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AS the human mind develops from infancy to the adult status it is destined to become the arena wherein many a severe psychic struggle will take place. In this developing mind many a real conflict is certain to occur, not to mention the thousands upon thousands of "sham battles" which will be fought.
Freud lays great emphasis on sex. Adler, on the other hand, emphasizes what he calls the ego instincts, the wish for power and the desire for security, as the primary motives involved in these manifold emotional struggles which are so productive of mischief in the case of certain human beings who are unfortunate in either their heredity or early training, or both. Freud holds that man's behavior and all his nervous troubles are largely the result of conflicts which go on in the mind between the sex urge and various other groups of emotions. The inordinately nervous are supposed to have over-suppressed their sex emotions.
Adler and other psychologists would have us believe that man is more largely controlled by the urge to dominate his fellow men, to master as much of the world as possible, and, in connection with all this, to attain the greatest measure of comfort and achieve the highest degree of security against the harshness of nature and the attacks of one's fellows.
To the behaviorists, mind is all but non-existent, so they can hardly accept the modern theory of the subconscious. They are forced to recognize the phenomena which we commonly associate with the subconscious, and endeavor to explain these things in their particular terminology by saying that the subconscious is merely a designative term which indicates the unverbalized domain of human thought. By this they mean the objective psychic world in contradistinction to the verbal consciousness. When one sees something or conjures up a psychic image of it and has a name for it, that is supposed to be the domain of verbalized thought and roughly compares with what psychologists call consciousness; but when one finds he is confronted with an object, either in the external world or in the mind, for which he has no name, this unverbalized or nameless domain of thought is what the behaviorists are wont to compare with our so-called subconscious.
I am willing to subscribe to the doctrine that both the sex urge and the ego instinct are universal and are highly important drives, and that they are undoubtedly connected with human happiness and various nervous disorders; but I am not willing to admit that these are the only instincts and emotions which are concerned with the cause and manifestation of nervous difficulties.
Emotional analysis has told us much about these mental complexes, and it should be borne in mind that mental conflict arises out of the fact that the human mind is not a psychic unity. The intellect of man is built up from thousands upon thousands of more or less individualized complexes. If a person were, mentally speaking, a single and coordinated unit, there could be no such thing as a mental conflict. His ideas, feelings, and emotions would always be consistent and harmonious. But the human organism is not a unit. Each organ and each domain of psychic life has its own interest to look after. This entails conflicts and such other adjustments as displacement, substitution, repression, sublimation, etc. The child is multi potential as it starts out in life. Much of its future depends upon the nature of its early identifications, transferences, etc., just as later on we can prognosticate much of the child's future from the sort of hero it settles upon. Children suffer from both too much and too little mother love, so that a child sometimes grows up looking in later life for some of the love satisfaction of which he was deprived in his early years.
Mental conflict manifests itself in many different ways. It often appears as a conflict with reality. The demands of real life are sometimes too painful for a neurotic individual gracefully to accept. The facts of life may be in direct and strong opposition to his wishes. Many people, especially children, refuse to face the painful facts of actual life, and try to go on living in a world of fantasy - a world in which their desires are supposedly easy of realization. Such nervously predisposed individuals refuse to adapt themselves to the real world in which the rest of us live and work.
The second form of conflict arises through objection to authority. Certain highly imaginative and fantastically neurotic persons disdain to subject themselves to the hardship of routine drudgery, and they eschew submission to any and all forms of authority. These sensitive souls dislike everything which in any way conflicts with the desire to assert one's individuality, or to dominate one's associates and surroundings.
Another form of conflict occurs between certain groups of instincts or emotions, as between fear and anger, or love and ambition. Mental conflict always produces a feeling of restlessness and anxiety, and when greatly prolonged, as it is in the frequently recurring conflict between love and duty, the feeling of anxiety becomes so pronounced and persistent that it may well be called an anxiety neurosis.
As regards the study of emotional suppression and emotional conflicts in relation to various psychic states and nervous disorders, I would offer the following classification or grouping of human instincts, emotions, and urges:
And so it will be seen that I am disposed to recognize five great groups of human instincts and emotions which are capable of warring upon each other, as well as of disagreeing and contending in a minor manner among themselves. It will now be in order to take up these groups one by one for more detailed consideration as to the manner in which they participate in those emotional conflicts which are supposed to be the cause of psychic restlessness and other forms of nervous irritability.
