In chemical dependency, wherein morals usually break down horribly, addicted

persons tend to believe that they remain in respectable condition, with

respectable prospects. They thus display an extremely unrealistic denial of

reality as they go deeper and deeper into deterioration. In my youth, Freudian

remedies failed utterly in reversing chemical dependency, but nowadays

Alcoholics Anonymous routinely achieves a fifty percent cure rate by causing

several psychological tendencies to act together to counter addiction. However,

the cure process is typically difficult and draining, and a fifty percent

success rate implies a fifty percent failure rate. One should stay far away from

any conduct at all likely to drift into chemical dependency. Even a small chance

of suffering so great a damage should be avoided.

 

Twelve: Excessive Self-Regard Tendency

 

We all commonly observe the excessive self- regard of man. He mostly

misappraises himself on the high side, like the ninety percent of Swedish

drivers that judge themselves to be above average. Such misappraisals also apply

to a person’s major “possessions.” One spouse usually overappraises the other

spouse. And a man’s children are likewise appraised higher by him than they are

likely to be in a more objective view. Even man’s minor possessions tend to be

overappraised. Once owned, they suddenly become worth more to him than he would

pay if they were offered for sale to him and he didn’t already own them. There

is a name in psychology for this overappraise-your-own-possessions phenomenon:

the “endowment effect.” And all man’s decisions are suddenly regarded by him as