THE TYPES OF PERSONALITY
THE ENDOCRINE PERSONALITY
If a single gland can dominate the life history of an individual it
becomes possible to speak of _endocrine types_, the result of the
_endocrine analysis_ of the individual. Studying endocrine traits of
physique, life reactions, disease tendencies, hereditary history and
blood chemistry, one may gain an insight into the composition or
constitution of an individual. The endocrine type of an individual
is a summary of these, his behaviour in the past, and is also a
prediction of his reactions in the future, much as a chemical formula
outlines what we believe to be the skeleton of a compound substance
as deducible from its properties under varying conditions. Only,
admittedly, as yet the endocrine label is but roughly qualitative and
most crudely quantitative, whereas the chemical formula is the essence
of the exact.
However, the fact remains that though we are only upon the first
rungs of the ladder, we are upon the ladder. The horizon undoubtedly
broadens. We possess a new way of looking upon humanity, a fresh
transforming light upon those strange phenomena, ourselves. Of the
ugly achievements of that dreadful century, the nineteenth, the most
illuminating was the discovery of itself as the _ape-parvenu._ Yes,
we are all animals now, it said to itself, and set its teeth in the
cut-throat game of survival. But there was no understanding in that
evil motto of a disillusioned heart. The ape-parvenu, desperately
lonely and secretive, has still to understand himself.
Let us be clear if we can. There is perhaps a certain presumption in
the phrase, the endocrine type. It is ambitious, and perhaps will not
fulfill its promise. But it is useful because it points a parallel and
an ideal. As Wilhelm Ostwald never tired of repeating, H_{2}O is a
complete shorthand record for the bundle of qualities commonly known
as water. It is an example of that highest task of mind, synthesis.
It is the highest synthesis of the studies of the internal secretions
that certain combinations of them, permutations and blendings of
them, are responsible for those unique wonders of the universe,
personalities.
The riddle of personality! Are we at last upon the track of its
uncovering? That elusive mystery, which philosophers have wrapped in
the thousand veils of Greek and Latin words, and psychologists, even
unto the third and fourth generation of Freudians, have floundered
about in, moles before a dazzling sun, is it to be unwound for our
inspection? Think of the human soul. What an invisible, intangible
chameleon is its true reality! Watch it, and you see something that
seems to uncurl and expand like a feather with exultation and delight
and joy, to contract and stiffen into a billiard ball with fear and
pride, shrewd caution and vigilant malevolence, to rear back and spark
fire like lightning with anger and temper, and to crawl and slither
with abjection and smirking slyness, when it needs to. This multiplex
Thing-Behind-Life, are we really about to dissect it into its
elements?
Personality embraces much more than merely the psychic attributes. It
is not the least important of the lessons of endocrine analysis
that there is no soul, and no body, either. Rather a soul-body, or
body-soul, or the patterns of the living flame. The closer tracking of
the internal secretions leads us into the secrets of the living
flame, why it lives, and how it lives, the strange diversities of its
colorings and music and the odd variations in its energy, vitality
and longevity. Why it flickers, why it flares and glares, spurts,
flutters, burns hard or soft, orange-blue or yellow.
The medieval scholiasts, who fought as fiercely about names as nations
about territories, divided men into the sanguine, the bilious, the
lymphatic and the nervous. It was a pretty crude classification of
different constitutions. The endocrine criteria, more exact and
concrete, divide them into the adrenal centered, the thyroid centered,
the thymus centered, the pituitary centered, the gonad centered, and
their combinations.
THE ADRENAL PERSONALITIES
An adrenal personality is one dominated by the ups and downs of his
adrenal gland. In the large, the curve of his life is the curve of
secretion by this gland, both of its Cortex and medulla. Such an
adrenal personality is entirely normal, within the definition of
the normal as something not threatening the duration of life, nor
comfortable adaptation to it. So are the other glandular types. No
sharp line can be drawn between the normal and the abnormal in any
case, the borderland is wide, the transitions many.
The skin is one of the chief clues to the adrenal personality. The
relation between the adrenal and the skin dates way back in the
evolutionary scale, for adrenalin has been isolated directly from
pigment deposits in the epidermis of frogs. Skin pigment bears a
direct relation to the reaction of the organism to light, especially
the ultraviolet rays, to the radiation of heat, and hence to the
fundamental productions and consumptions of energy by the cells. So
the gland of energy for emergencies writes its signature always all
over the skin.
In an adrenal personality, the epidermis is always slightly, somewhat,
or deeply pigmented. The pigmentation is due to a dark brown deposit
lightly or thickly scattered over the skin. With the general diffuse
pigmentation or darkening there are often the black spots, the
pigmented birth marks, or the lighter ones of freckles. The latter
signify some permanent or transitory adrenal inadequacy in the past,
ante-natal or post-natal, of the individual, and presage the same in
his future. These spots have been frequently observed to appear
after an attack of diphtheria or influenza. There seems to be more
tuberculosis among those who have them than those who do not. We
therefore say that diphtheria, influenza and tuberculosis stand out
as adrenal-attacking diseases, which have a greater power to kill,
cripple or hurt those with defective adrenal constitutions than
others.
