How to Rein In Our Nerves

A great number of books, magazines, and articles teach us how to win friends, how to influence them, how to command our feelings in anger or hatred or love, and how to master our nerves, lead well, and manage others.

Every individual in this existence is two persons: himself, and his other self, forever influenced by what the subconscious mind dictates to it — and the two selves may be strangers to one another, so that one of them does not even know the other exists. This second part of us is the subconscious, or unconscious, mind. It is the storehouse that holds the thoughts and inclinations we do not wish to disclose even to ourselves. These furtive thoughts, which we are so unwilling to acknowledge, and which we try to forget and erase from our memory, leave behind them traces that cannot be effaced. The more we try to be rid of them, the more firmly rooted and fixed they become. Our pressing down upon our thoughts does not remove them, but only sinks them into the depths.

The psychologist Sigmund Freud was the first to search and inquire into the unconscious mind and to know its nature. Upon that discovery, science learned many things about this second self of every individual, and proved that our unconscious mind has an influence on our conduct that is great to a far-reaching degree. Most of us imagine that our actions spring from our thinking and the soundness of our judgment alone: we face a difficulty, we ponder it well, then we set to work, believing that our decision was built on logic and the reasoning mind alone. This is sometimes true, and beyond dispute; but far more often it is our unconscious mind that steers our decisions, not mere thinking alone.

An example of the way feeling is built up in the reservoir of the unconscious mind is what parents permit their little ones, which delights them, and what they withhold from them, which stirs their anger and hatred. And since the children have learned that showing these feelings brings harm and injury to others, they have tried to conceal them by handing them over to the unconscious mind, where no one sees or finds them. Thus each of us grew up carrying within him the various feelings produced by the clash of what we want with what others want: ourselves and our surroundings, our duties toward others, our obedience to laws and regulations, our observance of and respect for moral codes and social systems.

We must go to school when we would rather go swimming. We must respect the schoolmistress though we sometimes wish we could slap her face. We must study algebra, geometry, and chemistry while our inclination is toward sewing and embroidery. And above all this, we must stay nailed to the classroom benches while our souls yearn to walk, to run, to move, to gaze out of the windows... After school we go out into life — into work — and here too we face the same problems, the same clash between our own views and our surroundings... We meet someone about some matter at eleven o'clock, when he ought to have been met at nine in the morning so that things would not be delayed. We carry out a request of the head of our department that conflicts sharply with our personal conviction, when we ought to have opposed him; so we hide our vexation behind a screen of politeness and respect. And thus the days pass, and the unconscious mind holds within its folds all the inclinations that were suppressed and the desires that were checked.

To reach the unconscious mind, one must believe in the power of one's subconscious and truly long to gain mastery over it — and this is not so easy as it appears. To keep his balance, a man must draw a little away from himself, imagine that he is another person, and then look at himself with the naked eye. He will notice things — small, minute things — drifting among the folds of his subconscious, and he must identify them: envy, jealousy, hatred, anger, disappointment, prejudice, revenge — these germs lurking behind those folds. If he cannot identify them, then one of two things has happened: either he is the one perfect person on this green earth, or his naked eyes have been smeared with the filth of pride, self-love, and vanity. And when he discovers these things in himself, let him do something useful about what he has discovered — and this is quite possible, now that he knows the dispositions of his subconscious mind. His love of correcting error lights his path, and he takes upon himself the care of the situation.

After a man has passed through these stages he reaches the very summit; but his first stand there will not last long, for the winds of habit, rooted in his soul, will sweep him down to earth again. He must not be alarmed, but must gather himself and try the climb again. And once his feet stand firm upon the summit, he will have carried out a psychological test of real weight in his life. He will not merely understand his subconscious mind; he will become able to distinguish clearly the force that lies behind every human relation, and will then perceive the cause of his own failure, or of others' failure, in certain matters where the subconscious mind moves contrary to the plan laid down.

A man's ascent of those steps is the greatest thing he can do. Is he ready to pay the price it will most certainly cost him, in proportion to the efforts he will expend for this purpose?

The price he will pay is contained in a single sentence:

— Acknowledging what he sees with the naked eye —