The Foundations of Personality Part 20

Were she not rich, M. would be one of the social problems that the social workers cannot understand or handle, e. g., there is a type who never sticks to anything, not because he is bored quickly, or is inefficient, but because he is at the mercy of the new and irrelevant. Without sufficient means he throws up his job and tries to get the new work he longs to do. Sometimes he fails to get it, and then he becomes an unemployed problem.

This type of uncontrolled energy reaches its height in the manical or manic phase of the disease already described as manic depressive insanity. The "manic personality," which need not become insane, is characterized by high energy, vivacious emotions, rapid flow of thought and irrelevant a.s.sociations.

4. The mesokinetic--medium or average in their energy (feeling and power)--run the range of the vast groups we call the average.

This type is spurred on by necessity, custom and habit to steady work and steady living. Possessed of practical wisdom, their world is narrow, their affections only called out for their kindred and immediate friends. Their interests are largely away from their work and as a rule do not include the past or future of the race. Usually conservative, they accept the moral standards as absolute and are quick to resent changes in custom.

They follow leaders cheerfully, are capable of intense loyalty to that cause which they believe to stand for their interests. Yet each individual of the ma.s.s of men, though he never rises above mediocrity, presents to his intimates a grouping of qualities and peculiarities that gives him a distinct personality.

C. is one of those individuals whose mediocre energy has stood between him and so-called success. At present he is forty and occupies about the same position that he did at twenty. As a boy he was fond of play but never excelled in any sport and never occupied a place of leadership. He had the usual pugnacious code of boys, but because he was friendly and good-natured rarely got into a fight. He liked to read and was rather above the average in intelligence, but he never tackled the difficult reading, confining himself to the "interesting" novel and easy information. He left high school when he was sixteen and immediately on leaving he dropped all study. He entered an office as errand boy and was recognized as faithful and industrious, but he showed no especial initiative or energy. In the course of time he was promoted from one position to another until he became a shipper at the age of twenty. Since this time he has remained at this post without change, except that when he got married and on a few occasions afterward, when the cost of living rose, his salary was raised.

C. is married, and his wife often "nags" him because he does not get ahead. She tells him that he has no energy and fight in him, that if he would he could do better. Sometimes he takes refuge in the statement that he has no pull, that those who have been promoted over his head are favorites for some reason or another, and he rarely recognizes the superiority of his immediate superiors, though he is loyal enough to the boss. He lives in that "quiet despair" that Th.o.r.eau so aptly describes as the life of the average man, and he seeks escape from it in smoking, in belonging to a variety of fraternal organizations, in the movies and the detective story. He is a "good" father and husband, which means that he turns over all his earnings, is faithful and kind.

Except that he admonishes and punishes his children when they are "bad," he takes no constructive share in their training and leaves that to the mother, the church and the school. He and his wife are attached to one another through habit and mutual need, but they have some time since outlived pa.s.sion and intense affection. She has sized him up as a failure and knows herself doomed to struggle against poverty, and he knows that she understands him. This mutual "understanding" keeps them at arm's length except in the face of danger or disaster, when they cling to each other for comfort and support. This is the history of many a marriage that on its surface is quiet and peaceful.

The hypokinetic types. We cannot separate energy display from enthusiasm, courage, intelligence, persistent purpose, etc. If I have made myself clear in the preceding pages of this book, you will realize that no character of man works alone, but all feeling, thought and action is a resultant of forces.

Nevertheless, there are those in whom the fire of life burns high and others in whom it burns low, and either group may be of totally different qualities otherwise.

There are people of low energy discharge, and these it seems to me are of two main kinds,--the one where nothing seems to arouse or create powerful motives and purposes, and the other in whom the main defect is a rapidly arising exhaustion. The first I call the simple hypokinetic group and the other the irritable hypokinetic group.

The simple hypokinetic person may be one of any grade of intelligence but more commonly is of low intelligence. In any school for the feeble-minded one finds the apathetic imbecile, who can be kept at work by goading and stimulation of one kind or another, who does not tire especially, but who never works beyond a low level of speed and enthusiasm.

