The Glands Regulating Personality Part 20

"'Two bullets, it will be remembered, entered the doctor's left chest, quite close together. Well, one nicked the heart and lodged between the lung and the heart. It didn't cause any more damage than a mosquito bite.

"'The second bullet went through the soft flesh of the chest, but it struck a rib and bounded back out again. That bullet was picked up beside the body.

"'After these vain attempts to send a bullet through his body to a fatal spot, the doctor apparently shifted the weapon to his right temple and pulled the trigger for the fifth time. Then the fifth bullet, driven likewise by a very weak charge of powder, pierced the skull at a point where it was thin and tore into his brain. Its lack of power, however, is shown by the fact that I found it this morning in the brain tissue.

"'In all my experience I have never seen anything so queer. It sounds almost like a dream--a man trying to kill with a pistol that shoots bullets that either stop after striking soft flesh or bound out of the body into which they are fired. But it is true; I have had all of the bullets in my hand.

"'They are all accounted for. They are all of the same sort. There is no reason to doubt that they are all from the same weapon, an instrument without manufacturer's name, and of a design that the police say is unfamiliar to them.

"'The dead doctor was a distinct type, and his tragic end was one that should not surprise anyone who has any knowledge of such cases. The courtroom was thronged with friends of the dead physician-dentist, who not only is reported to be of a wealthy family of Bogota, Colombia, but generally is credited with many charitable works in the uptown Spanish colony here.'"

The distinct type to which the first a.s.sistant to the chief medical examiner of the city referred is the thymo-centric personality (status lymphaticus is another technical name for it), we have been considering. The persistence of the thymus after adolescence makes for an arrest of masculinization or feminization, the end-point arrived at by the processes of p.u.b.erty. That is, a partial castration takes place. Now, as the experiments of Steinach upon the transplantation of ovaries into males deprived of their testes and of testes into females deprived of their ovaries have demonstrated, the removal of the interst.i.tial cells of one s.e.x a.s.sists enormously in arousing the opposite s.e.x traits that have been latent, h.o.m.os.e.xuality. In a thymo-centric, tendencies to h.o.m.os.e.xuality and masochism appear.

And so all the remarkable after-effects of those processes that the Freudians have so lovingly traced: the father complex in men, the inferiority complex, and the feminoid complex in general.

The feminoid complex introduces again the character of the functional hermaphrodite, the mixed male-female. The s.e.x index will certainly come in time as a measurement of s.e.xuality. But until then some more available cla.s.sification of s.e.x tendency is necessary. Including s.e.x intergrades, one may divide s.e.x types into six cla.s.ses: male, _male_-female, male-_female_, female, _female_-male, and female-_male_. The s.e.x intergrades, the four hyphenated cla.s.ses, nearly all have some degree of persistent thymus. If its influence is partial, the emphasis is before the hyphen, upon the ostensible. If its influence is unchecked, the emphasis is after the hyphen upon the apparently latent s.e.x. The s.e.x difficulties produced in these people by the conflict between their conscious s.e.x and their subconscious s.e.x, the s.e.x duel in the same mind, Siamese twins pulling in diametrically opposite directions, are comprehensible only from the viewpoint of the internal secretions.

h.o.m.os.e.xuality, in one form or another, frank or concealed, haunts the thymo-centric and spoils his life. The persistent thymus, like a vindictive Electra, stalks the footsteps of its victim, its possessor.

He wishes to live, according to society's remorselessly rigid expectations, for virility and happiness. But his thymus condition forces him also to live for femininity and misery. That h.o.m.os.e.xuality is not purely a psychic matter, of complexes and introversion, as the newest psychology would have us believe, has been proved by observations of its development in animals with internal secretion disturbances, acquired or experimental. Thus it has been recorded that a male dog showed a large goitrous swelling of the thyroid in the neck, with a rapid heart, staring eyes, the loss of flesh and fat and the nervousness of a hyperthyroid condition. Therewith he became an absolute h.o.m.os.e.xual. Observations on the primates along the same lines have been made. In goitrous hyperthyroids thymus persistence is common.

What complicates his s.e.x difficulties, and makes social adjustment almost impossible or completely impossible, is that his pituitary frequently cannot react to a.s.sist him. Often, as emphasized, it is bound in by bone on all sides and neither ante-pituitary nor post-pituitary can adequately secrete for his needs. So social instinct and the capacity for inhibition, the ability to control himself conceptually and somatically, are poor. As a child it is difficult to train him along the lines of the elementary habits and customs. He is into late childhood a bed-wetter, and steals and lies quasi-unconsciously.

