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HANDICAPS OF
CHILDHOOD

By
H. ADDINGTON BRUCE

Author of ‘‘ Psychology and Parenthood,’’ ‘‘ The
Riddle of Personality,’’ etc.

 

NEW YORK

DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY
1917

Na
A. S48e24

Coprrieut, 1917, BY
DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY, INC.
TO MY FATHER
JOHN BRUCE
IN LOVING REMEMBRANCE OF BOYHOOD
JOYS AND ADVANTAGES
PREFACE

Ir is my hope that this book will be read as a com-
panion-volume to “ Psychology and Parenthood,”
it being designed to amplify and supplement that
earlier work. Its general aim, accordingly, is to
present additional evidence in support of the central
doctrine of “Psychology and Parenthood,”—
namely, that, in view of the discoveries of modern
psychology with regard to individual development,
the mental and moral training of children by their
parents ought to be begun earlier, and be carried on
more intensively, than is the rule at present. But
whereas in “ Psychology and Parenthood ” the em-
phasis was chiefly on the importance of early mental
training, the chief concern of the present book is
to demonstrate the importance of early training in
the moral sphere. .

- tv]
PREFACE

Everybody, of course, is more or less aware that
lifelong character defects may result from parental
neglect to develop in children such qualities as unsel-
fishness, self-confidence, and self-control. But few
really appreciate that, by this neglect, children are
burdened with handicaps which, persisting into adult
life, may imperil not alone the winning of success
and happiness, but health itself. And, among par-
ents, comparatively few are sufficiently alert to the
danger signals giving warning that such handicaps
of perhaps catastrophic significance are being need-
lessly imposed on their children. Eccentricities of
behaviour in children—such as jealousy and sulki-
ness—are too often ignored as being of no particular
account, or are sadly misinterpreted by parents,
with perhaps dire consequences to the children’s
whole careers.

These eccentricities and their possible conse-
quences, these danger signals and handicaps, form
in the main the subject-matter of the pages that
follow. Desiring the book to be helpful to as many

[vi]
PREFACE

people as possible, I have been careful to avoid writ-
ing in any technical scientific way, and have tried to
be simple and concrete. For this reason many illus-
trative cases from real life are given, my belief being
that I could thus present most convincingly the truly
remarkable facts with which the successive chapters
have to deal. The result, I sincerely trust, will be
to contribute in some degree to save children from
the handicaps in question, and to assist adults now
afflicted with any of these handicaps to overcome
them.

In large part, this book has already appeared in
the columns of several magazines. To the editors
of these magazines—The Century Magazine, Good
Housekeeping Magazine, McClure’s Magazine, Har-
pers Bazar, Every Week, and The Mother's Maga-
zine—I owe grateful acknowledgment for the oppor-
tunity to acquaint their readers with the discoveries
and theories herein set forth. I am also under a
debt of gratitude to numerous psychological and
medical friends for advice and information. And,

[ vii]
PREFACE

as in the case of all my previous books, I am particu-
larly indebted to my wife for inspiration, encourage-
ment, and innumerable helpful suggestions.

H. Appincron Bruce.

Cambridge, Massachusetts,
July, 1917.

[ viii ]
VII
VIII
Ix

CONTENTS

PREFACE .. .

Menta BackwakDNEss

Tue Onty CuiLp

Tue Carty WuHo Surxs
JEALOUSY

SELFISHNESS .

BasHFuLNEss AND INDECISION

STAMMERING .

Farmy Tares Toat Hanpicar .

“Nicut Terrors ”

In Conciusion

InpEx

PaGE

37

63

99
131
165
207
243
271
303
307
MENTAL BACKWARDNESS
I
MENTAL BACKWARDNESS

NCE upon a time, not many years ago, a
distinguished French psychologist paid
a visit to a Parisian public school. It
was accounted an excellent school, and its principal
beamed with pardonable pride when the visiting
psychologist, Doctor Alfred Binet, explained that he
would like to see the pupils at work. Forthwith his
desire was granted, and for a time he attentively fol-
lowed the exercises of a class of forty children. He
said little by way of comment, until, toward the close
of the lesson-hour, he abruptly inquired:
“ Which of these pupils do you consider the most
intelligent? ”
“That boy yonder,” the master answered, nod-

[3]
HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

ding toward a pleasant-faced youngster who was
diligently reading his book.

“ And, pray, how old is he? ”

* He is twelve.”

“That, I suppose, is the average age for the
class? ”

“Well, no. I should say that they are on the
average ten years old.”

“What, then, is this twelve-year-old boy doing
among them? If he is so bright, why is he lingering
among these little ones? My dear sir,” the psychol-
ogist continued, while the principal stood in abashed
silence, “ would it not be nearer the mark to call him
a backward instead of a bright child? And would it
not be well to search for the cause of his backward-
ness and try to remedy it? Assuredly, this boy
should constitute for you a delicate problem that
insistently demands solution.”

This, I say, happened not many years ago. For
that matter, incidents quite like it occasionally hap-
pen even to-day, testifying to the inability of some

[4]
MENTAL BACKWARDNESS

teachers to appreciate the presence, let alone the
significance, of the laggard in the schoolroom. But
in the brief period that has elapsed since Alfred
Binet began his epoch-making investigations in the
schools of Paris, there has undoubtedly been a genu-
ine and widespread awakening in respect to the
tremendously important problem raised by the back-
ward child. Especially is this true of our own land.
Nowhere else, perhaps, have more diligent efforts
been made to ascertain the extent and causes of
backwardness among the school-going population,
and nowhere else is greater activity being displayed
in the beneficent task of transforming the backward
child, as far as possible, into the normal one.
Certainly, too, it must regretfully be added that
there is abundant reason for this activity. Re-
searches conducted during the past ten years by
American school authorities and by independent in-
vestigators, have revealed an appalling state of
affairs. Doctor Oliver P. Cornman, a district super-
intendent of the Philadelphia schools, making a sta-

[5]
HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

tistical survey of five city school systems, found 21.6
per cent. of Boston school children a year or more
behind the normal grade for their age; 30 per cent.
behind grade in New York; 37.1 per cent. behind
grade in Philadelphia; 47.5 per cent. behind grade
in Camden, New Jersey; and 49.6 per cent. behind
grade in Kansas City. Doctor Leonard P. Ayres,
acting in behalf of the Russell Sage Foundation,
investigated fifteen New York City public schools,
having twenty thousand pupils, and found a degree
of retardation ranging from 10.9 per cent. to 36.6
per cent. Scrutiny of the school reports of more
than thirty other cities revealed an average retarda-
tion of 33.7 per cent. Taking this as a fair average
, for the whole country, we have a total of between
six and seven million American school children who
are a year and more behind grade.

To be sure, this does not mean that all these chil-
dren are intellectually deficient, for the term “ re-
tarded ” is by no means synonymous with “ dullards.”
Irregular attendance owing to illness or truancy

[6]
MENTAL BACKWARDNESS

accounts for not a little retardation. The education
of a good many children is deliberately postponed
by their parents, and as a result they are necessarily
behind grade for some time after they cnter school.
In the case of many others, especially in cities like
New York and Boston, where there is a large foreign-
born population, ignorance of the English language
is a sufficient cause for temporary retardation.
Thus, I have received a letter from Doctor William
H. Maxwell, superintendent of schools, New York
City, in which he points out that many New York
school children are recently arrived immigrants, com-
ing from a foreign country, considerably above the
age at which school-going usually begins. The per-
sonal inefficiency of teachers is also a factor to be
reckoned with. Many a child becomes a “ repeater ”
simply because he has had a poor teacher.
Nevertheless, when every possible allowance is
made, the results of the investigations by Doctor
Ayres, Superintendent Cornman, and their co-work-
ers sum up to a deplorable showing. It is a show-

[7]
HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

ing, however, with one distinctly redeeming feature.
Readers of my previous book, “Psychology and
Parenthood,” will remember it was there pointed out
that the proportion of juvenile delinquents who are
“born bad,” and for whom no remedial measures
will avail, is exceedingly small. There is reason for
saying precisely the same thing with regard to the
retarded child.

He may be dull, stupid, to all appearance hope-
lessly defective, but the researches of the past decade,
the fruits of the mind-developing experiments that
have gone apace with the discovery of the extent to
which backwardness prevails, leave no doubt that in
most cases the child who is a true dullard may be
brought almost, if not fully, to normal intellectual
activity, provided he is taken in hand at an early
day. In fact, even the most pessimistically inclined
investigators admit that, at an outside estimate, not
more than 2 per cent. of backward children are back-
ward because of incurable defects of the brain.
Many present-day authorities put the figure as low

[8]
MENTAL BACKWARDNESS

as 1 per cent., and my own belief is that even this
is too high a proportion.

