The Glands Regulating Personality Part 13

Fear, rage and love reactions develop first in a.s.sociation with the suckling reflex, and the accompaniments, the mother's smile and voice, the color of her hair, eyes and skin, her b.r.e.a.s.t.s and odors. Each time the babe reacts to a pleasant or unpleasant stimulus, there is an outpouring of certain internal secretions, a cessation of others, a tingling of certain vegetative nerves and organs, a hushing of others.

The ensemble of reactions tends to be repeated around the same stimulus, until the whole becomes automatic. One may observe the same process in the lower animals. Offer a piece of meat to a dog and his mouth waters. Ring a bell before offering the meat. Repeat this a number of times, and after a while the mere ringing of the bell, without the presence of the meat, will cause his mouth to water. This a.s.sociated vegetative secretion reflex is the most fundamental to grasp in an understanding of the deepest strata of personality.

Now there are, besides the a.s.sociated vegetative-endocrine reactions, certain inborn automatic processes in the vegetative system and in the internal secretion system, which work automatically to produce increased intravisceral pressures. The reduction of these pressures below the point of their intrusion upon consciousness, their relief, as we say, also form the centers of constellations around feelings of satisfaction or love. Such, for example, are the voiding of excretions. Sooner or later, these automatic reactions, and the a.s.sociated reflexes formed around the mother, father and other a.s.sociates, come into conflict. Inhibitions or prohibitions of the automatic act at certain times or moments are imposed by somebody.

And so there occurs a pitting of the automatic mechanism against the a.s.sociated reflex. Conflict with adjustment by suppression must occur.

Thus a sense of self as active wisher (for the automatically pleasant experience), and punishable suppressor (of the same in favor of the acquired a.s.sociated reflex) develops.

So far, so good. Compromise by regulation from above, from the brain, of the automatic reactions follows, as training. No absolute repression is forced, no absolute encouragement is indorsed.

Harmonious equilibrium, or normality, continues. But now there come upon the scene the unconscious fears.

In the paleontology of character, these fears are the deepest strata, the eocene era, so to speak, of the soul. They are the hardest to get at and the most silent, as well as the most dominant of the influences which guide conduct. In Sir Walter Raleigh's words:

"Pa.s.sions are best likened to streams and floods.

The shallows murmur, the deeps are dumb."

During the first period of childhood, up to five or six, the primary fears group themselves around the taboos and secrets of its life.

Though we have every reason for believing that the s.e.x glands are acting in some way upon the organism during this time, nothing definite is known. Yet, as the numerous studies of the subconscious recently made prove, s.e.x curiosity like the other curiosities, flowers. More than about the automatic visceral reactions, these curiosities evoke the repressive imperatives of the a.s.sociates, the mother and father especially. These repressive influences may be and often are the effects of ignorance, prudishness, vulgarity, or h.o.m.os.e.xuality, or the s.e.x perversions that are known as sadism and masochism. But by the necessities of the case, the s.e.x wishes become overlayed by reflexes a.s.sociated with the mother and father and close a.s.sociates as love. This might be termed the oligocene. As the circle of acquaintance widens, other loved objects usher in the miocene phases of the development. With these become interspersed various hates and detestations, deliberately cultivated and accepted by the consciousness. So we have a cross-slice of the personality in the first five or six years of childhood.

But now, with the onset of the second dent.i.tion, a subtle change begins in the endocrine equations of the body. The second dent.i.tion itself is an expression of a certain internal secretion wave pa.s.sing through the cells, an increase of action of some hormones, a decrease of others. And a consciousness of physical s.e.xuality appears, while the outlines of character, hitherto mere tracings, become firmer, heavier, quasi-indelible lines. That there is some activity on the part of the internal secretions of the s.e.x glands, the ovaries and testes, can be demonstrated by accurately charting the behaviour of a boy or girl after this time. It will be found that there is a cyclic variation of health and conduct, more or less marked of course in each case. A cold may appear periodically at the end of each month, an increase of irritability and waywardness may be observed, or, on the contrary, a decrease of the regular restless playfulness. The ghost of s.e.x begins to haunt the scene.

