THE BACKGROUNDS OF PERSONALITY
The question of moods and sublimations once raised introduces the
problem of the relation of neuroses, nervous disorders without an
organic disease basis, and mental abnormalities, to the endocrine
system. Obviously, in view of all the influences exerted by the
ductless glands upon every organ and function of the body and mind,
and their intermediary, the vegetative nervous system, a relation must
exist. Observations accumulated, some of which have been referred to
in the preceding chapters, prove the complete, though complex, reality
of such a deduction.
The history of attitudes toward nerve and mental disorders is a
remarkable illustration of the vicissitudes of ignorance playing with
words. The Greeks, swayed and dazzled as they were by the magic of
words which they discovered, yet never permitted themselves to be
fooled by them. As an explanation for the phenomena of hysteria in
women, that benign mental disorder par excellence, they had the theory
of a wandering about of the womb in the organism as a cause. That
provided an image of something material happening as an explanation.
With the triumphs of anatomy after the Renaissance, that naïve view
had to be discarded. In its place the humoral theory held sway, with
its good humors and its bad humors, and their bilious, lymphatic,
nervous and sanguine admixtures. But that, too, went the way of all
flesh. During the first half of the nineteenth century, a popular
phrase, "nerves," paraphrased by practitioners of medicine as
neuroses, then came into vogue as the efficient cause of these
troubles. "Nerves" indeed today have filtered everywhere into the
common consciousness.
Because of the irritant effects of light, food and social conditions,
America has come to swarm with neurotics of every type, especially the
sexual. A rich field was created for cults of treatment, which spring
up like weeds periodically all over the country. We have seen how the
American, Beard, was inspired by the idea that "nerves" represented a
loss of tone, a flabbiness, weakness and softness of the nerves, to
coin the word neurasthenia. Nerve exhaustion he believed was the cause
of the nerve weakness. Weir Mitchell, another American, introduced the
rest cure combined with overfeeding as a treatment for it.
An analytical French neurologist, Charcot, was not to be satisfied by
words of Latin-Greek derivation. Insisting upon the significance of
the individual mental workings of each case, he and his pupil Janet
began to unravel a tangle which has led to the present revolution in
psychology. For Freud, Jung and Adler took up the story where Janet
left off.
Janet elaborated the ideas of a subconscious and an unconscious, a
dissociation of the components of the mind, and a splitting of
the personality. Lumping the phenomena of amnesia, somnambulism,
hypnotism, anesthesia, obsession and hysteria into the grand group of
mental dissociations and disintegrations, he achieved a unification
never considered possible before him. Suggestion as a mode of cure was
also emphasized and elaborated by him to an undreamed-of degree.
Freud, in 1895, studying a case of hysteria with Breuer, had attempted
cure by the method of free association, attempting to get the hysteric
to pour out her mental life. Not succeeding, and his interest aroused
by her continual references to her dreams, he discovered that by means
of those dreams he could tap the subconscious and unconscious in
regions hitherto inaccessible. For in the dreams, ideas, persons, and
experiences appeared that never came upon the stage of the conscious.
From that finding he developed the concept of repression, i.e., the
relegation of a painful experience into the unconscious, and kept
imprisoned there by the censor. Also how there it became the complex,
which, like a stage manager, never appeared before the footlights of
the conscious, but determined its content just the same by inhibition
or stimulation of any character or scene to be enacted upon it.
A complete critique of Freudianism cannot be attempted here. But in
relation to the endocrine system as controllers of nerve function
in health and disease, a valid criticism can be made. Firstly, the
Freudian jargon, its technicalities and explanations, are metaphors.
Some may regard them as justifiable descriptions of mental processes.
But it certainly can be urged against them that they provide us with
no idea concerning what is happening in the cells of the body and
brain as explanation for the event, normal or abnormal, supposedly
explained. Words like sublimation or transference are figures of
speech and nothing else. Secondly, they ignore totally the powers of
the vegetative apparatus, the viscera, muscles and secreting glands
together, as originators and determiners of the wish and its
adventures.
How utterly different, from the point of view of the physiologist, the
two explanations are as pictures, can be seen from a single example.