5. A more interesting type is T. He may be called the intelligent hypokinetic, the high-grade failure. As a baby he learned to walk late, though he talked early and well. He played in a leisurely sort of way, running only when he had to and content as a rule to be in the house. He was not seclusive, seeming to enjoy the company of other children, but rarely made any efforts to seek them out. He was quick to learn but showed only a moderate curiosity, and he rarely made any investigations on his own account. It was noticed that he seldom asked "why" in the usual manner of intelligent children.

He did fairly well in school; he had a wonderful memory and seemed to see very quickly into intricate problems. It was always a great surprise of his teachers that he was so bright, as one said, in comparison to his standing. Once or twice a zealous teacher sought to stimulate him into more effort and study, but though he responded for a short time, gradually he slipped back into his own easy pace. He went through high school, and on the basis of a splendid memory and a keen intelligence, which by this time were easily recognized, he was sent to college. He took no part in athletics and little part in the communal college activities. He had so good a command of facts and with this so cynical a point of view that he became quite a college character and was pointed out as a fellow who could lead his cla.s.s if he would. As a matter of fact, nothing could spur him to real compet.i.tive effort.

We may pa.s.s briefly over his life. After he left college, he drifted from one position to another. Usually in some hack literary line. Were it not for a small income he would have starved. After a few years he become very fat and gross looking, and then came a kindly pneumonia which carried him off.

We must not mistake the stolid for the hypokinetic. There was a cla.s.smate of mine in the medical school, a large, quiet fellow, D. M., who got by everything, as the boys said, by the skin of his teeth. He worked without enthusiasm or zeal, studied infrequently and managed to pa.s.s along to his second year, at about the bottom of the cla.s.s. In that year we took up bacteriology, the "bug-bear" as one punster put it, of the school. Just what it was about the subject that aroused D. M. I never knew, but a remarkable transformation took place. The man changed over, studied hard, read outside literature and actually asked for the privilege of working in the laboratory Sundays and holidays so that he might learn more. When this was known to the rest of the cla.s.s, there were bets placed that he would not "last," but quite to the surprise of everybody D. M. gained in momentum as he went along. As a matter of fact, his interest on the subject grew, and he is now a bacteriologist of good standing. In fact, his lack of interest in other matters has helped him, since he has no distracting tastes or pleasures.

Thus there are persons of specialized interest and energy, and it may well be that there is for most of the hypokinetic a line of work that would act to energize them. The problem, therefore, in each case is to find the latent ability and interest and to regard no case as really hopeless. I say this despite the fact that I believe some cases are hopeless. The pessimistic att.i.tude on the part of parent or teacher kills effort; the optimistic att.i.tude fosters energetic effort.

6. The irritable hypokinetic. Irritability[1] of a pathological type as a phase of lowered energy is well known to every physiologist and in the practical everyday world is seen in the tired and sick. There are people who from the very start of life show lowered endurance, who respond to certain stimuli in an excessive manner and are easily exhausted. This type the neurologist calls the congenital neurasthenic, and it may be we are dealing here with some defect in the elimination of fatigue products. This, however, is only a guess, and the disease factor, if there is any, is entirely unknown. I do not pretend that the person I am to describe is entirely representative of this group.

Indeed, no dozen cases would show all the symptoms and peculiarities of the irritable hypokinetic group.

[1] One must take care not to mistake the irritability which is the characteristic of all living tissue for the irritability here considered.

E. is a man at present thirty years of age. In person he is of average height, rather slender, with delicate features, somewhat bald, quick in action and speech. He flushes easily and thus often has high color, especially when fatigued or excited. This "vasomotor irritability," as the physicians call it, is quite common in this group of people, and in fact in all neurasthenia, whether acquired or congenital. Though I have described E. as belonging to the slender type of person, it is necessary to say that stout, rugged-looking people are often irritable and hypokinetic.

As a child E. "never could stand excitement or strain," as his mother says. What is meant is this: that he became overexcited under almost any circ.u.mstances and became profoundly fatigued afterwards. As we have seen, the intense diffusion of excitement throughout the whole body is a sign of the childish and inferior organism; as maturity approaches and throughout childhood excitability decreases and is better localized. When a noise is heard an infant jumps, and so do people like E., but the better controlled merely turn their head and eyes to see what the source of the noise may be. This lack of control of excitement extended in E.'s case to play, entertainment, novelty of any kind, crowds and especially to the disagreeable excitement of quarrels, fights, terrifying experiences, etc. Under anger he trembled, grew pale, and his shouts and screams were beyond control; under fear he became actually sick, vomited and showed a liability to syncope of an alarming kind. E. was not the selfish type of the neurasthenic; he was gentle and kind and ready to share with everybody, a lovable boy of an intensely sociable nature.