Long-drawn-out psychic conflict in the case of men and women with otherwise well balanced nervous systems produces little or no immediate trouble; but such disturbances in the day-by-day psychological life of the individual do tend to produce irritability, sometimes making him thoroughly grouchy and disagreeable. In the case of those having unstable and highly irritable nervous systems, the results are sooner or later disastrous. In the case of normal people we have a gradual onset of chronic worry, anxiety, or even so-called neurasthenia; in the other group of cases we have a more or less spectacular onset of an hysterical nature, a nervous breakdown, a profound depression, or a more or less complete collapse - a real hysterical blow-up.
Let us now take up these five different groups of emotions and study the manner in which they cause conflicts and thus contribute to the production of various forms of nervous troubles.
I am convinced that in the case of the average human being hunger is the dominant emotion. The nutrition instinct is the basic biologic urge of the animal world. There is a real reason why nations are willing to go to war in order to insure or increase their food supply. There is a real reason why neurasthenics become food faddists and why hypochondriacs are wont to select the stomach as the favorite organ upon which to bestow their affectionate solicitude.
The whole question of health, physical comfort, and personal efficiency belongs to the domain of these self-preservation complexes. Aside from ulcers, gall-stones, and chronic appendicitis, most of our digestive disorders are neurotic in origin. No first-class stomach will do good work if you spy on it. Just as soon as we begin to watch our digestion it immediately proceeds to get out of order, and thus is able to exhibit something to reward us for our trouble. No other vital organs are so subject to the influence of introspection as the stomach, and no other part of our vital machinery is so likely quickly to get out of order as the result of psychic conflict. The digestion is the most vulnerable of our internal mechanisms when it comes to reflexly suffering as the result of anxiety and psychic conflicts. Nausea is one of our most common neurotic symptoms.
The emotion of fear is one of the basic urges of the animal world, and one that has in past ages served a valuable purpose in the preservation and continuity of animal species, as well as one of the greatest of all emotions as regards its influence upon human health and happiness. An entire chapter will be devoted later to the study of this important subject.
A great deal of mental trouble and many nervous disorders are the result of frequent indulgence in fits of anger - that emotion which is experienced in connection with the arousal of the instinct of pugnacity. Every animal is born with an instinct of self-defense, and pugnacity is the name given to this inborn tendency to resent interference with normal enjoyment of the various emotions associated with the natural instincts of living.
But anger is very upsetting, not only to the immediate psychic state, but also to the ductless gland system of the body. Intense anger is known both to influence the thyroid output and to accelerate the function of the supra-renal gland. There is a direct physical as well as psychic effect, which inevitably follows the indulgence of anger.
We get into a great deal of psychic trouble because our personal comfort is interfered with, or because we desire certain comforts or luxuries which we find it difficult to obtain and at the same time keep peace with our emotional complexes, particularly those involving our conscientious convictions and social obligations. We also get into serious difficulty because of our effort to avoid things which are distasteful or disgusting. The more artistic type of human being is in frequent conflict with the realities of his environment in this effort to avoid stimulating his instinct of repulsion. It is laudable to be artistic, to have delicacy of feeling; but it is unfortunate that these attainments are so often allowed to cause psychic conflict because we are unable to provide ourselves with all the necessities and luxuries which our ideals of living may include.
When all is said and done, however, these biologic urges connected with the preservation of life are very powerful in dominating the human mind and in determining the motives for our subconscious reactions. One thing we can be certain of - the subconscious will always be alert in prompting us to give the right of way to these basic biologic emotions and instincts. No matter what other emotional complexes may be involved, if they get in the way of these basic biologic instincts, we may be sure that the subconscious will lend itself to that side of the conflict which promises victory for the self-preservation drive.
When these biologic urges get mixed up with the conscience, as in the case of our health faddists and those who become over-attentive to the welfare of some particular part of their anatomy, they are harder still to manage.
I could fill this book with the recital of cases illustrating how the economic struggle - the fight for food, raiment, and shelter - often comes to constitute the chief conflict of the human mind, and in the end unfailingly serves to break down the nerves and destroy the health in the case of susceptible individuals. The results of financial worry are too well known to require the citing of cases by way of illustration.
In the lower strata of society, many people live but a few days ahead of hunger or come face to face with it day after day, yet the fact seems to make little impression upon their nervous systems; but among the more intelligent and better educated classes, this experience sets up serious anxiety. Many forms of our business worries come about through going into debt and from over-ambition, and have to do not only with an effort to provide food and shelter, but also with the fourth group of our instincts and emotions - the power urge.
