=Enjoying the Blues.= It helps to know that the easiest way to fight the blues is by realizing that they are a deliberate, if unconscious, attempt to gain the pity of ourselves and others.  There seems to be in undeveloped human nature something that really enjoys being pitied, and if we cannot get the commiseration of other people, we can, without much trouble, work up a case of self-pity.  Most of us would have to acknowledge that we seldom find tears in our eyes except when our own woes are under consideration.  “Whatever else the blues accomplish, they certainly afford us a chance to submerge ourselves in a sea of self-engrossment."[63]

[Footnote 63:  Putnam:  Human Motives.]

=The Chip on the Shoulder.= It helps to know that irritability and over-sensitiveness are usually the result of tension from unsatisfied desires which must find some kind of outlet.  If a person is secretly restive under the fact that he cannot have the kind of clothes he wants, cannot shine in society, or secure a college education or a large fortune,—­all of which minister to our insistent and rarely satisfied instinct of self-assertion,—­or if he is secretly yearning for the satisfaction of the marriage relation, or for the sense of completion in parenthood; then the tension from these unsatisfied desires shows itself in a hundred little everyday instances of lack of self-control.  These mystify him and his friends, but they are understandable when the whole truth is known.

=Anxiety and Fear.= Nowhere is understanding more valuable than when we approach the subject of anxiety and fear.  Whenever a person falls into a state of abnormal fear, his friends and his physician spend a good deal of time in attempting to prove to him that there is no cause for apprehension, and in exhorting him to use his reason and give up his fear.  But how can a person help himself when he is fighting in the dark?  How can he free himself when the thing he thinks he fears is merely a symbol of what he really fears?  The woman who was afraid she would choke her child had been several months in the hands of Christian Scientists, and had earnestly tried to replace fear with courage.  But in the circumstances, and without further knowledge, this was as impossible as it is for a man to lift himself by his own boot-straps.  She had no point of contact with her real fear, as the man has no leverage contact with the earth from which he wishes to lift himself.

To be sure there are many cases in which an assumed cheerfulness and courage do have a mighty effect on the inner man.  The forces of the personality are not set, but plastic, and are constantly acting and interacting upon one another.  Surface habits do influence the forces below the surface.  William James’s advice, “Square your shoulders, speak in a major key, smile, and turn a compliment,” is good for most occasions, but sometimes even a little understanding of the cause is far more effective.