Nevertheless, his high excitability and his quick fatigue made it necessary to shelter him, for any effort at toughening merely brought about a "breakdown."

Here we must reemphasize the fundamental importance of the fatigue reactions. The normal fatigue reaction is to feel weary, to desire rest and to be able to rest and sleep. The abnormal reaction, one directly opposed to the well-being of the individual, is to feel exhausted, to become restless and to find it difficult to sleep. There are children who thrive on excitement and exertion; they sleep sounder for it, they recuperate readily and gain in strength and endurance with every ordinary burden put upon them. There are others to whom anything but the least excitement and exertion acts as a poison, making them restless and exhausted. Not all children who show this perverse fatigue reaction grow up with it. It may be only a temporary phase of their lives, but while it lasts it is very troublesome.

In E.'s case the overexcitable hypokinetic stage lasted until about the ninth year, and then there was a great improvement, though he still was of the same general type. He became a fairly good runner for a short distance, learned to swim, though he stood the cold water poorly, was clever and graceful as a dancer and was quite popular. At sixteen he left school to enter business, because of the straitened means of his family. He entered into adolescent period later and suffered greatly from his sixteenth to nineteenth year from, fatigue, hypochondriacal fears, and had to have a good deal of medical attention at this time. s.e.x questions perplexed him, for he became quite pa.s.sionate and at the same time had much moral repugnance to illicit relations. His s.e.xual curiosity was intense, and he read all manner of books on the subject, went to the burlesque shows on the sly and almost became obsessed on s.e.x matters.

At this stage he made only a mediocre showing in his business career, though his evident honesty secured him promotion to a clerk's position. After his nineteenth year he seemed to gain again in energy and endurance and was fairly well until his twenty-eighth year, though he had to nurse his endurance at all times, developed very regular habits of sleep, diet, etc., and in this manner got along. Once he had an opportunity to join an organization which would have paid him a better salary, but the hours were irregular, and it would have demanded much exertion and excitement, so he pa.s.sed it by.

In 1917 he joined the army, partly because of patriotic motives, partly because he was convinced that army life might develop his endurance and energy. He was sent to an army post in the South and within two months of his entrance had "broken down." He was sleepless, restless, was irritable and "jumpy," had lost appet.i.te and the feeling of endurance. Life seemed intolerable, though he had no desire to do away with himself, for he had no quarrel with life itself but was disgusted with his inferiority. He was hospitalized, but this did little good and he was afterwards discharged as medically unfit.

This, of course, hurt his pride, but essentially he was greatly relieved. He made but slow improvement until through the munificence of Uncle Sam he was given a new start in life through the Vocational Reeducation Board. Like many other city men, he has dreamed of the "chicken farm" as the ideal occupation free from too much work and yet lucrative. This, of course, is a mistaken notion, but while learning the work he is happy and is slowly regaining his energy. What time will bring forth no one can tell, but this is certain: throughout his life he will have to rely on good habits, carefully adjusted to his energy, in order to protect himself from the bankruptcy that so easily comes on him. A philosophy of life which will help to control his irritability is necessary, and the intelligent of the hypokinetic irritable acquire the habits and the philosophy necessary for their welfare.

Any neurologist could cite any number of such cases with varying traits of character, high intelligence or feeble-minded, controlled in morals or uncontrolled, happily or unhappily situated, whose central difficulty is an irritable and easily exhausted store of energy. They are easily excited and excitement burns them out; that is the long and short of their situation.

s.e.x, love, hatred, anger, strain, fear in all its forms, illness,--all these and many other emotions and happenings may break them down. Such people, and those who care for them, must not make the mistake of thinking that rough handling, strenuosity, will cure what is apparently a fixed character.