Last winter I met a pale, anemic young woman, who got it into her head that she must take cold baths every morning. She didn't like them, but she thought they were good for her, both physically and as moral discipline. She had three or four friends who carried out this practice faithfully, and she decided that it would cure her tendency to have so many colds in the winter, and relieve her of her habitual chilliness. Her reaction was poor, and the cold bath left her with a headache that lasted half the day; and yet conscience drove her on. I find that she has always been over-conscientious about something of this sort. She always has a health complex. She nearly killed herself once through over-conscientiousness about diet; then she took up physical culture and tried to walk ten miles a day, until she lost thirty-five pounds in weight; next she adopted bathing as a conscientious health fad.
In helping her overcome this harmful practice we have tried to educate her on the subject of conscience, so that there is some hope she will be delivered from this habitual tendency to pick up fads and become hyper-conscientious over them. No matter how good your health fad may be, don't overdo it. Treat it as a health measure, not as a religion.
Too bad we can't take the people who are careless and indifferent - happy-go-lucky folks who are digging their graves, as it were, with their teeth - and teach them how to postpone their funerals, without having them go to the other extreme and fall into the doctor's hands, sick and depressed, all because of a health complex! Too bad we can't think enough about our stomachs to avoid serious indigestion without, at the same time, thinking so much about the digestion as ultimately to bring on nervous dyspepsia!
Some people have been so unfortunately brought up, or are naturally so hyper-conscientious, that they begin to look around for trouble the moment they come to enjoy good health and experience real happiness. Now, it is not for me to become a conscience for any of my readers - you must determine for yourself what is right and wrong for you. I can do nothing better than to admonish you to follow your conscience for the time being; but I can't help feeling sorry for the earnest souls who go through life unable to enjoy what seem to me to be wholesome, healthful pursuits, just because their consciences tell them these pursuits are wrong.
Next to the food urge - the self-preservation instincts - I believe that in the case of human beings the sex urge is the most important and dominating influence which has to do with our psychic and nervous life.
When I use the word sex, I have in mind the whole sweep of the sex life. I am thinking not merely of the physical manifestation of sex, but also of its intellectual and social, not to say artistic, ramifications. We even run here into the spiritual domain. We can't envision sex without the recognition of that master-emotion which, for the want of a better word, we call love. This is not the place to undertake the definition or analysis of love. Suffice it to say that it is a sex-origin emotion, as also are those emotions of tenderness and pity which are so intimately bound up in the parental instinct - an instinct which is also of sex origin. Much of our admiration and all of that superb devotion which we find in family life, have their roots in the sex urge. True, much of our sex emotion, particularly as manifested in the course of our coeducational activities and as indulged in family life, is altogether subconscious; but, none the less, it has its origin in sex. Many of our most beautiful and sentimental human relationships have a sex origin.
The disciples of Freud, through their propaganda, have already over-taught the public regarding the fact of the ever-present sex conflict in the case of the average civilized human being. Little need be said at this time to emphasize sex conflicts. They are too well known to need special mention. Not a human being who lives on earth to-day has failed to pass through, not one, but many a sex struggle. The sex urge, in the case of the average normal and healthy individual, is altogether too real to need comment, and the conflict between this primitive urge and the restrictions and inhibitions of modern social conventions and moral requirements is altogether too well known to call for much comment, albeit most of this struggle actually takes place deep down in the subconscious mind.
I am particularly anxious that young men and women, or those of middle age, should not worry on through their lives over some minor sex or social mistake of their early years. I am referring now to minor misconduct, not to anything that would lessen our self-respect or our conscientious devotion to the Seventh Commandment; but as a physician I am constantly meeting individuals whose pathetic stories are illustrative of how easy it is to commit some little indiscretion in youth and then worry the rest of a long life over the supposed harm done, or to magnify the moral consequences of such minor mistakes and youthful indiscretions.
I think the time has come when the medical profession ought to try to help people to be delivered from wrong notions and exaggerated ideas of both the physical consequences and the moral bearing of these trifling missteps. We can have high ideals and steer clear of real moral turpitude without going so far afield as to make false moral issues out of minor mistakes. While there is much more to be said along this line, perhaps this is not the proper place to discuss it; but I believe the time has come to set a multitude of people free from exaggerated sex worries which destroy their courage, ruin their lives, and many times, as they tell the physician, even prevent their marriage because they are fearful they are unworthy, when they are guilty of nothing more than that of which a vast majority of the whole population is guilty.
It is astounding how the least little thing connected with sex, even a passing thought or a dream, can become hooked up with conscience in the minds of certain types of people and just about ruin their lives if someone doesn't lead them out of this wilderness of misunderstanding and despair.
