The Foundations of Personality - Abraham Myerson (best large ereader .txt) 📗
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street corner waiting for a car caught his eye. Signaling to his
companions, he walked up to her, put his arms around her and
kissed her. The girl stood as if petrified, then she pushed him
off and looked him up and down deliberately with cold scorn in
her eyes. Then she took off her glove and slapped him across the
face with it, as if disdaining to use her hand. With that she
walked away.
The man was a gentleman, and he stood there stricken. The laugh
of his companions aroused him. He saw them as if they were
himself, with a horror and disgust that made him suddenly run
away from them.
“From that moment I never again had the slightest desire for
drink. The slap sobered me for good.”
While these conversions occur now and then there are certain
practical points in the breaking of a habit that need attention
in each case.
In the first place it is best in the majority of instances to
avoid the particular stimuli and associations that set off the
habit. The stimulus is a kind of trigger; pull it and the habit
can hardly be checked. Whatever the situation is that acts as the
temptation, avoid it. Not for nothing do men pray, “Lead us not
into temptation.” The will needs no such exercise and rarely
stands up well against such strain. This may mean a removal for
the time being from the source of temptation, a flying away to
gain strength.
Further, a substitution of habit, of purpose, is necessary. Some
line of activities must be selected to fill in the vacuum. A
hobby is needed, a devotion to some larger purpose, whether it be
in work or social activity. “Nature abhors a vacuum”; boredom
must be avoided, for that is a pain, awakening desire. The
gymnasium, golf, sports of all kinds are substitute pleasures of
great value.
Third, harness a friend, a superior or a respected equal to the
yoke with you. Pull double harness; let him lend his strength to
yours. Throw away pride; confess and receive new energy from his
sympathy and wisdom. If you are lucky enough to have such a
friend, or some wise counselor, thank God for him. For here is
where the true friend finds his highest value.
In the analysis of any character the question of the kind of
habits formed demands attention. Since almost all traits become
matters of habit, such an inquiry would sooner or later lead to a
catalogue of qualities. What is here pertinent is this,—that one
might inquire into the kind of habits that are easily formed by
the individual and the kind that are not. Habits fall into groups
such as these:
1. Relating to care of the body: cleanliness, diet, exercise,
bowel function, sleep. Here we learn about personal tidiness or
the reverse, foppery, dandyism, gluttony, asceticism, etc.
2. Relating to method, efficiency, neatness in work: some people
find it almost impossible to become methodical or neat; others
become obsessed by these qualities to the exclusion of mobility.
3. Relating to the pursuit of pleasure: type of pleasure sought,
time given to it, hobbies.
4. Relating to special habits: alcohol, tobacco, drugs, sex
perversions.
5. Relating to study and advancement: love of books, attendance
at lectures.
Especially in the study of children is some such scheme
essential, for then one gets a definite idea of their defects and
takes definite efforts to make habitual the desired practice, or
else one sees the special trend, and, if it is good, fosters it.
This, of course, is the long and short of character development.
CHAPTER IV. STIMULATION, INHIBITION, ORGANIZING ENERGY, CHOICE
AND CONSCIOUSNESS
There are three fundamental factors in the relation of any
organism to the environment and in the relation of the various
parts of an organism to each other which we must now consider. To
consider a living thing of any kind as something separate from
the stimuli the world streams in on it, or to consider it as a
real unit, is a mistake that falsifies most of the thinking of
the world.
On us, as living things, the universe pours in stimuli of a few
kinds. Or rather there are few kinds of stimuli we are
specialized to receive and react to; there may be innumerable
other kinds to which we cannot react because they do not reach
us. The world for us is a collection of things that we see, hear,
smell, taste and feel, but there may be vast reaches of things
for which we have no avenues of approach,—completely
unimaginable things because our images are built upon our senses.
To some of the stimuli the world pours in on us we must react
properly or die. Certain “mechanisms” with which we are equipped
must respond to these stimuli or the forces of the world destroy
us. A lion on the horizon must awaken flight, or concealment, or
the modified fight reaction of using weapons; extreme cold or
heat must start up impulses and reflexes leading away from their
disintegrating effects. Food must, when smelled or seen, lead us
to conduct whereby we supply ourselves or we die from hunger.
Dangers and needs awaken reactions, both through instinctive
responses and through intelligence. The main activities of life
are to be classed as “averting” and “acquiring,” for if life
showers us with the things we would or need to have, it also
pelts us with the things we fear, hate or despise. It would be
interesting to know which activities are the most numerous;
presumably the lucky or successful man is busy acquiring while
the unlucky or unsuccessful finds himself busiest averting. The
averting activities are directed largely against the
disagreeable, disgusting, dangerous and the undesired; the
acquiring activities are directed toward the pleasant, the
necessary, the desired. The problems of life are to know what is
really good or bad for us and how to acquire the one and avert
the other. While there are certain things that “naturally”[1] are
deemed good or bad, there are more that are so regarded through
training and education. Morality and Taste are alike concerned
with bringing about attitudes that will determine the “right”
response to the stimuli of the world.