There is an irritable, high-energy type--irritable hyperkinetic--that is well contrasted with the foregoing. This explosive personality works by fits and starts but does not wear out, merely, as it were, settles down to his ordinary pace when he rests up. He is like a six-day bicycle racer who plugs along but every now and then sprints like mad for a few laps and then comes back to a pace that would kill the average rider. I shall not trouble to cite such a case, but I can think of at least one man of good attainments who is of this explosive hyperkinetic type. He responds to every demand with a burst of energy, and his quota of ordinary activities is simply appalling.

Neglecting the further types of energy display for the simple reason that this quality shades off into every conceivable type and is also a part of every nature, we turn to the types of emotional mood display. With these it is necessary to consider excitability as well, and the most interesting beings are here our objects of study.

I wish first to emphasize my belief that where there is a great natural variation in excitability and emotionality in individuals, there is not nearly so much in races as we think, and that social heredity is tradition and cultural level plays the more important role in this. My friend and colleague, Dr. A.

Warren Stearns, has made a study which shows that while the immigrant Italian is excitable and quick to anger and of revengeful reactions, his American-born descendent has so far controlled and changed this type of reaction that he does not especially figure in police records, in murders or a.s.saults. My own studies of the second and especially the third generation Jew show there is an almost complete approach to the "American" type in emotional display, in what is known as poise. This third generation Jewish-American has dropped all the mannerisms of excitability in gesture and voice, and his adherence to good form includes that att.i.tude of nonchalant humor so characteristic of the American.

1. The generally excitable, overemotional type. This type is more common in the Latin, Hebrew and Celtic races. In some respects it corresponds to the hypokinetic irritable, but it is not necessarily hypokinetic. The artistic type of person, so called, is of this group, but is, of course, talented as well. Talent need not be present, and there are persons of no artistic ability whatever who show a generalized, excitable-emotional temperament.

All young children show the main traits of this type, and there is something essentially simple about all these folk, no matter how civilized or sophisticated they get to be.

A. L., a woman of fifty, belongs to this group. She is a Jewess and now a widow. All of her life her character and temperament have been the same, and though her experiences have been varied she has not in any essential altered. This last is rather characteristic of the group, for experience has but little effect on their emotional reactions.

A. L. cries very easily and readily, but her tears are easily dried and her joy is grotesquely childlike. She is readily frightened, worries without restraint and finds a melancholy satisfaction in the worst. At the same time, her fears do not persist and are easily dissipated by encouragement or good fortune. She is readily angered and "raises a row" with great facility and without restraint. For this reason her relatives and friends become panic-stricken when she becomes angry, for they know that she does not hesitate to make an embarra.s.sing scene. In the efforts to conciliate her they are apt to give her her own way, as a result of which she is the proverbial spoiled child, capitalizing her weakness.

Our Jewess uses her emotions for effect, which means that she has become theatrical. Though there is reality in her emotional display, time and the advantages she has gained have brought enough finish and restraint to her manifestations to gain the designation artistic. True, it is a crude artistry, for intelligence does not sufficiently guide it, and her art is used sometimes indiscriminately and inopportunely. As she grows older the value of her tears is less, and she is becoming that prime nuisance, the elderly scold.

Among the emotional types well recognized by the neurologist is that known as the cyclothymic. In the individuals of this group there is a periodicity to mood (rather than to emotions). There is a definitely pathological trend to the cyclothymic, and in its most marked form one sees the recurring depressions and excitement of Manic Depressive Insanity.

Aside from these pathological forms, there are persons who show curious periodic changes in mood. They become depressed for no especial reason, are "blue" for day after day and then quickly return to their normal. Sometimes these blue spells alternate with periods of exaltation and happiness, but in my experience this is far less common than periodic blue spells, a kind of recurrent anhedonia.

L. D. is ordinarily what is known as a vivacious person. Bright, talkative, keen in her discriminations, she has all her life been at the mercy of strange alterations in mood, alterations which come and go without what seems to others adequate reason.

As a child L. D. was sick a great deal. She showed an unusual susceptibility to infection, and it was not until she was nine years of age that she attended school regularly. Her illnesses made it impossible to discipline her, and so she has always been a bit "spoiled," though her kind and generous nature makes her a charming person. But more important than the fact that she could not be disciplined is the lowering of energy that these sicknesses produced, a lowering marked mainly by a liability to fatigue and depression.

