“人们不仅躲避自己的低谷，也躲避自己的高峰。不仅畏惧自己最低的可能性，也畏惧自己最高的可能性。“ 约拿情结” 发展到极致，就是‘自毁情结' ，即面对荣誉，成功，幸福等美好的事物时，总是浮现“我不配”，“我受不了“的念头，最终把到手的机会放弃了。”——马斯诺

毫无疑问，“约拿情结”是我们平衡自己内心心理压力的一种表现。我们每个人其实都有成功的机会，但是在面临机会的时候，只有少数人敢于打破平衡，认识并克服了自己的“约拿情结”，勇于承担责任和压力，最终抓住并获得了成功的机会。这也就是为什么只有总是少数人成功，而大多数人却平庸一世的重要原因。

“an evasion of growth and fulfilling one’s best talents”. It is a “fear of one’s greatness”

I would like to turn to one of the many reasons for what Angyal called the evasion of growth. We have, all of us, an impulse to improve ourselves, an impulse toward actualizing more of our potentialities, toward self-actualization, or full humanness or human fulfillment, or whatever term you like. Granted this, then what holds us up? One such defense against growth that I’d like to speak about specially—because it hasn’t been noticed much—I shall call the Jonah complex

"If you deliberately plan to be less than you are capable of becoming then you’ll be deeply unhappy for the rest of your life. You will be evading your own capacities, your own possibilities"

It is believed that most of us have the Jonah Complex, which is the fear for success and development. Just as Maslow puts it, “We enjoy and even thrill to the godlike possibilities we see in ourselves in such peak moments. And yet we simultaneously shiver with weakness, awe, and fear before these very same possibilities” (马斯洛 42). The reason is that we fear the changes and responsibilities enveloped in the process of development and success.

At the end of the novel, Nick eventually overcomes his Jonah Complex and recognizes his strong sense of morality, thus embracing a real growth. And from Nick we learn that we need to resolve the Jonah Complex in ourselves and to embrace success, because that’s the only way we grow up. Our destiny is to realize our greatness and use the greatness to help others, thereby making a difference to the world. Of course there’s no good in daydreaming something too high or too far. So we’d better view our greatness and our limitations objectively, and believe that with hard work and discipline we will be able to amount to something one day. Whether the choice we’ve made about our life is good or not, only time can tell. But even if we fail, we need to be aware of the fact that we have chosen to live our life instead of being a bystander of it. And we can also use the failure to reflect on ourselves to conduct new behaviors, and to motivate ourselves to try, to fight, to succeed, and to shine.”