Undoubtedly—and especially since the invention
of psychological tests to determine the mental state
of dullards—many children have been erroneously
pronounced feeble-minded when their backwardness
is in reality due to remediable causes. The trouble
is not with the tests so much as with the inexperience
of those who apply them, some of the tests being
seemingly so easy of application that in many in-
stances they have been utilised by teachers and others
having little or no training in clinical psychology.
This is particularly true concerning the application
of the much-talked-about Binet-Simon method of
mental diagnosis, devised by Doctor Alfred Binet and
his colleague in scientific child study, Professor
Simon.

The Binet-Simon method is certainly simple
enough, and, rightly used, is of great value. It was
formulated by putting to hundreds of children, rang-
ing in age from three to thirteen, a series of ques-

[9]
HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

tions and commands of increasing difficulty, noting
the results obtained, and selecting as “ norms” for
each age the questions and commands to which the
majority of the children of that age were able to
respond correctly. Thus it furnishes a convenient
means for determining with considerable accuracy
the degree of mental retardation of any particular
child. Experience has shown, though, that its fixed
standard, by which children are pronounced “ men-
tally defective” if they fall three years behind the
norm for their age, is not always an infallible guide.
When the method is applied by the untrained inves-
tigator the result is sometimes absurd.

_ For instance, in one American city 49.7 per cent.
of six hundred retarded children tested by the Binet-
Simon method were reported as being “ feeble-
minded,” while 80 per cent. of three hundred children
in the special classes of another city school system
were similarly stigmatised. On such a basis we
should have, among the six million retarded children
in our schools, from three to nearly five million who

[10]
MENTAL BACKWARDNESS

are feeble-minded. Even if the Binet-Simon testing
is done by an expert, there is always the danger of
incorrect diagnosis, with resultant serious injustice
to the child tested, unless the indications drawn from
the testing are verified by careful clinical and lab-
oratory investigation. A few cases from the experi-
ence of a well-known clinical psychologist, Doctor
J. E. Wallace Wallin, director of the Psycho-Educa-
tional Clinic, Board of Education, St. Louis, may
well be cited to illustrate and emphasise this im-
portant truth.

There was once brought to Doctor Wallin a pupil
in a private school, an attractive girl of seventeen,
who was studying—or, rather, attempting to study—
Latin, history, algebra, and English. Her teacher
complained that she could remember little or nothing
of what was taught her, that her attention flagged
easily, and that in other ways she did not seem to
be of normal mentality. And, in fact, tested by the
Binet-Simon method she graded only eleven and a
half years old.

[11]
HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

Had the psychological inquiry into her condition
stopped there, she would have been declared a fit
subject for institutional care, according to the Binet-
Simon rating. But Doctor Wallin insisted on addi-
tional and different testings, and presently made the
significant discovery that her trouble lay, not in any
structural brain defect, but in a functional weak-
ness of the nervous system that caused her to become
fatigued at slight mental exertion. She was, in short,
a “psychasthenic,” and needed only proper treat-
ment by a skilled neurologist to be put into condi-
tion to profit from her lessons as her schoolmates did.

So, too, with a man of twenty-eight, who, tested
by the Binet-Simon system, displayed the mentality
of a boy of twelve. Had he been in the hands of an
investigator who knew no more of the technic of
psychological examination than the Binet-Simon
scale, he would unhesitatingly been classified as
feeble-minded. But, as Doctor Wallin said, in dis-
cussing the case:

“He did not impress me at all as being feeble-

[12]
MENTAL BACKWARDNESS

minded. His appearance, speech, and conduct sug-
gested the polished and cultivated gentleman. I put
him through approximately thirty sets of mental
tests [other than twenty-five individual Binet tests ]
and thirty moral tests. These tests demonstrated
that there was a considerable difference in the
strength of his different mental traits. Some
traits were on the twelve-year plane, some on the
fifteen-year, and some on the adult plane. In
some mental tests he did as well as college men.
He passed correctly practically all of the moral
tests.

“ His was indeed a case showing more or less defi-
ciency in respect to various mental traits. But, con-
trary to the Binet rating, the man was not feeble-
minded. It eventually developed that a sexual
complex was at the root of his trouble.”

Again, with the express purpose of determining
the reliability or unreliability of the Binet-Simon
tests as sufficient indicators of the mental status,
Doctor Wallin applied these tests to several success-

[13]
HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

ful farmers and business men. ‘The results were
surprising and amusing. He tells us:

“The 1908 scale was administered according to
my own Guide,” and the 1911 according to Goddard’s
version, which is usually used in this country for
diagnosing feeble-mindedness. The subjects were
generously rated in the tests; ie., full credit was
given for some responses that did not quite meet
the technical passing requirements. Measured by
the standards of one of the best rural communities
of the country, socially and industrially considered,
and by my own intimate knowledge of the subjects
tested during the greater part of my life, not a
single one of these persons could by any stretch of
the imagination be considered feeble-minded. Not a
single one has any record of delinquency, or crime,
petty or major, or indulges in alcoholic beverages.
All are law-abiding citizens, eminently successful in
their several occupations, all except one (who is

unmarried) being parents of intelligent, respectable

1 As given in J. E. Wallace Wallin’s “ Experimental Studies
of Mental Defectives,” 1912, p. 116 et seq.

[14]
MENTAL BACKWARDNESS

children. The heredity is entirely negative, except
for a few cases of minor nervous troubles and alco-
holic addiction. No relative in the first or second
generation, so far as it was possible to get the facts
by inquiry, was ever committed to a penal institu-
tion or an institution for the mentally defective or
disordered.”

Yet, given the Binet-Simon tests, every member
of this group, if judged by the tests alone, would
have to be rated as feeble-minded. Here is Doctor
Wallin’s account of one of these most illuminating
cases :

“Mr. A., sixty-five years old, faculties well pre-
served, attended school only about three years in
the aggregate; a successful farmer and later a suc-
cessful business man, now partly retired on a compe-
tency of $30,000 (after considerable financial re-
verses from a fire); for ten years president of the
board of education in a town of seven hundred;
superintendent or assistant superintendent of a Sun-
day school for about thirty years; bank director;

[15]
HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

raised and educated a family of nine children, all
normal; one engaged in scientific research (Ph.D.),
one assistant professor in a state agricultural school, “
one assistant professor in a medical school (now
completing thesis for Sc.D.), one a former music
teacher and organist, a graduate of a musical con-
servatory, now an invalid; one a graduate of the nor-
mal department of a college, one a graduate nurse,
two engaged in a large retail business, one holds a
clerical position, all high-school graduates, and all,
except one, one-time students in colleges and uni-
versities.

“ Failed on all the new 1911 tests except six digits
and suggestion lines (almost passed the central-
thought test). In the 1908 scale, passed all the
ten-year tests and some higher tests. Binet-Simon
age, 1908, 10.8; retardation, fifty-four years; intel-
ligence quotient, .17. According to the 1912 scale,
10.6 years.”

Doctor Wallin fittingly comments:

“ This man, measured by the automatic standards

[ 16 ]
MENTAL BACKWARDNESS

now in common use, would be hopelessly feeble-
minded (an imbecile by the intelligence quotient) and
should have been committed to an institution for the
feeble-minded long ago. But is there any one who
has the temerity, in spite of the Binet ‘ proof,’ to
maintain, in view of this man’s personal, social, and
commercial record, and the record of his family, that
he has been a social and mental misfit and an unde-
sirable citizen, and should, therefore, have been re-
strained from propagation because of mental defi-
ciency (his wife is still less intelligent). No doubt,
if a Binet tester had diagnosed this man forty or
fifty years ago, he would have had him colonised as
a ‘mental defective.’ r Tt is a safe guess that there
are hundreds of thousands like him throughout the
country, no more intelligent and equally successful
and prudent in the management of their affairs.
Had he been a criminal when he was tested, the Binet
testers who implicitly follow these standards would
have offered ‘ expert testimony ’ under oath that he
was feeble-minded and unable to distinguish between

[17]
HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

right and wrong, or unable to choose the right and
avoid the wrong.”

Truly, feeble-mindedness in an adult or child is
not safely to be determined by relying merely on the
results of a set of stereotyped mental tests. On the
other hand, in deciding as to a child’s actual mental
state it is far more misleading to depend on unaided
observation as a guide. Yet, since the beginning of
scientific investigation into the causes of backward-
ness, cases have continually been coming to light in
which teachers and even parents have mistakenly
identified curable dullness with incurable feeble-mind-
edness, and have abandoned all effort at intellectual
development. Sometimes, consequently, a condition
closely resembling outright idiocy results from sheer
neglect, as in one particularly striking case, for
knowledge of which I am indebted to Doctor Arthur
Holmes of Pennsylvania State College, well known
for his work in clinical psychology.

