First published in 1937 and edited by Florence Topal Wolfe, Successful Living is W. Béran Wolfe’s companion to How to Be Happy Though Human. Drawing on the popular psychology of his time, Wolfe offers advice for meeting the difficulties of everyday life, urging readers to look closely at their habits, ambitions and relationships.
His idea of success reaches beyond career or status: it involves finding purpose, making room for creativity and learning to live more fully with other people.
This 1948 second impression is a lively glimpse of the period’s confidence in psychology as a guide to ordinary life.
Wolfe’s questions about how we handle setbacks, what gives life meaning and how we relate to others still resonate. The book is also interesting as a record of early popular psychology and its belief in personal agency.
Some of its psychological explanations and attitudes to sex and relationships are dated, so it is best approached today as a historical work rather than a source of current clinical advice.
The book is in good condition. The dustjacket is frayed at some of the edges, especially at the top of the spine. There is a very nice inscription at the bottom of the front flyleaf in which the book is offered "in my great desire to help" and is dated July 15th 1949.
