The Glands Regulating Personality Part 14

There have been created high odes to an unknown G.o.d, sensuous lyrics of love, apostrophes and addresses to every human pa.s.sion. But no poet, to my knowledge, has risen to the heights of the maternal instinct. Some contemporary clap-trap about sentimentalism will perhaps decry and ridicule the demand for an apotheosis of it. There are some who deny its existence, and a.s.sert that maternity is forced upon every woman. Reduced to its elements, such nonsense turns out the absurd pose of the theorist desperate to epater le bourgeois or to cover up hidden defects in his or her make-up.

Without the maternal instinct, without the hope of immortality through somatic or spiritual posterity, we should all, who were sane enough, have to condemn ourselves to the futilities of hedonism. So that the criminal who was condemned to roll a huge boulder up a hill, only to see it roll down again, would have to thank his lucky stars for his lighter punishment. The future, tomorrow, the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth, or if you will, the Republic of Supermen, means to all of us what the child means to the madonna. The cynical epicurean careerists and careeristinas, and the depraved degenerates of a comfort-l.u.s.ting civilization may have suffered an absolute atrophy and castration of that instinct. But they are pathologic specimens, and we are not for the moment concerned with them.

The Freudians have set up a great hullaballoo about creative activities as sublimations of the s.e.x instinct, or as they would have it, the libido. That is their obsession, the confusion of the s.e.x instinct, the instinct for s.e.x life and satisfaction in the relation of the male to the female, with the maternal instinct. The paternal instinct bears the same relation to the maternal, as the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of the male do to those of the female, i.e., a functional hermaphrodite trait. The maternal instinct is the instinct to create, provide and care for offspring.

The mother expresses the deep craving of protoplasm for immortality.

What drives her is the instinct of Life to preserve itself unto eternity in infinite s.p.a.ce and time. That separates it sharply from the temporary needs of the s.e.x instinct. The artist, the man of science or letters, the statesman, craftsman and maker of every sort is instigated by the maternal instinct. He creates for his own pleasure, to be sure. But it is in its essence the pleasure of the bird making its nest.

It is necessary, therefore, to distinguish between the s.e.x instinct and the maternal instinct. For different glands of internal secretion have been found responsible for them. A distinct difference in the quality and amount of the two instincts may be observed in the same person. A strong maternal instinct may be seen again and again to dominate a woman with but little or no s.e.x urge or pa.s.sion. Numerous physiologically frigid women have lived successful and happy married lives because of contented maternity. Other women, with normal or exaggerated s.e.x instinct who welcome and stimulate the s.e.x life, may have no wish for children, no functioning maternal instinct at all, and if sterile, will accept their fate with indifference or even exultation. These variations occur because of a difference in chemical source and determination of the two instincts. While the ovary, stimulated by the thyroid and the adrenal medulla, is the chief determinant of the s.e.x instinct, to the posterior pituitary must be credited the chief hormone of the maternal instinct. The interactions of the two glands, the ovary and the posterior pituitary, modified by accessory influences, determine the relative intensity of the two instincts. In a sense, the two glands may be said to be antagonistic and yet one stimulates and complements the other.

THE TRANSFIGURATIONS OF CHILD-BEARING

Though what happens at p.u.b.erty, what happens all through life through the agencies of the endocrines is amazing enough, what occurs during the period of child-bearing is perhaps the most amazing of all. As emphasized, pregnancy is the time, among the internal secretions, of a great uprooting and stirring, of fundamental and cataclysmic changes in the most intimate chemistry of the cells. It is as if a dictator, inspired by his country's danger, its enemies at the gates of its capitol, were to draft and mobilize everyone, man woman and child from everyday activities to the necessities of defense. Or rather it is as if there appeared within the heart of our civilization a common purpose and intelligence, now so palpably lacking, which magnetized and drew to itself all the streams of individual self-aggrandizing effort. Imagine that possibility and how it would change the face of the earth and the entire basic const.i.tution of human life and society.

So do the profound tides of the hormones, centering around the new creature being made in the womb, transfigure the face and const.i.tution of the child-bearing woman.

