Rationalization

We can readily give what seem to us "good" reasons for being a Catholic or a Mason, a Republican or a Democrat, an adherent or opponent of the United Nations. But the "real" reasons are usually on quite a different plane. Of course the importance of this dis­tinction is popularly, if somewhat obscurely, recognized. The Baptist missionary is ready enough to see that the Buddhist is not such because his doctrines would bear careful in­spection, but because he happened to be born in a Buddhist family in Tokyo. But it would be treason to his faith to acknowledge that his own partiality for certain doctrines is due the fact that his faith to acknowledge that his own partiality for certain doctrines is due to the fact that his mother was a member of the first Baptist church of oak ridge.

The "real" reasons for our beliefs are con­cealed from ourselves as well as from others. As we grow up we simply adopt the ideas presented to us in regard to such matters as religion, family relations, property, business, our country, and the state. We unconsciously absorb them from our environment. They are persistently whispered in our ear by the group in which we happen to live.

The little word my is the most important one in  all  human  affairs, and properly to reckon with it is the beginning of wisdom. It has the same force whether it is my dinner, my dog, and my house, or my faith, my coun­try, and my God. We not only resent the im­putation that our watch is wrong, or our car is shabby, but that our conception of the ca­nals of Mars, of the pronunciation of "Epicte-tus," of the medicinal value of salicine, or the date of Sargon I, are subject to revision.

Fantasy and Daydreaming

Unconscious fantasy, often translated into fancy daydreaming, is one of the most subtly dangerous mental mechanisms because al­though up to a certain point it is useful and constructive, beyond that difficult-to-determine point it can be destructive of the personality. Everyone engages in fantasy and daydreaming; the world properly respects the faculty of constructive imagination, as illu­minated by artists in every media. We escape from the pressures of reality through the pleasures of fantasy. We sustain ourselves through hopeful dreams of a "better future." We relax by entering into the world of illu­sion provided by fiction and drama in books and magazines, on stage and screen.

Fantasy becomes dangerous, however, when we no longer distinguish between what is fantasy and what is reality. In the uncon­scious mind fantasy is the property of the id, which indulges in wishful thinking just as much as it can without restraint from the ego.

Normal fantasizing has been carried too far when it has become a facile substitute for work and the effort needed to bring a vi­sion to reality when wishful thinking about success supersedes all struggle to attain it. People who live entirely in a dream world are mentally ill.