BE

GLAD
YOU'RE
NEUROTIC
BY THE SAME AUTHOR

"Why Be Shy?"

"Your Nerves, Etc."

 LOUIS E. BISCH, B.A., M.D., Ph.D

BE
GLAD
YOU'RE
NEUROTIC

Whittlesey House
McGRAW-HILL BOOK COMPANY, INC.
New York London
Cop)iight y
1936, 1946, by the McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc.

All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, may not be

reproduced in any form without permission of the publishers.

SECOND REVISED EDITION

This book is produced in full compliance

with the government's regulations for con-

serving paper and other essential materials.

PUBLISHED BY WHITTLESEY HOUSE

A division of the McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc.

Printed in the United States of America

 To
HENRIETTE
My Wife
 Digitized by the Internet Archive
in 2010

http://www.archive.org/details/begladyoureneuroOObisc
CONTENTS
PACE
Preface ix

CHAPTER
I Ym a Neurotic Myself and Delighted 3

II To Be Normal Is Nothing to Brag About . . 14

III You Hate Yourself. No Wonder! 33

IV Your Neurotic Development Was Inevitable 44

V 1/ You Didnt Feel Guilty Youd Be an

Animal 55

VI Your Self-consciousness Hides Your

Superiority 70

VII No, You re Not Going Insane nor Will Any

of Your Fears Come True 80

VIII Your Errors Have a Meaning 91

IX Your Compulsions Are Calls for Help 102

X Are You Getting the Most Out of Your

Insomnia and Dreams? 113

XI Of Course Your Sex Life Is Far from

Satisfactory 132
•
• vii
 Contents
CHAPTER PAGE
XII To Be Sure You re Tired and Full of Aches
and Pains 141

XIII Dont Let Psychosomatic Medicine Alarm

You 150

XIV Are Your Glands on Friendly Terms? 156

XV Even Men Have Change of Life 171

XVI How Neurotic Are You Anyway? Try This

Test 179

XVII Being Neurotic, Should You Marry? 184

XVIII Learn How to Control Your Future 192

XIX If It's Treatment You Need, What Kind? .205

XX Consider Overcompensation and Cheer Up 214
XXI Then Follow These Five Simple Rules—
That's All! 229

•
•
vin
PREFACE

VERYBODY BECOMING PSYCHIATRIC-

E minded
IS

these days. Men and women in

all walks of life are realizing that to discover "what makes
you tick" is even more important than the basic knowledge
acquired in school as to how your other organs function. All
of us think, feel and act more or less alike in certain general
ways. Each of us, however, also reacts differently, in a highly
individualized way, to any given circumstance. It is these
individual differences that can "make or break" you.
Neurotics, of course, are definitely different. Thousands
have learned to understand these underlying assets they pos-

sess, have harnessed and directed their energy and have

achieved superlative success. Unfortunately, many more thou-
sands still exist who do not yet realize that nowadays help is

at hand to overcome neurotic states, to find themselves and

to gain the health, success and happiness that is their right-

ful due.

Feeling frustrated and miserable, the average neurotic can-

not possibly imagine how he could be glad. That is the his-

tory of all neurotics whom I have ever known or treated pro-

fessionally. They were unaware of the potential abilities they
possessed. Once they understood, of course, and found how
really simple and easy it was to put these abilities to work,
they truly were glad.
•
'
ix
 Preface

This book was first printed ten years ago and immediately
became a ''best seller." Since then its continued enthusiastic
reception by the general reading public, as well as the hun-
dreds of letters received attesting to the personal aid it has
given, justifies the hope, expressed in the first edition, that it

fills a real need. Psychiatry, however, now marches on at a

rapid pace. This revised and enlarged edition has therefore
been brought out to assist the neurotic still further and even
more effectively in the light of new scientific knowledge since
discovered.
A small part of this material was first printed in Reader s

Digest, Cosmopolitan, Psychology and American Mercury

magazines. To these my sincere thanks are due.

Louis E. Bisch.
New York. N. Y.

•
X
 BE
GLAD
YOU'RE
NEUROTIC
Chapter I

VM A NEUROTIC MYSELF AND DELIGHTED

HEN I TOLD MY WIFE I INTENDED WRITING

w, this chapter she looked at me in amaze-
ment. "Surely you re not serious?" she said.

"Why not?" I retorted. "Why shouldn't I admit being

neurotic with as little hesitation as confessing, say, my weak-
ness for tobacco, Angora cats, bronzes or the dancing of the
Radio City Rockettes?"
"You're a doctor, that's why! Your patients might think-
well, being neurotic and then attempting to cure neurotics—
isn't it like the blind trying to lead the blind?"
I saw her point. In fact, I had anticipated it. And in self-
defense I had resolved to say something like: "Don't you see,

being a neurotic myself it is easier for me to understand my

patients and to help them more?" I had even thought of sup-
porting this contention with an old joke of mine, credited to
the eminent Kraepelin, that one cannot be a good alienist
without being somewhat alienated oneself.
None of which, of course, I did.

My wife's opposition, nevertheless, served a useful purpose.

It emphasized what everybody thinks: that being neurotic is

something to hide, something to be ashamed of, something

about which one surely never boasts.
But the truth is I'm delighted to be neurotic. I'm delighted
because I know what being neurotic means.
•3-
I'm a Neurotic Myself and Delighted
That's why I want to reassure all the neurotics who may
read this book. I want to allay their doubts and fears, stop
their self-accusations, remove their guilt and convictions of
inferiority. I want neurotics to realize what they really are,

not what others would have them believe they are.

Particularly do I want to prove that the neurotic, instead of

being handicapped, actually is in possession of an asset. There-
fore I say, be glad you re neurotic!

"But, my dear doctor," I seem to hear someone protest, "I

thought a neurotic state could not be cured?"

"Stuff and nonsense!" is my answer.
Out of the hundreds of neurotic cases I have treated in the
past thirty-five years of special practice, there have been
mighty few that I considered hopeless. Even these were im-
provable. What's more, not only have I been able to promise
relief, I have been able to say that the sufferings that were
blighting their lives, making the future seem like a blind alley
ending in black despair, would turn out eventually to be
blessings in disguise. Often after onlv a few short months
these same people had a different story to tell. With the
hangdog look gone, with the step more elastic, with courage
in the voice— not to mention such a trifle as the disappear-

ance of the symptoms— they had to admit that I was right.

So famous a psychologist Jung has said that all neurotics

as

possess the elements of genius. To be sure, not every neurotic

man, woman and child will some day become an Edison, a
George Bernard Shaw, a Jane Addams, a Schumann-Heink
or a Yehudi Menuhin. Yet it is astonishing how often there
have come to light, while under treatment, abilities never be-
fore suspected, ambitions but vaguely formulated, sources of
•4-
 Yin a Neurotic Myself and Delighted
happiness never dreamed of. Nor should \vc overlook the tre-

mendous dynamic force and purpose which all persons in-

variably discover in themselves once they realize what a
neurosis is.

So many hundreds of thousands of neurotics exist the world

over that there are not enough bona fide specialists to treat
them all. Happily, all need not be treated by intensive psy-
chiatric methods. The majority of neurotic states are mild;

sometimes they are scarcely perceptible. The cases that are

so severe that hospital care is required constitute a compara-
tively small minority.

Anyway, the line of demarcation between what is normal,

average mentality and what is neurotic cannot always defi-
nitely be laid down. There are normals, there are borderline
neurotics, there are definite but mild neurotic states and there
are severe neurotic disorders. The question is how neurotic we
are and what we are permitting the neurosis to do to us.

In the old days the treatment prescribed for severe cases

included giving up one's job and taking a trip abroad. Now-
adays the very thing one never does is run away. One always
fights in the saddle. Attention to the glandular system— the
so-called "endocrine glands" or "glands of internal secretion"

—is usually indicated on the organic side, and some thought

probing, such as psychoanalysis, on the mental.
For the present I am not considering pronounced neurotic
states, where compulsions and obsessions are the rule; fear of

closed places, open spaces or heights; dread of contagion and

hosts of other ideas that make the lives of some neurotics al-

most unbearable. What to do about such conditions will be

discussed later. Although even the most dramatic forms of
•5-
Ym a Neurotic Myself and Delighted

neurosis are subject to cure, I am talking now specially to

those who are grappling with less severe types. Since the latter
outnumber the former something like a hundred to one, I

want to reassure them first. Besides, the out-and-out, chronic

neurotics need a change of viewpoint as much as do their
less harassed brothers and sisters. Even they should be glad
they're neurotic!
Were the mild neurotic states not so annoying and handi-
capping, they really wouldn't matter. But, whatever their
exact nature, they worry a person just enough to make him
uncertain of himself; they bother him just enough to make
him unhappy and inefficient at his work; they tantalize him
with timidity; they nag him with self-questioning; they leave
him self-conscious and oversensitive; they overwhelm him with
fatigue; they block the natural expression of his love life. Yes,
mild neurotic states can do that and a whole lot more. And
they do it to persons of both sexes, at all ages, even to children.
There is hope, however, and plenty of it. What one needs
in the mild cases is understanding. Understand what means
it

to be neurotic, remove the ignorance that surrounds it, and

presto! the malady disappears.
A lot of the misery in life, if not most of it, is due to igno-
rance. I once read a story about a group of professors who,
in passing through a science laboratory on their way to an
adjoining conference room, observed a large metal bowl stand-
ing on a table near a window. them remarked how
One of
warm the part of the bowl turned toward the sun was in com-
parison with the opposite or darker side. The others likewise
noted this striking difference.

After the conference, the professors again walked through

•6-
 I'm a Neurotic Myself and Delighted

the laboratory and past the same bowl. Lo and behold! the
part of the bowl away from the sun was now hot while the
part toward the sun was cold.
Heated controversy ensued. How could something away
from the sun's rays be hotter than something nearer to them?
Nobody suspected the truth that so readily explained this
seemingly startling phenomenon. This was simply that while
they were in conference a laboratory attendant had turned
the bowl around.
If professors can be ignorant of facts, what about the lay-

man's ignorance of the facts concerned with the intricacies

—to him the mysteries— of the mind? Actually there is more
ignorance to be met with in regard to the neuroses, more mis-
conception as to their causes, development and outcome—
consequently more silly fuss— than about any other single
disorder.

Small wonder then that accusations are heaped upon neu-

rotics on every hand. In family life a more
neurotic creates
trouble than an epidemic of smallpox. He is looked upon as
a misfit, a nuisance. Friends cross the street when they see him
coming. In fact, he has few friends. Nobody understands him.
Nobody seems to try to understand him. All the while the
poor neurotic is almost beside himself wondering what to
think and what to do.
I have a grievance even against certain members of my own
profession who, strangely enough, don't seem to grasp the
true significance of what it means to be neurotic. For what
does the average physician tell the average neurotic who goes
to him for scientific help? "Forget it, my boy," says the doc-
tor. "All you need is a little will power, a stiff upper lip. Here,
•7-
I'm a Neurotic Myself and Delighted
have this prescription filled; take a teaspoonful every four
hours. Come back and see me in a month."
That reminds me of a typical letter I received one day from
a colleague who usually sends me his neurotic patients. "I am
referring Miss So-and-So," he begins, ''who will probably tele-

phone for an appointment. There is nothing the matter with

this patient, so far as I can make out, except her imagination."
Then, after recounting her symptoms—her tortures, really—
he concludes: "See what you can do with her."
Well, my good friend, if it is only the imagination, isn't

that enough?
And why upon the imagination, anyway?
cast aspersions

Are any of our other faculties more valuable? What delights,

what sheer joy, what ambitious zeal imagination can en-
gender! What marvelous discoveries have been brought about
because of it! What novels, poems, dramas, paintings, sculp-
tures have been fashioned out of the fabric of imaginative
musings! Where would civilization be today if it were not for
the imagination? Don't we definitely owe most of the marvels
of life to the neurotic imagination?
I know what my medical colleague means. He is intimating
that the patient in question is not using her imagination in
the right way. He would say that she is employing it in a de-

structive instead of a constructive manner; a case of mis-

directed energy.
To be sure, a neurotic state is a mental state, simply because
it concerns the mind. That explains why I have seldom made
the diagnosis of a neurosis without my patient feeling either
frightened, dismayed or offended. For most persons have
heard something dreadful about this condition, and fully half

•8-
 Vm a Neurotic Myself and Delighted

of those who develop it suspect that by using the term "neu-

rosis" I am trying to inform them in a polite way that they
are insane.
Yet I cannot emphasize too strongly that a neurosis— no
matter how severe it ma}* be— is not insanity. The types of
mind in which the two conditions develop are entirely unlike.
As children, the neurotic and the insane start with similar
points of view. But so does the genius.
In other words, children having one of these three kinds of
mind do not respond to parental training and school educa-
tion as do average individuals. They don't accept even-thing
that is told them. They question things; they "if" and "but";
they argue with others and with themselves. These types see
the world differently from average individuals.
That is as far, however, as the similarity between neurotics,
the insane and geniuses goes. And often as early as the teens
the characteristics of the kind of mind the later adult will
possess make themselves manifest.
The insane type becomes pronouncedly different as the
years pass, but the important and essential change lies in the
fact that such an individual becomes convinced that he is

right, that his view of life is correct, while the world as a

whole is all wrong. Insanity is actually the most complete

adjustment that exists. It is absolute renunciation of the world
of realitv. It is a self-sufficient state, and not necessarilv an
unhappy one.
The neurotic also sees the world differently while young.
Instead of feeling self-sufficient he worries about this differ-

ence. If the neurotic would recognize this difference and not

worry about it, he might himself discover the advantages of a

•9-
Ym a Neurotic Myself and Delighted

neurosis and be glad. But no! The more neurotic he becomes

the more he stews in his own juice. In the end he feels like
jumping into the river. All simply because he wants to be like
other people.
About the genius? Well, he knows he is different, too, but
he surely doesn't worry about it. He projects this difference
into a book or a painting or the building of big business. He
makes his differences work for him; turns them to profit. He
can thumb his nose at the world— and often does. If every
neurotic could do that a book like this would not be necessary.
I am claiming you should be glad you're neurotic. All the
great thinkers and great doers were glad. Take Alexander the
Great, Caesar and Napoleon. Consider Michelangelo, Pascal,
Pope, our own Poe, O. Henry and Walt Whitman. And what
of Moliere, Heine, Stevenson, Lafcadio Hearn, Goldsmith,
Fielding? The list could be lengthened almost indefinitely
and made to include the outstanding personalities of the pres-

ent day. Every single one of them was neurotic. Their own
contemporaries considered them peculiar, eccentric. Usually
the greater they were the more neurotic they were.
Only two classes of neurotics exist: the successful and the
unsuccessful. One is glad, the other miserable. When he
makes good, the world pins medals on his chest, tells school

children how noble he is, even points to his peculiarities as

worthy of emulation. When he fails, the world does a tumble
backwards and blames his eccentricities for his downfall.

Regarding the full-fledged, pronounced neuroses— no mat-

ter of how long standing, no matter what the symptoms may
be— when psychiatrists treat these, the first thing they try to

make the sufferer realize is that there are thousands of others

•10-
 Vm a Neurotic Myself and Delighted

like himself and that he is in good company. The self-respect

of the neurotic must be restored at all costs!
Next it is emphasized that every one of his symptoms,
physical as well as mental, has a cause. This cause probably is

buried in his unconscious mind, which explains why he has

not been able to dig it out for himself. The symptom is not
the disease, it is merely a symbol standing for some maladjust-
ment in the emotional life, of which the patient himself is

unaware. Therefore, the symptom is really a cry for help on

the part of the neurotic's real, true, inner self. And just as a

pain in the foot is a cry for help on the part of the foot, so are
all neurotic fears, obsessions and whatnot cries for help on
the part of the mind.
Why not, then, heed such calls for help? The chapters that
follow should be valuable to you whether your neurosis be
mild or severe. You'll be astonished how often the trouble
started in childhood and because of circumstances over which
the sufferer himself had no control. Perhaps it was a trivial

matter, but whatever it was, nobody is really to blame. Indeed,

it is remarkable how much neurotic trouble can be overcome
with comparatively little effort.

I consider myself neurotic although I am not suffering from

a pronounced neurosis. Even as a boy I was rather peculiar; I

took everything too seriously; I overidealized girls absurdly.

To this day am high-strung and sensitive.
I Little things an-

noy me. Often am I assailed with doubt. I tend to worry

easily if I do not check myself. Sometimes a sense of anxiety,

even of impending danger, handicaps me. I enjoy building air

castles. I see life distinctly differently from the average man.

Had I not specialized in psychiatry I am certain I should
•11-
I'm a Neurotic Myself and Delighted
eventually have developed a full-fledged and severe neurosis.
But I was saved, not by a stranger who took an interest in me,
nor by luck. My parents had always wanted me to be a physi-
cian and at ten I already pictured myself a doctor and nothing
else. The neurotic tendencies which manifested themselves in
me directed my attention to mental ills. In those days a neu-
rotic was even more hopelessly misunderstood than he is
today. I resolved to adjust myself and make the emotional and
mental adjustment of others my specialty.

Were I not neurotic I would not, for example, possess the

ambition or the energy to write. Medicine would be quite

enough; I'd be satisfied. But seeing life differently from others,
I am impelled to try to make them see it as I do. And whereas
writing at one time was an escape for surplus energy, it has of

late years become a hobby which I cherish and enjoy beyond

measure.
That's why I say I'm delighted that I am neurotic. Nor is

this an excuse, for I need none. Being neurotic has enriched

my life and given a zest to what otherwise might have been
routine existence. What I did for myself can be done for you!

The neurotic who succeeds is undoubtedly far happier than

the nonneurotic. At least he scales the heights where the view
is broad and clear and the air rare, pure and piquant. He may
stumble and fall and scrape his shins as he strives to climb.

But for all that he breathes more quickly, his blood races
faster and the vitality and flow and sparkle of sheer living are

in him.
When we're neurotic there is unrest inside us. Yet this un-

rest is merely the sign that we are gaited for better things; that
•12-
 I'm a Neurotic Myself and Delighted

we have not as yet found ourselves. The neurotic must learn

to respect his condition; to understand must cease be-
it. lie

ing ashamed and afraid. Knowledge of what is ailing him is

all that is necessary. For knowledge begets power, and power,

courage. The rest is easy.

13
Chapter II

TO BE NORMAL IS NOTHING TO BRAG ABOUT

XAMINATION OF DRAFTEES IN THE FIRST

E World War first shocked the country
into the realization that the average mental age of the cream
of our young manhood was appallingly low. To be exact, the
average mental age was. 13.08 years, and Selective Service
records of the Second World War indicate that we have
absolutely no reason to feel that the average has improved
significantly in the past twenty-five years. These were men in
the prime of life, mind you; and the frankly feeble-minded,
the insane or the psychopathic are not included in the figures.
'The draft," comments Yerkes, 1 "is approximately a represent-
ative group which is presumably, however, a little lower in
intelligence than is the country at large."
A little lower? So this is normal!
But let us not be shocked too soon. Perhaps, despite intel-

lectual shortcomings, normal people are a decent lot after all.

Let us overlook the fact that over four and a quarter million
of them can neither read nor write. Let us inquire how they
behave. Let us see what sort of emotional make-up is hitched
to their intelligence, such as it is.

At the height of the war against Germany and Japan, de-

spite the fact that transportation was restricted and many race
1 "Psychological Examining in the United States Army" by Robert M.
Yerkes (National Academy of Science, 1921).

•14-
 To Be Normal Is Nothing to Brag About

tracks were shut down, the betting public, during the season

of 1945, wagered many more millions of dollars on horse

racing than ever before in the nation's history. Walter Win-
chell once made a remark over the radio to the effect that wise

money was getting out of the stock market, and the next day
so many frantic "investors" rushed in to sell out on the
strength of his "tip" that the market took a sudden dive.
Throughout the war "normal" citizens killed and injured far

more people with their automobiles than the enemy was able
to do with guns and bullets.
Even during these desperate times, murders, divorce cases,
paternity suits and irregular love affairs of movie celebrities
won front-page space in competition with news of battles that
were changing the course of history. The appetite of the
normal reading public for the juiciest details was fully as in-

satiable as during the cause celebre, the trial of Bruno Haupt-

mann for the Lindbergh baby kidnaping. Since the motiva-
tions of "normal" human conduct do not change (witness
the spectacle of women flocking around a glamorous seducer
outside the courtroom begging for his autograph), it is in-

some day another trial as spectacular as that of

evitable that
Hauptmann will eat up tons of newsprint and spark the same
kind of mass hysteria. Let me, then, quote the editorial com-
ment of the Forum onx
the Hauptmann trial:

It marks the low-water level of decency in America. On Sundays

sightseers swarmed through the courtroom. On week days the
Sheriff had requests for 5,000 seats. The courtroom was packed
with rouged flappers, ex-pugilists, society queens and other curi-
osity seekers who often created disorder with their talk and laugh-

1 The Forum, March, 1935.

- -15-
To Be Normal Is Nothing to Brag About
ing and had to be rebuked by the judge. An actress declared the
show 'good theater." These spectators seemed to forget that this
was no theatrical performance but a trial for murder growing out
of a dastardly crime. Outside the courtroom the trial was commer-
cialized to the verge of indecency. Replicas of the ladder intro-
duced as evidence were hawked as souvenirs. Restaurants served
"Hauptmann Beans/' ^^Jafsie Chops/' "Lindbergh Steaks."

If this be not enough, pick up any newspaper any day and

observe the antics of the normals for yourself. See how they
disport themselves. Without the slightest trouble you can
find juicy morsels on infidelity, divorce, crime, graft and
sundry other subjects that surely would make a visitor from
Mars regret his curiosity.

Do you wonder why I say that to be normal is nothing to

brag about?
The times are out of joint? I agree. But who knocked them
out of joint? Besides, are these the first signs of demoraliza-

tion in history? Can you name an era— start with the

Egyptians or the Mayans, if you like— that essentially was dif-

ferent? Inflation was a desperate problem in ancient Athens.

The Romans had food riots and demagogues who reduced

the rich to rags in order to "share the wealth." Privation, un-
employment, the certainty that civilization is at an end, have
recurrently plagued not only our own country but any other
you can mention. The crossbow was a weapon so horrible
that "another war would end civilization"; next, gunpowder
was so make wars unthinkable; today we have
frightful as to

the atomic bomb. Normal people are always getting them-

selves into frightful troubles and then advancing to worse
ones.

•16-
 To Be Normal Is Nothing to Brag About
Society disports itself the way it docs because of the char-
acter of the human beings that make up that society. The
intellectual status is a big factor, the emotional bigger still.

The great, great majority of the people who make a nation,

who make a world, are normal— don't forget that— even if it

be a low normal, just about missing moronity or falling upon

the bottom levels of adolescence.
A person's 10 or intelligence quotient is obtained by divid-
ing his mental age by his chronological age. It is a rough but
useful measurement of how smart people are. An 10 of 100,
you possibly think, must be perfect— something to brag about.
But what does the figure mean? Simply that the owner has
mental endowment equal to the average of his group over the
entire country. A normal IQ of 100 is little to be proud of, for

there are as many people rising above that figure as there are
people who fall below it. A vast amount of the nation's work
is done by people with IQ's well below 100. The great ma-
jority of these people act and are considered to be perfectly
normal. To be a high-grade moron is not by any means to be
incapable of earning a living in unstressful ways. But what a
standard of normality to aim at!

Among those responsible for making this dog of a world

wag its tail the way it does there are undoubtedly neurotics
to be found. Nevertheless, the neurotic is a thinker even if he
cannot lay claim to grammar-school graduation. Indeed, the
neurotic may never have done well in any school or college
because his thinking was different, because he could not be a
square peg squeezed into a standardized round hole. Nor does
the neurotic feel the way others do. Essentially he is neither

•17-
To Be Normal Is Nothing to Brag About

coarse nor common nor brutal. Unfortunately, and because

of an imitative tendency he often possesses, the neurotic may
copy the very worst traits of the normal and do everything in
his power to behave like them. Such variations of type, how-
ever, constitute the proverbial exceptions that prove the rule.

Neurotics are constantly being blamed for being book-

worms, for theorizing too much, for impracticality, for

Utopian ideas, for wanting to reform the world. They are

also accused of being too soft, too sensitive, too conscientious,

too sentimental, too irresolute. If the neurotic is concerned

with one problem more than any other, it is morality. Con-
tinually is he inhibited and restrained. Combinations of such
traits, however, do not give rise to brutality, dishonesty, de-
pravity and murder. They form a composite quite distinct,

qualitatively speaking, from the concept of normal. The influ-

ence of the neurotic is intrinsically refining and elevating.

Be glad you're neurotic, for to be normal is nothing to brag

about!
To be normal is, of course, to be average. Average charac-

teristics are obtained by finding the mean of all the character-

istics of all the people and calling this typical. Despite the

millions of neurotics already existing— and they are increasing

by leaps and bounds— the normals still outnumber them pre-

ponderatingly. The Century Dictionary defines normal as

"conforming with a certain type or standard; regular; natural."
Normal and average, psychologically considered, are identical
terms of classification. To attempt to differentiate would be
nothing short of quibbling, a mere exercise in sophistry.
Don't take my word for the downright mediocre charac-
•18-
 To Be Normal Is Nothing to Brag About
teristics of the normal and average. Consider this survey by
1
R. L. Duff us. Mr. Average, he says, is:

A person who is married; has two and three-tenths children;

commands an income of about $1,200 a year; owns and drives, on
behalf of his family, about five-sixths of a motor vehicle; has eight-
fifteenths of a radio set; goes to a motion picture theatre every
eight or nine days; smokes two and a half cigarettes a day (or ten
cigarettes if he can keep them away from his wife and children);
and, if he is over the age of thirteen, has half a membership in
some religious denomination. . . . We might find the average
man reading a newspaper, for the nation's circulations are large
enough to give every family one and a fraction copies every day.
But he and his average family would buy a book only once in two
years and draw a book from a public library no oftener. He is not
a learned man. What average man ever is? Probably, however, he
is better informed than any other average man in any country in

the world or at any period in history. At least he knows current

catch words.

You are correct, Mr. Duffus, but one shudders to think

what Mr. Average of days gone by must have been.
Let us note the stress laidupon creature comforts— auto-
mobile, radio set, motion pictures, cigarettes. Nothing said
about honesty, honor, charity, justice, love, aesthetic sense or

being kind to dumb animals. We must credit Mr. Average,

however, with carrying "half a membership in some religious
denomination." Does this mean that his spiritual urge is

strong? Considering the materialism that is rampant it is

1 "Trailing the Elusive American/' by R. L. Duffus, Magazine Section,

New York Times, Oct. 28, 1934. Mr. Duffus adds: "The term 'average man'
has a meaning in common speech even if it will not yield to mathematical
analysis. Usage justifies us in speaking of the average American when we
. . .

really mean the representative or typical American. . . . One feels that the
average man actually exists."

•19-
To Be Normal Is Nothing to Brag About

laughable to mention the possibility. Nine times out of ten

Mr. Average goes to church because of a hangover from child-
hood, a habit bred of fear and the opinion of the neighbors;
the net result little more than "lip service."

As for being better informed than any other average man

in any other country, what, I ask, is he informed about?
Mighty little beyond the sordid stuff already mentioned that
appears in the daily press and is significantly labeled "current

events/' Precious few books, of course, although "at least, he

knows current catch words." Listen to the conversation of
the average man, and the average woman for that matter, and
observe how elegant and virile his speech really is. Aside from
ignorance of, and downright laziness in the use of, his own
language, Mr. Average scarcely knows his own job thoroughly,
whether he be grocer, salesman or plumber. If he happens to
be expert in his work he tries to take advantage of you when
you hire him, delivers inferior materials or workmanship not
bargained for, loafs on the job, deceives you in so many ways
that in the end you are sorry you ever started.
If you think this is exaggeration, watch closely what hap-
pens when you send your automobile to the repair shop, place

an order with a department store or simply have your radio

tubes tested. Ask the average man if he thinks it pays to be
honest.
Observe a group of workers in protected occupations— that
is, civic employees who are practically guaranteed against dis-

missal by tenure or civil service laws, municipal employees,

surplus government workers who attach themselves to a se-

cure payroll and hang on for dear life. Do such people, in

general, impress you as being on their toes, eager to please
•20-
 To Be Normal Is Nothing to Brag About
and serve the public, always trying to give the best they have?
Write your own answer. The average man— and he's perfectly
normal, mind you— is more than willing, he is desperately
eager, to sell out for "security." Any kind of pay check is wel-
comed, no matter how small, so long as its regularity is guar-
anteed, whether he continually delivers the goods or not. The
average work effort of normal people is so low that a very
little extra push easily puts you above it.

The moral life of Mr. Average? The answer is "necking"

before marriage; frequently philandering afterward. We read
about the doings, say, of the sixteenth and seventeenth cen-
turies in such phenomenally popular novels as Forever Amber.
We think how licentious they must have been. Is it not true,
though, that in the olden days they added at least a bit of
finesse? Are normal people of our times so much better?
Venereal disease rates, accelerated by the war, have jumped
to an alarming degree in practically every city of the country,
ranging from 20 to 40 per cent and even higher. "Victory
girls" have added to the dictionaries a new term for easy per-
suasion. Divorce rates among the war-married are zooming;
in at least one city, Los Angeles, the rate is rapidly becoming
close to one divorce to one marriage! Can the normal people
of our time look down their noses upon the roisterers of

Forever Amber?
Practically nothing has been said so far about Mrs. Average
and her children, except the intimation that she might steal

her husband's cigarettes.

I wish I could picture the average female of the species
as a finer specimen of humanity, but it can't be done. As a
rule, she has a keen eye to the main chance, shows practically
•21-
To Be Normal Is Nothing to Brag About

no interest in her job beyond the pay check, is conceited when

pretty and attempts to capitalize it, becomes overbearing and
snobbish when a man is in the offing, lords it over her friends
when she marries, is gossipy and cattish, prevaricates when
cornered, spends her time talking men and clothes, believes

all the flattering bosh the opposite sex bestows upon her, often
behaves shockingly in public, is definitely "trivialized,"

scarcely knows how to cook or sew and often brings up her

children abominably. As for her knowledge of sex and love,
two factors in her life one might expect her to be superior in,

the divorce courts tell the story.

Should you meet Mr., Mrs. or Miss Average on the street,

vou would not be struck by the characteristics of downright

mediocrity I have listed. You might talk to one of these for

an hour and not find out. That's because all normals wear
a mask, a false face, and it's mighty deceptive. They put on
this false face when they meet you because they realize how
to please, to harmonize with the majority, to conform, to fit

in, to make a hit, to "belong." When you consider the social

conventions normals conform to so skilfully, you realize their

masks are as like as peas in a pod. But can you trust this game
of pretense? Recall Eugene O'NehTs first play with masks,

The Great God Brown.

The neurotic, on the other hand, neither fits in nor can

he wear the conventional mask no matter how hard he tries.

He is so essentially different from the average, from the con-

cept of normal, that often you actually can pick him out in

the street. Forever is he worrying because he is not like every-

bodv else. If only he knew! If only he'd discover that he should
•22-
 To Be Normal Is Nothing to Brag About
be glad he's neurotic since to be normal is nothing to brag
about.
A lad of twelve was brought to a psychiatrist many years
ago because he was flunking in school, refused to play base-
ball and preferred to fiddle. If ever there was a neurotic he
was one. Today he is one of the leading violin virtuosos of the
world.
A playwright became despondent because he could not
place his scripts. "Be satisfied to write popular stuff like the
rest," they told him. "Give the public what it wants." But he
couldn't do that and attacks of despondency would over-
whelm him. Finally he was persuaded to consult a psychi-
atrist. "Keep on being different," he advised. "Be glad you
aren't like the rest, with an eye to the box office. In the end
you certainly will be acclaimed." At present he is on the top
rung of the artistic ladder with a large bankroll to boot.
A woman who was desperately discouraged consulted a
psychiatrist. The urge for a career was strong, but she was
married and compelled to support an invalid husband. As if

this was not enough, there were children. "Don't give in,

don't change, no matter what happens," he warned. "Don't

be ashamed that the routine of wifehood and motherhood
Be proud you're
irks. neurotic. You may endure a lot, but in
the end-!"
If I divulged her name— as well as the names of the other
two mentioned— you'd recognize it at once. She, too,
triumphed, and as one of the most famous and successful
women of America.

Just sticking it out, just persisting, just refusing to conform

did all that for these and scores of other neurotics I could
•23-
To Be Normal Is Nothing to Brag About
mention. Incidentally, these particular three didn't even
bother to remove their disturbing neurotic traits. They used
them as a spur, a whip, to force themselves forward, to boost
themselves over the top into fields of clover, where the others
—the normal and average lagging behind— may behold them
from afar and applaud. These individuals at one time were
not glad to be neurotic. But ask them now!
The normal, the average, is surely nothing to brag about.
It's little more than ditchdigger stuff. There is no originality

to it, no sparkle, no flare. Cling, therefore, to any slightest

deviation from the normal you may possess. Goodness knows
what you yet may be able to do with it. Remember that you
are not going to succeed or be talked about, or even be noticed,
because of the ways in which you are like others, but only
because of the ways in which you are different.
Do everything that is expected of you: Be a model son or
daughter; get A's in college; marry to please you grandmother;
punch the time clock without fail; own your own home; save
for a rainy day; be prompt at meals and don't forget your
roughage and vitamins; display civic pride; join the Lions or
Rotary; budget your income; carry life insurance; and you may
be sure all the relatives will be present at your funeral.
But nobody else will. Why? Because you're a nobody!
They'll drop you into the ground together with your virtues
"unwept, unhonored and unsung," except for the paid obitu-
ary notice in your local paper and the printed sermon deliv-

ered by your local preacher.

No one yet knows what gangster names will take the place

of those of Al Capone, Legs Diamond, Dillinger, Baby Face

Nelson, Dutch Schultz and their ilk. But you can be sure that
•24-
 To Be Normal Is Nothing to Brag About
the new crop of desperadoes will be followed breathlessly by
the normal reading public in newspaper headlines. Have you
ever wondered why the crimes of such gangsters and racketeers
are followed so eagerly by people who are normal, respectable
citizens? Why should the public at large be interested in such
psychopaths? 1
Because deep down we harbor a secret admira-
tion for anybody who is what he is no matter what, even if he
is a criminal. Don't forget that it's the individual differences
that make all famous as well as infamous personalities stand
out above the common herd.
One of the supposed advantages of being normal is to
profit by experience. Consider the Second World War. Did
Germany profit by experience in the First World War? Did
Italy? Did the rest of Europe? Look upon the unparalleled
desolation and destruction wreaked upon the Continent and
you begin to wonder how much nations of normal people
really learn by experience. We have often heard that the
market crash of 1929 and the subsequent depression were
1 A psychopath is an individual suffering from emotional inadequacy (not
instability), which is present from birth (like mental defect), and is incurable.
He an individual upon whom an ordinary stimulus produces an unusual and
is

extraordinary effect, hence he does not respond to love, sentiment, pity, etc.,
as do either normals or neurotics. Emotionally he may be as "cold as steel,"
or may experience feeling in no more definite a manner than does the normal
in regard to the earth being round. But the psychopath is not a psychotic
although he may develop a psychosis. Nor does he suffer a genuine mental
defect in the sense of being feeble-minded. Intellectual development may even
be above average with emotional development, comparatively speaking, nil.
A large percentage of our criminal population, especially those who commit
atrocious murders with planfulness and cunning, are psychopaths. Unfortu-
nately, the courts are woefully behind science in not, as yet, accepting the
psychopath diagnosis. They confuse psychopaths with psychotics; if their
intellectual development be low, with the feeble-minded; and sometimes they
confuse the personality deviations of these individuals even with neurotic
states. Separate institutions should be provided for psychopathic cases, the
same as for the feeble-minded and for the insane.
•25-
To Be Normal Is Nothing to Brag About

caused at least in part by fantastic stock speculation. Barbers

would stop in the middle of a haircut to read the ticker. Shoe-
shine boys would dash out for the latest extra giving market
reports. Do you really think they won't do it again when they
get money in their fingers? Do you really believe that security

regulations, desirable though they be, are going to protect

normal people against making fools of themselves? Do you
think the war-debt fiascos of the 1930's, when we became
Uncle Shylock to the world, can never be repeated because
nations of normal people have learned deep lessons from
experience?
These are neat examples of what happens in this world of
normals. That's the sort of mess these minds that you, as a
neurotic, envy, get themselves into.
To be sure, I realize full well that I have placed the empha-
sis on the good points of the neurotic and on the bad points
of the normal. I know, too, that worse neurotics exist as well

as better normals. I am not trying to prove, or even suggest,

that praiseworthy traits are characteristic of neurotics only,
nor that normals are thoroughly bad, through and through.
Neurotics exist who can be common, sordid and immoral;
normals exist who, living on a higher psychological level (by

no means characteristic of the majority), display intelligence,

behavior and culture that is inimitable.

Neither of the classes just mentioned, however, is the rule.

It has been necessary for me to ride the normals hard because

you, as a neurotic, are not likely to appreciate what the aver-

age normal really is; what kind of make-up this normal, whom
you would imitate, usually possesses.

•26-
 To Be Normal Is Nothing to Brag About
What I desire particularly to stress is your differences. I

want to talk particularly to you as an individual.

Your early childhood training and education were designed
to fit you in, to make you dovetail with reality as it is, to make
you normal. In doing so your individuality was crushed; virile
dynamic traits were repressed; your inherent capacities were
throttled or else leveled and formalized until you emerged
from your childhood a standardized, average and therefore
mediocre product. That is, let me hasten to add, if you were
normal.
Do you suppose we Americans would be so clever fashion-
ing standardized products (furniture, autos, radios, clothes,
shoes, breakfast foods and whatnot) if our minds— the non-
neurotic, average, majority minds— were not gaited in that
standardized manner to begin with? It is the collective mind
that counts and the collective mind is normal.
Are we where we ought to be in the creative arts? Consider
our literature, drama, movies, painting, sculpture, music and
radio programs. The play Men against the Sea, acclaimed as
an outstanding artistic work, was pulled off the boards after
a few performances to scanty audiences, but Tobacco Road
ran for six years and will probably be revived to the end of time.
Complaints are leveled against mediocre B pictures, but the
movie-makers keep on producing them because the box office

indisputably proves that the public wants them. Think of the

illustrations in the tabloids and the "X marks the spot" pic-

tures verging upon, if not transcending, the gruesome. Observe

the bargain-counter conduct of shoppers and the "me first"

attitudes of people when something as scarce as nylon stock-

ings goes on sale. Watch how people jostle and elbow during
•27-
To Be Normal Is Nothing to Brag About

subway rush hours. What has happened to culture and refine-

ment, to decency and proper restraint, to ladies and gentle-
men, to chivalry?
What this country needs is not more normals— not even the
exceptionally fine ones— but more neurotics; neurotics who are
glad of it; neurotics who have the courage to stress their in-
dividuality and sensitiveness and make it outstanding and
telling.