During pregnancy, in consequence, the integrity of every structure of the body is tested. A stern, relentless accountant goes over the cells, counts up their reserves, establishes a balance, credits and debits according to the demands of the growing parasite within them.

Follow changes in the skin, the bones, the nervous system and the mind. That is, all the glands, subtle recorders, transmitters, producers of the vibrations of change are influenced. But the most influential are the most affected, as the most dominant personalities in a community are most disturbed by a revolution.

In Sinclair Lewis' "Main Street," the best novel ever made about America as a nation of villagers, the heroine, Carol Kennicott, has this to say to someone sentimentalizing about maternity.

"I do not look lovely, Mrs. Bogar. My complexion is rotten, and my hair is coming out, and I look like a potato bag, and I think my arches are falling,... and the whole business is a confounded nuisance of a biological process."

The exploration of the internal secretions has brought us an explanation and an understanding of why child-bearing is a nuisance.

We know now that if Carol Kennicott's complexion became rotten and her hair fell out, it was because her thyroid was not adequate to the demands of pregnancy, and that if her arches were falling, and her figure acquiring a potato bag dumpiness, it was because her pituitary was insufficient. In all probability she was a thymus-centered type, which accounts for much of the material that goes to make up the novel.

Different endocrine types react characteristically toward the situations of pregnancy. The adrenal type may not be able to respond with the necessary enlargement of its cortex which is normal for the needs of gestation. So pigmentations, darkenings and discolorations of the skin, especially of the face, the traditional chloasma develops.

The hyperthyroid type may become sharply exaggerated, almost to the point of mania and psychosis. The subthyroid will suffer an emphasis of her defect, and pa.s.s on, because of pregnancy, to the truly diseased state of myxedema, the state of dull, slow, stupid, semi-animal semi-idiocy. The pituitary type becomes more masculinized.

The face becomes more triangular and coa.r.s.er, the chin and cheek-bones more p.r.o.nounced, and there is a growth of all the bones, so that she is seen to grow visibly in height and breadth, and in the size of the hands and feet. Concomitantly, there is a changed, a more matured and steadier outlook upon life, all due to stimulation of the anterior pituitary, controller of growth, physical and mental.

In general, the major endocrines, the pituitary, the adrenals, and the thyroid should hypertrophy and hyperfunction during pregnancy.

Should they not, should adverse mechanical circ.u.mstances or chemical malfunction prevent, dire effects may follow. A woman with the closed-in type of pituitary, shut up in a small non-expansile sella turcica, will suffer the most violent headaches, will become fat, will frequently abort. One whose thyroid cannot rise to the demands of gestation, because of previous disease (like typhoid or measles) which injured her thyroid excessively, may be poisoned by the new elements introduced into the blood by the growing fetus, as it is the job par excellence of the thyroid to render innocuous these poisons.

Of adrenal insufficiency, failure of the adrenals to hypertrophy sufficiently in pregnancy, little is known. Possibly the corpus luteum, the endocrine formed of the torn egg nest in the ovary, makes up for any deficiency in this respect. For there is the most curious resemblance imaginable between the cells of the adrenal cortex and those of the corpus luteum, some day to be completely explained.

THE PLACENTAL GLAND

The placenta, an organ and gland of internal secretion newly formed in the uterus, when the fertilized ovum successfully imbeds itself within it, must be considered in any a.n.a.lysis of the transfigurations of child-bearing. Born with the pregnancy, its life is terminated with the pregnancy, for it is expelled in labor as the after-birth. Its importance and function as a gland of internal secretion has become known only recently. Many still doubt and question the accordance of that rank to it. But feeding experiments with it, in various endocrine disturbances in human beings, have proved its right to the t.i.tle.

The placenta is created by the fusion of the topmost enlarged cells of the uterine surface and the most advanced cells const.i.tuting the vanguard of the growing and multiplying ovum. These front line invaders interact with the cells in contact with them to make a new organ which serves as lung, stomach and kidney for the embryo, since it is the medium of exchange of oxygen, foodstuffs and waste products between the blood of the mother and the blood of the embryo.

Ultimately it acts, too, as a gland of internal secretion, influencing the internal secretions of the mother, and also those of the embryo.

