People in 19th Century America must have been pretty stupid.Consider.Had I been the one to discover the gold in California in 1848 that led to the 1849 California Gold Rush, the last thing I would have done was to start shouting from the roof tops, “Gold! Gold! Gold! There’s gold in them thar hills.”No.I would have secretly started panning for the gold and getting as much of it as I could before others discovered it.I also would have worked overtime to keep it a secret.But.After I panned and mined and set my claims for all the gold I could handle, then I might have started letting the word out about the presence of the gold I did discover.And if truth be told, I did discover gold in California.But it was in the 20th Century not the 19th.In fact it was a discovery for me that culminated in April of 1976 as I partook of my first ever Branden Four Day/ 40 hour Psychotherapy Intensive at his Beverly Hills Office in California—the workshop-intensive he titled, Self Esteem and The Art of Being.This was a few months before my 31st birthday and a mere four months after I had painstakingly sifted through his Psychology of Self Esteem book for the many nuggets of wisdom therein. Nuggets that I needed because I was going through a divorce. A divorce on two levels: getting divorced from my actual wife (at her insistence) and at the same time trying to divorce my beloved and growing selfishness-self from my dismal, pathetic, Religious self-effacing, self-sacrificing self (at my insistence).This was personally very difficult for me and I needed all the nuggets I could get, nuggets such as: … guilt subdues self assertiveness, page 141 (Kindle), [me: therefore, undo unearned guilt and don’t earn any new] … psychology is the science of consciousness, page 5 (Ayn Rand’s axiomatic consciousness as in, Consciousness is conscious.) … consciousness is awareness, same page … [me: hence, psychology is for people, not rats; I am people] … and this really big nugget: A person may develop the life-assertive selfishness proper to a living being … Or, fearing the effort, the responsibility, the integrity, the courage that such selfishness (and self-value) require, he may begin the process of giving up his soul before it is even fully formed; he may surrender his aspirations, his happiness, his values, not to some tangible beneficiary, but to his own nameless, unidentified lethargy or apprehension. page 213 … [oh no, did I do this? do I do this?, dunno, maybe].As to why would anyone do such a thing or how would they do this led me to the biggest find of my prospecting days: repression: automatized mental avoidance of bad stuff is really really bad for you because bad is as you define it and as a human being just as you can and do define bad as bad you can also define good as bad and hence become a double-barrel repressor, pages 76 – 92. And especially page 87, Repression of Positives. This was such an eye opener, such an extremely large nugget for me--it was so large I could barely lift my pan out of the stream to retrieve it—but I did.And if truth be told more, I did do a little bit of hoarding and secret keeping.But not a lot.Of course now, almost half a century later looking back on this first discovery and all the claims I made and all the golden nuggets I’ve extracted over the years it is difficult to separate out which nugget came from which of my many many mine stakes.Or should that be, mind stakeouts—specifically, my mind as the place where I did all the excavating and extracting of self-facts as golden opportunities to discover who I really was and who I really wanted to be and to remake myself in that image.That’s why I sometimes think Branden’s books—including the Psychology of Self Esteem--are not as much scientific textbooks about human psychology as they are How To books on becoming a prospector: what equipment you need, how to get it and how to use it to mine your own psyche. How to excavate it for the many many self-facts you will need in order to make any kind of effective, positive changes for your life. And how to asssay the excavations after separating the gold from the sand and gravel.And the Psychology of Self Esteem book in particular also shows you how to identify and separate out the real gold from the fools gold and how to throw out the sand and gravel while keeping both the real gold and the pan.The gold to add to your growing supply of psychhological nuggets.And the pan to prospect again tomorrow and then the day after that too.Until you get enough nuggets to buy your way to the base of your own happiness mountain.Then, after that, the choice to climb it or not to climb it will be entirely up to you.