Thoughts to Build On

damage there is, of course, the entire spectrum of basically
mental illnesses, ranging from simple self-consciousness to
violent insanity. The situation has gotten completely out
of hand. As Time Magazine stated some time ago: "If all
the 15,000 (psychiatrists) in the United States, plus all the
psychiatric social workers and all the psychologists trained
as therapists, spent all their working hours with individual
patients, they would still only be able to treat one in ten
of the patients who need help for emotional ills."
I make no pretense of being qualified to pro-
vide a solution for so momentous a problem. I do want to
suggest a simple-and highly successful-form of therapy
which can be used to alleviate some mental and emotional
stresses which often escalate into more serious disorders.
Dr. Karl Menninger, one of America's most
famous psychiatrists, called it: "TALKING it out." More
technically, psychiatrists call it: "Catharsis." The unpro-
fessional simply calls it: "Getting it out of your system."
To stay in the common vernacular, when something is
"eating you", don't keep it to yourself-talk it out, get it
out of your system. Don't worry and stew and fret just by
yourself until you get "all steamed up" and then fail to
"let off the steam" -because that's when you may "blow"
in anyone of a thousand disastrous ways!
Dr. Karl Menninger taught (in his excellent
book, "The Vital Balance") that mental illness is not a lot
of different illnesses, but actually consists of increasing
stages of a basic mental disorder.
Certainly that is a greatly simplified and useful
approach. It follows, since the first stage is the repression