In this case the daughter of a well-to-do profes-
sional man failed to show normal growth in infancy

[18 ]
MENTAL BACKWARDNESS

and was supposed by her sorrowing father to be
weak-minded. Left to her own devices, on the theory
that it would be useless to try to mend the work of
Providence, she remained until the age of eight in a
state of seeming imbecility. She could not read or
write, could not speak more than three words, and
spent most of her time gibbering in a corner. Then,
as good fortune would have it, she came under the
observation of an expert investigator of mental con-
ditions and was subjected for a year to careful train-
ing. At the end of that time she “could speak in
simple sentences, answer ordinary questions intelli-
gently, read in a primer, write a few words, and
conduct herself in the manner of a little lady.”

In other words, she had been taken in hand in
time to save her from a life of incompetency, misery,
and mental darkness. Is it not reasonable to infer, in
the light of this and similar cases on record, that our
institutions for the feeble-minded would be far less
crowded than they are to-day had regenerative meas-
ures been likewise applied to their inmates in early

[19 ]
HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

childhood? Indeed, with Professor Lightner Witmer,
dean of American clinical psychologists, I am pre-
pared to affirm:

“I believe that a child may be feeble-minded in
one environment—for example, in his own home—and
may cease to exhibit feeble-mindedness when placed
in a different environment. I also agree with those
modern students of insanity who assert that the de-
velopment of some forms of insanity may be averted
by a proper course of discipline and training. Anal-
ogously, I contend that because a child of sixteen or
twenty presents a hopeless case of feeble-mindedness,
this is no evidence that proper treatment instituted
at an earlier age might not have determined an en-
tirely different course of development.”

Also, as in the case of the criminal alleged to have
been “born bad,” mental backwardness has again
and again been found to depend on comparatively
slight physical defects—defects of eye, ear, mouth,
nose, throat, teeth—the correction of which often
results in a spontaneous and remarkable intellectual

[ 20 ]
MENTAL BACKWARDNESS

awakening.. Or the dullness mistaken for feeble-
mindedness may be due to a generally weakened
physical condition, the result of unhygienic home sur-
roundings, lack of outdoor exercise, poor food, and
_so forth. Here is a case in point, reported by Pro-
fessor Witmer. It is the case of a little Philadelphia
girl, Fannie, the eight-year-old daughter of Russian-
Jewish parents, whose two-room home is thus de-
scribed by Professor Witmer:
“ The living-room had one window, and contained
a table, a few chairs, a stove, a lounge, dirty clothes
piled in one corner, a barking cur, and many flies.
The table was covered with a piece of black oilcloth,
and on this were usually to be found pieces of brown
bread and glasses of tea. No meals were prepared
and the family never sat down to table. Their diet
consisted chiefly of bread, tea, and sometimes fish.
The bread was always on the table for the flies to
crawl over and the children to eat when their hunger

drove them to it.

+¥For some illustrative cases see “ Psychology and Parent-
hood,” especially pp. 174-178.

[21]
HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

“The front of the house looked out on a board
fence which divided a double alley. In the rear was
a small back yard. One hydrant at the entrance
sufficed for the different families. There was under-
ground drainage, but an offensive odour came from
the closets. This was the soil in which Fannie had
struggled to grow for eight years. When the school
nurse visited the house, Fannie sat crouched in
a corner, her eyes sullen and dead, her mouth
hanging open, her skin showing the poorly nour-
ished condition. Her eyes were crossed, her teeth
irregular, the whole face devoid of life or in-
terest.

“ Fannie had been two years in the first grade of
a Philadelphia school, and had made in that time so
little progress that there was no possibility of pro-
moting her to the next grade at the end of that
school year. During the first year her attendance
had been somewhat irregular, but despite the regular
attendance of the second year she had profited little,
and had come to be overlooked because she was

[ 22 ]
.

MENTAL BACKWARDNESS

thought to be too feeble-minded to progress in a
school for normal children.”

Taken to the psychological clinic, she was given
a thorough physical and mental examination. She
was found to he afflicted both with adenoid growths
and enlarged tonsils, and was sent to a hospital to
be operated on for these. Later she was entered in
the hospital school connected with Professor Wit-
mer’s clinic at the University of Pennsylvania. Here
she remained a year, part of that time attending
also one of the city’s public schools. Both mentally
and morally she made satisfactory progress. Her
sullenness rapidly disappeared under sympathetic
handling. Though “ at first she did not seem to un-
derstand affection,” by the end of six weeks “ she
was the most demonstratively affectionate child in
the school.” Professor Witmer adds:

* During the first summer she appeared extremely
sluggish. She showed very little tendency to play,
and preferred to sit more or less motionless. As
good food, better air, sunlight, and kindly treatment

[ 23 ]
HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

began to take effect, she burst forth with such exces-
sive vitality, such exuberant spirits, that once when
I had her before the psychological clinic one of the
teachers asked if the lively movements were not the
result of St. Vitus’s Dance. This first outburst of
vitality gradually subsided, leaving her a normally
active child.”

Undeniably, of course, even though a vicious
household environment was chiefly responsible for
this girl’s backwardness, the adenoids and enlarged

_tonsils were also responsible for it in some degree.
Parents cannot too keenly appreciate the hurtful
effect bodily defects like these may have on mental
development. Doctor Ayres, who has made an ex-
haustive study of this factor in retardation, esti-
mates that it alone accounts for about 9 per cent.
of the laggards in our schools, and clinical psycholo-
gists are disposed to put the percentage still higher.
On the other hand, their experience with retarded
children has led them to the important conclusion
that, helpful as spectacles, the ear syringe, and the

[ 24 ]
MENTAL BACKWARDNESS

surgeon’s knife may be, “ after-treatment” in the
form of careful individual training usually is indis-
pensable, if only for the reason that while handi-
capped by the bodily defect the child may have ac-
quired faulty mental habits which need to be cor-
rected before education by ordinary schoolroom
methods can count for much.

This means, manifestly, that many agencies must
co-operate in the regeneration of the curable dullard.
How many are sometimes involved may perhaps be
sufficiently indicated by detailing another case from
Professor Witmer’s extensive experience, the case of
an eleven-year-old boy who was brought to the Uni-
versity of Pennsylvania’s psychological clinic with
a history of five wasted years in school.

Any suspicion that this boy might belong to the
ranks of the truly feeble-minded was dissipated by
the results of the exhaustive mental testing through
which Profdéssor Witmer put him. This showed not
only that he was naturally intelligent, but also that
he was of an dffectionate, generous, and thoughtful

[25 ]
HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

disposition. When, however, a physical examination
was made, ample reason for his dullness was discov-
ered, for it was found that he was suffering from
adenoids, enlarged tonsils, weakness of vision, and
dental trouble, his teeth being decayed and unclean,
with tartar pushing back the gums, which were in-
flamed and swollen. In addition, he was stoop-shoul-
dered, had an irregular heart action, and showed
signs of being poorly nourished.

“Before anything can be done to improve your
boy’s mental state,” it was explained to his mother,
“his physical condition will have to be improved.
He should be put under treatment without delay.”

Then began a distressful period for the hapless
youngster. First of all, a throat specialist operated
on him for the removal of the adenoids and the hyper-
trophied tonsils. After this he was sent to the eye
clinic, where he was fitted with glasses. Next, he
was taken to the dental clinic, where his teeth were
cleaned and filled. All the while a trained social
worker kept in touch with his parents to make sure

[ 26 ]
MENTAL BACKWARDNESS

that he would receive the hygienic care which had
hitherto been wanting. In the meantime, he was
allowed to return to school, from which, after the
beginning of the summer vacation, he was transferred
to a special school for backward boys. Here he
remained most of the summer, being given individual
attention with regard to his mental and physical
needs.

It was noticed at first he was inclined to be quick-
tempered and disorderly; but under the tactful
handling he received he soon settled down. From
being puny and delicate, he became an active, vigour-
ous boy, excelling in the swimming-pool and the gym-
nasium. At his books he also made such progress
that, on returning to regular school in the autumn,
he was promoted through two grades in less than six
months, being then only one grade behind normal
and giving every promise of catching up with the
boys of his own age in another six months.

Altogether, the services of half a dozen specialists
in psychology, medicine, and education, and the ex-

[27 ]
HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

penditure of much time, effort, and money had been
required to get this boy straightened out. Nor is
his by any means an uncommon case. Moreover, like
the case of the gibbering girl of eight, it illustrates
another point in connection with the problem of re-
tardation which should indeed be emphasised—the
part played by parental ignorance and thoughtless-
ness in swelling the army of the retarded.

Had the parents of this boy appreciated the close
relationship between bodily health and the health of
the mind, had they taken alarm at the first signs of
malnutrition and sought the advice of a competent
physician, instituting developmental measures in ac-
cordance with his counsel, their son might not have
become an educational “lame duck,” and all the
tedious and costly restorative work of later years
would then have been avoided. To be sure, it must
immediately be added that maintenance of his physi-
cal health would not of itself have unfailingly oper-
ated as a guarantee against retardation.