The hair of the adrenal type is characteristic: ubiquitous, thick,
coarse and dry. It is prominent over the chest, abdomen and back,
and has a tendency to kink. Often its color is not the expected: an
Italian's will be yellow, a Norwegian's jet black. It has been stated
that most red-haired persons are adrenal types. Such persons also have
well-marked canine teeth which is another adrenal trait. They also
have a low hair line.
When the adrenal type has a properly co-operating pituitary and
thyroid, he possesses a striking vigor, energy and persistence. With a
fortunate combination, he develops into a progressive winning fighter,
arriving at the top in the long run every time.
Brain work is pretty well lubricated in the well-compensated adrenal
type. Brain fag is closely associated with, if not dependent upon,
adrenal fag, particularly of the cortex. Brain tissue and adrenal
cortex tissue are near relatives, and a normal human brain never
develops without a normal adrenal cortex. The adrenal type with an
hypertrophied adrenal cortex is always efficient.
Among women, the adrenal type is always masculinoid. If physically
feminine--due to adequate feminine reactions on the part of the
other endocrines--she will at least show the qualities of a psychic
virilism. A generation ago, such a woman had to repress her inherent
trends and instincts in the face of public opinion and law, and so
suffered from a feeling of inferiority. Nowadays, these women are
striding forward and will attain a good many of the masculine heights,
commanding responsible executive positions and high salaries. An
adrenal type will probably be the first woman president of the United
States.
However, that presupposes a normal range of action of the other
endocrines. Let there be some quirk or weakness elsewhere in the
chain of hormones, and instead of the successful woman, behold
the spinsters, the maiden aunts, the prudes and cranks who never
satisfactorily adapt themselves in society. To them must be given
a good deal of credit for the suffrage revolution. These unadapted
adrenals, as we may call them, once sowed the seeds, expending their
masculinism in the struggles of the pioneers' martyrdoms, preparing
the harvest their sisters, the more adequate adrenal types, will now
reap. The unadapted adrenals of today will have to look for new worlds
to conquer.
So much for the compensated adrenal types. They are the good workers,
the efficients, the kinetic successes of the driven world. They make,
at a certain level, good slave drivers because they feel within
themselves a driving force. But suppose the adrenal type becomes
uncompensated, or perhaps is inadequate to the demands of life to
start with. Then the story becomes different. The perfect efficient
superman of business or profession begins to lag. Though he is himself
in the morning, he begins to lag in the afternoon. That is when he
tires. In the evening he is all in. More sleep, recreational trips,
vacations slip into the rank of necessities, whereas previously they
had been laughed at as luxuries. More minute or large moles emerge
in the skin, especially if the individual is of a fair type. If a
strenuous effort is not made to give the adrenals an opportunity to
recuperate, or if adjustment on the part of the other glands does not
occur, this stage of intermittent and remittent adrenal inadequacy
gives way in turn to the state of permanent adrenal insufficiency.
The adrenal insufficient is important because he is to be seen
everywhere. Built along the same lines as the adrenal adequate and
apt to be taken for him, he differs and contrasts vividly below the
surface. One may sum him up by saying that he is one variety of
neurasthenic, perhaps the most frequent variety. Cold hands and feet
plague him, cold feet psychically as well as physically, for a chronic
and obsessive indecision is one of his most prominent complaints.
A fatigability, that goes with a low blood pressure, lowered body
temperature and a disturbed ability to utilize sugar for fuel
purposes, is another of his chief complaints. The skin often presents
an instability of the blood vessels, so that they now react to
stroking with a blanched instead of a reddened effect. Irritability,
a liability to go off the handle at the slightest provocation, and a
consequent complete exhaustion that, after an outburst, sends him to
bed, is conspicuous. Dismissed sometimes contemptuously as weaklings,
they are accused of laziness, craziness, and haziness. In their
psychic attempts to compensate, they land into all kinds of hot water,
from which friends, relatives or luck extricate them sometimes. The
other times they go to the wall.
The congenital adrenal deficient is a special problem. If the history
of such an individual is followed from birth, one gets a pretty
typical story. The genealogy is nervous. Nervous is a word of many
meanings. But when parents confess themselves nervous, it generally
means a mental and emotional instability of some sort. Sometimes the
idea is camouflaged as high strung. In the feeding narrative of the
child, one finds not occasional incidents or episodes, but continued
trouble, difficulties, adventures. Even after the first year or two,
the nutritional chronicle is not satisfactory. Lack of appetite, lack
of energy, lack of response to stimuli are its keynotes and the motifs
of the later years of childhood.
Growth is a strain. It becomes a task to make these children grow
and gain. Chronically below the average weight and height, herculean
efforts are made by the conscientious parents, but with small success.
With the entry of school life and competition, the curtain rises upon
the real tragedy, a tragedy in which the avenging Fates are the usual
ignorance, stupidity and misunderstanding. If the teachers alone are
duty-obsessed, or perhaps sadistic, the child endures the agonies of
repeated admonitions, demotions, and punishments. However, a certain
thick-skinned indifference may develop to protect the sufferer.
If the parents are in addition ambitious, or proud, or competitive,
then woe betide the victim. With their nervous dispositions, it is
the school and the tutor who are to be blamed, if not the child. From
school to school, from system to system, from novelty to fad, from
doctor to doctor, from fakir to charlatan, from pillar to post, they
wander in search of an education. Educational cults by the dozen have
sprouted and grown fat around these unfortunates.
