People often accuse me of being overly optimistic about life; and they have also predicted that I will suffer intense disillusion because of it someday. I readily agree to the first assertion, but have yet to suffer the dire consequences they anticipate for me in the second. I suppose this outlook--besides being a significant part of my psychological makeup--is also one of the foundations of my political outlook. It represents a classic case of "the glass is half empty vs. the glass is half full" conundrum.

This brief essay delineates what neurosis is and states how to heal it. Neurotics are persons who formed a pattern of questing after ego ideals, a goal that is impossible of attainment. Healing neurosis lies in desisting from seeking ego ideals and accepting the imperfect self and body as they are and making the most of them.

Everyone desires the good things of life. This desire creates the quest for new things. The latest brand name, alluring displays, adverts, and special sales prices make it almost impossible to resist wandering into a store and buying some things that you know is out of your budget. Unfortunately, instead of exercising restraint, many people overspend because they have opted to buy now and pay later. Many people struggle financially because they live beyond their means. While they make good money, it is as if they put it in a bag with holes.

This paper points out that many Igbos seem invested in associating themselves to persons that they perceive as successful and dissociating themselves from persons that in their opinions seem to have failed. It speculates that it is inferiority feeling that leads them to seek compensatory superiority from appearing proximate to successful persons. This is a neurosis, a mild mental disorder that is healed when folk accept their real selves, in this case, their African selves, without need to associate themselves with external others perceived to be important.

This brief essay reiterates the need to accept ones actual self (ones imperfect body) and real self (the unknown spiritual self) and the need to avoid trying to seem an imaginary ideal, perfect self. It states the merits of either life style. The essay did not go into causal analysis as to why folk reject their actual and real selves and embark on trying to become idealized, special selves, for doing so would take the essay too far afield.

This paper points out that the individual’s inherited biological constitution affects the formation of his personality and that once personality is formed in childhood it affects the individual’s subsequent behaviors and what he gets out of life. No reasonable person disputes the impact of the environment on the individual, after all the environment formed the individual’s biology, the paper insists that individual’s present biological state plays the greater role in determining his personality.