The Glands Regulating Personality

suffice for their adequate consideration. Reflexes, instincts, habits, tendencies and emotions are involved in their machinery. The development and normal functioning of the intellect, the pure reaso

him with thyroid from outside sources, feed him animal thyroid, be it of the sheep, the pig, or the g

nd their associations, and thus the speed of thought, are regulated. Iodine has been shown to increase the electric conductivity of the brain that is, the rate at which electrons will fly through it. The thyroid may then be regarded as manipulating the amount of iodine brought to play upon the brain cells at a particular moment of danger or exal

Y-MIND

f the body mediate the primary mind stuff. Without internal secretions and a vegetative system there could be no soul, in the sense of complex emotion. Nor those combinations of thought and emotion which synthesize attitudes, sentiments and character. The internal secretions and the vegetative system mediate the primary soul

the internal secretions and the vegetative system. Through them we may affect the very quality of the nerve tissue. The future of the race, the future of human nature, depends upon the knowled

mitation, volitions and inhibitions as chemical matters. In all their relations, mutually reacting effects and defects, excesses and deficiencies,

dify him because they modify his ductless glands and his vegetative apparatus, as well as his brain, depressing some parts, and stimulating others, and so rearranging the system. In particular will he be transformed as the gland is affected which is the centre of the system to which the others adapt and accommodate themselves. The inertia of the system is very great, almost absolute, and

EX IN

ations are by no means her monopoly. Man is likewise a creation of the chemical wheels within wheels and springs within springs that are his glands of internal secretion. That he is not so obviously an appendix to his testes is due to two reasons. First, the male sex hormones have not the instability nor cyclic rhythmicity of the female. Secondly, and perhaps consequently, his sex instinc

l nesting and migrating instincts may be eliminated by interfering with their ovaries. At the same tine there is a change in their plumage toward the male type. Similarly, the males, when their sex endocrines are cut off, will change their psychic nature as well as physically. Besides owning his flag-waving comb, his spurs and brighter feathers, the rooster struts to attract the female, and fights aggressively with his sex competitors. When he is made a capon, he loses his spurs and comb and distinctive plumage, and in addition becomes ret

mocking bird gurgles provokingly, when the robin fills its scarlet breast and the starling floats in ecstasy through the perfumed air, when the pigeon coyly woos its mate, and the butterfly flirts with the dazzling multicolors of its wings, when all the marvelous devices of sex at

ISM AND EX

tance of the gonads. Sex exhibition differs in man and woman because of the differently combined internal secretions that are their substrates. The male's attitude, aggressive pursuit

n awakening interstitial gonad action. Some boys have no interest whatever in sex. Others will show an intense curiosity spontaneously, a curiosity which perhaps may be explained as a larval precocity, dependent upon the minimum of sex hormone production by the gonads. Close observation of the correlation of somatic and psychic development in extreme examples of these children corrobora

e the typical feminine outlook on life, aspirations and reactions to stimuli, which, in spite of the protests of our feminists, do constitute the biologic feminine mind. Large, vascular, balanced ovaries are the well-springs of her life and personality. On the other hand, the woman who menstruates poorly or not at all is coarse-featured, flat-breasted, heavily built, angular in her outlines, will also be often aggressive,

T AND B

enced, and so is furnished another example of a chemical control of instinctive behaviour. McDougall, once of Oxford, now of Harvard, introduced into psychology the idea of the simple instinct as a unit of behaviour, regarding the most complex conduct as a compounding

mmunication by them with the endocrine organs. As a result, some of them are moved to further secretion, and others are paralyzed or weakened. In consequence of changes of concentration in the blood of the various internal secretions, tensions, movements and tumescences, as well as relaxations, inhibitions and detumescences, occur throughout the veg

superficially is regarded as the essence of the instinct. As a matter of fact, it is only the endpoint of a process, the res

one another as sensation-endocrine stimulation-tension within the vegetative system-

nto. Conduct, that fascinator of the common gossip and the great novelist alike, normal and abnormal, social and asocial, in all their complexities, even unto the third and fourth generation, the Freudian complexes, is governe

