The Psychology of Relaxation: Reflections on the Methods to Escape from the Clutch of the Modern Strenuous Life

This book treats of the psychology of relaxation and the methods to escape from Stress of the modern life. “Some of us manage to escape neurasthenia, but few of us are free from fatigue, chronic or acute. We hear with amazement now and again someone say "I was never tired in my life." Surely under normal conditions we ought not to be so tired as we are, nor tired so often. Under these circumstances a new interest has suddenly awakened in relaxation. The psychology of it is yet unwritten; the physiology of it is obscure; yet the need of it has become apparent. This need has lately been greatly emphasized by an outbreak of recreation crazes of which the dancing craze and the moving-picture craze are the most conspicuous. They have become so general and are so compelling that they even remind us of the epidemics of the middle ages. The almost obsessional character of these crazes may not be wholly explicable on psychological grounds, but it suggests the need of psychological inquiry into the nature of relaxation in itself and into the peculiar conditions of our times which issue, on the one hand, in the outburst of recreation crazes, and, on the other, in a rather wide-spread disposition to fatigue or even nervous disorders...”