The chief defect of the congenital adrenal inadequate is an
insufficiently developed adrenal cortex. That means an insufficiently
developed brain and nervous system. For we have seen how closely all
these are related in development. Now education can never be the
education of a vacuum. And we have to deal here with a relative
vacuum. When there are no potentialities, there can be no education.
Where the potentialities are limited, education must be limited.
The congenital adrenal inadequate is defined in physical and mental
energy. Hence educators cannot drive him. Up to a certain point he can
be led, but no farther. He should not be expected to go to a college,
and waste the opportunity of some one financially unlucky, but whose
endocrine system is more generously endowed.
Not that the outlook is absolutely hopeless. Puberty, with its
tremendous changes in the glands of internal secretion, when one can
almost hear the clicks and the whirring of the wheels in the internal
machinery, may transform. The unfathomed possibilities of gland
therapy are still to be probed. But the general rule remains.
THE REACTIONS TO MODERNISM
The adrenal personalities in all their variations must be safeguarded
and carefully looked after in the strained complexities of modern
post-bellum civilization. In a sense, the adrenal type is the Atlas
of the twentieth century world, and small wonder that he and his
descendants stagger beneath the burden. The adrenals are organs for
the mobilization of energy, physical and mental, for emergencies. They
are the glands which meet shocks and neutralize the effects of shock.
In the solitary animal, the everyday producers of shock are pain,
fright and wounds. The adrenal mechanisms oversecrete to encounter
the enemy, and then there is a period of rest and recuperation. Man,
however, with the growth of his imagination and the increase in
number and density of his surrounding herd, has become the subject of
continuous stimulation. In the past, this was balanced by the almost
universal dominance of some religious belief, as an effective opiate.
Concepts like Fate, Predestination, an all-guiding and all-wise
Providence, relieved and shielded the adrenals, and acted as valuable
adjuvants for the preservation of normality.
The nineteenth century witnessed the birth and expansion of a great
number of new stimulant reagents, the discoveries of physics and
chemistry, which, with the climax of the World War of 1914-1918, have
made for a more or less complete deliquescence of accepted religion.
For the great majority there was no faith to take its place. War,
pre-war, and post-war shocks have continued with their incessant
pounding upon the reserves of energy. Under these conditions the
adrenal personalities are bound to suffer. The other endocrine types
suffer, too, but quite differently.
Today, anti-adrenal, anti-religious ideas are epidemic. Of these,
first prize belongs to a cult of egotism fathered by the Napoleonic
Idea, consciously assertive and self-conscious in Max Stirner's
"The Ego and His Own," which engendered a swarm of imitators and
plagiarists. Human beings are all incorrigible egoists more or less,
furtive or frank. But social and religious codes curbed the most
narcissistic of kings and conquerors. Before Napoleon, all of them
vowed allegiance and expressed submission to some sort of deity,
confessed some fear of the Lord in their hearts. But the ideas
of Napoleon flouted all that. The unscrupulous predatory who
put effectual scheming for the self plainly above every other
consideration and rode rough shod over all his fellows appealed
powerfully to the latent animality of the adrenal types. Then came
the dawning awareness of capital and labor of themselves as classes
fiercely opposed forever in the policy of cut-throat versus
cut-throat. The labor organizations and the commercial companies
and corporations pitted themselves against each other consciously.
Doctrines like "Property is but Robbery," "Everyone for himself and
the devil take the hindmost," the "Iron Law of Wages" and the "Facts
is Facts" of the Gradgrinds were the phrases of the nineteenth century
that assisted. Finally came the Darwinian revelation of man as the
ape-parvenu, which completed the disintegration of the old restraints.
Man seemed to see himself now for the first time stark and naked. But
Man consists of many varieties, and all reacted differently to
the image in the clouded mirror. There was universal attempt at
suppression. But slowly the anti-adrenal forces infiltrated every
activity and every soul. Like a hidden focus of infection in the body,
it germinated and poisoned. A slow fever crept into life. A febrile
quality tinged the acquisition of wealth, the concentration upon sex,
and the desperate pursuit of the novel stimulus.
Then, like the hand that appeared at Belshazzar's Feast, came the War,
only it was a hand that stayed with a long flashing lightning sword in
its grip, sweeping pitilessly among the erstwhile dancing multitudes
to mutilate and destroy. A good many people, with that sturdy
animality George Santayana speaks somewhere of as a trait of mankind,
set out to enjoy the War. It was a new sort of good time upon an
incredibly large scale. It was an undreamed-of opportunity. The
mechanisms of suppression of the mind render it incapable of
appreciating horror until encountered. And so thousands with
dangerously unstable adrenals were plunged into the most trying
conditions possible. Hundreds of them, already shaken, on the
borderland of instability, reacted with the phenomena of breakdown
of control, lumped with a host of other phenomena, under the general
rubric of "shell shock."
That alone was not all. If hundreds collapsed, thousands approached
the verge of collapse. They survived and were discharged from the
armies as normal. They reappear in civil life as cases of "nerves."
Ordinarily that would mean that they would be classed as failures. But
such have been the psychologic reactions to the war that all kinds
of compensations in the way of dangerous mental states have become
frequent in these inadequate adrenal types. A trend to violence and a
resentful emotionalism are combined with desperate attempts to spur
the jaded adrenals with artificial excitements. Consequent melancholia
and depression, the "blues," are inevitable. A survey of drug addicts
would probably show a definite percentage of this type. The same
applies to certain petty criminals and law breakers.
