Self-Realization and Self-Defeat. Samuel J. Warner. New York:  Grove Press, 1966.  215 pp.

The self turns against the self. That assumption is axiomatic. Supporting data are not lacking: self-hatred, self-defeat, masochism, self-destruction—the list is endless. Are men deficient in elementary selfishness? What are the barriers to constructive self-interest, not only in the personal sphere but on the level of social institutions? In short, what conditions of modern life turn men into three-time losers? These are the questions which Dr. Warner omitted from his book. I believe it is fair to judge a book by its omissions, as well as its inclusions, because to leave unsaid something of importance is to lead the reader down the wrong path—away from the heart of the matter.

Dr. Warner's book is about losers, people who seemingly condemn themselves to be nothing. It is tacitly assumed that where there are losers there must also be winners. The author does not see that the lives men lead today are often marred by selfishness, and that his neurotic losers also tried to play the game of selfishness. They simply did not have enough willfulness in their makeup, not enough brass, so they fell to one side, becoming social failures, vocational failures, sexual failures, failures in the committee room no less than in the locker room. Alas! They did not flail away vigorously enough on the new thrashing-floor of the executive suite. The sweet kernel of success remained trapped in its husk, and their lives turned to straw.

Dr. Warner is right that men undo themselves, but to think of men as isolated atoms, and to imagine that they are defeated, one by one, is to be in error. They do not die separate spiritual deaths, but overcome each other, so that each apparent self-defeat makes losers out of others, as well. Dr. Warner's patients are only the small minority of self-conscious losers whom we call neurotics. Their individual tragedies are part of a collective loss, the unconscious self-betrayal of entire multitudes devoid of altruism, and destroyed by their own fears and malev