The Foundations of Personality - Abraham Myerson (best large ereader .txt) 📗
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determined intelligent and shrewd. But let us suppose he has a
son who is as strongly egoistic, is as determined, but lacks
intelligence and shrewdness. Not becoming successful, this person
ascribes his failure to others and develops ideas of persecution.
Again, a true poet is a person of keen sensibilities, but he must
possess at the same time imaginative intelligence and the power
of words. Let these be joined in proper proportions, and his
verse becomes ours and we hail him as a poet. But let him lack
the power of words, and though he sweat with a desire to write he
is a failure or a hack poet, making up by industry what he lacks
in beauty. Suppose there is a man deeply passionate, thrilled by
the beauty of women and desiring them with a fierce ardor, and
yet he has strong inhibitions, great purposes which hold him
steady. Then throughout life he seems calm, chaste and
controlled, and no one knows of the turmoil and battle within
him. We may suppose that old age[1] or a sickness lowers his
inhibiting qualities, and a startling change in conduct results,
one that we can scarcely believe and which we are inclined to
call a complete transformation of personality. In reality, a
disharmony has occurred, some trend has been released, and
conduct, which is a resultant, changes its direction.
[1] Sexual misdemeanor is not uncommon in old men who have
hitherto been of hallowed reputation.
Inhibition control, may develop later than it should, as I have
already mentioned. At adolescence sex desire comes suddenly into
play, but usually in one way or another there are checks upon its
effects already established. But often there is not, and the boy
or girl plunges into a sex life that brings them into violent
conflict with themselves and society. Despite their efforts the
non-ethical conduct continues; despite their tears and vows to
reform they are swept by “temptation” into difficulty. Then
suddenly or gradually, perhaps long after every one despairs of
them, the inhibition appears, and they settle down to a
controlled life. What has happened? We cannot say in anatomical
terms, but from a psychological standpoint the function of
inhibition, delayed in its appearance, finally comes on the
scene. We see this delay in other phases of character; there is
often delay in sex feeling, in the interest in work, in love of
the beautiful, in control of anger, etc. Take the last mentioned:
an irascible child grows into an irascible adolescent and even
into a similar adult, flaring up under the least provocation, to
the dismay and disgust of others and himself. “He can’t control
himself,” so say others, and so thinks he. He vows reform, but
nothing seems to help. Then like a miracle comes the longed-for
inhibition; anger is still there when his will is crossed or his
opinion scouted, but a firm hand is on it, and he maintains a
calm he had despaired of reaching.
Man is a bundle of disharmonies, as the great Eli Metchnikoff
pointed out, physically, psychologically and sociologically. When
these disharmonies are within average limits we do not notice
them; when they are greater in degree they bring about conduct
that at once claims attention. Sometimes a disharmony is merely
an excess development of some ability, in which case, if the
ability is socially valuable, we have the talented person or the
genius. This is often the case with the artistic abilities and
also with the physical powers. If the disharmony involve an
instinct, an emotion or certain phases of the intelligence, we
are brought face to face with the abnormal.
There is, of course, disharmony through ordinary defect as in
feeblemindedness, as in absence of some essential emotion or
instinct. These are hopeless situations and belong in the grim
field of psychopathology. Often what seems to be a defect is a
“sleeping” quality, and one that will awaken under appropriate
circumstance. Conspicuously, maternal love is of this nature. One
sees a girl who has no interest in children, considers them bores
and nuisances, who marries with the hope she will be childless,
and with the first baby becomes a passionately devoted mother,
even fiercely maternal.
In the following pages I shall sketch some prominent character
types. This has been done by such masters as Aristotle, Spinoza,
Kant, La Bruyere, Stewart, Ribot, Mill, etc., but with a
different purpose and starting point than mine.
Every great novelist is a professor of character depiction.
Witness Scrooge, Pecksniff, Mark Tapley, Pickwick, Sam Weller and
his father, created by Dickens; the four musketeers, especially
D’Artagnon, of Dumas; Amelia and Rebecca Sharp, George, and the
Major of Thackeray; Jane Austen’s heroines and George Eliot’s men
and women; the narrators in the famous Canterbury Inn, the
soldiers of Kipling, the Shylocks, Macbeths, Rosalinds and
Falstaffs of the greatest dramatist; the thousand and one
fictitious and yet real figures of literature.
The temperament studies by the psychologists and philosophers
have been too broad and too classical to be of practical value.
Sanguine and choleric temperament, the bilious, the nervous and
the phlegmatic, the quick and the slow, all these are broad
divisions, and no man really exemplifies them. What I propose to
do is less ambitious, but perhaps more practical. I shall take a
few of the qualities with which the previous pages have concerned
themselves and show how they work out in individuals mainly
sketched from life.
