AND ANHEDONIA
In the preceding chapter we spoke of the feeling of energy and
certain of the basic emotions--such as fear, anger, joy, sorrow,
disgust, surprise and admiration. It is important to know that
rarely does a man react to any life situation in which the
feeling of energy is not an emotional constituent and governs in
a general way that reaction. Moreover, fear, anger, joy and the
other feelings described mingle with this energy feeling and so
are built great systems of the affective life.
1. Courage is one of these systems. It is not merely the absence
of fear that constitutes courage, though we interchange
"fearless" with "courageous." Frequently it is the conquest of
fear by the man himself that leads him to the highest courage.
There is a type of courage based on the lack of imagination, the
inability to see ahead the disaster that lurks around every
corner. There is another type of courage based on the philosophy
that to lose control of oneself is the greatest disaster. There
are the nobly proud, whose conception of "ought," of "noblesse
oblige," makes them the real aristocrats of the race.
The fierce, the predisposed to anger are usually courageous.
Unrestrained anger tends to break down imagination and foresight;
caution disappears and the smallest will attack the largest. In
racial propaganda, one way to arouse courage is to arouse anger.
The enemy is represented as all that is despicable and mean and
as threatening the women and children, religion, or the flag. It
is not sufficient to arouse hate, for hate may fear. While
individuals of a fierce type may be cowards, and the gentle often
enough are heroes, the history of the race shows that physical
courage resides more with the fierce races than with the gentle.
Those who feel themselves superior in strength and energy are
much more apt to be courageous than those who feel themselves
inferior. In fact, the latter have to force themselves to
courage, whereas the former's courage is spontaneous. Men do not
fear to be alone in a house as women do, largely because men feel
themselves equal to coping with intruders, who are sure to be
men, while women do not. One of the early signs of chronic
sickness is a feeling of fear, a loss of courage, based on a
feeling of inferiority to emergencies. The Spartans made it part
of that development of courage for which their name stands, to
develop the physique of both their men and women. Their example,
in rational measure, should be followed by all education, for
courage is essential to nobility of character. I emphasize that
such training should be extended to both male and female, for we
cannot expect to have a timorous mother efficiently educate her
boy to be brave, to say nothing of the fact that her own
happiness and efficiency rest on courage.
Tradition is a mighty factor in the production of courage. To
feel that something is expected of one because one's ancestors
lived up to a high standard becomes a guiding feeling in life.
Not to be inferior, not to disappoint expectation, to maintain
the tradition that a "So-and-So" never shows the white feather,
makes, heroes of the soldiers of famous regiments, of firemen and
policemen, of priests, of the scions of distinguished families,
aye, even of races. To every man in the grip of a glorious
tradition it seems as if those back of him are not really dead,
as if they stand with him, and speak with his voice and act in
his deeds. The doctor who knows of the martyrs of his profession
and knows that in the code of his calling there are no diseases
he must hesitate to face, goes with equanimity where others who
are braver in facing death of other kinds do not dare to enter.
Courage is competitive, courage is cooperative, as is every other
phase of the mental life of men. We gather courage as we watch a
fellow worker face his danger with a brave spirit, for we will
not be outdone. Amour propre will not permit us to cringe or give
in, though we are weary to death of a struggle. But also we
thrill with a common feeling at the sight of the hero holding his
own, we are enthused by it, we wish to be with him; and his
shining example moves us to a fellowship in courage. We find
courage in the belief that others are "with us," whether that
courage faces physical or moral danger. To be "with" a man is to
more than double his resources of strength, intelligence and
courage; it is more than an addition, for it multiplies all his
virtues and eliminates his defects. The sum total is the Hero. I
wonder if there really ever has been a truly lonely hero, if
always there has not been some one who said, "I have faith in
you; I am with you!" If a man has lacked human backing, he has
said to himself, "The Highest of all is with me, though I seem to
stand alone. God gives me courage!"
In a profoundly intellectual way, courage depends on a feeling
that one is useful, not futile. Men lose courage, in the sense of
brave and determined effort, when it seems as if progress has
ceased and their place in the world has disappeared. This one
sees frequently in middle-aged men, who find themselves relegated
to secondary places by younger men, who feel that they are
slipping and soon will be dependents.
Hope, the foreseeing of a possible success, is necessary for most
courage, though now and then despair acts with a courage that is
largely pride. The idea of a future world has given more courage
to man in his difficulties than all other conceptions together,
for the essence of the belief in immortality is to transfer hope
and success from the tangle of this world to the clear,
untroubled heavenly other world.