The adrenal element in the personality must be considered in every
disturbance, morbid, personal, or social involving brunette types,
Huxley's dark white, Mediterranean-Iberians, red-haired persons, and
even pigment-spotted fair people. Historians have traced the earliest
civilization to the doings of a brunette people, the Sumerians, the
first to build cities in the Euphrates-Tigris region more than five
thousand years before Christ was born. An adrenalized people one
would, expect to be the first to take advantage of possibilities
because of their energy capacity. The earliest Sumerian stone carvings
of warriors exhibit an undersized skeleton compared with the large
head, broad face, a low hair line and prominent nose that would fit
into the ensemble of the adrenal type. Certain other historical
aspects of the adrenal personality have yet to be worked out.
THE PITUITARY PERSONALITIES
The presence of two antagonistic elements in the one gland complicates
any attempt at even the most abstract analysis of a personality
dominated by that gland. The pituitary, composed of an anterior lobe
and posterior lobe, supplies two fairly uncomplicated corresponding
types, best described as the masculine pituitary type, and the
feminine pituitary type. The masculine pituitary type is one
determined by the rule of the anterior pituitary, representing
superlative brain tone and action, good all-around growth and
harmonious general function, the ideal masculine organism. The
feminine pituitary type has an excess of post-pituitary, with
susceptibility to the tender emotions, sentimentalism, and
emotionalism, feminine structural lines. Ante-pituitary dominance in
a male reinforces the general masculinity while the post-pituitary
depresses it. The post-pituitary in a woman augments her natural
trend, ante-pituitary tending to counteract it. In other words,
post-pituitary and ovary are conjunctive, ante-pituitary and ovary are
disjunctive, post-pituitary and testis are opponents, ante-pituitary
and testis are allies.
One mechanical circumstance involved in the pituitary personalities
may be the determinant of the entire life history. That is the
emphasized fact that the pituitary is encased in a small bony box, at
the base of the skull. The size of this bony box, and its capacity to
yield to the various pressures of a pituitary enlarging to meet the
demands of the organism, will often spell happiness or misery,
success or failure, genius or idiocy for the man or woman. Certain
possibilities are conceivable. All of them occur, for the developments
of X-ray technique have rendered available almost a direct view of the
sella turcica.
In the first place, the bony box may be definitely too small to start
in with. That means a small and so potentially inadequate pituitary,
both anterior and posterior, potentially inadequate in that it will
become impossible for it to grow and produce extra secretion upon
demand. Handicapped thus, the unfortunate so born is doomed to
inferiority and very little can be done for him. He will not develop
satisfactorily. He possesses small genital organs which will not
evolve properly in adolescence, or if they will not stand still, tend
to revert to the opposite sex type. Then he tends to be dwarfed,
fatigable, adipose. Among these types are included subjects of
obsessions and compulsions who are dull and apathetic, cannot learn or
maintain inhibitions, and so, without initiative, evolve into moral
and intellectual degenerates, liable to epilepsy and the most
remarkable sex aberrations. All because a cranny of the skull, about
the size of a thimble, is not large enough for their dominating gland.
If the bone of the cavity of the pituitary is softer and yielding,
so that some enlargement of the gland is possible, especially of the
anterior, there appear rapid growth with a tendency to high blood
pressure, great mental activity associated with frequent and severe
headaches (often of the migraine type), a combination of initiative
and irritability and a marked sexuality. X-ray examination of the
sella turcica shows what is called erosion of the bone as it yields to
the pressure of the growing gland.
The ideal sella turcica for the ideal pituitary type is a large room
in which the gland may grow and reach its maximum size and so its
maximum function, without needing to exert pressure or destroy and
erode bone in front of it, to the side of it or behind it. The
distinctive masculine and feminine types, classed as the normal,
belong to this group. Sometimes, the bone in front of the pituitary
will yield, while the one in the rear will not, and sometimes the
conditions are reversed. Thus we may have ante-pituitary sufficiency
with post-pituitary insufficiency, or ante-pituitary insufficiency
with post-pituitary sufficiency, complexes which contribute to create
the grosser functional hermaphrodite types of mixed sex.
In the average feminine pituitary type of personality, post-pituitary
dominates. In a woman and to a lesser degree in a man, the general
build is slight and rather delicate. The skin is soft, moist, and
hairless, the face is the doll or Dresden China sort, with a roseate
or creamy complexion, flushing easily, eyes large and prominent. The
mouth shows a high arched palate and crowded teeth rather long. The
voice is high-pitched. One recognizes the traditional womanly woman,
petite and chic, who always marries the hero in stories. She is
usually fond of children, easily moved, has a good libido, and the
traditional feminine traits. When unstable, the post-pituitary type is
restless and hyperactive, craves excitement, and continual change of
interest and scene, a new pleasure every moment. A good many of the
women of today, who fifty years ago would have been nice sedate girls
because of their excellent post-pituitary constitution, have
been irritated by the atmosphere of post-1914 into the excess
post-pituitary state, the adventurous never-satiated avid pleasure
hunter, in whom the craving for stimulation will stop at nothing. F.