The physician is confronted with a real problem when it comes to trying to solve some of these sex conflicts. The better teaching of the past twenty-five years regarding the fact that sex dreams in both young men and young women are normal has done a great deal to help in the case of the average young man. The young men of to-day do not worry so much over these matters as did the youth of a former generation, neither are they such easy prey of the quack doctors. The average young man has learned, through parental instruction or from lectures, that these so-called "wet dreams" are perfectly normal phenomena, and they do not worry over them as their parents and grandparents did. I think we are beginning to meet with fewer and fewer young men and young women who have brought themselves into serious nervous conditions through worry over masturbation. In recent years physicians have become courageous enough to tell the truth about this. Parents are becoming better educated along these lines in that, while they endeavor to teach their children to refrain from such practices, they do not go to unwarranted extremes and threaten them with feeble-mindedness, insanity, and epilepsy in case they occasionally indulge in them.
I don't see how we are going to avoid the so-called social problem as long as old Mother Nature gets people ready for marriage when they are fifteen or sixteen years of age, while the demands of civilization and the standards of decent living, to say nothing about the time required to secure an education, prevent marriage for a period of almost a dozen years after sex maturity. Meanwhile our ethical requirements and religious inhibitions draw the line against all forms of irregular sex relations. For my part, I see no solution of this problem except in teaching young men and women that they can be entirely healthy and efficient without sex relations, and in stopping our erroneous teaching that masturbation is all but fatal to the integrity of mind and health of body; and that we further seek to enlighten our youth respecting the naturalness and even desirability of so-called sex dreams.
During the week of this writing I had a call from a young man whose life had been all but ruined as the result of the well-meant teachings of his mother respecting the dire results of masturbation. When about seventeen years old he ran across a sex book which painted this picture in colors even more lurid than his mother had dared to employ. He decided to break himself of the habit, and there followed a long period in which he would first succeed in quitting his practice of self-relief, and then would again fall back into the habit, while all this time his religious experience was fiercely at war with his natural animal nature. The result was that the young fellow's health was wrecked; he was afraid to get married; he developed a first-class inferiority complex. It was pathetic to see what had happened to this otherwise splendid young man, all because he had been fighting himself - nobly but unintelligently - trying to maintain an ideal supposedly based on truth but in reality founded on error.
And so, no matter to what degree I might let myself in for criticism in some quarters, I would prefer to trust my destiny to truth. In this study of the tricks of the subconscious, we are trying to develop a passion for the truth, a willingness to face facts. While clinging tenaciously to our ideals, let us be wholly unafraid of truth. Let us teach sex-control on the basis of true manhood and enlightened self-discipline, and not of unwholesome fear based on the teaching of untruths.
In dealing with sex complexes in unmarried men and women, I have long since come to the place where I tell them to instruct their consciences to keep guard over the Seventh Commandment and to leave the minor phases of sex feeling to the care of old Mother Nature.
Under ordinary circumstances, I believe in instructing these young people that - in the matter of sex feelings, dreams, and practices which do not involve immoral relations of the sexes - the whole group should be taken out of both health and moral realms; that the harm to health comes purely through the channel of worry over the fear that they are unhealthful or over the conviction that they are morally wrong. And again, I could fill this book with the stories of young men and young women - more particularly young men - whose lives have been ruined by this worry, and who have been set free and come to enjoy health and happiness the moment they came to realize that they had been mistaught.
It is indeed a great relief to reach the place where we can make an end of this unfortunate conflict between the sex urge and the religious urge; but the problem is never solved until the individual himself reaches the place where he becomes master of the fine art of compromise - that art of psychic adjustment which enables him to live at peace with both his sex nature and his religious nature. It is entirely possible to bring about such a state of mind without injury to the health and without doing violence to our legitimate moral standards or true spiritual ideals.
I remember the case of an unmarried woman, a college graduate, about thirty-five years of age, whose mother had spent almost her last dollar on doctors, nerve specialists, and sanatoriums for her. She was the victim of subconscious sex repression, but she had no idea that her trouble was due to a lifelong shunning of everything that seemed to pertain to sex. Her mother had so successfully taught her about the dangers of sex and of evil men, and had so sheltered her younger years through watchful care and a convent education, that this woman little realized the nature and cause of her trouble; and she was inexpressibly shocked when, after a prolonged study, her medical adviser finally dared to suggest that her trouble was prolonged emotional suppression, and that the suppressed complexes were largely of a sex nature. But she was intelligent - a college graduate - and although it required two or three months for her to accept this diagnosis, finally she did face her problem from that viewpoint. It took a year or two to readjust her mental status and to harmonize her conflicting emotions, but in time she arrived at the place where she made a successful compromise between these contending complexes, and from that time on, physically and nervously, she began to improve. Within another year she had achieved complete victory over her troubles and was able to emerge from years of semi-invalidism into a life of usefulness as principal of a school.
