Taboo and Genetics Part 13

The taboos on illegitimacy in the United States have been less affected by the practical population problems growing out of war conditions than those of other countries. As compared with the advanced stands of the Scandinavian countries, the few laws of progressive states look painfully inadequate. Miss Breckinridge writes:[1]

"The humiliating and despised position of the illegitimate child need hardly be pointed out. He was the son of n.o.body, filius nullius, without name or kin so far as kinship meant rights of inheritance or of succession. In reality this child of n.o.body did in a way belong to his mother as the legitimate child never did in common law, for, while the right of the unmarried mother to the custody of the child of her shame was not so n.o.ble and dignified a thing as the right of the father to the legitimate child, she had in fact a claim, at least so long as the child was of tender years, not so different from his and as wide as the sky from the impotence of the married mother. The contribution of the father has been secured under conditions shockingly humiliating to her, in amounts totally inadequate to her and the child's support. In Illinois, $550 over 5 years; Tennessee, $40 the first year, $30 the second, $20 the third. (See studies of the Boston Conference on Illegitimacy, September, 1914, p. 47.) Moreover, the situation was so desperate that physicians, social workers and relatives have conspired to save the girl's respectability at the risk of the child's life and at the cost of all spiritual and educative value of the experience of motherhood. This has meant a greatly higher death rate among illegitimate infants, a higher crime and a higher dependency rate."

The fifth of the dysgenic influences which has been fostered by the inst.i.tutional taboo is uncovered by recent studies of the effect of certain emotions on the human organism. The life of woman has long been shadowed by the fact that she has been the weaker s.e.x; that even when strong she has been weighted by her child; and that throughout the period of private property she has been the poor s.e.x, dependent on some male for her support. In an age of force, fear has been her strong emotion. If she felt rage it must be suppressed. Disappointment and discouragement had also to be borne in silence and with patience. Of such a situation Davies says:

"The power of the mind over the body is a scientific fact, as is evidenced by hypnotic suggestion and in the emotional control over the chemistry of health through the agency of the internal secretions. The reproductive processes are very susceptible to chemic influences. Thus the influences of the environment may in some degree carry through to the offspring."[2]

The studies of Drs Crile and Cannon show that the effects of fear on the ganglionic cells are tremendous. Some of the cells are exhausted and completely destroyed by intensity and duration of emotion. Cannon's experiments on animals during fear, rage, anger, and hunger, show that the entire nervous system is involved and that internal and external functions change their normal nature and activity. The thyroid and adrenal glands are deeply affected. In times of intense emotion, the thyroid gland throws into the system products which cause a quickened pulse, rapid respiration, trembling, arrest of digestion, etc. When the subjects of experiments in the effect of the emotions of fear, rage, etc., are examined, it is found that the physical development, especially the s.e.xual development, is r.e.t.a.r.ded. Heredity, age, s.e.x, the nervous system of the subject, and the intensity and duration of the shock must all have consideration. Griesinger, Amard and Daguin emphasize especially the results of pain, anxiety and shock, claiming that they are difficult or impossible to treat.

To the bride brought up under the old taboos, the s.e.x experiences of early married life are apt to come as a shock, particularly when the previous s.e.x experiences of her mate have been gained with women of another cla.s.s. Indeed, so deeply has the sense of shame concerning the s.e.xual functions been impressed upon the feminine mind that many wives never cease to feel a recurrent emotion of repugnance throughout the marital relationship. Especially would this be intensified in the case of s.e.xual intercourse during the periods of gestation and lactation, when the girl who had been taught that the s.e.xual functions existed only in the service of reproduction would see her most cherished illusions rudely dispelled. The effect of this long continued emotional state with its feeling of injury upon the metabolism of the female organism would be apt to have a detrimental effect upon the embryo through the blood supply, or upon the nursing infant through the mother's milk. There can be no doubt that anxiety, terror, etc., affect the milk supply, and therefore the life of the child.