The idea of repression, to the Freudian, means the pushing down
into the subconscious of some experience. Pushing down is a process
controlled by the laws of physics: it involves the concepts of matter
and force. Hence, the expression, as a description of a psychic
episode, is a metaphor pure and simple. From the standpoint of the
process of repression as pictured by the student of the vegetative
apparatus, the term signifies a real bottling up of energy. For the
repression means actual compression of muscle, the muscle contained
in the viscera. And the repression means a real interference with
the release of energy, which remains bound up, tugging for room
for expression as much as a spring tightly coiled in a box. In the
production of that tension an endocrine has often been decisive. The
endocrine nature of the individual may decide whether a subconscious,
i.e., visceral or vegetative tension, is to come into being, live
or die, in the face of a given situation. If thereby, a permanent
disturbance of the equilibrium between the components is brought
about, a neurosis, expression of an unsatisfied vegetative tension,
follows.
It has been hailed as a brand new discovery by those following the
latest in psychology that the subconscious and the unconscious
constitute a more essential component of the personality than the
conscious. As a matter of fact, common practice has recognized the
fact, if not the mechanism and its significance, for ages. It is not
what people say or do--it is how they say it: that is how the true
reactions of personality are recognized instinctively even by animals.
Tone and gesture (when not acted or posed) are accepted as symbols and
symptoms of states of the inmost sancta sanctorum that words and wit
never give entrance to, nay disguise and block. Tone and gesture as
revelations of the Inner-Me, the True-Me or Intra-Me if you will,
are so potent because they are direct expressions of the vegetative
apparatus. The curl of a lip, the flicker of an eye-lash, the twitch
of a shoulder are the overflow of energy cramped in the increased
intravisceral pressure, determined by increased outflow of endocrine
secretion. Wittingly or unwittingly we interpret the little signs as
messages from the deepest self, which they truly are.
NERVOUS BREAKDOWNS AND SHELL SHOCK
In civil life, the complex of symptoms Beard jumbled together as
neurasthenia, when associated with a loss of self-control, so that the
sufferer is incapacitated for the duties of everyday life, has become
the popular "nervous breakdown." A sanitarium appears to be one of the
necessary components of the condition. It is the last act, the climax
of "nerves."
During the War of 1914-1918, thousands of cases of functional
disorders of the nervous came to be grouped under "Shell Shock."
The psychic phenomena in the wake of concussion of the brain due to
explosives suggested the term, and its application to affections of
self-control, or dissociations of the personality, with paralysis,
blindness, speechlessness, loss of hearing and so on. The War neurosis
(including those arising in home service) is still a topical subject
because thousands of mentally disabled soldiers are alive.
In view of what has been said concerning the endocrine mechanism of
the instincts and the vegetative apparatus, it could be predicted that
a number of these nerve casualties of peace and war would be caused by
an upset of the equilibrium between the glands of internal secretion.
A study of war neuroses by the great Italian student of the
endocrines, Pende, confirms this assumption. As emphasized, the
internal secretions are like tuning keys, and tighten or loosen the
strings of the organism-instrument, the nerves. War for the soldier,
or the civilian combatant as well, sets the strings vibrating, and
with them the glands controlled by them. Excessive stimulation or
depression of an endocrine will disturb the whole chain of hormones,
and the vegetative system, and their echoes in the psyche. The nervous
disorders of war that have been lumped as shell shock or war shock may
be looked upon as uncompensated; airings of the endocrine vegetative
mechanism, as dislocations of parts and processes that are reflected
outwardly as ailment or disease.
AN ENDOCRINE NEUROSIS
An exquisite example of an endocrine neurosis, that is a disorder of
nerves and brain dependent upon an upset of the equilibrium between
the internal secretions due to a trying experience, was furnished
recently by the reactions of three naval officers lost in the snow
wilds of Canada through a balloon adventure. The cases aroused a good
deal of interest at the time, and the details were reported by the
newspapers as if they were the episodes of a serial mystery story.
The three officers started out late one fine evening from Rockaway
Air Station in a balloon for a practice trip. Atmospheric conditions
suddenly changed, they became lost in the clouds, and finally landed
somewhere in the Canadian wilderness. The commander of the balloon
crew, Lieut. A., 23 years old, was the youngest of the three; the
oldest, Lieut. B., being 45, and the third man in the thirties, Lieut.
C.
According to the testimony given at the Court of Inquiry held
afterwards, two hours after they abandoned the balloon and started
struggling through the snow, B. became tired and complained of his
fatigue. B.'s fatigue increased, and two days later became so great
that the party had to stop for an hour and build a fire in order to
permit him to rest. However, an hour proved too little: and in another
half hour he was falling and fainting.