I cite this case because it is not generally known that women suffer from these subconscious sex conflicts to the extent they do - a blind spot in popular science due to the fact that the sex nature in the female is not so well able to express itself in consciousness as in the case of the male. When the male is undergoing a sex conflict he is usually more or less aware of the nature of his difficulty, but in the case of women, serious disorder may rage in the subconscious and the individual be altogether innocent of the real nature of the psychic conflict.
One more case to illustrate how subtle may be our sex conflicts, and how little the real nature of this subconscious warfare may be suspected: A devoted mother had an only child, a son. This boy was rather an extraordinary chap in that he never gave his parents much trouble; he was a dutiful lad, of high ideals. While the mother found it very difficult to consent to his going off to college, she finally did. He was home at every opportunity to visit his parents, and two or three times during the year the mother would go East to visit her son in college. They spent their summers together, and all went well until he was about twenty-four years old, when he announced to his mother that he was going to get married. That was five years ago. This devoted mother was immediately seized with a feeling of nausea. She lost her appetite, began to lose in flesh, and in spite of all that medical science could do, was soon bed-fast, having lost forty pounds in weight. Repeated examination by many physicians failed to disclose anything organically wrong with her.
The son postponed his marriage for a year. The mother improved slightly, but as the wedding-day neared she relapsed. She was feeling so poorly when the day arrived that the church wedding had to be abandoned and the son was married in her bedroom. Apparently she wished him well. She was very fond of the new daughter-in-law, but she was just heart-broken at the loss of her boy. She was unable to face this fact, to reconcile herself to the marriage of her only son; and so things went on for a couple of years after the marriage. The mother was no better. She was a nervous wreck, as physicians repeatedly told her husband. Finally the family physician concluded that this was all a psychic defense reaction to the marriage of her son. He came to see me, and said that he thought the woman was pouting; that she was in the same class with the spoiled child who, when his feelings had been hurt, wanted to run away from home, or go out and eat worms and die, so that his parents would be sorry they had treated him so rudely.
The doctor's diagnosis was right, as the sequel proved. No doubt this mother at first subconsciously realized that her son probably would not leave her and get married if she were sick; he was too good a boy - he thought too much of his mother to do that; and then, when this ruse failed, there was nothing to do but go on with the program in the hope that he might possibly come back. Not that she, of course; consciously wanted him to desert his wife. There was, in the subconscious mind of this woman, still an unreasoning hope that she might win her point and keep her boy; and by the time this method had been pursued three or four years, the habit of being sick had been formed; there was nothing else to do but go on.
It is hard to tell what would have happened had not the husband and the doctor intervened. Now that all this has been dragged into the light of day - tho I assure you she was reluctant to admit it at first - the foundation has been laid for a complete recovery. It is about six months now since this mother faced the facts, abandoned her bedridden life, and enlisted in the battle against subconscious domination. She is now well on the way to victory, and is liberating herself from the nefarious tricks which her own mind had been playing upon her these many years. She finds increased health and happiness in the idea that, instead of losing a son, she has gained a daughter; but it has been a battle royal, and has entailed the employment of every intellectual and moral power which this mother possessed to enable her to overcome her subconscious enslavement.
In common with many of the higher animal species, man shares the emotion of wonder which is associated with the instinct of curiosity. Curiosity leads man into adventure and exploration. It is at the bottom of our scientific instinct of inquiry. Out of this emotion of wonder, sooner or later, there comes into the human mind, partly through fear and the realization of one's helplessness in the presence of the ruthless forces of Nature, the deep emotions of awe and reverence; and, ere long, worship of something outside of man himself is sure to follow.
In connection with this group of religious emotions and the group associated with worship, are to be found our sentiments of gratitude and humility - humility in the presence of that which is superior and awe-inspiring, and gratitude for those things which we enjoy and which contribute to the comfort of living. Such emotions also imply that we suffer from self-reproach and remorse under certain circumstances, as when conscience tells us we have not attained our standards of right and wrong; and all these feelings and sentiments lead to the super-emotion or conviction of altruism. Our whole charitable, humanitarian, and philanthropic structure is built upon the emotions belonging to this group.
And it is with the emotions of this group that the sex instincts are prone to quarrel. It is the warfare between these two sets of complexes that produces really serious nervous troubles, and yet the suppression of the worship urge alone is sometimes sufficient to bring about real nervous difficulty.