For, quite conceivably, he might have been sur-

[28]
MENTAL BACKWARDNESS

rounded by an intellectually deadening home environ-
ment, receiving from his parents neither proper dis-
ciplining nor encouragement and stimulus to mental
activity, with the result that when the time came for
him to go to school he would display little capability
for, or interest in, the tasks of the classroom. So
frequently is this actually the case that students of
retardation are inclining more and more to rate
faulty home training as perhaps the chief cause of
mental backwardness. Thus we find one keen ob-
server, Professor P. E. Davidson, declaring in an
address at an educational convention in California:

“Parental neglect as a cause, resulting in emo-
tional and volitional disorder, is emphasised in our
cases. Learning in school is conditioned largely by
what Witmer calls ‘ pedagogical rapport,’ wherein a
deference to the prestige of the teacher and the
school and a sensitiveness to its rewards and punish-
ments are such as rapidly to produce a habit of
voluntary effort or active attention. Confirmed wil-
fulness at home and undisciplined impulsiveness must

[ 29 ]
HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

undoubtedly figure in the matter of learning. If the
child’s organic habit, after five or six years of poor
home training, makes avoidance of the painfulness of
effort the usual thing, we may be sure the teacher
in the first grade will have unusual difficulty in in-
ducing a disciplined attention, and a bad beginning
on this account may establish a backwardness which
later may not be overcome without the individual
attention that is impossible in the teaching of large
classes.”

Professor G. W. A. Luckey, of the University of
Nebraska, listing the causes of retardation, puts at
the foot of his list “bad inheritance, unredeemable
defects, physical and mental,” and at the very top,
“ignorance and indifference on the part of parents.”
Most investigators would evaluate these contrasting
causes in precisely the same way. The inference,
needless to say, is that we need never hope to bring
about an appreciable diminution in the number of
retarded children until parents are more fully en-
lightened as to their duties and responsibilities. It

[ 30]
MENTAL BACKWARDNESS

is therefore good to find that a nation-wide cam-
paign of enlightenment is well under way, together
with an ever-increasing extension of agencies for the
work of rescuing the retarded and fitting them to
achieve success in the school and in the world.
Eight years ago there were in all the United States

rT7

only three “ clearing-houses for retarded children.”
These were the psychological clinic of the University
of Pennsylvania, established by Professor Witmer
in 1896; a civic psychological clinic, opened in
1909, in connection with the schools of Los Angeles;
and the psychological clinic of Clark University, at
Worcester, Massachusetts, established in the same
year as a department of that university’s splendid
Children’s Institute.

To-day, as part of the regular activities of uni-
versities and normal schools, there are psychological
clinics in more than a dozen States, including Cali-
fornia, Colorado, Connecticut, Iowa, Kansas, Louisi-
ana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New York,
Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Washington. At least four

[ 31 ]
HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

States—Indiana, Massachusetts, New York, and
Pennsylvania—have psychological clinics in opera-
tion as adjuncts of hospitals. California, Illinois,
Missouri, New York, and Pennsylvania have similar
clinics in direct connection with the public school
system. Ohio has one connected with a vocational-
guidance bureau. And in some States—such as Con-
necticut, Illinois, and Massachusetts—psychological
clinics are also in operation for the special purpose
of aiding in the proper disposition of cases brought
before the juvenile courts.

Even more rapid has been the development of ear,
eye, throat, and dental clinics for the needs of school
children. As an outgrowth, too, of the discoveries
of the past few years, there has been a widespread
movement in the direction of establishing special
schools and classes in which the retarded may receive
the care necessary to enable them to make up for lost
time, or, when this is out of the question, to equip
them for as happy and useful a life as is possible
under their exceptional mental limitations. Unques-

[ 82 ]
MENTAL BACKWARDNESS

tionably a splendid beginning has been made in the
warfare against retardation—a beginning not sur-
passed by similar effort in any foreign land, and
certain to prove of great value to the American
nation.

But, if it is to prove of the utmost possible value,
there must be active co-operation by the public gen-
erally and by parents in particular. Society must
insist on every child being given hygienically decent
surroundings, and parents in the mass must become
increasingly alive to their responsibilities and oppor-
tunities in developing the mentality of their young.
To reiterate:

It may be considered as definitely established to-
day that the vast majority of cases of mental back-
wardness are the result, not of organic brain defects, ;
not of true feeble-mindedness, but of remediable physi-
cal conditions or faulty training in the home.

It may be considered as established that even seem-
ingly incurable cases will often yield to expert treat- *
ment,

[ 33 ]
HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

And it may be considered as established that, of
the cases which cannot be successfully handled, a
large proportion are cases which could have been
successfully handled had they been recognised and
given expert treatment during early childhood.

Let every parent of a dull child act, and act
promptly, to ascertain from some expert just why
his child is dull, and what can and should be done to
overcome the dulness. Let every parent of every
child make it his business to learn and heed the laws —
of physical and mental hygiene as applicable to his
child, with a view to insuring that the child shall not
be afflicted with preventable mental backwardness.
This is one of the prime duties of parenthood.

[ 34 J
THE ONLY CHILD
II
THE ONLY CHILD

IFTEEN years ago a boy was born of pros-

perous New York parents. His arrival was

exceptionally welcome, for his father and
mother had been living in dread that theirs might
prove a childless marriage. They had fervently
promised themselves that if their fondest hopes were
realised and a child granted to them, nothing that
loving devotion could accomplish would be left un-
done to secure for the little one the best possible
start in life. As a first step in the fulfilment of this
promise, they decided soon after their son’s birth
to remove from New York to a pleasant residential
suburb, where fresh air abounded, and where the ad-
verse environmental influences of the crowded city

streets were utterly unknown.
[ 87 ]
HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

Seemingly, no decision could have been wiser;
seemingly, no child could have been brought up amid
more favourable surroundings than their boy en-
joyed in the splendid home they provided for him on
a beautiful slope crested with pines. Yet, despite all
the love lavished on him, despite the prodigious
efforts to keep him well and strong, he did not
thrive.

Before he was seven he displayed “nervous”
symptoms that threw his parents into a panic. He
suffered from “ night terrors,” he became excitable
and irritable. The eminent physician to whom he
was taken made the flattering diagnosis that the
only trouble with the boy was an unusually sensitive
nervous organisation; prescribed sedatives, advised
outdoor exercise, warned against overstudy, and so
forth. Unfortunately, he did not also emphasise
the necessity for simplification of the child’s environ-
ment as a preventive of nerve strain. Nor did he
dwell on the supreme importance to physical, no less
than moral, welfare of sedulously cultivating in the

[ 38 ]
THE ONLY CHILD

little fellow the virtues of courage, self-control, and
self-denial. Perhaps he did not think it needful to
speak of these things to such evidently well-bred and
well-intentioned parents; perhaps he did not think
of these things at all.

In any eveut, while acting on his advice as to
stimulating animal activity and retarding brain func-
tion, the father and mother continued to minister to
their son’s every whim, and eternally busied them-
selves devising amusements and distractions for him.

. § In time the “night terrors” were no longer in evi-
me 2 dence; but the excitability and irritability persisted,
and presently other unpleasant traits appeared,
notably a tendency to conceit and selfishness. Natu-
rally, this did not make the poor youngster any too
popular among the few playmates with whom his
parents allowed him to associate, and naturally the
parents blamed the playmates for not appreciating
the “ sensitiveness ” of his disposition. Thus matters
continued until his twelfth year, when his father
suddenly awoke to the fact that, intellectually, the

[ 39 ]
HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

naughty playmates were considerably ahead of the
good little boy. For the first time common sense
scored a distinct triumph over excessive and indis-
creet parental love; the governess who had been un-
able to handle her self-willed pupil was dismissed,
and the boy was sent to school.

There he has been painfully gaining the disci-
pline—the lessons in self-mastery—that should have
been given him in the nursery. But he still is lament-
ably arrogant and selfish; he still finds it difficult to
get along with other boys. Whether his schoolmates
will take the trouble to help him overcome the handi-
cap of his early rearing is questionable; and however
this may be, it is hardly likely that the character
defects unnecessarily acquired during his childhood
will be wholly rooted out.

——“Tt must regretfully be added that this boy’s case
is not an exceptional one. Rather, it is typical of
the plight of most “ only children,” who, no matter
what their advantages of birth, too often reach man-
hood and womanhood sadly handicapped and mark-

[ 40 ]
THE ONLY CHILD

edly inferior to other children. In a vague way, to
be sure, parents with only one child have long realised
that they are confronted with special problems in
child training; but there is abundant proof that in
innumerable instances they signally fail to grasp
these problems clearly and work them out satisfac-
torily.