Scott Fitzgerald portrayed an exquisite specimen of the kind in his
short story "The Jellybean," with a quasi-heroine of a good Southern
family, built to be a high standard wife and mother, who drinks,
swears, gambles, and finally marries on a dare. Modern post-pituitary
woman is excitement mad and thrill chasing. The worst of it is that
the resultant personal tragedies cannot be dismissed as transient
inevitables. The heredity of the internal secretions determines that
the offspring of these women are bound to be pituitary unstable, the
least desirable of endocrine instabilities because of the concomitant
mental effects. Even from the purely selfish point of view, the
standpoint of enlightened selfishness, the post-pituitary type must
beware of excesses. For disturbances of menstruation, psychic fears,
anxieties, states of suspicion and obsession, various pains are among
the penalties.
A period of post-pituitary excess as an effect of disease, pregnancy,
or the rapid life, may be followed by post-pituitary deficiency as a
result of exhaustion of the gland. The girl or woman then becomes fat
and suffers from headaches (the fair, fat and forty type) yet retains
a certain capacity for enjoyment which enables her to continue gay,
happy and gentle, kind, interested. So she contrasts with the thyroid
deficient who gets fat, but also dull, stupid, even morose.
The masculine pituitary personality, the man with a dominant anterior
pituitary gland in a roomy sella turcica with plenty of space to grow
in, is the ideal virile type. They are generally tall (unless the
growth of the long bones was checked too early by a social precocity
of the testes) with a well-developed strong frame, large firm muscles,
and proportionately sized hands and feet. The head is of the marked
dolichocephalic type, flattened at the sides, face is oval more or
less, with thick eyebrows, eyes rather prominent, nose broadish and
long, lower jaw prominent and firm. Prominent bony points like the
cheek bones, the elbows and the knees, the knuckle joints of the hands
and feet. The teeth are large, especially the upper middle incisors,
and they are usually spaced. The arms and legs are hairy. High grade
brains, the ability to learn, and the ability to control, self-mastery
in the sense of domination of the lower instincts and the automatic
reactions of the vegetative nervous system, the rule by the individual
of himself and his environment are at their maximum in him. The
ante-pituitary personality is educable for intelligence, and even
intellect, provided the proper educational stimulus is supplied. Men
of brains, practical and theoretical, philosophers, thinkers, creators
of new thoughts and new goods, belong to this group. The distinction
between men of theoretical genius, whose minds which could embrace
a universe, and yet fail to manage successfully their own personal
everyday lives, and the men of practical genius, who can achieve and
execute, the great engineers, and industrial men lies in the balance
between the ante-pituitary and the adrenal cortex primarily. Men like
Abraham Lincoln and George Bernard Shaw belong to this ante-pituitary
group.
The feminine pituitary personality, in whom there is predominance of
the post-pituitary over the ante-pituitary, occurs in men. The type
is short, rounded and stout. They have heads that seem too large
for their bodies, the general hair distribution on the trunk and
extremities is poor, although that of the scalp and face is plentiful,
and they acquire an abdominal paunch early. They exhibit the feminine
tendency to periodicity of function, their moods, activities,
efficiency are cyclic, reminding one of the menstrual variations of
the female. This rhythmicity saturates their personalities, so that
poetry and music almost morbidly appeal to them. A number of the great
poets and musicians are to be classified as of the feminine pituitary
species. Last, but not least, they are the hen-pecked lovers and
husbands. Sex difficulties are frequent in their history.
The determination of endocrine type and tendencies, the prediction of
the future personality, during childhood is one of the developments
confidently to be looked for, as our knowledge of the internal
secretions will grow. The possibilities of control loom as one of the
most magnificent promises of science. Yet the high expectations for
tomorrow should not depress our respect for the achievements of today.
In the case of the pituitary, for instance, a hint as to the method
of approach is furnished by the tabulation of the traits of pituitary
dominance and pituitary inferiority in children.
Pituitary sufficient and dominant:
Large, spare, bony frame
Eyes wide apart
Broad face
Teeth, broad, large, unspaced
Square, protruding chin and jaws
Large feet and hands
Early hair growth on body
Thick skin, large sex organs
Aggressive, precocious, calculating, self-contained
Pituitary inferior:
Small, sometimes delicate skeleton
Rather adipose, weak muscles
Upper jaw prognathous
Dry, flabby skin
Small hands and feet
Abnormal desire for sweets
Subnormal temperature, blood pressure and pulse
Poor control of lower vegetative functions
Mentally sluggish, dull, apathetic, backward
Loses self-control quickly, cries easily, discouraged promptly,
psychic stamina insufficient
The pituitary personality in childhood produced by limitation of the
size of the gland, because its bony box is completely or partially
closed, presents typical hall-marks. He supplies the second and third
offenders in the juvenile courts, the delinquents and pathological
liars of childhood, the incorrigibles, the precocious hoboes, mental
and moral deficients and defectives, the prey of the sentimental
complexes of elderly virgins and helpful futility all around. Not
utilitarianism or futilitarianism is needed, but pituitarianism.
The feeding of pituitary gland in large enough quantities to these
unfortunates may do more than ten charity organizations, with the most
patrician board of directors complete.