Now all kinds of possibilities of conflict emerge. The child is still a bis.e.xual, growing into a mixed s.e.x type, depending upon the nature and amount of its internal secretions. The influencing adult of the family, the most important of the external factors encouraging or depressing the tendencies of the child, possesses a fairly fixed ideal of monos.e.xuality which he or she, generally quite unconsciously, seeks to impose upon it. A doting feminine mother will make her son as much as possible like her husband: if she dislikes her husband, as much as possible like her father or grandfather. A masculinized mother will tend to make a s.e.x object out of the son, however, which means his feminization. But, on the internal secretion side, the boy may be definitely masculine. That is, after adolescence he would be strongly masculine, _if the vegetative-endocrine mechanisms created by the mother's personality had not slipped into the inside track_, so to speak. As a consequence, continual subconscious conflict between the two sets of s.e.x reaction will, sooner or later, disturb, perhaps disrupt and ruin his life.

So an infant may start life with a fairly balanced endocrine equipment, with its wake of a normal life (barring accidents and infections), and yet he may end as an inferior, insane, criminal, or failure directly because of establishment of conflict between himself as one sort of s.e.x type, and his obligatory a.s.sociates of another sort of mixed s.e.x type. This applies also to the mother-daughter, the father-son, and the father-daughter relationship.

Male and female created He them, is a bald misstatement of the facts.

Male and female emerge as final by-products of endocrine heredity, environmental treatment and adaptation. Often the male-female, the female-male, persist anatomically, or are forced to persist functionally. Society, constructed upon the Biblical dogmas of man as a fallen angel, and absolute s.e.x, is responsible for much misery and suffering meted out to the functional hermaphrodite, as we shall see later in an a.n.a.lysis of the endocrine character of Oscar Wilde. The privileges and powers of s.e.x relationship, marriage and parenthood, should be safeguarded for the mixed s.e.x type, the man or woman with the variable s.e.x index. For there are no tragedies in life more pitiful than those in which an aggressive masculinely built type is forced to a.s.sume a submissive, receptive, pa.s.sive, feminine role and vice versa, the tragedy of compelled h.o.m.os.e.xuality, because of wrong a.s.sociates.

MASOCHISM AND SADISM

The functional hermaphrodite enables us, too, to understand the phenomena of masochism and sadism, to a certain extent, on the chemical side. The masculine personality, the combination of masculine, e.g., adrenal cortex and gonad internal secretion predominance, is built for aggression. The feminine personality, the union of feminine, e.g. thyroid and ovarian superiority, is constructed for submission. Reverse the possibilities, or confuse them, as occurs in the functional hermaphrodite, and the att.i.tudes become reversed or perverted. So a masculinoid personality in woman will make for sadism, a feminoid personality in a man for masochism.

Variants and refinements of these perversions will often be found in the functional hermaphrodite who must satisfy two doubly flowing streams of visceral pressure within himself. Persistence of the thymus or pineal gland tends to a prolongation of the infantile and child types, that will be taken advantage of.

CHAPTER VII

THE RHYTHMS OF s.e.x

If one permits a drop of ink to fall into a gla.s.s of water, amazing figures and shapes, bizarre and chameleon, are born as the blue swirls and whirls through the resisting medium. Unseen forces and currents, tides and pressures, set up a seething and flowing, pulling and twisting of the drop of ink until it becomes a strange wraith created out of the molecules. A temporary individuality lives in the water.

So likewise the forces of s.e.x, essentially the forces of the internal secretions, mould and sculpt and mould again the woman out of the flesh and blood. Adolescence--p.u.b.erty--menstruation: the maid,--pregnancy--labor--lactation: the matron, thirty years of ups and downs of these processes around the idea of love or suppressed love, against an aesthetic background of some sort--and finally the loss of the stress and strain of s.e.x, the menopause. All the landmarks of the life of woman, in their entirety, are erected and dominated by the tides and currents, the phases of concentration and dilution, of the different internal secretions in the endocrine mixture which is the blood.

Marvelous are all the manifestations of the reproductive necessity.

