How-to-do-it

It was reported in “Sports Illustrated” magazine that athletes who intended to participate in the National AAU track and field championships were required to fill out a questionnaire. Among the questions were, “What is your hobby?” and “What is your ambition?” One Olympic distance-runner answered, “My hobby is taking apart my Volkswagen … My ambition is to be able to put it back together.”

Achieving self-esteem, self-respect, peace of mind, a sense of worthwhileness and purposefulness, an “I’m O.K. feeling,” these are the ambitions of us all. Sure, we want to “get it all together,” but oh how complicated the process seems to have become in our time. In recent years there has been a publications-explosion of popular books on how to take ourselves apart and put ourselves back together. Professional and amateur psychologists, and others, have made a hobby of inventing new psychological gimmicks for helping people to “get it all together,” to use the modern cliche. The “popular-psychology” shelves in any modern…