THE THYROID PERSONALITIES
The accessibility of the thyroid gland in the neck, the ease of
surgical approach, the definite effects following its removal, and
then the miraculous marvels of the feeding of thyroid have rendered it
the centre of attack by the largest army of endocrine investigators.
As a result we know more about the thyroid in childhood, adolescence,
adult life and old age than about the other glands.
In childhood, the subthyroid or thyroid deficient, the cretinoid type,
the type resembling the cretin, is fairly common. The peasant's face,
with the broad nose and the tough skin, coarse straight hair, the
undergrowth, physical and mental, a persistent babyishness and a
retardation of self-control development, make up the picture. He needs
an excess of sleep, sleeps heavily, needs sleep during the day,
when awakened in the morning still feels tired, and rather dull and
restless, dresses slowly, has to be coaxed or forced to dress, gets to
school late nearly every morning, does badly at the school, reaction
time, learning time and remembering time being prolonged as compared
with the average, and is lazy at home lessons. He perspires little,
even after exertion, yet fatigues easily, is subject to frequent
colds, adenoids, tonsillitis, and acquires every disease of childhood
that happens along.
Adolescence, the coming of menstruation, the first blooming of youth
is delayed in the subthyroid. The secondary sex traits as they develop
tend to be incomplete and to mimic those of the opposite sex. Yet in
adolescence too there may be a sudden change and reversal of the whole
process, a jump from the subthyroid to the hyperthyroid state. So a
girl who has been dull and lackadaisical, with no complexion and every
prospect of evolution into a wall flower, may be transformed into a
bright-eyed woman, generally nervous and restless, high colored, and
possessed of a craving for continual activity and excitement. Skin,
hair and teeth become of the thyroid dominant type. The heart
palpitates under the slightest stimulus, she perspires almost
annoyingly, heat and emotion are prostrating. If such a
transfiguration does not occur, the effect of the reconstructions
of puberty is to create a person with about the following
characteristics.
1. Height below the average
2. Tendency to obesity (toward middle age)
3. Complexion sallow
4. Hair dry--hair line high
5. Eyebrows scanty, either as a whole or in outer half
6. Eyeballs deep-set, lack lustre, in narrowed slits
7. Teeth irregular, become carious early
8. Extremities cold and bluish
9. Circulation poor. Subject to chilblains
Intellectually, these people vary enormously, depending upon which of
the other glands will enlarge to compensate for the deficiency of the
thyroid. If the growth of the skull has left a roomy sella turcica
for the pituitary to grow in, the intellect may be normal or even
superior, though energy is below par. If this is not possible and
the adrenals have to predominate, a lower, more animal and less
self-controlled type of mentality is produced.
In direct contrast to the subthyroid types is he who originally was
hyperthyroid. During childhood he is quite healthy, thin, but striking
robust, active, energetic, generally fair-complexioned with nose
straight and high bridged, eyes rather "poppy," teeth excellent,
regular, firm, white with a pearly translucent enamel. These children
are always on the go, never get tired, require little sleep. Seldom
will one of the classical children's diseases strike them, measles
perhaps, but no other. Adolescence for them, however, is more apt to
be stormy and episodic, adjustment to the new world of people and
things is much more difficult, wanderlust is acute. All an expression
of cells keyed up, charged with energy that must flow somewhere or
explode.
The ruddy live-wire, recognized everywhere as bubbling with vitality,
the life of any group, the magnetic personality may, however, be
shocked by some seismic event like the death of a father or mother,
or the ruin of some cherished ambition. A break in the balance of the
other glands follows quickly and disablement and invalidism, which may
cure itself after some years, remain stationary, or descend to the
worst forms of thyroid deficiency.
During maturity, the type are characterized usually by a lean body,
or tendency rapidly to become thin under stress. They have clean cut
features and thick hair, often wavy or curly, thick long eyebrows,
large, frank, brilliant, keen eyes, regular and well developed teeth
and mouth. Sexually they are well differentiated and susceptible.
Noticeable emotivity, a rapidity of perception and volition,
impulsiveness, and a tendency to explosive crises of expression are
the distinctive psychic traits. A restless, inexhaustible energy makes
them perpetual doers and workers, who get up early in the morning,
flit about all day, retire late, and frequently suffer from insomnia,
planning in bed what they are to do next day.
Certain types of thyroid excess associated with the thymus dominant
next to be described are peculiarly susceptible to emotional
instability. They are subject to brain storms, outbreaks of furious
rage, sometimes associated with a state of semi-consciousness. To
emphasize the analogy to epilepsy, their attacks have been called
psycholepsy. Among the Italians especially they were watched and
reported during the War, when the explosive fits were seen to take the
form of irresponsible acts of insubordination or violence.
THE THYMO-CENTRIC PERSONALITIES
During the first period of childhood, up to five, six or seven, or
more accurately, up to the point at which the permanent teeth begin
to appear, every child may be said to be a thymus-dominated organism,
because the thymus, holding the other endocrines in check, controls
its life. That is why up to the third and fourth years at any rate,
most children seem alike. Closer observation, however, reveals points
of differentiation and signs of the coming potencies of the other
hormones. During the second period, up to puberty, these marks of the
deeper underlying forces of the personality make themselves more
and more felt. The thymus, like a brake that is becoming worn out,
continues to function in a progressively weaker fashion. Until with
the arrival of the gonadal (ovaries' or testes') internal secretion,
its influence is wiped out.