Settlement of the fertilized ovum in the womb introduces into the system new secretions, new substances which are partly male in origin, since the ovum contains within it the substance of the male sperm which has penetrated it. This masculine element causes a rearrangement of the balance of power between the endocrines towards the side of masculinity. They push down the pan of the scale to inhibit the post-pituitary. So menstruation, the menstrual wave which follows the increasing tide of post-pituitary secretion, is postponed. For ten lunar months, not another ovum breaks through the covering of the ovary, and the uterus is left undisturbed. The placental secretion plays a most important role as brake upon the post-pituitary, the most active of the feminizing uterus-disturbing endocrines. Until at last something happens that puts the placenta out of commission in this function of restraint, and the long bottled up post-pituitary secretion explodes the crisis apparent as the process of labor.

A condition of self-poisoning often occurs in pregnancy, with symptoms orchestrating from mild notes like nausea and vomiting to the high keys of convulsions and insanities. They represent what happens when an unbalanced endocrine system is attacked by the placenta. Depending upon where in the internal secretion chain the weak point, the Achilles' heel spot, will be found, the nature of the reaction will vary. And even after labor, after the explosive crisis, so much of the reserve endocrine materials may be consumed, that an actual mania or a chronic weakness may come in its wake.

Yet the placental secretion must not be looked upon as something wholly evil in its potentialities. Without enough of it to hold the uterus stimulating endocrines, particularly the post-pituitary, in check, still-birth results. If there is enough, and not too much of it, the woman will not feel ill at all, or perhaps only transiently, but will be possessed of a curious feeling of drowsy content and pa.s.sive, relaxed happiness. Let there be relatively too much of it, too little of the other glands, and the grosser transfigurations and ailments of the child-bearing period follow.

THE MAMMARY GLANDS

Once pregnancy is terminated by labor, the placenta is expelled from the body as the after-birth. The placenta removed, a new arrangement of the balance of power among the endocrines becomes necessary. But a new-comer appears upon the scene to take up the function left vacant by the absent placenta. This new-comer is the secretion of the activated b.r.e.a.s.t.s, the mammary glands. They make for a persistence of the state of equilibrium among the endocrines attained during pregnancy.

The mammary glands are typical glands of external secretion. They make the milk and pour it out of the b.r.e.a.s.t.s through little ca.n.a.ls into the mouth of the suckling. Yet evidence forces us to conclude that they are also glands of internal secretion, that their internal secretion subst.i.tutes to a certain extent for the loss of that of the placenta but not quite.

What seems to happen in fact, is this: the corpus luteum secretion stimulates the dormant cells of the mammary glands, formed during p.u.b.erty, but latent until the advent of pregnancy. We know that injection of corpus luteum will cause an hypertrophy of the b.r.e.a.s.t.s.

The same effect is produced regularly during the menstrual period, with a consciousness of swelling of the b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Their atrophy at the menopause coincides with the shrinkage of the ovaries that takes place at that period. Activity of the b.r.e.a.s.t.s parallels indeed more or less the activity of the corpus luteum.

With the prolonged activity of the corpus luteum during pregnancy, prolonged stimulation of the b.r.e.a.s.t.s occurs. The secretion of the post-pituitary would now cause the change from the internal cell secretion to milk. But it is inhibited from so doing by the placenta.

When the placenta is removed, after labor, the post-pituitary can act, and a free flow of milk is established. However, to counterbalance this, and to prevent the post-pituitary from overacting, the b.r.e.a.s.t.s secrete a hormone with an action like that of placenta, but not so strong, which tends to inhibit the ovary. So is put off the imposition of a pregnancy upon a period of lactation, obviously bad for mother, infant, and embryo. We have here an exquisite sample of the checks and compensations which make for a self-balancing of the whole endocrine system.

CRITICAL AGES

The Dangerous Age is a phrase coined by a Scandinavian writer as a more dramatic euphemism for the time of life when s.e.x function ceases, the climacteric. As a matter of fact, the age of adolescence is just as much of a dangerous age as the age of deliquescence. The only difference between them is that the dangers of the one have been hushed up, the dangers of the other well boomed and advertised.

