THE PROENSITY TO FEEL guilty or anxious about our behavior is a character trait that is commonly found today. Most of us are uneasy about certain aspects of our personalities. Often we blame ourselves even when our behavior hardly merits any punishment whatsoever. A certain level of guilt is, of course, necessary for some awareness of conscience. Indeed, it is complete absence would be symptomatic of the extremes of psychopathy. Excessive self-abasement or recrimination, on the other hand, reveals an equally neurotic and unbalanced attitude. The most agreeable food of the mind, taken in by the eyes and ears, does not always prove nutritious to the understanding.

Those who have persistent feelings of guilt often have an over-zealous religious background, with ideals of behavior that cannot be matched in life. However, this is by no means the only cause. In terms of the activity of the brain itself, the presence of an overriding sense of guilt could equally be caused by the limbic system with—once again the villain of the piece—an over-active amygdala that is continually being kept on an uneasy alert twenty-four hours a day. The mind is a master of itself; and is endowed with powers that might enable it to laugh at the tyrant’s vigilance.

I have seen, have seen ahead, seen where all is dark, read the unwritten. The brain of an individual is Jove’s eagle and his lightning on Earth—the title to majesty henceforth. Do you feel you have spent your life doing things you enjoy? Do you hate your present job? Do you feel bad if you let other people down? Do you feel bad when you think of times you have been rude or thoughtless? A mind that after a long season of oblivion in pain returns to wakefulness without a keen edge for the World is much in danger of souring permanently.

The caverns of the mind are open, and they will not close. Basic emotional attitudes have helped to create sensitivities and values as well as to establish habitual anxieties and inhibitions. Individuals whose strategies are dedicated to moving toward others are called Courtesan. Courtesan people act upon another’s wishes, and there is an implied docile submissiveness, rather than a genuine desire to please. Some people are like this with their parents and they tend to be single and isolated. This is caused by an overwhelming need for affection and approval. I have seen the mind was capacious, the affections were good.

The Courtesan is also a personality type that is implemented with an intimate partner. Courtesan personality types are caused by a feeling of being surrounded by threatening forces that must be appeased. There is a certain kind of trifling in which a mind not much at ease can sometimes indulge itself. One feels an escape, as it were, from the heart, and is fan to take up with lighter company. It is the theft of a truant boy, who goes to play for a few minutes while his master is asleep, and throws the chiding for his task upon futurity.

However, those perceived as most aggressive and thus most to be feared are the very people the “complaint indulger” needs most to be liked by. In the compulsive desire to belong and be liked, this type tends to overrate his or her shared interests with others. All behaviors arise from the compelling need to be accepted, approved of and appreciated. By attempting to fulfil others’ imagined expectations, this type usually losses sight of his or her own feelings. Philosophy and religion may be called the exercise of the mind, and when this is disordered, they are as wholesome as exercise can be to a distempered body.

However, this is not the only inherent difficulty the Courtesan encounters. In assuming and actually living the role of being unselfish, undemanding, over-considerate and grateful, always taking a subordinate role, Courtesans are surprised at how they appear to bear no grudge and are easily reconciled when someone does something to hurt them. They will go out of their way to accept the blame when it is inappropriate, will accuse themselves rather than others of inefficiency or some lapse or lack of judgment, and will credit others with being superior, more attractive and more worthwhile than themselves. He had that mental combination which is at once humble in the region of mystery and keen in the region of knowledge.

Inwardly they feel weak and helpless, are dependent upon the opinion of others, rate themselves and their performance almost entirely on the approval or disapproval of those they regard as their superiors—which is just about everyone—and fall apart when threatened with even mild criticism, rejection or abandonment. They feel most expansive with values like goodness, sympathy, unselfishness, humility, love. It is usual with the human mind to skip from one extreme to its opposite, as easily and almost as suddenly, as a bird from one bough to another.

They contract inwardly and are fearful of ambition, power, wielding, egotism, insensitivity and callousness. Curiously these negative values also excite them, for they feel the power and apparent strength they imply. This often reinforces their dependence upon aggressive and assertive companions. A well-proportioned mind is one which shows no particular bias; one of which we may safely say that it will never cause its owner to be confined as a madman, tortured as a heretic, or crucified as a blasphemer. Also on the other hand, that it will never cause him to be applauded as a prophet, revered as a priest, or exalted as a king. Its usual blessings are happiness and mediocrity.