Mass production, mass education, mass anything is all right

so far as it goes, but it scarcely makes the corner. Don't tell
me that a chair, shoes, a suit of clothes or a dress fashioned
by hand, with the mark of solicitude of the craftsman indubi-
tably stamped upon it, is no better than the millions turned
out each year by factory machinery. Don't tell me that mod-
ern college systems by which thousands receive degrees at each
commencement do not turn out far too many educated in-

competents with mental indigestion. Don't tell me that fitting

a child to a mass-conditioned curriculum instead of a curricu-
lum to the special requirements of the child, making marks
instead of mental and emotional development the goal, won't
crush the embryo abilities a developing child may possess and
level him down instead of up.
In the last analysis, the responsibility for this normal jumble
of men and things can be charged to the schools. After all,

what can be expected of parents when their offspring are

looked upon as accidents, when they have practically no con-

ception of, and still less preparation for, fatherhood and
motherhood and when, if they have brains, they devote them
in excessive ways to bridge? Ignorance always is a basic evil.
If education generally would only stop looking upon the
•28-
 To Be Normal Is Nothing to Brag About
'

newer concepts embodied in 'progressive education" as a fad,

there might be hope for the normals fifty years hence. If
teachers would only respect their work, appreciate its im-
portance, take a lively interest in it and consider it something
more than a meal ticket!
There is something almost sinister in the fact that the insti-

tutions that train teachers are called Normal Schools. Here the
word normal is used with a vengeance! We do expect our
teachers to be normal in that the training they give our young-
sters represents the best current standards of knowledge. Yet,
actually, what is the case? It takes at least a generation for the
truths developed by leaders in education to percolate down to
the training level of teachers. Young teachers are taught by
older teachers who, for the most part, impart ideas that were
fixed during the days of their own training. For one example,
leading grammarians are withdrawing from old ideas of sen-
tence parsing, sterile rules, rigid standards of correctness and
incorrectness based upon immutable authority. These leaders
recognize that ours is a living, vital language constantly under-
going change, and that "correct" standards of tomorrow are
not imposed by teachers from within but by users of the
language from without. Yet children are still taught authori-
tarian notions of speech that are losing validity, and resistance

to change— it's normal!— is bitter and intense.

Money, pure and simple, is the god of the average normal.
Lesser gods are bluff, show and fake, all members of the same
club. Get the money! is the slogan. Make good in that, never
mind how!
If you marry for money and forget love, you're "pretty
smart." If you trick your competitor, even ruin him and drive
•29-
To Be Normal Is Nothing to Brag About
him to suicide, ''business is business" is the alibi offered.
Everything is justifiable provided you make a profit. There
was a time when to be caught grafting was the unpardonable
sin. Nowadays, not even that matters. What, after all, are a
few years in Sing Sing with conditions so pleasant there and
the parole board so active? Make money the way normals do
and you're O.K. "To get away with it" makes it right. Every-
body knows that a good press agent and a clever lawyer will
carry you farther than a dozen college degrees.
Yet these normals actually believe they are the superior
ones!
In substantiation normals claim the neurotics are queer,
possibly a "bit cracked." But these normals take to golf for
exercise and recreation, then they play 36 holes and bet on the
game. They take a cruise for a much-needed rest, then dance,
drink and keep ungodly hours the entire voyage. They wear
furs and felt hats in summer and straws in winter. They build
hotel roofs to represent an ocean liner and remodel their
ships to look like hotels.
Then the normals criticize the neurotics for being too emo-
tional. Yet it's normal forever to be seeking excitement and
new thrills, to get worked up reading pornographic literature,

to tell smutty jokes, to get soused at parties and stimulate the

sex appetite to the point of bursting, to chase after an ambu-
lance or fire engine, to gloat over bankruptcies, to keep up
with the Joneses, to become aroused over a rape, an electrocu-
tion or a brutal wrestling match, to work until you drop. If

this is not overindulgence of the emotions and in absolutely

wasteful ways, then this dog of a world of ours accomplishes
something when it chases its own tail.

•30-
 To Be Normal Is Nothing to Brag About
These supposedly well-balanced individuals do not even
cooperate when a campaign is launched for their own good,
such as to immunize children against diphtheria, to maintain
sanitary barber shops, to cut down auto accidents or to pre-
serve the parks.
Lastly, let the car, subway, magazine and newspaper adver-
tisements tell their story. What do they deal with? B.O.,
dandruff, sick scalp, hair removers, pyorrhea, halitosis, ex-
cessive perspiration, itching skin, rashes, ringworms, women's
hygiene, menstrual difficulties, sanitary napkins, sprays,
douches, mucus in the nose and throat and indigestion. To be
sure, it's the direct personal appeal that is sought!
Neurotics can be vulgar and they may make asses of them-
selves. Particularly in the worship of Bacchus can they go the
limit. Nevertheless, it must be maintained that when the neu-
rotic turns to alcohol, takes to drugs or otherwise "out-herods

Herod," his exaggeration of behavior is an escape, a faulty

adjustment of some kind, which is motivated by neurosis, in
such cases a severe one. In other words, the normal misbehaves
because the average reaction is like that and it comes natural
to him. The neurotic misbehaves because he is sick.

Here the words of Joseph Hergesheimer seem fitting. "Nor-

mal people," he says, "are almost invariably without minds or
imagination. In the main they are extremely stupid. They are,

frequently, widely esteemed and often occupy places of power,

grow rich, but they have never produced an elevated written
line."

Yes, the normals are distinctly "down-to-the-ground peo-

ple." When neurotics nose in the dirt they were not born

•31-
To Be Normal Is Nothing to Brag About

that way; they came to it through illness. The neurotic justi-

fiably can offer many excuses; the normal none.

No, to be normal is nothing to brag about! When I study
normals and compare them with neurotics wonder some-
I

times whether to be normal is not something to be ashamed

about.
I realize full how heavy the burden of neurosis can be,
well
how utterly devastating when it grips you firmly. But remem-
ber that nothing is acquired in this life for nothing. If your
possessions are better than your neighbors', you have paid for
them. When your superiority concerns your mind and your
emotions, you also have paid.
What of it, anyway, if you can rid yourself of disturbing

neurotic traits while at the same time keeping the valuable

ones?
It can be done!

32
Chapter III

YOU HATE YOURSELF. NO WONDER!

PERHAPS YOU THINK MY APPRAISAL OF THE

somewhat unfair. Have they
normals is

not, however, got it coming to them? Not so much because

they are what I accuse them of being, but because usually they
are so obtuse, cocky, inconsiderate, even cruel, when it comes
to their appraisal of neurotics.
To what degree the talk and opinion of certain normals are
responsible for making you, my reader, self-accusatory about
your own particular neurotic state, I am not prepared to say.

What I do know is that even if you lived on a desert island,

you still would hate yourself.

No wonder! Aside from the criticisms your family, your

friends and your associates heap upon you, you yourself are
your own fiercest accuser.

First of all you find yourself outrageously self-centered.

It would seem as though the hub of the universe passed

directly through the center of your body. Or shall we locate
it more definitely by placing the axis in the region of the solar

plexus, where the ancients believed the soul resided?

At any rate, you find it exceedingly difficult to interest your-
self in your work, in some duty, even in pleasure. Those
around you seem to have a plan of life, somehow they man-
age to get up after the alarm goes off, eat their meals, rush to
the office or factory and keep a date in the evening. Not you.
•33-
You Hate Yourself. No Wonder!
You cannot concentrate, there is no interest in anything, not

even sex, and if you can afford it you have discovered that a
trip abroad left you as indifferent as before. To you the
world would seem to have been made for other people. De-
spite the hardships you know they undergo, you hear them
laughing occasionally and you wonder how it can be done.
You are all mixed up.
What you are trying to do is put some order into your
thinking, straighten out confused ideas, harmonize conflicting
feelings. But you cannot, somehow, get outside yourself, study

yourself with a calm and cool perspective. You are like a per-

son living in a glass ball. You see others in their glass balls but
you cannot escape from your own prison to study yourself as

you do them.
Forever are you self-conscious and oversensitive.
You respond to what is heard and said in your presence, or
to what occurs in your immediate environment at any particular
time, as though it were all deliberately meant for you. Some-
times you even blush. While sitting at the dinner table, your
niece or nephew giggles, you look up to see whether he is
laughing at you. Walking along a busy street you pass a group
in conversation and you say to yourself: "I hope they won't
notice me." You go to church, the minister preaches about
the evils of alcohol and you wonder whether you will ever be-
come a drunkard. You realize that this self-conscious attitude

is nonsense. You are convinced oversensitiveness is ridiculous.

But it's no use. You seem unable to change.

You find, also, that you are suggestible. If someone tells you
that you do not look well, you actually feel sick. If an illness
is discussed, you wonder whether you have it.

.34.
 You Hate Yourself. No Wonder!
Your reasoning and logic fail you miserably.
You think this; you resolve that. You make excuses for your-
self, then realize it's an alibi and feel ashamed. You find it

utterly impossible to extricate yourself from the muddle of

ideas that pounds inside your brain. You can't escape your
own thoughts. You feel weak, you suffer a sinking sensation at
the pit of the stomach, your heart thumps, your legs cave in,

the throat is dry and hurts, the tendons in the neck are tight,
your head aches, you feel dizzy. In other words, your emotions
keep you self-centered. You are forever stewing in your own
juice.

In the end you become discouraged and disgusted. You

sleep late, smoke too much or drink yourself into forgetful-
ness. Depression grips you, too; agonizing fits of the blues.

"Who is to blame?" you cry. "J, J, J, IF you yell back at your-

self.

You may hate yourself to such an extent that you cry. I have
seen six-footers with the muscles of an Ajax cry like babies.
Everything seemed so hopeless to them. Such a man, an army
officer at that, once said to a psychiatrist: "I want the truth,
Doctor, the whole truth. I've got it coming to me. But please
go easy at first. I can bawl others out with a relish but my own
feelings are as sensitive as a boil."

Self-pity, to be sure, may assail the neurotic instead of self-

hate. That is when upon being misunderstood,

stress is laid

when he feels utterly alone, that nobody sympathizes with, or

loves him. To feel sorry for oneself is more undermining than
being rip-roaring mad at one's own ineptitudes. That's because

there is no fight in self-pity. It's a flabby state in which the

individual is willing to give up, to allow the world to steam-

•35-
You Hate Yourself. No Wonder!
roller him. "Am I so awful, after all?" he asks himself. "I must
have a few good traits, like all human beings. In fact, I know
I have. But nobody else seems to think so!" Although self-pity

is a bad sign it is by no means a hopeless one. Even self-pity

victims can be made to agree, after cure, that being neurotic

is advantageous.
The opposite of the self-pity neurotic is the self-sufficient
one.
Such a person, male or female, is mighty touchy about be-
ing placed under obligation to anybody. He won't accept gifts,

the loan of a ten-spot, a free pass to the theater, a lift in a car

or a job, if he hasn't secured it through his own efforts. He,

too, lives in a world of his own, in a detached, shut-in fashion
that nothing can penetrate, not even love of the opposite sex
or the slavery of a devoted mother. Such independent persons,
naturally, are not happy. Indeed, their apparent self-sufficiency

is merely a pretense set up to hide inner yearnings for de-

pendence. Usually, they don't realize the truth until a psychia-
trist proves it to them. Then they, too, are glad. When they
finally thaw out they bask in the warmth of human affection
like a purring kitten in the sunshine of spring.
Another reason you hate yourself is that you indulge in too
much phantasizingl
In other words, you daydream, you build air castles, you
are full of good intentions, you dwell upon what might have
been or what may happen in the future. All this divorces you
more and more from reality, from persons, events and things
as they are.

You, yourself, sense that.

You tell yourself you should be up and doing, getting a

•36-
 You Hate Yourself. No Wonder 1

job, sitting in your employer's office ehair instead of looking

up at his window from across the street. In the end you hate
not only yourself but other men and events as well. You be-
come unduly aroused over an editorial or a news item. Pomp
and circumstance, such as that attending an opening night of
the Metropolitan Opera with its top hats and mink coats, may
move you to write a letter of protest. You fume because the
public parks are littered by careless citizens. You get hot under

the collar over the slow advance of world fellowship or what-

not. You develop mistrust and envy and you curse everything,
whatever it may be.

What you really are doing is behaving like an infant!

Medical psychologists have a name for it. They call it an
infantile fixation. Although your brain, so far as its intellectual

faculties are concerned, has developed apace, your emotions

have lagged behind.
A baby, you must have observed, knows no other way of

registering protest than to cry. Its cry brings results because

somebody comes to its aid. You, too, when you protest, would
like that to happen. No one, however, runs to you. The world
is too hard-boiled for that. The best it does is give you advice,
and mighty poor advice at that. And so you feel utterly help-
less, not knowing which way to turn. Being honest enough to

realize all this— your intellectual make-up taking good care to

point out— you call yourself names but actually do precious

it

little in the way of self-help.

Doubt and uncertainty are the irritations that make you

despise yourself, both leading to vacillation and procrastina-
tion.

Seldom do you seem to be able to make up your own mind.

•37-
You Hate Yourself. No Wonder!
"Should I or should I not?" becomes a bugaboo that continu-
ally casts its shadow upon your thinking muddy and to
to
confuse it. Often, as the saying goes, you don't know whether
you're coming or going. Irresolution continually stops you in

your tracks. You keep stalling. So far as your progress is con-

cerned, you seem to be standing on your own foot.

As a result of these "ifs" and "buts" you find your evalua-

tion of persons and circumstances to be untrustworthy. You
place emphasis where it does not belong or, contrariwise, you
underemphasize the important.
Exaggeration of trifles follows.
You make an awful fuss over occurrences that really do not
matter. You keep pondering over them, first from this angle,
then from that. The discourtesy of a bus driver, for example,
may influence you for a whole day. Mole hills become moun-
tains. The insignificant assumes enormous proportions. Yet all

the while you note your own reactions and you hate yourself.
Conviction of failure likewise haunts you.
You consider the achievements of your friends, of your
schoolmates, perhaps of your brothers and sisters. In compari-
son you feel you are trailing far behind. No matter how excel-

lent your record already is, no matter whether your income is

great or small, you persist in thinking that it's no use trying

because you are done for.

Another way of looking at your problem is to say that you

are too introverted. By that is meant a turning of the emotions
inward instead of outward.
Emotions, you see, must be expressed, turned loose, some-
times let run wild. They should be projected toward some-
thing. Otherwise— and that's you, again— they keep you steam-
•38-
 You Hate Yourself. No Wonder!
ing and boiling; they weaken you; they wear you down to skin
and bone.
Introverts, to be sure, are the creative artists of pen, brush
or clay, the inventors, the philosophers, the research workers,
the people who fashion the new and the startling. We owe
almost everything that is cultural and genuinely civilized to

the introverts. You, as an introvert, should be glad that you

belong to so celestial a company.
On the other hand, too much of anything, no matter how
good, is no good. That is your difficulty. Were you, say, 50
per cent introverted and 50 per cent extroverted, you would
at least buck the world and You would not merely
fight it.

protest and seek refuge in tears or anger. You would not hate
yourself. You would be glad because you would realize how

precious your inner speculations and flights of fancy are be-

cause you would have learned that they can be made effective

(extroverted, turned outward) to the point of bringing you

success, wealth and fame.
Again and again, when I suggest to a neurotic that what he
needs is scientific introspection, he retorts that introspection

is precisely what got him into such a muddle.

Two kinds of introspection exist, however. One is scientific
and the other is no introspection at all. "Know Thyself/' said
Socrates. He didn't mean thinking about your faults, worries
and whatnots until the brain aches. That's a kind of running
around in circles. What he meant was to break into and
through this superficial thinking to the deeper reaches of the
mind, where our real assets as well as handicaps lie. Were
Socrates living today he might say: "Don't delude yourself

.39.
You Hate Yourself. No Wonder!
with plausible excuses instead of real, fundamental reasons.
Call a spade a spade and do it unflinchingly."
A lady of forty-one kept thinking and thinking. Finally she
decided to go to the park, where she believed she could think
more clearly. Her problem was whether or not to invite a
chorus girl to the house for dinner, a person whom she had
discovered her only son had been courting for about a year.
"Quiet introspection is what I need," she concluded.
The lady did "introspect" until night arrived and a police-
man asked her if she was ill. Nor was she any nearer the solu-
tion of her problem than she had been during the afternoon.
Merely thinking did no good. Nor was her way of thinking
introspection.
What did she accomplish by trying to make up her mind
whether the girl in question was "good enough" for her son?
Her labor was a sheer waste of time. This is understandable
when one realizes that all her thinking was conscious, there-
fore shallow thinking, that sidetracked the truth as to why she
bore the girl an antagonism.
This mother did not dislike the girl because she was in the
chorus, or because she was poor and her son rich, or because
she thought the girl a gold digger. She was in a quandary be-
cause in her inner self— in her unconscious mind, if you will-
there lurked a son complex that selfishly wanted to keep her
child for herself alone. Had her unconscious, instinctive de-
sires had their way she would not have allowed her son to go

with any girl, irrespective of her social standing. True, honest,

penetrating introspection would have discovered this truth

about herself. As it happened, a psychiatrist had to do it for

her.

•40-
 You Hate Yourself. No Wonder!
Thus you may be puzzled over yourself because you are
not thoroughly honest with yourself.
Often, the reason why you are unable to evaluate your own
feelings, desires, resistances and so forth is because you never
have forced all the facts youknow about yourself to the sur-
face and faced them squarely. And often do you suspect that
you haven't. So you hate yourself for not pushing the probe
deeply enough to let out the evil humors of pretense; of trying
to be something that you are not.
In summary, we call this business of not being honest with
yourself and bolstering up your wrong thinking and behavior
with plausible reasons, rationalizing. It's a kind of self-justifi-

cation. What you thus reason out "listens well" but actually
it just "ain't so!"

Then those secret sex thoughts and practices that so many

thousands, often through sheer ignorance, consider sinful!
Nothing contributes more to self-hate than these factors. This
is such an important subject that it will be dealt with sepa-
rately in another chapter.

Lastly, may it not be that you hate yourself because you

really dont want to get well?
Does such a question sound absurd? Consider, however,
that you, yourself, in response to your training and environ-
ment, have made certain adjustments, neurotic and upsetting
though they be. It has taken years to bring these about. Such
adjustments are very private and personal and for that reason
alone you hug them close. No how bad your neurosis
matter
may be, no matter how many symptoms may be harassing
you, you realize that it might have been worse.
Remember, too, that when you get rid of your neurosis you

•41-
You Hate Yourself. No Wonder!
no longer can make excuses for yourself. You will no longer
be able to blame inability to work, to love and be loved, to
marry, to become effective in some one endeavor, upon your
nerves. You will have to get started! Getting started offers so

many possible complications, so many new adjustments, so

many difficulties, that it frightens you.
In short, no matter how much you are suffering, certain ad-
vantages can be discovered in remaining the way you are. One
may be that you achieve a certain importance thereby, despite
the fact that may be the importance of being singled out for
it

derision. You may feel that you are dramatizing yourself.

Such sneaking suspicions on your part contribute in no small
measure to the hatred that you bear yourself.

But getting well and getting started anew will not be so

difficult as you think. After all, the human organism wants to
function normally, the body and mind try naturally and in-

stinctively to be healthy, not sick. Plant ivy on the shady side

of a house and it grows around to the sunny side. Remove the
obstacles that lie in the path of your stream of mental energy,
allow it to follow its natural direction instead of halting it and
forcing it to divide itself up into ineffective trickles, and your
personality soon becomes a power to be reckoned with. You
have everything on your side. Just give nature a chance, that's
all!

Let me emphasize, too, that life is a point of view. It is not

what is that counts but the way we look upon it. As Pirandello
in his plavs has emphasized, reality exists in the mind.
WTiether or not a rainy day gives you the blues depends not
upon the mournful aspect of the world outside but upon your
interpretation of the scene inside your thought processes. If,

•42-
 You Hate Yourself. No Wonder!
for example, you met the "one and only/' whom you still love
deeply, in the rain, the harder it pours the more will it gladden
your heart. What we ourselves contribute to the stimuli that
enter our minds from reality is of the utmost importance.
Not only do I claim that you can change your reactions and
your emotional responses, I am going to try to prove to you
presently that you are not even to blame for being what you
think you are. The fact is you could not help being neurotic.
It was inevitable.
In the meanwhile stop hating yourself. For you and I are
going to do a piece of research— a piece of scientific detective
work, if you will— to see how it happened that you developed
as you did.

I daresay it will surprise you. Such a discovery alone should

make you glad!

43
Chapter IV

YOUR NEUROTIC DEVELOPMENT WAS

INEVITABLE

HEN YOU WERE BORN YOU WERE USHERED

W; into a world far bigger and more power-
ful than yourself. You were physically and mentally helpless

and you became the victim of your environment, whatever it

was.
Chesterton once said that it made such an enormous dif-

ference down which chimney you happened to have been

dropped. Whether you were born into poverty, into middle-
class surroundings, or "with a silver spoon in your mouth" is

not so important as it might seem. Many poor parents bring

up their children far better than do some of the The
rich.

crux of the child-training problem is how much and how in-

telligently the youngster is repressed.
For all children must be repressed. They must be fitted into

this inexorable and set reality that looms ahead. Children are
little animals, adorable little savages. If allowed their own way,
if given too much freedom of self-expression, they become un-
bearable. Society would never tolerate such unrepressed indi-
viduals as adults.
Mothers, fathers, teachers, nurses and guardians recognize
their duty in this respect. As a rule they not only mean well,

they try their best. With the average normal child the job is

not so difficult. Such children give their parents compara-

.44.
 Your Neurotic Development Was Inevitable

tively little trouble. They accept what they hear and they do
what they are told. Parents usually arc very proud of such
children because they arc "so good." They never develop into
neurotics nor do they ever set the world on fire.

The child who is destined to be a neurotic, on the other hand,

is not so easily repressed, or he may be easily held in check

and still think his own way. Either reaction may cause trouble.
Such children rather early in life display an individualism, a

decided difference, that makes them stand out from their

schoolmates and playmates, even from their own brothers and
sisters. They are, essentially, supercharged and hypersensitive.
I do not mean that neurotics-to-be necessarily appear excep-
tional or outstanding in a superior manner. Actually they may
seem dull, shut-in, moody, indifferent and ineffectual. But
something is brewing inside their minds, nevertheless, and it

is not reached by the well-meaning persons who have them in

charge. About all such elders seem to be able to do is scold

and punish, sometimes beg, sometimes bribe, sometimes give
up in despair.

What they do not realize is that the child who later be-

comes neurotic is different, consequently does not fit in, be-

cause he has been born with potentials for development that
are greater than, and unlike, the average. Remember he is not
neurotic at birth, only supercharged and hypersensitive. His
neurotic reactions appear only later.

The surplus energy of the neurotic is emotional in char-

acter. That is why such a neurotic child reacts differently to
what he is told, to the way he is coerced, than do average chil-
dren. Being also more highly sensitized because of this excess
emotion, to be repressed by the administering of an ordinary
.45.
Your Neurotic Development Was Inevitable

reprimand may produce upon him an extraordinary effect. At

the same time, since there aremore dynamics in the neurotic
child, special, personalized and possibly greater repression

must be exerted in the attempt to make him fit in.

But the hit-or-miss methods usually adopted do not bring
about the desired results. It is not because greater repression
was used to train you that the foundation for your neurotic

character was laid, but rather because the repression employed

was not of the understanding variety it should have been; it

was not the special, personalized brand of repression which

your particular emotional make-up required.
To think of your development in terms of instincts may
help also to make you realize that you scarcely could have
avoided becoming neurotic.
Our four chief instincts are the nutrition, the self-preserva-
tion, the reproduction and the ego instincts. Regarding the
first two, modern civilization, defective though it be, has ar-

ranged matters fairly conveniently. In short, if you have the

money you need not worry about obtaining food and shelter as
did your primitive ancestors. Your life is safeguarded in many
ways other than by traffic lights and the police.

When it comes to the instincts of reproduction and ego,

however, civilization has fallen down badly.
Comparatively few normals are able to satisfy their repro-

ductive urges in the conventional and moral manner. In con-

sequence we continually hear of the commission of sex trans-
gressions of various kinds. If this be true of the average how
much more should it be true of the neurotic? Such a man or
woman, such a child, possesses a reproductive urge that is

stronger than normal. What he does is worry about it, feel

•46-
 Your Neurotic Development Was Inevitable

ashamed of it, repress it. And the more he represses it

the greater becomes the counterpressurc until, finally, the

thwarted sex urge breaks through in the form of symptoms.
The ego instinct of the neurotic likewise is powerful. He
wants so much to be well thought of, to amount to some-
thing, to"make good" according to the ideal standards his
mother and others, who supervised him as a child, set for him.
A strong sex urge and a strong ego urge form an explosive
mixture. Psychologically speaking, a conflict occurs between
sex and ego. The result is a neurotic character if the battle is

not too fierce, neurotic symptoms if it is. It is astounding how

many neurotic disorders are based primarily upon such a
conflict.

Think of yourself also as a creature of desire. Or call your-

self a wishing animal. If desire, if wishing, were taken out of

life nothing but a vegetative existence would be left.

Now then, the neurotic is one whose desires are stronger

than average. When he iswhen reality thwarts

disappointed,
him, the reaction in the emotional part of him is much greater
than occurs in the average, normal individual. Most people
live from day to day, in more or less of a casual, happy-go-

lucky fashion and the disappointments that befall them— the

desires and wishes that do not come true— are taken in their

stride with little or no emotional upset. On the other hand, if

the person of neurotic nature cannot buy a dress or an auto-

mobile, meet a certain man or woman or find a job, this
thwarting of desire can overwhelm him with black despair.
But don't blame your mother or father, your teachers, your

religious training or the chimney down which you were

dropped. No one single person or factor is responsible. Your
.47.
Your Neurotic Development Was Inevitable

mother undoubtedly exercised the greatest influence over

you. But unless she was a neurotic herself and profited be-
cause of it, you can scarcely accuse her. You may be glad, how-
ever, that you have learned. At least, your own intelligent
guidance of your own possibly neurotic children will go far
toward freeing them from symptoms and suffering.

Apropos of this it may be noted that what is generally

spoken of as "nervousness" in children has increased markedly.
In fact, this subject was a major problem for discussion at a

meeting of the International Association of Preventive

Pediatry at Geneva. In commenting upon this condition the
London Lancet, a medical publication, said at the time:

Conditions of modern civilization have made the "nervous

child" unfortunately only too familiar. What has variously been
termed nervous disorder, nervous instability, or neurosis, has in-

creased in the last thirty or forty years, particularly in children of

school age.

What the Lancet might have emphasized is that while such

symptoms of neurosis made themselves manifest during school
age, they really had been in the making since birth. Both the
neurotic disposition and the appearance of a neurosis, as such,
are a gradual development. Again would I emphasize that one
is not born with a neurosis nor does one inherit it. It comes
on slowly and insidiously and becomes more and more mani-
fest and marked as the years pass.

Naturally, going to school, with its new adjustments, its

breaking away from the protection of the family, tends to

bring a neurosis to a head. Or if it does not definitely appear
in the early years of schooling it may at puberty, when glandu-
•48-
 Your Neurotic Development Was Inevitable

lar changes in both male and female children attendant upon

the ability to procreate, in conjunction with the stupid cus-
tom of making children work harder in school at this period
than ever before and worrying them no end with even more
stupid examinations, places unusual stress and strain upon
their nervous system.

Two general causes for every full-fledged neurosis can al-

ways be made out. One is the precipitating cause and the

other the underlying cause.
Stress at school, an automobile accident, disappointment in
a love affair, loss of money, a fright or shock— any one of
these (or other seriously disturbing occurrences) may consti-

tute the precipitating cause of a neurosis, the proverbial straw

that breaks the camel's back.
Always, however, the root cause or causes can be traced to
childhood, to the effect of the environment upon the child
and his or her reaction to it. Such underlying causes must be
found before the neurotic can be completely cured. Luckily,
they always can be.
Remember that what you are today is conditioned by what
you have been in the past. Nor is it the dramatic events of
your life only that you should consider as causative factors for
your neurotic behavior. Little incidents, thoughts, feelings, al-

though appearing trivial now, may have been highly important

when they occurred. A boy can be spanked black and blue and
yet the punishment may not alter his character a single iota.

On the other hand, a tear in his mother's eye may change the
course of his entire life.

The child at birth is a helpless mite, dependent for its very

life upon those who take care of it. This helplessness is great-

.49.
Your Neurotic Development Was Inevitable

est during infancy but actually extends through adolescence.

The years in which the mind is most plastic and hence recep-
tive, however, are the first five. That is why neurotic disorders
almost invariably start at an early age.
At about age five— when reasoning and the higher intellec-
tual faculties begin to blossom— there occurs a general and
automatic repression into the unconscious mind of practically
every experience lived up to that time. This is a socializing

process. It would not be well if the child could recall experi-

ences relating to birth, nursing, elimination, etc. In other
words, there is laid down a kind of blanket of concealment
and the past is forgotten. The technical name for this is

infantile amnesia, the latter word meaning forgetfulness. With

this self-repression experiences and feeling-patterns likewise

may be carried into the deep unconscious that can form the
nucleus for neurotic ideas later on.
Psychiatrists speak of the infant as an autoerotic being. The
child who will become a neurotic is decidedly so. Autoeroti-
cism is an overvaluation of the body as such. It is a seeking

after physical gratification.

Inasmuch as the infant up to approximately age five does

not appreciate pure mental gratification, or does so only to a

negligible degree, practically all its life is dominated by the
way its body feels. The baby does not yet care whence its

pleasures are derived. It is, however, decidedly self-seeking

and pleasure-seeking. It takes in everything and gives up
practically nothing.

In the previous chapter I said that you hate yourself be-

cause you are too self-centered, self-sufficient, too introverted
in many of your reactions. It would be more scientific to say

•50-
 Your Neurotic Development Was Inevitable

that you arc too autoerotic. That is what I meant when I

spoke of an "infantile fixation." You never were able to rid

yourself of your autocroticism completely.
What was it, however, that stopped you? Why was the
influence of the infantile period so overwhelming?
Because, first of all, you may have been fussed over too
much, loved too much, protected too much or you did not get
half as much of such attention as you craved.
Strangely enough, parents can make a child neurotic through
oversolicitude as well as through undersolicitude.
Every child must be studied as to his individual differences

and needs in this respect. Generally speaking, excessive devo-

tion to an infant and young child, as well as unnecessary

handling of its body, thereby rousing to excess the sensuous-

ness it comes by naturally, will sow the seeds of a neurosis.

Such a child will keep on craving in later life what nobody will

be willing to bestow upon it. In the end, repression will result.

Contrariwise, if a child is yearning for such consideration

and fails to obtain it in sufficient amounts to satisfy it at least

partially, then it will gradually crawl into its shell, as it were,

become shut-in and asocial, and develop a neurosis just the

same. Again it will be repression that is to blame.

This brings me to the famous mother and father complexes

one hears so much about. What is meant here is a too strong

attachment of either a boy for his mother or a girl for her

father.

That such fixations can and frequently do interfere with

free expression of the love-life later on there can be no ques-

tion. So is it also undeniable that often they are the founda-

•51-
Your Neurotic Development Was Inevitable

tion upon which a neurotic character is built and this through

no fault of the neurotic himself.

It is natural for persons of opposite sexes to have a stronger

attraction for each other than for those of the same sex. It is

also natural, therefore, that a mother should tend to love her

son more than her daughter, and a father the daughter more
than the son. Indeed, when the children are grown such af-
fections frequently occur, at the expense of the husband or
wife involved. The mother sees in her son characteristics of

her husband when he was courting her; when he was her

lover. Often without realizing it, she becomes too solicitous

over her son, holds him too close, prevents him thereby from
wanting to marry. A similar mechanism may occur in regard

to father and daughter.

The real danger, however, lies in the fact that mother and

father fixations are laid down in early childhood and that the
parents do nothing to correct them as the child grows.

You, for instance, could not help loving your mother or

father. Nor can you help favoring the parent of the opposite

sex, unless such a parent has, for one reason or another, an-
tagonized you. After all, they fed you, educated you, protected
you, gave you your start. Nor can you help it if either or both
your mother and father deliberately tried to keep you be-
holden to them as long as possible or failed to make you
realize, fairly early in your life, that other decent people

besides themselves exist. In fact, being a sensitive child, and

one that needed special training in regard to the repression

or expression of your emotions, you probably failed to get

what, psychologically, you needed.
•52-
 Your Neurotic Development Was Inevitable

But it was not your fault. Ilcrc, again, the development of

your neurotic character was inevitable.
Intensive individual study of every child, and from the
earliest days of its life, is, therefore, indicated. Besides, as re-
gards the bestowing or withholding of affection, a middle
course is usually best. Never should it be forgotten that the
neurotic child is a highly sensitized child. The rules that apply
to average children do not necessarily apply to the neurotic.
If you happen to have been an only child or the favorite
one of the family then, inevitably too, you soon developed an
altogether exaggerated idea of your own importance.
Such children do not get enough of the give-and-take that
goes with having brothers and sisters nor do they usually play
enough with other children. Being in the company of adults
too much they become oldish and worldly wise before their
time and many such persons throughout life suffer from men-
tal indigestion.

In what might be termed "the romance of family life" the

only or favorite child is the star. But the world outside the
immediate family circle is not interested in this play and in
consequence the star, when he or she emerges from the shelter
of the home theater, finds himself a "flop."
Think of yourself as always having been "tender-minded" in

contrast to the majority, who are "tough-minded." Is it not

inevitable that a tender person— tender in his emotions, of

course— will be bruised by the harsh, stern and often cruel

world of reality into which he was thrust?
This is not weakness, nor indeed a defect. Brain has con-
quered brawn. So also have the more cultural emotional
finer,

values taken the place of the baser and more materialistic

•53-
Your Neurotic Development Was Inevitable

ones. Nowadays we live on a higher psychological plane than

heretofore— that is, the neurotics do. Their influence, despite
the drag of the average, is nevertheless telling. The world as a

whole is not as brutal as the behavior of the Nazis and Japa-

nese might lead one to believe. The better elements did, after
all, conquer and punish them. We are gradually climbing the
heights, even if the progress is slow.
Some day the neurotics will be in the majority. Then it will

not be necessary to prove that being neurotic has its ad-

vantages.

54
Chapter V

IF YOU DIDN'T FEEL GUILTY YOU'D

BE AN ANIMAL

SHAME, INFERIORITY— THERE'S A

G UILT,
umvirate to conjure with! Always are
TRI-

they together, always do they work in unison, always do

they exercise the role of the dictator to crush your spirit and
make you humble.
Guilt comes first. Guilt is first cousin, if not mother, to the
other two. After feeling guilty, you naturally feel ashamed.
When you have felt both guilty and ashamed it is logical that

you should become convinced that you are inferior.

Recall what I said about the normals, how they behave.

And how I urged you to be glad you were not like them, but
neurotic instead. I also said you had paid a worth-while price

for being different. That price, looking upon it in summary

fashion, is guilt!

Average, normal individuals do not feel guilty. At least,

their guilt sense is so slight, compared to yours, as to be

negligible. If a normal drives a competitor into bankruptcy
and his wife and children are forced to go to work to keep the
wolf from the door, do you suppose said astute businessman
will lose any sleep over it? If he does it probably will be be-
cause he was out late celebrating. But let a neurotic business-
man commit a similar deed and it will worry him sick.

If this be an exaggeration it is but the exaggeration of the

•55-
If You Didn't Feel Guilty Youd Be an Animal
truth. The normals are a tough-hided species. Your skin, on
the other hand, is too thin, too delicate, too readily bruised.
That is why you never have got where you wanted to go. Your
goal still seems so far, far away. You never got there because
every time you tried, every time you made up your mind to
be like the others, to run roughshod over principles— fairness,
honesty and a sense of humanity— it hurt and you got hurt.
Nor did you develop like that only after you reached ma-
turity. You were always like that even if you did not realize

it.You were that way as a child. You never have been any dif-

ferent. And it all started in guilt.

As already explained, the type of repression that was used

in your upbringing was not, as it should have been, different
in kind and quantity from that used upon the average. That
was not your fault. Nevertheless, you were the victim. You
were the victim because you were made to feel more guilty

than was necessary or desirable. You became guilt-conscious.

After the passage of years, your unconscious mind was filled

with guilt.

It seems a pity that we should be raised on so many lies.

Distortions of the truth, often to camouflage lack of knowl-

edge on a given subject, is the easy way out in child training;

at the same time it is the most pernicious single factor for

undermining sterling manhood and womanhood that exists.

Remember how you were lied to about the use of tobacco

and alcohol? Remember all the lies you were told, or heard,

in regard to masturbation, homosexual contacts and your

thoughts about the opposite sex? Recall the maxim that said,

"The wages of sin is death," and the one reading: "Early to

•56-
 1/ You Didn't Feel Guilty You'd Be an Animal
bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise?"
Surely it is unnecessary to multiply examples.
You have since corrected whatever erroneous tales you were
told. Is that your answer?
My contention is that you may have done so consciouslv.
But are you aware that, since so much unsound data were en-
graved upon your mind when you were immature and readily
influenced, the advantage then taken of you may still be a
mighty factor in making you feel guilty?

My language may seem strong but it is necessary in order to

combat guilt. There is an expression about one needing a
rough ax to split a rough log. Guilt is such a rough log.

