The cure of self-consciousness / by James Alexander.

  • James Alexander
Date:
1915
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The cure of self-consciousness / by James Alexander. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    is rugged at first, but the pleasant places on the way are many, to the man who will keep steadily on. With regard to the second form of the fear of failure, the hopes of cure, or more properly, control are very bright. We cannot teach you how to prevent the thought of failure entering your mind, but we can show you how to control the thought, and how to prevent it affecting your career. | § 13. FEAR OF CRITICISM. The self-conscious person has a great dread of criticism. A slight analysis of what we mean by criticism will reveal the grounds of his fear. Criticism is a term that is used primarily in connexion with literature and the fine arts, but it is used also in a much wider sense. ‘T’o criticise signifies to judge; it is a weighing up for or against. A critic examines care- fully the merits or demerits of a work, its beauty or its ugliness, its strong points or its weak points. A true critic gives his reasons for his judgment. He explains why he considers a work good or bad, beautiful or ugly. He must be scrupulously fair and free from bias. Criticism in its wider sense is a scrutiny of every form of human effort. We criticise books, pictures, music, with a facility born of ignorance. We criticise men, women, and children; we criticise their actions, their speech, their dress, and everything about them. In this wider and inexact sense, every human being is a critic. With the self-conscious person—the extreme type— criticism is always regarded as an unfair thing, an unholy thing; it is a personal attack directed against himself, his actions, or his work. Even should the criticism be favourable, he is suspicious; it may be the prelude to a stinging attack, an attempt to lead him into more ambitious work where he may fail, and criticism may have a sure target.
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