higher math, Pete appraises Jane as no good at it even if Jane is a whiz. This

sort of wrong thinking is both natural and common. Pete’s antidote is not to

believe that, on average, ninety-year-olds think as well as forty-year-olds or

that there are as many females as males among Ph. D.’s in math. Instead, just as

he must learn that trend does not always correctly predict destiny, he must

learn that the average dimension in some group will not reliably guide him to

the dimension of some specific item. Otherwise Pete will make many errors, like

that of the fellow who drowned in a river that averaged out only eighteen inches

deep.

 

Eleven: Simple, Pain-Avoiding Psychological Denial

 

This phenomenon first hit me hard in World War II when the superathlete,

superstudent son of a family friend flew off over the Atlantic Ocean and never

came back. His mother, who was a very sane woman, then refused to believe he was

dead. That’s Simple, Pain-Avoiding Psychological Denial. The reality is too

painful to bear, so one distorts the facts until they become bearable. We all do

that to some extent, often causing terrible problems. The tendency’s most

extreme outcomes are usually mixed up with love, death, and chemical dependency.

 

Where denial is used to make dying easier, the conduct meets almost no

criticism. Who would begrudge a fellow man such help at such a time? But some

people hope to leave life hewing to the iron prescription, “It is not necessary

to hope in order to persevere.” And there is something admirable in anyone able

to do this.