Guilt is the forerunner of most of the neurotic symptoms

that exist. It is the root cause for oversensitiveness, for self-

consciousness, for discouragement and disgust, for self-pity, for

doubt, uncertainty and vacillation, for exaggeration of trifles,

for convictions of unworthiness and failure, for misgivings and

despair, for morbid self-depreciation, shame and inferiority,

for depression, for lack of confidence, for fears of all kinds and
for all sorts of mental tortures— not to mention physical ones
—that would stand comparison with Dante's conception of
the inferno.
Unfortunately, "don't" still is the usual cudgel word by
which parents coerce their children; punishing them and mak-
ing them feel ashamed, frequently without their fully under-

standing why, still are the means usually employed to bring

home to the offspring the fact that they have done wrong.
This conviction of wrongdoing is, to be sure, often intensified
by the intimidation and fear that school and religious teach-

ers instill into the immature and developing mind. It would

•57-
If You Didn't Feel Guilty You'd Be an Animal
be impossible, therefore, for anyone wholly to escape guilt

feelings.

In addition, there is not an individual living (adult or

child) who has not or does not accuse himself or herself of
harboring sex thoughts or of having given way to sex practices
(alone or in conjunction with others) at some time during
his life which either he has been taught or has heard are
wrong. Yet the real harm that flows from secret sex acts is

entirely mental in that it produces so much unwarranted

1
guilt. Furthermore, despite popular opinion to the contrary,
onanism never has led to insanity. Ignorance regarding the

truth about sex in all its manifold ramifications is one of the

most fruitful causes for people believing the "bunk" that they
must, at last, be paying for their supposed sex transgressions
with a neurotic disorder or with a definitely deranged or de-
teriorated mind.
Although the discussion of sex as such is freer than hereto-
fore, it still remains more or less of a taboo subject and the
joke with the double meaning continues to be the prevalent
social way of letting off repressed sexual steam. A wrong slant
on sex and the love life in general is what causes many con-
victions of guilt, especially in women and children. The scien-

tific truth, of course, never did. Thousands of young girls,

when they become aware of the stirrings of the reproductive

urge within themselves and note the phantasies that result
therefrom, immediatelv come to the conclusion that thev
must be foul-minded. Their ideation then is so much at

variance with what they were taught as children.

Nor has the postwar revolt of youth with its consequent
1 For further discussion and a specific example, see Chap. X.
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 7/ You Didn't Feel Guilty You'd Be an Animal

moral looseness corrected the situation. Sooner or later a

backward swing of the pendulum toward Victorian conduct
will be evidenced. There are marked cycles in expression of
moral standards just as there are cycles in the business world.

These social swings from strictness to looseness and back again

do not fundamentally change the deep, underlying attitudes
toward sex that have developed in the individual, however
they may modify their outward expression. Sex remains some-
thing dirty to most people. It probably always will. Besides,
mirabile dictu for this day and age, women exist who are
puzzled as to how the sex act is performed, what is to be
expected from it, or even how a baby is born! And, "believe
it or not," the knowledge that most men have on the subject
is scarcely more profound.
Shame flows from guilt so quickly that both would seem to
arise simultaneously. Individuals do not know that others
likewise are upset. They think they must be unique. Hence
shame them all the
grips harder.
With shame there also arises the impulse to compare one-
self with others; to discover, if possible, whether others know
what is going on. The ego instinct now makes its appearance
to start a conflict with the reproductive urge. The ego (the
personality, if you prefer) striving to be acceptable and well
thought of by others lines itself up against the physical, ani-
mal needs of the body, the purely reproductive strivings as
such. Before long the ego gets the upper hand and the guilty
and ashamed individual is led to suspect, if not to believe,
that others have noticed, that others reallv do know. That is

when the individual becomes a prey to suspicion, avoids social

gatherings, blushes, observes himself in the mirror, becomes
.59.
If You Didn't Feel Guilty Youd Be an Animal

convinced that his eyes are telltale, develops self-consciousness,

palpitation of the heart, digestive disturbances and all sorts of
similar upsets. This is the time also when the prevalent com-
plex that I am pleased to call ''What would people think?"
arises. Guilt and shame have finally joined hands in prepar-
ing the man or woman for inferiority.

Convictions of inferiority are so prevalent that the term

inferiority complex has become a byword. They surely are
responsible for a tremendous amount of unhappiness and
failure.

If a person recognizes consciously that he is inferior and

this is based upon facts concerning his inability to make good
in a special line of work, upon unpreparedness perhaps, upon
lack of alertness or upon one or more similar handicaps, that
person in a strict scientific sense cannot be said to be suffer-
ing from an inferiority complex. Nor can a person who is

physically handicapped, say, with lameness or blindness, be so

designated.
Technically, a complex is a repressed idea, experience, or

both, linked to a disagreeable emotion. Complexes are repres-

sions from the conscious into the unconscious. Whenever
anything occurs during the waking life that upsets us we try

to push it out of the way; we try to forget it. By forcing it out

of the conscious mind into the unconscious, however, we do
not make it vanish. Especially is this true when the disagree-
able experience has to do with the thwarting of some in-

stinctive demand, as noted above in the discussion of guilt.

Suppose a girl, well brought up in the conventional sense,

falls in love with a married man. Consciousness, conscience,
ego— call it what you like— says "No" but her instinctive sex

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 1/ You Didn't Feel Guilty You'd Be an Animal
urge says "Yes." Finally ego wins; the girl tries to forget the
man that society, her upbringing, her moral and religious
codes declare she may not possess. In a few weeks she suc-
ceeds in interesting herself in her home, her work, possibly
even in other men. In short, the mind has been able to repress
the love affair with its painful associations from one part of
itself (the conscious) into another part (the unconscious). In
the latter, psychiatrists say, a complex is formed— that is, a
tangle of thwartings, emotions at cross-purposes and upsetting
feeling-patterns that lead, like an ostracized colony, an ex-
istence apart.
Will this young lady whom we are considering remain free
of dissatisfaction after having succeeded in repressing her
primitive demands? Although she no longer thinks (con-
sciously, to be sure) of the married man whom she wanted
as a lover, is that the end of him? Quite the contrary is the
truth.

After all, what does her sexual apparatus, as such, her or-

ganic physical side, care for the customs of the world of reality,
for the rule of the greatest good to the greatest number— here,
specifically, for the marriage vows of the man she desired? Her
unconscious animal self wants to express itself irrespective of
conscious taboos. It wants its man, this particular man. The
way it finally accomplishes that— the way the complex makes
its escape— is in a substitute way, because it cannot do other-
wise. Therefore, the girl becomes convinced she is an inferior.

She probably would not realize what the specific cause is.

Yet inferiority becomes a symptom, a symbol or sign of her

defeat, actually the defeat of her deepest and most funda-
mental desires.

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If You Didn't Feel Guilty Youd Be an Animal
I have personally known scores of cases like that. Similar

sex repressions for social reasons may not always lead to

inferiority. They may lead merely to a state of unrest, dis-
satisfaction and general nervousness. On the other hand, in-
feriority may result from repressions that are not sexual.
Repeated thwartings of ambition in nonsexual spheres as in

business, a domineering father, mother or teacher— similar

repressions of personality development usually engendered
during childhood or adolescence— may definitely give rise to
1
convictions of inferiority.
Referring to those who think they are suffering from an
inferiority complex which is due to handicaps that are en-
tirely conscious, it may be added that exaggeration and faulty
evaluation of the difficulty complained of is usually a basic
cause. Often all that is necessary in such cases is to aid the
individual to get an unbiased perspective on himself and to
change his mode of work or living. Indeed, he can actually do
all this for himself.
A girl who was lame became so morose because she could
not dance that she considered taking her own life. Luckily
she sought medical aid in time. The lameness could not be
cured but her mental viewpoint, her conscious inferiority,
could.
Rhythm and melody were what this unfortunate girl's

emotions craved. And it was an outlet for this that her

1 The mechanism by which our unfulfilled desires transmute themselves

intosymptoms, as well as into errors that we commit almost daily, is discussed
more fully in Chap. VIII, "Your Errors Have a Meaning" and in Chap. IX,
"Your Compulsions Are Calls for Help." Further similar discussions will be
found in Chap. X, "Are You Getting the Most Out of Your Insomnia and
Dreams?"

•62-
 If You Didn't Feel Guilty You'd Be an Animal

psychiatrist at once sought. He realized that if she could ex-

press herself musically, especially if she could be made profi-

cient in it, a substitute would be found for her inability to

dance. So it proved to be.

When met her she played the piano, but only fairly well.
I

I got her to put her whole heart and soul into it. With a pro-
ficient instructor and six hours of practice each day, she not
only developed into a piano teacher herself but eventually she
became a concert performer. What did dancing matter when
she could express herself musically in another gratifying way?
In thisnew life she could not possibly feel inferior. She had
got a new slant on herself. She quickly became an adjusted
and contented woman.
Another case of conscious inferiority was that of a sailor
who had once been a lawyer. After practicing law for five

years his brother was convicted of forgery and sent to state's

prison. This so weighed on the brother's mind that he fled

from everything and hid himself in the service of the mer-

chant marine. His brother's criminal act had disgraced him,

he felt. It had overwhelmed him with personal inferiority.

Here was another example of emotional exaggeration, only

in a somewhat different way. The lame girl had allowed a

real handicap to haunt her beyond all reasonable limits. The

lawyer went a step further and manufactured a handicap for
himself out of whole cloth.
''Did you in any way, directly or indirectly, aid your brother

in the forgery?" he was asked.

"No," he replied. "I didn't know a thing about it until he
was arrested."
•63-
1/ You Didn't Feel Guilty You'd Be an Animal
'Then why did you run away? By no stretch of the imagi-
nation could you have been held accountable."
"I know that. Still I could not get it out of my head what
people would think of me, knowing I was related. I was afraid
it might hurt me professionally. People might not trust me."
"You did not wait to find out, however?"
"You are right there, doctor," he replied. "I quit at once."
"In other words, you became more scared of yourself than
of your brother's crime?"
After a pause he said, "I never thought of it in that light

before. Maybe if I had stuck it out nothing would have

happened."
"Go back to your law work," I advised. "Take this inferi-

ority feeling by the throat and throttle it. And just to prove to
yourself how defiant you can be and what a good scrapper you
really are, devote most of your attention to that very branch
of the law that deals with criminality. Specialize in criminal
law!"
He did and he won! The inferiority fled helter-skelter!

Still another example concerns a man who was forced to

quit school to go to work and help at home. He had reached

the graduation class but had not been able to complete that
last term. This worried him for years afterward. He never
could completely rid himself of inferiority because he thought
he lacked the proper education to develop himself fully. And
this despite the fact that when I met him he was holding
down an executive job at fifteen thousand a year!
Yet the adjustment was so readily made. A private tutor not
only taught him the subjects he had missed in the graduation

class but high-school and college subjects as well. In this man-

•64-
 1/ You Didrit Feel Guilty You'd Be an Animal
ner the business executive made up for lost time. After a few
months of coaching and reading at night he found he could
discuss intelligently such subjects as history, literature and
politics in any company, without fear of making a fool of
himself, without feeling inferior.
Exaggeration of emotional reaction must first of all be re-

moved in solving conscious inferiority problems. One asks the

sufferer to make out a list of his abilities— the things he is

capable of doing— and weigh them against his conscious

handicap. Then these assets are emphasized. They are talked
about and thought about. The element of timidity is, in this

way, replaced by self-confidence. This counteracts the handi-

cap and opens up new interests. That is about all that is

necessary.
In the other class of inferiority convictions, the unconscious
type, the inferiority is frequently disguised. These are the
deeper and more pronounced types. They are the kinds that do
the greatest damage. Sometimes, if undiscovered, they com-
pletely wreck people's lives.

Those who suffer from unconscious inferiority do not know

that the inferiority exists. They are made to think and feel and
act in strange and peculiar ways by emotional mechanisms of
which they are absolutely unconscious. They are totally igno-

rant of what is going on inside themselves. The inferiority

tricks them. They are like helpless puppets in a marionette

show, pulled by unseen strings.

Although I have already cited a case of unconscious in-

feriority in relation to what a complex really is, it may be well

to emphasize the symbolic character of some complexes by
illustrating what has just been written. In this instance it was
•65-
If You Didn't Feel Guilty Youd Be an Animal

stammering that constituted the disguise, although the

patient had believed that the stammering had caused the in-

feriority. The possibility of a neurotic state, as the causative

factor, had never been considered.

This young man had practiced speech exercises for over a
year. His parents had spent hundreds of dollars for all sorts

of "cures." Nothing had worked. It was simply impossible for

him to learn how to place his tongue and breathe properly, so

essential in these courses of speech training.

Why? Because attention had been drawn to the wrong

thing. The cart had been placed before the horse.

Here it was necessary to draw attention to his emotional

make-up, which was causing the speech trouble— in brief, his

complexes. If these could be corrected, both the speech

trouble and the inferiority would take care of themselves.
I soon learned that this lad was overconscientious. He had
been too eager to succeed in his studies while at school. He

was too scared of failure. He had exaggerated what he consid-

ered his obligations to his books. He had given up his chances
for a good education and taken a job as a machine operative
in a factory.

When I found that he had a special liking for figures I got

him to go to night school and take up bookkeeping. In the
bookkeeping class, and in contrast to his former high-school
course, all the men were as serious as he. Nor did the boy have
to worry about athletics or joining a fraternity. Bookkeeping
didn't confuse his purposes and jumble his thoughts. There
were no jumbled thoughts to jumble his words. Furthermore,
his unconscious mind no longer needed to produce a speech
•66-
 If You Didn't Feel Guilty You'd Be an Animal
defect in order that he might be able to excuse himself for
not succeeding in school.
In two months the stammering disappeared without speech
training. A guilt complex in the unconscious that had meta-
morphosed itself into ovcrconscicntiousness on the conscious
level, as well as into resistance against following conventional
standards, was responsible.
Unconscious inferiority can certainly play havoc with an
individual's efficiency and peace of mind. But the best of it is

that it can be discovered and conquered. Find the complex or

complexes responsible; make it conscious. The inferiority van-

ishes as if by magic!
It is noteworthy that inferiority complexes (conscious or
unconscious) frequently produce in the individual a form of
behavior that is the direct opposite of inferiority. One speaks
of these changes as defense mechanisms. They are a kind of

pose that is used to hide what the individual deep down thinks
and feels but wishes to keep hidden. Such defenses always
carry some sort of spurious superiority.

Thus it may be noted that many men with weak chins

adorn them with whiskers; persons of short stature strut and
talk loudly while the unusually tall stoop and modulate their

speech so as not to attract attention.

Other types of defense reactions caused by other types of
complexes are everywhere in evidence. Spinsters often reveal
their defense when they say that "no man can be trusted
around the corner." Total abstainers may be keeping away
from alcohol as a defense set up against a conscious or uncon-
scious, but inordinate, craving for liquor. Even unusual brav-
•67-
1/ You Didn't Feel Guilty Youd Be an Animal
ery may be a defense for cowardice, hard-heartedness for kind-
heartedness, a gruff manner for pronounced amiability.
Let it be emphasized that any urge that is strong— and the
urges of the neurotic are strong— tries to assert as well as
gratify itself. If it is unable to accomplish this directly and
undisguisedly in reality via the route of conscious and delib-
erate thinking and action, the repression first forms an un-
conscious complex, then it takes a roundabout course and
appears in substitute, symbolic form, in thinking, feeling and
behavior that puzzle us, as well as in symptoms and in dreams.
Guilt, with resultant shame, is, however, the root cause of
most inferiority.

It will doubtless be clear to you now that the lower down

the animal scale one goes the less guilt sense there is, while
the higher you go the more of it is apparent. A dog can be
made to feel guilty, probably not a cat, and certainly not a

chicken, or a species more rudimentary in brain structure.

still

The more civilized you are, the more refined and cultural your
early training has been, the more have your obligations to, and

the rights of, your fellow men been emphasized.

It may be said, therefore, that one's guilt potentials are in

direct proportion to one's social development. The farther

away from the animal you are the guiltier you are likely to

feel. And since the neurotic is such a highly sensitized being,

anyway, he feels guilty more often and more easily than do
the nonneurotics. Indeed, he often develops guilt, even shame
and inferiority, quite without logical justification.

In the first chapter I stated that all the great thinkers and
doers of the past were glad to be neurotic. It is a fair question

to ask if thev also suffered from guilt and its end result, in-

•68-
 If You Didrit Feel Guilty You'd Be an Animal
feriority. Undoubtedly they did. But they, you see, not only
turned the products of their highly sensitized natures into
constructive achievements, they frequently went so far as to
overcompensate for their apparent differences. If this were not
so, surely men like Caesar, Napoleon, and other outstanding
warlike conquerors could not have pushed through so ruth-
lessly to gain their objectives. What they and other great neu-
rotics did was to turn their handicaps into assets. To this

fascinating, as well as highly profitable, mechanism of the

mind a whole chapter will be devoted later on.

Yes, be glad you're neurotic. It is hard to realize that guilt

and shame can be overcome and inferiority turned to su-
periority. Yet it is a fact. Any devastating neurotic symptom
can be turned into victory.
If you had not started your adult existence with one or more
neurotic handicaps— although they are erroneously so con-
sidered—you might have accomplished much; but you will

accomplish ever so much more when you remove the guilt

that has been holding you back and the force released by its

removal will catapult you over the top and far beyond.
In short, you have never as yet had a fair chance to reveal
what really is inside of you, what really you can do!

69
Chapter VI

YOUR SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS HIDES YOUR

SUPERIORITY

w HAT
sion
I HAVE JUST WRITTEN AS A CONCLU-
to the
proved in no better way than by studying the unconscious
previous chapter can be

mechanisms responsible for self-consciousness.

That the self-conscious person feels inferior, timid and even,

at times, afraid goes without saying. Yet the truth of the mat-
ter is that deep down inside of him he is anything but
cowardly. Actually, he is laboring under a feeling of repressed
superiority.

To be sure, you were not born neurotic nor were you born
with self-consciousness, the latter being a symptom of neu-
rosis. Neither were you born exactly like other average, nor-

mal children. For some reason or other— nobody knows why

—you were at birth a supercharged and hypersensitive child.

As you grew older you did not, for example, react like other
children to similar training and to the influences that arose
from your environment. You may have been seclusive and
shut-in and did not mix well with your playmates. Your feel-

ings were easily hurt and maybe you cried a great deal. Friends

commented upon the fact that you did not talk much, that
you seemed moody and depressed. You often had a wondering
and confused look in your eyes as though something were
troubling your little head. You craved affection and would
•70-
 Your Self-consciousness Hides Your Superiority
run to your mother when alarmed. You did not like a fight;
in fact, you probably ran away when one threatened.
During the early school years you did not join any of the
social or club activities. When school was out, instead of play-
ing around with the others, you ran home. You may have
studied hard and tried to excel so as to assure yourself that
you amounted to something anyway. You may even have been
called a good boy or girl. You found it easier to do what you

were told than to stand your ground.

During your adolescence the story was about the same. In-
deed, your shyness probably mounted. You shunned competi-
tive sports; you avoided parties and dances; you became more
and more introverted. Especially, when company of the
in the

opposite sex you froze up like an icicle. The mere thought of

meeting such a new acquaintance gave you palpitation of the
heart and threw you into a panic.
To this very day, irrespective of your age, this self-conscious
bugaboo is still getting you down. The general pattern of your
reactions in meeting people, asserting yourself and forging
ahead may be almost identical with what it was years ago, or
it may have changed and you have added even more distress-

ing symptoms. Whether or no, shyness surely devitalizes you

and interferes with your general effectiveness and happiness
as no other single neurotic symptom can.
Then where does this idea of superiority enter the picture,
you may ask? How can one be self-conscious and actually su-
perior at one and the same time?
People in all walks of life can be called upon for illustra-

tion. Among nobility, King Louis XIV of France is known

to have been so timid and shy he was embarrassed in speak-

•71-
Your Self-consciousness Hides Your Superiority
ing to persons he'd known for years. Yet this was the man
who said, "Uetat cest moi" or words to that effect. Na-
poleon's second wife, Marie Louise, was so afflicted with feel-
ings of inferiority that her awkwardness was painfully noticed
at court, while Queen Mary, whose very stature and position
indicate dignity and poise, often, as a child, burst into tears

because she was so shy.

Even performers prominent in the public eye can be self-

conscious! Paderewski, after fifty years of concert work, was

still bothered with stage fright, as are Tallulah Bankhead,
Raymond Massey, Alfred Lunt and scores of other celebrities.

Albert Edward Wiggam, who has given over five thousand

lectures, and is undoubtedly one of the country's masters of
the lecturing art, as well as a writer and scientist of renown,
was overwhelmingly shy and self-conscious in his younger days.
Lawrence Tibbett was plagued by when a youth
inferiority

because his mother ran a boardinghouse and he owned only

one suit and lacked the money to buy sodas for his girl. The
late Cardinal Hayes was a painfully shy, retiring lad who red-

dened with embarrassment when called upon to speak before

class. Michelangelo shunned people because of a facial dis-

figurement. Incongruous, you might say, to learn that even

such persons as T. E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia), the
playwright, Channing Pollock, William L. Stidger, pulpit and
radio orator, and a host of others suffered the agonies of self-
consciousness when young. Even George Bernard Shaw would
sometimes walk up and down before the house of a friend
before mustering enough courage to ring the doorbell.
Superior people, these— all of them! What they did was
manage, somehow, to break through and thus overcome their

•72-
 Your Self-consciousness Hides Your Superiority
self-conscious handicaps. By so doing they permitted their in-
herent superiorities to come to the fore.
I mentioned in the beginning that you were born super-
charged and hypersensitive. That is what you are at the pres-

ent time. That kind of emotional make-up is what the famous

ones, listed above, possess. You, like them, must learn not
only to recognize your true worth but also to have the courage
to present it to the world. Thousands of others have done it

and many of these have achieved success in some unusual way.

What they have done you can do.
What would you rather be like, an ordinary low-powered
radio or a superheterodyne model? Nevertheless, the finer
instrument must be tuned correctly in order to obtain the
best results. Otherwise it picks up the stations you don't
want or produces discord. You are like that. You not only
have a lot of power, dynamic force, within you, you also react
in a highly sensitized way to other people— to what they say
and do— and to your environment.
This "individual difference" that is characteristic of you—
this supercharged and hypersensitive nature that is yours and
is unlike that of the average, normal person— is therefore a
blessing in disguise. But how, you will want to know, can you
make this supposed blessing a working reality?

Consider your ego. By ego I mean your personality as a

whole, your desire to belong, to be well thought of and ac-

cepted, to move along with the parade and, if possible, to lead

it. When you are self-conscious, your ego, for the most part, is

suffering from lack of expression. It is held back and repressed.

It wants to come out like an animal that has buried itself for

the winter in the earth and darkness and is eager to be warmed

•73-
Your Self-consciousness Hides Your Superiority

by the sun of spring. Why, however, is your ego buried? What

has made it run away and hide for protection? That is where
x
your guilt comes in.

Let me repeat that average, normal individuals do not re-

spond in the guilty way that you do. Their sense of guilt is

negligible as compared to yours. While the normals are tough,

your emotional disposition by comparison is delicate and
easily bruised. why you have been hurt so often, why
That is

you have become timid, why you have tried to withdraw from
reality and its harshness. That is also why, even as far back
as childhood, you have felt more guilty than you should, more
than either was necessary or desirable. In short, you became
guilt conscious. That led directly to self-consciousness.
Whatever the type of guilt pattern that gradually became
more and more fixed in your unconscious thinking and feel-

ing, you developed the attitude that if people knew what you
really were they would not accept you. This fear of not being
accepted or approved, of making a social error or of somehow
revealing your true self is the very backbone of every self-

conscious person, young or mature. With this fear there

rushes into consciousness a score of doubts and uncertainties
that makes the very thought of every social or business con-
tact a veritable nightmare.

A young man invites a girl to a ball. This young miss, being

self-conscious, immediately develops forebodings. Although
the invitation itself has pepped up her ego, all is counteracted
by the misgivings that assail her and become increasingly
strong as the longed-for yet feared evening approaches.
1A review of Chap. V would be advantageous at this point.

.74.
 Your Self-consciousness Hides Your Superiority
"Suppose I meet his friends and begin to stammer as I

sometimes do when I am nervous," the poor girl thinks. "Sup-

pose I don't dance as well as he thinks I can. Maybe I won't
look as pretty as he thinks I will in evening dress. Will he like

me if I wear my hair straight back so that I can show my new

earrings? If supper is served, will I make some ghastly
blunder?"
So the young woman worries on and on until the tiny bit
of self-confidence she mustered when first invited disappears
completely and nothing but abject terror takes its place. In

the end this self-induced, but nevertheless automatic, torture

may well lead the afflicted one to make up some plausible
excuse, such as sudden illness, and call the whole thing off.

A man can harass himself in similar fashion. Indeed, I have

often when men are self-conscious they
felt that suffer even
more than women. Being men, they are supposed to be more
self-assured. Besides, they are expected to take the initiative
in their relationship to women, and that is exactly what the
shy individual finds hardest to accomplish.
Such a man may be a returning war hero. He has fought the
enemy at point-blank range. Perhaps he has wiped out a
machine-gun nest singlehanded and brought back a dozen
prisoners. Perhaps he has received a medal for his bravery

and wears the Purple Heart. His wife him as the ship
greets

docks, hugs and kisses him and vows she always knew she had
married the most wonderful man in the whole world. So far,

so good! No shyness has manifested itself, not even when his

wife enthusiastically embraces him before his buddies.

Now, however, comes the ordeal! When the hero's boss and
fellow employees stage a special dinner of welcome and he is

•75-
Your Self-consciousness Hides Your Superiority
called upon to make a speech, his throat dries like the Arizona

desert, his tongue won't move, his hands and legs shake, per-

spiration soaks his body as if he were in a Turkish bath, his

face flushes crimson and he finds it impossible to utter a single
word. Our hero leaves that friendly company convinced that
he has made a perfect ass of himself and wishing that a Jap
bullet had got him after all.

Nor need it be an unusual circumstance that will throw a

self-conscious person completely off balance. A girl possesses
an unusual voice, does well with her singing teacher but finds
it impossible to perform in public. A boy knows his lesson

letter-perfect but forgets every word of it when he is called

upon in class. One cannot enter a restaurant or cafe; another
feels uncomfortable in the subway, bus or streetcar, where
others can look him over; a man "sweats blood" whenever he
is called into the manager's office; either a man or woman
may blush when greeted by a member of the opposite sex.
Many hold on desperately to jobs they despise or for which
they are unfitted because they lack the nerve to try to get
another. Bachelors and spinsters often remain unmarried, not
because they want to but because they are too shy to try to
find a life's partner.
Regarding convictions of guilt, we do not become self-

conscious because of misdeeds, actual or fancied, of which we

are consciously aware. A misdeed committed deliberately—
perhaps a theft, the habit of onanism or other sexual trans-
gression—may bring on pangs of conscience, shame and regret,

but it does not produce self-consciousness.

Think back into childhood, therefore, and sec how many
guilt ideas you can resurrect.

•76-
 Your Self-consciousness Hides Your Superiority
Try to recall how you felt when you began to hear how
babies were born and what sex really meant. Did you ever
actually behold your parents in the act of cohabitation, or did
you suspect this was going on and consequently feci ashamed
for them? Were you ever caught practicing masturbation, or
were you accused of it? If a woman, did you feel self-conscious
when you first menstruated? When did consciousness of sex,
or the thought that you were sexually desirable, begin, and did
you react unfavorably to it? If you were the only boy in a

family of girls, or vice versa, did these associations produce

shyness? Did you feel guilty because of sex thoughts you en-
tertained, because you ''petted," smoked or used alcohol
contrary to your parents' wishes? Did guilt assail you be-
cause you found yourself wandering away from church or
its teachings? Did you ever cheat in school, lie or steal any-
thing? Have you felt inferior because of race or creed, the
background of your family, or because of some physical de-
formity? Did you grow up convinced that you were weak
physically? Did you feel you were not wanted as a child or that
you were discriminated against? Was affection denied you as

a child? Were you teased a great deal? Were you a poor

student?
The above questions should serve as a guide to help you find
buried memories charged with guilt. It goes without saying
that there are hundreds of other possibilities; also, that any
of them would tend to make a person feel inferior and thus
undermine his ego.

Yes, you are still unduly influenced by fixations of guilt in

childhood, and part of your self-consciousness is nothing more

or less than a further seeking of punishment on your part. So
•77-
Your Self-consciousness Hides Your Superiority
you find yourself making unnecessary sacrifices, depriving
yourself of pleasure, working too hard or paying for this bur-
densome debt of guilt in more subtle ways.
Stop punishing yourself, however; be yourself; let people
know what you really are. Make a list of your assets, of the

things of which you feel proud— of your true superiorities.

How do I know that you possess such superiorities? Be-

cause, being supercharged and hypersensitive— hence neurotic
— vou are bound to possess such assets in abundance.
Is it not true that you are fundamentally truthful, con-
scientious, honest and trustworthy? Won't you admit that
your intelligence is above par. Maybe you are creative, in-

ventive or artistic as well. Haven't you felt right along that

there is something deep within that is crying out to express
itself, perhaps in the form of a play, story or novel? Are you
not neat and careful about your personal appearance and gen-
eral habits? Do you not give the impression of being refined
rather than vulgar? Do you not possess a strong will of your

own and refuse to be pushed around? Are not your standards

of morality high? Don't you keep on trying to be liked? Is not
your imagination highly developed? Is it not a fact that you
are ambitious, feel a high sense of duty and try ever so hard to
improve yourself?
These are all assets
1 — ego (personality) builders. But they
don't do you much good unless you recognize them, let them
loose and give them a fling. When your superiorities are re-

pressed, they make you feel inferior. You feel, as if by instinct,

that people do not evaluate your true worth. Recognize these

1
Contrast such superiorities with what has been said in Chap. II.

•78-
 Your Self-consciousness Hides Your Superiority
superiorities yourself, first. Others will then, and quickly, fol-

low suit.

Your self-consciousness is, in the last analysis, merely a

point of view. Once you get the correct angle on yourself and
recognize your own true worth, your self-consciousness will
cease to be.

79
Chapter VII

NO, YOU'RE NOT GOING INSANE NOR WILL

ANY OF YOUR FEARS COME TRUE

M I LOSING MY MIND, DOCTOR?"

A* That question has been put to me so
many times, it seems like a million. People unload their mis-
givings to a psychiatrist as to no one else. Even the general
practitioner knows how common is this haunting dread of in-

sanity. But goodness knows how many millions there are in

addition who harbor a sneaking suspicion that they are head-

ing for a mental disorder and either are afraid to consult a
medical authority to learn the truth or are ashamed to confess
possessing symptoms they feel convinced must be abnormal!
Allow me, however, to be reassuring forthwith. The very
fact that you fear you are losing your mind is the best possible
proof that you are not.
I have mentioned the factor of ignorance in the first pages
of this volume. It is ignorance, pure and simple, that really
lies at the bottom of most cases of the insanity fear. The
average individual is ignorant of the way his mind works, how
it is supposed to work, why it does not always work as he
would wish and what, if anything, can be done to make it

work again as it should. Nor is this universal factor of igno-

rance astonishing. Psychology is a neglected subject in the ele-

mentary and secondary schools, it is usually an elective in

•80-
 No, You re Not Coing Insane
college and even a medical training takes in precious little

of it.

Small wonder then that those who note a change in their

thinking and feeling jump to the conclusion that if their mind
is not functioning right it must be functioning wrong; and if

it is wrong it must be insanity. Little do they realize that there

arc scores of normal deviations within the normal; that neu-

rotic states exist that are decidedly more harassing than a
full-fledged psychosis; lastly, that the possessor of a psychosis

(this is the medical term for insanity, the latter being a legal
definition) practically never is aware that his mind is upset.

The individual who develops a psychosis * has been heading

that way since childhood. A competent psychiatrist would
have been able to foretell the inevitable (if the peculiar per-

sonality make-up remained untreated) when that individual

was eight, ten or twelve. There is nothing mysterious about a
2
psychosis, nor can it nowadays be called baffling, since the
majority of cases are cured if caught early enough. Indeed,
after a psychosis has fully developed there may still be hope.
Over a third of the patients already shut away in asylums
leave such institutions cured while half return to their homes
definitely improved.

The very essence of a psychosis is the delusion. The charac-

teristics of an insane delusion (whether it be in the nature of
a persecution idea or any other error of judgment) are: first,

that the patient adopts a wholly false premise of some kind;

secondly, that his reasoning and consequently his conclusions

1 For the differences between psychosis, neurosis and genius, consult Chap. I.
2 For methods used in treating the psychoses, consult Chap. XIX.
•81-
No, You re Not Going Insane
are illogical; thirdly, that he tenaciously clings to what he
holds to be true no matter how much proof is brought to bear
in an attempt to establish the falsity of his far-fetched and
altogether absurd ideas. The psychotic is convinced that you
are in error; only he understands. If anyone is insane it is

you, not he.

Now then, the person who worries about losing his mind
presents quite an opposite picture. He knows something is

wrong with him. Because of one or more neurotic symptoms

from which he is suffering, he is continually obsessed with the
thought that he is different from others. But his premises are

sound as well as his reasoning and conclusions. The link be-

tween himself and the world in general is never lost and he

keeps on trying to strengthen it; the psychotic, contrariwise,
has broken that link and lives in a mental world altogether
distinct, peculiar and apart.

The out-and-out neurotic, of course, also may suffer from

ideas that are absurd, ideas that the layman calls "imaginary."
But no matter how ridiculous on the surface such neurotic
imaginings may seem, the possessor of them, unlike the psy-
chotic, is forever attempting to conquer them and change
1
them so that he may think, feel and act like other people.

A psychotic patient under my care believed all the bones in

his body to be broken. Even when stood upon his feet he still

held to his delusion. Another claimed that people were "work-

ing wireless" on him, and this man, mind you, had formerly
been a radio engineer. A third said, "My blood is dried up.

That's why I feel so weak." When he was pricked with a

i Recall Chap. II.

•82-
 No, You re Not Going Insane
needle and actually saw his own blood flow, he still stuck to
his delusional idea.

Following arc the symptoms commonly met with that make

people afraid they will lose their minds. One notes at a glance
how essentially different they are in content from psychotic
An otherwise perfectly normal
delusions. person, man or
woman, may be troubled by one or more of these and such a
person should realize that the manifestation is merely an indi-
vidual difference that, as already mentioned, should be looked
upon as a normal deviation within the normal. If several such
symptoms exist, especially for several years, the condition
would technically be called neurotic. But even a neurosis, no
matter how severe, no matter if it presents symptoms other
than those mentioned below and the patient is suffering in-
tensely, does not lead to insanity.

Loss of Memory.— For this physical causes exist, or mental

or both. The usual physical causes are late hours, insufficient
sleep, too little exercise and fresh air, too much alcohol or

tobacco, sluggish intestinal elimination. Correct your faults in

any of these respects and at once your memory improves.
Regarding mental causes it should be pointed out that the
ability to remember depends primarily upon three factors:

the recency of the stimulus; the intensity of the stimulus; the

repetition of the stimulus. In other words, we are able to re-

member most readily an experience that occurred only a short

while ago, or that was unusual or dramatic, or that occurred
several times instead of once. Think of your poor memory in

this light and it will explain a lot. It ought to allay your

apprehension.
Let it be emphasized, furthermore, that your mind is

•83-
No, You re Not Going Insane
strongly self-protective and consequently it tends not to re-

member what it does not want to remember. If your memory

is interfering with your work, analyze your emotional attitude
toward your work and try to discover why you have grown
antagonistic.
As regards the relationship between failing memory and
the psychosis, this occurs only after a psychosis has been ex-
istent in a full-fledged way for years, in the terminal stages of
deterioration.
Inability to concentrate usually is an accompaniment of
unretentive memory. What has already been said about the
former applies in every detail to the latter.

Suicidal Impulse. —Suffice it to say that when ''things get a

bit too thick" and the outlook appears hopeless the thought
of ending it all is a perfectly intelligent reaction. So also is it an
intelligent reaction to realize one's responsibilities and to con-
vince oneself that events somehow have a way of straightening
themselves out. There are few who do not, during the course of
a lifetime, think occasionally about self-destruction. Strong
guilt feelings often are a motivation. Of course, only the fool
gives way. If the impulse persists, as often is the case in a neu-
rotic state, the help of a psychiatrist had better be sought and
the compulsion removed. The impulse, however, is not a sign
of insanity.
Worry.— We worry because our minds are confused and
doubtful, because we are not able to think clearlv and to see
a way out of something that threatens. For example, you keep
on worrying how to pay a note about to fall due until you
remember suddenly that you can borrow on your life in-
surance. The mechanism of all forms of worry is essentially

•84-
 No, You're Not Going Insane
the same. Knowledge dissipates mental confusion and removes
uncertainty and worry.
The psychotic cannot be said to worry, because he cannot
be said to be confused and doubtful in the sense that I have
outlined. He is too sure of his own thinking. Worry can de-
plete the organic brain system and lead to a nervous break-
down (a severe neurosis). It is often reported that So-and-So
became insane because of worry. Investigation of such causes
always reveals that worry is a sort of camouflage masking other
facts. In short, it is normal to worry. How could an intelligent
person be absolutely free from it these days?
Unreality Feelings.—-When the environment, including
people and things, begins to "feel" unreal (as though objects
did not exist or as though they were seen through a mist), you
should always ask yourself what it is from which you are trying
to escape. Search deeply into your thought storehouse, al-

though thismay not be necessary because the reason for

"flight" may be known to you. Disappointment in a beloved
one, inability to get a job, etc., are common causes. The mind,
again in the role of protector, always attempts to blot out an
offending factor by making the whole world seem not to exist
as it really is.

Feelings of unreality are technically called escape mecha-

nisms, as is the fear of insanity itself. But, mind you, the arti-

ficial world of phantasy that the psychotic sets up for himself

appears decidedly real to him.

