The Foundations of Personality - Abraham Myerson (best large ereader .txt) 📗

yet showed the same fondness for

dancing and good times that the normal girl does. She met a

promising young business man who fell immediately in love with

this demure looking young woman, and they were later married.

Once I asked her how the reform came about. “I don’t know

myself,” she answered frankly. “I never was happy—when I was the

other way. I always vowed reform, but when there was money around

I’d think and think about it until it was mine. Then I’d spend it

in a silly way to get rid of it fast. I craved good things, and

you know how poor we were. Then I lied just to have people like

me and pity me, even though I called myself a fool while doing

it. Often, often I tried to reform and for a week or two would be

real good. Then perhaps I’d see some money, and I’d try to think

of something else. But that money would come to my mind, and I’d

get hot and dizzy thinking about it. Perhaps I’d say, ‘I’ll just

look at it,’ and finally I’d go and take it—and feel so relieved

and spend it. After I left the hospital it seemed to me that I

could never smile again. I cried all night long; I wanted to die.

I could see one girl who thought I was so good and nice, and her

face as she looked at me when I left! Her eyes were wide open,

and her mouth was so stern, and she looked as if she wanted to

speak but she turned around and walked away. One day I woke up

after a restless night at home, and it seemed to me that I had

strength, that something had turned around in my nature, and

since that day I have never even wanted to steal. I haven’t had

to try to be good; it came as natural as eating and sleeping.”

 

The sexually under-inhibited are those whose sex control is

deficient. This may be either from over-passionate nature, bad

example, deficient mentality, vanity and desire for good times,

as in certain girls, etc. To discuss these types would be to

write another book, and so I forbear. But this I wish to

emphasize: that neither age, sex protestation of indifference and

control, occupation or social status, alters the fact that the

history of the sex feelings, impulses and struggles is essential

to a knowledge of character. Without detailing sex types, these

are some that are important.

 

1. The uninhibited impulsive, passionate (the bulk of the

prostitutes).

 

2. The controlled, passionate. Very common.

 

3. The frigid. Not so rare as believed.

 

4. The extremely passionate (nymphomania, satyriasis). Rare.

Always in trouble.

 

5. The sensualist, a deliberate seeker of sex pleasure, often

indulging in perversion. Common type.

 

6. The perverted types,—autoerotic (masturbator), homosexual,

masochists, sadists, fetishist, etc. More common than the

ordinary person dreams.

 

7. The periodic, to whom sex life is incidental to certain

periods and situations. Common among women, less common among

men.

 

8. The sublimators, whose sexual activity has somehow been

harnessed to other great activities. Fairly frequent among these

who either through choice or necessity are to remain continent.

 

9. The anhedonic or exhausted. Found in the sensualists and often

reacted to by the formation of religious and ethical codes, which

eliminate sex,—Tolstoy, the hermits, certain Russian sects, etc.

 

There is under-inhibition of a good kind. There are

generous-hearted people always ready to give of themselves to

anything or anybody that needs help. Often “fooled” by the

unworthy, they resolve to be calm, judicial and selfish, and

then,—their generous social natures override caution, and again

they plunge into kindness and philanthropy.

 

F. L. is one of these. As child, boy and young man he was

free-hearted to an extraordinary degree. Ragamuffin, stray dog or

cat, tramp, down and outer of every kind or description, these

enlisted his sympathy and help despite the expostulation and

remonstrance of a series of conventional good people, his mother

and father, his best friends and his outraged wife. The latter

never knew, she used to say, what he would bring home for dinner.

“He always forgot to bring home the steak, but he never forgot to

lug along some derelict.” More than once he was robbed, often he

was imposed upon. Once he met an interesting vagabond who spoke

several languages, quoted the Bible with ease and accuracy, and

so fired the heart of our simple man that he bought him clothes

and brought him home to stay. His wife threw up her hands in

despair. “But, my dear,” said F. L., “he’s a scholar who has

fallen on evil days.” “Ah,” she answered, “I fear it will be an

evil day for us when you took him home.” She had a good chance to

say, “I told you so,” when the rogue eloped with the best of

their silver.

 

Not only is F. L. impulsive and uninhibited in his generosity,

but his “pitch in and help” quality is about as well manifested

in other matters. If he sees a man or boy struggling with a load,

he immediately forgets that he is over fifty and well dressed and

steps right in to help. He saw an ash and garbage man—this is

his wife’s star story—struggling to lift a much befouled can

into his wagon. F. L. left his wife and some friends without a

word and with a cheery word threw the can into the wagon.