His mother realizes soon that he cannot be made to acquire a sense of responsibility either for himself or for others. She becomes afraid to let him go into the street because of his inability to take care of himself, to acquire the right att.i.tude toward street cars, autos, strangers, in short, danger. She dreads to take him to places because no sooner would they be out of them, than she would discover that he had taken something that did not belong to him, quite as a matter of course. He will fabricate stories with no motive, fabricate them out of whole cloth for the pure fun of it. In a word, moral irresponsibility is the keynote of the volitional traits of the thymo-centric personality from childhood up.

With so much against them, physical inferiorities, mental defects, moral lacks of every sort, it is little wonder that the thymo-centrics die young. Infections. .h.i.t them badly. The cases of flu that went off in twenty-four hours belonged to the type. Fulminant meningitis, pneumonia, diphtheria, scarlet fever, the varieties that are supposed to kill in twenty-four to forty-eight hours because of the terrible virulence of the attacking microbe, are probably so malignant only because the organism attacked is a thymus subject.

In the alcohol and drug habitue wards of hospitals as well as in medicolegal cases of degenerates, gunmen and other criminals, the characteristic conformation and diagnostic stigmata of the thymo-centric are often encountered. Life treats them badly.

Misunderstood and misjudged, they are the hopeless misfits of society.

If the pituitary and the thyroid can enlarge to compensate for their defects, they may become the queer brilliants, the eccentric geniuses of the arts and sciences. Should they not, mental deficiency and delinquency are their portion. Epilepsy, then, is sometimes their mode of escape from the terrors of an utterly foreign world. Should they survive all other hazards, suicide may still be their most frequent fate. A study of 122 cases of suicide by one observer showed that the status lymphaticus was practically constant and often p.r.o.nounced.

Certain of them, after a stormy life in the twenties, become adapted to their surroundings in the thirties because the pituitary gradually emerges and becomes dominant in their personalities. They are then recessive thymocentrics. An increase in size, a broadening, together with a greater mental tranquillity and stability, accompany the adaptation. Historically, the thymocentrics who combined brilliancy and instability played a great part as some of the famous adventurers and restless experimentalists.

THE s.e.x GLAND CENTERED OR GONADO-CENTRIC PERSONALITIES

(The Eunuchoid Personality)

Among the individuals whose personality is dominated by their s.e.x glands the physiognomy, physique and life reactions are so distinctive that no better examples exist of our main thesis: that the whole life of man is controlled primarily by his internal secretions. These gonado-centric types are not all necessarily s.e.x gland deficient, as the term eunuchoid implies. They may be rather gonad unstable with a corresponding instability of the entire endocrine system.

About the face of the eunuchoid the striking feature is the incomplete, irregular, or absent hair development. Below thirty it is chubby and ruddy, and rather childish in its texture; after thirty, there is an effect of premature senility: the skin is yellowish, leathery, and wrinkled as the faces of old women are wrinkled: the upper lip is traversed by vertical wrinkles, and wrinkles come around corners of the mouth. The expression is juvenile, effeminate or plaintive.

Invariably the voice is higher pitched than the usual masculine tones.

It may be gentle and subdued, like a genteel female's, or strident and rasping. Occasionally it is a pleasant high tenor. The Adam's apple, poetic popular name for the thyroid cartilage, is never prominent, because it is not ossified, as it should be in the normal male.

Tall and slender, or generally undersized, the muscles are soft and flabby as a woman's. The hands and feet are small and gracile typically. Viewed in profile, the lines of the body are feminine. The b.r.e.a.s.t.s may reach almost the size of the female's and there may be a well-marked area of pigmentation around the nipple. The hair growth under the shoulders and on the lower abdomen tends to be scanty and to approximate the opposite s.e.x in quality and distribution, as do the reproductive organs themselves.

These traits of physiognomy and physique indicate functional hermaphroditism in the underlying feminoid const.i.tution. The feminoid const.i.tution appears again in the supposedly masculine. The feminoid const.i.tution should not be confused with the infantiloid const.i.tution.

The former, the gonado-centric personality, is a digression of growth, a deviated evolution of the individual because of the conflicting forces, some masculine and some feminine, in his make-up. The infantiloid const.i.tution is one of arrested development, and may center around the arrested function in childhood or adolescence of any one or a number of endocrine glands. Yet the two may resemble one another pretty closely, at times. A cretin imitates the extreme grade of infantiloid const.i.tution. The infantiloid is a sort of enlarged and lengthened child. The feminoid is ostensibly a man, with a good deal of woman in him. The infantiloid is a quite general type, but of course when typical is a freak, recognized and treated as such. How far the eunuchoid may deviate from the normal is suggested by the following description of one.

"Face rounded, moon-like, chubby, devoid of hair. Eyes puffed. Lips protruding and fleshy. Cheeks round and thick. Nose little developed.