Depression.— There are those who take life more seriously
than others, also those who get the blues readily when dis-
appointed. Women are more disposed to depression than men
and their physiological cycle may be responsible. Nor should
•85-
No, You re Not Going Insane
it be forgotten that everyone is more or less subject to ups and
downs and that this follows a fairly regular rhythmic curve
and pattern.
Depression, however, is not melancholia. The latter, a psy-

chosis, presents quite a different clinical picture; such patients

worrying absurdly about some negligible transgression of the
past, like stealing an apple, for which they are convinced they
can never be forgiven. Depression, therefore, is normal. When
despondency becomes psychotic it is extremely marked, of
long duration, and shows delusions in addition.
Doubt.— This disturbance may become so marked as to
lead to what the French call folie de doute, a sort of doubting
mania. Here irresolution robs the individual of his will power
and leaves him helpless. He is unable to make a decision and
stick to it. Even after he does decide he begins to doubt
whether or not he has done right and he may go so far as to

try to undo what already has been done.

Especially in pronounced cases do people fear for the in-
tegrity of their minds. Doubt, however, is not a characteristic
of the psychotic. The latter is really too sure of himself.

Anxiety or a feeling of impending danger does not lead to

insanity. These are typical neurotic states and, of course,
curable. Usually they are the outgrowth, in summary fashion,

of a general, underlying neurosis that presents other symptoms

as well.

Guilt and inferiority should be included as symptoms that

often make people fear they are going insane. These have al-

ready been explained in a previous chapter. Although all neu-

rotics are more or less suffering from guilt and inferiority, only
•86-
 No, You re Not Going Insane
when such feelings are pronounced do they become alarmed
about becoming psychotic.
Various errors that we commit almost daily and definite
obsessions and compulsions likewise scare people into the in-
sanity bugaboo. Chapters VIII and IX, in detail, deal with
these interesting mental factors.
There arc various fears, besides that of insanity itself, that

must needs be mentioned here.

To be sure, everybody is likely to become timid now and
again. In fact, always to be fearless in every particular, even
in the face of financial difficulties, critical illness or other
impending disaster indicates lack of foresight and intelligence.

It is also natural to be afraid to speculate in the stock market,

to dive into shallow water, to run an automobile at breakneck
speed and the like. Such fears are engendered by the instinct
of self-preservation and are, as above stated, only natural.
Certain fears exist, however, which are decidedly neurotic.
Fear of death may be placed in this category, likewise the fear
of growing old, fear of the dark, the fear of poverty, fear of
snakes, cats, worms and the like.

Then there is claustrophobia. It means fear of closed places.

People who are harassed by this type of fear cannot feel at

ease in a small or closed room, in a subway, elevator, and the

like. They only feel safe when the place is large and the doors
and windows are open.
An opposite, so to speak, to this fear also exists. It is known
as agoraphobia. Literally agoraphobia means fear of open
spaces. Such persons have a dread of crossing a street, a plaza

or an open field; they also feel uncomfortable in large theaters

or assembly halls.
•87-
No, Youre Not Going Insane
There are also aerophobia, fear of high places; misophobia,

fear of dirt; fear of a certain number and anything with which

it may be associated; anthropophobia, fear of human society;

ailurophobia, fear of cats; hematophobia, fear of the sight of

blood, etc., etc. The list of possible phobias is a long one.
With regard to number fears persons exist who not only
fear, say, 7, but all multiples of 7, such as 14, 28, 77, etc. There
is a case on record where the patient became alarmed when
the clock reached seven minutes before the hour and seven
minutes after it. At these times he experienced a peculiar and
indefinable sensation that something dreadful was going to
happen to him, exactly what he did not know. Besides, when-
ever he ascended a flight of steps he would count them. When
he reached the seventh step he would be in a panic. On the
seventh of each month he stayed in bed all day because he was
fearful of venturing out. Needless to say, the number 7
rendered this man's life a veritable misery.
Such manifestations are, however, neurotic in origin and, I

repeat, they do not lead to insanity. They are merely symbols

that represent something else; something the unconscious
mind is trying to express. Psychoanalysis is the best method
for all such cases.

In this connection it should be said that a psychosis is not

scientifically considered a hereditary disease. It does not, for
instance, follow the laws of inheritance set down by Gregor
Mendel in 1865, and this is the ultimate test. Should you hap-
pen to find a case of psychosis somewhere in your family tree,

whether near or remote, that fact in itself is nothing what-

ever to be alarmed about.
I stated in the beginning that if you fear you are losing your
•88-
 No, You re Not Going Insane
mind it proves that you are not in any such danger at all. To
be afraid of anything really stands for a motivation to avoid
it. If I fear becoming a dope fiend, whether justified or not, I

avoid all medicines containing a narcotic.

Besides, in the last analysis, a fear (psychologically consid-
ered) embodies in a symbolic way an unfulfilled wish in the

unconscious mind. That does not mean that a person who

fears he will lose his mind actually wishes to be removed from
reality and incarcerated in a mental hospital. Nevertheless, the
unconscious mind plays with the possibility because, when in-

sane, the individual is removed from his difficulties in the

world of reality; he is excused; in short, he is allowed to escape

without censure or blame. On the other hand, still more im-
portant reasons exist why, even unconsciously, he does not
wish to be allowed to escape so successfully. A conflict be-

tween what insanity stands for (the wish to escape in a sym-

bolic sense) and the wish to remain and fight it out resolves
itself into fear. Through fear the conscious mind makes
doubly sure that the wish for escape in the unconscious shall

not be allowed to have its way. Therefore it may be said, in

general terms, that when we are afraid a thing will happen we

are doubly fortifying ourselves against its possible occurrence.
Although it is manifestly impossible to discuss, even briefly,
every symptom that may drive certain persons into the convic-

tion that they are losing their minds, it is to be hoped that, by

consideration of the usual ones encountered, what I am
pleased to call the factor of ignorance will be removed and
consequently many people will be reassured. An old saying
has it that what we worry over the most never happens. So be
•89-
No, You re Not Going Insane
glad that you're not going insane and that your worst fears will
not materialize.
Should this good news not make you glad after all, a final

course still remains open. That is to consult a psychiatrist who

knows his job; who, with specialized methods, sometimes with
only a personal heart-to-heart talk, can chase your dread of
losing your mind, as well as your other fears, helter-skelter. It
is relatively an easy matter to assist you to live more content-
edly with the world as well as with yourself.
Don't forget that every symptom, whatever its nature, has
a meaning. It is a symbol that stands for something else-
some repression, complex or conflict in the unconscious. The
controlling mechanism of your entire organism, your mind, is

sending out in its own way its S.O.S.

Your mind is trying, ever so hard, to make you better than
you already are. It is endeavoring earnestly and persistently
to adjust itself.

90
Chapter VIII

YOUR ERRORS HAVE A MEANING

O YOU SOMETIMES FORGET FAMILIAR TELE-

D phone numbers? Do you find it difficult

or impossible to recall certain faces or incidents? Have you

ever hesitated over the name of a friend or beloved one or
called such a person by a different name? Do you overlook
birthdays, wedding anniversaries and other important occa-
sions? Are you in the habit of mislaying your hat, your keys

or your glasses? Do you often oversleep? Do you make mis-

takes in writing, speaking or reading? Does your mind fre-

quently go blank?
None of the faulty behavior I have listed may be true of
you. Have not, however, similar errors annoyed or embarrassed
you? Such reactions may appear trivial, even foolish; because
of their repetitious character, however, they may become a
downright nuisance, even give rise to grave concern.
Yet everything that occurs in the mind or that the mind
causes us to do has a meaning and is purposeful. Especially is

this true if it be repeated. No repeated error, whatever its

nature, should be held to be insignificant. If you do no more

than stub your toe as you enter a building, there may be a
reason. Once a bride-to-be fell at the entrance to the church
where she was to be married and sprained her ankle. She was
rushed to a hospital and the ceremony postponed. The acci-

dent—if so it may be designated— was for her a blessing in dis-

•91-
Your Errors Have a Meaning
guise. She thought she wanted to marry but her unconscious
mind not only reminded her that she did not, it actually pre-
vented her from marrying.
No man, woman or child is wholly free from unintentional
errors. We do and say many things that later seem strange
and unexplainable. We forget what we should remember; we
develop peculiar tastes, desires, impulses, likes and dislikes;

we mislay or lose objects that are valuable; we suddenly di-

vulge a secret we have protected for years. Then we ask our-
selves: "Why did I do that?"
And well we may! Every such error is a call for help sent up
by the unconscious mind. What you think with your con-
scious mind may be quite at variance with what you desire,

feel and think within the real you which is your unconscious
mind. The activity of the conscious is social, conventional,
stereotyped in comparison with the unconscious, which is ego-
tistic, primitive, instinctive and self-protective.

Discover the cause for your repeated errors and you rid your-
self of such irritations, at the same time bringing to conscious
recognition maladjustments in your inner emotional make-up,
the removal of which should prove valuable in directing as
well as smoothing the course of your life.

Should you forget a. familiar telephone number at once ask

yourself, Why? The reason undoubtedly is that deep down
you do not want to make the call. I myself forgot the number
of a hospital where I was to deliver a lecture when I was about
to apologize for my delay. I had talked to that particular hos-

pital perhaps a hundred times before. This was the first time,
however, that I was consciously trying to do what uncon-
sciously I did not want to do.

•92-
 Your Errors Have a Meaning
A colleague told me that when he decided to telephone his
wife to say he could not be home for dinner he dialed three
wrong numbers before he got his own. "It's because she al-

ways flares up when I'm detained at the office," he explained.

As regards one's difficulty or inability to recall certain faces

or incidents, the unconscious mechanism is the same. The ap-

pearance of persons whom one dislikes or is jealous of, who

have offended in some way or whom one fears, tend to be

blotted from the mind. Incidents that by association carry a
disagreeable emotional feeling-tone, such as an operation or a
funeral, likewise fade from memory. Although the entire in-

cident may not be forgotten, salient details are dropped out.

The more disagreeable an incident, the deeper is it finally

repressed. A man may forget entirely that he once was jilted

by a girl he deeply loved. The recollection of the pain attend-

ing childbearing never lingers long. Indeed, when we delib-
erately try to recall a harassing experience the mind may go
quite blank. The unconscious mind always tries to protect the
individual from again being emotionally upset.
Regarding hesitation over the name of someone we really

know well, such an occurrence means that inwardly we bear

that person an antagonism and that why an attempt is being
is

made to repress the name. A woman told me that when she is

about to scold her daughter she invariably stammers. Another
woman confided that, after a quarrel, she addressed her sec-
ond husband as Vincent, which is the name of her first

husband.
Be wary, therefore, of persons who continually forget your
name, have difficulty in remembering it after being told, or

address you with a name not your own. The same attitude

.93.
Your Errors Have a Meaning
should be taken if they should, but do not, remember having
seen you before. There is likely to be some hostile feeling
present. This may be of a personal nature or such a person

may associate you with some disagreeable experience of his

own not directly connected with you. To be sure, the real
reasons for such social errors are seldom suspected.
For a husband to overlook his wife's birthday or wedding
anniversary is proverbial. Here woman's intuition reveals her

to be a good psychologist; she won't take "too busy" or any

other excuse for an answer. She realizes that we never really

forget what we want, with all our unconscious as well as con-

scious being, to remember.
A man who mislays his hat either dislikes it, wants a new
one, experienced unpleasantness when last he wore it or he
does not want to go out. And what you lose you may be sure
you do not value, even if it be your wedding ring. Psycholo-
gists claim that we lose things because we want to be rid of
them or the association they carry, but that we are unwilling
to admit the fact to ourselves and actually throw the thing
away.
An ardent admirer of the late President Roosevelt forgot
the combination of the safe in which his Adjusted Service
Certificate had safely been stowed away. He told me he had
opened the safe only a week before Congress passed the
soldier bonus over the President's veto, but that, try as he
would, he could not recollect the combination since. After
explaining the complex he had developed— that even if his

conscious mind wanted to "cash in" his unconscious was still

supporting the President— the combination of the safe came

to him in a flash.

.94.
 Your Errors Have a Meaning
A certain man forgot to wind the alarm on several occa-

sions, in consequence of which he was late for work. He also

forgot his keys on two occasions and had to wake up his wife

in the early hours of the morning. Twice he forgot to bank the

furnace at night with the result that there was no heat the
next day. In this case the unconscious was trying to tell him
that he did not like living in the country although consciously
he maintained that he did, for the good of the children.
A young man who was writing a Ph.D. thesis got into the

habit of mislaying his glasses. Finally he lost them altogether.

He admitted afterward that he "hated the job." A woman of
my acquaintance always knows where she left her glasses when
she wants to read a novel or newspaper but never when she
wants to write a check. A widow who has been forced to sew
for a living said: "I'm forever losing my thimble or needles or
tucking away dress materials in out-of-the-way places."
Housewives may forget to season the soup after some diffi-

culty with a member of the family. A psychiatrist told me

that, after he had scolded his butler, he observed that the man
forgot him when serving the dessert.
Oversleeping is, of course, an unconscious desire to avoid
facing the problems of the day. It is a wish to blot out reality.
One might call it an escape mechanism. Perhaps you have
observed that you never oversleep when you have to catch a
train or boat to go on vacation.
Mistakes in writing, speaking or reading are exceedingly
common.
A doctor wrote to a former patient who asked for an ap-
pointment: "I hope you will not be able to come to the office

at four o'clock Saturday." The explanation of this "slip" is

.95.
Your Errors Have a Meaning
understandable because the patient owed the physician a large
amount for unpaid previous visits.

In my own case a patient once sent me a check for services

rendered but failed to sign his name. The implication surely
was no compliment.
A woman who wished to consult an attorney about a di-

vorce wrote to him: "I have been married 22 years." But the
second 2 had evidently been added afterward, indicating that
probably she was embarrassed to admit not being able to make
a go of it after living with the man so long.
In congratulating a successful political rival upon his elec-
tion the defeated candidate mentioned his "ill-deserved vic-

tory." He meant to write "well-deserved." But apparently his

unconscious disappointment could not be stilled despite the
face he wished to put upon it.

Regarding error's in speaking numerous examples could be

cited.

A social climber, in greeting a guest at one of her teas, said:

"I'm so glad you came, Mrs. Vanderbilt." The guest's real

name was Vanderburgh.

"Will you always bore me?" inquired a young lady of her
lover. It is interesting to note that when the man showed he
was hurt the girl insisted she had said "love," not "bore." And
speaking of love, a schoolteacher revealed his secret to his
pupils when on several occasions he called a child by the first

name of the girl with whom he was infatuated.

In a crowded courtroom a witness let slip his opinion of the
attorney for the opposite side by referring to him as a "liar"

instead of "lawyer." So also a conceited astronomer gave him-

self away when talking to his class about relativity. He ended
•96-
 Your Errors Have a Meaning
his talk with: ''None of you can be expected to understand
this subject." According to his notes he had intended to add:
"unless you study hard." An expectant father revealed what
was troubling him when, in commiserating with a man who
had lost his home through foreclosure, he exclaimed: "What
a great maternity!" instead of "calamity."
Mistakes in words often are the result of condensation, that
is, two or more thoughts which the unconscious is trying to
express separately, are rolled consciously into one, thereby
producing odd combinations.
A woman who was talking to me about an intended trip to

the lakes of northern Italy said: "I don't wish to visit Lavonia
Bay." She, herself, was surprised, as no such place exists. Inas-

much as the trip was to be a honeymoon it was "love, honor

and obey" that really was bothering her.

As regards reading, we often read what is not on the printed

or written page and transpose, insert or omit words that reveal
what unconsciously we are thinking.
For instance, a spinster confessed to me that, whenever she
reads any word that is like "lady," "laddie," etc., she changes
it to "baby." As an example of inserting a word not actually in
the sentence a playwright, in reading the notice of a particu-
larly sarcastic critic whom he feared, read: "Last night Mr.
X's best play was produced," although the modifying adjective
actually was missing in the review. During the First World War
a mother skipped the name of her son which appeared in the

list of casualties she was reading and would not believe that
her eyes had played her false until later it was proved to her.

What might be termed erroneously-carried-out actions like-

wise are common.

.97.
Your Errors Have a Meaning
In dressing for a formal dinner a man put on a bright red
bow tie. His enthusiasm was self-evident. A physician who
was supporting his sister in another city enclosed a statement
'Tor Professional Services Rendered/' intended for a patient,
instead of the usual check, which he sent, instead, to the
patient.
When, for instance, a usually efficient secretary makes er-

rors in typing or shorthand, the excuse of fatigue or indisposi-

tion should be taken with a grain of salt. Resentment may

have developed toward the employer or the work, or some-
thing may unconsciously be bothering her. Some years ago
my own secretary often hit the t key by mistake. I discovered
a young man by the name of Thomas was courting her.
In the case of the bride-to-be mentioned in the beginning
the spraining of the ankle accomplished an unconscious pur-
pose and was not serious. On the other hand, such purposeful
accidents often are serious. I am familiar with a case where a
man shot himself while cleaning his revolver and it is signifi-

cant that this occurred after the market crash of 1929; further-
more, that he chose this particular time after neglecting the
weapon for over a year. All sorts of self-inflicted injuries,
especially when so apparently senseless, may represent uncon-
scious motivations for escape or for self-punishment following
guilt complexes. Nor can there be any question but that auto-
mobile accidents are often brought about by unconscious
death wishes.
Psychologists speak of a psychic censor, that, like a police-
man, is stationed between the conscious and the unconscious.
It is this mechanism that is responsible for keeping repressed
material repressed. In other words, what once disturbed or is

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 Your Errors Have a Meaning
disturbing consciousness is pushed away— "forgotten'' the lay-

man would say— into the limbo of the unconscious. However,

if such repressions are vital to the individual they make the
attempt to be recognized on the conscious level again and
again. Since they were disturbing factors before, the censor
them as much as possible. This explains why
tries to disguise

we commit errors and afterward wonder why we did.

It can frequently be noted that we like or dislike certain

people for no apparently adequate reason. Here the explana-

tion lies in our unconscious feelings; that is, some special
characteristic, perhaps not at all well marked, connected with
an unpleasant memory associated with another person. De-
spite what appears to be universal approval in others, a friend
of mine disliked Fred Allen. He said that Fred's radio wit was
crude, his puns corny, his style of comedy atrocious. And I

know whv. This man had a father who was cruel both to him-
self and to his mother. The father's voice had a sharp quality

very reminiscent of Fred Allen's inimitable twang. I explained

the unconscious reason to my friend about a year ago. Since
then his antagonism to Fred Allen's program has entirely dis-

appeared and now he is one of the comedian's most enthusi-

astic fans.

Note, too, your possible tendency to forget, misspell or

change the names of your competitors, rivals or other mem-
bers of your profession. Such persons you would, from the
unconscious point of view, eliminate from the scene. Con-
scious training, however, interferes. The result is an error of
some kind.
The unconscious even heeds the call of the physical. In
other words, if an organ is affected a dislike may develop for
.99.
Your Errors Have a Meaning
tobacco, tea, coffee, alcohol and certain foods. Dr. Ernest
Jones, of London, said that he usually placed his pipe in some
corner where it did not belong and where he afterward could
not find it whenever he began to feel the evil effects of having
smoked more than he should.
Sometimes, too, you feel annoyed and you do not know
why. Sit down quietly to think it out, however, and you will
probably discover the reason. In Caesar and Cleopatra by
George Bernard Shaw, the author pictures Caesar as upset,

after leaving Egypt, by the thought that he had left something

undone. Finally he remembered that he forgot to say good-by
to Cleopatra.
Not only can you aid yourself by studying your own errors,

you can likewise learn a great deal by observing the errors and
attitudes of others.
If a person leaves an umbrella or any other article in your
house, it is likely that he enjoyed his visit and would like to

return. To neglect to write or telephone to someone, especially

after promising to do so, probably denotes some measure of
antagonism, although it may be mild. Forgetting to return
a borrowed book may likewise suggest some form of hostility.

Failure on the part of a husband to have noticed a new hat or

gown is always a suspicious sign. To forget to greet another
likewise warrants attention, as well as failure to mail a letter
or carry out an errand for someone else. People who have dif-

ficulty pronouncing your name or are late for an appointment

are trying, perhaps, to "high-hat" you. Those who don't look
at you when they talk, refuse to accept favors, or fail to call
you by your firstname when you do them, likewise are not
as genuinely friendly as they may seem to be.

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 Your Errors Have a Meaning
It is by their errors that others reveal themselves to us and
by our own that we reveal ourselves to ourselves.
Nor is it difficult to become proficient in this sort of mental
detective work. Merely a little quiet introspection as well as
honesty to face the truth are all that is required.
Errors such as I have been discussing cannot be classified as

neurotic symptoms unless one stretches the elasticity of the

term too far. My purpose in emphasizing them is to show

how much, and in what manifold ways, the demands of the
unconscious seek to make themselves known to all of us;
how much they really have meaning.

101
Chapter IX

YOUR COMPULSIONS ARE CALLS FOR HELP

E SHOULD, HOWEVER, CONSIDER ERRORS AS

w: discussed in the previous chapter as mild
types of obsessions, or perhaps better yet, compulsions. In
other words, they obtrude themselves upon consciousness and
force us into certain forms of behavior without our bidding,
hence they are obsessive in character. Furthermore, we fre-

quently must give way to them whether we will or no, even if

we realize they are absurd, and these are the characteristics of

compulsions.
All of a sudden, and for no apparent reason, you find your-
self humming a tune, familiar or otherwise. After a while it

begins to annoy you because it keeps repeating itself inside

your mind without your humming it. In other words, a kind of

mental humming occurs and it haunts you and you cannot
get rid of it.

The cause of such a special brand of error again is to be

found in the unconscious. Maybe it is the theme song of a

musical show you attended, where you were accompanied by

a person for whom you care a great deal. Perhaps the tune is of

a lively character and the unconscious is trying to cheer you

up. There are many possible reasons that, by association, may
produce the obsession.
An illustration of an obsession more annoying because it

seemed, from the conscious point of view of this particular

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 Your Compulsions Are Calls for Help
man, to be more senseless, was the constantly recurring
thought "mashed potatoes, boiled potatoes— mashed potatoes,
boiled potatoes." It kept repeating itself for days until this call

for help on the part of the unconscious was thoroughly under-

stood.
Here the difficulty lay in the fact that the man had pre-
viously received a reprimand from his employer regarding his
easygoing ways with the men who were under him in his de-
partment. "Don't be too soft!" the employer had shouted.
"Be hard!" That very evening his wife served French fried
potatoes that were burnt. "I should be hard with her, too,"
he mused. The next day the "mashed potatoes— boiled po-
tatoes" obsession had been born. In other words, he could not
make up his mind to be tough with his wife, after all, although
his unconscious kept reminding him that he should.
A compulsion is really an obsession that carries an impulse
of action. One feels impelled to do thus and so irrespective of
how irrational it seems. One may or may not give way to one's
compulsions. If one fights them down one usually experiences
a sense of uneasiness.
Among the ordinary compulsions met with are the desire
to go back to see whether the front door is locked, whether
you have turned off the gas stove and whether you have put
out your cigarette. Feeling impelled to touch gateposts or
avoid cracks in the pavement, or to add up the numbers on
the license plates of passing automobiles, are other examples.
Then there are those who must look under the bed or open
all closet doors before retiring. Indeed, a whole series of such
acts may become obsessive and the individual in question may
have no peace until he performs the entire ritual.

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 a

Your Compulsions Are Calls for Help

Making designs on paper while holding a telephone receiver

or while in conversation may develop from an error into a

compulsion, with the individual incapable of stopping himself
from damaging his own and other people's desks, blotters, and
tables. One such person would always roughly draw animals,
such as pigs, chickens and cows. His deeply-rooted ambition
was to own a farm. Another simply made up-and-down strokes
with his pencil. These markings were symbols representing his
lack of sexual gratification.
Compulsions may likewise be disturbing in character. There
are those who feel impelled to smash electric light bulbs and
shop windows. Even murderous ideas may be of a compulsive
nature.
To be sure, obsessions and compulsions can be so severe,
even torturing, that the individual himself cannot possibly
work out their meaning. Such a person would then be said
to be more than merely neurotic, that he was suffering from a
genuine neurosis— a compulsion neurosis, if you will.

A patient was obsessed with the idea that whatever she

touched somehow might poison, by the medium of contact,
somebody else. Guilt feelings engendered by sex indiscretions
of youth were the basic cause. She considered herself as one
"poisoned." Therefore, although she knew it was impossible,
she developed the idea that she could poison other people.
Another patient endured for years the compulsion of dress-

ing and undressing three times before he felt comfortable in

his clothes. Another had to walk around the block before he
would enter his house. A third washed his hands with soap,
afterward with alcohol, every time he touched a doorknob—
"dirt complex," so to speak.
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 Your Compulsions Are Calls for Help
Indeed, thoughts alone can become highly obsessive and
undermining.
I knew a woman who kept thinking that an accident would
happen to her children whenever they were out of her sight.

The children were safeguarded well enough and this mother

knew that the chances of harm befalling them were prac-
tically nil. Yet try as she would the compulsion persisted and
caused her no end of heartache.
Young women frequently suffer from sex-thought obses-
sions. Of and by themselves these ideas about men are per-
fectly natural and normal. What makes them neurotic, how-
ever, is the fact that they keep crowding into the mind, forcing
other ideas out. In some cases they actually prevent women
from living a happy and efficient life.
Falling in love is a compulsion. To be unable to think of
anything else but one's beloved can assume all the earmarks
of a bona fide nervous disease.
Even conscience, as such, can become a compulsion. Al-
ways to have that intangible something obtrude itself into
one's thinking and point the accusing finger of wrongdoing and
guilt is a compulsion of the very first rank.
Conscience, to be sure, keeps us in line with moral stand-
ards and dictates what we shall or shall not do, what we dare
or dare not do. For under the skin— and often not deeply at
that— lies the untamed savage in each of us. We are afraid to
let him out. We have been taught that he must remain buried
and repressed.
When he does slip out now and again we naturally are tor-
mented. We know we have done wrong and we accuse and
revile ourselves. We may go so far as to consider ourselves out-

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Your Compulsions Are Calls for Help
casts, unfit to mingle with decent people and particularly with
those we love. Such conscious mechanisms, you will agree,

seem entirely exaggerated when held up to the cold light of

reason and common sense.

Nevertheless compulsions are like that. Whether it be an

ever-present and overdeveloped sense of conscience that keeps

obtruding or whether it be the type of compulsion that forces

a person to perform certain acts over and over again, the result
is always the same, namely, mental distress.

And the cure always is the same, too— that is, the general
method to be employed in each case is identical although the

fundamental causes, even for the same compulsion in different

persons, are different. For all obsessions and compulsions—

whether of thought or deed, whether conscious and clearly

defined or subtly disguised in symbolic forms— the cure always

lies in digging up from the unconscious mind the complex or

maladjustment that is responsible. Thus do you heed the

mind's call for help.

A kleptomaniac, age seventeen, was brought to me when I

was director of the Psychopathic Laboratory of the New York
Police Department. This girl had a very comfortable home,
was well educated, but was an incorrigible shoplifter. The
articles she stole were of trifling value and her allowance was
ample enough to have permitted the purchase of any or all

of them.

A careful investigation showed that she stole only articles

that had a point, like knives, scissors, needles, pins. She was
caught taking an imitation diamond brooch, valued at $1.98,
from a bargain-sale counter. Her room at home was searched

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 Your Compulsions Are Calls for Help
and was found to be filled with innumerable trifles of similar
kind.
The girl was Italian born. In Sicily she had always envied
her brother's privilege of carrying a knife. Once her older
brother stabbed a boy who had smacked her face. She was
then ten years old. She admired her brother for this and
wished to copy him but her parents taught her that girls must
act subdued and refined. It was the special privilege of males
alone to carry knives and stilettos and perhaps stab those who
offended them. However, when she had a quarrel with any-
one she would think: "If I were my brother, I could and
would stab that person."
Later, when the family moved to America, she had quite
forgotten the incidents and thoughts set forth above. The de-
sire unlawfully to possess sharp instruments was still motivat-
ing her, however. Finally it transformed itself into shoplifting.
She could easily have bought the articles, which were symbols
of the knife or stiletto with which she could kill those who
offended her, but the compulsion became master, so she took
the unlawful way of obtaining these forbidden things.
Many compulsions and their analyses are less dramatic than
this. Often, too, the explanation of the compulsion is not so
involved and the unconscious complex, or cause for the com-
pulsion, can be discovered rather easily.
Feelings of guilt and consequent self-punishment are often
at the root of the whole matter, especially when the compul-
sions are torturing in nature. And in this connection I would
like to stress the factor of compulsive sex ideas and acts in
children.
It is fortunate that fathers and mothers are generally com-
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Your Compulsions Are Calls for Help
ing to recognize how important it is to try to explain sex
matters to their children and, by so doing, to take the vulgar
mystery out of it. It can be done so easily anyway. There are
many books on the subject for children, and the approach to
the realities of sex by means of examples taken from plants
and the lower animals is admirable.
Every parent should try to win the confidence of his son
and daughter to the extent that all sex questions, especially
irregular sex practices, can be discussed frankly, freely and
without embarrassment on either side. If the parents feel this
is impossible then, at least, they should consult their physician
or a competent psychiatrist who either will advise as to the
best method of approach or will talk personally to the child
himself. There are few children who do not worry about what
x
is erroneously looked upon as "self-abuse" at some period of
their lives. When they give way to it without honest knowl-
edge on the matter the seeds of self-accusation, convictions of
guilt and inferiority are likely to be sown, and later in life

unconsciously to torment the sufferer with some form of

compulsion. This occurred in the following case.
Here was a man of thirty-eight, strong and healthy, well
educated and capable, but holding an unimportant position
in an advertising firm. His was a case where the conviction of
being watched and the impulse to throw himself from a height
were combined and marked. Wherever he went he would
carefully observe people to see how he was reacting upon
them. Especially was this true in social gatherings, where he
would blush upon the slightest provocation. His place of busi-
ness was on the fifteenth floor and he was afraid that he
1 For amplification refer to Chap. V.
•108-
 Your Compulsions Are Calls for Help
would jump out of the window. As if this were not enough,
he suffered from insomnia, terrifying dreams and a terrific

sense of loneliness.
The analysis revealed that this man's mother was unusually
severe with him as a child. The father died when the boy was
five. The mother became a dressmaker. Being of a nervous
temperament, she punished the boy severely for the slightest
naughtiness. It was not uncommon for her to lock him up in
a dark closet and keep him there, despite his screams and en-
treaties, until he fell asleep. She also whipped him frequently
with a leather belt belonging to the father. When she caught
the boy practicing onanism not only did she beat him cruelly,

she reviled him with unmentionable epithets.

Strange as it may seem, the boy grew to man's estate loving
his mother and idealizing her more and more. She became
kinder to him as the years went by. After a while he sup-
ported her and relieved her of financial burdens. The pun-
ishments and humiliations which he had suffered at her hands
gradually were repressed into the unconscious and practically
forgotten.
They were responsible, just the same— these repressions—
for the symptoms I have listed, all really symbolic forms of
self-inflicted guilt.

The blushing and compulsive feelings of being observed

came from the childhood conviction that people notice it
when a boy is addicted to sex habits; he was convinced,
furthermore, that he deserved to be found out. He couldn't
sleep after growing to man's estate because he continued to
be tempted as when a boy. His dreams were frightening inas-

much as they indicated an upset, maladjusted state of the

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Your Compulsions Are Calls for Help
unconscious mind. Lastly, the impulse to jump from high
places was an unconscious desire to do away with himself since
he was so unworthy that he deserved self-destruction.

Compulsions are tricky things, and often most involved, be-

The cause, however, can always be

side being tormenting.
found and removed. The sufferer from compulsions can al-
ways be greatly helped if not completely cured.
The reason I speak guardedly about complete recovery here
is because curing a full-fledged compulsion neurosis of long
standing is one of the most difficult tasks to undertake in the
whole realm of medical psychology. The difficulty lies, of
course, in the fact that many persons with such deeply in-
grained and habitual compulsions do not want to give the
time necessary for a cure. For there are few indeed who can-
not be improved, if not completely cured, provided they stick
it out.
Tics and habit spasms, such as blinking the eyes, or man-
nerisms in walking, etc., may also be classified as compulsions.
Even stammering, stuttering, cluttering, or lisping, that is not
caused by structural defects, belong in the same category.
Often the unconscious repression responsible is no more than
a wish, for some specific reason, not to contact reality. In one
man who was treated, months of "speech exercises" had done
not the slightest good. In a few analyses it was discovered that
he felt he did not want to live (contact reality) after his
mother died, which was the time when his stammering
started. After this unconscious repression had been made con-
scious, he quickly improved and finally was cured.
Probably no chapter on compulsions would be complete
without a word on superstitions. These, to be sure, may be-

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 Your Compulsions Are Calls for Help
come definitely upsetting no matter how much the individual
in question recognizes their neurotic nature.
Although the psychology involved is not simple, we may
say in summary that every superstitious belief carries with it

an element of punishment which one is impelled to try to

avoid. And why should one fear punishment? Because one
feels guilty and deserving of punishment.
To put it another way, the source that is to inflict the pun-
ishment has, in your mind, become a rectifier of wrong, a
symbol of some unknown power whose temper may not be
trifled with. Such a power has decreed, for instance, that no-

body shall become associated with the number 1 3 except upon

pain of something dreadful happening. Since, unconsciouslv,
you believe this power would punish you together with all

sinners like yourself, if you disobey, you avoid 1 3 as much as

possible. In other words, you subscribe to the ritual attending

this superstition and you likewise find yourself superstitious in
other ways.
It may be said, indeed, that the more superstitious you are,
the more unconscious guilt you harbor and the more neurotic
you are. Nor can you consider yourself a free soul in this
respect if you say: "Of course, I'm not really superstitious,
but why take a chance?''
In Reader's Digest for January, 1935, certain "pet econo-
mies" of well-known persons were listed that are amusing.
These, too, are compulsions.
Bruce Barton hates "to see medicine wasted. Whenever half
a bottle is left around the house by any member of the family,
I always finish it," he says, "with thus far excellent results."

Kathleen Norris confesses to a "stinginess in the matter of

•111-
Your Compulsions Are Calls for Help
butter." Charming Pollock claims he could not make himself
leave a hotel room with a single light burning. Ida Tarbell and
Gelett Burgess won't throw away string, wrapping paper or
glass bottles.

In conclusion may it be emphasized that the question is

not: "Have you one ormore obsessions and compulsions?"

The question is how distressing is what you have?
If the compulsion does not especially annoy, simply leave
it alone. Nothing of a serious nature will occur because of that

fact. If it does annoy you can, if you wish, have it rooted out.
A great deal can be accomplished by oneself. For, after all,

compulsions are habits of thought and action. To speak of

them in a figurative but graphic way, one can think of these
habits as water running along certain channels. Each time we
give way to a habit the channel is worn deeper and wider.
Each time, on the other hand, that we resist the habit we
shunt the flow into other mind channels.
Although it may seem impossible to believe, even those
with strongly vexatious obsessive ideas or with a definite com-
pulsion neurosis were glad to be neurotic after their symp-
toms had been removed. In the analysis that was required to
cure them they learned such tremendously valuable things
about themselves they had never known before and, besides,
so much about life in general. They now realize they could
not have become so thoroughly aware of their assets as well
as handicaps in any other way.

112
Chapter X

ARE YOU GETTING THE MOST OUT OF YOUR

INSOMNIA AND DREAMS?

N THE JOURNAL OF {CATHERINE MANSFIELD,"

r the author says: "It often happens to me
now that when I lie down to sleep at night, instead of grow-
ing drowsy, I feel more wakeful and, lying in bed, I begin to
live over either scenes from real life or imaginary scenes. . . .

They are marvelously vivid." She goes on to describe such an

experience where she imagines herself on an ocean liner. It is

night and growing late. Her father "puts his head in" and
asks if "one of you would care for a walk before you turn in.

It's glorious on deck."

If Katherine Mansfield could fashion such a beautiful mind
picture, it is needless to say that she knew how to get the
most out of her insomnia.

Yet insomnia can be an agonizing experience and develop

fairly quickly into a habit that saps the vitality and makes the
very thought of turning out the light a hideous prospect. It is

a fact, too, that insomnia is a result rather than a cause, and

that, as such, it can be overcome.
The person who habitually falls into the arms of Morpheus
the minute he retires, and remains so the entire night, is a
rarity indeed. As a rule, people are sleepless or restless sleepers

now and again, some finding it difficult to fall asleep, others

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Are You Getting the Most Out of Your Insomnia?
becoming fully awake after a few hours, then finding it im-
possible to sleep after that.
A change in weather conditions may be the cause, as well
as increased humidity in the air. A strange bed may be to
blame; too many covers or too few. Too little fresh circulating
air may make a person toss about, or a rainstorm or a howling
wind outside. An exciting day, book, movie, play or stimulat-
ing music may prevent one from sleeping. Overfatigue is a
frequent cause, or working late when one is not used to it.

There are also many physical factors

1
that may be to blame
as well as a marked keyed-up state of the emotions.

Then there is the factor of irregularity of the hour of turn-

ing out the light. College students who for years have studied
late often find it difficult in after years to fall asleep earlier. Of
Jimmie Durante, the comedian, it is said that he never can
sleep before two in the morning because he used to work in

night clubs, and of the late Theodore Dreiser, a former news-

paperman, that he frequently would awaken at three a.m.
and remain fully awake until five.

The recipe for overcoming the physical and mental factors

is, of course, to correct them. Regarding bad sleeping habits

inherited from the past, keep trying until more beneficial

habits are established. Regarding general rules that may be

effective, a glass of warm milk, a few crackers, or a tepid bath;
a cold shower followed by a brisk rubdown; deep breathing
exercises before an open window; the reading of light or
monotonous literature; listening to the radio; a glass of beer

—any of the foregoing may work wonders with certain people.

1 Consult Chap. XII.

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 Are You Getting the Most Out of Your Insomnia?
Never, however, take to sedative drugs except upon the ad-
vice of a physician; nor should you ever become alarmed that
your chronic insomnia will lead to insanity. Unconscious dis-

turbances of neurotic nature may be the sole cause and those,

to be sure, can be removed.
Let us, however, think of our "white nights"— particularly
if they occur only occasionally— as having a meaning, as being
still another way by which the unconscious tries to gain
recognition.
What it frequently is attempting to say is that the sleeper's
love life is not adequate. Such inadequate expression may per-

tain to whether the individual be married or single, whether

he or she be of a philandering or promiscuous nature.
Especially in reference to sex, as such, 1
may it be said here that
sexual gratification is as much mental as physical.