Everyday observation supports this statement,
and it is confirmed by the findings of modern medi-
cal, psychological, and sociological investigation.
Statistically, its most important corroboration is
forthcoming from the results of a census of “ only
children,” undertaken some years ago by the psycho-
logical department of Clark University in conse-
quence of certain suggestive indications noticed in
the responses received to a questionnaire on peculiar
and exceptional children.

Of the thousand children described in these re-
sponses it was observed that forty-six were specifi-
cally mentioned as being “only children,” although
none of the queries in the questionnaire asked directly

[41]
HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

or indirectly about such children. The presumption
was that a number of the remaining children de-
scribed in the responses were also of the only-child
class. But even if such were not the case, the total
of forty-six was surprisingly high, since, according
to reliable vital statistics, the average progeny of
fertile marriages is six, with an only-child average
of one out of every thirteen fertile marriages; that
is, a proportion of one only child to every seventy-
eight children, as contrasted with the proportion of
one in fewer than every twenty-two of the “ peculiar ”
children described in the questionnaire reports.
Moreover, on dividing these reports into three
groups based on the “ advantageous,” “ neutral,”
and “ disadvantageous ” character of the peculiari-
ties mentioned, it was found that while considerably
less than half of the total number of children fell
into the disadvantageous group, two-thirds of the
“only children ” had to be put into it. Naturally
this suggested the desirability of a special investiga-
tion with reference to the only child, and accordingly
[ 42 ]
THE ONLY CHILD

a second questionnaire was issued, with queries relat-
ing to age, sex, nationality, health, amusements, in-
tellectual ability, moral traits, and so forth. In
this way, from school teachers and other disinter-
ested observers, definite information was obtained
concerning nearly four hundred “ only children ”—
information which, as finally tabulated and analysed
by the director of the investigation, Doctor E. W. |
Bohannon, is of great significance to the parents of
every only child and to all interested in individual
and racial improvement.

The age average of those whose ages were given—
nearly three hundred—was twelve years, including
about sixty ranging in age from seventeen to thirty-
five. About four-fifths were of American parentage,
while the proportion with regard to sex was, roughly
speaking, one-third male and two-thirds female, a
disparity doubtless attributable in part to the cir-
cumstances of the investigation. About one hundred
were said not to be in good health, and another hun-
dred to be in outright bad health. In one hundred

[ 43 ]
HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

and thirty-three out of two hundred and fifty-eight
cases the temperament was described as “ nervous.”
Precocity was another often-mentioned trait; but
on the average the beginning of school life was from
a year and a half to two years later than is usual,
and in the performance of school work the ques-
tionnaire responses also revealed a marked inferiority
on the part of many “ only children.”

In their social relations only eighty were reported
as “ normal,” while one hundred and thirty-four out
of a total of two hundred and sixty-nine got along
badly with other children, usually because they were
unwilling or did not know how to make concessions,
or were stubbornly set on having their own way. On
this important point Doctor Bohannon says, in
detail :

, “When they disagree with other children it is

usually because of a desire to rule. If they fail in

this desire they are likely to refuse to associate with

the children who cause the failure, and in a measure

succeed in the wish to have their own way, either
[ 44 ]
THE ONLY CHILD

by choosing younger companions whom they can
control, or older ones who are willing to indulge them.
Many do not care for a large number of companions,
and select one or two for friends, with whom they
prefer to spend most of their time. . . . In numer-
ous instances . . . a marked preference for the
company of older people is manifest, even when op-
portunity for younger company is present. But this
is no doubt due less to a dislike of suitable compan-
ionship than to their inability to understand and be
( onderstood by children of near their own age. It
is plainly evident that they have as deep longings
for society as the children of other families, but their
isolated home life has failed to give them equal skill
and ability in social matters. They do not so well
understand how to make approaches, to concede this
thing and that.”

Of two hundred and forty-five in attendance at
school, more than one hundred “only children ”
were recorded as not being normally interested in
active games, sixty-two of these scarcely playing at

[45 ]
HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

all. “If left to their own devices,” Doctor Bohannon
infers from the reports which he received concerning
the inactive sixty-two, “they are pretty sure to be
found in the schoolroom with their teachers at inter-
mission. A number of the boys prefer to play with
the girls at strictly girls’ games, such as keeping
house with dolls, and generally come to be called
girl-boys.”

Effeminacy, in fact, is an unpleasantly frequent
characteristic of the male only child, and was noted
in case after case described in the replies to the
questionnaire. Selfishness was set down as the domi-
nant trait in ninety-four “only children” of both
sexes, and many others were described as being
unusually bad-tempered, vain, naughty, or un-
truthful.*

These depressing findings have since been con-
firmed by other investigators, some of whom have

contributed specially to our knowledge of the state

1 Doctor Bohannon’s report ought to be carefully read by
the parents of every “only child.” It is published in The
Pedagogical Seminary, vol. v, p 475 et seq.

‘ [ 46 ]
THE ONLY CHILD

of the only child in adult life. For instance, the well-
known English psychologist, Havelock Ellis, study-
ing the life histories of four hundred eminent men and

oe

women, found the low percentage of 6.9 for “ only
children,” indicating unmistakably the persistence of
the intellectual inferiority brought out by the an-
swers to the Bohannon questionnaire. There would
also seem to be no doubt that egotism and social
inadaptability characterise the adult only child no
less than the immature one.

“In later life,” affirms the American psychopath-
ologist, A. A. Brill, who has made a special study
of the only child from both a medical and psychologi-
cal point of view, “ he is extremely conceited, jealous,
and envious. He begrudges the happiness of friends
and acquaintances, and he is therefore shunned and
disliked.” Besides which, speaking from wide ex-
perience as a practising specialist in New York City,
Doctor Brill insists that the only child, at any age
of life, is peculiarly liable to fall a victim to hysteria,
neurasthenia, and other serious functional nervous

[ 47 ]
HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

and mental maladies; and his belief, as I happen to
know from their personal statements to me, is shared
by other observant neurologists and psychopathol-
ogists, such as Doctors James J. Putnam and I. H.
Coriat, of Boston.

This is a point of special interest, for the reason
that recent medical research has made it certain that
the maladies in question are one and all rooted in
faulty habits of thought, usually resultant from
errors of training in childhood. Chief among these
errors, according to all modern neurologists, is an
upbringing which tends to develop excessive occupa-
‘tion with thoughts of self. But this is precisely the
kind of upbringing given the majority of “ only chil-
dren.” Here again the Bohannon investigation
affords impressive evidence. One of the queries in-
cluded in the questionnaire bore on the treatment
accorded the only child when at home, and it is indeed
significant that in about 75 per cent. of the replies
received it was stated that the policy of the parents
was one of extreme indulgence.

[48 ]
THE ONLY CHILD

“Had her own way in everything,” “ Her parents
gratify her every whim,” “She is surrounded by
adults who indulge her too much,” “ Humoured,”
“ Petted,” “ Coddled,” are some of the expressions
frequently employed to describe the parental treat-
ment. Many of the answers sent to Doctor Bohan-
non also testify to an over-anxiety with respect to
the child’s welfare that might easily give rise to
undue feelings of self-importance or to an unhealthy
habit of introspection. “ His mother was always
unduly anxious about him when he was out of her
sight,” “She is thought to be quite delicate, and
great care is taken of her; she is kept in a warm
room and seldom allowed to go out,” “His home
treatment has made a baby of him,” may fairly be
cited as typical statements returned by Doctor
Bohannon’s respondents.

Is it any wonder that the average only child grows
up deficient in initiative and self-reliance? Is it any
wonder that, under the stress of some sudden shock,
he reacts badly, allowing himself to be overwhelmed

[ 49 ]
HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

by it, even to the extent of perhaps becoming a neu-
rasthenic wreck? In short, can it be doubted that
the handicap under which he too often has to
struggle painfully through life is not a handicap
imposed by Nature but is solely of his parents’
making?

Sometimes this is all too clearly appreciated in
later life by the child himself, and the parental error
is bitterly resented; or, if the sense of filial piety be
sufficiently strong, is splendidly excused. As in this
fragment from an autobiographical statement by an
only child:

“Of the selfishness of which a frank woman ac-
cused me, my parents were, up to that time, quite as
unconscious as I. She had asked my mother to drive
with her to the home of a friend in a neighbouring
town, where the two were invited to spend the night.
My mother declined, on the ground that I, at that
time about nine, could not comb my hair and pin
my collar properly for school in the morning; and
as we then had no maid and my father could at best

[ 50 }
THE ONLY CHILD

only have buttoned my frock, the objection seemed
insurmountable. But the family friend called me by
the ugly title of naughty, selfish little girl, and
chided mother for allowing me to monopolise her
time, contending that she was making me selfish and
- dependent.