[1] I place in quotations NATURALLY because it is difficult to
know what is “natural” and what is cultural. In the widest sense
everything is natural; in the narrowest very few things are
natural. Cooked food, clothing, houses, marriages, education,
etc., are not found in a state of nature, any more than clocks
and plays by Ibsen are. Our judgment as to what is good and bad
is mainly instinctive leaning directed or smothered by education.
The stimuli that thus pour in upon the individual, and to which
he must react, must find an organism ready to respond in some way
or other. A sleeping man naturally does not adjust himself to
danger, nor does a paralyzed man fly. The most attractive female
in the world causes no response in the very young male child and
perhaps stirs only reminiscences in the aged. Food, which causes
the saliva to flow in the mouth of the hungry, may disgust the
full. Throughout life there are factors in the internal life of
the organism instantly changing one’s reaction to things of
physical, mental and moral significance. He talks loudest of
restraint and control who has no desire; and in satiation even
the sinner sees the beauty of asceticism. There must be a
coincidence of stimulus, readiness and opportunity for the full,
successful response to take place.[1]
[1] A slang epigram puts it better: The time, the place, and the
girl.
The simplest response to any stimulus from the outer world is the
reflex act. Theoretically a reflex act is dependent upon the
interaction of a sensory surface, a sensory nerve cell, a motor
nerve cell and a muscle, i. e., a receptive apparatus and a motor
apparatus in such close union that the will and intelligence play
no part. Thus if one puts his finger on a hot stove he withdraws
it immediately, and such responses are present even in the
decapitated frog and human for a short time. So if light streams
in on the wide-open pupil of the eye, it contracts, grows
smaller, without any effort of the will, and in fact entirely
without the consciousness of the individual. Swallowing is a
series of reflexes in a row, so that food in the back part of the
mouth sets a reflex going that carries it beyond the epiglottis;
another reflex carries it to the esophagus and then one reflex
after the other transports the food the rest of the way. Except
for the first effort of swallowing, the rest is entirely
involuntary and even unconscious. Those readers who are
interested would do well to read the work of Pavlow on the
conditioned reflex, in which the great Russian physiologist
builds up all action on a basis of a modification of the
primitive reflex which he calls the “conditioned reflex.”[1]
[1] Pavlow is one of the scientists who regard all mental life as
built up out of reflexes. The immediate reflex is only one
variety; thought, emotion, etc., are merely reflexes placed end
to end. Pavlow divides action into two trends, one due to an
unconditioned reflex, of innate structure, and the other a
modified or conditioned reflex which arises because some stimulus
has become associated with the reflex act. Thus saliva dripping
from a dog’s mouth at the smell of food is an unconditioned
reflex; if a bell is heard at the same time the food is smelled
then in the course of time the saliva flows at the sound of the
bell alone,—a conditioned reflex. A very complex system has been
built up of this kind of facts, which I have criticized
elsewhere.
The simple reflex, immediate response to a stimulus, has only a
limited field in human life or adult life. Sherrington points out
in his notable book, “The Integrative Action of the Nervous
System,” that there is a play of the entire organism on each
responding element, and there is also a competition throughout
each pathway to action. Let us examine this a little closer.
A man is hungry, let us say; i. e., there arise from his
gastro-intestinal tract and from the tissues stimuli which arouse
motor mechanisms to action and the man seeks food. The need of
the body arouses desire in the form of an organic sensation and
this arouses mechanisms whose function is to satisfy that desire.
Let us assume that he finds something that looks good and he is
about to seize it when an odor, called disagreeable, assails his
nostrils from the food, which stops him. Then there arises a
competition for action between the desire for food and the visual
stimulus, associated memories, etc., on the one hand, and the
odor, the awakened fear, memories, disgust, etc., on the other
hand. This struggle for action, for use of the mechanisms of
action, is the struggling of choosing, one of the fundamental
phenomena of life. In order for a choice to become manifest, what
is known as inhibition must come into play; an impulse to action
must be checked in order that an opposing action can be
effective. The movement of rejection uses muscles that oppose the
movement of acquirement; e. g., one uses the triceps and the
other the biceps, muscles situated in opposite sides of the upper
arm and having antagonistic action. In order for triceps to act,
biceps must be inhibited from action, and in that inhibition is a
fundamental function of the organism. In every function of the
body there are opposing groups of
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