Adaptation to Life

A few years ago, I read a magazine article about a remarkable study by an interesting psychiatrist. The doctor in question had in fact not initiated but inherited the so-called "longitudinal" study, which closely followed a cohort of men from a particular generation and Ivy League university from their freshmen years until the present day, and attempted to chart their success, and their satisfaction with their lives.
At that time I was in weekly therapy sessions with WL, a young and softspoken psychiatric resident, whose lasting impact on me would be difficult to understate, despite the years we spent together, crammed into his impossibly small office.
Although I forget what exactly was revealed in the article, it was enough to inspire me to track down the book, which I special-ordered, as it was not in stock at the psychology-specialised book store on the main university campus in my city. I remember the clerk telling me that it was kind of old (12-15 years perhaps at the time), and I remember telling him that he was bound to get a bunch of orders for it because of the fresh new light shone thereon by the article I had read, in a widely-read magazine.
It took a month or more for the book to arrive, and I remember how excited I was when it did. And I remember reading it enthusiastically and voraciously, and I remember sharing with S., who was by that time living with me, and with WL, whom I had actually known marginally longer, that this book was going to change my life. And I remember the similar indifference of them both to my confident enthusiasm.
The premise of the book is that happiness and success are essentially contingent on how well one learns to handle adversity. The author, in studying his subjects, identifies, classifies and stratifies the adaptive mechanisms which they employ to handle the situations in which they find themselves. He sorts the techniques into four groups, which he numbers Levels 1, 2, 3, and 4, namely psychotic, immature, neurotic, and mature. His conclusion: the more prominent the role of the mature adaptive defence mechanisms in a subject's repertoire, the happier and more successful they tended to be.
I have given a great deal of credit in these pages to some of the people close to me who have made enormous contributions to help and inspire me: my mentor LB, my neighbour and coach LD, my friend LH, my Goddaughter and inspiration J, my sister K, my friend PH, my coach OW, my therapist WC. I have neglected to credit GV, the author of that book, for the initial inspiration.
The seeds of the remarkable transformation which I have undergone were planted upon reading that book. The roots of FSM, the Class Act, are found within the pages and the premise of that book. The power which I have been able to harness and channel into such remarkable feats this year for myself and for my friends and my family stems from the fundamentals laid down in that book.