There is a definite degree of thymus activity during everyone's
childhood, unless by its premature involution, precocity displaces
juvenility. Yet even during childhood, there are certain individuals
with excessive thymus action, foreshadowing a continued thymus
predominance throughout life. The "angel child" is the type: regularly
proportioned and perfectly made, like a fine piece of sculpture, with
delicately chiselled features, transparent skin changing color
easily, long silky hair, with an exceptional grace of movement and an
alertness of mind. They seem the embodiment of beauty, but somehow
unfit for the coarse conflicts of life. In English literature several
characters are recognizable as portraits of the type, notably Paul
Dombey, whose nurse recognized that he was not for this world. They
may look the picture of health, but they are more liable than any
other children to be eliminated by tuberculosis, meningitis or even
one of the common diseases of childhood.
It is after puberty, when the thymus should shrink and pass out of
the endocrine concert as a power, that the more complex reactions of
personality emerge when the thymus persists and refuses to or cannot
retire. The persistent thymus always then throws its shadow over the
entire personality. To what extent that shadow spreads depends upon
the strength of the other glands of internal secretion, their ability
to compensate or to stay inhibited. Whether or not the pituitary will
be able to enlarge in its bony cradle seems to be the most important
factor determining these variations. If there is space for it to grow,
at any rate normally, the individual may pass for normal, although
he will have difficulties throughout life he may never understand,
particularly in sexual directions. If the pituitary is limited.
partially or completely, the thymus predominance is more prominent
and fixed, and the abnormalities become obvious, both of person and
conduct.
The anatomic architecture of the latter thymo-centric personality is
fairly typical. The reversion in type of the reproductive organs, the
slender waist, the gracefully formed body, the rounded limbs, the long
chest and the feminine pelvis strike one at the first glance. The
texture of the skin is smooth as a baby's, and sometimes velvety to
the touch. Its color may be an opaque white, or faintly creamy, or
there may be an effect of a filmy sheen over a florid complexion.
Little or no hair on the face contributes to the general feminine
aspect in the more extreme types. They are often double jointed
somewhere, flat footed, knock-kneed.
In women, the external manifestations of a thymo-centric personality
may be limited to thinness and delicacy of the skin, narrow waist,
rather poorly developed breasts, arched thighs and scanty hair,
with scanty and delayed menstruation. Or there may be obesity, with
juvenility, if there is a repression of the pituitary secretion for
one reason or other.
In their reactions to the problems, physical and psychic, of everyday
life, the thymo-centrics are distinctly at a disadvantage. In the
first place, muscular strain, stress or shock is dangerous to them
because they have a small heart, and remarkably fragile blood vessels,
which renders their circulation incapable of responding to an
emergency, or at least definitely handicapped. In infancy, they may
die suddenly because of this, either for no ascertainable cause at
all, or because of some slight excitement like that attending some
slight operation, a fall, or a mild illness. During the run-about
epoch they are unable to cope with the necessities of an active
child's existence in playing with other children. Puberty and
adolescence are specially perilous to them for they may endeavour to
compensate for an inner feeling of physical inferiority by going
in strenuously for athletics and sports, and so risking a sudden
hemorrhage in the brain, producible by the tearing of a blood vessel,
as if constructed of defective rubber. Reports published in the
newspapers from time to time of children or young men instantly
killed by a tap on the jaw in a boxing contest, or some other trivial
injuries are doubtless samples of such reactions in thymo-centric
people.
As an illustration of the conduct aberrations of the thymo-centric
personality during adult life, the following extracts from a newspaper
report of a suicide are worth quoting.
"An autopsy made yesterday by Dr. Benjamin Schwartz, first assistant
to Dr. Charles Norris, Chief Medical Examiner, removed any mystery
that surrounded the death on Saturday night by pistol bullets of Dr.
José A. Arenas and the wounding of 'Miss Ruth Jackson' and Ignatio
Marti.
"Dr. Schwartz said that his post-mortem examination had convinced him
beyond doubt that the dead physician-dentist had killed himself after
he had tried to take the life of the young woman with whom he had
lived and of the youth who was his successful rival.
"'Besides that,' Dr. Schwartz said, 'my report to the police will
include a statement from the young woman to me that she always had
understood that Dr. Arenas had killed some one in Havana, Cuba, before
he came to New York.
"The autopsy left no doubt that Dr. Arenas was a case of status
lymphaticus (thymus-centered personality). I made a most complete
report because of the scientific value of the autopsy.
"'This confirmed my first deductions after seeing the body on Saturday
night in the doctor's furnished room with alcove bedroom adjoining.
You will remember that as soon as I had seen him I revealed that he
was wearing corsets.
"'These cases of status lymphaticus are intensely interesting. In them
the blood vessels are very small, and the lymphatic clement is greatly
in excess. They die suddenly, from ruptures of blood vessels. Many
of them are degenerate. Most of them are criminals. All of them are
liable to commit crimes of passion. Among them are found a large
percentage of drug addicts.
"'Miss Jackson, in the hospital, confirmed my scientific theory that
the dead man was not normal. She was perfectly frank in her statement.
She said she had left her husband, Elmer Schultz, an automobile
salesman in Toledo, several months ago and had come to New York. She
said she had lived with the doctor for some time.
