THE IRRATIONAL BRIDGE PLAYER...... ( Article by professor Hu Chi Ku Chi )

I have often wondered why bridge turns a quiet, polite and caring individual into a mean spirited, nasty piece of work. Does bridge bring out the beast in man, or is it a case of the flawed individual demonstrating the irrational nature of the human condition ?
Do bridge players belong to a group of people who cannot cope with failure,  having experienced so much success in their marriages, jobs, hobbies and sporting pursuits ?  Perhaps bridge players,  by virtue of getting so passionate over a game of cards,  are bizarrely  unbalanced ?  Moreover, are bridge clubs respectable places where decent people go to play cards  ......or places which have been turned into mad houses by undiagnosed lunatics who admit themselves voluntarily  ?    
If unconvinced by such views,  then please read the following passage from Herman Hesse's Book  ( Reflections)  to obtain a rational perspective on the irrational bridge player. 

" What is great or small, important or unimportant ? The psychiatrists call a man unbalanced if he reacts sensitively and violently to small upsets, small irritations, small injuries to his dignity, when quite possibly the same individual will bear up bravely under sufferings and shocks that most men find it very hard to take. A man who is insensitive to constant humiliations, who puts up with the most wretched music, the most miserable architecture, the most polluted air without complaint, but who pounds the table and cries bloody murder when he loses so much as a trifle at cards, is regarded as healthy and normal. In  ( bridge clubs ) I have often seen men of good reputation, generally regarded as perfectly normal and honorable, curse and fume so fanatically , so crudely, so bestially.....especially when they felt the need of blaming a fellow player for their losses...that I very much wanted to seek out the nearest psychiatrist and have these unfortunates committed. "