Unfortunately some of the contents splashed, and F. L. suffered

both in dignity and appearance as a consequence. He had to go

home by back alleys and had to endure the mirth of his friends

for a long time. But it did not change his reactions in the

least, although he was really vexed with himself and endeavored

to be conventional and self-controlled for a while. The point is

that F. L. attempts inhibition of generous impulses and fails as

ignominiously as a drunkard struggling with the desire to drink.

 

Of course he is of the salt of the earth. Upon such uninhibited

fellowship feeling as his rests the ethical progress of the

world. A dozen inventors contribute less to their fellow men than

does he. For their contributions may be used to destroy or

enslave their fellows, and it is a commonplace that science has

outstripped morals. But his contributions spread kindly feeling

and the notion of the brotherhood of man.

 

The over-inhibited, those whose every impulse and desire is

subjected to a scrutiny and a blocking, often come to the

attention of the neuropsychiatrist. But there are many “normal”

people who fall into this group, and whose conduct throughout

life is marked by a scrupulosity that is painful to behold. The

over-inhibition may take specific directions, as in the thrifty

who check their desires in the wish to save money, or the

industrious who hold up their pleasures and recreations in the

fear that they are wasting time. A sub-group of the

over-inhibited I call the over-conscientious, and it is one of

these whose history is epitomized here.

 

K. has always had “ingrowing scruples,” as his exasperated mother

once said. As a small child he never obeyed the impulse to take a

piece of cake without looking around to see if his mother and

father approved. He would not play unreservedly, in the

whole-hearted impulsive way of children, but always held back in

his enjoyment as if he feared that perhaps he was not doing just

right. When he started to go to school his fear of doing the

wrong thing made him appear rather slow, though in reality he was

bright. The other children called him a “sissy,” mistaking his

conscientiousness for cowardice. This grieved him very much, and

his father undertook to educate him in “rough” ways, in fighting

and wrestling. He succeeded in this to the extent that K. learned

to fight when he believed that he was being wronged, but he never

seemed to learn the aggressiveness necessary to get even a fair

share of his rights. His mother, a similar type, rather

encouraged him in this virtue, much to the disgust of the father.

 

Not to spend too long a time over K.‘s history, we may pass

quickly over his school years until he entered college. He was a

“grind” if there ever was one, studying day and night. He had

developed well physically and because of his hard work stood near

the top of his class. He took no “pleasures” of any kind,—that

is, he played no cards, went to no dances, never took in a show

and of course was strictly moral. It seems that the main factor

that held him back was the notion he had imbibed early in his

career that pleasure itself was somehow not worthy, that an ideal

of work made a sort of sin of wasting time. Whenever he indulged

himself by rest or relaxation, even in so innocent a way as to go

to a ball game, there was in the back of his mind the idea, “I

might have been studying this or that, or working on such a

subject; I am wasting time,” and the pleasure would go. By nature

K. was sociable and friendly and was well liked, but he avoided

friendships and social life because of the unpleasant reproaches

of his work conscience and the rigor of his work inhibitions. He

grew tired, developed a neurasthenic set of symptoms, and thus I

first came in contact with him. Once he understood the nature of

his trouble, which I labeled for him as a “hypertrophied work

conscience,” he set himself the task of learning to enjoy, of

throwing off inhibition, of innocent self-indulgence, and my

strong point that he would work the better for pleasure took his

fancy at once. He succeeded in part in his efforts, but of course

will always debate over the right and wrong of each step in his

life.

 

This one example of a high type of the over-inhibited must do for

the group. There is a related type who in ordinary speech find it

“difficult to make up their minds,”—in other words, are unable

to choose. Bleuler has used the term ambivalent, thus comparing

these individuals to a chemical element having two bonds and

impelled to unite with two substances. The ambivalent

personalities are always brought to a place where they yearn for

two opposing kinds of action or they fear to choose one affinity

of action as against the other. They are in the position of the

unfortunate swain who sang, “How happy I could be with either,

were t’other dear charmer away.”

 

M. is one of these helpless ambivalent folk, always running to

others for advice and perplexed to a frenzy by the choices of

life. “What shall I do?” is his prime question, largely because

he fears to commit himself to any line of action. Once a man

chooses, he shuts a great many doors of opportunity and gambles

with Fate that he has chosen right. M. knows this and lacks self-confidence, i.e., the belief that he will choose for the best or

be able to carry it through. He lacks the gambling spirit, the

willingness to put his destiny to fortune. Often M. deliberates

or rather oscillates for so long a time that the matter is taken

from his hands. Thus, when he fell in love, the fear of being

refused, of making a mistake, prevented him from action, and the

young woman accepted another, less ambivalent suitor.

 

M. is in business with his father and is entirely a subordinate,

because he cannot choose. He carries out orders well, is very

amiable and gentle, is liked and at the same time held in a mild

contempt. He has