When the individual tries to sleep and an attempt to blot

out consciousness is made, then the repressions and conflicts

that lie close to the surface, so to speak, have an opportunity

to present themselves for consideration. why we phan- That is

tasize so much when in bed and surrounded by darkness. The

distractions of reality are reduced to a minimum. We think

more honestly at such a time because we can introspect bet-

ter. Many things become clear at night that were muddled
during the day. That, however, is what prevents us from
sleeping.

Despite the factor of losing sleeping time there is no gain-

saying the fact that sleepless hours can be made valuable

hours. That is why I ask whether you are getting the most out

1 See Chap. XI, which discusses sex fully.

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of your insomnia. Don't let it put you in a panic; don't roll

from one side of the bed to the other; don't try to stop

thinking.
Think until you find out what your unconscious wants you
to think about. Settle that and you will automatically fall

asleep. Then your mind will be glad and you will feel content.

Suppose you do lose an hour or two? Even if you cannot make

it up the next day, isn't it worth it if you have learned some-
thing about yourself that you never knew before, or if you
have finally settled a problem that has been demanding solu-

tion for weeks?

Not that I am suggesting you carry your troubles to bed
with you and make a habit of it. Occasionally, however, this
is beneficial rather than harmful. The peace of the night al-

lows you to think clearly.

And should you fall asleep and later awake, there is surely
something important that is trying to escape from the uncon-
scious. It may be that a dream is revealing an inner disturb-
ance and that consciousness jumps into activity so as not to
worry you. This self-protective mechanism concerning the re-

lationship between insomnia and dreams will be understood

more clearly after the discussion on dreams. Dreaming actually
tends to prevent insomnia. It eases into the upper reaches of
the mind repressions that must come out, without actually
disturbing the dreamer to the extent of awakening him.
If insomnia has become a habit the chances are that a com-
plete analysis of your unconscious mental and emotional
processes is required. You have then reached a stage where it

is impossible for you to get the most out of your insomnia

by yourself, without outside scientific aid. Your repressions are

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probably deep-seated and of long standing. You cannot solve
your problems by thinking in the dark, as previously suggested,
in a conscious manner. Deeper probing of the unconscious is

indicated.
Whether or not, however, you are of the type that cannot
fall asleep, or the type that sleeps and then wakes up, you do
sleep some of the night and undoubtedly you dream a great

deal.

Try, therefore, to study your dreams. All have a meaning.

Get the most out of them. They will shed a flood of light
on your insomnia problem.
Dreams have always held a strange fascination. These weird
mind pictures that visit us while we sleep seldom fail to capti-
vate the dreamer's interest and, even centuries ago, they were
believed to mean something. The Greeks and Romans ac-

corded the dream great respect because they believed it

originated from an outside divine power and had prophetic

But during the Middle Ages dream interpretation
significance.

degenerated into the silliest kind of superstition. Only lately,

one might say, has the dream come into its own, this being
coincident with the advance made in psychology generally.

For the past half century the mysteries of dream life have at
last been solved and the dream itself put upon a scientific

basis.

Nowadays it can be demonstrated that each and every one

of your dreams, no matter how incoherent or sketchy it may
be, is a definite attempt on the part of your unconscious mind
to bring something to your conscious attention. In other
words, understanding your dreams means knowing yourself
as you never have before. What is more, via such enlighten-
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ment concerning your inner tendencies and capacities, you
definitely can make your dreams work for you!

Indeed, the practical significance of the dream for the

dreamer himself has always been stressed. For instance, when
Alexander the Great was laying siege to Tyrus, the resistance
of the enemy was so stubborn that Alexander was about to
withdraw his army. But then he had a dream in which he be-
held a satyr dancing as in triumph. The soothsayers declared
that this meant the enemy soon would capitulate. Where-
upon Alexander ordered a vigorous attack and conquered
Tyrus. And then, of course, there are those two famous Bibli-
cal dreams that Pharaoh had concerning the kine and the
corn, which Joseph interpreted as a prophecy, also in a prac-
tical way, that seven years of plenty would be followed by
seven years of famine.
The "dream book" interpretations of our grandmothers'
time— a remnant of the discredit into which dreams fell dur-
ing the "Dark Ages"— were likewise intended to be more or
less helpful to the dreamer. But reliance upon these unscien-

tific interpretations has frequently proved disastrous. Only re-

cently a business executive of my acquaintance dreamed that

he was in a room where hundreds of birds were singing. "And
what would you say that meant, my dear?" he inquired of his
wife, with a twinkle in his eye. "That's easy," she replied, with-
out consulting her pet volume. "Singing birds signify gain
and success in a new undertaking." Whereupon this sup-
posedly level-headed financier, acting upon what he must have
considered a dependable guide, bought two hundred shares of
stock because of an inside tip and promptly lost several
thousand dollars.

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When Aristotle in his treatise "On Dreams" (fourth cen-
tury B.C.) stated that if, when dreaming, "one imagines one
walks through fire and feels hot, it is because this or that part
of the body has become slightly warmed/' he really was break-
ing away from the then current notion that influences outside
the individual himself were responsible for his dreams and, in
effect, he was enunciating the first fundamental truth in
dream psychology. That this view likewise embodies the per-
sonally helpful nature of dreams is nicely illustrated by the
following dream of a friend of mine.
To use the dreamer's own words: "A devil with horns was
sitting on the footboard of my bed and with long pincers he
was placing hot coals all around me as though fearful he would
not be able to keep the fire burning." The dreamer awoke,
startled, and discovered he was suffering from a high fever.

Whereupon a physician was called, the diagnosis of diphtheria

made and lifesaving antitoxin promptly administered. With-
out this dream my friend would undoubtedly have had to
endure a much more prolonged illness.

In fact, we often have dreams of this kind. I, myself, once

dreamed that I was standing under Niagara Falls with my
mouth wide open, and into it tons of water were tumbling
without a drop being wasted. My body that night was calling
for more fluid since I had eaten steak for dinner that had been
oversalted.
Two thousand years had to pass before the moderns began
to struggle seriously with the dream problem. Although such
names as Schopenhauer, Strumpell, Hildebrandt, Maury, Kant
and Havelock Ellis appear in the literature on the subject,
they were more concerned with the purely theoretical aspects
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involved than with the practical significance the dream might
possess. They quickly discredited the idea that dreams origi-
nate from sources outside the dreamer. What they finally
proved was that the dream actually is connected somehow
with waking life— usually with its disappointments— and that
its real source may be organic, purely mental, or both, and
that it always arises from within the dreamer's own mental
processes.
A dream, to be sure, is nothing more than the continued
activity of the brain while we sleep. During sleep, conscious-

ness is blotted out but not the workings of the unconscious.

The conscious mind, the waking mind, is merely an inter-

mediary between the unconscious mind, which is our real

memory, emotional and reasoning storehouse, and the world
outside, frequently referred to as reality. The brain never
stops functioning any more than do the heart, liver, kidneys,

lungs or any other organ of the body. During waking hours

the function of the brain comprises unconscious plus con-
scious activity. During sleep only unconscious activity is car-

ried on. Some of this comes through in dreams. Some of

it reveals itself in changed conscious ideas the following

morning.
It has remained for Sigmund Freud actually to solve the
mystery of dreams; that is, to unravel their causes and mean-
ings. What's more, Freud's theories work; they are "prag-
matic." By means of them not only is one able to understand
oneself thoroughly, to discover unrealized tendencies, assets
and handicaps— even to solve personal problems in the men-
tal and imaginative spheres— but by means of them one can

also find the causes for emotional, social, business and other

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maladjustments as well as the causes for neurotic disorders.

Small wonder that nowadays psychiatrists the world over con-

sider the Freudian approach to the dream the "royal road to
the unconscious" and at the same time the most valuable
single instrument they possess for the understanding, relief

and cure of all kinds of mental upsets.

In summary, Freud contends that the dream always ex-
presses an unfulfilled wish. That is, the wishes, the desires, the
fulfillment of which is denied to us during waking life because
of circumstances or moral, social or religious standards, are ful-
filled for us, granted, during sleep. And, of course, we can see
at a glance that the theory of Aristotle regarding physical
stimuli deals, essentially, with body wishes.
If ever you have dreamed of a parent, child or beloved one
dying, you may wonder how such a dream could be a wish
fulfillment. A dream of this nature came to my notice re-
cently and puzzled the dreamer no end. She dreamed she saw
her mother lying in a casket; that was all. "Frankly, I do not
think I could live without my mother," remarked the dreamer.
"I am positive I do not want her to die."
Since the history of this person was known to me, the
reason for the dream was clear. Briefly stated, this lady had
never married because she had promised her father on his
deathbed always to take care of her mother. The mother, how-
ever, consistently refused to live with a married daughter,
hence three different proposals had been rejected by the
dreamer. At the time of the dream, the dreamer was approach-
ing forty. Soon it would be impossible for her to have a child,

she thought. Yet, there was her promise and the impossibility
of her marrying while mother lived. In short, one part of her
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make-up, the reproductive urge, managed to make its demands
known in a dream despite the really sincere affection this

woman bore her mother. Or to state it another way, a conflict

of emotions existed in the unconscious mind which resolved
itself in the dream.
The best way to test the validity of this modern wish-fulfill-

ment theory is to study the dreams of children. In their

dreams the wish denied in waking life is often clearly ex-
pressed and without disguise. For instance, a little girl of six
asked her mother if she might lick the plates that had been
used for the ice cream at her birthday party. Of course, the
mother said no. That night the child dreamed she was a huge
cat on the kitchen table lapping up plate after plate of her
favorite dessert.
That the unconscious is always trying to help us, trying to
heal itself, one might say, or better, perhaps, to adjust itself,
the same as every other mechanism in the body, and that it

can do so specifically, is evidenced by scientists, authors and

creative artists generally who not infrequently find some
knotty problem solved in one of their dreams.
A chemist friend of mine often dreams that he is working
in his laboratory, puzzling over this or that, and— presto!— the
solution he is after appears as if by magic. Indeed, he claims
that even chemical formulas, actual equations, have thus been
revealed to him. This man never fails to leave a pad and pen-
cil on the night table when he retires. In the morning, he
writes down everything he can remember that his unconscious
mind was trying to express during the night, and should he
awaken before morning the same procedure invariably is fol-

lowed. He finds, as is true of dreams in general, that they

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tend to fade out quickly upon arising; so quickly, really, that

one may not even remember that one has dreamed.

A dramatist I know also keeps track of the service his
dreams may yield him. His imagination naturally is a produc-
tive one and he dreams, as he says, "the whole night long."
No matter how fantastic his dream visions may be, they are
studiously set down the next day and examined. 'This helps
one to get away from a too realistic plot construction/' he re-

marked recently. "I see situations that are unusual. And not
infrequently, when I'm stuck, I wait for a dream to show me
the way out. Sometimes everything comes as clear as crystal;

sometimes a plot is not so clear and I must perfect it con-

sciously later on. My dreams, however, are more helpful than
any collaborator or ghost writer possibly could be."
Some years ago an official in a department of police who
was in charge of the detective division was psychoanalyzed.
After the analysis he claimed that he, too, could make his

dreams do his bidding in helping him to solve difficult cases.

As proof of this he said he had looked in every conceivable

place for a revolver that he needed to connect a suspect with

a certain crime. "Then I dreamed that I had fallen down a
sewer," he added. "In the morning I realized that an inspec-
tion of the street sewer outside the house where the crime was
committed had been overlooked. I sent my men there and
they found the gun."
Itmust be remembered, of course, that the unconscious
mind is logical and directive as well as dynamic. Woman's in-

tuition is proof of this, it being the result of unconscious

thinking which she does not consciously realize. And the dif-

ference between a genius and an ordinary individual consists

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primarily in the fact that the former's unconscious mind serves

him particularly well. A genius does not proceed in his think-

ing in a step-by-step and labored conscious manner. He gets

results, arrives at startling conclusions and truths, by means

he knows not how. But his mind only flashes and flares on the
conscious level because of the preliminary, and often the en-
tire, work which his mind on the unconscious level has done
for him. It would be psychologically correct to say that such

a person dreams continually while awake.

To be sure, we do not always dream as clearly as in the

cases I have cited. Frequently the unfulfilled wish is disguised

—that is, it is presented by means of symbols— and this is

usually the case if the wish deals with repressions of which we

are more or less ashamed, which are sexual or which are so
strongly instinctive that they have had to be repressed again
and again. The reason for such symbolization is that if the
original wish thwarting— the repression or complex— were al-

lowed to reappear in consciousness, the individual would be

compelled to worry and struggle with it all over again. And
that is why the solutions of scientific, play or other problems
are not, as a rule, strongly symbolized; they have nothing to

do with morals or other factors that may cause conscious em-

barrassment.
A dream I heard recently concerns thwarted sex strivings
which happen to have been presented in an amusing way.
Dreams seldom, however, are funny although, due to symboli-
zation, they may be absurd, bizarre, illogical and improbable.
Dreams are inherently serious because they stand for vital

maladjustments within the mind proper, for repressions that

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the unconscious is trying hard to draw to the attention of the

conscious so that they may be corrected.

In this particular instance a spinster dreamed that she
was running about in the nude in an open space where there
were numerous statues arranged along a path. People were
approaching and she was trying to hide. Suddenly she spied a
upon it and in a twinkling, jumping
pedestal without a statue
up, she took the pose of Venus de Milo, and remained un-
discovered. The wish element here was a desire on the part
of the unmarried woman to keep her primitive urges from
being gossiped about. In fact, whenever her friends teased her
she would stoutly insist that she was not in the slightest in-
terested in men.
As an illustration of the repression of a similar type of in-

stinctive urge that would not so readily be stilled consciously

—the result, therefore, a more successfully disguised wish-
fulfillment— a young married woman dreamed she was walk-
ing through a beautiful garden carrying a basket of fruit. Here
the symbolism was plain, the basket standing for the womb,
the fruit for the child. It happens that in this particular case

husband and wife had decided that they couldn't afford a

baby. The reproductive urge, nevertheless, was attempting to
force demands regardless of economic conditions.
its

Although most persons use the same type of symbols in

their dreams it is hazardous to interpret a dream by symbols

alone, without taking the personality make-up of the dreamer

into account. It is possible, also, that the same dream symbol
in two different persons may not stand for the same thing. For
instance, wishes to escape some unpleasantness in reality

usually present themselves in the symbol of taking a journey.

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In analyzing dreams, however, I have frequently found that
taking a journey meant quite the opposite as, for example,
anticipated joy in taking a vacation or in meeting someone.
It is common knowledge that if you dream intensely you
feel tired the next day. What has occurred is that the uncon-

scious mind has been more active than usual and, instead of
the nerve cells recuperating because of a regular lowering of
functioning during the night, they have actually been work-
ing harder than during the day.
Particularly is this true of nightmares. Here the unconscious
brain activity is exceptionally marked, with strong symboliza-
tion and heightened intensity, the reason for this being that

the same repression— one highly emotionalized, like a definite

fear or a marked disappointment in the love-life— simply will

not remain repressed. Such nightmares call for a thorough-

going review of the dreamer's life with special reference to his
or her inability to express and adjust emotional urges. Often
the individual, once realizing that the nightmare is such a call

for help, can do this for himself since he now knows that his
adjustments, such as they were, are not satisfactory to his
deeper and fundamental strivings. Failing in this, as exempli-
fied by a continuation of nightmares or frightening dreams in

general, the services of a psychiatrist should be sought.

Incidentally, somnambulism is nothing but an intense
dream, surcharged with so much energy that even motor as
well as sensory nerves are activated. Incidentally, too, it is not
dangerous— despite a popular conviction to the contrary— to
awaken a sleepwalker while thus perambulating. Sudden, rude
awakening, to be sure, may startle him. The fact that sleep-

walkers seldom injure themselves is another proof of the self-

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preservation nature of dreams and of the unconscious mind
in general.

Daydreams, so-called, involve the same mechanisms as night

dreams. In these phantasies, when the conscious mind seems
to break away from reality and ceases to be influenced by it,

wishes arc clearly set forth, without much, if any, symboliza-

tion. In fact, we speak of daydreams as a building of "air
castles." In these instances, the unconscious desires break
through before night comes and conscious repression is en-
tirely eliminated.

I have frequently been asked, since sleep is a blotting out of

consciousness together with its defensive and "on guard"
qualities, and one learns so much about oneself by means of
dreams, would it not be a good idea to anesthetize people? It

is true, to be sure, that ether, chloroform, laughing gas and

other drugs that anesthetize, even overdoses of alcohol, usually
open up unconscious thinking, as it were; so much so that it

fairly gushes out and creates the most fantastic mind pictures
imaginable. The value of such productions, however, is negli-

gible; first because the brain cells are not functioning normally
since they are poisoned by the anesthetic, secondly because it

is believed such drugs actually can and do, temporarily, break

down the "myelin sheath" or protective covering of the nerve
fibers, thus permitting nerve energy to jump across, in the

manner of a short circuit, to the near-by nerves. The sum total

effect, naturally, is an artificial mix-up of unconscious think-

ing, possessing no logic nor the possibility of being unraveled
and understood.
The chemist and dramatist whom I mentioned previously
are not altogether exceptional in being able to make their

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dreams work for them, either in whole or in part. In every

case it is worth trying. To be sure, one's technique improves

with practice. After a person has been psychoanalyzed and
many of his dreams have been interpreted by a psychiatrist,

it is always relatively easy for him to find the hidden meaning

of his own dreams.
The way the analyst interprets a dream is to request the
dreamer to let his thoughts drift aimlessly after thinking of
each of the several important elements of a dream. The
woman of the statue, for example, would have been asked to

think of a statue, then what she thought of next, then next,

etc. This is called free association. Sooner or later the
dreamer's stream of thought becomes blocked, the mind goes
blank. This usually means that a repression, a complex, has

been reached. The thought at this point explains the symbol

or part of it. Then the dreamer realizes what it is that he
should not neglect, to which he should pay conscious and
deliberate attention.
One time I, myself, dreamed of Santa Claus. That was all

I could recall the next day. In following the free association

method, I reclined in an easy chair, closed my eyes and
thought of Santa Claus. First I could see him as the conven-
tional figure children at Christmas adore; then my attention
centered on his venerable white beard. After "white" my
thoughts went to "snow," then Admiral Byrd's voyage to the
Antarctic, then to "cold," then the cold of next winter. Then
my mind went blank.
Persisting, however— in other words, trying to think hard
and to push through this blocking— I came to the cause of my
dream. My unconscious undoubtedly was reminding me to fill

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my cellar bins for next winter. When the dream occurred it

was summer, when the price of coal is low. I had considered

this before but had dismissed it from my mind because I was
hoping the price might go lower still and because, frankly, I

was resistive concerning the expense.

There are those who catch on to the free association
method and can interpret their own dreams fairly accurately

without even undertaking an orthodox psychoanalysis. Inci-

dentally, it may be noted that dream analyses are being sought
more and more each year by those who are not neurotic and
who merely wish to learn more about the workings of their
inner mental and emotional selves, to evaluate their mental
assets as well as their liabilities. Indeed, dreams often bring
hidden and unsuspected capacities to light. I recall vividly the
case of a newspaper reporter who, in the course of professional
dream analysis, learned that he had the makings of a novelist.

Today he happens to be incapacitated by tuberculosis but

earns a livelihood writing fiction.
It has often occurred, in the course of free association-
used for the purpose of analyzing a dream— that the dreamer
has at last remembered, consciously, something lost or for-
gotten. One person recalled by this method where she had
hidden certain valuable papers; another remembered an im-
portant address; while to a third it was revealed why his girl

friend was behaving coolly toward him. He had inadvertently

failed to mention her birthday.
Dreams open up many possibilities, many points of view.
New jobs may present themselves for consideration, business
strategies may be devised, men and women may find out what
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they should do to gain or to hold the love of a member of the

opposite sex.
"Never again will I poke fun at dreams/' confided a man.
"I needed money badly to meet a note due at my bank. I won-
dered and I worried and I got myself all wrought up. Finally,
two nights before the dreaded date arrived, I dreamed of an
old aunt of mine who is very fond of me. In the morning I
paid her a visit and came away with the money." In this case

the unconscious mind was more astute than the conscious.

If people by and large realized that every dream has a mean-
ing and is more revealing than their own social conversation

or facial expression, they would not be so eager to tell their

dreams. Instead, thev would take the time to think about their
sleep thoughts and discover what their unconscious mind is

trying to do for them. On the other hand, it is foolish to be

disturbed over one's dreams, no matter how many wild ani-
mals may appear in them or how frightening they may be.

Nor should one be upset if the mood a dream creates carries

over into the waking state and is hard to remem-

dispel. Just

ber that all dreams have a meaning and that this meaning
is always a constructive one, aimed to assist you, to make you
cognizant of the whole truth, without prejudice, concerning
yourself.

You may be sure that in the not too distant future no per-

son will be considered as educated, as prepared for life, or as

capable of facing reality as he should be, if he has not mas-

tered the technique of interpreting his own dreams.
In the past you may have considered your dreams non-
sensical and your insomnia, whether occasional or habitual, a

nuisance.

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From now on try another attitude. Get the most out of
either or both. Nature did not create such reactions within
yourself for nothing. Discover what nature is trying to do for

you; assist it and make yourself glad.

As a neurotic you may not dream more than nonneurotics.

Your dreams, however, hold precious nuggets of information
that theirs do not. If you are not a strong wisher— and normals
are not— you cannot have strong repressions and consequently
rich dreams. And if anybody boasts that he falls dead asleep
the second he hits the pillow advise him that this nonneurotic
ability of his is not necessarily an asset.

131
Chapter XI

OF COURSE YOUR SEX LIFE IS FAR FROM

SATISFACTORY

\0 FIND A PERSON WHOSE SEX LIFE IS COM-

t;pletely adjusted and gratified would be
difficult indeed. Not that such individuals do not exist. They
are, however, even among normals, exceedingly rare. In neu-
rotics, on the other hand, maladjustments and dissatisfaction

in the expression of the sex instinct are practically 100 per

cent.
Nor is this to be wondered at. Remember that you, as a
neurotic, possess urges of many kinds that are stronger than
average. These would necessarily include the power behind
the reproductive instinct; here, specifically, the sex impulse.
Remember, too, that you never did fit in very well with any
of the moral, religious and other concepts or customs that
reality set as standards for you. And since reality itself is often
contradictory, confusing and changeable, it follows that if

there is one field of expression in which you are more likely to

be upset than in any other it must be the sexual.

In a summary way reality, as interpreted by your parents

and teachers, laid down these dicta: "As a child you will re-
main innocent of sex thoughts and practices. When puberty
arrives and during your adolescence you will somehow learn

all you need to know about the expression of your sex feelings.

Again, somehow, the proverbial 'right man' or 'right woman'

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 Of Course Your Sex Life Is Far from Satisfactory

will step into your life and upon him or her you will project

your sex desires by dreaming about and idealizing that person,

by touching the lips, but no further. Then you will marry and
your instinct will suddenly reveal to you what sex relationship
amounts to, what it is supposed to signify, and how often it is

to be indulged in. Likewise when you (a woman) become

pregnant, instinct again will come to the rescue at the proper
time to apprize you of all you need to know. In similar fashion
will instinct be on hand to help you with the bringing up of
your babies. Likewise when you (a man) find you are about
to become a father, your idealized love will eliminate your sex
appetite for about a year. And when both of you (man and
woman ) have been married for from five to ten years you will
find that your sex impulses will gradually bother you less and
less and, of course, the thing to do is to let them vanish."
Sounds perfectly idiotic, does it not? Yet Til wager some of
my readers have been brought up on ideas exactly like that,
while others have had standards outlined for them that were
more like these than they were different.

The modern child is not being brought up in so absurd a

fashion. The nature and importance of sex is being taught
even in the public schools. Parents are talking more freely
about sex to their children. Books are to be had on the subject
that deal with it in a scientific yet simple way and written for
adults as well as children. Repression, sneakiness, guilt, shame
and all the other evils that follow, when correct information
on sex is withheld and when the individual is allowed to
wonder and worry and castigate himself no end, may some
day be a thing of the past.

But if you are a neurotic I'm afraid you did not have the
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benefit of sex enlightenment bestowed upon you. Think back

and you will recall how mixed up and troubled you were.
Probably you are still mixed up and troubled right now.
It must be recognized that the sex life of the human species

is not confined to a "rutting" season as in the lower forms,

nor is it limited to the individual's need or desire to have an
offspring. Few husbands and wives set out deliberately to
have a child, while among the unmarried— whose sex lives

are even more unsatisfactory than those of the married, so

much so that the problem demands special consideration in

all such persons— the possibility of being "caught" looms large

both as cause for perverted sex ideas and practices and as a

deterrent for complete sex gratification.

The facts are that the sex urge, being usually thwarted in
its natural expression for some reason or reasons, becomes
stronger and stronger. The facts also are that onanism, homo-
sexuality, Lesbianism and perversions are indulged in much
more than one might suppose. Nor need one be a psychiatrist

to appreciate this. Statistics aplenty are available. But almost

without exception those who are unable to marry and who
carry on these abnormal methods of expression as some sort

of outlet for pent-up emotion, or who marry and continue to

practice them, do not realize that their make-up is intrinsically

neurotic.

The same may be said of those who marry and find them-
selves philandering, or who are in some degree impotent or

frigid; even of those whose sex interests wane quickly, or who

never have been satisfied, or who suffer from the thousand and
one possibilities that go by the name of "incompatibility" but
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 Of Course Your Sex Life Is Far from Satisfactory

that deep down are nothing more nor less than sex maladjust-
1
ments.
Nor is an unsatisfactory sex life, of and by itself, the whole
story— that is, from the point of view of the pleasure or pain
sustained by the individual mentally, emotionally or both. Re-
pressed sex, irrespective of kind, may influence to a marked
degree the individual's work, his efficiency, his happiness, his
general social relationships, his glands and his health. So
fundamental and primitive an urge as sex cannot be relegated
out of existence, entirely or partially, without affecting the
personality. So may it also be said, whether or not we believe
the sex impulses to be the strongest that exist, that the man
or woman who does lead a satisfying sex life possesses an asset
that goes far in compensating for any nonsexual neurotic
handicaps he may possess. A sexually adjusted person almost
always is full of vigor, ambition and the joy of living.

Two general causes may be responsible for sex maladjust-

ment. One is conscious inhibition, the individual deciding to
refrain from responding to his instincts by an act of the will.

The other cause is unconscious; in other words, the individual

wants to respond but for reasons unknown to him it is impos-
sible for him to do so. In all the conscious cases, however, an
analysis of the psyche reveals that the individual, because of

his childhood training, has been prepared for such conscious

repressing. It always dates back, in the unconscious as well as

the conscious cases, to guilt and shame feelings from which

the individual usually does not fully realize he is suffering.

To state it another way, if you would only recognize that

the sex instinct is not only a nagging urge but that it also is

i Consult Chap. XV.

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Of Course Your Sex Life Is Far from Satisfactory

not always "a pretty one" according to existing standards of

civilization, you never would suffer from neurotic difficulties

on this basis. Face the sex facts of your nature, whatever they
may be, don't hide or repress them because nature is nature
and there is nothing to be ashamed about, and at once your
sex life becomes more satisfactory.

For instance, there are those who believe that masturbation

has affected them mentally or physically for no other reason
than that they think it does. There are those who feel dis-

graced because they experience for the same sex intense love
that is sexual or borders upon it and they, too, lead a life of
misery without ever committing an overt homosexual act. The
same may be said of all other sex thoughts that deviate from
the accepted normal.
Sex ability or inability lies primarily in the mind. Irrespec-
tive of unconscious influences, merely calling a spade a spade
in regard to one's sex thoughts and feelings, and fearlessly, can
wipe out many a neurotic tendency. Therefore, never feel

guilty or ashamed about any sex ideas you may have, or had;
never feel ashamed of what you may have done about it. The
important thing is not what you have thought or done in the
past but what you are going to do in the future. Somehow, all
abnormal tendencies should be adjusted.
Here again, the factor of ignorance already referred to in
this book, is pertinent. Few persons know what normal, aver-
age, sexual development implies. I have known men who

believed since childhood that semen is 'white blood," also

that the penis is the prolongation of the spine and, through its

canal, is directly connected with the brain. Many neurotic

men feel completely exhausted after intercourse when, actu-
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 Of Course Your Sex Life Is Far from Satisfactory

ally, the reverse should be the case. For the most part, men
are woefully awkward as well as lacking in finesse and under-
standing as regards the sexual approaches they make. That a
preliminary "preparatory stage" exists in which the woman is

played upon, if you will, as on a musical instrument seems to

be quite beyond their knowledge.
Wlien we are born, Dame Nature must take care of the
nutrition instinct first of all. She therefore establishes in the

mouth area an erogenous, that is, a pleasure-giving, zone so

that the infant will nurse as quickly as possible. If the child
did not nourish itself it would die. At puberty, and for a like

self-preservation reason, a second erogenous zone is established

in the genital area. Nature, in all forms of life, goes to the
greatest pains to foster procreation.
Now then, although every individual gradually develops
away from his erogenous zones as other desires come into be-
ing, he never wholly divorces himself from them. When the
erogenous zones are established it is understandable that the
individual stimulate them; this being eating in the case of the
mouth, onanism in the case of the genitals. That is why mas-
turbation is, in a way, as natural as is eating and why it cannot
be harmful unless excessive or unless the individual has been
told that it is harmful.
It is also natural to overcome the habit of onanism. The
goal of nature is not reached unless copulation be achieved.
The jump from autoerotic stimulation to heterosexual in-
terest is not, however, a single one. There is always an inter-
mediary step. In other words, after the boy or girl has been so
wrapped up in himself he transfers first to a member of the

same sex before he does to the opposite sex. He finds interest

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Of Course Your Sex Life Is Far from Satisfactory

in bodies like his own (homosexual), before he finds interest

in the bodies of the other sex (heterosexual). This interest
may display itself in actual homosexual practices or it may
be purely theoretical. This explains the "crushes" of ado-
lescence and the interest in athletics where prowess of one
body vies with that of another. It is only after this homosexual
stage is passed that the sex urge finds stimulation and ade-
quate gratification in association with the opposite sex.

Since the sexual impulse starts with masturbation, then be-

comes homosexual in character and only in the end is dis-

tinctly heterosexual, it follows that a person may not com-

pletely develop out of one stage into another. He may develop
a fixation which holds him back from complete heterosexual
expression. Such a person may continue to practice onanism
or phantasize about homosexuality. But even if either or both
practices be on a purely theoretical basis only, the individual
merely wondering how "it might be," or being unconsciously
so motivated without consciously realizing why, we find in

such fixations one of the commonest causes for neurotic dis-

orders.
Incidentally, it may be mentioned that definite arrests of
development of this character, which usually are linked with
1
glandular disturbances, produce the actual homosexual and
Lesbian, the male being vulgarly known as a "pansy" or
"fairy." Such individuals are not neurotic, however, because
they are quite satisfied to remain as they are. They do not
suffer from repressions, guilt, shame or inferiority. They are

not upset by sex conflicts because none exist. There is no

urge present to be heterosexual.
1 See Chap. XIV, in reference to the thymus gland.
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 Of Course Your Sex Life Is Far from Satisfactory

To be sure, men and women differ as to the amount of male

and female hormones each possesses. The average male has
more female hormones than one might expect and still re-
mains quite masculine in his behavior reactions. Many women
have more than the average amount of male hormones char-
acteristic of their sex. Each sex has at least some hormones of
the other. Such differences from average, unless they be
marked, do not appreciably alter the normal heterosexual
urges.

It should not be thought, however, that I am advocating

any form of sexual expression other than the heterosexual.
This should invariably be the aim sought. If it is not possible
so to adjust oneself, despite scientific knowledge— the truth—
upon the subject, then a psychoanalysis is necessary.
Let it be pointed out also that a vast difference exists be-

tween conscious control and repression. Conscious control of

sex thoughts and acts that do not harmonize with current
standards may never result in neurotic symptoms if such con-
trol is not based on guilt or fear. In fact, some measure of such
conscious control is necessary in order that the sex life be
made as satisfactory as is possible for the individual who can-
not control his environment as he would wish. But repression
is another matter! Here one starts with the premise that one
is wrong, that one must forget such wrongdoing as completely
as possible. In such repression one finally succeeds in deluding
oneself that the urge is not present, that the desire does not
exist. But, as you already know, repressing an urge does not
remove its influence. The repressed urge, when strong, may
give rise to symptoms. In fact, the more you repress the more
neurotic are you likely to become.
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Of Course Your Sex Life Is Far from Satisfactory

The substitution of strong sex urges is always possible, with

results sometimes entirely satisfactory. This method is known
as sublimation. It is a sort of idealizing of a basic, primitive

desire. A spinster, for example, may have a strong sex and

motherhood urge despite the fact that no man has asked her

to marry. Sublimation here might be achieved through adopt-

ing a child, teaching school, having a few animal pets to love,
doing social-service work and the like.

Lastly, it may be added that sex relationship, whether with

or without marriage, never adjusted or cured a neurotic con-
dition. The advice to marry is often given to unmarried girls

who are neurotic. What always happens when such counsel is

followed is that the already existing sex difficulties make two

persons miserable instead of one. The problem of sex is not
so simple as that.
But remember that you can neither neglect nor disregard
your sex urges except at your peril. Whatever the trouble may
be it exists primarily in your mind. Being neurotic you have
undoubtedly harbored a wrong slant on the whole subject.

140
Chapter XII

TO BE SURE YOU'RE TIRED AND FULL OF

ACHES AND PAINS

tigue? And if
w HAT MAKES YOU TIRED?
endure nerve fag
WHY MUST YOU
as well as physical fa-

your body aches in addition and you suffer from

malfunctioning of some particular organ even to the extent of
pain, what is wrong? What is the reason and what can you do
about it?

It goes without saying that here I am excluding actual

physical disease such as organic heart trouble, tuberculosis,
anemia, diabetes and other body disorders in which actual,
structural changes have taken place in the tissues themselves.

Neurotic states, as such, no matter how mild or how severe,

are nevertheless always functional and never organic. Your

heart may palpitate, be irregular, "skip beats"; you may cough;
you may suffer headaches, dizziness and nausea; there may be
pain in the chest or throat; you may lose the power of your
hand or leg; you may even go blind— yet, alarming though such
manifestations be, they may be purely a state of neurosis. Such
knowledge should make you glad.
If your aches and pains, your malfunctioning generally and
irrespective of the organ to which it refers, are caused by neu-

rosis alone they will promptly disappear when your neurosis

is cured. On the other hand, if you do suffer from physical dis-

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To Be Sure You re Tired and Full of Aches and Pains

ease, your possible neurotic make-up should also be studied. 1

Failure to appreciate fully the significance of the last two
paragraphs accounts for so many people running from one
doctor to another without being benefited. Sooner or later
such persons are classified, sometimes even by physicians, as
individuals who haven't anything really the matter with them,
but who like to believe they are sick and be pampered because
of it.They may even be called hypochondriacs.
Yet nobody wishes to suffer, and the neurotic with func-
tional trouble referable to his physical make-up may experi-

ence actual pain which is not imaginary and which is as severe

as if a cancer were gnawing at his vitals.

True hypochondriasis, to be sure, can likewise be cured, de-

spite its existence for years. Hypochondriasis is a neurosis of
2
the fear and anxiety variety. Such pronounced states are

merely obsessions, calls for help. It is a pity we can be so

negligent concerning our fundamental needs as to allow the
many physical upsets, found in a typical case of hypochon-
driasis, to develop.
If, however, you are suffering from excessive fatigue, fatigue
without adequate or apparent cause, or you ache here or there
and your physician says you are sound physically, don't for

such reasons alone call yourself a hypochondriac. Your disabili-

ties then are undoubtedly neurotic. But in true hypochondria-

sis it is characteristic that the patient jumps from complaint
to complaint; first it is one part of the body, then another; he
is in a constant state of alarm. He is depressed, sometimes

1 For further clarification see Chap. XIII, "Don't Let Psychosomatic Medi-
cine Alarm You."
2 It might be well here to review Chap. IX.

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To Be Sure You re Tired and Full of Aches and Pains

morbidly so, about his own health; nor can he be made to feel
reassured despite what a physician might say. The hypochon-
driac is, in effect, a case of severe neurosis, the removal of
which demands specialized psychiatric procedures.
When physical symptoms exist in the average neurotic they

are usually referable to one organ, possibly two, and the symp-
toms persist. The clinical picture is different from that of the
hypochondriac. Besides, neurotics usually bear their symptoms
well. The average neurotic, although he may complain a lot,
stands a lot. Many are what nowadays would be called ''bears
for punishment."
I wish to point out, nevertheless, that you should never
jump to the conclusion that your physical ailment is neurotic,
or must be neurotic, because you know your mind is neu-
rotic. You should first establish beyond possibility of doubt
that your organic structure is absolutely sound.
Always select a competent physician, or physicians, who will

give you a thorough physical examination, including labora-

tory tests, before you conclude that your physical disabilities

arise from the mind.

I recall a case where a woman was referred to a psychiatrist
for a psychoanalysis because the doctor claimed that the pa-

tient's pain in the upper right abdomen was not appendicitis

but the "conversion symptom of a neurosis." Inasmuch as the

surgeon who referred the woman was a capable man, the

psychiatrist proceeded with his work. But the pain persisted;

it grew worse. Then fever developed.

Although fever is not uncommon in neurotic conditions,

this particular analyst, being himself an M.D., finally exam-

ined the patient physically. To his amazement he could feel

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To Be Sure You re Tired and Full of Aches and Pains

the distinct enlargement of an abscessed appendix. The pa-

tient was promptly rushed to the hospital. An acute peritonitis

was narrowly avoided.