Letters written by C. to his wife and gotten hold of by reporters
declared that B. at this juncture passed into a semi-sane state, in
which he accused himself of a number of sins, and volunteered to
commit suicide, so that the others would not be burdened by his
weakness. Also, that they might use his body to fortify themselves. A.
discussed with C. the advisability of taking B.'s knife away from
him. Living on their carrier pigeons, they continued on, moved by a
desperate hope of finding someone. B. had several fainting spells
after drinking water traced by moose tracks.
Luck favored them, and they encountered an Indian who guided them to
a place called Moose Factory. Here they wrote the letters home which
reached their wives and the daily press before they themselves
returned to civilization. A great hue and cry was raised by the
newspapers about their plight. Newspaper correspondents vied with each
other for the honor of being the first to meet them and get their
story.
They arrived at a collection of houses named Mattice. A. and C.
proceeded ahead and found instructions for them not to talk. C. went
back to B., who was in a shack with the correspondents full of the
story of the letters. B. became enraged and struck C. who retained his
self-control.
Differences were patched up, and the three returned together to New
York. There the medical examination of the three showed that the four
days in the wilderness had left its deepest effects upon the physique
and mind of B. In a few days he developed an attack of tonsillitis,
with fever, and a mental disturbance described by the medical officer
as exhaustion psychosis. He believed this condition to be the result
of severe exhaustion, prolonged anxiety, worry, and extreme exposure.
Extreme restlessness and irritability, confusion of thought and
an undefined perplexity, all the prominent symptoms of exhaustion
psychosis, making him hyperactive and inclined to acts of violence,
were in evidence.
The physique, character and reactions of Lieut. B. are what interest
us in the case. The pictures of him published, and the structure of
his skull, face and teeth, his hair and other physical traits point to
his being an adrenal-centered type, of the unstable variety, so far as
his internal secretion make-up is concerned. As we shall see in the
next chapter on the different kinds of endocrine personalities,
the unstable adrenocentric (convenient name for the class) is
characterized by rapid exhaustibility because under conditions of
stress and strain, the reserve of the gland is consumed. The adrenal
glands, we noted in a preceding chapter, are concerned with the
maintenance of muscle and nerve tone in emergencies. They are the
glands which, during crises especially, control the production and
supply of energy to the various organs and tissues called upon to
function to the utmost in emergencies. When the adrenals fail, as they
do readily in these labile adrenocentrics, it is as if the adrenals
were cut out of the body. And it has been repeatedly shown that
extirpation of the adrenals is immediately followed by degeneration
and breakdown of the brain cells.
These facts explain the reactions of Lieut. B. The acute call upon his
adrenals made by his dangerous situation probably soon exhausted them
of their content of reserve secretions. Overwhelming fatigue with loss
of muscle tone followed. The changes in the brain caused him to talk
as he did in the wilderness. Returned to safety, the news that his
reputation was under fire because of C.'s letter brought out another
adrenal characteristic: the excessive instinct of pugnacity, easily
stimulated, with its emotion of anger and the tendency to violence.
What is spoken of as a quick temper is an adrenocentric trait.
Returned to New York, an infection, tonsillitis, attacked him.
Infections in adrenocentrics use up the content of the adrenals as
rapidly as physical exhaustion or emotion. So the tonsillitis, which
in another type of individual would have been combatted continuously
by the adrenals and so passed by as a mere sore throat, presented him
with a high temperature, and the brain disturbance described by the
medical officer as exhaustion-psychosis, with again a tendency to
violence. In short, the history of his adventure is the history of his
adrenals under stress and strain. It illustrates the mechanism of a
typical endocrine neurosis.
THE UNCONSCIOUS AND THE VISCERA
In the chapter on the glands of internal secretion as an interlocking
directorate, certain generalities were stated as the laws of the
government of the organism's life by them in association with the
vegetative apparatus. It was put forward as a fundamental revision of
the theory, hitherto accepted, of the limitation of mind to the brain
cells. We think and feel not alone with the brain, but with our
muscles, our viscera, our vegetative nerves, and last but not least
our endocrine organs. In short, we think and feel with each and every
part of ourselves.
Among these pristine factors determining the content of consciousness,
the endocrines are most important, because they alone to start with,
of all the other factors, are different in each and every individual.