Both are dangerous to the individual, because both are periods of instability and readjustment of the cells, particularly the brain cells, to a deranged endocrine system and blood chemistry.

Moral att.i.tudes differ at the two ages, not so much as an effect of experience, as expressions of different visceral pressures produced by newly dominant internal secretions. So in Eugene O'Neil's play, "Diff'rent," we see the woman Emma Crosby as she is in her youth, when her ovaries have budded and bloomed for only a few years, and her other endocrine influences are still dormant. She breaks off her engagement to Captain Caleb Williams on the eve of her wedding because she is informed of the episodes of a s.e.x affair he was involved in on his last voyage, under circ.u.mstances not discreditable to him. The next act shows her thirty years later when, as an elderly spinster, she is pa.s.sing through the climacteric, and is in the state of s.e.xual hyperesthesia some women are afflicted with before the menopause. It is as if the ovaries and the accessory s.e.x internal secretions erupt into a sort of final geyser before they are exhausted. So the captain, ever faithful, finds her, and discovers to his horror that she is a thousand times more like other women than he has ever been like other men. Because of his ignorance of the underlying chemical basis for the transfiguration, tragedy follows. Critics may cackle about a s.e.x starved woman, who has repressed her natural desires, and hail the play as a contribution to the Freudian clinics. As a matter of fact, it is a study of libido variation, with endocrine variation, at two stages of the inner chemical life of a woman.

The chain of events at the menopause, the acme and then ebb of the s.e.x tide, may be summed up something like this:

The ovaries cease producing their eggs and so shrivel as a storage battery atrophies when it dries up. An important member of the endocrine board of directors thus drops out, and so a rearrangement of gland activities, a new regime, becomes necessary. If a balance of power is established quickly and equitably, very little happens.

Quickly the woman pa.s.ses on to the next plane of her existence. But if some endocrine proves recalcitrant, and takes advantage of the situation to make itself dominant, trouble and maladjustment, and their psychic echoes, come. Anterior pituitary control will mean a relative masculinization, with hair on the face and aggressive att.i.tudes. Post-pituitary most often refuses to settle down, and expressing its ambition as headaches, flushes, obesity and hysteria, may cause extreme misery and unhappiness to its possessor. Sooner or later, if the harmonious equilibrium of the normal life is to be revived, all the glands must regress, thyroid, pituitary and adrenals.

With the waning of the ovarian function, the thyroid type will also exhibit its particular flare. If there is thyroid excess the woman will be excitable and irritable, the thyroid deficient will be depressed and dull, the thyroid unstable (that is swinging between excess and deficiency) will have a cyclic up and down alternation of mood and temperament. The adrenal centered will have a high blood pressure and masculinoid traits, the adrenal inferior will have a low blood pressure and suffer from a constant weakness and fatigability.

So each form of reaction to the critical ages is individualized according to the predominating glandular influence in the const.i.tution of the woman. When the womb has atrophied, and the b.r.e.a.s.t.s have shrunk, the typical tan complexion, and the angular masculinoid figure, face and psyche follow, and the transfiguration has been completed.

Man has his critical age of s.e.x cell deterioration as well as woman.

The age period swings between forty-five and fifty-five. Here enters upon the scene that organ of external and internal secretion, the prostate, the most important of the accessory s.e.x glands in the male.

Experiments with its extract upon growing tadpoles have demonstrated it to have the same differentiating effects as thyroid, but without the poisoning effects. Furthermore, the microscope reveals cyclic changes in its cells comparable to the menstrual phenomena of the uterus. Indeed it is accepted as the h.o.m.ologue or male representative of the uterus. Small and undeveloped during childhood, its growth at p.u.b.erty parallels that of the other reproductive organs. Its secretion has been shown to be necessary to the vitality of the sperm cells.

The regression of the prostate, its retirement from the field of s.e.x compet.i.tion, is the central episode of the male climacteric.

