The Glands Regulating Personality

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 nervo

order 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 na?ve view had to be discarded. In its place the humoral theory held sway, with its good humors and its bad humors, and their bil

ring 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 nerv

the significance of the individual mental workings of each case, he and his pupil Janet began to unravel a tangle wh

he phenomena of amnesia, somnambulism, hypnotism, anesthesia, obsession and hysteria into the grand group of mental dissociations and disintegrations, he ac

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

me 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 ex

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

at 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 b

AKDOWNS AND

rol, so that the sufferer is incapacitated for the duties of everyday life, has become the popular "nervous breakdown."

f the brain due to explosives suggested the term, and its application to affections of self-control, or dissociations of the personality, with paralysis, blindness, speechlessn

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 w

CRINE N

ons 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.

uddenly changed, they became lost in the clouds, and finally landed somewhere in the Canadian wilderness. The commander of the balloon cr

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

red 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

h reached their wives and the daily press before they themselves returned to civilization. A great hue and cry was raised by the newspap

ructions for them not to talk. C. went back to B., who was in a shack with the correspondents

ays 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

rine 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, cont

drenal 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 in

CIOUS AND

tion 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 alon

rows, 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, supernorm

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 ameb

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 organ

OF THE E

es 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 wit

e 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

F THE VEGET

h-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 vi

ue is manifestly absurd, when it can only be the diplomatic constitutional monarch of the system. It can, in fact

etter, 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

BASIS OF TH

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 apparat

d laws of its workings. It provides a reason for the apparent swiftness, spontaneity, and unreasonableness of w

docrines. So do we forget not alone with the brain, but with the muscles, the viscera, the endocrines and their ne

rgetting 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 o

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 i

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 secreti

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 consciousne

OLOGY OF E

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, Fraenke

utomatic 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

AL AB

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

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 n

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 gr

what is power of endurance and perseverance, the quality of stamina

l 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 a

L DEF

oil is by fertilizers like phosphates or nitrates. Increased production follows increased fertilization. Natural disability mu

te 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 i

cluded are all sorts of examples of feeble-mindedness varying from the moron to the imbecile and idiot, arrested brain life. T

nia 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 psychosi

ther 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 t

ctually 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 enthus