“Perhaps she was. But I protest that it could
hardly have been otherwise, considering that she
had in full measure the world-old desire of mothers
to spend themselves for their children, and only
one child to spend herself on. It had not occurred to
my mother, I am confident, that her habit of minis-
tering to me constantly was pampering; nor had I,
in going to her for services that I might easily have
learned to perform for myself, made demands in the
manner of the arrogant spoiled child.” *

The compelling power of mother-love and father-
love must, of a truth, be recognised in extenuation
of the spoiling of the only child. But the fact of
the spoiling remains, and the fact also that when the

* Bverybody’s Magazine, vol. xv, p. 693.
[51]
HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

spoiling is achieved the parental pride and joy will
be turned to grief and bitter lamentation. The pity
of it is that the only child, simply because he is the
only child, ought to be able to grow up healthier,
wiser, and more efficient than other children.

For, as psychologists are insisting more and more
emphatically, the health, happiness, and efficiency
of adult life depend preponderantly on the home
influences of early childhood; and, obviously, in a
home where the parental attention can be concen-
trated on a single child, better results should be
attained than when the work of training involves a
division of the attention among several children.
Unhappily, when it is a question of training an only
child, too many parents seem to take it for granted
that training is entirely unnecessary, that their child
is innately so good that he will develop of his own
accord into one of the best of men.

In reality, as modern psychology has made very
clear, every child at the outset of his life is much
like every other child, a plastic, unmoral little crea-

[ 52 ]
THE ONLY CHILD

ture, exceedingly impulsive and exceedingly recep-
tive, readily impressed for good or evil by the influ-
ences that surround him. Childhood, to repeat a
truism hackneyed to psychologists, but seemingly
unappreciated by most people, is pre-eminently the
suggestible period of life. It is then, when the criti-
cal faculty still is undeveloped, that whatever ideas
are presented to the mind are most surely absorbed
by it, to sink into its subconscious depths, and there
form the nucleus for whole systems of thought after-
ward manifesting as habits. Herein lurks the special
peril to the only child afflicted with over-loving, over-
anxious parents.

Their perpetual solicitude for him, acting as a
suggestion of irresistible force, tends to engender in
him a mental attitude out of which may afterward
spring, according to the subsequent circumstances
of his life, a cold, heartless, calculating selfishness,
or a morbid self-anxiety, perhaps eventuating in all
sorts of neurotic symptoms. If, as a boy, he is too
closely and constantly associated with his mother,

[ 53 ]
HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

the force of suggestion again, acting largely through
the imitative instinct, may lead to a development of
those feminine traits frequently characteristic of
male only children, and often involving pathological
conditions of dire social as well as individual signifi-
cance. Further still, by restricting unduly the inter-
course of only children with playmates of their own
age, as is often done, one of the finest agencies in
development through the power of suggestion is left
unutilised. There is a world of truth in the lament
of the only child from whose autobiography I have
already quoted:

“ All this carefulness kept me uncontaminated by
the naughtiness of little street Arabs, but it also
limited my opportunity to imitate where imitation is
easiest—among those of my-own age; it stunted the
initiativeness and inventiveness that might, in nor-
mal conditions, have developed in me; and it left me
lacking in adaptability. I sometimes disloyally won-
der if my chances of being a tolerable citizen might
not have been as good if I had been permitted to

[ 54 ]
THE ONLY CHILD

‘run wild,’ and thus secure for myself the companion-
ship I could not have at home.”

Of course, association with other children means
at least an occasional hard knock, and hard knocks
are, above all else, what the doting mother wishes to
avoid for her darling boy. She forgets that they are
certain to be experienced, soon or late, and that the
earlier her boy is fitted to withstand them the better
they will be withstood. She forgets, too, that if the
suggestions emanating from playmates are not in-
variably suggestions for good, they may easily be
counteracted, without sacrificing the advantages to
be gained from association with playmates, by proper
training in the quiet of the home.

Always, let me repeat, it is the home training that
counts for most. If the only child turns out well,
the credit must go to the parents; if, alas! he turns 7
out badly, if he becomes a monster of selfishness or
a neurotic weakling, the blame must likewise be theirs.

And now it becomes necessary to add that, if in
less degree, the “favourite child” in a family is ex-

[ 55 ]
HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

posed to dangers similar to those menacing the un-
wisely brought up “ only child.” That parent of sev-
eral children is making a sad mistake if he singles
out any one of his children for special affection and
solicitude. The consequences of such favouritism are
twofold, affecting adversely, perhaps disastrously,
both the child unduly favoured and the child or chil-
dren comparatively slighted. So far as the former
is concerned, the outcome, when the favouritism in-
volves really excessive love and anxiety, is pretty
sure to be much like that in the case of the average
only child. That is to say, there is always more than
a possibility that the favourite child, no matter how
' good his inherited qualities, will grow up arrogant,
self-centred, and neurotic.

He is usually in less danger than the only child
of growing up deficient in initiative and social
adaptability. For, unless his parents constantly
interfere in his behalf, daily intercourse with his
brothers and sisters is bound to impress on him at an
early age the necessity for developing self-reliance

[ 56 ]
THE ONLY CHILD

and for making concessions to the rights and sus-
ceptibilities of others. On the other hand, because
he is the favourite child and because his brothers
and sisters instinctively resent this, his intercourse
with them is likely to be attended with more than the
usual amount of friction. Thereby an additional
stress will be put on a nervous system already more
or less strained by the fussing and fretting of in-
dulgent, unthinking parents. During childhood, it
is true, he may not give marked evidence of neural
enfeeblement. But, soon or late, if a kindly fortune
does not rescue him at an early age from the harmful
home environment—as, for example, by his removal
to a good boarding-school—one may count on his
displaying striking eccentricities of character and
conduct, if not positively pathological conditions.
Consequently, his whole prospects for adult life
will be adversely affected. The selfishness fostered
by his father’s, or mother’s, excessive devotion may
become intensified rather than lessened by friction
with envious brothers and sisters, with the result
[57]
HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

that the favourite child passes into manhood abnor-
mally deficient in altruistic qualities, and even ab-
normally misanthropic. “A favourite son, a bach-
elor of sixty-two years, who was a wealthy retired
merchant,” notes the psychopathologist Brill, “ told
me that whenever there was a rise in the market he
suffered from severe depression and fits of envy,
simply because he knew that some of his friends would
make money. He himself had no interest in the
market.” And, speaking as an observer who has
closely studied the subject, Doctor Brill unhesitat-
ingly adds that, like so many “only children,”
almost all favourite children are in later years “ sel-
fish, unhappy, and morose.”

It is true there are notable exceptions. Some
favourite children are brought up so well that, aside
perhaps from a tendency to nervous ailments, they
display no peculiarities and pass through life credit-
ably, possibly brilliantly. But such exceptions are
conspicuous by their rarity, for the excellent reason
that parents who are wise enough to rear favourite

[ 58]
THE ONLY CHILD

children well are commonly wise enough not to show
favouritism to any of their children.

For, no matter how much the favourite child may
benefit from the extra care bestowed on him, the
mere fact that he is thus selected for special atten-
tion is sure to work to the detriment of the other
children in the family. When, as often happens,
there is only one other child, the effect on that child
may be catastrophic. When the favourite child has
several brothers and sisters there is less danger that
any of these will be really disastrously affected. At
best, however, they will chafe under the injustice of
the favouritism shown by the parent or parents; and,
besides instinctively drawing together for mutual
consolation and defence, they may develop a spirit
of rebellion destructive to the peace and well-being of
the entire family.

[59]
THE CHILD WHO SULKS
III
THE CHILD WHO SULKS

OBODY likes a chronically sulky child.

Even his own parents are apt to lose

patience with him. In common with out-

siders, though im less degree, they regard his sulki-

ness as indicative of an unpleasant disposition, call-

ing for stern disciplinary measures. Seldom do they

see it for what it really is—the result of conditions

for which the child is not to blame, and a danger-

signal giving warning that unless a successful effort

is made to ascertain and correct the sulk-producing

conditions, the child will enter adult life under a tre-
mendous handicap.

As I write, there comes before my mind’s eye the
weary face and form of an old acquaintance, with
whose life history I am familiar. This man, though

[ 63 ]
HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

not yet in his forties, and with health unbroken by
any serious disease, is nevertheless one of the unem-
ployable. He is willing enough to work, he affirms,
and in his time has had many positions. But he has
been able to hold none of these. There has always
developed friction between him and his employer or
between him and fellow-employees. For a few days,
perhaps a few weeks, after gaining a new position,
things go smoothly with him. He is confident, even
enthusiastic. Then, for no apparent reasons, he
acquires a “ grouch.” He conceives the idea that his
“* job ” is not sufficiently remunerative, or that he is
not being treated with due respect. Sometimes he
gives vent to his feelings in words that promptly
effect his dismissal. More often, giving no explana-
tion, he sullenly stops work of his own accord.

