It will now be seen how very necessary it is, in dealing with Narcissism in particular, to understand something of rationalization, so that we may be on our guard in examining ourselves, against allowing this to play too great a part in our conclusions. Otherwise, with all the goodwill in the world, we may never succeed in making any improvement whatsoever, in ourselves. The greatest scientists themselves have been amongst those who realised this. It was Darwin who wrote, as we have quoted in the earlier part of this book, “I had, during many years, followed a golden rule, namely, that whenever a published fact, a new observation or thought came across me, which was opposed to my general results, to make a memorandum of it without fail and at once, for I had found by experience that such facts and thoughts were far more apt to escape from the memory than favourable ones.” And it was the great scientist, Helmholtz, who said, “It is better to be in actual doubt, than to rock oneself in dogmatic ignorance.” FOOTNOTE: [7] Of course this does not imply that no one is ever capable of putting his conscious feelings on one side, and examining a subject in spite of pre-conceived ideas and desires, but that this is the exception rather than the rule. PART II PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS CHAPTER X SELF ANALYSIS In attempting to cure ourselves of hyper-Narcissistic characteristics, there are several lines of treatment which may be followed, some of which depend upon the particular manifestation of Narcissism with which we have to deal. One, however, which should be followed in every case, we borrow from the methods of psycho-analysis. We cannot call it psycho-analysis because the technique employed by an amateur in examining himself must be vastly different from the technique employed by a psycho-analyst in dealing with his patient. But it is a modification of one detail of the technique of psycho-analysis which, if properly applied, may have far-reaching results. It is on the lines of that phenomenon which is known generally as ab-reaction, and is as follows. When an individual has come to the conclusion that he is suffering from some characteristic of Narcissistic nature, which he would rather be without, he should, first of all, carefully call to mind, and if possible make historical notes of the situations which stimulate the particular temperamental reaction to which he objects. If he can, he should go further than this, and recall as many as possible of the actual situations of recent date, when this particular reaction has been called forth.