Skin thick and of clear color. Disproportion between the size of head and body. Hair of scalp fine. Brows and lashes scarce, trunk elongated and cylindrical. Limbs thick and plump, tapering from the root to the extremities. Good fat layers over the entire body. Reproductive organs those of a little boy. Infantile mental state: light-heartedness, navete, timidity, easily evoked tears and laughter, promptly aroused but fugitive wrath: excessive tenderness, but unreasonable dislikes."

An almost wholly mental infantiloid state or one purely physical may occur. Certain rather large Tom Thumbs belong to the group. In everyday life we see doll creatures, overgrown children, on every hand. Mental measurements of any large group of population reveal a remarkable percentage of it as below the mental age of 12. Juvenile traits and juvenile mind, separate or combined, should always suggest the possibility of the infantiloid const.i.tution of one type of thymocentric also.

The eunuchoid or feminoid personality is also found often among artists. One must carefully distinguish the two because the ensemble of characteristics of the one may easily stimulate the other. Yet fundamentally they are as far apart as the poles. The infantiloid type never rises above the subnormal, which is its habitat, while the feminoid type (or masculinoid, in woman) often produces an abnormal personality which rises above the normal. The infantiloids become the slaves and the weaklings of society, the Mark Tapleys, and the Tom Pinches, while the eunuchoids have created splendid literature and immortal music.

The life reactions, and especially the s.e.x reactions of the gonado-centric, are as complex and difficult as those of the thymo-centric. Straightforward h.o.m.os.e.xuality and the eunuchoid const.i.tution have always been intimate. The h.o.m.os.e.xuality of the thymo-centric is more subtle and disguised, often buried under the stronger masculine component of the personality.

h.o.m.os.e.xuality as a cult has appeared correlated with the production of the functional hermaphrodite by artificially creating the eunuchoid type of const.i.tution. Among the Aztecs, h.o.m.os.e.xuals were produced in quant.i.ty for religious purposes by a deliberate fostering of the eunuchoid const.i.tution. They called them the Mujerados. Their method consisted in making a healthy man ride horseback constantly, until an irritable weakness of the reproductive organs ensued, and a paralytic impotence followed. The exhausted testes would then atrophy, and the voice ring falsetto, muscular tone and energy diminish, inclinations and habits become feminine. The Mujerado lost his position in society as a man, a.s.sumed female clothing, manners and customs, and to all intents and purposes was treated as a woman. Their large b.r.e.a.s.t.s were said to be capable of lactation. Their only reward was the high honor paid them as religious consecrates.

Among the Phoenicians there was a similar sect, devoted to the worship of Astarte. Known as the Galli, they were men who had transformed themselves into the closest possible resemblance to women. At all times they were prepared to engage with members of either s.e.x in s.e.xual relations of the most depraved kind. They lived in idleness as prost.i.tutes, cultivating and extending their skill in s.e.x perversions as specialists. Their initiation into their professional careers was a part of a religious ritual. During the revels of great festivals, apprentices to the trade, wrought up by certain traditional songs and music, would be hypnotised into a frenzy, run amuck, throw off every garment, and, s.n.a.t.c.hing up swords, deliberately placed in convenient spots, castrate themselves at one blow. In a wilder hysteria, screaming loudly, the self-made eunuchs would then run through the streets holding the severed organs high above their heads. At last, faint through loss of blood, they brought their madness to its climax by hurling the organs in their hands into the nearest houses, so forcing the owners to take them in, and provide them with female wearing apparel, and the other feminine accoutrements of war.

Henceforth, this manner of dress was not to be changed. The physical changes followed. The hair of the face was lost, the b.r.e.a.s.t.s enlarged, the voice became high-pitched, and the other type-characters of the eunuchoid complex appeared.

These const.i.tutions thus may be either congenital or acquired.

Individuals apparently normal during childhood and adolescence may be transformed. Injuries to the reproductive glands, sometimes the slightest bruises, may lead to atrophy, and a change of personality follows in less than six weeks. Mumps may achieve the same results because of the inflammation of the gonads that may accompany or follow it.

Whole family and races may show some of the signs of the eunuchoid const.i.tution for generations. According to Darwin (Descent of Man) "the development of the beard and the hairiness of the body differ remarkably in the men of distinct races, and even in different tribes, and families of the same race. On the European-Asiatic continent, beards prevail, until we pa.s.s beyond India, although with the natives of Ceylon they are often absent.... Eastward of India beards disappear, as with the Siamese, Kalmuks, Malays, Chinese, and j.a.panese. Throughout the great American continent the men may be said to be beardless: but in almost all tribes a few short hairs are apt to appear on the face, especially in old age...." Hair being an adrenal cortex trait, it is to be inferred that hairless families and races are more eunuchoid, and possess less of the adrenal cortex secretion than the more hairy.

