Studies in Crap: To fix your personality, stop being fat, start manipulating people

Each Thursday, your Crap Archivist brings you the finest in forgotten and bewildering crap culled from basements, thrift stores, estate sales and flea markets. I do this for one reason: Knowledge is power.

​How to Improve Your Personality,

Plus the Formula for Being an Interesting Conversationalist

Author: George W. Crane, PhD, MD

Date: Not given, but its a-bomb fear and belief that psychology is magic suggests the early 1950s

The Cover Promises: You bore people.

Representative Quotes:

• “Praise a girl regarding her party dress or slender ankles, or kissable mouth, etc.” (page 8)

• “You can develop all sorts of discussions ranging from whether or not women are as intelligent as men, or should smoke and drink whiskey, to the male opinion of red fingernails on girls, or their use of slang or profanity.” (page 8).

One of dozens of similar titles once rush-mailed to America’s most hapless souls, this twenty-cent guide to exploiting social situations so that you might take advantage of others marks a signal development in the history of the think-yourself-awesome industry pioneered by visionaries like Norman Vincent Peale and Professor Harold Hill, Dr. George W. Crane, PhD, MD, super-powered his self-help with science, which, fifty years ago, was still something that Americans liked.

That means this grubby rip-off describes the ego, recommends textbooks Dr. Crane has written, and distinguishes itself with that most important self-help book standby: reducing the endless complexities of personality into a quick, science-flavored list-ettes.

For example, Crane breaks down the self like Stereo Review evaluates speakers, proposing your personality is the result of how you rank in (1) Physical Appearance; (2) Tact or Social Intelligence; (3) Aggressiveness or Assurance; (4) Emotionality; (5) Morality.

Since Physical Appearance is number one, science itself compels Dr. Crane to spend a quarter of the pamphlet picking on your weight. “Remember, you can’t feel like a sports roadster with the chassis of a truck,” he writes. His best advice for “the corpulent person”:

“Even the rings on a fat person’s fingers accentuate obesity, so try to reduce your hand jewelry if you wish to shun those things that advertise your fatness. And eliminate B.O., as well as halitosis, dandruff and blackheads.”

Fortunately, even a tubby stinkbug like you has a chance at love. This confounds the good doctor, who observes that anyone who hangs out at the marriage license window of the courthouse will notice “that many girls aren’t even average in their physical beauty, yet they have won sweethearts and are soon to enter matrimony.”

How could this be? Dr. Crane discovers his answer by harnessing the power of science.

“How did they attain their engagement rings? Well, because they had attractive personalities and had learned to too the other fellow’s horn.” 

Remember, ladies: if all you do with a horn is toot it, Jesus doesn’t mind if you wear white.