Yet he began life with seemingly excellent pros-
pects. His parents were well to do and could give
him every educational advantage. And in early
childhood he was both a bright boy and a well-be-
haved boy. A little later, when he began to go to

[ 64]
THE CHILD WHO SULKS

school, there was a noticeable change in his disposi-
tion. Huis parents learned that he did not associate
with other boys as readily as might be desired. They
noticed that he developed a tendency to keep much
by himself, to. be uncommunicative, to smile seldom—
in fine, to sulk. But, though they noticed this, they
fancied it was only a passing phase which he would
in time outgrow. They failed to take his sulkiness
seriously—failed, that is to say, to recognise in it
a sign that something was amiss which should be
seriously investigated. To-day, perhaps wholly be-
cause no investigation was made and no corrective
treatment attempted, this unfortunate man is find-
ing life a heavy burden.

With all the emphasis at my command I would say,
When a child frequently sulks, it is always a sure
indication of mental or nervous stress. If parents
have a child who is sulky, they should neither ignore
the sulkiness nor accuse him of wilful naughtiness
and try to improve him by scoldings and punish-
ments. They should recognise, in his habit of sulk=

[ 65 ]
HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

ing, evidence of one of two things: either that they
are not bringing him up as they should, or that he is
suffering from some unsuspected physical disability,
of which his sullen, morose, peevish disposition is
symptomatic. It may be that this disability is an
irremediable one, such as organic weakness of the
brain. But the chances are that it is caused by func-
tional disturbances easily discovered and easily
cured. The parent is neglecting his full duty to his
child if he fail to inquire into the child’s physical
condition.
~ One of the commonest causes of sulkiness is noth-
ing more or less than indigestion. Everybody knows
that if a baby’s food disagrees with him the baby is
pretty sure to be fretful and irritable. But parents
too often forget that, in the case of older children,
mental and moral eccentricities may be traced to
the same cause. When food is not properly digested,
there is an impoverishing and poisoning of the blood.
This means that the brain is poorly nourished, and
a poorly nourished brain means a general weakening

[ 66 ]
THE CHILD WHO SULKS

of the power to think and to will. It means, too, a
heightening of nervous irritability, coupled with a
tendency to take a gloomy view of life. Under these
circumstances, it is not at all surprising to find sulki-
ness becoming characteristic of a child of any age,
as in a typical case reported by Doctor T. A. Wil-
liams, of Washington, a specialist in the treatment
of the nervous diseases of children.

Doctor Williams’ patient was a ten-year-old girl,
the daughter of a clergyman. She had been lovingly
reared, and until the age of nine had been easy to
manage, vivacious, and happy. Then there came a
marked change in her behaviour. She became easily
irritated, had frequent crying spells, and frequent
fits of sulkiness. Besides this, she had difficulty in
studying. Thinking that she had been overworking,
her parents took her out of school, although her
mother noticed that she was less inclined to sulk when
kept busy.

What Doctor Williams found, after a long and
careful examination of the girl and questioning of

[ 67 |
HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

her parents, was unmistakable evidence of nerve defi-
ciency, due chiefly to faulty diet, and aggravated by
“ parental interference, well meant, but entirely inju-
dicious.” She had been eating oatmeal and meat to
excess, had been taking her principal meal at night,
and had gone to bed soon after it. Doctor Williams
ordered that her allowance of meat and oatmeal be
cut down, that she eat her principal meal at noon,
and that she stay up for at least an hour after her
evening meal. Further, he gave these directions:

“ On waking in the morning, the child must make a
practice of getting up at once, instead of ruminating
in bed. Parents must avoid criticising her about
trifles, and her behaviour must be left to take care
of itself at present. Her affections should be in-
dulged and reciprocated. She must be given plenty
to do and sent back to school in a few days.”

Under this treatment the girl’s disposition began
immediately to improve. Within two weeks her
mother reported to Doctor Williams that she was as
“happy and joyous ” as she had formerly been. No

[ 68 ]
THE CHILD WHO SULKS

longer was her stomach being loaded with food it
could not digest ; and with the removal of this source
of toxic irritation, together with the suggested
changes in her parents’ handling of her, she had be-
come a different child.

On the other hand, underfeeding may be, and often
is, a cause of sulkiness, owing to the inadequate
nourishment the underfed child’s brain receives and
the general weakness of his system. Sulkiness, again,
may be associated with an insufficiency of physical
exercise, or with failure to make sure that the ‘child’s
living and sleeping quarters are properly ventilated.
Fresh air is as essential as digestible food to the
maintenance of nervous balance. When, as some-
times happens, children are obliged to spend their
school hours in dusty, ill-ventilated classrooms, when
they return to homes with few windows, and these
seldom open, and when they sleep in a tainted,
vitiated atmosphere, it is indeed hard for them to
see life in bright colours. Besides which, to prevent
or cure sulkiness in a child, it is not enough to keep

[ 69 |
HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

school and home well ventilated, and let the child
play outdoors as much as possible. It is necessary
also to see to it that the child is so conditioned that
he will have no difficulty in adequately breathing the
fresh outdoor air.

To a physician in a Western city there was
brought a boy, nine years old, with a face so flat,
expressionless, and frog-like, that persons who knew
him thought he was feeble-minded. His school
teacher reported that his mind seemed a blank and
that he was also hard of hearing. His parents com-
plained that he was selfish and sullen. The boy
seemed doomed to a life of misery.

But, making a physical examination of him, the
doctor found reason to think otherwise. -He discov-
ered no real brain defect. In the cavity back of the
boy’s nose he found an abnormal growth of adenoid-
tissue that of itself might account for the boy’s
stupidity and sulky disposition, as well as for his
deafness. The diseased tissue acted as an irritant
and a drag on his nervous energy; and, in addition,

[70 ]
THE CHILD WHO SULKS

by interfering with the intake of oxygen it lowered
the nutrition of the brain.

The adenoid growth was removed. Gradually
the appearance of the unfortunate boy’s face changed
for the better. His hearing improved. He began to
take an interest in school work, and studied to real
advantage. Consideration for others took the place
of his habitual selfishness, and he sulked no more.

Adenoids, dulness, deafness, and sullenness often
are intimately associated. The parents of a sulky
child will therefore do well to ascertain whether
adenoid trouble is present. Its presence is usually
plainly indicated by the flat, insipid appearance of
the victim’s face and by his habit of breathing
through his mouth, particularly when asleep. If
there is any reason to suspect adenoids, parents
should take their children to a competent physician
without delay.

Further, and on general principles, they should
have their children’s teeth thoroughly examined by a
good dentist. A child whose teeth are decayed is a

[71]
HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

child suffering both from nerve irritation and from
some degree of poisoning, due to his swallowing food
that has become infected by its contact with the
germs of dental caries. Such a child has abundant
reason to feel uncomfortable, pessimistic, and sullen.
So has a child whose teeth, if not decayed, are
crowded together.

Yet another common, and often unsuspected, phys-
ical cause of sulkiness in children is eye-strain. v
Most of us are under the impression that when a
person is afflicted with eye-strain he is certain to have
painful or, at least, unpleasant sensations in his
eyes. This is by no means always the case. During
childhood and youth there may be no telltale eye
symptoms at all. But defective eyesight may give
rise to various nervous conditions; sulkiness is one
manifestation.

An eight-year-old girl, previously in good health,
and with no more nervousness than is displayed by
the average child, began to show traits that worried
her parents. She became difficult to control, queru-

[72]
THE CHILD WHO SULKS

lous, and sullen to an extent that bordered on melan-
cholia. In addition, she complained of indigestion
and headache, symptoms which caused her parents to
take her to a physician for treatment. His medicines
and the course of diet he prescribed did her no good,
and another physician was consulted. Then began
for this unfortunate little girl a weary round of
examinations by doctor after doctor. Every means
of curing her headaches and indigestion seemed un-
availing, and her nervousness and sullenness in-
creased apace. Finally, one physician, in spite of
the fact that the girl’s eyesight seemed normal, sug-
gested that she be examined by an eye specialist.
Then, for the first time, it was discovered that she
had a serious ocular defect. According to Doctor
Percy R. Wood, who reported the case for the bene-
fit of the medical profession in general, within six
months after she first put on spectacles the girl was
entirely free from digestive disturbances, her head
had ceased to ache, and her melancholy moroseness

had given way to normal good nature.
[73 |
HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

Occasionally sulkiness results from some special
form of nervous disease. It may be an initial symp-
tom of that strange malady of childhood, chorea. A
child affected with chorea is restless, uneasy, and
weak in muscular control. Muscles of the face
twitch, the child has difficulty in using his hands, and,
in later stages of the disease, the arms and legs make
random, involuntary movements. In addition, just
before or about the time the muscular weakness be-
gins, there are sometimes signs of mental disturb-
ance, described as follows by an authority on nerv-
ous diseases :

“These symptoms consist of a slight loss of mem-
ory and inability of the patients to apply themselves
to their studies as well and continuously as formerly.
Children who were previously of an obedient and mild
disposition become irritable, obstinate, and perverse.
They become insubordinate, lose their love of play,
and are not as affectionate as was their wont. These
phenomena are naturally looked upon as indubitable
evidences of wilfulness, and are punished accordingly,

[74 ]
THE CHILD WHO SULKS

thus frequently precipitating and aggravating the
course of the disease.”