Although I have stressed the necessity of ruling out all

organic, structural causes for physical disabilities before the

diagnosis "neurosis" is made, I do not wish to belittle the
tremendous influence of the mind over the body. But to be-
lieve that every ailment you may suffer is purely mental is

sheer nonsense. It is likewise unscientific to speak of the body

and mind as though they were separate entities, each func-
tioning in own way and in entire disregard of the other.
its

No, body and mind function as a unit, as one. The physical

1

affects the mental; the mental the physical.

That the minds of some persons have a greater controlling
ability over their organs than the minds of others undoubtedly
is Nor are all such individuals neurotic. Witness the
true.

power of mind over matter in the performances of Kuda Bux,

the Hindu. Not only was he able, while blindfolded, with his
eyes completely sealed with dough, to ride a bicycle without
mishap through the traffic of London's streets, he was even
able to walk barefoot over glowing hot coals without sustain-
ing so much as a single blister!

Before we take up, however, the physical effects that can

flow from the purely mental, let us consider briefly certain
health rules which, if not adhered to, produce fatigue. 2
Inadequate intestinal elimination is a prevalent cause for

that "tired feeling" although individuals vary greatly in this

1 This principle is emphasized in Chap. XIII.

2 Gland factors that may be important in this connection are discussed in

Chaps. XIV and XV.

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To Be Sure You re Tired and Full of Aches and Pains

respect. Most people eat more than they need for tissue repair

and energy storage. Excessive drinking, smoking, dancing and

night life likewise produce fatigue. Too little exercise,

especially in the open air, is another cause. A rule frequently

broken is not getting enough sleep, with the result that the
tired one suffers from leftover fatigue from the day before. In
this respect, too, individual differences exist, some requiring
more than the average eight hours of sound sleep, some,
especially the aged, less. Inability to relax or not taking the

time to try to relax, especially for short intervals during the

day when stress and strain are specially marked, or in the
evening when the day's labor should be over, accounts for
many cases of excessive and quick fatigue. Insufficient leisure,

recreation or pleasure and lack of variety in mental and emo-

tional expression are often causes for chronic fatigue or for its

variant, a bored, disinterested attitude toward life. Lastly, the

pernicious habit of carrying one's business and other worries

home and into bed with one undermines the nerve and other
cells of the body, prevents the recuperative forces from doing
their work, allows chemical "fatigue substances" to accumu-
late and produces pronounced fatigue.

Since neurotics react in a faulty manner to reality in general

it is logical that they should, as a class, neglect the essentials

of right living as noted above. For such reasons alone, you

may feel continually "washed out" and as weary on awaken-
ing as when you retired.

You, as a neurotic, use up more nerve energy than do other

people. In fact, you consume your energy in unproductive and
wasteful ways because you are continually thinking, thinking

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To Be Sure You re Tired and Full of Aches and Pains

and thinking how you can straighten yourself out and be like

the others whom you envy.

The neurotic, one might say, is forever stewing in his own
juice. The problem from a physical point of view is really

one of relaxation. He is unable to open up his nerve junctions

(synapses) so as to give his nerve cells a chance to rehabilitate
themselves. He is constantly in a state either of fight or flight,

usually the latter, in a figurative way of speaking. After a

while his glandular system * likewise is affected, especially his

adrenals. Then he designates himself correctly when he says

he is "all in."

Let us now consider, from the structural side, how compli-

cated the brain is.

Dr. C. Judson Herrick, in a paper read before the Ameri-

can Association for the Advancement of Science, stated that
he estimated, after extensive research, that the nerve cells in

the brain number from ten to fourteen billion, and that their

fibers which connect with other cells run to a stupendous

number— something like fifteen million ciphers placed after
the figure one.
What is more, it has definitely been proved that nerve en-
ergy is electricity. Such mind currents have been drawn from
the brain and recorded. The greater the amount of thinking

there is, the greater the degree of emotion, the greater also is

the amount of electricity used. What actually makes thought

or emotion, what the exact nature of the electrochemical
processes involved is, still remains a mystery.
In addition to the enormous amount of brain cells it must
i Consult Chap. XIV.

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To Be Sure You re Tired and Full of Aches and Pains

be remembered that the brain has another essential function

besides that of giving rise to thinking and feeling. Every tiniest

piece of tissue situated anywhere in the body is connected, via

special nerves, or in an indirect maimer, with the brain proper.
The brain, therefore, is the coordinating organ of the entire
system. It is like a highly-sensitized, automatic, electric switch-
board.
It is not to be wondered at, therefore, that the mind, as
such, can and does influence the body commanding a
in so

manner. To state it differently, the needs and demands of the

mind can, and frequently do, manifest themselves in physical

disturbances.
Unless one is used to seeing cases where aches, pains and
almost any variety of physical disorder are nothing more than
different forms of calls for help— as obsessions are—on the part
of the mind, it is perhaps difficult to believe that such strange
manifestations can occur. Yet there are rather few neurotics,
comparatively speaking, who are not troubled by some physi-
cal upset that may be serious or merely irritating. That is why
the title of this chapter is "To Be Sure You're Tired and Full
of Aches and Pains."
Nausea and vomiting, for example, are frequently en-
countered. They may be nothing more than symbolic expres-
sions—in the physical sphere but produced in the unconscious
mind— of a desire to rid the individual of complexes that are
getting out of hand and are becoming too annoying; or the

nausea and vomiting may represent a repression or repressions

linked with shame and disgust.
Here, as in most symptoms that are converted complexes,

it is as if the unconscious said: "If I can't get recognition in

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To Be Sure You re Tired and Full of Aches and Pains

the conscious mind so as to have this troublesome thought

removed, then I will get conscious recognition by means of a
roundabout route, namely, a physical sickness."
In a similar way a choking sensation in the throat may
represent, symbolically, self-punishment; headache may be
produced by conflicts between opposing instincts or wishes;
dizziness may stand for escape from reality; heart trouble for
fear of the future; self-pity may represent an urge to self-

destruction or a symbol of thwarted love, etc. The familiar

functional paralysis of writer's cramp often is nothing more
nor less than a sign that, although the conscious mind wants
to write, perhaps in order to make a living, the unconscious is

saying "no" for even better reasons.

A case that neatly illustrates to what extent the unconscious
will go to make its needs known, concerns a navy man who,
during the war, suddenly went stone blind. He was on a sub-
marine chaser at the time; he could not account for his dis-
ability; nor, after he had been brought ashore to a hospital,
could eye specialists find a single bit of pathology referable to
his eyes. In other words, the lenses, the optic nerves, the
muscles— the entire eyeballs— were anatomically normal. Yet
the man could not see; could not even distinguish light from
dark!
An analysis of his mental process, however, revealed the
cause for this devastating physical calamity. In fact, the
trouble when found was simple. Here was a man who had
voluntarily enlisted in the Navy before he was drafted in the
Army. "I wanted to do my bit without being forced," he ex-
plained. Nevertheless, despite his ego strivings (his ego in-

stinct), the self-preservation urge, which he had repressed,

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 "

To Be Sure You re Tired and Full of Aches and Pains

tried to stop him from risking his life. It failed, to be sure,

because the man found himself on a submarine chaser, as-

signed to dangerous duty.

How then could the self-preservation urge, now in conflict
with the ego urge, assert itself? One way at least was to render
the man sightless. Then he would be taken off duty and his
life safeguarded. Nor could anybody, nor he himself, then
point the accusing finger and cry "Coward!
To complete this history, it may be said that when the
psychiatrist was able to piece together all the data gathered in
the analysis, when he was able to explain to the patient that
his warring ego and self-preservation instincts had, so to speak,
agreed to compromise their differences by causing his blind-
ness, thus preventing him from endangering his life, a ray of

hope lighted his face that was marvelous to behold.

"Then I ought to be able to see?" he cried.

"Certainly. Take off those bandages and prove it to your-

self."

You may finish this story any way you like. Needless to add,
that sailor man, although he had suffered one of the most
severe of neuroses, was the happiest man in the world.

149
Chapter XIII

DON'T LET PSYCHOSOMATIC MEDICINE

ALARM YOU

N DISCUSSING YOUR ACHES AND PAINS AND THE

i neurotic fear that you may be suffering
from an actual organic disease, I emphasized that in such
cases the organs are physically sound. I stated, also, that or-
ganic disease, of and by itself, may produce nervous manifesta-
tions, so much so that whatever the laboratory tests, X rays or
other diagnostic procedures reveal, the patient complains of
more symptoms than these justify.
Your neurotic make-up— specifically your emotions—can,
however, be responsible to an appreciable degree for actual
changes in organic structure. In an indirect way the emotions
interfere with the proper functioning of certain organs and
trouble results.
Nowadays, therefore, the thorough surgeon and internist is

not satisfied when he discovers the existence of pathology

(physical diseases); he no longer thinks
work is done in
his
arriving at a diagnosis when he has employed all necessary
or available laboratory aids. Such a doctor, in addition, in-
quires into the emotional life of his patient. He wants to find
out if factors exist that somehow contributed to the physical
abnormality discovered or that may retard the progress of the
patient or his cure. If his patient is organically ill, the doctor
wants to know how much the feeling reactions and general
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 Don't Let Psychosomatic Medicine Alarm You
outlook of the man's case tie up with his physical condition.

In other words, to what extent do his emotions make the man

sick?

That is what is meant by psychosomatic medicine. It is a

ponderous name but it stresses simply the fact that the mind
("psyche") and the body ("soma") constitute a single unit,
neither one being independent of the other. The coining of
the word psychosomatic is really a belated acknowledgment
on the part of the medical profession at large— accustomed too

long to evaluate all diseases in terms of the organic alone—

that the mind, after all, is a powerful factor in physical and
physiological, as well as mental, well-being.
The Medical School of Columbia University is now con-
ducting the first Psychoanalytic and Psychosomatic Clinic in
the country. At the Neuropsychiatric Center in Boston a so-
called Thought Clinic devotes itself to adjusting patients to
their social and emotional difficulties. This is only the begin-
ning.

When we are talking about psychosomatic medicine, re-

member that we are considering actual organic disorders that
may not seem to be associated with any emotional factors at
all but which, nevertheless, are. The emotional centers affect
the functioning of the organs, and these, in turn, may pro-
duce changes in structure. More than half of all the cases seen
by the general practitioner present emotional problems of one
kind or another that should not be overlooked. Unless these
are corrected the doctor cannot hope adequately to cope with

the physical disabilities found.

To the gastrointestinal specialists come scores of men and
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Don't Let Psychosomatic Medicine Alarm You
women with stomach or intestinal upsets, including ulcers and
colitis. The acidity of the stomach is appraised as well as its

motility and emptying ability, test meals are given, the fluoro-
scope and X rays are brought into use, the patient is put on a
diet and medicated. As a parting blessing the doctor pats his
patient on the back and says, 'Take it easy now and don't
worry."
But the trouble is that the patient is unable to take it easy
and he continues to worry. Maybe he is working too hard be-
cause he fears competition and the loss of his job. Maybe he's

got a nagging wife. It could be that he's got another woman

on his mind, or that he thinks his wife is unfaithful or, at
least, has lost her love for him. Maybe he is worrying over the
welfare of his children.
Well, such a man never can be cured of his ulcer or what-
ever it may be until his emotional conflicts are brought to the
surface, talked out and adjusted. Even if he gets over one
ulcer he is almost certain to develop another if his basic neu-

rotic disposition is not changed.

The same may be said of "heart trouble," a term that covers
such a multitude of sins. Here is an organ that the patient
actually hears functioning. Merely centering his attention on
its beat, or taking his pulse, increases it.

The heart specialist makes an electrocardiogram besides ex-

amining the offending organ in the usual way, and either tells

the patient that his heart is sound or that there is something

organically wrong. How often, however, does he inquire into
the patient's emotional make-up and what makes him emo-
tional? Whether the heart disorder is organic or functional,

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 Don't Let Psychosomatic Medicine Alarm You
improvement or cure cannot be hoped for unless disturbing

emotional factors are removed. These concern the way the

mind works, the way the patient thinks, feels and behaves.
Many abdominal and other operations are performed, and
of necessity, where the patient in the end seems no better off

than before. Even in organic heart disease the final collapse

of the organ may be postponed and the patient complete his

normal life span provided that devitalizing mental stress and
strain are removed.
A woman was "opened up," as she phrased it, three times
because of intestinal obstruction. Had the aid of a psychiatrist
been enlisted, once would have been enough. The "chronic
appendix" diagnosis is a case in point. Perhaps the patient is

just as well off to have it out, but why should his complaints
persist afterwards? Indeed, there are cases that may be classi-
fied as "postoperative neurosis," and with propriety. The sur-

geon finishes his job and does it well, but he does not usually
realize the psychic effect his assault on the body of the patient
may produce. People become alarmed over high blood pres-

sure and are treated medically for years when all that is

necessary, perhaps, is the change of a job or a way found to

pay the mortgage on a home.
Asthma, hay fever, migraine, skin rashes and allergies of

various kinds, eczema, nervous indigestion, diabetes, ovarian

and menstrual dysfunctioning, frigidity and impotence, tu-

berculosis, infectious diseases and the common cold, unex-

plained fever, backaches, headaches, dizziness, weakness, fa-

tigue, as well as many other organic disorders— each may have

a psychosomatic story all its own. Exactly how and why cer-
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Dont Let Psychosomatic Medicine Alarm You
tain types of emotional shocks and conflicts affect certain

parts of the body and not others is still a matter for further

research. Generally speaking, however, hostility toward par-

ents, deep resentments, feelings of insecurity, convictions of
being "unwanted" or of "not belonging," conflicts regarding
love, reluctance to reveal emotion to others and an attitude of
not being willing to face and cope with reality— although pos-
sibly unable to because of repressions dating from childhood-
are the chief causes.
If your doctor examines you and says, "I can't find anything
organically wrong with you," raise the question whether your
emotions may not have something to do with your condition—
if you are not neurotic. Should he say you are suffering from
an organic ailment, inquire what steps you should take to
regulate your life in order to speed your recovery. Ask specifi-

cally whether the latter is not actually the crux of the entire
problem.
Although psychoanalysis is undoubtedly the most thorough
way of reaching the inner emotional self, thereby straighten-
ing out the psyche which, in turn, affects the physical organs
favorably, treatment of such a kind need not consume
months. All that may be required are a few searching talks
at the hands of a man who has studied the mind and its in-

fluences, who is understanding, who does not sit in judgment

on your case and who does not scold. With him you must be
frank, feel confident and unafraid.

Do not think, of course, that every emotional maladjust-

ment, even if severe, will lead to organic change, if only to a
minor degree. Usually it does not. Merely be on the alert to
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 Don't Let Psychosomatic Medicine Alarm You
see if it does; best of all, remove your neurotic tendencies and
take no chances.
At any rate, psychosomatic medicine should not be terri-

fying. Its advent is merely another step in the forward march

of science to help you.

155
 Chapter XIV

ARE YOUR GLANDS ON FRIENDLY TERMS?

from another?
w
How
HAT MAKES US THINK THE WAY
Why is it one person
WE
acts so differently

can we explain the striking differences in

DO?

individual feeling reactions?

A crowd is waiting at the intersection of a busy street. There
may be fifty people expectantly watching for the red signal
to turn to green. Three of them become impatient; they think
they see an opportunity to cross; they run. A car suddenly
bears down upon them. The driver jams his brakes.
A dodges, keeps his head, quick-wittedly avoids another
car, gains the sidewalk in safety. B stands stock-still, appar-
ently expecting to be struck, accepting the situation with calm
and resignation. C hesitates, wavers, jumps forward and back-
ward, then runs head-on right into the car. The impact knocks
him unconscious. The driver hastens to his assistance and C
finally revives. Recognizing the driver, he flies into a rage, uses
the vilest language and plants his fist on the surprised driver's

jaw.
Temperament, habit, environment, heredity, training, per-
sonality—which? The McDougallians cry "Instinct!" "No,"
retort the Freudians, "complexes!" "Wrong again," shout the
behaviorists, "can't you see it all depends upon the condi-
tioned reflex?"
Haven't we got the explanation yet why some of us, like A,
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 Are Your Glands on Friendly Terms?

are keen, intelligent, quick on the trigger, rational, common

sense? Don't we know why, like B, we may be slow, stolid,
reserved, fatalistic? Is there no unanimity of opinion about
people who, like C, are unstable, fiery, vituperative and
maniacal?
And then, regarding other attributes. How does it happen
that one person succeeds and another fails when it is obvious
the reverse should be the case? What makes for contentment
and discontent? Wherein lies the basic cause for achievement?
What's wrong when our love lives remain bottled up and
longing? Why do we lie, deceive, become unfaithful, steal,
murder, sometimes despite the fact that we fight against such
impulses with every available grain of energy?
Is there neitherrhyme nor reason about this sphinxlike
riddle of human behavior? Cannot modern science find an
Oedipus to solve it? Just where, and in what, are we to seek
for the why and the how and the wherefore?

One must admit that the Freudians have had the best of it
thus far. At least they have received the most publicity. That
psychoanalytic probe of theirs has penetrated deeply. Appar-
ently it has reached hitherto inaccessible places. It has ex-
plored the disguised and mysterious reaches, even the darkest
and most offensive wellsprings of human conduct. Relentlessly
that probe has pierced pride, sham, pretense, bluff, culture,
refinement, and exploded them like so many toy balloons.
The psychoanalytic theories based upon the primitive, un-
conscious self in conflict with the socialized and standardized
world of reality, the repressions caused thereby, the complexes
built up as a result, the handicaps thus established— these in-

terpretations of individual differences have gone a long, long

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 Are Your Glands on Friendly Terms?

way in explaining what hitherto appeared hopelessly inex-

plicable. And the explanations have worked! That's the best
of it. People have been changed and helped. Not always, of
course. On the whole, however, psychoanalytic theories have
proved pragmatic, which is more than can be said of the
others.
To be sure, it has not been a flattering investigation. The
psychoanalytic probe has hurt. It has shown us up as a pretty

shoddy lot. Sex? Sex aplenty! Yes, often skulking, sordid, per-
verted sex and from places surprisingly unexpected. But at
least, and at last, sex has fearlessly been roped and thrown;
it has been dragged up out of its hidden lair in the uncon-
scious and into the light of day. That's something. We are
not so afraid of sex as before. Generally speaking, frankness
has had a cleansing effect. We have been revealed for what
we really are, all of us, without favor or exception. That is

what the psychoanalysts claim. They say our very soul has
been dissected and laid bare.

Whether right or wrong, pretty thorough stuff at any rate,

don't you think? when these re-

Can anything more be said

searchers of the psychic insist that as adults we are motivated

by stimuli impinging themselves upon the mind while we are
waiting to escape from the mother's womb? Certainly it is

not possible to go back further than that!

But we haven't got the whole story after all. Not yet! Our
individual differences in thinking, feeling and action seem to
be explained, but the truth is not always what it seems. When
all is said and done the various schools of psychology have

been talking psychology. It's the mind that has captivated and
fascinated them.

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 Are Your Glands on Friendly Terms?
What about the body? Has sight of that been lost in the
scuffle? We must not forget that the ancients did not believe
the soul was lodged in the mind. No fools were they, either.
They located the soul in the pit of the stomach.
Anyway, here enter the physiologists!
And with the physiologists enter the thyroid, the adrenals,
the pituitary, the pineal, the thymus and the sex glands! These
are the famous endocrine glands, also known as the "ductless

glands" and the "glands of internal secretion/'

Here, indeed, is a troop to conjure with; an all-star cast if

ever there was one. Each a principal, each a leading player,

each an absolutely indispensable factor in motivating, shaping
and determining the drama of human destiny.
Laying bare the secrets of the soul— eh? Yes, that's a pretty

good job. Let us give the devil his due and include the psycho-
analysts. But these physiologists and their endocrine glands!
These Stanislavskys and their Moscow Art Theater players!
There is no use trying to force the metaphor. The physiolo-
gists have undoubtedly gone the psychologists a step further.
That's the marvel to emphasize. They have taken the step
which some day may explain of what stuff the soul actually is

made!
Inorganic chemistry enacted a compelling role in bringing
industry where it is today; organic chemistry revolutionized
agriculture;now physiological chemistry is throwing the spot-
light upon human conduct.

Remember what A did when suddenly confronted with the

automobile? He made the proper dodges and won. Each
school of psychology would have given him 1 00 per cent plus
on this particular reaction. I can hear Freud himself declaring
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Are Your Glands on Friendly Terms?
that A's analysis would scarcely be worth doing. So average a
reaction could only come from a most prosaic and common-
place person. And an automobile bearing down upon you may
be a sex symbol at that, you know, especially if you dream it.

But A did not dream it. It was an actual fact of reality for

him. Certainly it was a perfectly normal act to escape so

adroitly at the moment, sex or no sex.

And the physiologists? What of them? ''All glands in bal-

ance/' would be their verdict on A. And, of course, quite
uninteresting.
Let us examine B. He it was who stood still, docile and in-

active, ready and waiting to be hit. "Introverted, shut in, re-

pressed, day-dreaming," the psychoanalysts would declare.
"Suffering from a marked inferiority complex with shame and
guilt accompanying. Self-accusatory and self-depreciative be-
cause of infantile sex transgressions. So unworthy he felt he
ought to be killed."

The physiologists? "Deficient thyroid. In other words, a

hypothyroid state. Didn't you notice how short, fat and pudgy
he was in addition to that marked mental and motor slug-

gishness? A few tablets made from sheep, hog or goat would

have brought his gland system back into balance. Let us hope
he takes them before he attempts to negotiate the traffic

again."
Now C. He got entirely rattled, knocked himself down and
out, later flew into a rage and attacked the chauffeur. "Sex
hunger," the Freudians would declare. "Always keyed up and
irritable because of it. Undoubtedly suffers from insomnia
and when he does sleep his dream life must be productive,
distorted and possibly frightening. Automobile unquestion-
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 Are Your Glands on Friendly Terms?
ably has sex significance for him. The mechanical principle
involved is that of the piston in the cylinder; besides, an auto-
mobile is a self-propelling machine and suggests onanism. At
any rate, to C the car is both enticing and menacing at one
and the same time. His feeling toward it is 'ambivalent.' His
falling unconscious was a symbolic escape. Attacking the
driver suggests a homosexual defense, but of that one cannot
be absolutely certain. A thorough analysis is indicated to clear
up this point. It might take months. But then, the man needs
an analysis as much as food. He is heading for a complete
nervous collapse/'
And again the physiologists? "As obvious a case of deficient
(hypo-) adrenal functioning as one could wish to see. The
adrenal glands have to do with maintaining the tone of the
muscles and nerves in emergencies. C used up his adrenal re-

serve in attempting to run across the street and in trying to

make up his mind what to do when he found himself trapped.

That's why he fell unconscious. During that brief interval his
adrenals worked overtime and another reserve supply was fur-

nished. The quick temper and the pugnacity is typically an

adrenal reaction. This man also needs glands and it might be
better to administer them by 'hypo' and put him to bed."
Does this account amuse you? Do the views of the leading
psychological school as compared with that of the physiolo-
gists seem far-fetched and possibly even contradictory?

As a matter of fact, they are neither one nor the other.

Each has reasoned the particular behavior under consideration
quite logically and according to Hoyle. One method uses the
of mind approach; the other takes the physical route. Both
are valid. Both can be turned to the benefit of B and C.

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Are Your Glands on Friendly Terms?
Regarding the adherents of the McDougall school and
those that follow in Dr. Watson's footsteps, well, I'm afraid
we shall have to drop them here. Instincts and conditioned
reflexes would not do B and C much good.
But let us not permit diverse opinions upon an identical
problem to upset us. Nowadays we must constantly expect to
have our pet theories knocked into a cocked hat. We think
we know something today; tomorrow we find that that much
ignorance won't get us by a Binet test or one of Edison's for-

mer questionnaires.
In this instance, though, we are lucky. We are not com-
pelled to snub any of our old relations in order to embrace
these new members of our mental family. Your mother and
father fixations and your inferiority complexes can still remain
friendly with your endocrine glands. In fact, you will find that

intimate acquaintance with all of them can only redound to

your own personal advantage.

Glands are not new, of course. When I tell you that one of
them, the pituitary, situated at the base of the brain, is sup-
posed to be the remnant of a third eye which prehistoric lob-
sters boasted of, you will obtain some idea of the number of

years those glands of ours have been in existence.

The Chinese employed glands for physical ailments hun-

dreds of years ago. They dried frogs and newts, powdered
them and tried them for epilepsy and heart disease. They also

employed canine orchitic extracts for the treatment of obesity.

Decoctions of lizards, toads and spiders had been used blindly,

but with salutary effect, for goodness knows how long. Re-

centlv, scientific investigations revealed that the skins of these

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 Are Your Glands on Friendly Terms?
beasties harbor tiny adrenal glands which manufacture an
appreciable amount of adrenalin.
The really new thing about glands is a recognition of the
way they affect human nature, especially our intellectual and
emotional lives. It is no exaggeration to say that we think, act
and feel, not only with our brain, but also with our glands!
The way these glands interlock and cooperate with the brain
pan is a piece of physiological-psychological machinery than
which nothing could be more marvelous.
Suppose we examine more closely into the hidden mecha-
nisms that made C behave the way he did. I am sure you con-
sider him the most interesting fellow of the three. And I feel

certain you will agree further that a dovetailing of his psycho-

analytic explanation with that of his gland interpretation is

interesting.

When C found himself confronted by the automobile he

realized what was happening through his sense organs, espe-

cially those of sight and hearing. With a travel speed greater

than that of light the message of danger was at once flashed
along nerve paths to the spinal cord and from the spinal
nerves to the autonomic nervous system in front of the cord.
Again with kaleidoscopic speed the message was shunted
over to the adrenal glands, to each of them, since there is one
seated on top of each kidney. Immediately the adrenals let
go their reserve supply of adrenalin which, circulating in the
blood, activated the liver. The liver responded by pouring into
the blood its stored-up sugar, otherwise known as glycogen.

This glycogen stimulated all the muscles and got C ready for
flight or fight. There you have it in a nutshell.

This is what occurs between the brain and the glands and
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Are Your Glands on Friendly Terms?

the organs of the body in every emergency. If you suddenly

came upon a tiger running loose in a park, that is what would
take place. If you have a heated quarrel with your husband
or wife or sweetheart, it's the same thing. Always the brain
prepares the adrenals, which prepare the muscles, for flight of
fight.

And which you do depends upon your adrenal reserve and

your unconscious complexes!
If the automobile had not been a sex symbol for C he
might have used his slight adrenal reserve in propelling his

legs faster. In consequence he probably would have succeeded

in escaping the danger as well as A did. But automobile was
his complex. It completely overwhelmed him. He couldn't
stand still and face it like B. Probably his unconscious sent
down another message to the adrenals saying: "You will

simply have to let this fellow take a few counts until I lasso

the complex again. Meanwhile you might give us a little more

juice."

If I have given you the impression that the adrenals are the
most important glands in the body I have given you a wrong
one. The thyroid is as important as the adrenals, as are also

the thymus, the pituitary, the ovaries and the testes. In fact,
they react to and counteract each other in a most remarkable
fashion. They run like a smoothly interlocking system of
wheels within wheels. And when one does not function prop-
erly, either through overactivity or underactivity, it always up-
sets the normal functioning of the others which, in turn, will
undersecrete or oversecrete, as the case requires, in order that
some semblance of balance may again be restored.

During the past fifty years of the most scientifically search-

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 Are Your Glands on Friendly Terms?
ing and practical work on the endocrine glands, especially
interesting has been the investigation of the adrenals. Note-
worthy has been the correlation with the flight-fight concept
at the psychological level.
The flight-fight mechanism, you see, actually constitutes
the core of human behavior. When all is said and done, the
essence of the problem is the way you and I, as individuals,

respond to, and are influenced by, our environment. That is

what conditions conduct.

And in this relationship between the individual on the one
hand, and the world of reality on the other, lies conflict.
Now the individual succeeds in conquering reality; now he
fails. Now he achieves his ambition, encompasses his ideals,

finds and subdues the woman who gratifies his love life, makes
a lot of money, allows his ego free play— all because he is

winning in the fight. Now he feels discouraged and unhappy,

recognizes that the goal of his ambition is still miles and miles
away; his ideas have gone smash; he is still seeking, yearning,
prayerfully hoping for that "one and only" through whom he
will again he able to express, not only his sex, but his deepest
personality cravings as well— all because life is giving him the
worst of it and he is running away. Standing still is, psycho-
logically, a running away. A definite psychological flight from
reality develops an orthodox neurosis with symptoms.
Psychiatrists recognize this universally motivating flight-
fight mechanism. When in flight they say you repress. Repres-

sion is the keystone of the neurotic arch.

The physiologists likewise recognize the flight-fight mecha-
nism. The cramping and squeezing of gland energy into the
musculature of the body makes for tension, like the tension

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Are Your Glands on Friendly Terms?
of a coiled spring in a jack-in-the-box, and this compression
of energy at one and the same time prevents its release.

Here we have two perfectly rational explanations to ac-

count for success and failure, for contentment and discontent,
for the basic cause for achievement, for gratified love and sex
and for starved love and sex. Nor is it a question of taking
your choice. Both explanations dovetail and the best plan is

to play both ends, not against the middle, but in conjunction

with the middle.
In my own neuropsychiatric practice, fully two-thirds of all

my patients receive gland therapy as well as some form of

analytic procedure. Usually the primary cause is unconscious
repression which, even in childhood, has affected the glan-
dular system. The problem often resembles the one involved
in the joke about which came first, the chicken or the egg.
To treat either the mind or the glands alone is not enough
in the out-and-out neurotic disorders. Both must receive the
proper share of attention.
I touched upon the thyroid gland in relation to B. This
gland is situated just behind and below the Adam's apple in

the neck and when it is enlarged it is spoken of as a "goiter."

That the thyroid has a most significant lot to do with

rousing brain activity and stimulating the intelligence, there
can be no question whatsoever. Thyroid tablets are used con-
tinually in the treatment of feeble-minded states due to defi-

ciency of thyroid. The way such a so-called "cretin" will

change from a stunted, coarse-skinned, square-headed, wide-
mouthed, ugly imbecile or idiot into a being that, in appear-

ance and intelligence at least, has a right to claim a human

classification, comes mighty close to being a miracle in an
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 Are Your Glands on Friendly Terms?
age when about the only true thing that can be said about a
miracle is that there "ain't no sich animal."

Thyroid as well as other gland extracts are also given now-

adays to children who are backward in school, who are shut
in and asocial, who are delinquent, etc. Skill is required in
such treatment and it should never be undertaken except by
a medical expert in nervous and mental disorders.

It is interesting here to speculate what a few of the world's

famous neurotics must have been, "glandularly" speaking.
First Napoleon, that individualist par excellence, that dy-
namic, ruthless genius about whose public achievements and
more has been written than about any
private peccadillos
other human being in history. What about his adrenals and
thyroid?
Being a many-sided man one might expect him not to be
so simple about his gland composition. And sure enough;
Napoleon was primarily a pluriglandular case— adrenals, thy-
roid and pituitary.

The pituitary lies in a bony, saddle-shaped bed, the sella

turcica, at the bottom of the brain. Its anterior part, or lobe,
has to do with skeletal growth; its posterior with metabolism.
Now the striking characteristic about Napoleon was, of
course, his small stature (deficient secretion of the anterior
lobe of the pituitary). He was domineering, irascible, su-

premely egotistic, indefatigable, unscrupulous— no flight but

chock-full of fight (abundant adrenal activity). He tended to
be corpulent and at St. Helena he got positively fat and flabby
(insufficient secretion of the posterior lobe of the pituitary).

He possessed a remarkable mind that functioned like a steel

trap (thyroid efficiency). And then those fainting attacks of
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Axe Your Glands on Friendly Terms?
his, often spoken of as having been definite states of epileptic
unconsciousness? Nowadays it is well known that pituitary
disorder may be accompanied by epilepsy. Lastly, and in addi-

tion, Napoleon's sexual life. It was marked by sudden flares

of desire which disappeared, if not satisfied, as quickly and

unexpectedly as they had arisen. He was never in love in the
sense of a lasting, idealized affection for any one particular
woman (deficient gonads). Josephine had to give way when
the heir that his brain demanded was not forthcoming.
What finally failed Napoleon were not his adrenals or his

thyroid but his pituitary, the one weak link in his glandular
chain. He was noticeably becoming fat when he made himself
emperor. Impaired judgment was shown in the Russian cam-
paign. Already the weak pituitary was beginning to unbalance
the thyroid, possibly even the adrenals. We know that after
Waterloo he gradually grew indolent, shut in, sulking and
apathetic (subpituitary). His mental ability toward the end
can be judged by that childish essay of his on suicide.
Might the story of Waterloo have ended differently had the
specialists of the time known about Napoleon's pituitary in-

sufficiency? But can you imagine him taking their advice? Can
you picture him in a busy campaign stopping to take his tablet

on an empty stomach three times a day?

Next I think of Oscar Wilde and of the thymus.
At birth this gland is very large and toward the end of the
second year it attains its maximum growth. It then reaches,
in leaflike fashion, from the root of the lungs to the base of
the neck. Normally it diminishes in size after that. When
puberty is reached it has almost disappeared.
What the thymus does, apparently, is to use itself up, like

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 Are Your Glands on Friendly Terms?
a martyr, in inhibiting the development of sex structures. This
seems to be necessary in the early years of life in order to
avoid sex precocity. When the thymus gland docs not in-
volute in the male we find the adult's general appearance
decidedly feminine. This is likewise true of his mental
processes and general effeminate behavior. It is not necessary
to study psychoanalysis to be convinced of that. The sexual
life of these persistent thymus cases is, as might be expected,
abnormal.
Had Wilde received glandular treatment and a psycho-
analysis for his homosexuality in a hospital instead of being
thrown into prison, the world might have saved a rare ap-
praiser of the beautiful as well as a literary genius. But these
glands of ours were not then generally recognized for what
they are and Wilde was held responsible for homosexual
behavior that really he could not help any more than he
could the exceptional size of his skull.

I have already referred in passing to the remarkable way

in which glands intercorrelate one with the other. When one
is deficient another attempts, through overactivity, to com-
pensate for the loss. Thus we see in Wilde a pituitary com-
pensation for thymus persistence. He was tall, corpulent, and
his head was large— all connected with metabolic and skeletal

growth, hypersecretion of the posterior and anterior pituitary

lobes respectively.
What is human nature? What is man? What is his soul?

Darwin, Huxley and Herbert Spencer began the quest for an

answer. They hunted in the past. Thomas Addison, Charcot,
Moebius, Brown-Sequard and the rest have been concerned
less with what was than with what is. Their work has been
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Axe Your Glands on Friendly Terms?
the endocrine glands. A thorough understanding and control
of these glands of ours suggests almost unbelievable possi-
bilities for the future.
Already the slow and retarded receive their thyroid; the
nervous and emotionally unstable their pituitary; if the blood
pressure is low and mental activity exhausts itself like a fire

of straw, adrenal substance may be indicated. Emotional in-

adequacy and emotional instability, deception, prevarication,

philandering, temper and temperament, criminality and the

taking of life— each may have a little gland storv of its own.
The absolute, unchallenged and irrefutable answer to the

why, the wherefore and the how cannot, however, be so far

off at that when these analysts and physiologists can be on
speaking terms!
Be glad, therefore. As a neurotic it may be that all you need
is a little glandular adjustment, the mental side then reacting
sufficiently favorable to grant vou vour desires. x\nd if it be a
severe neurosis that holds you in its grip, glands can be made
to join hands with analytic insight and speed you to victory.

ro
Chapter XV

EVEN MEN HAVE CHANGE OF LIFE

EGARDING GLANDULAR ADJUSTMENT— OR

R' should I say, maladjustment— one nat-
urally thinks of middle life, say, from forty to fifty, with
special emphasis placed upon that dreaded age of forty-five,

the usual time for the female menopause. Now we know,

however, that men also undergo a so-called change of life, in

most cases at about fifty, and that they as well as women can
get their nerves upset no end because of it.

To be sure, not every middle-ager develops a crisis at the

climacteric. There are men who experience no difference in
physical, mental or emotional tone and never realize that

physiological and chemical changes are taking place within

their bodies. There are women who tide over this transition

year or years with little or no disturbance or discomfort of

any kind. If such occur medical science is ready to lend a help-
ing hand through the proper administration of gland hor-
mones. Actually, it is the mental side— an unwarranted fear
that from now on the individual's life is practically finished—
that drives a considerable number of men as well as women
into a state of alarm.
There was the case of Mr. J. At fifty he was a top-flight

executive of a large manufacturing concern, earning $50,000

a year and generally considered one of the most intelligent
and successful men in the business. So well was he thought of
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Even Men Have Change of Life

that during the Second World War the government fre-

quently called him in for consultation. His impressive figure,

six feet tall and muscular, matched his forceful personality.

He was specially known for the confidence he inspired and

for the sureness with which he handled men.
But this is what his wife said of him: ''Something's come
over Ted lately that I cannot understand. He complains of
headaches, of occasional dizziness and he doesn't sleep well,"
she said. "Whereas formerly he always liked to see the chil-
dren and fuss over our two granddaughters, he now avoids
them and is irritable when they are around. He is impatient
with me, too, and I am told that he is irritable at the office
and gets into loud arguments. What particularly alarmed me
was his saying last night that for two pins he'd put an end to
it all. After that I felt it was high time he consulted a psy-

chiatrist."

Actually, however, there was nothing to be alarmed about.

J's neurotic manifestations were merely those characteristic of

a change of life. A few weeks of endocrine therapy, plus sev-

eral psvchoanalvtic talks, straightened him out and made him

over, to use his own words, "as good as new."
Many symptoms besides those that assailed J may
other
attend the male climacteric. Tension is a common symptom,
likewise depression and emotional instability that may lead
to tearfulness and spells of weeping. Such persons tire readily
and complain of not being able to concentrate. Memory can
be poor, especially as regards recent events and the names of

persons well known to them. Feelings of anxiety, depression,

despair and a sense of impending danger may be marked. A
loss of interest in work, friends and family is the rule. These

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 Even Men Have Change of Life

are avoided and the patient prefers being alone, refusing to go

out socially or to visit the theater or movies. All sorts of
trifling things annoy and worry him. Inferiority ideas develop.
He thinks he will lose his job because he is not efficient any
more. He talks of growing old and being useless. Whereas
formerly active and ambitious, such a man now becomes in-

dolent and indifferent. And, of course, secretly he keeps

worrying about losing his manhood because he notes a decline
or loss of potency.
On the physical side hot flushes may be the rule as in the
case of women. Numbness of hands and feet, also tingling sen-

sations in the extremities, and pains here and there, may be

experienced. Palpitation, shortness of breath and fear of a
physical illness, such as cancer, heart disease or a stroke, are
encountered.
There may be other manifestations, as well, that give rise

to alarm. These concern philandering ideas and tendencies.