They are what render him unique at birth, even though he looks the
counterpart of millions of other babies born at the same time. They
constitute his inner destiny. As he grows, the external factors,
social experiences, climate, accidents, and disease modify and
condition the reactions and complexity of the endocrine system. As
these modifications and associations are of the greatest import for
the final elaboration of the personality, composing as they do the
elements of the unconscious which confers the unique stamp of normal,
abnormal, supernormal, or subnormal, it is worth while now to review
the most general of the determining laws. Man is an energy phenomenon,
both conscious and unconscious, with the energy emanating from the
endocrine-vegetative mechanisms. So it becomes possible for us,
by their aid, to analyze the conscious, the subconscious and the
unconscious with the terms long current in the analyses of physics.
1. Man is an energy machine which, though it is constantly losing
energy as a whole; consists of parts constantly accumulating energy
(as a result of inherent chemical reactions accelerated by the
absorption of food). This process of local accumulation of energy
associated with general loss of energy may be observed even in the
ameba, in the form of stored reserve food material. Evolution
created a system of organs, the viscera, as specialists in energy
conservation, utilization or transformation.
For intercommunication and interaction between the viscera two systems
were elaborated: a younger system of direct contacts, the nerves,
and nerve cells, through which influences could be conducted for the
stimulation, acceleration, retardation or inhibition of an energy
process in them; and the older, the endocrine gland association, for
the production of chemical substances to act as messengers to be sent
from one viscus to another, and also to the nerves, through the blood
or lymph which bathe all the cells. They could affect only one or
certain organs, because by selection only the chosen organ or organs
knew the code, as it were. The chemical system is much the older
system, and preceded the nerve system by aeons of time. The whole
system, viscera, visceral nerves and the endocrines gradually united
into a complete autonomous organism within the organism, and as such
functions as the vegetative apparatus.
EVOLUTION OF THE ENDOCRINES
2. In the course of evolution, variations occurred in all three
components of the apparatus, the viscera, the nerves, and the
endocrines. Now variations in the viscera and the nerves are
essentially grossly physical and quantitative. That is, there may be a
bigger stomach or a smaller stomach, larger nerve fibres or smaller.
And as Life always has worked with a large margin of safety, and
always played for safety first as regards quantity, these variations
have not become of much significance for the history and destiny of
the animal.
But variations among the endocrines made a tremendous difference. To
have very much thyroid and very little pituitary, much adrenal and not
enough parathyroid meant a great deal to the Organism as a whole,
as well as to the vegetative apparatus. For states of tension and
relaxation, activity and inactivity in the nerves and viscera would be
determined by these variations in the ratio between the variants. The
vegetative apparatus in its virginity, say in the new-born infant, may
be said to have its development primarily determined by the reaction
potentials of the endocrine part of it, that is the latent power of
each gland to secrete at a minimum or a maximum, and the balance
between them.
EDUCATION OF THE VEGETATIVE SYSTEM
3. Training or education involves, beside other effects, a training
of the endocrines, and hence of the entire vegetative apparatus, to
respond in a particular way to a particular stimulus. Experience is
like the introduction of new push-buttons, levers, and wheels into the
mechanism. All learning which calls out or arrests the functioning of
an instinct, must, from what we have learned of the chemical dynamics
of instincts as reactions between hormones, nerves and viscera, affect
the vegetative system. When there is a conflict between two or
more instincts, between pressures of energy flowing in different
directions, there may be compromise and normality, or a grinding of
the gears and abnormality.
Where does the brain come in, in all this? As the servant of the
vegetative apparatus. To call it the master tissue is manifestly
absurd, when it can only be the diplomatic constitutional monarch of
the system. It can, in fact, act only as the great central station
for associative memory, as only one of the factors implicated in
education.
The most powerful educative agents of the vegetative apparatus of a
human being are the other humans around him. And they comprise the
most powerful of the external effectors of education, for better, for
worse. The training and education of the endocrine-vegetative system
is the basis of all social rules (Habit, Custom, Convention, Law,
Conscience). An unresolved discord, a continued conflict among the
parts of the vegetative system, in spite of such education, is the
foundation of the unhappiness of the acute or chronic misfits and
maladjusted, the neurotic and the psychotic.