2. Here we must consider other, related qualities. The office of
intelligence is to adjust man to a complex world, to furnish
pathways to a goal which instinct perhaps chooses. Suppose a goal
reached,--say marriage is entered upon with the one that we think
is to give us that satisfaction and happiness we long for. The
marriage does not so result, either because we have expected too
much, or because the partner falls below a reasonable
expectation, or because contradictory elements in the natures of
the wedded pair cannot be reconciled. Unity is not reached;
disunion results, almost, let us say, from the very start. What
happens?
Many adjustments may take place. A crude one is that the pair,
after much quarreling, decide to separate or become divorced, or
on a still cruder, ignoble level, one or the other runs away,
deserts the family. A common adjustment, of an anti-social kind,
forms the basis of much of modern and ancient literature; the
partners seek compensation elsewhere, enter into illicit love
affairs and maintain a dual existence which rarely is peaceful or
happy. Indeed, the nature of the situation, with outraged
conscience and fear of exposure, prevents happiness.
But there are those who in such a situation do what is known as
"make the best of it." They avoid quarrels, they keep up the
pretense of affection, they seek to discover the good qualities
in the mate; they are, as we say, resigned to the situation. To
be resigned is to accept an evil with calmness and equanimity,
but without energy. Resignation and courage are closely related,
though the former is a rather pallid member of the family. The
poor and the miserable everywhere practise this virtue; the
church has raised it perforce to the most needed of qualities; it
is a sort of policy of nonresistance to the evils of the world
and one's own lot.
But resignation represents only one type of legitimate
adjustment, of sublimation. By sublimation is meant the process
of using the energy of a repressed desire and purpose for some
"higher" end. Thus in the case of domestic unhappiness the man
may plunge himself deeply into work and even be unconscious of
the source of his energy. This type of adjustment is thus a form
of compensation and is seen everywhere. In the case of many a
woman who gives herself over to her children without stint you
may find this sublimation against the disappearance of romance,
even if no actual unhappiness exists. Where a woman is childless,
perforce and not per will, an intense communal activity often
develops, leading to good if that activity is intelligent,
leading to harm if it is not. For sublimation develops the crank
and pest as well as the reformer. In every half-baked reform
movement you find those who are striving to sublimate for a
thwarted instinct or purpose.[1]
[1] The historian, Higginson, put it well when he said
substantially, "There is a fringe of insanity around all reform."
Sublimation is the mark of the personality that will not admit
defeat even to itself. The one who does admit defeat becomes
resigned or seeks illicit compensation,--other men, other women,
drink. Freud and his followers believe that the neurasthenic or
hysteric is striving to find compensation through his symptoms or
that he seeks to fly from the situation that way. I believe that
the symptoms of the neurasthenic and hysteric often find a use in
this way, but are not caused by an effort for compensation. That
is, a neurasthenic may learn that his or her pains or aches give
advantages in sympathy, relief from hard tasks or disagreeable
situations; that they cover up or are an excuse for failure and
inferiority,--but the symptoms arise originally from defects in
character or because of the physical and social situation.
Nevertheless, it is well to keep in mind, when dealing with the
"nervous," that often enough their weaknesses are related to
something they may gain through them. This I have called
elsewhere "Will to power through weakness," and it is as old as
Adam and Eve. The weak have their wills and their weapons as have
the strong.
The highest sublimation, in the face of an insuperable obstacle
to purpose or an inescapable life situation, finds a socially
useful substitute in philanthropy, kindness, charity, achievement
of all sorts; the lowest seeks it in a direct but illicit
compensation for the self and in a way that merely increases the
social and personal confusion; and a pathological sublimation in
part, at least, manifests itself iii sickness. These are the
three leading forms, but it must be remembered that there are no
pure types in character; a man may sublimate nobly when his
domestic happiness is threatened but cheat when his business
purposes are blocked; a woman may compensate finely for
childlessness but "go all to pieces" because hair is growing on
her face and the beauty she cherishes must go. Contradictions of
all sorts exist, and he is wise who does not expect too great
consistency from himself or others.
3. "Man," says Hocking, "can prolong the vestibule of his desire
through infinity." By the vestibule of desire this philosopher
means the deferring of satisfaction for any impulse or desire. We
love, but we can wait for love's fulfillment; we desire
achievement, but we can work and watch the approach of our goal.