Considering that reproduction was at first merely a form of growth, a discontinuous kind of growth, that seized upon s.e.x as a splendid means to escape death, the chemical methods evolved arouse a sense of awe.

A baby is born with her or his glands practically as fixed for her or him as the color of the eyes. Thymus and pineal keep him a child, keep him uns.e.xed. Then at p.u.b.erty, a new current is added to the calmly flowing river, and behold! a turmoil. Ovaries or testes actively functioning erupt upon the calm spectacle, and the girl is transfigured into the maid, the boy into the youth. After the ovaries, the corpus luteum: after the corpus luteum, the placenta: after the placenta, the mammary glands: after that the cycle begins again until the ovaries are exhausted and the chain is broken. Besides, all the other glands of internal secretion beat in rhythm, fluctuate in their activities, may divide prematurely the tides or dam them completely.

Innumerable varieties and combinations of interglandular action supply us with the limitless types of adolescent girls. Some endocrine cooperatives that make one girl stable and settled, will make others unstable and unsettled. Alicia may be hyperthyroid, and so excitable, nervous, restless, and subject to palpitation of heart and sleeplessness. Bettina may have too much post-pituitary, and so will menstruate early, tend to be short, blush easily, be sentimentally suggestive and s.e.xually accessible. Christina may be adrenal cortex centred and so masculinoid: courageous, sporty, mannish in her tastes, aggressive toward her companions. Dorothea may have a balanced thyroid and pituitary and so lead the cla.s.s as good-looking, studious, bright, serene and mature. Florence, who has rather more thyroid than her pituitary can balance, will be bright but flighty, gay but moody, energetic, but not as persevering. And so on and so on.

Environment, habit-formation, training, education serve only to bring out the internal secretion make-up of the girl, or to suppress and distort and so spoil her. Adolescence will be peaceful, calm, semi-conscious, or disturbing, revolutionary and obsessive according to the reaction of the other endocrines to the rise of the ovaries.

Harmony, and so continued happiness of the mind and body, means that they have been welcomed into the fold. Disharmony, ailments, unhappiness, difficulties, mean that they are being treated as intruders, or are acting as marauders. The after life, s.e.xually the period of maturity, barring accidents, diseases, and shocks, will bear the same character. The kind of adolescence provides the clue to the kind of maturity, for both are effects of the same endocrine factors.

THE s.e.x GLAND CHAIN

Furthermore, the activities of a normal woman involve a series of s.e.x glands. Since there function, in addition to the ovaries, the glands of the uterus, the b.r.e.a.s.t.s or mammary glands, and the placental gland (the secreting cells of the tissue which comes out as the after-birth). Each of these contributes directly to the reproductive life of the individual. To call the ova the s.e.x glands is to confer upon them a name which really belongs to a chain of glands.

All of the members of the s.e.x chain, including those of the thyroid, the adrenal and the pituitary, are necessary to the functions of menstruation, impregnation, settlement of fertilized ovum in the wall of the uterus, labor and lactation. A disturbance of one of them will set up disturbances all along the line, and a resonance of distress or compensation upon the part of all of them. As an interlocking directorate over the s.e.xual functions of the female, they are members one of the other. So what helps or hurts one, helps or hurts all.

THE CYCLE OF MENSTRUATION

Essentially, the ovary is a collection of follicles, nests of cells, acting as safe deposit vaults for the ova that are to become candidates for fertilization. At birth, there are some 30,000 to 200,000 of these, of which a good many atrophy during childhood so that there are no more than about 30,000 left at p.u.b.erty. Of the 30,000, only an elite 400 actually mature between the ages of fifteen and forty-five. About every twenty-eight days, one of the follicles swells, becomes filled with liquid, pushes or is pushed to the surface of the ovary, there to rupture and expel into the abdominal cavity the tiny ripe ovum. The rest of the torn follicle makes itself over into a peculiar yellowish body, the true corpus luteum, should pregnancy occur. If pregnancy and the consequent placenta do not occur, it shrinks and turns into a scar, the false corpus luteum. The true corpus luteum resembles closely the adrenal cortex in make-up and staining reactions. It seems as if, once successful impregnation has been achieved, the feminine organism adrenalizes itself, makes itself more masculine and less feminine, inhibiting the posterior pituitary and the adrenal medulla, as well as the ovaries. Besides, the corpus luteum stimulates the thyroid to prepare for the heavy demands to be made upon it during pregnancy.