Accompanying its shrinking are prominent an irritable weakness, despondency, and melancholia, which may emerge at any time if there is disease or disturbance of it. The influence of the prostate upon man's mental condition, and its contribution to the s.e.x index, still remains to be investigated in detail.

s.e.x CRISES

At the periods of interst.i.tial cell hyperactivity, when a wave of radicalism in the blood sweeps through the tissues, the other endocrines are tested, and their latent stability or instability is made manifest. Even before p.u.b.erty, cyclic variations of health and conduct may be observed in boys and girls which undoubtedly depend upon currents among the internal secretions. Children, who, in the best of circ.u.mstances, habitually are attacked by a wanderl.u.s.t and run away from home, or suffer from fits of naughtiness, are samples of such endocrine lability. Children specialists have found that at about the end of the second year their charges begin to individuate. In a certain percentage, s.e.x traits appear pretty early. But the fact of the matter is that it is rather the minority of girls who spontaneously exhibit the traditional stigmata of the natural girl.

The doll-cherishing, housekeeping imitator of mother is another story.

At p.u.b.erty arise the most exquisite cases of life crisis dependent upon hormonic crisis. The boy becomes restless, irritable and quick-tempered when his thyroid and adrenals respond to the call of the interst.i.tial cells. If they do not, he will become dull, heavy, lazy and listless. The girl correspondingly is transformed into a vivacious, gay, nervous and apprehensive b.u.t.terfly, or a sedate, dreamy, bashful, or even morose moth. It is interesting to note that poise, mental equilibrium, is not established until physical growth ceases, marked by a cessation of growth of the long bones known as ossification of the epiphyses. Poise seems to be controlled by the ante-pituitary. The growth of the long bones is also dominated by the ante-pituitary. It would seem as if, its secretion dedicated to the one function, could not be available for the other. So it happens that those in whom growth ceases early (probably because of an earlier and more vigorous invasion of the internal secretion system by the interst.i.tial cell product), develop mental maturity more rapidly and possess more of it than those in whom growth continues. The ac.u.men and salacity of certain dwarfs is proverbial. The p.u.b.erty phenomena teach that s.e.x crises of every sort are dependent fundamentally upon fluctuations, periodic or aperiodic, of the s.e.x index, as we have defined it.

THE DETERMINING FACTORS OF s.e.x LIFE

The material summarized in the preceding paragraphs furnish some slight inkling of the vast dominion of s.e.x, in all its relations, somatic and spiritual, over which the glands of internal secretions rule. The founder of modern pathology, Virchow, said that woman is woman because of her ovaries. He meant that woman is a woman, the sort of woman she specifically is, because of her internal secretions. But no divine decree has laid down a line of cleavage between man and woman. There are fundamental const.i.tutional differences between man and woman. But it is just as true that man is man because of _his_ internal secretions.

We have seen that the concepts of Man and Woman are the end-points of a curve including variations of every possible combination that are embraced in the construction of a s.e.x index. This s.e.x index is not an absolute constant, although its range of fluctuation is pretty well fixed at birth. It varies from day to day, year to year, depending upon the influences that have been brought to bear upon it. But it determines the character of the three planes of s.e.x: the endocrine, the vegetative, and the psychic. The endocrine is concerned with the fundamental chemistry of s.e.x, the internal secretions, which determine the chemical reactions that provide the free energy for the s.e.x process. Upon the vegetative plane occur those transformations, tensions, and relaxations, in the viscera, which are controlled in part by the endocrines and in part by the experiences of the individual as registered in his subconscious. Upon the psychic, conscious planes appear the echoes and reflections of the occurrences upon the other two planes, as well as reactions arising in the brain from the necessity of the organism reacting as a whole to isolated episodes. Accompanying is a self-awareness of the organism as a unit.

The three planes are not like separate plates of gla.s.s one raised above the other, the usual idea picture of planes. They are nebulae, swirling into each other, influencing and being influenced continually. The reactions among these three complexes of s.e.x create the milieu for the variations and aberrations of tendency, character and conduct which stamp his unique quality upon the individual. s.e.x morale is likewise so influenced. The fundamentals of s.e.x ethics will, in due time, be revised in accordance with these conceptions.

CHAPTER VIII

HOW THE GLANDS INFLUENCE THE MIND