THE PHYSICAL BASIS OF THE UNCONSCIOUS
4. Another vastly important law that governs the content of the
conscious and the unconscious, and resultant behaviour is the fact
that the nerves and nerve cells of the vegetative apparatus, the
nerves leading to the viscera and the endocrine glands, like the solar
plexus, are affected by stimuli of lower value than those which arouse
the brain cells. In the metaphorical language of the old psychology,
the threshold value, that is the strength or loudness of stimulus
sufficient to make itself felt or heard, is less for the vegetative
apparatus than for the brain. So we begin to glimpse why an emotion
seems to be experienced before the visceral changes that really
preceded it, but pressed their way into consciousness later. This
gives us a clue to the unconscious as the more sensitive and deeper
part of the mind.
More than that, it supplies us with a physical basis for the
unconscious which will explain much of the observed laws of
its workings. It provides a reason for the apparent swiftness,
spontaneity, and unreasonableness of what is called intuition. And it
may show us a source for a good deal of the material of dreams and
dream states.
We have said that we think and we remember, not alone with the brain,
but with the muscles, the viscera and the endocrines. So do we forget
not alone with the brain, but with the muscles, the viscera, the
endocrines and their nerves. The utmost importance of muscle attitudes
in remembering has been established in the experimental laboratory.
It is one of the great services Freud rendered to psychology (and one,
by the way, largely responsible for the acceptance of his doctrines
by the disinterested intelligence) that he showed that a species
of forgetting is nothing casual, but active and purposeful, a
manifestation of the life of the unconscious. However, though his
description of the process was correct, he left it to occur in a
vacuum. As a matter of fact this forgetting consists in the inhibition
of associative memory by a process in the vegetative apparatus, so
as to maintain the equilibrium within itself which is reflected in
consciousness as comfort.
The unconscious, in short, consists of the buried associations among
the parts of the vegetative apparatus and the brain cells. We seem to
be much nearer to grasping the nature of the unconscious, when we look
upon it as a historical continuum, a compound or emulsion of different
and various states of intravisceral pressure and tone, in the
vegetative apparatus, dependent upon the balance between the
endocrines, as well as upon past experiences of the viscera in the
way of stimulation or depression. We forget that which is held down,
literally, in the vegetative apparatus. This explanation of forgetting
tells, too, why the forgotten (stored in the sub-brain, the
endocrine-vegetative system) continually projects itself into and
interferes with the regular flow of consciousness, e.g., in slips
of the tongue, mistakes of spelling, and so on: because the energy
bottled in the vegetative system tends to erupt into the consciousness
into which it would ordinarily flow.
In the evolution of the mind, there have been elaborated devices
to protect it against the vegetative apparatus. Consciousness, or
awareness, must be accepted as a fundamental, primal fact, like
protoplasm. Consciousness and protoplasm may be the complementary
sides of the same coin. Whatever the truth, the fact stands out
that the oldest, deepest, most potent consciousness is that of the
traditionally despised lowest organs, the vegetative organs, the heart
and lungs, stomach and intestines, the kidneys and the liver, and so
on, their nerves, e.g., the solar plexus, and the glands of internal
secretion. They invented and elaborated muscle, bone and brain to
carry out their will. Evolution has been in the direction of a
greater perfection of the methods of carrying out their will. Their
consciousness, working upon the growing and multiplying brain cells,
has created what we call self-conscious mind.
Mind, reacting upon its creator, has, in a sense, come to dominate
them, because it has become the meeting ground of all the
energy-influences seething and bubbling in the organism, and
so developed into the organ of handling them as a whole, their
Integrating-Executive. But just the same and all the time, the
underlying consciousness of the viscera and their accessories stand as
the powers behind the throne, but as what we have now learned to speak
of, in relation to the Mind, as the Unconscious.
PSYCHOPATHOLOGY OF EVERYDAY LIFE
To sum up these relations of the viscera, the endocrines, the
unconscious and the mind, it may be stated as a far-reaching
generality for the understanding of human life: that character and
conduct are expressions of the streams of energy arising in the
vegetative apparatus, primarily endocrine determined at birth, and
secondarily experience determined after the organism has learned to
react as a whole, as consciousness. The result of such a reaction as a
whole tends to balance the disturbance of energy, so as to maintain
or restore the equilibrium, or sense of harmony and comfort, when
consciousness again disappears. This law is an attempt at synthesis of
the labors of the psychanalysts, the behaviourists, and the students
of the internal secretions (Freud, Jung, Adler, Sherrington, Watson,
Von Bechterew, Kempf, Crile, Cannon, Cushing, Fraenkel are the
great names of the movement). Most of the details, and all of the
quantitative applications of the law still remain to be worked
out. But a statement like the following of Cushing, the eminent
surgeon-student of the endocrines, that "it is quite probable that the
psychopathology of everyday life hinges largely upon the effect of
ductless gland discharges upon the nervous system," shows which way
the wind is blowing.