Something we desire is directly ahead, almost in our reach,--
fame, love, riches, vindication, anything you please from the
sensuous to the sublime satisfaction; and then an obstacle, a
delay, appears, and the vestibule is lengthened out. A man may
even plan for the satisfaction he can never hope to have, and in
his greatest ideal that vestibule reaches through eternity.
That quality which enables a man to work and wait, to stand the
deferring of hope and desire, is patience. The classic figure of
patience sitting on a monument is wrong, for she must sit on the
eager desires of man. Nor is patience only the virtue of the good
and farseeing, for we find patience in the rogue and schemer.
Altruists may be patient or impatient, and so may be the selfish.
Like most of the qualities, patience is to be judged by the
company it keeps.
Nevertheless, the impatient are very often those of small
purposes and are rarely those of great achievement. For all great
purposes have to be spread over time, have to overcome obstacles,
and these must be met with courage and patience. Impatience is
fussiness, fretfulness and a prime breeder of neurasthenia.
Patience is realistic, and though it may seek perfection it puts
up with imperfection as a part of human life. But here I am
drifting into an error against which I warned the reader,--of
making an entity of a conception. People are patient or
impatient, but not necessarily throughout. There are men and
women who fuss and fume over trifles who never falter or fret
when their larger purposes are blocked or deferred. Some cannot
stand detail who plan wisely and with patience. Vice versa, there
are meticulous folk, little people, whose petty obstacles are met
with patience and cheerfulness, who revel in minute detail, but
who want returns soon and cannot wait a long time. We are not to
ask of any man whether he is patient but rather what does he
stand or do patiently? What renders him impatient?
A form of impatience of enormous social importance is that which
manifests itself in cure-alls. A man finds that his will
overcomes some obstacles. Eager to apply this, he announces that
will cures all ills. Impatient of evil, men seek to annihilate it
by denying its existence or by loudly chanting that good thoughts
will destroy it. These are typical impatient solutions in the
sphere of religion; in the sphere of economics men urge
nationalization, free trade, socialism or laissez faire, or some
law or other to change social structure and human nature. War
itself is the most impatient and consequently most socially
destructive method of the methods of the treatment of evil.
While patience is a virtue, it may also be a vice. One may bear
wrongs too patiently or defer satisfaction too long. One meets
every day men and women who help injustice and iniquity by their
patience. We are too patient, at least with the wrongs of others;
perhaps we really do not feel this intensely or for any length of
time. In fact, the difficulty with most of the preaching of life
is its essential insincerity, for it counsels patience for that
which it feels but little. We bear the troubles of others, on the
whole, very well. Nevertheless, there are Griseldas everywhere
whom one would respect far more if they rebelled against their
tyrants and taskmasters. Organized wrong and oppression owe their
existence mainly to the habitual patience of the oppressed. To be
meek and mild and long-suffering in a world containing plenty of
egoists and cannibalistic types is to give them supremacy.[1] We
admire patience only when it is part of a plan of action, not
when it is the mark of a passive nature.
[1] Here the ideals of East and West clash. The East, bearing a
huge burden of misery and essentially pessimistic, exhorts
patience. The West, eager and full of hope, is impatient.
4. Because man foresees he wishes. Rather than the reasoning
animal, we might speak of the human being as the wishing animal.
An automatically working instinct would produce no wish. The
image of something which has been experienced arouses an
excitement akin to the secretion of saliva at the thought of
food. The wish which accompanies the excitement is a
dissatisfaction, a tingling, an incomplete pleasurable emotional
state which presses to action. Sensuous pleasure, power,
conformity to the ideal, whatever direction the wish takes, are
sought because of the wish. Right education is to train towards
right wishing.
Because the wish is the prelude to action, it became all powerful
in mythology and superstition. Certain things would help you get
your wishes, others would obstruct them. Wishes became animate
and had power,--power to destroy an enemy, power to help a
friend, power to bring good to yourself. But certain ceremonies
had to be observed, and certain people, magicians and priests had
to be utilized in order to give the wish its power. Wisdom and
magic were mainly the ways of obtaining wishes. Childhood still
holds to this, and prayer is a faith that your wish, if placed
before the All-Mighty, will be fulfilled.