The sixth dysgenic effect of the control by taboos is the rebellion of economically independent women who refuse motherhood under the only conditions society leaves open to them. The statistics in existence, though open to criticism, indicate that the most highly trained women in America are not perpetuating themselves.[3] Of the situation in England, Bertrand Russell said in 1917: "If an average sample were taken out of the population of England, and their parents were examined, it would be found that prudence, energy, intellect and enlightenment were less common among the parents than in the population in general; while shiftlessness, feeble-mindedness, stupidity and superst.i.tion were more common than in the population in general ... Mutual liberty is making the old form of marriage impossible while a new form is not yet developed."[4]

It must be admitted that to-day marriage and motherhood are subject to economic penalties. Perhaps one of the best explanations of the strength of the present struggle for economic independence among women is the fact that a commercial world interested in exchange values had refused to properly evaluate their social contribution. A new industrial system had taken away one by one their "natural" occupations. In the modern man's absorption in the life of a great industrial expansion, home life has been less insistent in its claims. His slackening of interest and attention, together with the discovery of her usefulness in industry, may have given the woman of initiative her opportunity to slip away from her ancient sphere into a world where her usefulness in other fields than that of s.e.x has made her a different creature from the model woman of yesterday. These trained and educated women have hesitated to face the renunciations involved in a return to the home. The result has been one more factor in the lessening of eugenic motherhood, since it is necessarily the less strong who lose footing and fall back on marriage for support. These women wage-earners who live away from the traditions of what a woman ought to be will have a great deal of influence in the changed relations of the s.e.xes. The answer to the question of their relation to the family and to a saner parenthood is of vital importance to society.

BIBLIOGRAPHY FOR CHAPTER IV

1. Breckinridge, Sophonisba P. Social Control of Child Welfare.

Publications of the American Sociological Society. Vol. XII, p. 23 f.

2. Davies, G.R. Social Environment. 149 pp. A.C. McClurg & Co., Chicago, 1917.

3. Popenoe, Paul. Eugenics and College Education. School and Society, pp. 438-441. Vol. VI. No. 146.

4. Russell, Bertrand. Why Men Fight. 272 pp. The Century Co., N.Y., 1917.

PART III

THE s.e.x PROBLEM IN THE LIGHT OF MODERN PSYCHOLOGY

BY

PHYLLIS BLANCHARD, PH.D.

CHAPTER I

s.e.x IN TERMS OF MODERN PSYCHOLOGY

Bearing of modern psychology on the s.e.x problem; Conditioning of the s.e.xual impulse; Vicarious expression of the s.e.xual impulse; Unconscious factors of the s.e.x life; Taboo control has conditioned the natural biological tendencies of individuals to conform to arbitrary standards of masculinity and femininity; Conflict between individual desires and social standards.

An adequate treatment of the s.e.x problem in society must necessarily involve a consideration of the s.e.xual impulse in the individual members of that society. Recent psychological research, with its laboratory experiments and studies of pathology has added a great deal of information at this point. The lately acquired knowledge of the warping effect of the environment upon the native biological endowment of the individual by means of the establishment of conditioned reflexes, the discovery that any emotion which is denied its natural motor outlet tends to seek expression through some vicarious activity, and the realization of the fundamental importance of the unconscious factors in shaping emotional reactions,--such formulations of behaviouristic and a.n.a.lytic psychology have thrown a great deal of light upon the nature of the individual s.e.x life.

There are certain modifications of the erotic life which are explicable only when we recollect that under environmental influences situations which originally did not call up an emotional response come later to do so. This fact, which was first noted by Setchenov, was experimentally demonstrated by Pavlov and his students.[7] They found that when some irrelevant stimulus, such as a musical tone or a piece of coloured paper was presented to a dog simultaneously with its food for a sufficiently long period, the presentation of the tone or paper alone finally caused the same flow of saliva that the food had originally evoked. The irrelevant stimulus was named a _food sign_, and the involuntary motor response of salivary secretion was called a _conditioned reflex_ to differentiate it from the similar response to the biologically adequate stimulus of food, which was termed an _unconditioned reflex_.

"The significance of the conditioned reflex is simply this, that an a.s.sociated stimulus brings about a reaction; and this a.s.sociated stimulus may be from any receptor organ of the body; and it may be formed of course not merely in the laboratory by specially devised experiments, but by a.s.sociation in the ordinary environment."[1] Thus it is evident that the formation of conditioned reflexes takes place in all fields of animal and human activity.