In the face of these conceptions the position of the psychanalyst as a
practical therapeutist becomes clearer, and the causes of his failure
when he fails. In the first place, he deals with psychic results as
processes, and ignores the physiology of their production. Since a
true cure of the neurosis, what he is after, is impossible without a
removal of the cause, a disturbance in the vegetative apparatus, he
cannot succeed where an automatic adjustment among the viscera does
not follow his probings and ferretings of the unconscious. In the
second place, he disregards the existence of a soil for the planting
of the malign complexes in the individual in whom they grow and
flourish. That soil is composed in part of the endocrine relations
within the vegetative apparatus. And as we can often attack that soil
more effectively and radically from the endocrine end than from the
experience end (e.g., repressed episodes) we may transform the soil
and make it barren rock for morbid complexes, at any rate. The concept
of the endocrine-vegetative apparatus as the determinant of normal
and abnormal behaviour, emotional reactions and disturbances of power
should in time cause even the most fanatic of the psychanalysts to
recognize the functional basis of the mental acrostics they are so
fond of dissecting.
NATURAL ABILITY
Another achievement of the psychanalysts is the recognition of the
influence of organic and functional inferiorities of the individual
upon the history of his personality. Gross organ inferiorities are
those which are definite handicaps in the struggle for success in
society, such as heart disease. Such handicaps, however, are limited
to relatively few of a population. The raison d'être of the greater
number of minor mental inefficiencies the psychanalyst puts down to
handicaps in the unconscious. Again he mistakes figurative imagery for
explanations. The conception of endocrine diversity in the make-up
supplies us with the rationale of the vast majority of organic and
functional defects and inferiorities, in short, subnormalities of any
group, large or small.
Moreover, how would the psychanalyst explain the occurrence and
influence of organic and functional _superiorities_ and their
tremendous influence upon the individual and society? We live in a
generation which has acquired a flair for the pathologic. Undoubtedly
it is a soul-sick generation, and its interest in sickness of the
mind is only natural. Just the same, whatever advances, improvements,
progress, have been made (and certainly a number of the changes in his
environment, external and internal, must be admitted to be changes for
the better) have been made, not by natural disability, but by natural
ability. What is the physiology of natural ability?
The finest study of natural ability that has as yet been composed is
Francis Galton's on Hereditary Genius. It also remains the best study
of the natural conditions of success. He showed that of the type of
man he classed as "illustrious" there occurred about one in a million,
and of the type "eminent" about two hundred and fifty in a million.
Of the qualities which determine natural ability of this kind, he
selected inherent capacity, zeal, and perseverance as the three
prerequisites. And he states that "If a man is gifted with vast
intellectual ability, eagerness to work, and power of working, I
cannot comprehend how such a man should be suppressed." "Such men
(those who have gained great reputations) biographies show to
be haunted and driven by an incessant, instinctive craving for
intellectual work." "They ... work ... to satisfy a natural craving
for brain work." "It is very unlikely that any conjunction of
circumstances should supply a stimulus to brain work commensurate with
what these men carry in their own constitutions."
What is this inherent craving for brain work? What is this zeal? And
what is power of endurance and perseverance, the quality of stamina?
How are they to be interpreted in terms of the internal secretions?
In view of what has been said of the ante-pituitary as the gland of
intellectuality, studies of intellectually gifted people having shown
well functioning large pituitaries, and of mental defectives in a
certain number of cases a small limited pituitary, it is justifiable
to regard the factor of inherent capacity as a function of the
ante-pituitary. The factor of zeal or enthusiasm points to the
thyroid. Markedly enthusiastic types are thyroid dominant types. Vigor
as a third factor, the ability to stand stress and strain of continued
effort is dependent upon good adrenal and interstitial cell function.
So we may say that craving and capacity for brain work plus ardor plus
perseverance in its pursuit, the triplicate of natural ability, are
the reflections in conduct and character of balanced and sufficient
ante-pituitary, thyroid, and adrenal-interstitial contributions in
the chemical formula of the personality. In the chapter on historic
personages analyzed from the endocrine viewpoint, we shall see that
some of the most eminent and illustrious people of history have been
pituitary-centered.