Many a man has got himself into difficulties when he found
his sex desires decreasing and became convinced that what he
needed was the stimulus of strange and younger women. Such
wayward interests tend, of course, to be carried to excess, and
the added strain on glandular structures in the process of
natural evolution is to weaken them all the more.
Tolerance and understanding, even forgiveness, are required
at such a crucial time in a man's life. Although it is particu-
larly hard on a wife, what such a person needs is neither a
scolding nor threats. He should be made to realize, rather,
that no one has lost faith in him, either in his working ability,

his love for his family or in his moral stamina. The patient's
philandering tendencies can and should be shunted back as
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Even Men Have Change of Life

quickly as possible into some form of ego build-up that will

rout his growing inferiority convictions.
Then, of course, medical treatment also is indicated. The
administration of testosterone in one form or another is the
preferred way of giving the body what it is being depleted of
too rapidly. In a few weeks or months— cases vary— this sex
hormone usually accomplishes wonders. As the endocrine
structure is aided and tided over, as it were, and a new equi-
librium between the glands concerned is established, symp-
toms disappear, emotional equilibrium is restored, mental
powers reappear and physical well-being, even in the sexual
sphere, is experienced.
Impotence, as such, can also be purely psychic and have no
reference whatever to the crucial climacteric years of the male,
say, between forty-five and fifty-five, with exceptions as early
as thirty-five and as late as past sixty. Indeed, I have met with
many cases of such sexual impotence in youths of twenty-five
and younger.
These latter cases are purely neurotic in origin and usually
the result of some guilt-punishment mechanism that is un-
conscious. When it occurs in married men whose sex life has
been satisfactory heretofore, the cause may be some conscious
or unconscious antagonism to the wife which is not recognized
because it is disguised.
Psychic impotence is seldom if ever benefited by gland
treatment. A thoroughgoing psychoanalysis is always indi-
cated. As regards what might be called neurotic manifestations
in an apparently nonneurotic male suffering from change of
life, analysis also is desirable although in a less intensive way.
It has been estimated that 95 per cent of all men pass

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 Even Men Have Change of Life

through a change of life without being upset in any way, or

if they are it is so mild in character that they take it in their
stride without comment or complaint. The figures are exactly

the reverse of the female. Ninety-five per cent of all women

arc affected nervously to greater or lesser degree as their

menstrual periods become less marked and irregular and

finally disappear. Only 5 per cent note no special changes in
their physical or emotional reactions as such.

Yet women need not worry at all. For them estrogen works
as effectively as testosterone does for men. Unfortunately,
when a woman undergoes the menopause her physical appear-
ance changes, and this causes moments
her more unhappy
than all the physical and emotional symptoms, shown by men
as well, put together. When her skin tends to grow flabby, in-

creased weight is revealed at the wrong places and wrinkles

show on her face and neck, when her hair thins and a faint

suggestion of a mustache appears, then it is that neurotic

symptoms of almost any variety can spring into being.

Indeed, many women don't wait to develop a case of nerves
until the menopause is reached. They start a few years earlier

before the "dreaded age of forty" arrives. Indeed, this forty-

phobia may appear in the early thirties.

As if an atomic bomb were threatening, women then begin

to look frightened when their age is questioned, their visits
to the beauty parlor become more and more frequent, cos-
metics deplete their purses more and more completely. A cer-
tain conviction of utter frustration and hopelessness seems to
mount as that awful fortieth birthday draws nearer and nearer.
I have seen otherwise happy women become miserable and
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Even Men Have Change of Life

bitter. Devastating ideas of inferiority and uselessness may

become an obsession.
Luckily, not all women go neurotic that way. Many accept
the inevitable forties with resignation and try to compensate
by developing new interests and a new outlook on life. By far

and large, however, the forties present a most favorable soil

for the sprouting of hitherto dormant neurotic tendencies or

for the precipitation of an actual and distressing neurosis.
Behind all this fear, and motivating it since girlhood, is

the instinctive urge of every woman to love and be loved.

What the average woman craves above all else is neither
social position, artistic achievement, fame, money, clothes,
jewels, furs, a career or her picture in the magazines. What
she wants is love. And what she dreads is the possibility, when
in the forties, that she will lose love.
The forty-phobia is, nevertheless, purely a mirage. As the
woman catches up with her apprehensions, so to speak, and
finds herself safely past forty and getting along well in spite
of it, her fear gradually disappears as does mist before the sun.
Tradition— a false and pernicious one at that— is largely
responsible for women believing that, since the reproductive
period ends at the menopause, the poor, worn-out, old lady
from now on should sit by the fire and knit. A similar foolish
notion exists regarding her sex life. As a matter of fact, sex
can be as important, if not more important, to a woman after

the climacteric than before. Freed from the danger and fear of
pregnancy many a woman enjoys her physical relationships
as never before. Frigidity, too— practically always a mental
affair— may likewise disappear automatically.
What a woman should try particularly to do as middle life

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 Even Men Have Change of Life

approaches is stress and express her individuality. The list of

women who did just that, who refused to be alarmed or be
by-passed by life and old-fashioned notions, and who started
a brand-new career is, indeed, a long one.
Mrs. Hortensc Odium's most important job was that of
wife and mother. But children grow up and the time arrives
when life calls for readjustment. For Mrs. Odium another ca-
reer,demanding but immensely satisfying, began. As head of
the fashionable Bonwit Teller store on New York's Fifth
Avenue, she became known as one of the most brilliant mer-
chandising executives in the country. Mrs. Emily Post had
years of gracious living behind her as well as fame as a hostess

among her friends before she wrote the book that has made
her name synonymous with etiquette. Mary Margaret Mc-
Bride carved out a career as a newspaper writer until the
bottom dropped out of it with the depression. Undaunted, but
with fear and trembling, she started over again in radio. Few
stars of the networks can boast of as vast and enthusiastic an
audience of women fans as she. Mme. Curie still was proving
secrets of radioactivity (precursor of the atom bomb) when
she was well along into advanced years that would have spelled
old age to most of us.
At forty you possess an outlook on life that is valuable and
should be put to practical use. Social work, politics, women's
clubs with a serious sociological or charitable purpose are all

open to you. Life still holds for you endless possibilities if

only you will bestir yourself to find them. Find your own niche
in the world and fill it with honor.
During middle life, too, women gradually find themselves
quieting down in regard to their nervous constitution. They
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Even Men Have Change of Life

develop more poise and emotional stability. Whether she

has been married or not, has had children or not, has failed or
not according to her own thinking, this turning point in life

is exactly the time for a woman to make a new and fresh start.
Be yourself! Don't imitate or try to fit yourself into the
pattern of others. Stop worrying about what other people
think. Free yourself from this devastating fixation left over

from childhood. Be mature and stand on your own two feet.

Don't try to dress and behave as though you were an ado-

lescent. Be original in your clothes. Try to make them enhance
and etch your personality.

Last, but not least, that's the way to avoid becoming

neurotic.

178
Chapter XVI

HOW NEUROTIC ARE YOU ANYWAY?

TRY THIS TEST

TEIERE ARE THOSE WHO BELIEVE THEY ARE

not neurotic when actually they are; there
are those, also, who are not so neurotic as they think they are.
But why not have ''the truth, the whole truth and nothing
but the truth"? Take the time to do the following test and
check up on your nerves. It will remove much of the doubt
and confusion you have about yourself. It will be an illuminat-
ing as well as refreshing experience.
Don't, however, allow this test to frighten you. After all,

while some possess the knack of evaluating their own handi-

caps, others find such self-analysis difficult. If you will con-

sider this test as a general guide only, you will approach it

with the best point of view. It should make you glad to dis-
cover that others have symptoms you do not possess.

A Test to Check Up on Your Nerves

Read These Directions Carefully

1. First read the 50 questions over carefully, at least once, to get a general
idea of the subject matter.
2. In doing note that most of the questions really consist of two questions
this,
separated by or. That is why there are two "yes" columns at the right.
3. If, therefore, you answer the first part of such a double question in the

affirmative, place a check in the first "Yes" column; if only the second,
then a check should be placed in the second column. And, of course, if your
answer is an affirmative one for both parts of the question, then two checks
will appear opposite the question.

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 —

How Neurotic Are You Anyway? Try This Test

4. A few questions, you will note further, consist of one question alone. Such,
for example, is 11, which inquires whether you are self-conscious. Should
you be suffering from this complaint two checks should be placed opposite
the question. In other words, either you are self-conscious or you are not.
If you are, it counts more heavily in making an analysis of yourself than if,
for instance, vou are only afraid to meet people, the second part of Question
1.

5. It must be remembered that even marked neurotic symptoms may have

their normal and average counterparts, therefore do not score yourself a
Yes unless vour trait is really definite, marked and at least somewhat
bothersome. Everybody is more or less sensitive, for instance (first part of
Question 1) but such average amount of sensitiveness is something quite
differentfrom being oversensitive.
6. It cannot be emphasized too strongly, on the other hand, that the general
—
tendency is to make excuses for oneself to "let oneself down easy"
rather than to overstate one's faults; although people do exist who, just
because they are neurotic, delight in finding fault with themselves.
7. After vou have finished scoring yourself, add up all the check marks in
both "Yes" columns and subtract from 100. The remainder will reveal to
— —
vou how nearly normal it would be better to say average you are, and in
terms of per cent.
8. It is not possible for anyone to score 100 per cent. Absolute normality does
not exist. If you have 15 checks or less, making you 85 per cent normal or
better, I am afraid this book roused in you merely an academic interest.
A score of 70 to 85 checks would tend to indicate that you may place your-
self in the neurotic class, which I hope, by now, you consider a privilege.

A person who scores more than 85 checks is probably suffering from a

severe neurosis.

180
 How Neurotic Are You Anyway? Try This Test

A Test to Check Up on Your Nerves

Score Box
i. Are you OVERSENSITIVE or AFRAID to MEET
PEOPLE?
2. Do you AVOID SOCIAL CONTACTS or REMAIN
too much BY YOURSELF?
3. Do you indulge in SELF-PITY or tend to PAMPER
YOURSELF?
4. Are you given to SELF-ACCUSATION or to feel-
ings of GUILT?
5. Are you quick to make EXCUSES for yourself or
DEFEND YOURSELF before others ?

6. Are you OVERCONSCIENTIOUS to the point

where it annoys you ?
7. Do you feel REPRESSED or feel that you could do
CREATIVE WORK?
8. Any feelings of ANXIETY or IMPENDING
DANGER without knowing why?
9. Are you given to WORRY
WITHOUT JUSTIFI-
CATION or are you forever concerned about
WHAT PEOPLE THINK?
10. Are you convinced, but without justification, that
you are either INFERIOR or SUPERIOR to
others ?

n. Do you suffer from SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS ? . . . .

12. Are you assailed by the habit of DOUBT, not know-

ing what is best to do or are you unusually SUG-
GESTIBLE
13. Are you JEALOUS or SUSPICIOUS of others?. . . .

14. Are you extremely CRITICAL of others or DIFFI-

CULT TO PLEASE?
15. Are you unable to MAKE or HOLD FRIENDS?. .

16. Do you EXAGGERATE trifles or unduly MINI-

MIZE important things ?
17. Are you either DEPRESSED or unduly OPTI-
MISTIC without cause ?

18. Are you continually DISSATISFIED or upset by

MENTAL CONFLICTS ?

19. Do you PREFER the society of the SAME SEX or

DISLIKE THE OPPOSITE SEX ?
•181
 .

How Neurotic Are You Anyway? Try This Test

A Test to Check Up on Your Nerves. — (Continued)

Score Box
20. Are you "HEART-HUNGRY" or do your SEX
DESIRES TANTALIZE?
21. Do you DISLIKE CHILDREN or feel ANTAGO-
NISTIC toward MARRIAGE?
22. Do you DAYDREAM a great deal or do you FAIL
TO TRY to make your ambitions come true ? . . . .

23. Have you LOST INTEREST IN CURRENT

EVENTS or do you feel DISGUSTED WITH
THE WORLD ?

24. Do you tend to be RADICAL just to be different or

are you stubbornly CONSERVATIVE?
25. Have you become generally FAULT-FINDING or
CYNICAL?
26. Have you LOST AMBITION or do you feel your
LIFE has been a FAILURE? ,

27. Do you LACK SELF-CONFIDENCE or feel you

would like to be A CHILD AGAIN?
28. Do you often feel that PEOPLE or YOUR SUR-
ROUNDINGS ARE UNREAL?
29. Are you UNABLE TO HOLD ANY JOB FOR
LONG?
30. Are you exceptionally ORDERLY or unusually
DISORDERLY ?

31. Are you OVERCAREFUL in DRESSING or do

you spend an excessive amount of TIME BE-
FORE THE MIRROR?
32. Do you consider yourself a PHYSICAL COWARD
or do you LIE even when it isnot necessary?. . .

33. Are you SUPERSTITIOUS or do you adhere to any

CULT of any kind ?
34. Is the influence of a PARENT or ANY RELATIVE
unusually strong ?
35. Do you frequently make ERRORS or do things you
CONSIDER FOOLISH ?

36. Any COMPULSIONS such as looking into closets,

under the bed, satisfying yourself several times
that the door is locked, the gas off, etc., or are you
unable to overcome any BAD HABITS, such as
excessive use of tobacco, alcohol, etc. ?

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 How Neurotic Are You Anyway? Try This Test

A Test to Check Up on Your Nerves. — (Continued)

Score Box
37.Have you a haunting DREAD OF DEATH ?
38 Have you a passion for COLLECTING
THINGS
or do you QUICKLY TIRE and GET RID of
your belongings ?
39 Do you FEAR THE DARK or any of the FORCES
OF NATURE or suffer a DREAD OF IN-
SANITY?
40. Do you think about committing SUICIDE or

entertain other MORBID IDEAS ?

41. Do you feel UNCOMFORTABLE IN CLOSED

PLACES such as elevators, subways, etc., or
when traversing OPEN SPACES such as fields,
nlazas etc. r

42. Do you DISLIKE HIGH PLACES such as moun-

tains, tall buildings, etc., or do you have an
IMPULSE to jump off?

43. Any unreasonable FEAR OF GERMS or has

CLEANLINESS become an OBSESSION?
44. Are you IRRITABLE or given to TEMPER TAN-
TRUMS ?

45. Is your CONCENTRATION or MEMORY poor?.

Are you easilyFATIGUED feel you must
or do you
46.
ALWAYS "BE ON THE GO?"
47. Do you find it DIFFICULT to RELAX or do you
suffer from INSOMNIA?.
48 Do you have frequent HEADACHES or are you
generally UNSTABLE EMOTIONALLY ?

49. Do you have DISTURBING DREAMS or do you

tend to OVERSLEEP?
50. Have you PHYSICAL SYMPTOMS that doctors
claim are IMAGINARY?

Totals (add both columns)

183
Chapter XVII

BEING NEUROTIC, SHOULD YOU MARRY?

YOUNG WOMAN WAS USHERED INTO MY

A consulting room one day, the picture of
dejection and despair. From the look of her dull, red eyes it
was evident that she had been weeping as well as suffering

from loss of sleep. Taking the proffered chair at my desk she

kept pulling at her handkerchief and with lowered head fixed
her gaze on the floor.

"Please tell me what is distressing you so/' I asked with as

much encouragement as possible. "Just talking it out should
help, you know."
For a few seconds she neither moved nor replied when sud-
denlv, as though making a supreme effort, she turned and
whispered hoarsely: "The boy I was going to marry has been
sent home a mental case/' Then she broke down and sobbed
as though her heart would break.
Thousands of women— wives, mothers and sweethearts-
have been shocked like that during the last war. As in the

case of the girl just cited, many of the folks at home were not
onlv astonished but actually stunned when something like

this happened. Because of nerves, strong, virile and capable

men were classified as 4-F by their local draft boards, others
were discharged while in training and still others "broke
down" and were returned as unfit for military duty. Few sus-

pected that any maladjustment of any kind existed, and to be

•184-
 Being Neurotic, Should You Marry?
placed in the 4-F category for a "mental" reason carried with
it, in their opinion, a kind of stigma that, somehow, vaguely
reflected upon the other members of the family. All of which,
of course, was absurd.
What had disturbed the young woman mentioned above
was, to be sure, the fear that marriage with her ex-soldier
friend was out of the question, which also proved to be ridicu-
lous. For this young man was not a mental case at all— this
designation being used correctly only when applving to a psy-
chosis. His diagnosis upon discharge was psychoneurosis.
The term psychoneurosis is an old one that, for the most
part, has been discarded. It means the same thing as neurosis.

Psychoneurosis and neurosis, therefore, are interchangeable

terms.
At the various induction centers 1,825,000 out of 4,650,000
men were rejected because of a personality maladjustment.
There were 300,000 discharged from the Army for neuro-
psychiatry reasons. The total percentage of the two groups
reaches the astounding figure of 43. In the Navy, 37,100 men
were discharged with the diagnosis "psychoneurosis" from
Jan. 1, 1942, through June, 1945. To believe that these hun-
dreds of thousands of men taken from civilian life, where
the vast majority held jobs, supported themselves and often
families in addition and otherwise conducted themselves in

an intelligent and adequate manner could or should, by far

and large, be looked upon as in any way deficient, inferior,

unbalanced or otherwise unfit, is preposterous. I know per-

sonally of a score or more of highly intelligent, unusually effi-

cient men who were classified by the Army as neurotic. Among

these are business and professional men of outstanding ability
•185-
Being Neurotic, Should You Marry?
who draw large salaries and are most respected in the com-
munities in which they live. Indeed, it is a well-known fact
that many of the high officials in Washington, who actually
conducted the war, were neurotic themselves!
Even members of Congress did not escape the 4-F classifi-
cation. It was an amusing sidelight on psychoneurotic labeling
to read that these officials resented it. They were inclined to
believe that such a psychoneurotic designation placed them
in a false position before the public. People might think they
were incompetent for their jobs!

In a paper read before the American Psychiatric Association

inMay, 1944, Lieut. Col. Malcolm J. Farrell and Capt. John
W. Appel of the Army Medical Corps exploded the popular
myth that only weaklings develop psychiatric upsets. "In one
campaign/' the report stated, "the incidence of psychiatric
cases was uniformly higher among veteran combat troops than
among fresh, green troops. Months of intensive combat had
weeded out all the weaklings. The men who remained had
proved the toughness of their underlying personality structure
by their mere survival. Yet fatigue and other factors produced
more 'psychoneurotics' among this group than among fresh,
untried troops. In short, it became evident that anybody could
develop a psychoneurosis under certain circumstances."
In other words, everybody has a breaking point.
Imagine what would happen if Joseph Pulitzer, famous
founder of the New York World, had appeared for a selective

service examination. The clink of a stethoscope, the clank of

a weight on a scale balance, would probably have driven him

frantic, for he was so incredibly sensitive to sound that the
rasp of a fork on a dinner plate was enough to bring down a
•186-
 Being Neurotic, Should You Marry?
tirade upon the offender. Yet Pulitzer is an immortal name in
American journalism.
John Bunyan was a neurotic who saw strange visions— but
we still read Pilgrim's Progress. Thomas De Quincey was an
opium addict; William Scabury presented an enthralling per-

sonal picture of alcohol addiction in his book Asylum; Leo

Tolstoy, a titan of literature, was beset with powerful obses-
sions and compulsions that were surely psychoneurotic.

Yes, among the most brilliant names of history you'll en-

counter neurotic after neurotic who certainly would never
have got beyond the psychiatric screening test of a military

board.
The same may be raised regarding a host of other
question
famous men and women already mentioned in this book. The
greatest thinkers and doers in all walks of life: musicians,
writers, actors, inventors, sculptors, painters, astronomers, re-

search workers and professors of all kinds, as well as the build-

ers of big business, are either neurotic or actually suffer from

neurosis. May I emphasize again that neurotics are, funda-
mentally, superior people whether or not they have found
themselves, whether or not they are still repressed and in

conflict with themselves. Because of this inherent, dynamic

force that can be released, they should be glad.
No woman need fear marrying a neurotic nor should any
man hesitate about going to the altar with a neurotic woman.
A husband who is neurotic possesses a high degree of sensi-
tivity that may make him a bit touchy, that may make his

feelings easily hurt. He may likewise require a great deal of

attention, even to the extent of wanting to be babied. He will

probably be critical and faultfinding but with the idea of

•187-
Being Neurotic, Should You Marry?

having as perfect and as well-run a home as possible. How-

ever, since a neurotic possesses an abundance of feeling, his

capacity for love, loyalty and consideration for his partner

is large. In short, a neurotic has the makings for an excep-
tionally fine husband.

The same may be said of a neurotic wife. Although her

emotional ups and downs may be trying at times and she
probably will demand repeated proof that she is truly loved,
life with her will, at least, never be humdrum. •

Three tendencies must, however, be controlled. These are

emotional immaturity, overpossessiveness and sexual incom-
1
patibility.

Neurotics, being more or less autoerotic and not yet having

rid themselves of their emotional puppy wool, sometimes find
it difficult to transfer affection, in the spirit of true surrender,

to members of the opposite sex. They are unwilling to make

advances, preferring to be courted themselves. This applies to
men as well as to women. A parent fixation may, of course, be
the important causative factor involved. No person can hope
to make a go of marriage if he or she has not yet emancipated
himself sufficiently from parental influence or domination.
Overpossessiveness is a criticism frequently encountered in
cases of marital incompatibility. One charges the other as
wanting to usurp all the time and attention available. "I'm
watched and supervised all day long, even while at work. I

feel as if I'm in a prison with no sense of freedom," complains

a husband. A wife may cry: "Since our marriage, I can't call

my soul my own. My life is worse than that of a slave. He

1 Chap. XI might be reviewed here with profit.

•188-
 Being Neurotic, Should You Marry?
wants mc to wait on him and respond to his beck and call

whenever it suits his fancy/' Such unhappy ones must learn

to realize that, in the last analysis, it is love that is motivat-
ing such possessive desires. A toning down is indicated here.
Separate vacations once or twice a year, friends, hobbies and
amusements can do wonders.
When sexual incompatibility is encountered from whatever
cause and it cannot be straightened out through the reading
of popular books on the subject, a visit should be made to
a competent psychiatrist.

Nor is there any reason why two people with neurotic tend-
encies should not marry. Tempers may flash and flare now
and again, and, as one such couple described their relation-

ship, "there's never a dull moment"; nevertheless, I have

known dozens and dozens of such marriages that were far
happier than the average. Like understands like.

I would, however, caution a woman against marrying a

man who suffers from a well-defined neurosis in contrast to

his being merely neurotic. The same would apply to a man

contemplating marriage with such a woman. Marked fears,

compulsions, hypochondriacal ideas and asthenia (pro-

nounced physical weakness but on an emotional basis)make
a poor and faulty foundation for the building of a home and
happiness. What such individuals should do is to be cured
first— then marry. The experience of having battled a neurosis
and then of having been cured by means of a thoroughgoing
psychoanalysis should make of such individuals the very best
of marital partners.
Hereditary factors do not, of course, exist. You do not trans-

mit your neurosis, nor even a tendency toward it, to your chil-

•189-
Being Neurotic, Should You Marry?
dren. Your neurotic disposition and attitude can, however,
set a favorable groundwork for neurotic development in your
child. It is the neurotic family environment in childhood as
well as the child's reaction to it that counts.
Repression in childhood can, of course, produce neurosis.
On the other hand, no child can or should be allowed to grow
up an untrained savage who is unmindful of the rights of

others. Perhaps the best yardstick to follow is this: 'Train

your child in such a way as to avoid guilt and inferiority as
much as possible."

Coerce him and, if necessary, punish him. Do it always,

however, with understanding, never in anger, and try always
to make him understand why you do what you do. Be fair,

too, and don't withhold praise. Remember that he has a sen-

sitive ego that should not be hurt too much. Bestow your love,
don't withhold it, but be careful not to overdo such affection.
See to it that your child believes he is wanted, that he belongs
and that he feels secure and unafraid within the family circle.

Regarding sex education, don't keep your child "innocent"

too long no matter how appealing that may seem. Don't curb
his sex curiosity but answer his questions frankly and in a
way that he can understand at his age. Many books can be
secured on sex training for children of various ages.
And, particularly, don't be shocked or look dismayed if you
discover onanism to have become a habit. Talk it out or seek
advice elsewhere as how best to meet this situation. Usually
a boy or girl will benefit by a visit to the family doctor. But
whatever you do, don't lie to him or her about anything
sexual. You mav want to wait until the child is older before
becoming too specific. Then tell him so. It is no longer con-
•190-
 Being Neurotic, Should You Marry?

sidcred cute to have children believe the stork or other similar

fable when their companions are giving these the lie. Lastly,

never frighten him with nonsensical stories about masturba-

tion leading to insanity or other mental or physical injury.
Thousands of returning veterans want to marry, and a con-
siderable proportion of these either are neurotic or they are
oppressed by a neurosis. What I have just written about neu-
rotics and marriage applies to them as well.

In my opinion it is hazardous for any ex-service man to

rush into marriage irrespective of his neurotic status. To be
sure, absence makes the heart grow fonder, and the young
men, after what they have endured in the way of loneliness
and hardship, are eager for affection, female companionship
and a home. A cooling-off period as regards the emotions after
their return is nevertheless desirable. It takes time to readjust
oneself to civilian ways and modes of thinking. In addition,
there is always that matter of a job or of more schooling.
Women should keep such facts in mind and never bring
pressure to bear where marriage with a recent veteran is con-
cerned. It is better to curb one's desires, hopes and enthusi-
asm and wait for the time when the boy friend really is ready.
The chances for a lasting union are infinitely better that way.

191
Chapter XVIII

LEARN HOW TO CONTROL YOUR FUTURE

HEN YOU WERE A CHILD YOU WERE UN-

W; able to control your environment. Until
about the age of five your reasoning, judgment, powers of
comparison and the rest of your intellectual faculties were
scarcely functioning. For years after that, even, your parents,
your teachers, your surroundings, were dominating factors in
shaping your thoughts and feelings, in establishing the char-
acter of your unconscious mind. You had little, if anything,
to do with your repressions and complexes, with your mal-
adjustments and symptoms.
Now, however, it is different! You are an adult. You may
still be influenced overmuch by your emotional make-up laid

down Your intellect, nevertheless, no matter how

in the past.
much it may be undermined by unconscious mechanisms, is

mature; your conscious mind likewise possesses the inde-

pendence of maturity to greater or lesser degree. You now can
change the present and plan ahead. What is generally recog-
nized as will power is at your service.

In other words— and aside from overcoming your neurosis,

mild or severe— you can learn how to control your future!
What you must specially guard against, what you must pre-
pare for, is not so much what is likely to take place as what is

unlikely to occur. It makes no difference who you are, what you

are, what you have been or what you hope to be, the unexpected

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may happen and change everything. It is the unexpected, not

our own preparation for the future, that so often shapes our
lives.

Primo Camera was a carpenter and content to remain so

But chance led him into a circus where
for the rest of his days.

the manager, impressed by his giant frame, offered him the

job of strong man in the side show. Weeks later, also by
chance, a sports promoter happened to witness his feats of
strength and persuaded him to take on Leon Sebillo, an ex-
perienced 200-pound boxer. Camera knocked out his adver-
sary in the very first round. The unexpected happened for the
third time! The carpenter became a professional pugilist.
If Lew Fields had not been amused at the way Vernon

Castle draped his long, spindle legs around himself when he

happened to meet him at a stag party in New York, there
probably never would have been a stage career for Castle nor
would ballroom dancing have become the vogue he made it.

I am acquainted with a woman whose husband died sud-

denly of a heart attack, when she was forty-six years old. With
consternation she learned that he had left her without a cent.
After repeated failure to secure any kind of employment what-
soever, and with starvation imminent, she decided finally to
turn on the gas and end it all. She determined, however, not
to leave this world without an explanation, without attempt-
ing to justify herself. But as she was finishing her "apologia,"
the bell rang and a newspaper friend stood at the door. That
story turned out to be such a revealing human document that
the friend was able to have it published. Within a few months
the would-be suicide was writing for the "pulps," still won-
dering how it all happened.
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One never can tell! Chance plays such a tremendously im-
portant role in our lives. Trace your own past and you will find
more than one instance to corroborate this. So many are there
likely to be, in fact, that you may wonder whether any of
them could possibly have been controlled in advance. The life

that is entirely uneventful, where the unexpected never hap-

pens, is rare indeed. The long arm of circumstance frequently
may single us out to alter the course of our careers, to influ-
ence our success, to sway our love relationships and to modify
the state of our happiness. In fact, when the unexpected hap-
pens other things happen as well. Changes result, either for

better or for worse. The effect of the unexpected, because it

is usually sudden, sharp and dramatic, is telling.

It is when the unexpected carries bad news, however, that

devastating troubles usually start. Think how you would feel
if, quite out of a clear sky, you lost your job or your savings,
or you were seriously injured or laid low with a chronic dis-

ease? Such contemplation is not pleasant, I know. Nor is the

fact that some day we die— an event for which we also should
prepare.
Although bad news and unexpected disaster are admittedly
one might think that good news surely could pro-
upsetting,
duce no harm. Strangely enough, unexpected happiness can
tear up the emotions worse than sorrow. That's because we
never are taken as much by surprise when the unexpected
spells sadness as when it spells gladness. Most of us, you see,
already have suffered aplenty and we are more or less used to
it. The expression to "die of joy" is really no mere figure of
speech. To surprise old people, for example, is dangerous,
especially if it carries pleasure. The same holds true for the
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chronically ill, for those with heart trouble and for those
whose nervous system is high-strung and unstable.
But how, you may ask, can the future be controlled? How
can the unexpected be prepared for when we must, by the
very nature of the definition of the unexpected character of
the future, remain ignorant of how and when the blow will
fall? Can we protect ourselves against the onslaughts of the
unexpected before it happens? Can we make ourselves more
resistive? Can we fortify ourselves against the shock? Can the
evil effects of the unexpected be sidetracked or halted?
Thanks to modern psychology there is an answer for each
of these questions and it is a reassuring, hopeful and stimulat-
ing answer. Specifically this psychology deals with the emo-
tions. Indeed, when it comes to the conquering of a serious
problem brought about by the occurrence of the unexpected,
the intellectual side of our brain as such offers precious little

help.
Many a business executive has failed in putting through an
important transaction for no other reason than that he quar-
reled with his wife at breakfast. Students who know their
subjects frequently fail in examinations because of fear. Stage
fright is the besetting sin of the actor. "I was too nervous" is

a common excuse among women. In all such cases the mental

faculties are as sound anatomically as ever. But they do not
function as well as they should because emotion undermines
their efficiency.

That iswhat takes place in the human being when

exactly
the unexpected lays him low. The possession of a trained
mind may heighten the wall of personal fortification. Every-
body, however, has a "breaking point." How to avoid such a

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Learn How to Control Your Future
break of morale, possibly a nervous collapse— how to escape
being overwhelmed, is the problem.
I stated that you actually can protect yourself against the
unexpected before it happens. You really can make yourself
resistive to most eventualities the future may carry. Especially

should those that commonly occur be prepared for; these be-

ing illness, injury, loss of a faculty, paralysis, death of a beloved
one, loss of job or fortune, disappointment in love. Nor is

deep psychological study required. All that is necessary is a

little thought and practice. In fact, in preparing yourself for

the unexpected you really "kill two birds with one stone"; in

making yourself resistive to chance, in fortifying yourself

against a sudden attack upon your deepest and most sacred
emotions, you are at one and the same time expanding and
enriching your life.

Specifically make yourself resistive by avoiding a single goal.

In other words, never concentrate on one objective to the

neglect of other interests.
For instance, there was a girl, an only child and orphaned,
who determined long before marriage that she would make of
herself a model wife and mother. In college she chose for her

elective subjects cooking, home economics and care of babies.

After graduation she went so far as to work six months in a

day nursery and six months as a probationary nurse. Nor did

she experience any difficulty having suitors. She married,
deeply in love, at twenty-three.
The unexpected that the future held for this young woman
descended in her case as early as the honeymoon in France
and brought to naught all her dreams. She learned from hos-
pital records in Paris that her own father had died in that city

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of a disease known as haemophilia when she was six. In this
disorder the "bleeder" docs not transmit his condition to his
daughters directly but the daughters, who arc never them-
selves affected, transmit the haemophilia to their own sons.
Naturally, children for her were out of the question. The long
arm of circumstance, amazingly long in this case, shocked her
so that she had to spend the rest of her honeymoon in a
sanitarium.
Although I am not decrying the advantages of perfection in
any one particular field of endeavor, I have seen it happen
again and again that, when some dreadful disaster befell a
cherished ambition, the individual literally went to pieces.
That was true when a portrait painter of my acquaintance
suffered a paralytic stroke after which he could not handle
a brush for months, and during his convalescence losing all

interest in his work. Only

some years of effort was an
after

adjustment worked out and he became an art critic for a maga-

zine. Had painting not been his "life and soul," as he once

boastingly declared before a blood vessel burst in his brain, his

interests undoubtedly would have been wider and he would
have been able to "find himself" much sooner and with fewer
heartaches.
As regards one's work, it is a wise plan to develop a hobby
different from one's regular job. Not only is such a hobby
refreshing to tired nerves but in an emergency, when regular
work must be dispensed with, it can be used as a substitute,

possibly even a lucrative one. The fostering of creative occu-

pations is especially valuable here— writing, painting, sculp-
ture, music, metalwork and other handicrafts. Bob Davis, one
of the best known of magazine editors, developed portrait

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photography as a hobby while still the head of the Munsey

publications. In the beginning he took photographs of well-
known people in his office. After the magazines were discon-
tinued he developed this hobby until his photographs of
celebrities the world over now are famous and eagerly sought.
Particularly should we widen our interests where the love
life is concerned. Here, to be sure, I am not advocating
philandering for men or sex looseness on the part of women.
I wish to emphasize, however, that men and women both
make the greatest mistake when, after marriage or a formal
engagement, they cut themselves off entirely from their

friends. Nothing is worse than when the unexpected robs a

woman of her husband in death, or vice versa, especially when
they have been happily married for years. Another terrific

blow to wife or husband is the sudden discovery that the other

has been "cheating." Old friends of both sexes then are a
great comfort as well as valuable objects toward whom to
turn the tide of affection and love. The same applies regard-
ing children. Married folks should have children and always
more than one. Indeed, adopted children are better than none.
Then, should the unexpected stalk ghostlike into the home,
the love that is distributed among many instead of being con-
centrated upon one becomes a cushioned bulwark that pre-

vents the victim from being swept out into the sea.
Fortify yourself also against the emotional shock of the
unexpected by reading literature and seeing plays and movies
that actually depend for interest upon the unexpected. Mys-
tery and detective stories are excellent. Shock yourself often

in a vicarious manner and you won't be so shocked when the

unexpected of a frightening or even harrowing nature occurs
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 Learn How to Control Your Future

in real life. For the time being it may not make you glad but
you surely will be glad later.

If you knew that some day you would be in a shipwreck the

common-sense thing to do would be to harden yourself as
much as possible with adventures, actual or substitute, that
would simulate an actual case. Experience would then find
your emotions stabilized because already they would have been
trained to that particular variety of excitement.
In Brittany, in the Basque country and other places where
the population lives by fishing which is dangerous, the boys
are taken out in the boats by their fathers while still in their
teens, and the more frightened they are the better the oldsters
like it. During both World Wars an attempt was always
made to accustom men to the sound of heavy firing before
they were sent to the front lines. Sham battles, also military

and naval maneuvers generally, serve this purpose in addition

to teaching the men how to shoot. Football practice, training

for boxing and wrestling, in fact all athletic preparation, has
the same psychology behind it— a hardening of the individual
against the unexpected which should, after all, be expected.
Despite the most careful preparation to control one's fu-
ture, it is still possible that the unexpected may be of a nature
that was not even remotely anticipated. It is therefore a fair
question to ask whether the evil effects of the unexpected can
be sidetracked and halted.
It is in this some of the most marvelous
very field that
adjustments have been made. Even permanent disability has
been turned into an asset. The very handicap that the un-
expected handed the victim has been used by him to his own
particular advantage, to make himself glad. As if to make
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amends to the unfortunate for his loss, nerve energy often

stimulates the mind as never before and the individual excels

signally for the very fact that the unexpected did occur. It is

held by critics that Milton would not have been able to turn
out his masterpiece Paradise Lost had he not been blind. One
would expect deafness to be an insurmountable obstacle to a
musician, yet Beethoven was handicapped that way and his
greatest works were done when the deafness was complete.
The definite relationship that exists between chronic in-

capacity—in other words, the advent of the unexpected ex-

tending over a long period— and genius is most interesting.

One wonders if the very fact of illness is not often directly

responsible for greatness.
1
Indeed, the list of such persons who
suffered poor health is extremely long.
2
Arkwright, the inventor of the spinning jenny, as well as
James Watt, the inventor of the steam engine, suffered
wretched health. Of Voltaire and also of Rousseau it has been
said that they were "born dying." After twenty-four Carlyle
was an invalid, complaining that "a rat is continually gnaw-
ing at the pit of my stomach." The saints, of course, often

ascribed their turning to God to the unexpected, especially

when the unexpected took the form of severe illness. For ex-

ample, Loyola was converted when a cannonball, at the siege

of Pamplona, shattered one leg; St. Francis of Assisi was

dissipated until he fell ill; St. Theresa of Jesus' accomplish-
ments were most remarkable when she was ill and old. Cole-
ridge first took opium by chance in a patent medicine. Julius
1 See Chap. XX, on
overcompensation.
2 paragraph taken from The Privilege of Pain by
Statistical material in this
Mrs. Leo Everett, and by permission of Bruce Humphries, Inc., Boston,
copyright owners.

