Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1930-02-20
THIS AND THAT
BY cHARLEs 3. TRACEWELL.

and observation before one can have
any grasp Of the science.
And the very science itself is con-
stantly undergoing change and reforma-
ton, and its finest practitioners know
that what is known after ali is only a
1.-THE of what yet remains to be learned
No layman, no matter how MANY
books he has read, is in any position
to make an analysis in a twinklfnp of
an eye. DR.. White himself couldn't do
it. At least he wouldn't
4 4 X
Some Of the greatest men and women
In world history, of course have been
paranoiacs, so there is no particular
disgrace in the thing.
Yet 1t is so satisfying to some people
to be able to feel that their friends and
acquaintance are afflicted with various
bodily and nervous degenerations.
And particularly decisions of perse-
cution!
Some one ought to rise as a defender
OF the persecution complex.
The joke of it is that MANY persons
are prosecuted, and often quite cruelty
and inexcusably. There isn't a bust
ness establishment in this country-or
probably in any other-in which some
essentially mean individual does not
pick" on one or more of his comrades,
There are many forms of persecu-
ton which have nothing at all to do
with mental states except that involved
In naturally nasty disposition. The
mean man has never been diagnosed
as case" as yet, but perhaps some
day he will.
There is a vast difference between the
finn IF
perfectly normal that he is being per-
secuted and the "delusions of perse-
cution" which the genuine paranoiac
displays.
This difference comes in the per-
sistence. The former is only too glad
to give up his ideas of persecution when
the prosecutor quits. 1t is the one
thing in the world that the victim prays
for. Nagging for instance. Thousands
Of men in this country have been al
most driven to insanity by the constant
nagging OF otherwise efficient help
meets.
It would have been easy for any dab
bier In the things of the mind to have
declared that they were suffering from
persecution decisions. The victims,
however, knew better. All they wanted
was for the old lady to let up on them.
And sometimes she did, when happily
she took up" a new creed which
Gained her mind and heart and per-
mitted her to realize that nagging, in
its aggravated forms, was nothing more
nor less than persecution.
X X X X
The genuine paranoiac, as we have
read about him (and herr, gets fixed
idea into his head. which never for a
moment will he release
Argument does no good. Always he
is able to outargue anybody or any
thing He has an idea that So-and-Sc
is after him, or that Something or
other Is after him, and that is both
the beginning and the end of it.
One of the most interesting of the
recent biographies details a perfect case
of this kind. Here was a delusion
based upon bodily and nervous degen-
Grafton. complicated by Authorizations
of hearing Cat least in childhood), in
volving a lifelong devotion to the flxec
idea.
There is tremendous gulf between
being the victim of petty, actual per-
| secution and the victim of prosecutions
which do not exist except in ones owr
mind. One does not have to be a doctor
to see the difference. Nor does one have
to have anything but common sense to
realize that any one who insists or
singing around such terms as par
anoia" and "paranoiaC" Is makine
something of a fool of himself.