Watson has recently stated that a similar subst.i.tution of one stimulus for another occurs in the case of an emotional reaction as well as at the level of the simple physiological reflex response.[8] This means that when an emotionally exciting object stimulates the subject simultaneously with one not emotionally exciting, the latter may in time (or even after one joint stimulation) arouse the same emotional response as the former. Kempf considers this capacity of the emotion to become thus conditioned to other than the original stimuli "of the utmost importance in determining the selections and aversions throughout life, such as mating, habitat, friends, enemies, vocations, professions, religious and political preferences, etc."[5]

Just as Pavlov and his followers found that almost anything could become a food sign, so the study of neurotics has shown that the s.e.xual emotion can be fixed upon almost any love object. For example, a single characteristic of a beloved person (e.g.,--eye colour, smile posture, gestures) can become itself a stimulus to evoke the emotional response originally a.s.sociated only with that person. Then it happens that the affection may centre upon anyone possessing similar traits. In most psychological literature, this focussing of the emotion upon some particular characteristic is termed _fetishism_, and the stimulus which become capable of arousing the conditioned emotional response is called an _erotic fetish_. In extreme cases of fetishism, the s.e.xual emotions can only be aroused in the presence of the particular fetish involved.

Krafft-Ebing[6] and other psychopathologists describe very abnormal cases of erotic fetishism in which some inanimate object becomes entirely dissociated from the person with whom it was originally connected, so that it serves exclusively as a love object in itself, and prevents a normal emotional reaction to members of the opposite s.e.x.

The development of romantic love has depended to a great extent upon the establishment of a wide range of stimuli capable of arousing the erotic impulses. As Finck has pointed out, this romantic sentiment is inseparable from the ideals of personal beauty.[3] As criteria of beauty he lists such characteristics as well-shaped waist, rounded bosom, full and red underlip, small feet, etc., all of which have come to be considered standards of loveliness because the erotic emotion has been conditioned to respond to their stimulation. Literature is full of references to such marks of beauty in its characters (_Jane Eyre_ is almost the only well-known book with a plain heroine), and is therefore one of the potent factors in establishing a conditioned emotional reaction to these stimuli.

The erotic impulse may have its responses conditioned in many other ways than the building up of erotic fetishes. Kempf has observed that the affective reactions of the individual are largely conditioned by the unconscious att.i.tudes of parents, friends, enemies and teachers. For instance, one boy is conditioned to distrust his ability and another to have confidence in his powers by the att.i.tude of the parents. Similarly, the daughter whose mother is abnormally prudish about s.e.xual functions will surely be conditioned to react in the same manner towards her own s.e.xual functions, unless conditioned to react differently by the influence of another person.[5] Through the everyday a.s.sociations in the social milieu, therefore, the erotic impulse of an individual may become modified in almost any manner.

Just as an emotional reaction may become conditioned to almost any other stimulus than the one which originally called it forth, so there is a tendency for any emotion to seek a vicarious outlet whenever its natural expression is inhibited. Were any member of the group to give free play to his affective life he would inevitably interfere seriously with the freedom of the other members. But the fear of arousing the disapproval of his fellows, which is rooted in man's gregarious nature, inhibits the tendency to self-indulgence. "A most important factor begins to exert pressure upon the infant at birth and continues throughout its life,"

says Kempf. "It is the incessant, continuous pressure of the herd ... to conventionalize its methods of acquiring the gratification of its needs."[5] The emotions thus denied a natural outlet seek other channels of activity which have received the sanction of social approval.

It is obvious that the rigid social regulations concerning s.e.xual activities must enforce repression of the erotic impulses more frequently than any others. The love which is thus denied its biological expression trans.m.u.tes itself into many forms. It may reach out to envelop all humanity, and find a suitable activity in social service. It may be transformed into the love of G.o.d, and find an outlet in the religious life of the individual. Or it may be expressed only in language, in which case it may stop at the stage of erotic fantasy and day-dream, or may result in some really great piece of poetry or prose.

This last outlet is so common that our language is full of symbolic words and phrases which have a hidden erotic meaning attached to them.

According to Watson, the phenomena seen in this tendency of emotions inhibited at one point to seek other outlets are too complex to be explained on the basis of conditioned reflex responses. All that we can say at present is that too great emotional pressure is drained off through whatever channel environmental and hereditary factors make possible.[8] This vicarious mode of expression may become habitual, however, and interfere with a return to natural activities in a manner a.n.a.logous to that in which the development of the erotic fetish often prevents the normal reaction to the original stimulus.