Let there come a sickness, and this woman's stock of hopeful mood goes and there results a loss of interest in life, a loss of zest and joyousness.

A digression,--and a return to the theme of the first chapter of this book. The dependence of the mental life on bodily structure, equally true in the both s.e.xes, is exquisitely demonstrated in woman. In many women there occurs an extraordinary increase of s.e.x desire just before the menstrual period and in some to the point where it causes great internal conflict. Others show moderate depression and even confusion at this time, and to the majority of women some mood and thought change is taken for granted. At the menopause mental difficulties to the point of insanity are witnessed, and in some cases the change is permanent. Back of mood is the entire organic life of the organism, and back of the nature of our thoughts and deeds is mood.

A peculiarity of fatigue is remarkably well shown by this person.

When she is tired or convalescent a depressing thought sticks, becomes an obsession, a fixed idea, to the plague of her life.

Thus when she was nursing her first baby the night feedings exhausted her. One night, half asleep and half awake, with the vigorous little animal pulling away at her breast, she watched the pulsing fontanelle on the top of the baby's head, and the thought came to her how dreadfully easy it would be to injure the brain beneath. Her heart pounced in fear, she almost fainted at the thought, and yet it "stuck" and came back to her with each random a.s.sociation. I need not detail how the idea recurred a dozen times a day and brought the fear that she was going insane.

She stopped nursing the baby at night, got a good rest, and the idea disappeared. She was "able to shake off" when rested that which was a hideous obsession when fatigued.

Indeed, one might speak of persons of this type as hypothymic as well as cyclothymic. The hypothymic are those whose stock of courage and hope is easily exhausted, who become easily discouraged. They are borrowers of energy and vigor, they need st.u.r.dier folk around them; often they are said to be sensitive, and while this is sometimes true, it is more often the case that they are more affected. That is, two persons may notice the same thing or suffer the same sickness, but the so-called sensitive has a reserve of courage and energy that disappears, whereas the other has enough left in stock so that he does not feel any change.

The extraordinary complexity of human character is well ill.u.s.trated by C. D. She is hypothymic or cyclothymic to the little affairs of life and to the minor illnesses. Yet when her family fortunes were greatly imperilled by a financial crisis, she stood up against the strain far better than did her husband, a man st.u.r.dy and buoyant in most of the affairs of life. His ego was more concerned with financial fortune than was hers, and against this ill she was the philosopher and not he.

We may well contrast L. D. with her husband. He belongs to the st.u.r.dy in emotions and morals,--the stable. Dark days and bright days, sickness and health, fatigue and rest seem to impair his courage, hope and general cheerfulness of mood but little. He has a high organic balance and a well-built-up philosophy. I started to say of him that he is an optimist, but this is not true. He is cheerful, but he does not sing, "Tra la la, all the things that are, are good." He says, "There are bad things, but I must carry on and fight the good fight." His is a philosophy of courage and endurance, but not of optimistic twaddle. He is too wide-brained to speak of life as "all good" when he knows of inherited disease, cruelty, preventable poverty, gross neglect and unmerited misfortune. Yet he lends hope and comfort to the afflicted, and he has an unvarying comfort for his cyclothymic mate.

He has built up his ego around a business, one in which there was sunk not only his own fortune but that of a host of friends. When this was so threatened as to seem inevitably lost, his ego was deeply wounded, he lost courage and hope and then needed the strength of his wife. This she gave, and when the tide of affairs turned, his own courage was ready and unimpaired. We are like trees,--the hard, strong, knotty parts of our fiber are distributed in irregular fashion, and he who seems strongest has a weak place somewhere. Attack that, and his resistance, courage and hope disappear.

While there are the types of mood and emotional make-up, there are curious monothymic types, people who habitually tend to react with one emotion or mood.

The fear type. It must again be emphasized that we cannot separate emotion, mood, instinct, intelligence in our a.n.a.lysis.

And so we shall speak of individuals of this or that type when what we mean is that they reacted habitually and remarkably in one direction. Thus with the man F., who has quick imagination, and whose ability to forecast is inextricably mixed with a liability to fear. It is true that some do not fear because they do not foresee, and that placidity and calmness are less often due to courage than to lack of imagination.