It will seem that perhaps a disproportionate number are
pathological, but I wish to insist that there is no sharp line
between the “normal” and “pathological” in character. In fact,
normality is an abstract conception, an ideal never reached or
seen, and each of us only approaches that ideal in greater or
lesser degree. Moreover, certain deviations from the normal are
useful, as the assemblage of qualities that make the genius or
the reformer of certain types. Others are not useful, or at least
not useful in the environment and age in which the deviated
person finds himself. Undoubtedly the abnormal have helped found
religions, for one who “hears” God and “sees” him as do many of
the insane, if intelligent and eloquent at the same time, easily
convinces others; but if such a person occurs in a group with
well-established belief and resistant to the new, the insane
hospital soon lodges the new apostle.
I shall not attempt to consider all the varied shades of harmony
and disharmony, the extraordinary variety of types. There are as
many varieties of persons as there are people, and the
mathematical possibilities exceed computation. Those depicted are
some of the outstanding types, in whom qualities and combinations
of qualities can easily be seen at work.
CHAPTER XVII. SOME CHARACTER TYPES
There is one kind of energy discharger that we may call the
hyperkinetic, controlled practical type. This group is
characterized by great and constant activity, well controlled by
purpose, with eagerness and enthusiasm manifested in each act but
not excessively.
1. A. is one of these people. In school he specialized in
athletics and was a fine all-round player in almost every sport.
When he left high school to go to work he at once entered
business. His employers soon found him to be a tireless worker,
steady and purposeful in everything. In addition to carrying on
his duties by day, A. studied nights, carefully choosing his
subjects so that they related directly to his business. Despite
the fact that his work was hard and his studies exacting, A. had
energy enough left to join social organizations and to take a
leading part in their affairs. He became quickly known as one of
those busy people who always are ready to take on more work.
Naturally this led to his becoming a leader, first in his social
relations and second in his business. Always practical in his
judgments and actions, A. fell in love with the daughter of a
rich family and married her, with the full approval of her
relatives, who were keen enough to see that his energy, power and
control were destined for success.
The leading traits that A. manifests hinge around his high energy
and control. He is honest and conventional, devoted to the ideals
of his group and admires learning, but he is not in any sense a
scholar. He is a poor speaker, in the ordinary sense of that
term, but curiously effective, nevertheless, because his earnest
energy and sturdy common sense win approval as “not a theorist.”
But mainly he wins because he is tireless in energy and
enthusiasm and yet has yoked these qualities to ordinary
purposes. The average man he meets understands him thoroughly,
sympathizes with him completely and accepts him as a leader after
his own heart.
So A. has become rich and respected. As times goes on, as he is
brought more and more into contact with large affairs outside of
business; as a trustee of hospitals and a director of charitable
organizations, he broadens out but not into an “unsafe” attitude.
He pities the unfortunate but is not truly sympathetic, in that
it rarely occurs to him that success and failure are relative,
that an accident might have shipwrecked his fortunes and that his
good qualities are as innate as his complexion. For this man
prides himself on his strong will and courage, whereas he merely
has within him a fine engine in whose construction he had no
part.
2. The hyperkinetic, controlled, impractical person. B. is, in
the fundamentals of energy and control, singularly like A., but
because of the nature of his interests and purposes their lives
have completely diverged so that no one would ordinarily
recognize the kinship in type. B. is and always has been a
worker, enthusiastic and enduring, and he has stuck to his last
with a fidelity that is remarkable. He is very likable in the
ordinary sense,—pleasant to look at, cheerful, ready to joke,
laugh or to help the other fellow. Nevertheless, he has only a
few friends and is a distinctly disappointed man at heart,
because his interests are in the ordinary sense, impractical.
B. early became interested in physiology. From the very start he
found in the workings of the human body a fascination that
concentrated his efforts. Poor, he worked hard enough to obtain
scholarships and fellowships in one university after another
until finally he became a Ph. D. Here was a great error from the
practical standpoint; for had he become an M. D., he would have
had a profession that offered an independent financial future.
But, in his zeal, he did not wish to take on the extended program
of the physician, and he saw clearly that he might become a
better scientist as a Ph. D. He became a teacher in one school
after another, did a good deal of research work, but has not been
fortunate enough to make any epoch-making discoveries. He is one
of those splendid, painstaking, energetic men found in every
university who turn out good pieces of work of which only a few
know anything, and from which in the course of time some genius
or lucky scientist culls a few facts upon which to build up a
great theory or a new doctrine. He married one of his own
students, a fine woman but unluckily not very strong, and so
there fell on him many a domestic duty that a thousand extra
dollars a year would have turned over to a maid.
Thus B. is an obscure but respected member of the faculty of a
small university. He teaches well, though he dislikes it, and he
is happy at the times when he works hard at some physiological
problem. He loves his family and has vowed that his son will be a
business man.
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