Since wishing brings a pleasurable excitement, it has its
dangers, in the daydream where wishes are fulfilled without
effort. Power, glory, beauty and admiration are obtained; the
ugly Duckling becomes the Swan, Cinderella becomes the Princess,
Jack kills the Giant and is honored by all men; the girl becomes
the beauty and heroine of romance; the boy becomes the Hero,
taking over power, wealth and beauty as his due. The world of
romance is largely the wish-world, as is the most of the stage.
The happy ending is our wish-fulfillment, and only the
sophisticated and highly cultured object to it. Moulding the
world to the heart's desire has been the principal business of
stage, novel and song.
In the normal relations of life, the wish is the beginning of
will, as something definitely related to a future goal. He who
wishes finds his way to planning and to patient endeavor, IF
training, circumstances and essential character meet. To wish
much is the first step in acquiring much,--but only the first
step. For many it is almost the only step, and in the popular
phrase these have a "wishbone in the place of a backbone." They
are the daydreamers, the inveterate readers of novels, who carry
into adult life what is relatively normal in the child. The
introspective are this latter type; rarely indeed do the
objective personalities spend much time in wishing. Undoubtedly
it is from the introspective that the wish as a symbol and worker
of power gained its influence and meaning. This transformation of
the wish to a power is found in all primitive thought, in the
power of the blessing and the curse, in the delusions of certain
of the insane who build up the belief in their greatness out of
the wish to be great; and in our days New Thought and kindred
beliefs are modernized forms of this ancient fallacy.
It is a comforting thought to those who seek an optimistic point
of view that most men wish to do right. Very few, indeed,
deliberately wish to do wrong. But the difficulty lies in this,
that this wish to do right camouflages all their wishes, no
matter what their essential character. Thus the contestants on
either side of any controversy color as right their opposing
wishes, and cruelties even if they burn people at the stake for
heresy, kill and ruin, degrade and cheat, lie and steal. Thus has
arisen the dictum, "The end justifies the means." The good
desired hallows the methods used, and all kinds of evil have
resulted. Practical wisdom believes that up to a certain point
you must seek your purpose with all the methods at hand. But the
temptation to go farther always operates; a man starts to do
something a little underhanded in behalf of his noble wish and
finds himself committed to conduct unqualifiedly evil.
5. There are certain other emotional states associated with
energy and the energy feeling of great interest. What we call
eagerness, enthusiasm, passion, refers to the intensity of an
instinct, wish, desire or purpose. In childhood this energy is
quite striking; it is one of the great charms of childhood and is
a trait all adults envy. For it is the disappearance of passion,
eagerness and enthusiasm that is the tragedy of old age and which
really constitutes getting old. Youth anticipates with eagerness
and relishes with keen satisfaction. The enthusiasm of typical
youth is easily aroused and sweeps it on to action, a feature
called impulsiveness. Sympathy, pity, hope, sex feeling--all the
self-feelings and all the other feelings--are at once more lively
and more demonstrative in youth, and thus it is that in youth the
reform spirit is at its height and recedes as time goes on. What
we call "experience" chills enthusiasm and passion, but though
hope deferred and a realization of the complexity of human
affairs has a moderating, inhibiting result, there is as much or
more importance to be attached to bodily changes. If you could
attach to the old man's experience and knowledge the body of
youth, with its fresher arteries, more resilient muscles and
joints, its exuberant glands and fresh bodily juices,--desire,
passion, enthusiasm would return. In the chemistry of life,
passion and enthusiasm arise; sickness, fatigue, experience and
time are their antagonists.
This is not to deny that these energy manifestations can be
aroused from the outside. That is the purpose of teaching and
preaching; the purpose of writer and orator. There is a social
spread of enthusiasm that is the most marked feature of crowds
and assemblies, and this eagerness makes a unit of thousands of
diverse personalities. Further, the problem of awakening
enthusiasm and desire is the therapeutic problem of the physician
and especially in the condition described as anhedonia.
In anhedonia, as first described by Ribot, mentioned by James,
and which has recently been worked up by myself as a group of
symptoms in mental and nervous disease, as well as in life in
general, there is a characteristic lack of enthusiasm in
anticipation and realization, a lack of appetite and desire, a
lack of satisfaction. Nothing appeals, and the values drop out of
existence. The victims of anhedonia at first pass from one
"pleasure" to another, hoping each will please and satisfy, but
it does not. Food, drink, work, play, sex, music, art,--all have
lost their savor. Restless, introspective, with a feeling of
unreality gripping at his heart, the patient finds himself
confronting a world that has lost meaning because it has lost
enthusiasm in desire and satisfaction.