I have a man under my care at the present time who is in a precarious condition, fussing over his religious beliefs, and all but going insane as the result of religious worry. For three and one-half years he has worried about having left one church and joined another. Mind you, in the same denomination. One church expected too much of him - he shrank from participating personally in too many religious activities - and so he left it and joined the other church. Now he thinks he has committed a grave sin, and feels he should go back and join the former church; but, of course, in his present mental state, if I should allow him to do this, he would only worry more. He can't make a decision now that would be satisfactory forty eight hours after it was made.
I have had to put him to bed under the care of a nurse and let him rest and see if he can get his thinking under control. I will allow no conversation of a religious nature for awhile. It will probably take six months or a year to get this man straightened out, and have him recognize that religion is only a part of life down here; that we have other duties. I will have to show him that a man has a duty to provide for his family; that he must get interested in his wife and four children. I quoted Scripture to him - that "a man who does not provide for his family is worse than an infidel". He must think about his duty to his brothers, his partners in business, who now, the two of them, have the whole responsibility of the concern on their hands while he is taking the rest cure.
Then here is the case of a minister, fifty-one years of age. How many times he has helped distracted souls to see that they had not committed the unpardonable sin! And now, as the result of over-anxiety for his flock, over-conscientiousness in his parish duties, this man has experienced a collapse. He is in the throes of nervous prostration, and his one great worry is that he has committed the unpardonable sin.
I am having to use on him all the arguments and reasons that he probably used on those he labored with in years gone by, and I am having the same trouble to get him to see these things in his present state of nervous exhaustion; but he admitted a few days ago that it was probably true that one who had committed the unpardonable sin, whatever it was, would be the last to worry about having committed it. So, for the time being, he has accepted the idea that he has not committed such an offense, and thus some of the terrible anxiety is being lifted from his mind and he is giving old Mother Nature at least a partial chance to heal his distressed soul.
How many times we are confronted with these over-conscientious individuals who have had a passing thought to commit some crime or to indulge in some moral dereliction, and who then commence worrying! It is not enough that they resisted temptation and came out victors; they feel as if the thought must have been equivalent to the deed. They begin to pray for forgiveness and worry over having been morally, if not actually, guilty of the crime; it only takes a few weeks of this to bring them to a terrible state; they are sick in bed, in the doctor's hands.
I can cast about among my patients and friends and pick out a score of such individuals. Splendid, noble minds, and the highest type of Christian souls, but they are all the time harassed because of these suggestions of evil which pass through the mind. Perhaps the thoughts are engendered by something in the morning paper, by neighborhood gossip, or by some spontaneous association of ideas that comes up suddenly in their minds. Whatever the source of these so-called wicked thoughts, they accept full personal and moral responsibility for the presence of them in the mind and begin to blame themselves for a weakness of which they are wholly innocent.
Then I am constantly meeting people who are worrying over something in their religion, something that has to do with the interpretation of the Scriptures. It seems to me that we should all remember in reading the Bible that it was revealed and indited through, and written by, the Oriental mind. Our religious guide-book has come to us, as it were, through another race. Those of the Occidental mind do not think in the same manner as did the men and women of the races who gave expression to the ideas we find in the Bible, with their symbolic, allegorical, and other mystic illustrations. We sometimes have serious trouble when we place too literal a construction upon these sacred writings.
I could cite dozens of cases of ill health and unhappiness all brought about by worrying over some little point in the Scriptures which to me seemed to be highly symbolic and subject to numerous possible interpretations; yet these over-conscientious souls seize upon some set and formal interpretation, and then all but ruin their lives trying to make everything conform to this arbitrary notion.
Conscience is quick to seize upon religious traditions and observances and demand implicit homage on the part of the mind. It is not strange that this domain of religion should prove to be the one in which conscience does its most strenuous work when it comes to producing worry and those over-anxious states of mind which are so fatal to health and happiness.
Inordinate ambition, the grasp for power, the desire to rule other people, the craving to enjoy the emotion of elation - that supreme sort of self-satisfaction which is associated with the primitive instinct of self-assertion - results in the building up of a group of complexes which are certain mischief-makers in the human mind. No doubt the urge of ambition is in many cases tied up with our food urge - with the basic biologic urges having to do with self-preservation; nevertheless, this group of emotions results in the building up of the power complex and is thus able to carry on trouble-making conflicts with other emotional groups which go to make up one's psychic life.
It is in this domain that we encounter the hoarding urge - the saving and accumulating emotions associated with the acquisition instinct. Here is where all our avarice or covetousness has its roots - the love of material things and the desire to accumulate property. The miser represents this group of emotions in the saddle; all others, aside from the hunger urge, have been put to flight.