MENTAL DEFICIENCY
Natural ability grows in an endocrine soil of a particular kind,
perhaps affected by the internal secretions much as natural soil is by
fertilizers like phosphates or nitrates. Increased production follows
increased fertilization. Natural disability must vary similarly with a
perversion or improper mixture, deficiency or absence of the hormones
that combine in natural ability.
It is assumed as a matter of course that the brain itself is there,
which, to carry out our analogy, means that the crude soil or earth is
there. Sufficient quantity and adequate quality of nerve tissue must
be regarded as prerequisite. If the brain has been damaged in any way
during development or birth, if it has been smashed up in any way, or
if it has failed to evolve the minimum number of healthy nerve cells,
the endocrine influence becomes negligible. It is like attempting to
insert a key into a door which has no lock.
It is among the specimens of normality of the brain cells that we may
look for our examples of endocrine mental deficiency. Included are all
sorts of examples of feeble-mindedness varying from the moron to the
imbecile and idiot, arrested brain life. The cretin is the classic
type of mental deficiency due to endocrine insufficiency, curable or
improvable by the proper handling.
Insanity, degeneration of the normal brain life, may be caused by an
upset of the endocrine balance. Among the commonest manifestations
of insanity are excitements and depressions, apathies and manias,
hallucinations, delusions and obsessions, all of which are
reproducible under known conditions of internal secretion excess or
failure. Alternating states of mania and depression are caused in some
instances by extreme hyperthyroidism. The critical periods of life,
when a profound revolution is overturning the endocrine equilibrium,
puberty, pregnancy, and the menopause, are the periods of most
frequent occurrence of insanity, when mental instability reveals
endocrine instability (Dementia praecox, pregnancy psychosis,
menopause neurosis). Actual insanity need not be the only
manifestation. By far the greater number of mental disturbances due
to aberrations of the internal secretions never see an asylum or a
doctor. They live more or less close to the borderline of insanity as
persons who have spells, eccentricities and peculiarities, hysteria,
tics or just "nervousness."
About two-thirds of mental deficiency is definitely inherited, about
one-third acquired. It is the opinion of a number of psychologists
that it is inherited as what the Mendelians call a recessive, that is
as a trait which will be overshadowed, if there is admixture of normal
mentality, but will crop up by breeding with another mental defective.
What we know of the endocrine factors in heredity leads us to suppose
that it is the mating of one marked endocrine insufficiency with
another that is often responsible for the inherited tendency to
feeble-mindedness and insanity. The effect of the hormone system upon
the vegetative apparatus may create the more obscure insanities and
quasi-insanities. The direct action of the internal secretions upon
the brain cells, producing a sort of hair trigger situation within
them, may cause the explosive discharges from them which appear as
overpowering impulses or uncontrollable conduct. The waves of feeling
which precede them are unquestionably endocrine determined. The wave
of fear a cat experiences upon seeing a dog is accompanied and indeed
preceded by an increase of the amount of adrenalin in the blood. The
picture of fright, as observed in a so-called normal person, staring
eyes, trembling hands, dry lips and mouth, corresponds to the portrait
of the appearance in hyperthyroidism. In persons afflicted with
uncontrollable impulses, the inhibiting hormones may not be present in
sufficient quantity.
Feeble-mindedness, ranging from stupidity to imbecility, may also be
a direct effect of insufficient endocrine supply to the brain cells.
When there is not enough of the thyroid secretion in the blood, the
tissue between the cells in the brain become clogged and thickened, so
that a gross barrier to the passage of the nerve impulses is created.
We have here an illustration of internal secretion lack actually
producing gross changes in the brain. But without a doubt, most
endocrine influences upon the brain, at work every minute and second
of its life, are the subtle ones of molecular chemistry and atomic
energetics. We know that such mental qualities as irritability and
stupidity, fatigability, and the power to recover quickly or slowly
from fatigue, sexual potency and impotence, apathy and enthusiasm are
endocrine qualities. We know also that the thyroid dominant tends to
be irritable and excitable, the pituitary deficient to be placid and
gentle, the adrenal dominant to be assertive and pugnacious, the
thymus-centered to be childish and easy-go-lucky and the gonad
deficient to be secretive and shy. This brings us to the relation of
the internal secretions to the type of personality as a whole.