"'About ten days ago she left him to live with Marti, a healthy,
normal lad. Before she went from the doctor's room she destroyed those
colored collars that were found beside the body. She cut them with
scissors. But that was after, so she states, the doctor had destroyed
stockings of hers by cutting them.
"'She told me in the hospital today, and with every appearance of
truth, that she had met Arenas in the subway at the station on
Seventy-second Street and Broadway on Friday night and that she had
asked him when she could come and get her clothes. He said, according
to her story:
"'Come to the house tomorrow afternoon--but come with Marti.'
"'She said that she and Marti went there according to this invitation:
that first the doctor showed her the cut collars and told her that she
would get her clothes back in perfect condition, and that the next
thing she knew she had been shot. She couldn't remember much after
that.
"'I believe that both she and Marti have told a perfectly
straightforward story and the autopsy is proof of it.
"'There were six bullets in the doctor's pistol to be accounted for.
One, in an undischarged cartridge, still was in the weapon. That
leaves five. One struck "Miss Jackson" in the right chest squarely in
front, and penetrated the flesh about one inch. If there had been any
power at all behind the missile it would have gone right through,
pierced a lung, caused a hemorrhage, and the chances are that "Miss
Jackson" would have died. That leaves four bullets.
"'One more struck Marti in the left upper chest. It passed through the
pocket there, and the skirt, grazed the skin, and then bounced over to
the right hand side in front. It was a most amazing case of a bounding
bullet. I was particularly careful about examining its course because
at first I was suspicious of the stories that were told by Marti and
"Miss Jackson." Now I know they are true.
"'But anyone might have been puzzled by the queer antics of the
missiles from the pistol of South American manufacture that the doctor
used. If it had had any penetrating power--or rather if the bullets
that it sent out, had any real kick behind them--the chances are that
both "Miss Jackson" and Marti would be dead now.
"'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 assistant 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 puberty. 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
interstitial cells of one sex assists enormously in arousing the
opposite sex traits that have been latent, homosexuality. In a
thymo-centric, tendencies to homosexuality 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 sex index will certainly
come in time as a measurement of sexuality. But until then some more
available classification of sex tendency is necessary. Including
sex intergrades, one may divide sex types into six classes:
male, _male_-female, male-_female_, female, _female_-male, and
female-_male_. The sex intergrades, the four hyphenated classes,
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 sex. The sex difficulties produced in these people
by the conflict between their conscious sex and their subconscious
sex, the sex duel in the same mind, Siamese twins pulling in
diametrically opposite directions, are comprehensible only from the
viewpoint of the internal secretions.
Homosexuality, 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 homosexuality
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 homosexual. Observations on the primates along the same
lines have been made. In goitrous hyperthyroids thymus persistence is
common.
What complicates his sex difficulties, and makes social adjustment
almost impossible or completely impossible, is that his pituitary
frequently cannot react to assist 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 attitude 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 hit 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 habitué 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 pronounced.
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 SEX GLAND CENTERED OR GONADO-CENTRIC PERSONALITIES
(The Eunuchoid Personality)
Among the individuals whose personality is dominated by their sex
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 sex 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
breasts 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 sex in quality and distribution, as do the
reproductive organs themselves.
These traits of physiognomy and physique indicate functional
hermaphroditism in the underlying feminoid constitution. The feminoid
constitution appears again in the supposedly masculine. The feminoid
constitution should not be confused with the infantiloid constitution.
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 constitution 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 constitution. 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,
naïvete, 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 constitution 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 sex reactions of the
gonado-centric, are as complex and difficult as those of the
thymo-centric. Straightforward homosexuality and the eunuchoid
constitution have always been intimate. The homosexuality of the
thymo-centric is more subtle and disguised, often buried under the
stronger masculine component of the personality.
Homosexuality as a cult has appeared correlated with the production of
the functional hermaphrodite by artificially creating the eunuchoid
type of constitution. Among the Aztecs, homosexuals were produced
in quantity for religious purposes by a deliberate fostering of the
eunuchoid constitution. 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, assumed female clothing, manners and customs, and to all
intents and purposes was treated as a woman. Their large breasts 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 sex in
sexual relations of the most depraved kind. They lived in idleness as
prostitutes, cultivating and extending their skill in sex 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, snatching 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 breasts enlarged,
the voice became high-pitched, and the other type-characters of the
eunuchoid complex appeared.
These constitutions 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
constitution 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 pass 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
Japanese. 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 sexuality. He is an introvert, his personality
is shut in, he isolates himself from the world.
The lower eunuchoids exhibit a curiously child-like personality.
Naïvely confiding, communicating to all comers all their joys and
sorrows, they ask diffidently for confirmation of their statements,
and they pass quickly from tears to laughter. About sexual matters
they are extremely timid. A moral innocence pervades their speech and
conduct. Usually they have no true conception of crimes of jealousy
or passion. 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 sexual 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 identity 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 undersexed eunuchoid
personalities, depending upon the quality and degree of the secretions
lacking.
When there is an excess of these sex secretions, a turbulent,
tempestuous, sexually 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. Oversexed types of personality
therefore may exist as well as undersexed.
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 assigned, by hall marks which
facilitate their classification. 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 classes. 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. Quantitative 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 attitude 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 analysis 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, attitudes
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 sex 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.