Hair Pulling in Ancient Literature - Part 5: Aesop

In Aesop's The Miser (6^th Century B.C.) a money hoarder hides a lump of gold in a hole for safety.  Unfortunately for him someone has spied his digging and steals the treasure.  On discovering the theft the miser reacts by pulling his hair out.  

The Miser, on his next visit, found the hole empty and

began to tear his hair and to make loud lamentations...

The advice of his neighbour, to replace the gold with a stone and forget about the theft, is the offered solution to the problem and proffered remedy for the miser's hair pulling behaviour.  But this advice is insufficient to help the miser cope with his object loss.  Indeed, the hoarding behaviour is symptomatic of comfort seeking and suggests the miser  already has underlying psychological issues that cannot be so easily resolved.  With the gold gone, and with it the miser's artificial sense of security, he is now especially prone to manifesting self-directed comfort seeking behaviour.

Ongoing conflicts that a person can find no solution or resolution to is characteristic of people who pull hair.  The puller is unconscious of the conflict that underlies pulling because if s/he were conscious of it the pulling might be allayed.  So the advice for the miser to forget about the theft and negate the problem rather than to accept and live with the painful loss is not helpful at all.  Only by ending the conflict - by ceasing to long for the return of something that will never be replaced and finding a new means to emotional security will the problem be addressed.