Whatever the exceptions--and there have been eunuch generals in history--Marces, Chancellor of Justinian, who beat the Goths at Nocera, and Ali the Gallant who commanded the Turkish Army after the invasion of Hungary in 1856--the eunuchoid generally runs to type in his mentality and his s.e.xuality. He is an introvert, his personality is shut in, he isolates himself from the world.

The lower eunuchoids exhibit a curiously child-like personality.

Navely confiding, communicating to all comers all their joys and sorrows, they ask diffidently for confirmation of their statements, and they pa.s.s quickly from tears to laughter. About s.e.xual matters they are extremely timid. A moral innocence pervades their speech and conduct. Usually they have no true conception of crimes of jealousy or pa.s.sion. The occupations they go in for are those without responsibility away from crowds or observation, such as ship cooks, stewards, and so on. They marry to find a home, without the object of establishing s.e.xual relations. When they are asked whether they think their wives will be pleased to look at the matter in the same light, and be contented to live with a man upon such conditions, they are puzzled or perplexed, as if they had never thought seriously about the matter before. Their simplicity has even extended to proposing to their wives to seek gratification from some other man. Naturally, such an arrangement often proves unsatisfactory, and desertion follows.

Concerning the children sometimes the offspring of these unions, scepticism as to the ident.i.ty of the father is decidedly permissible.

Still in some cases the best of evidence exists that fertility occurs.

The vitality of the children then is subnormal and the mortality rate high. The eunuchoid tendency is transmitted. Variations and transitions of every kind are found among the unders.e.xed eunuchoid personalities, depending upon the quality and degree of the secretions lacking.

When there is an excess of these s.e.x secretions, a turbulent, tempestuous, s.e.xually sensitive temperament, that may go on to satyriasis or nymphomania, is created. It has been shown that doves can be rendered overfeminine in their behaviour and characteristics by injections of ovarian material. Overs.e.xed types of personality therefore may exist as well as unders.e.xed.

COMBINATIONS AND PERMUTATIONS

The types of personality sketched--the thyrocentric, the pituitocentric, the adrenocentric, the thymocentric, the gonadocentric--are really prototypes, the great kingdoms of personality, to which individuals can be a.s.signed, by hall marks which facilitate their cla.s.sification. They may also be described as the pure endocrine types, which include a minority of a population. But the majority consist of dominant mixtures, hyphenates, groups which are the species and varieties of the greater cla.s.ses. Combinations and variations of control among the adrenals and thyroid, pituitary or thymus, and so on, occur, with effects that are sometimes additive, reinforcing a particular trait of the person, and at others conflicting, and neutralizing. Quant.i.tative variations of the same secretion may occur periodically in the same individual, which explains the multiplicity and complexity, the inconsistency and contradictions of conduct in a man or woman at the different episodes and crises of life, to a certain extent.

There should be a stable balance between the various endocrines, the stability expressing itself in what we are pleased to call the normal.

There should also be a balance between the antagonistic elements in the same gland; for instance, the pituitary. The pituitary, built of two distinct portions, the anterior and the posterior, is in equilibrium when the two are nicely adjusted. But the accidents and vicissitudes of life (pregnancy for example) will upset the balance.

And so there will result changes of physique, conduct and character.

Like possibilities apply to all the other glands of internal secretion. In our ability to exercise a control over these disturbances of balance, to be developed in the future, lies one of the great hopes for a chemical perfectability of human life and nature.

NATURE'S EXPERIMENTS VS. MAN'S

The kinds of personality described, as prototypes and variants and the fundamental facts supporting the view that they are the reaction types of the human beings we meet in everyday life, represent simply a beginning of the work to be done. Putting into our hands a new powerful searchlight that penetrates the interiors of body and soul, a fresh att.i.tude toward the complicated problems of Man in society grows imminent. The normal and the abnormal become illuminated with an effect as if our retinas were suddenly to get sensitive to the ultraviolet rays to which we are now blind. An apparatus is put in our hands which shows us not only a static condition at a given moment, but the whole life process of an individual, normal or abnormal, his past and his future.

Upon that fetich of the biologists, the struggle for existence, the struggle for survival, the struggle for possessions and satisfactions, for happiness, victory and virility, in short, for success, as success is measured by the biologists, a searching spectroscope can play, with a yield for our understanding and control of life, that will stand comparison with the astronomer's a.n.a.lysis of the stars. Toward the process of adjustment and adaptation, of the environment to the individual, as well as of the individual to the environment, att.i.tudes will change from _hopeless acquiescence in the inevitable to a complete self-determination of the self and its surroundings._ The adventures of the personality, strung along as the episodes of his career, his friendships and s.e.x reactions, his mishaps and diseases, and the final fate or fortune that overtakes him, be he normal, subnormal, supernormal, or abnormal, begin to become comprehensible, and hence controllable.

CHAPTER XI

SOME HISTORIC PERSONAGES