Let us say that he has entered a restaurant for lunch, and that having glanced down the menu, he then has to wait ten minutes before the waiter attends to him. Probably, after the first minute of that time, he has begun to get impatient; at the end of ten minutes he is either making up his mind to go without his lunch, so great is his irritability, or else he is, with great emotion, explaining to his neighbour how extremely inefficient this restaurant is, as regards management, service, and, in fact, everything connected with it. He is utterly unable to realise the facts of the case. Let us again refer to the facts for a moment. The restaurant is a business, and must make a profit; in order to do this, only a limited number of waiters can possibly be kept, and the number of these has to be regulated by the average number of customers, by the profit which it is possible to make in the neighbourhood, and other factors. In the second place, the luncheon hour is one at which the number of customers is well above the average, and therefore in which the service is bound to be the slowest; however good the management, however skilful the waiters, they are obliged to devote a certain number of minutes to each customer; and the probability is that our Narcissistic individual is being as well attended to as anybody else. He does not realise this however, he is not dealing with the facts at all. He merely knows that he wishes for an immediate meal, that his sense of perfection is thoroughly disturbed, and his unconscious idea is that if he is sufficiently impatient, what he wants will come to him immediately, just as it did in childhood.
Now let us see how he may deal with himself. We will suppose that he has read this chapter before his next visit to the restaurant in question. Once again he sits down, once again he finds he is kept waiting. His impatience begins to manifest itself in its early stages. He pulls himself up, and the first thing that he does is to realise the causes of his impatience, as set out in the last paragraph. He must go quickly over the original causes of his Narcissism in infancy, and of how he obtained means of satisfaction, and so developed his present habit of thought. He must run over the facts concerning the restaurant, and realise that it is a business place, and that it is at its busiest hour. In other words, he must get into full consciousness the various factors associated with this Narcissistic outburst of impatience. Then, let him realise as a kind of summary, “What I am actually objecting to is the disturbance of my unconscious feeling of omnipotence and perfection. Let me, however, turn this energy, utilise this time during which I am waiting in attaining a step nearer real perfection instead of bemoaning the loss of my imaginary perfection. Now, a step towards real perfection will be attained, if I overcome this habit of impatience. Let me, therefore, utilise this time in sitting here patiently, in worrying no longer about the time the waiter is taking, in being actually pleased with the fact that I am becoming more patient, and that my time is being usefully filled with a directive aim, which has as its object the same ultimate idea as the original phantastic one, namely, that of perfection.”
Critics may here suggest that this long monologue on the part of the impatient individual might have been cut short by allowing him to say, “Obviously, the waiters are busy, it is no use being impatient, let me be patient.” I must point out, however, that the result would probably not have been the same. The longer method has its value in the fact that he brings into consciousness the two ideas of perfection, the Narcissistic idea which is being hurt, and the real idea which he is desiring consciously to obtain. And it is very much easier to turn energy from one channel to another, if there are lines of similarity between the two channels.
Hence, when one’s sense of perfection is assailed, let one turn one’s energy into some form of thought which still satisfies the idea of perfection attained or attainable. A similar process can be gone through with any other Narcissistic form of trouble, and consists in recapitulating the causes, and in reaching a determined effort to deflect consciously the energy from the phantastic into the real. The same principle holds good for all temperamental troubles of this sort, but the individual will have to devise for himself a suitable formula to use to suit the needs of his own case.
CHAPTER XIII AUTO-SUGGESTION
Suggestion, in one form or another, plays an extremely important part in the life of everyone. Suggestion consists in impressing upon the unconscious mind some idea or thought in such a way that the unconscious mind will take it and absorb it as part of itself, and utilise it unconsciously and instinctively. Quite unconsciously, throughout childhood and adult life, we are receiving suggestions from the actions of those around us.
For example, I remember as a boy going repeatedly with a relative to a friend’s house. At the time, I did not notice that my relative invariably used the knocker, and never rang the bell, or rather I did not consciously notice it. On one occasion I, myself, was sent with a message to this house, and although I was in the habit of ringing bells whenever I went to other houses, at this particular one, I instinctively knocked only. The suggestion that I should knock upon that particular door had been implanted in me by the fact that I had repeatedly seen the same action take place, although I had paid no conscious attention to it. It had impressed itself upon my mind as the right action to take place, under the particular circumstances attending a visit to this house, so that I performed the action itself automatically, without any further thought in the matter.
The example impressed itself upon my mind, because while I was in the house, on this occasion, a man came to mend the bell, which had been out of order for many months. Hence, the reason my relative invariably knocked.