CHARGING

ntent of the idea is the recognition of the fact that the wish is charged. Now it could never be charged in a vacuum. That means that a wish could never be born in the brain alone. For the brain has no power to charge itself with energy-it can only store and transmit. If a wish is potential energy that must be transformed into kinetic, it must have a source. That source is the vegetative system. Without the vegetative system, the great complex of viscera in the abdomen and chest, blood and its vessels, endocrines, muscles and nerves, the brain

manipulate the environment to satiate the insatiable viscera, insatiable because the local chemistry is continually raising the tension of one or the other of them. A physics of human behaviour becomes possible with t

sure may be accurately measured by means of a small balloon swallowed and then inflated. When the pressure rises above a certain figure, the sensation of hunger breaks into the consciousness of the individual. We infer that certain sensory impulses sent up to the brain attain a strength that finally forces itself into the conscious field of feeling. The sensation of hunger varies from individual to individual because of variation in the

tuated by repeated experience to react in the same way to the same stimulus, permutations and combinations of wishes become possible until at length the inscrutable complexities of the behaviour of civi

before offering the meat, his mouth will water only when he sees or smells the meat. If, however, the ringing of the bell precedes the meat a sufficient number of reactions, a time comes when merely the sound of the bell will cause salivation, without the presence of the meat. So it is with

tinct may be excited by the sight of a baby. But because a baby is small and delicate, anything small and fine, a tiny book, a toy, a miniature, may arouse it. The object is then said to be

me other associated factor or instinct, conduct results to lower the pressure to what it was before the instigator of the tension appeared. But if another instinct is sparked, or another associated factor comes into play, another focus of increased pressure within the vegetative system is created, with another st

incts. And if one endocrine system conquers, it must be either because it is inherently stronger, its secretion potential, that is, the amount of secretion it can put forth as a maximum, is greater (so explaining the term dominant)-or because a pas

ck, exhaustion. Susceptibility depends upon the play of the forces focusing upon them that may be summed up as associations. In the ability of one endocrine system to inhibit another we have the germ of the u

nd last but not least sex. All the different nuances of personality are expressions of a particular relationship, transitory or permanent, between the endocrines and

GER, AND

s most primitive form. And anger, the destructive passion, must have appeared early upon the scene of life. Certainly these two instincts were definitely

area? The answer lies in the bipartite construction of the adrenal. All the evidence points to its medulla as the sec

he immediate effects of fear because they are the immediate effects of excess adrenalin in the blood upon the vegetative viscera and the muscles. The perception by associative memory of these effects of adrenalin, the sensations arising from the orga

retion pours in an overwhelming amount of its secretion from the first into the blood there will be no fear, but anger immediately. Habitually charging and fearless animals like the bison, bull, tiger, or lion have a relatively larger cortex in their adrenals. Habitually fle

inates medulla, there may be fear-complexes, dating back to events and times when medulla overtopped cortex, especially childhood. So in the coolest people, certain persons, objects, episodes, may send a wave along an old line of nerve cells and paths which lead to the adrenal medulla, and so flood him with fear, terror or even panic before his usual cortex response occurs. Impressions during the early years of childhood, probing o

ovary, making the corpus luteum, evolves an additional stimulant to the medulla, through its irritating influence upon the thyroid. Then the infl

hem is probably anger with a sort of blood-lust, and no consideration of the consequences. The object attacked acted like the red rag waved at a bull-it had stimulated a flow of the secretion of the adrenal cortex, and the instinct of anger became sparked, as it were, by the new condition of the blood. In courage, deliberate courage, there is more than instinct. There is an act of volition, a display of will. Admitting that without the adrenal cortex such courage would be impossible, the chief credit for courage must be ascribed to the ante-pituitary. It is the proper conjunction of i

ITARY AN

nying disturbances of this gland, and controllable by its control. It might be said to energize deeply the tender emotions, and instead of saying soft-hearted we should say much-pituitarized. For all the basic sentiments (as opposed to the intellectualized self-protective sen

They store the fruits of abstract thinking, mathematics, for example. The anterior pituitary is in the closest relation and contact with them. Its secretion is tonic to them. Now the instinct that is the forerunner of intellectuality is the instinct of curiosity, with its emotion of wonder, and its expression in the various constructive and acquisitive tendencies. Studies of intell

pheres of the mind, are definitely connected with disturbances of the pituitary. As we shall note in reviewing the essentials of the pituitary-centered or pituito-centric personality, the personality governed by the fluctuations of activity within the pituitary, people with injured, diseased or mechanically limited pituitaries (because of the s

