The Man Who Removed His Wart by Cutting Off His Foot

I had a college fiction professor, N.V.M. Gonzalez, who used the above example to illustrate "pathological irony." I always thought of it as overreaction: The solution is worse than the problem. 

One example that comes to mind is 25 years ago a student with a short-man's complex told me he went to elaborate steps to overcome his shortness insecurity. He'd always gather around people by finding the highest spot to stand on and would put lifts in his shoes and walk on his tiptoes. The latter "solutions" destroyed his back, he told me, and he needed surgery. 

Much of human history will be a chronicle of a species whose real woes were self-induced.