What It Means to Grow Up - a Guide in Understanding the Development of Character

WHAT IT MEANS TO GROW UP. PREFACE: This book should be valuable in dealing with personality problems. It should help young people to understand themselves, and should be a resource to parents and teachers, and to all others who deal with children and youth. We must teach youth to face calmly the facts, the tasks and difficulties of actual, everyday life and to master them, for it is not a cold abstract theory or a world-forgetting ideal morality which we are called upon to transmit to the new generation. Which means, at the same time, that we must show how one can recognize, understand, and master ones qwn peculiarities, ones own tasks and diffi culties. We must teach the art of growing up. That the practical way of overcoming personality problems is always at the same time also the ethical way may be a fact tremendously important from philosophical and religious points of view. For the present we cannot let it be a determining factor in our psychological problem. Young people are not able, as a rule, to make the right decision so long as they perceive moral rightness only on theoretical grounds. It is true, however, that they learn quickly and simply to take the usable way as soon as they have come to the conviction that here, in this con crete specific case, it is the only possible, practical way out In this book only facts and their connections have been set forth, and certain practical inferences have been pointed out. Everything else, the discussion of the premises and the development of the point of view philosophically., must be left to the reader. We can and must help young people understand their experiences and deduce the necessary conclu sions. But tlieir point of yiew their life philosophy, their religio, they, inust work out for themselves. They cannot be absolved from this most difficult and most important task in life. We can assist in the preparation for it, but the final decision in this mat ter each person must make alone and for himself. Therefore in this book the endeavor is made, over and again, to induce the reader to think for himself and to judge these psychological problems for him self. He shall seek his own point of view, call his own experiences into council, develop his own judg ment, deepen it and correct it over and again until in this way he becomes mature, grows up, gains wisdom. In different countries on the continent, soon after the appearance of this book, it so happened that several teachers began to read it with, their classes. Quite a number of results, in the form of letters, articles and also applications for instance to various novels and plays, have been collected. It would be valuable for the psychology of adolescence, and also possibly of great interest for comparative folk psychology, if similar results from within the range of Anglo-Saxon culture might be received. FRITZ KUNKEL, M. D. October, 1936. CONTENTS: Preface v L FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES 1. Objectivity and Egocentricity 3 2. TAtf Effects of Pampering. Superi ority and Inferiority 5 3. The Hardening Process Inner Laws 10 4. Intimidation Pessimism 14 5. 77z Vicious Circle 17 6-Tension Capacity 21 JL PL Y 7. Real Play 29 8. P y without Wor 32 9. JFor without Play 36 ix CONTENTS 10. Memorization 41 11. Learning Arithmetic 46 12. Training in Athletics 50 . DEFIANCE AND OBEDIENCE 13. The Habit of Saying No 57 14. The Habit of Saying Yes 60 15. Playing Grown-up 64 1 6. Playing Baby 69 17. T Craving to Be Great 72 1 8. Excitability 77 IK SOLITARINESS AND FELLOWSHIP 19. T Spoilsport and the Dreamer 83 20. Buffoons 88 21. Followers 90 22. Fanatics 95 23. Dictators 98 24. Weaklings 103 x CONTENTS V. LOVE AND RESPONSIBILITY 25. Sexual Enlightenment 109 26. Sex as Weapon 113 27. Flight into Solitude 117 28. Flight into Anger 122 29. Refuge with Individuals of Ones Own Sex 127 30. Courage for the Long Way 133 VI. THE CRISIS AND A PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 31. The Way that Leads to the Crisis 141 32...