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 Learn How to Control Your Future
Caesar and Alexander the Great suffered repeated attacks of
nerves. Scores were neurotics. When Wolfe, at thirty-two,
started his campaign for the conquering of Quebec, he was
tortured bv a chronic internal disease. Elizabeth Barrett
Browning was always in delicate health. Charles Lamb and
his sister had repeated attacks of insanity. Heinrich Heine
struggled all his life on a "mattress grave." Darwin once said:

"If I had not been so great an invalid, I should not have

done nearly so much work as I have accomplished." Indeed,
in reviewing the literature it would seem that about the only
two outstanding geniuses who enjoyed robust health were
Leonardo da Vinci and Goethe.
Unusually striking is the fact that so many individuals
whose genius depends upon the productivity of their imagina-
tion suffered with tuberculosis. Robert Louis Stevenson is a
classical example. Aubrey Beardsley, famous for his extraordi-
nary black and white drawings, was a sufferer who died from
the disease at twenty-six. Keats was a consumptive and there
can be no question but that his genius flowered in direct pro-
portion to the spread of his lung lesions.
When the unexpected happens another way to make it a
blessing in disguise is to see whether or not it can be turned
into financial profit. Certainly some persons have deliberately
made money out of their afflictions. It is said that Garbo
suffers from anemia. Is this the reason for her melancholy
voice, her peculiar languidness, her delicacy and consequent
charm? Circus people know how to commercialize the un-
expected as is evidenced by the freaks they carry around with
them. Beggars, too, when they reveal their disabilities to
passers-by, are good psychologists in this respect.

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It has happened that the very fact of illness has been the
means of discovering a hidden talent. A patient who, while
bedridden with a fractured hip, saw grotesque faces and fig-

ures in the wall-paper designs of his bedroom, was thereby

started on the way toward becoming a sketch artist. In seeking
the cause of neurotic disorders, inherent, unsuspected abili-

ties often are brought to light. Such neurotics, naturally, are

particularly glad.
Yes, illness and misfortune may truly be bless-
of all kinds

ings in disguise to make you glad. One may come face to face
with reality for the first time. Suffering, even, may turn out
to be a marvelous teacher. It may make us think and think
deeply. In searching our souls it can give us the first real in-

sight into life that we have ever had. When we are young
and conceited over our vigorous bodies, sound health, ambi-
tion and abilities, we tend to lack the seriousness of purpose
which a blow from the unexpected usually brings home to us.
It may be a cruel awakening; nevertheless, it is an awakening.

The unexpected makes us take a sensible view of life. We see

where we have made mistakes. It makes us resolve to live dif-

ferently in the future.

Whenever the unexpected descends upon us the fight-flight
mechanism, discussed in Chap. XIV, is brought into play. Small
wonder that persons who receive several shocks within a com-
paratively short space of time use up an unusual amount of
reserve energy, which leaves them exhausted or candidates for

a case of nerves. If, however, the fight-flight mechanism oper-

ates more frequently, but less intensely and deliberately, it
becomes a more flexible mechanism because of such opera-
tion, while likewise becoming strengthened.

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 Learn How to Control Your Future

Remember that each time you fight you are behaving in

accord with your primitive instincts, which arc brave and
aggressive in character. Contrariwise, each time you run away
you are going counter to the stand that nature has destined you
to take in the struggle for existence. Don't forget that the fit-

test survive and the fittest fight; they don't flee. Therefore, be
a fighter; if necessary look for fight. In this way you will not
only know how to meet the unexpected when it arrives, but
you will combat it perfectly and, what is more, automatically.
You will have learned how to control your future.
It was that eminent physician, Osier, who said that we are
not likely to die of a disease we know we have and which we
are watching, but rather of a disease that takes hold unex-
pectedly because we are not prepared.
Be prepared! Don't think that fate has predestined every-
thing for you; that you were born under an evil or a lucky
star; that no matter what you do you can't control your future.
If that were true, doctors would be superfluous. Just as you
can add ten or more years to your life span by being prepared
for the unexpected as regards your health, so you can ward off

the often cruel effects of the unexpected upon your feelings

and your morale, particularly upon your sensitive neurotic

constitution.
Nor should you think you may never be hit by the un-
expected because so far you have been spared. Recall what the
depression did to thousands. We prepare for death by going
to church, selecting a cemetery plot and taking out life insur-

ance. We should, in a similar way, prepare for all possible

unforeseen occurrences, good or bad, by being ready as set
forth. That is the way to remain glad.

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Learn How to Control Your Future
Viscount Morley in his Recollections quotes from an essay
by John Stuart Mill as follows:

Next to birth the chief cause of success in life is accident and

opportunity. situation of most people no degree what-
... In the
ever of good conduct can be counted on for raising them in the
world without the aid of fortunate incidents.

But the trouble is more "bad breaks" than

most of us get
good ones— at least so they seem when unexpectedly they
arrive. Although we cannot prevent their occurrence we

should suspect that always they may be "just around the

corner."
Be ready, therefore, for the future, no matter how much
of the unexpected it may carry. It can, and it should be done.
You will never regret it!

204
Chapter XIX

IF ITS TREATMENT YOU NEED, WHAT KIND?

PREPARE YOURSELF IN THE SAME MANNER

when it comes to the matter of treatment.
If yours is an established neurosis with symptoms that inter-

fere with your general well-being, not to mention your other

relationships in life, get rid of it! Individual treatment at the
hands of a competent specialist may likewise be desirable if

you are merely neurotic, if you have not yet developed an out-
and-out neurosis.
Whatever you do, don't just run around from one doctor to
another or follow some religious or other cult without seeking
basic therapy.
Remember that a neurosis is curable no matter how long
you have suffered from it. You must never lose hope. Few
neuroses do not respond to the proper kind of treatment fairly
soon even though a complete cure may take months. The day
is when a year was no time at all to devote to such a cure.
past
Modern methods and experience in the field of the functional
disorders have reduced the treatment period of the average
case by two-thirds. Even in the unusually difficult cases—
those exceptional ones that prove the rule that all neuroses
can be cured— improvement can result.

Bear in mind, too, that by now your neurosis is probably

an old friend, although an annoying one, whom you may
really be loath to forsake. In other words, your neurotic symp-
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If It's Treatment You Need, What Kind?
toms have been a kind of prop for you for years. They have
often come in handy as an excuse for your failure to obtain or

hold a job, to get yourself married, actually to knuckle down

to business, whatever the issue.
A neurosis can be a wonderful alibi. It's a backlog to which
you can retreat and behind which you can hide. It draws atten-
tion to yourself and creates interest, even sympathy. And if

you think your own particular neurosis is the most extraordi-

nary and baffling one ever encountered by medical science—
which is not an uncommon opinion and is never true— it actu-
ally can boost your ego.
Being convinced, however, that you can't forget your neu-
rosis or that you cannot dispel it through distraction, change
of job, a new family setup or the power of the will, what kind
of treatment should vou seek?
The First World War helped to put the recognition of
mental maladjustments on the map; the Second World War
has definitely made people psychiatric-minded. The publicity
that the neuroses and their treatment has received in news-
papers and magazines is enormous. In the main, this is excel-

lent, but it also has had its drawbacks. People are becoming
acquainted with so many kinds of treatment these days that
thev scarcely know which way to turn.
There is hypnotism, for example. One hears it mentioned
as though it were a brand-new method. Yet Sigmund Freud
himself, founder of the psychoanalytic school, used hypnosis
in the early days and discarded it.

First of all, not everyone can be hypnotized. Secondly, such

controlled suggestion changes nothing that is basic regarding

the causes of a neurosis. These causes are laid down over the

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 J/ It's Treatment You Need, What Kind?
years from childhood on up in a cumulative way. The symp-
toms of neurosis are merely indicative signs, "symbols," as the
psychiatrists say, of these causes which are always maladjust-
ments in the emotional sphere due to the child's individual-
ized reaction to his environment. No form of treatment that
does not resurrect buried and forgotten memories in the un-
conscious mind, make them conscious in order to take the
guilt out of them, then integrates the new personality that
develops, can cure a neurosis.
Hypnosis merely imposes the will of the hypnotist upon his
subject, adds more material— even if it be constructive— to the
unconscious and does not change in any appreciable way the
immature, unfinished business to be found there. You cannot
run away from yourself. Although hypnosis often is helpful in
children too young to understand psychoanalysis, it produces
no permanent curative effects in neurotic adults.

I, myself, employed hypnotism when I first specialized in

psychiatry. Then, when psychoanalysis appeared upon the
horizon, many psychiatrists, myself included, passed through
a phase where we used both hypnosis and psychoanalysis in a

particular case, hoping through hypnosis to reach deeply re-

pressed memories and to break down strong resistances to cure

or change that the patient might present. But the combina-
tion did not work satisfactorily.

After all, to undergo effective treatment for a neurosis is

like experiencing a reeducation. No man or woman thinks and

feels the same after he has been analyzed simply because he
has at last got rid of his emotional immaturity of which he
probably was himself unaware. Indeed, those who have car-

ried along a neurosis all their lives, as they would drag a ball

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If It's Treatment You Need, What Kind?
and chain, can't imagine what it means to be free of it. They
have not as yet lived at all. Once they do the sheer joy of liv-

ing is unmistakable. Then they are glad!

Army hospitals have been trying various means of giving
quick aid to men suffering from so-called "battle fatigue/' In
the First World War the term used was "shell shock." These
reactions of loss of memory, guilt, confusion, weakness, fear
or panic, etc., are neurotic in character.
The use of sodium pentothal and other drugs to induce a
state of partial or complete narcosis, during which violently
repressed memories, conflicts and other emotions are allowed
to drain off, is meeting with success. Even in these cases, how-
ever, some form of psychoanalysis is employed to reeducate

the personality and to prevent, if possible, the danger of re-

currence. This combination technique, so to speak, is known
as "narcosynthesis."

Which mind "shock therapy"

brings to so often mentioned
in connection with mind disturbances.
A drug called metrazol was first employed in this connec-
tion, injections producing a convulsive seizure of short dura-
tion. Insulin also has been administered in a similarway and
with similar results. Electric shock has since grown more
popular. In the last-named a weak electric current is passed
through the patient's brain by means of electrodes placed at
the temples. The treatment is almost instantaneous and the
patient suffers no pain. Unconsciousness occurs, followed by
a convulsive seizure of short duration. Sometimes curare is

used to diminish the convulsion. The patient usually recovers

consciousness in ten to twenty minutes and does not recollect
anything that has happened to him. So-called "ambulatory
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 If It's Treatment You Need, What Kind?
shock" is also being used. Here the current is weaker still and
the patient may not require hospitalization.
That shock therapy, irrespective of its kind and the fre-

quency of its use, has opened up an entirely new field in the

treatment of the psychoses there can be no question. Per-
sonally, I do not recommend it as routine treatment for the
neuroses. It can be helpful in certain cases, the differentia-
tion of which does not properly belong here. In fact, shock
treatment does not always produce improvement or cure even
in psychotic individuals. More research along these lines is

being pursued. The wisdom of its application should be left

entirely to the judgment of the psychiatrist in charge. At any
rate, a certain amount of analytic probing should be used in
addition.
Psychoanalysis still remains the means, par excellence, for
the treatment of neurotic states and the neuroses. This form
of therapy has spread throughout the world, and its literature

of thousands of books and many more thousands of articles

is steadily mounting. Every large medical center has its psycho-
analysts or psychiatrists who employ psychoanalysis as a form
of treatment. Freudian analysis is still universally practiced,
although the modifications of Jung, Adler and others are
employed. Psychiatrists— these men, by the way, are always
M.D.'s— have a way of using analysis according to their own
individual concepts. After all, the practice of psychiatry is an
art rather than an exact science.
The chief difficulty encountered in treating all patients with
psychoanalysis is "resistance." By this is meant the fight which
the patient puts up— usually he is not aware of what he is

doing— against changing the habit patterns of his inner nature.

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If It's Treatment You Need, What Kind?

To be sure, he wants to be rid of his handicapping symptoms,

but on his own terms. He is not always willing to change his
point of view on life completely enough. Furthermore, when
repressions, which originally were painful experiences, are
brought to conscious recognition, he may feel that he is get-

ting worse and may even wish to discontinue treatment en-

tirely. Or the patient may suddenly declare that he is sure his
is an incurable case because it is of such long standing or

because he has come to the conclusion that his condition is

hereditary or because he has learned that insanity appears in

his family tree. All alibis, of course, and nonsense to boot!
To be sure, reactions such as these, if they occur, are only
temporary in nature. The handling of such resistances are,

nevertheless, the psychiatrist's most difficult task.

The question often asked by a patient about to be analyzed

is: "Suppose we do find repressions, complexes, conflicts and
whatnot in my unconscious mind, doctor, and we bring them
to the surface, to conscious recognition— how will that cure
me?" Which is fair enough. It is hoped that the following case
will make this clear.

A man of twenty-nine was suffering from severe self-con-

sciousness. Ever since he could remember he had shunned
social gatherings, girls, restaurants and all public places. From
work he went home to his room where he read and listened
to the radio. It was a monotonous existence if ever there was
one.
In the course of analysis he was able to remember— all this

had been blotted out for years— that when he was twelve years
old he had a teacher for whom he developed a typical ado-

lescent "crush." Although his mother was a stern and un-

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 If It's Treatment You Need, What Kind?
demonstrative woman who never gave the child any affection,
this teacher was warm and motherly. He used to think how
much he would have liked to have her for a mother. At night,
while in bed, the boy would phantasize about this teacher. He
would wonder how it would be if she were lying next to him,
holding him in her arms.
Allwould probably have been well had not guilt entered his
mind. Having heard about sex from other boys, also feeling
guilty about knowing such things, he began to think that he
was entertaining sex thoughts about his teacher that were
wrong.
Then one day the teacher called upon him in class to recite.

Although a bright pupil who always did his homework and

knew his lessons, he found himself confused and blushing. He
kept thinking of what teacher would think of him if knew
she
his secret thoughts and wishes. He could not say a word. The
teacher, surprised, told him to sit down. From that moment
his self-consciousness started.

The point is that the patient had totally forgotten both

the incident mentioned and his adoration for his teacher. It

was entirely repressed. Nevertheless, this unconscious guilt

was still influencing him, making him feel that he was dif-

ferent although he did not know why.

When this complex, this emotionally mixed-up state, was
finally resolved and made simple and understandable, I asked
the patient if he still thought he was in love with this teacher

of years gone by and if he still thought he would like to have

her in bed holding him in her arms.
He laughed. "Say, doc," he said, "don't you think I would
now prefer a younger woman?"
•211-
If It's Treatment You Need, What Kind?
In other words, in the light of his adult intelligence and
experience, what was so vital to him as a child ceased to be
important as a mature man. And that's the way, in a general

sense, that people who are psychoanalyzed are cured.

A single, dramatic incident such as I have outlined is not
always the root or main cause of a neurosis. Even the patient
in question had other maladjustments in childhood that
needed attention. The man really suffered from a mother
fixation. A point of view of life, religious upsets— almost any
intangible emotional reaction— may constitute the cause or
causes of a neurosis.
The criticism is often voiced that psychoanalysis deals too
much with sex. Is it not true, however, that more guilt, mis-
information and incompatibility regarding sex exists than
about anything else? Don't assail analysis for being compelled
to stress sex— in fact, it only does so when necessary. Criticize
nature or the social set up in which we live.
Thorough treatment of neurotic conditions of all kinds fre-

quently includes attention to blood pressure, vitamin defi-

ciency (especially Bi), diet in general, exercise, entertainment

and social contacts, to revitalizing the nerve cells themselves

and to other strictly organic complaints in addition to atten-

tion directed to the mind, as such, alone. Each case varies.
What happens if you keep your neurosis, try to overcome
'

it with will power and 'sweat it out"? Well, you won't go in-

sane, that's certain. You will, however, court the possibility of

your symptoms growing worse. What's more, even if you over-
come some symptoms, new ones may be added. And, of
course, if the progress of the neurosis is not checked, a nervous
breakdown possibly may result. When this happens the pa-
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 If It's Treatment You Need, What Kind?
tient is so upset and exhausted that he no longer is able to
function adequately, and he must be put to bed and treated
as one would any sick, incapacitated person.
Therefore, if it's treatment you need, be sure to get it! But
see to it that you obtain the correct kind, the kind that is

individualized, that does not merely stress one part of you but
that considers your mind and all the other organs of the body-
as a single unit, a whole.

213
Chapter XX

CONSIDER OVERCOMPENSATION AND

CHEER UP

H AVE YOU EVER STOOD BESIDE A STREAM,

wondering if you could jump across it,

in fact, feeling that you couldn't? The chances are that all of

a sudden something within you urged you to try and, not only
were you able to jump the water safely, you actually jumped
farther than was necessary.

That is overcompensation.
Have you ever been fearful of meeting someone— perhaps a

social celebrity or an employer— only to find that, once you

got started, you succeeded in handling the situation beyond
your fondest expectations?
That, too, is overcompensation.
Now consider a handicap more serious than temporary
physical timidity or mental embarrassment. Suppose you are
suffering from inferiority convictions to such an extent that
they thwart your ambition, undermine your efficiency, inter-
fere with the gratification of your love life and, all in all,

render you generally miserable.

What would vou sav if someone told vou that the traits that

hold you back can be turned into traits that hurtle you into

success? That not only can you rid. yourself of your handicaps

but that, in addition, each separate devastating inferiority con-

•214-
 Consider Overcompensation and Cheer Up
viction actually can be changed into a definite and pronounced
superiority?
A paradox, you say, almost impossible to believe? Not
when you study the psychology underlying overcompensation.
Indeed, due to this astounding dynamic force many, if not
most, of the world's greatest achievements have been effected.
It is overcompensation that can make every neurotic both
successful and glad.

Consider the case of Clifford W. Beers. He was insane, con-

fined in an asylum. Did he, after release, consider himself
hopelessly handicapped? Not by a long shot! He wrote a book,
since made famous, called A Mind Tlmt Found Itself, and it

sold by the thousands. Still not satisfied, still overcompensat-

ing, he went ahead and founded the National Committee for
Mental Hygiene. It is no exaggeration to state that were it not
for this organization, and specifically through the personal
and tireless efforts of Beers, humane and scientific treatment
of the insane would not be what it is today. Take Dr. Tru-
deau. Not only did he cure his own handicap of tuberculosis
by braving the winter cold of the Adirondacks, he went ahead
and established there what became a world-famous
later sana-
torium, thereby proving, once and for all, the value of fresh
air in checking this hitherto baffling disease. Then there was
Joseph Conrad. Up to the age of twenty he could not write
a word of English because he was born and raised in Poland.
His determination was so strong, however, that his over-
compensation finally made him one of the greatest novelists
and stylists in the language. Sometimes he would write and
rewrite for hours until he had mastered what he considered
a few satisfactory sentences. Lastly, note how Disraeli over-

•215-
Consider Overcompensation and Cheer Up
compensated. He was
Jew and despised. But before he got
a
through with the world he had become Prime Minister of
England, with everybody showing him respect, his former ene-
mies in particular acknowledging his superiority.
Perhaps you recall the story of Javert in Victor Hugo's Les
Miserables. The author, with profound psychological insight,
has this character explain why he became a police inspector,

and a stern and cruel one at that. His father had been a
criminal, a hunted man; the son resolved to become a pur-
suer instead of one pursued. Again overcompensation!
How much the above nonfiction personalities were moti-
vated automatically and unconsciously, I am not prepared to
say. For it is true that the mind often does the job of over-
compensation for us when little or no conscious effort is in

evidence.
When the will is exercised, however, the result is even more
striking. Consciousness, being the intermediary between the
unconscious and the outside world, can exert a directing influ-

ence toward practical ends in a more telling way. In other

words, whereas unconscious, automatic overcompensation may
prove successful, it nevertheless is more or less of a haphazard

process, and hence may fail.

Imagine, therefore, what actually you can accomplish for

yourself. The thought itself make you
should glad.

On the other hand, you must do more than phantasize. You

must get down to business and do something! Frankly, it is up
to you to take your handicaps in hand. It is your duty to try
to conquer them. Every handicap you possess should be
looked upon as a direct and personal challenge. The more
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 Consider Overcompensation and Cheer Up
neurotic you arc, the more symptoms you possess, the greater
that challenge!
When you stood by the stream wondering whether you
could jump across, you were being challenged. When you
were afraid to meet someone a voice from within nevertheless
dared you to try. Nature, you see, wants you to express your-
self fully, wholly; to contact reality and harmonize with it 100
per cent. You really have everything in your favor when you
set out to compensate because you are assisting nature.
Small wonder, once the brakes on expression are released,
that the energy so long pent up— so powerful simply because
it has been confined— rushes you forward and up to heights
you scarcely dreamed you ever would reach. Small wonder that
when neurotics achieve, they achieve signally.
Neglect is one of the major causes of all handicaps; neglect
in developing an inherent ability that has been lagging behind.
If, for instance, you are convinced you cannot swim or make
a speech, obviously what you should have done is take swim-
ming or elocution lessons. You should never have neglected
such essentials. Actually receive such special training, however,
and the interest plus the satisfaction thus created will prob-

ably impel you to wish to excel. Two illustrations of this come

to mind. In the one, the man afterward entered a long-distance
swimming race, while in the other the woman became a
teacher of dramatics.
Although we should blame ourselves for not trying to turn
a recognized handicap into an asset, we often are not to blame
that we possess such a handicap. Often the need for develop-
ing a certain side of our personality was not apparent to those
who trained and educated us.

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Consider Overcompensation and Cheer Up
A girl of wealthy parents may never take an interest in
cooking or sewing because her mother does not encourage it;

the mother believes that her daughter will always employ

servants. Yet such a girl may fall in love with a poor man and
find herself handicapped. If a boy is brought up on a farm and
his parents intend him to be a farmer, they may not attempt
to develop the social side of his character. Such a boy con-
ceivably may grow up diffident and shy.
In addition to neglect, a frequent cause for handicaps is a
psychic trauma. By this is meant a mental or emotional hurt,
or both, which acts as a shock to the nervous system, pro-
duces an indelible impression and influences the individual
throughout his life.

Two general types of such traumata are to be recognized.

One is a sudden and unexpected shock, such as overwhelm-
ingly bad news; the other a series of lesser traumata ex-
perienced over a long period.
A patient was continually scolded by her mother for be-
ing awkward with her hands; still another for indifference
about her personal appearance. The first girl deliberately took
courses in modeling and painting in order to exercise and
train the small muscle groups of the hand and in the end be-
came a sculptress; the second afterward blossomed forth as a
dress designer.
Ask the average person suffering with a handicap to think
back to childhood for the cause and he probably will answer:

"I have tried that and failed." Or he may say: "It seems to me
I have had it all my life." But keep nagging him and before
long he actually finds the cause or he recalls incidents that
lead up to it.

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 Consider Overcompensation and Cheer Up
An excellent method is to write down what might be
called the "purple patches" (pleasurable or otherwise) of your
life— that is, incidents in childhood that impressed you, that
had a telling effect. It may be disappointment in a love affair,

an exceptionally low mark at school, regret over some youth-

ful indiscretion, misplaced confidence in a friend, loss of
money or a job, inability to achieve an ambition. Any one of
these, and many others besides, may turn out to be the start-

ing point for discovering the real cause of your difficulty. In-
deed, often it is the earliest memories you can resurrect that
give a clue.
Giving way to a handicap is really surrendering to an in-

fantile fixation. As you know, this means that despite your

adult years you are still acting emotionally like a child. It is a
basic neurotic trait. Think of that and it will help.

Remember also that you are what you are today because of
everything you have been from the cradle up to the present
moment. Life is a continuous process. In fashioning that con-
tinuum, in shaping its course, in setting the milestones of suc-
cess as well as failure, no incident should be adjudged, from
the psychological standpoint, as trivial or inconsequential.
A man of forty was pronouncedly lacking in self-confidence.
He possessed energy, ambition and originality, but he would
always be stopped in his tracks by the devastating thought: "If
I do that, what will people think?" In seeking the cause, by
letting his mind drift into the past, he recalled that he was
brought up in a small town and that his grandmother, with
whom he lived, was forever coercing him and warning him to
consider the neighbors. "But I live in a large city now," he
finally concluded, "even the people who live on the same floor

•219-
Consider Overcompensation and Cheer Up
with me in my apartment don't care a rap what I think, say
or do. I'll be hanged if I let myself still be influenced by the
narrow-minded ideas of my grandmother. I am acting as I did
when a child/' That was enough to eradicate the handicap.
One might think that the longer a handicap is in existence
the more difficult it is to overcompensate. As a matter of fact,
a long-standing defect, neurotic or otherwise, may in the end
result in greater overcompensation for the very reason that in
trying to overcome it more momentum is developed.
Nor should you think that only a few selected handicaps
can be corrected and changed from liabilities into assets.
Some variety of overcompensation, either directly of an oppo-
site nature, or indirectly of a less direct compensatory nature
but still making for success, can be found.
Of the latter, Lafcadio Hearn is an illuminating example.
He was a sickly man, blind in one eye, in constant dread that
he also would lose the sight of the other. His health could not
be improved nor his eyesight. In short, he was incurable. He
claimed, however, that his unusual type of mind was the re-

sult of his illness. 'The owner of pure horse flesh," he de-

clared, "never purchased the power of discerning half-lights.

In its separation of the spiritual from the physical portion of

existence, severe sickness is often invaluable in the revelation
it bestows of the undercurrents of existence." Knowing this
and reading Hearn, no one could doubt but that his work, so
discerning and sensitive, represents overcompensation. 1
Various types of inferiority, self-consciousness, oversensitive-

ness, timidity, fear of the future, doubt, worry about making

1
For additional examples of overcompensation in illness, consult Chap.
XVIII.

•220-
 Consider Overcompensation and Cheer Up
good in marriage, physical weakness and cowardice, are among
the common handicaps encountered. When overcompensated,
however, the inferior may become bold salesmen, the self-

conscious actors, the oversensitive book agents, the timid

lawyers, those with an unwarranted fear of the future may
retire from business at fifty; the "doubting Thomases" may
become some new movement; those afraid of mar-
leaders in
riage may become the finest wives and mothers; the physically

weak may develop muscles like a Sandow; and the cowardly

may become soldiers and policemen. Nor do they always real-
ize what they have accomplished or that they are neurotic.

The above overcompensations may not be the ones you,

yourself, would choose. Nor would you, should you be a

woman, care to change from a "wallflower" into a coquette

(an actual case, by the way). But there are so many ways of
accomplishing something desirable via overcompensation that
with a little study of individual desires and needs a solution
can always be found. What's more, if you realize the neurotic

element in your handicap, hence its cause, the overcom-

pensatory adjustment is so much easier and more effective.

As a rule one feels that it is more difficult to overcompen-

sate for a physical handicap than for a mental or emotional
one. On the whole, this is true. Yet see what Helen Keller has
done with her blindness. Consider, too, that Theodore Roose-
velt, the elder, was a delicate boy. He was sent to a ranch out
West. Through overcompensation he became the symbol of
the "big stick." Paderewski, surprisingly enough, had weak
fingers. Overcompensation made of him one of the world's
greatest pianists.
Even poverty is surmountable. Think how Spinoza, Rous-
•221-
Consider Overcompensation and Cheer Up
seau, Goldsmith and Dr. Johnson struggled against it and won.
Remember, too, the financial losses that Sir Walter Scott and
our own Mark Twain suffered. But they did not give up. In
fact, poverty often has been the incentive for superior accom-
plishment. It is said that Mascagni wrote no music so fine as
Cavalleria Rusticana, done while he was poor. And is it not
true that some of the biggest fortunes of the present day have
been built up by poor boys? Is this not overcompensation?
It is interesting to note, too, how frequently overcompensa-
tion reveals itself in an artist's work. Consider Eugene
O'NehTs plays. By nature he is shy and retiring but his dramas
are the essence of strength. To look at one of MacMonnies'
statues, such as his "Civic Virtue" or his Marne memorial,
one might picture him as a six-footer, built like a wrestler.

Actually, however, he looks quite different. In fact, the great-

est works of art often do not reflect the nature of their author
photographically, but in an overcompensatory way for some
deficiency, handicap or weakness.
It must be remembered that no person ever developed to
capacity, not even as regards the specialized work he is doing.
Besides, millions of brain cells— on the right side of the cere-
brum, especially— remain dormant throughout life for want
of use. Theoretically, we can do about what we wish with our
minds.
To overcome a handicap and overcompensate is much the
same as consciously and deliberately setting out to overcome
a superstition. We will say that you are afraid to pass under
a ladder. But suppose you defy the superstition and do it

anyway? You may feel uneasy for a few hours or a few days.
To your surprise, perhaps, nothing dreadful happens to you.
•222-
 Consider Overcompensation and Cheer Up
This gives you courage. You try the ladder stunt again. Still

you find yourself unharmed. After a while you look for lad-
ders; you delight in walking under them; your ego has been
pepped up and you defy demons that may be! Courage
all the
begets courage in the same way tJiat fear begets fear. Each
time you succeed you automatically become bolder to try
again.
Put your will to work; don't falter and you cant fail! All
you have to do is keep at it long enough. What happens inside
your unconscious mind is this: First you neutralize, then
obliterate, old reflex arcs— in other words, habits that have
throttled you and prevented you from being what you want
to be. Next new come into being to replace
reflex arcs the
old ones, new ones designed to make you efficient, that will

carry you where you want to go, that will make you glad.
Suppose a person is suggestible, too much so for his own
good. Let us assume that whatever he reads in the editorial
columns of a newspaper influences and sways him. Should he
read two papers with divergent opinions the same day, he is in

a muddle. We may say in this case that the reflex arcs regard-
ing response to external stimuli have deteriorated him to a
mere "yes-man." His reflexes have made him agree before he
thinks; after a while he no longer is able to think, at least for
himself. That is the sort of handicap that needs a stiff dose of
overcompensation.
What can such a person do? Deliberately argue every point
made in every editorial read, either with someone else or with
himself. New reflex arcs will soon be established— in fact, with
surprising speed—and the spell of suggestibility broken.

I know a man like that. It all started with a country school-

•223-
Consider Overcompensation and Cheer Up
teacher who, to meet every argument of his class and make it

easy for himself, would declare: "Look it up in the book. If it

is printed, it is true!"
This man followed the recipe given above and it worked
like a charm. Now he is a judge on the bench and so definitely
resistive is he to suggestion that he seldom makes an im-
portant decision without "sleeping over it," without weighing
and considering most carefully every argument pro and con,
and until he has made up his own mind to his own satis-

faction.
You probably have heard that when an aviator has a crack-

up he goes up into the air again about as quickly as he can. He

says he doesn't want the accident to "get him." The psychia-
trist says the aviator does not want reflex arcs to be established

which will keep him afraid.

One known magazine editors told me how ter-

of our best
ribly shy he was when a boy, so much so that he used to be

teased about it and when he was introduced to other boys he

blushed. "But I made up my mind that when I grew up I'd
know more people than anybody else. Well, maybe I haven't
exactly made good on that boast, yet I do know a whale of a
lot of authors— and enjoy it— and that's one good reason why

I hold my job." This gentleman's destructive reflex arcs that

carried fear surely gave way to constructive ones that now
yield pleasure as well as profit.
Overcompensation often occurs automatically in an emer-
gency. When the steamship Dixie was in distress on a coral
reef, the water as high as the cabin bunks and baggage float-

ing around in all directions, this is what one of the passengers

afterward said happened: "We all were of the opinion that

•224-
 Consider Overcompensation and Cheer Up
we would finally be carried down. But there was no hysteria.
We all sang!"
Overcompensation may also benefit others as well as the
individual himself. I once remarked to a former patient that
he paid his bills with astonishing speed. "That's because my
father was in debt all his life," he replied. "To this day I

shudder when I think of the stream of bill collectors that used

to ring the front doorbell and whom I had to put off con-
tinually with one excuse or another."
There is often a humorous side to overcompensation when
you realize that its motivation is likely to be of an opposite
nature. It may then be properly termed a defense mechanism.
A person may boast about how hard he works when, deep
down, the cause is laziness. Likewise, marked tidiness and
cleanliness may signify overcompensation for disorderliness
and uncleanliness; excessive politeness an overcompensation
for rudeness; a pleasant manner for bad temper; talkativeness
for a fundamental dislike of people; self-discipline for care-

lessness; thriftiness for a spendthrift nature; kindness for

cruelty; generosity for avariciousness.

Lastly, overcompensation may carry danger, likewise of the
defense variety. Fast automobile driving, beyond the limits of
safety, undoubtedly denotes a weak ego. By passing everybody
else on the road, by tooting the horn loud and often, the
driver's ego is boosted. Dictators, particularly the harsh and
cruel ones, are motivated by a similar personal psychology.
Inferiority, strange as it may seem, may overcompensate into
unbridled pride, audacity and self-assurance. And sometimes
it goes too far. Then the dictator is no more.
In fact, since overcompensation is really a marked and
•225-
Consider Overcompensation and Cheer Up
excessive compensation, always suspect exaggerated behavior
of any kind as having been brought about, consciously or un-
consciously, by a quite different, an opposite, form of be-
havior.
No person is well developed in all his intellectual faculties

or in all the components of his emotional make-up. Particu-

larly is this true of neurotics. One person is, relatively speak-

ing, poor in drawing logical conclusions or his imagination is

not readily aroused. Or, in the emotional sphere, his feelings

are easily hurt or he becomes embarrassed without justifica-

tion. In other words, we all have handicaps to greater or less

degree. These, too, can be overcome— and in the same way

as the more pronounced varieties— through the principle of
overcompensation.
An attempt should invariably be made to bring weak abili-

ties up to the level of our best ones. This makes for valuable

balancing factors and enriches and rounds out our That lives.

is why I repeat that every handicap should be considered by

you as a challenge. Your real, true, inner, unconscious self

wants so earnestly to make you do something about it. And,
just as in a family the sickly child, although perhaps at first

not welcomed, afterward gets most of the love and attention

and becomes the favorite child, so you, as the head of your
own mental household, should pay particular and solicitous
attention to your handicap. Don't be afraid or ashamed of it.

Look upon it as a cry for help. Respect your handicap, give it

the required attention until it becomes your truly favorite trait

instead of the one you have always wanted to hide.

Nor am I talking mere inspiration psychology. I am not
trying to give you a "pep talk." The mind is a machine. Your
•226-
 Consider Overcompensation and Cheer Up
various group thoughts and feelings are integral components
of that machine. Your automobile does not run smoothly
if the air and gas are not properly mixed in the carburetor.

There is choking and sputtering, the car jolts and halts, there
may be explosions.
The situation is identical when one of your component
mental parts is out of harmony with the rest. It wants so
much to be heard. It wishes to express itself. It wants to be
given a chance. That is why it makes such a fuss; why your
handicap produces fears, discouragement and panic. That is

why you are neurotic! A devastating emotion is tagged onto

the handicap in order that you may constantly and effectively
be reminded to get busy.
That is why, also, once you do pay attention, everything is

in your favor for success; that you quite naturally and easily

overcompensate; that you excel where once you felt dismayed.

The start in overcompensation, as in everything else, is the
hardest. Persevere, however; don't give up. Grapple with your
handicaps, whatever their nature; conquer them. The energy
thus released does the rest.

Overcompensation has made the weak strong; the inefficient

efficient; the inferior superior; the fearsome bold; the sickly

healthy; the despairing hopeful. In other words, it has made
the neurotic glad!
A chain is as strong as its weakest link. Repair that link,

weld it, and that particular link becomes stronger than any of
the others. That is overcompensation!
The more neurotic you are the better adjusted you can be-
come. Every devastating symptom you possess can be changed
into an outstanding asset of opposite character.
•227-
Consider Overcompensation and Cheer Up
You should be glad that you possess so many factors that

can be turned to your advantage. At least something is brew-

ing inside of you. Your mind is neither static nor dead. You
are in a state of flux; in a condition of change. You won't
remain the way you are because you can't. You will become a
being who will laugh heartily when, later on, he looks back
and compares what he is then with what he was.
That, too, will be overcompensation!

228
Chapter XXI

THEN FOLLOW THESE FIVE SIMPLE RULES-

THATS ALL!

N CONCLUDING THIS VOLUME— WHICH SHOULD

r prove not merely an inspiration to you but
a definite and practical handbook as well— permit me to quote
from the keynote address made by Dr. Joseph V. Collins, one
of the founders of the Neurological Institute, on the occasion
of its twenty-fifth anniversary:

Submit to being called a neurotic [he declared] for then you

belong to that splendid and pitiable family which is the salt of the
earth. All the greatest things we know have come to us from
neurotics. It is they, and they only, who have founded religions
and created works of art. . . .

It is the psychoneurotics who have painted the pictures that

have lasted from the time of El Greco. Just as sure as the Missis-
sippi River flows from Lake Itasca, all modern art flows from El
Greco. Just as sure as Leonardo da Vinci existed, all modern appli-
cations of physics stem from him.
You can't name a poet, Poe in this
whether it be Whitman or
country, or Stephen Collins Foster or Swinburne, but that you
find a psychoneurotic. . . .

Never world be conscious of how much it owes to the

will the
neurotics, nor above all what they have suffered in order to bestow
its gifts on it. We
enjoy fine music, beautiful pictures, a thousand
exquisite things, but we do not know what it cost those who
wrought them in sleeplessness, tears, spasmodic laughter, asthma,
epilepsy, terror of death and worse than these.

•229-
Then Follow These Five Simple Rules— That's All!

But the time is past when you must suffer as did the great,
and the neurotic generally, of days gone by. The science of
psychiatry is only, comparatively speaking, a recent branch of
learning.
Frankly, if you are neurotic and you continue to suffer, you
have only yourself to blame. If you are neurotic you can help
yourself. If you are laboring under the weight of a full-fledged
and severe neurosis specialists are at hand.
In any case, follow these five simple rules. Remind yourself
of them morning and night. If necessary, paste them inside
your hat!
ANALYZE YOURSELF
STOP FEELING GUILTY
YOUR EGO A BOOST
GIVE
TURN YOUR HANDICAPS INTO ASSETS
PROFIT BY YOUR NEUROSIS
Then
BE GLAD!

230
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