Before menstruation, there is a stage of preparation, a stir and twittering of the endocrines, the premenstrual state. Currents of communication flow between the different glands, messages and replies pa.s.s to and fro. When these are properly balanced, so that all goes well, the consciousness of the woman will be disturbed by no knowledge of them. In some women abnormal sensations appear, a sense of fullness in the b.r.e.a.s.t.s, or of weight in the back or pelvis, or pain in the head. The last is probably due to swelling of the pituitary beyond the capacity of its bony container. In a good many women, nervous and mental phenomena herald the expected menstruation because of a complete upset of the balance between the internal secretions, with resulting disturbance of the nervous system. Irritability, depression, excitability, melancholia, exaltations, restlessness, hysteria, loss of self-control, or even more marked mental aberrations may appear.

Following them, and roughly paralleling them, may come various abnormalities of menstruation itself. The character, extent and duration of these furnish us the best clues to the endocrine stability or instability of the particular feminine organism.

Menstruation is simply the uterus saying: well, not this time. As the destined ovum within its nest, the follicle, grows, its fluid affects the interst.i.tial cells to send their specific stuff into the blood.

There it circulates, hits this gland and that, makes some more active, others less, transforms the chemistry of the cells, and engorges the mucous membranes, most of all those of the nose and of the uterus. It is all to welcome the mature ovum and its possible impregnation, to prepare a site for its landing and settlement, blood and food for its nutrition, safety for its development. But it is not to be. No sperm at hand, or effective enough to penetrate that wandering ovum. Love's labour's lost. All must return to the so-called normal, really the intermenstrual state. The womb must surrender some of that blood, the glands return to their routine, and a s.e.x diastole of the whole organism succeeds. Until again, another follicle swells, another ovum matures, and the premenstrual state of s.e.x high tide cycles back.

Seven to ten days before menstruation we know that s.e.x high tide is beginning for that is when the blood pressure goes up. As this rise of blood pressure is probably controlled by the posterior pituitary, we have a clue to the reason for the rhythmic variations in the rate of production of its secretion by the ovary. For, since menstruation is so closely connected with the phases of the moon and the tides, the rhythmicity of the posterior pituitary may be traced to the days when the pineal was an eye at the top of the head, and in direct relation with the pituitary.

Menstruation has been said to be a miniature labor. It is not that as much as it is a miniature abortion. It is an effort of nature still-born. But nature is quite used to its disappointments and returns placidly to the daily grind. The four phases of a woman's twenty-eight day cycle succeed each other as the premenstrual, the menstrual, the postmenstrual and the intermenstrual, with the precision of pistons moving in a motor, when no interfering factor as disease, profound emotion or climate disturbances are present, affecting the endocrines.

The sequence of events appears to be about as follows: The amount of post-pituitary secretion reaches a certain concentration. This in turn stimulates the thyroid and adrenal medulla. They in turn activate the ovarian cells, which congest the uterine glands and lining membrane.

The follicle bursts, the ovum is discharged and wanders, the uterus waits and wonders. Nothing happens, the curtain is lowered, the scenery is removed, the actors revert to civilian clothes. That is the story of menstruation, the central phenomenon of woman's pre-pregnancy life. One sees it clearly as a play of an internal secretion syndicate.

THE PREMENSTRUAL MOLIMINA

The premenstrual molimina is the traditional t.i.tle accorded symptoms, sensations, feelings, observations of women in the premenstrual phase.

In the light of endocrine a.n.a.lysis, they become exceedingly important indicators of the underlying const.i.tution of the individual concerned.