As the bird builds its nest, the beaver its dam, and the bee its honeycomb, so human beings have inherited an instinct of construction, the urge to make things, and there is a certain peculiar and justifiable sort of pride which is attached to our ability to work up the raw material of nature into the finished creations and the exquisite productions of manufacture. But the purpose of all of this in modern civilization seems to be to amass wealth, to get power, to gain the advantage over our fellow men; and it is this power-urge which so frequently comes in conflict with our complex of idealism and our religious urges.
But there are many things to be desired about the controlled exercise of the power urge; it involves not merely pride of personality and the exaltation of ego, but the generation of courage, which is associated with the instinct of rivalry. Courage is productive of good in many ways. We look upon courage as an altogether desirable emotion, but it has its root in this feeling of rivalry, in this desire to win the game, to secure the advantage, and to come in possession of the power associated with material triumphs.
Perhaps from the viewpoint of health and happiness, the most remarkable features of this whole power urge are the emotions of hate and revenge, which are so often associated with our status of temporary defeat, or our failure to secure the desired advantage over our fellows. And this goes on to where it indulges itself in scorn or even contempt, all of which is thoroughly unwholesome from the viewpoint of one's psychic peace and health.
As an illustration of how this power urge can make us trouble, let me relate a recent experience with a patient, a middle-aged man, who for ten or twelve years had been carrying on a protracted psychic conflict:
This man was employed by a large corporation, and while not perfectly fitted, temperamentally, to fill the position which he so earnestly coveted, nevertheless, he felt he was in line for promotion. To his amazement, one morning, he found that the man he feared as his rival had really been advanced to the position he had hoped himself to fill. Instead of being a good sport, a good loser, and congratulating his colleague on his promotion, he became increasingly morose and sour. He nursed his grievance and carried on such a continuous conflict in his mind over this disappointment that he became very disagreeable in his home. He grew increasingly taciturn and uncommunicative. This sort of thing went on for almost two years, and then his wife and father unitedly took charge of affairs and decided that something must be done. He was led to seek medical advice, and the source of his trouble came out in the course of a thoroughgoing emotional analysis.
Without being conscious of the fact, this man was gradually wearing himself down so that he would not have to go to the office to work. He admitted he looked forward to the time when he wouldn't be able to go to work in that office any more. He really wanted to get sick. He thought of deliberately getting in the way of an automobile so that he might have an accident and thus be able to get out of going down to the office where he had to see his hated rival.
This man had too much pride to resign - to quit and acknowledge defeat. He didn't know of any similar position that he might obtain, and so he resigned himself to the fate of grieving and worrying over the matter until he would be put out of commission, and then, by medical orders, he would be given a furlough, and thus would be afforded at least temporary deliverance from the situation which so galled him. And now that the whole story has been dragged out into the open, now that he has come, at least partly, to recognize the technique of his gradual loss of health and happiness, he has expressed a willingness to start in earnestly at the task of reconstructing his morale, changing his viewpoint, and reeducating his mind to accept the facts as they are. But this is going to be a long pull; it will take this man the best part of a year to finish the job he has so determinedly set out to accomplish. Determination, stamina, persistence, however, will win the fight.
Not long ago I was consulted by a business woman forty-five years old, who complained of indigestion and insomnia. She had struggled up from a position as stenographer in a manufacturing concern to that of secretary of the company, and through business connections had become very wealthy, largely because of fortunate real estate investments. Early in her career she became, as it were, money-mad. She worshiped power. To frequent proposals of marriage she turned a deaf ear. While it later developed that she had considerable of the maternal instinct and a great love of children, she was content to satisfy this affection upon a constantly increasing group of nieces and nephews.
As fortune continued to smile upon her and money accumulated rapidly, she became active in the speculative world. She determined to be a millionaire, and in this ambition she was successful. How she enjoyed doling out stipends to her poor relatives! I think there was only one fly in the ointment, and that was that her mother did not live to see her in possession of this money and power. She had a home in the city and another in the country - horses, automobiles, servants galore - but at about the time when one should be capable of the greatest enjoyment of life, she began to sicken and sorrow. She suffered from headaches - or, rather, distressful feelings in the head, hardly severe enough to be called pain - indigestion and restlessness; and then began the long story of consulting specialists and going to sanatoriums. This went on until she was on the threshold of melancholia. For more than a year she tried to carry on with her work, but her business associates advised her to take a leave of absence.