OID AND

emotions of pride and shame respectively. In certain states of excessive thyroid activity there is an extra stimulation of the instinctive display of the person which may go on to boasting, mania and exhibitionism. On the other hand, in states of thyroid insufficiency, depression is produced, which may go on to melancholia, a desire to be alone, to hide, to sit apart and even a tendency to accuse the self of various uncommitted crimes and sins. In the form of cyclic insanit

AND SEN

and their ancestors showed them to be endowed with a large amount of energy. It has been said to be the absolute prerequisite of genius. Now if there is a single fact that has been well established by investigations of the internal secretions, it is that the energy quantum of an individual is a function of and

city because they stimulate the thyroid. People with thyroid dominant constitutions talk fluently, rapidly, and continuously. Their energy makes them doers, act

tion they find it necessary to sleep during the day. Forty winks or more in the afternoon makes a good deal of difference to them. Taciturn, inarticulate, lazy, slow, tired, are the adjectives applied to them by their friends as well as by their enemies. All becaus

, because he arrives more quickly at the stage when the stimulus damages his nerve apparatus. The electric conductivity of his skin is greater, sometimes a hundred times greater, than the average. Conversely the thyroid deficient type has a

thyroid element predominating in his composition. Lack of energy and

UDGMENT,

ust admit some sort of memory trace as the basis for the persistence of memory. This memory deposit facilitates the occurrence of the chemical reaction constituting the memory along the same path the next time. Forgetting then consists in a disappearance of these memory traces or deposits. Forgetting is greatest in the first hour after remembering, m

he extreme grades, the memory for recent occurrences becomes completely lost. Iodine and thyroid increase the electric conductivity of the brain, so that the memory trace must be deposited more easily in those who have an excess of thyroid. Removal of the thyroid produces a degene

ds recent experiences, they are better held, although in a sort of subconscious manner, recoverable when the condition improves or is cured. But the greatest difference between the thyroid and pi

memory and association of experiences. Behind it is an attitude as much as there is in an emotion or the arousin

sical growth which consumes most of the secretion of the ante-pituitary. After adolescence, after the early twenties, when physical growth has ceased, the ante-pituitary secretion sensitizes the cells of the brain to mental growth. The reaction potential of the ante-pituitary, that is its inherent, latent ability to supply a maximum of its endocrine f

ccurate judgments as one grows older implies at least a maximum efficiency of it. This maturation is not at all universal. Even after middle age, after forty and fifty years of reasoning, some individuals retain the juvenile mind of their youth. Like the Bourbons, they have learned nothing and forgotten nothing. Their ante-pituitary insu

is possibly purely thyroid in its determination). With the advent of the gonads upon the scene, judgments become the centre of the play's plot undoubtedly. The intelligence of eunuchs and eunuchoids is in general low. The skull and brain of castrates, animal and human, is smaller than the average. Gall, the physiologist who popularized ideas concerning the meaning of the protuberances and depressions of the h

N AS AN EN

ong been known to act as an evocant of strange images. The hallucinations of delirium tremens are the results obtained in extreme intoxication. A strangely imaged flow of consciousness, the imaginative

en of science. The other that it is higher in the female sex than in the male. We have seen that the philosophic, scientific, intellectual mind, the capacity to abstract, and think in terms of abstractions, is definitely dependent upon proper secretion by the ante-pituitary. In woman, the post-pituitary is

ons, delusions, nervousness, all expressions of what we may sum up technically as the imaginative state of mind, occur and occur frequently, associated with other symptoms of posterior pituitary overactivity. Persons in whose make-up it rules are more liable to imagine disturbances of their mentality, or exhibit a well-developed imaginative streak. Normal states of overactivity of the post-pituitary such as occur in some women during the menstrual per

example. The post-pituitary confers the lability of the underlying state of brain in all of these imaginative tincturings of consciousness. The constructive imagin

THE ORGA

n during the premenstrual period. A number of them have their pituitary balance upset then, with an overtopping of the ante-pituitary by the post-pituitary. Irritability, a sub-hysteria, or an actual hysteria may emerge in the usually most placid characters. A quiet wife and mother may go for her husband, curse and mortify him, even strike and beat him. She may slap her children at that time and no other. It is well known that most of their crimes are committed b

ilution in the blood of particular internal secretions. Restlessness and excitement can be produced experimentally by feeding thyroid. Vague anxiety, depressive fancies and fears, imaginative overactivity