Because the conditioned emotional reactions and subst.i.tutions of vicarious motor outlets take place at neurological and physiological levels outside the realm of consciousness, they are called unconscious activities of the organism. There are many other unconscious factors which also modify the s.e.x life of the human individual. The most fundamental of these are the impressions and a.s.sociations of the infancy period, which may well be cla.s.sed as conditioned reflex mechanisms, but are sufficiently important to receive separate consideration.

It is generally conceded by students of child psychology that the social reactions of the child are conditioned by the home environment in which the earliest and most formative years of its life are pa.s.sed. It is not surprising, therefore, that the ideal of the opposite s.e.x which the boy or girl forms at this time should approximate the mother or father, since they are the persons best loved and most frequently seen. The ideals thus established in early childhood are very often the unconscious influences which determine the choice of a mate in adult life. Or the devotion to the parent may be so intense as to prevent the transference of the love-life to another person and thus entirely prohibit the entrance upon the marital relation. Elida Evans has given some very convincing cases in ill.u.s.tration of these points in her recent book, "The Problem of the Nervous Child."[2]

On the other hand, in those unfortunate cases where the father or mother is the object of dislike, a.s.sociations may be formed which will be so persistent as to prevent the normal emotional reaction to the opposite s.e.x in later years. This, too, results in the avoidance of marriage and the establishment of vicarious outlets for the s.e.xual emotions, or less often in h.o.m.os.e.xual attachments or perversions of the s.e.x life.

Conditioned emotional reactions such as these play a dominant role in the social problem of s.e.x, as will become apparent in succeeding chapters.

In addition to the influences which naturally act to condition the original s.e.xual endowment of the individual, there are artificial forces which still further qualify it. The system of taboo control which society has always utilized in one form or another as a means of regulating the reproductive activities of its members, has set up arbitrary ideals of masculinity and femininity to which each man and woman must conform or else forfeit social esteem. The feminine standard thus enforced has been adequately described in Part II of this study. Dr Hinkle has also described this approved feminine type, as well as the contrasting masculine ideal which embodies the qualities of courage, aggressiveness, and other traditional male characteristics. From her psychoa.n.a.lytic practice, Dr Hinkle concludes that men and women do not in reality conform to these arbitrarily fixed types by native biological endowment, but that they try to shape their reactions in harmony with these socially approved standards in spite of their innate tendencies to variation.[4]

The same conclusion might be arrived at theoretically on the grounds of the recent biological evidence of inters.e.xuality discussed in Part I, which implies that there are no absolute degrees of maleness and femaleness. If there are no 100% males and females, it is obvious that no men and women will entirely conform to ideals of masculine and feminine perfection.

In addition to the imposition of these arbitrary standards of masculinity and femininity, society has forced upon its members conformity to a uniform and inst.i.tutionalized type of s.e.xual relationship. This inst.i.tutionalized and inflexible type of s.e.xual activity, which is the only expression of the s.e.xual emotion meeting with social approval, not only makes no allowance for biological variations, but takes even less into account the vastly complex and exceedingly different conditionings of the emotional reactions of the individual s.e.x life. The resulting conflict between the individual desires and the standards imposed by society has caused a great deal of disharmony in the psychic life of its members. The increasing number of divorces and the modern tendency to celibacy are symptomatic of the c.u.mulative effect of this fundamental psychic conflict.

BIBLIOGRAPHY FOR CHAPTER I

1. Burnham, W.H. Mental Hygiene and the Conditioned Reflex. Ped. Sem.

Vol. XXIV, Dec, 1917, pp. 449-488.

2. Evans, Elida. The Problem of the Nervous Child. Kegan Paul & Co., London, 1920.

3. Finck, H.T. Romantic Love and Personal Beauty. Macmillan, N.Y., 1891.

4. Hinkle, Beatrice M. On the Arbitrary Use of the Terms "Masculine" and "Feminine." Psychoa.n.a.lyt. Rev. Vol. VII, No. 1, Jan., 1920, pp. 15-30.

5. Kempf, E.J. The Tonus of the Autonomic Segments as Causes of Abnormal Behaviour. Jour. Nerv. & Ment. Disease, Jan., 1920, pp. 1-34.