Emotional analysis revealed that the power urge - the group of ego emotions - had come to monopolize the psychic life of this woman. Everything aside from the food urge and the desire for a few of the comforts of life had been slowly but certainly subdued and driven out of her mind. Even those all-powerful emotional groups which we call sex and religion had been all but vanquished. Her social instincts were blunted and stunted. The mind of this woman had become one great domain for the indulgence of the hunger and thirst for power. Wealth, because of its potential power, was her whole object and aim in life. The conflict between the power urge and the other urges had been waged to the defeat of every emotion and to the subjugation of every sentiment that did not have to do with the augmentation of her power to do as she pleased and power to wield over other people. It came out in the emotional analysis that she had even dreamed of securing control of the corporation of which she was an officer, but since it entailed disloyalty to her business associates she balked at that; and, as far as I can see, this is the only thing that ever stopped her; she would not betray her official trust.
I don't know that I have ever seen a human being undergo more excruciating suffering than this woman went through in an effort to regain health, in an effort to reinstate her religious, sex, and social emotions. Certainly no one trying to overcome the drug habit ever suffered more than she did in carrying out the regime we imposed upon her. At first, she was disinclined to believe that it was an emotional matter - that her power urge had enslaved her soul and vanquished all the higher sentiments and emotions of her psychic life; but finally she accepted the diagnosis and began the battle for her rehabilitation. The struggle was long and severe. Persistently for eighteen months the program of reeducation and reorientation proceeded, and this woman eventually gained the victory, tho to-day there is something missing; she has a home without children of her own; in a world full of people there is no one with whom she can enjoy that intimate comradeship which is found in the normal family life; but she did win the fight with her dominant and slave-driving urge to power.
A similar case in my experience is that of a woman who had risen to a position of trust and honor in the commercial world, and whose nervous system broke down under the stress and strain, because she was trying to subsist alone upon the enjoyment of things material. But when brought face to face with the program she must follow in order to get well, she frankly and flatly said, "No, I won't do it". And as far as I know she is going on, up and down, hysterical now and then, melancholic most of the time, trying to fight it out. Being blessed with a strong physical constitution, she is able to take the punishment and continue the losing struggle. What a pity that a splendid woman should sell herself into lifelong slavery to this master slave-driver, the power urge!
Here we run into another domain where we have trouble between our sex urges and religious convictions. Sometimes we find patients suffering from a triangle of this sort - confusion between sex urge, religious conviction, and social inhibitions. You see, there is an emotion of security which is bound up with this gregarious or herd instinct of the human species. We feel just a little more secure when we are in company with those of our kind; and, of course, this entails the emotion of subjugation, the instinct of self-abasement which we feel in the presence of our superiors or in that of superior numbers of our own group.
Human beings are imitative; the child is the most imitative of all animals; this is why we get along when organized in social groups. We instinctively tend to conform more or less to custom and to follow in the wake of the established social conventions.
This social instinct leads through that most exquisite of all human relations - friendship - to loyalty to our social, industrial, and professional groups, and on to that super-urge, patriotism. Through the social instinct is developed sympathy, and sympathy runs through all the emotions belonging to this so-called social urge. Both play and humor are bound up in this group of social instincts.
Some time ago a woman of more than average culture and breadth of mind, about sixty years of age, was led by members of her family to seek medical advice because of the fact that she had come more and more, over a period of twelve or fifteen years, to withdraw from all social contacts. She ceased to attend family dinners, no longer paid visits or received visitors, and eventually even stopped associating with her near relatives. Day after day she spent reading books - all sorts of books, but mostly novels. Gradually she came to the place where she did not want to leave her own room, and didn't even want to get out of bed - she had her meals served in bed, and just read, and read, and read.
We found, in studying this woman's emotions, that she had always had this conflict in the domain of the social urge. People bothered her, social engagements fatigued her. Maternal instinct was able to assert itself until the children were raised, and then she surrendered to the life-urge instincts for food, comfort, and personal pleasure. She had an income from an estate which took care of her physical wants and made her independent. The power urge was therefore dormant. The sex urge was latent - more or less of the past. The worship urge influenced her for a while, but eventually she gave up reading the Bible and other religious literature because it stimulated her conscience, and she rationalized that she had done enough of that in her earlier years. And so even the religious instinct finally succumbed. She sold herself into complete enslavement to ennui, to indifference, and settled back to do what she most wanted to do - entertain her mind by the continuous performance of those actors and characters who go to make up the world of fiction.
This woman is now in the midst of the painful and laborious process of coming back into the world. In every way possible we are trying to awaken her social consciousness. Step by step, day by day, she is coming back; but it is a long, up-hill road. The grade is steep, and the self-discipline is severe. Far better to maintain a harmonious psychic life, to avoid these conflicts which sooner or later must wear one out or lead to the surrender of a part of our mental life. Far better to live so as to enjoy the lasting pleasure of disciplined thinking and controlled emotions, which are a part of the broad-minded and fearless reaction to all the obligations of human society.