How does this unhappy state arise? In the first place, from the
very start of life people differ in the quality of eagerness.
There is a wide variability in these qualities. Of two infants
one will call lustily for whatever he wants, show great glee in
anticipating, great eagerness in seeking, and a high degree of
satisfaction when his desire is gratified. And another will be
lackadaisical in his appetite, whimsical, "hard to please" and
much more difficult to keep pleased. Fatigue will strip the
second child of the capacity to eat and sleep, to say nothing of
his desires for social pleasures, whereas it will only dampen the
zeal and eagerness of the first child. There is a hearty simple
type of person who is naively eager and enthusiastic, full of
desire, passion and enthusiasm, who finds joy and satisfaction in
simple things, whose purposes do not grow stale or monotonous;
there is a finicky type, easily displeased and dissatisfied,
laying weight on trifles, easily made anhedonic, victims of any
reduction in their own energy (which is on the whole low) or of
any disagreeable event. True, these sensitive folk are creators
of beauty and the esthetic, but also they are the victims of the
malady we are here discussing.
Aside from this temperament, training plays its part. I think it
a crime against childhood to make its joys complex or
sophisticated. Too much adult company and adult amusements are
destructive of desire and satisfaction to the child. A boy or
girl whose wishes are at once gratified gets none of the pleasure
of effort and misses one of the essential lessons of life.--that
pleasure and satisfaction must come from the chase and not from
the quarry, from the struggle and effort as well as from the
goal. Montaigne, that wise skeptic, lays much homely emphasis on
this, as indeed all wise men do. But too great a struggle, too
desperate an effort, exhausts, and as a runner lies panting and
motionless at the tape, so we all have seen men reach a desired
place after untold privation and sacrifice and who then found
that there seemed to be no energy, no zeal or desire, no
satisfaction left for them. The too eager and enthusiastic are
exposed, like all the overemotional, to great recessions, great
ebbs, in the volume of their feeling and feel for a time the
direst pain in all experience, the death in life of anhedonia.
After an illness, particularly influenza, when recovery has
seemingly taken place, there develops a lack of energy feeling
and the whole syndrome of anhedonia which lasts until the subtle
damage done by the disease passes off. Half or more of the
"nervousness" in the world is based on actual physical trouble,
and the rest relates to temperament.
When a great purpose or desire has been built up, has drained all
the enthusiasm of the individual and then suddenly becomes
blocked, as in a love affair, or when a business is threatened or
crashes or when beauty starts to leave,--then one sees the
syndrome of anhedonia in essential purity. A great fear, or an
obsessive moral struggle (as when one fights hopelessly against
temptation), has the same effect. The enthusiasm of purpose and
the eagerness of appetite go at once, in certain delicate people,
when pride is seriously injured or when a once established
superiority is crumbled. The humiliated man is anhedonic, even if
he is a philosopher.
The most striking cases are seen in men who have been swung from
humdrum existence to the exciting, disagreeable life of war and
then back to their former life. The former task cannot be taken
up or is carried on with great effort; the zest of things has
disappeared, and what was so longed for while in the service
seems flat and stale, especially if it is now realized that there
are far more interesting fields of effort. In a lesser degree,
the romances that girls feed on unfit them for sober realities,
and the expectation of marriage built up by romantic novel and
theater do far more harm than good. The triangle play or story is
less mischievous than the one which paints married life as an
amorous glow.
One could write a volume on eagerness, enthusiasm and passion,
satisfaction and dissatisfaction. Life, to be worth the living,
must have its enthusiasms, must swing constantly from desire to
satisfaction, or else seems void and painful. Great purposes are
the surest to maintain enthusiasm, little purposes become flat.
He who hitches his wagon to a star must risk indeed, but there is
a thrill to his life outweighing the joy of minor success.
To reenthuse the apathetic is an individual problem. When the
lowered pressure of the energy feeling is physical in origin,
then rest and exercise, massage hydrotherapy, medicines
(especially the bitter tonics), change of scene are valuable. And
even where the cause is not in illness, these procedures have
great value for in stimulating the organism the function of
enthusiasm is recharged. But one does not neglect the value of
new hopes, new interests, friendship, physical pleasure and above
all a new philosophy, a philosophy based on readjustment and the
nobility of struggle. Not all people can thus be reached, for in
some, perhaps many cases, the loss of these desires is the
beginning of mental disease, but patient effort and intelligent
sympathetic understanding still work their miracles.