The Waterbury Democrat., 1943-12-17
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 REAL PERSON BY DR. HARRY EMERSON FOSDIC.k
Only the Person Who Invests His
 Life Enriches It

The personal counselor constantly runs upon self-focused, unextended lives, miserably striving to find happiness by attending to them selves. In late years the gospel of self, expression has gained a wide hearing. Popularly it has meant Explode yourself; let yourself go; knock the bungs from your emo tional barrels and let them gurgle! As protest against petty. prohibi- tive moralisms, this gospel is easily applicable, and as 8 means of re- lease to some individuals, tied hand and foot with senseless scrupulosi- ties, it has had its value.
 The wise counselor pleads not against self-eXpression but for 1t; he, too, wants the uninhibited outgoing life; but he wants self expression to be und ,rstood and practiced in accord with t h { realistic, psychological facts.
 Merely exploding individual emo tons for the sake of the momentary self -centered thrill gets one mo- where. Like firecrackers they go of and nothing comes of it. In the end, the constant repetition of such emotional self-relief disperSes life and leaves it more incoherent arl6 aimleSS than 1t was before.
 Even in the sexual realm this Ii true. Says one of our eminent psychiatrists: From the point oi view of cure, the advice to go ane express your instincts Is only one degree more foolish than the anti quated advice which used to bt given to ever. neurotic girl: Al you need is to get married.' II actual experience I have nevel known 8 true neurosis cured b, marriage, still less by sexual lib ertinism. But I have personal! known many neuroses preclptatet times tempted to think that hal my patients are neurotic because they are not married and the othel half because they are!"
 Adequate self-eXpresSion Is ( much deeper matter than self-ex- plosion. Its true exponent is not the libertine but the artist, the musi- clan, the scientist, the fortunate mother absorbed in her family, the public-spirited businessman crea- lively doing something for his com- munity, the philanthropist going all out for the sake of others in need the teacher saying as Prof. George H. Palmer did, Harvard College pays me for doing what I would gladly pay it fo. allowing me to do.'
 Such personalities, in eminent or humble places, really express them seves, and their common quality iS not self absorption but self invest ment.
 Indeed, all durable happiness par takes of this quality. One must lose oneself in music to enjoy it. One must forget oneself in game to love 1t. One must go out to ones friends to know friendships satis- factions. The egocentric person tries to bounce on happiness, but he al- ways misses it.
 To call human nature essential ly and altogether selfish, obvious | ly, is a nliSStatement. Human na- ture is so constituted that it never flowers out until it escapes from absorbing self concern.
 Some of the direst perils that confront the world today springs not from egocentricity but from mans constitutional urge to over- pass it, and from the attempted satisfaction of that urge in mistak- en ways.
 The totalitarian state, for ex- ample, is made possible by me:l's insistent desire to belong to scme 1 thing greater than themselves - a race or nation in loyalty to which they lost themselves. All such de- mands for self-devotion, e V e n though we call them pooled self ishness," have this much sense Tn them-they recognize, as philoso- phies of inuividualistic license and libertinism do not, that man is es- sentially made not for egocentric- ity but for self-investment, and can never be satisfied without 1t. XXyhap fhic deeD-Spated urge In