Indeed, the premenstrual period furnishes a direct clue to the dominating internal secretion in a woman. Moreover, these premenstrual phenomena are the shadows cast by coming events. For they mimic and prophesy the events of the last crisis of feminine s.e.x life, the cessation of ovulation which goes by the name of menopause, gonadopause, or change of s.e.x life. The premenstrual phenomena provide a positive film, so to speak, of the latent negative picture of the endocrine system of the girl or woman.

Thus, there is the sub-pituitary or pituitary insufficient type, in whom the excessive swelling of the gland causes headache, and a dull, heavy, tired feeling, a definite depression. Drowsiness, sleepishness, indifference to surroundings, general sluggishness of thought, feeling and reaction, a phlegmatic frilosity, all go with it. It is due to an overweighing of the pituitary, controller of good brain tone, and alive wakefulness, by the demands of the organism.

On the other hand, the hyperthyroid type of woman reacts with an exaggeration of her tendency. When the posterior pituitary begins to secrete more in her its stimulation of the thyroid is enough to tip it over the normal line. Such a woman in the premenstrual phase becomes irritable and restless, does not know what to do with herself, cannot concentrate on conversation, occupation or any single activity, may become excited to the point of mania. Hot, tremulous, sleepless, or sleeping badly, she has a much harder time of it than her pituitary sister.

These samples of premenstrual internal secretion reaction are the extremes of a vast number and variety of types. There are women in an unstable quasi-premenstrual state for the greater part of their lives.

Sometimes an infectious disease or a psychic blow will put a woman into this cla.s.s. The significance of these cyclic changes has been tremendously increased by the recent formal admission of women to partic.i.p.ation in public activities on a plane of equality with men.

Evidence exists that in man, too, there is some cyclic rhythmicity of his endocrines, which sets up a fluctuation in his physical and mental efficiency. The curves of these variations have still to be plotted, and will doubtless contribute no little to our knowledge of the control of human nature. One unexpurgated fact stands out: the reproductive mechanism of woman has rendered her whole internal secretion system, and so her nervous system, all her organs, her mind, definitely and sharply more tidal in their currents, more zigzag in their phases, more angular in their ups and downs of function, and so less predictable, reliable and dependable.

THE MASCULINOID WOMAN

The masculinoid woman, as a functional hermaphrodite, exists first as a congenital ent.i.ty, with an inborn distribution of endocrine predominances that make for masculinity. There are also numerous acquired forms. The infections of childhood, measles, scarlet fever, diphtheria, and above all mumps, may so damage the hormone system that an inversion of s.e.x type follows. However, the stimulative and depressive effects of environment are even more significant. The effects of environment in producing changes in an organism, the changes the biologist sums up as adaptation, can be tracked in many instances to responsive reactions of the glands of internal secretion to demands made upon them by changed external conditions. So a cold climate, which necessitates a more voluminous hair covering for an animal, will evoke a hypertrophy of the adrenal cortex. Secondarily other effects appear as by-products of the adaptation. The adrenal cortex makes for pugnacity, temper, animal courage, irritability and anger reactions. So a hairy animal will, in general (unless other endocrines come in to defeat the primary effect), be more pugnacious, courageous, irritable and combative. The same applies to woman. An environment which tends to encourage the masculine traits in her, to arouse repeatedly her pugnacity and combative decisions in the more rapid give and take of the masculine world, will rouse the adrenal cortex to greater activity, and so make her face hirsute, her att.i.tudes aggressive, and perhaps render her sterile. Concomitantly there may be a disturbance of menstruation.

The presence or absence of sterility, natural or enforced, always present, or say appearing after the birth of one child, must all be donated a prominent place in studying the endocrine make-up of a woman. When there is not enough ovarian secretion, the ovum may not be able to burst through the ovary, a necessity before it may begin its travels to the uterus. Next, the propulsive action of the genital ducts may be insufficient because of defective corpus luteum. Or the uterus may not have received enough posterior pituitary or thyroid to make it fit soil for the ovum to plant itself in. Or there may be too much of these, which cause the uterus to ma.s.sage itself daily by gentle contractions and so keep it well-toned. Excessive ma.s.sage will throw the ovum out. All these are factors in the sterility problem, with its psychic resonances affecting the maternal instinct.

THE MATERNAL INSTINCT