Happily, sulkiness, as an early symptom of chorea,
or of other grave nervous and mental disorders, is of
comparatively infrequent occurrence. The things
the parents of a sulky child need more particularly
to inquire into are the amount and character of the
food the child eats, the state of his digestion, his
habits of exercise, the ventilation of the rooms in
which he spends most of his time, the condition of his
nose, mouth, and teeth, and his ability to see and hear
distinctly. But it must be admitted that any or all
of these common physical causes of sulkiness may be
present, and the afflicted child nevertheless contrive
to get along without sulking. And, on the opposite, |
when a child thus afflicted does sulk, the correction
of the physical trouble is not always followed by a
cessation of the sulkiness. For, precisely as in the
case of the child who remains mentally backward
after the correction of bodily defects responsible for
his backwardness, it may be that a habit of sulking

L75 ]
HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

has become established. What is much worse, it
may also be that the sulky child has a home environ-
ment that makes sulking almost inevitable.

Here we come to the central fact in the whole
problem of sulkiness, for, nine cases out of ten, it is
the home environment—the training a child receives,
the parents’ attitude towards him—that is primarily
responsible for his sulking. The healthiest child in
the world will sulk if his parents surround him with
a sulk-breeding environment. He will sulk because
it is child nature to react appropriately to the sug-
gestions received from the environment. Every psy-
chologist will bear out this statement. It also finds
confirmation in the everyday experiences of all ob-
servant persons who have an opportunity to study
children. It is all very well to exhort a child to be
cheerful, to speak of “developing his will-power.”
But if the child’s home surroundings are such as to
fill his mind with depressing, disturbing ideas, he is
bound to be influenced in his behaviour by these ideas.
Parents are prone to forget this. They blame the

[76 ]
THE CHILD WHO SULKS

sulky child when, in all justice, they ought to blame
themselves.

Recently a veteran New England school teacher,
talking with me on this question of sulkiness, said:

“There are times when I am tempted to believe
that the home influence is everything, and that con-
ditions of physical ill health have virtually nothing
to do with sulkiness. Of course, I know that in
reality physical conditions have to be taken into
account, but my experiences with sulky children
have been such that now, whenever I find a sulky
child, I ask myself the question, ‘ What is wrong in
that child’s home?’ If I have opportunity to inves-
tigate, I invariably find that something is wrong.

“My pupils are girls, eight and nine years old.
Among them last year was one bright, attractive-
looking little girl, to whom I felt drawn when she
first appeared in the class. But I soon discovered
that she was a difficult child. She neglected her
school work, did in a careless, indifferent manner
whatever she was obliged to do, and sulked at slight

[77 ]
HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

provocation. She had been examined by the school
physician, who gave her a clean bill of health. My
suspicion deepened that the child was the victim of an
unfavourable home influence, and one day I sug-
gested this to the principal of the school.

““*T am sure you are wrong,’ said he. ‘I happen
to know the family. They are first-rate people, in
good circumstances.’

“ A little later, after I had again spoken to him
of the girl’s misconduct and sullenness, he told me:

“* You were right and I was wrong. Outwardly,
everything seemed well with that family. But I now
find that the parents have for some time been on the
verge of seeking a divorce. They are bitter against
each other and dispute over the child, giving her
contrary orders. The mother will tell her to do
something, the father will tell her not to do it. No
wonder she is sullen and hard to deal with. She is
to be taken from them and put in a good home.’

“This is an extreme instance, I have no doubt.
But it is in line with what I am observing all the

[78]
THE CHILD WHO SULKS

time. Therefore, I insist that sulkiness in children
is, as a rule, a sure sign of unwise training in the -
home.”

Many parents, though wholly unappreciative of
the fact, inspire sulkiness in their children by setting
them an example of. sulkiness. A striking instance
has lately come under my personal observation, in the
experience of a mother who is continually being an-
noyed by the whining, sulky ways of her four-year-
old daughter. She scolds the girl, she spanks her,
but all to no good. Not once does it seem to occur
to the mother that possibly her own habit of sulking
when things do not go right may be blamed for the
sulkiness of her child. She is precisely the kind of
woman to whom the learned Professor Paul Dubois
addresses these scathing words:

“You, madam, who complain of the irritability of
your little girl, could you not suppress your own?

. . Remember the proverb, ‘ The fruit does not
fall far from the tree.’ ”

This factor of example in the causing of sulkiness

[79 ]
HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

is something that parents frequently ignore. In a
general way they realise that their children are likely
to imitate them, but they do not appreciate the subtle
force which imitation exercises in forming the mental
states and moral attitudes of the young. Time and
again we see parents talking and acting as though
children had no eyes or ears or memories; as though,
indeed, they were beings quite insensitive to the sights
and sounds of their surroundings.

Yet normal children are the most sensitive and the
most “suggestible” of beings. Let father snarl
and mother sulk, and little Johnny or Mary may be
pretty confidently counted on to snarl and sulk
likewise—unless by a happy chance Johnny and
Mary have playmates or relatives whose lives radiate
sufficiently strong suggestions of cheerfulness to
offset the parents’ unhappy influence. Instruction
is much, but example is more. Or, as wise Pastor
Witte puts it, “ Instruction begins, example accom-
plishes.”

But, if the parental example is good, if the child’s

[ 80 ]
THE CHILD WHO SULKS

physical condition is excellent, and if he nevertheless
is a sulker—what then? Again, it must be insisted
that the trouble rests with some fault in his upbring-
ing, some error in the parental policy. If there is
more than one child in the family, it may be that the
sulkiness is a symptom of jealousy. The parents
should ask themselves in all seriousness whether they
have given this particular child any reason to sulk,
by showing greater favour, or seeming to show
greater favour, to his brothers and sisters. Or, pos-
sibly, the sulkiness is indicative, not of jealousy, but
of a feeling of inferiority due to the child’s fear that
he is not quite so bright as other children. In that
case the parents may be sure that in some way, how-
ever unwittingly, they have failed to bring into their
child’s life enough happiness and joy to prevent the
feeling of inferiority from becoming dominant in his
mind. Perhaps, for the matter of that, they have
themselves been instrumental in forcing on the child
recognition of his inferior mental status.

There are parents whose behaviour when dealing

[ 81 ]
HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

with a mentally retarded child is—often quite un-
consciously—that of a censorious judge upbraid-
ing a criminal. They nag, they harass, they urge
the child to greater effort, never questioning that he
can of his own accord improve his ability to learn.
Perhaps he is mentally deficient, perhaps he is suffer-
ing from some remédiable physical cause of retarda-
tion, perhaps the method by which he is being taught
is not suited to his type of mind. To all these possi-
bilities the parents do not give a moment’s thought.
The child is stupid; it must be his fault ; he should be
forced to mend his ways. So they pester the little
unfortunate. And when to retardation he gradually
adds sullenness, they are more incensed than before.
But, in point of cold fact, whose is the fault? Not
the child’s, surely. Perpetual nagging is a first-class
means of producing sulkiness in any child, whether
he be mentally retarded, unusually bright, or just a

plain ‘

‘average child.
Another almost equally efficacious means is un-
truthfulness on the part of parents in their relations

[ 82]
THE CHILD WHO SULKS

with the child. There are some parents who think
it not at all amiss to deceive their children. They
make promises to them which they do not intend to
keep. They threaten them with punishments that
never materialise. They make untruthful replies to
questions the children put to them. The children are
not imbeciles. They note these broken promises,
these empty threats, these untruthful replies. They
lose faith in their parents, and sometimes it happens
that their loss of faith manifests itself in a gloomy
brooding, a sullen resentment against the parents.
The parents, on their side, regard the sulky child as
maliciously naughty and evil-minded. Not an ink-
ling do they have of their own share in the making
of the condition of which they complain. They
blame only the child.

Even the practice, common among parents, of
telling their children “white lies” with regard to
delicate matters is at times productive of sulkiness
as a symptom of nervousness due to inner mental
conflict. Almost every child is at an early age in-

[ 83 ]
HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

quisitive about his origin and the manner of his com-
ing into the world. If his questions on these subjects
are evaded or answered in a fantastic way, the
child’s curiosity is likely to be increased rather than
satisfied. In exceptional cases there may result an
obsessional pondering of the evaded topic, intensi-
fied when the child discovers that his parents have
deceived him. Extreme nervousness, accompanied
with sullenness, is then a likely result. But, apart
altogether from the possibility that nervousness and
sulkiness may be caused by parental deception of this
sort, the danger of losing control over their chil-
dren is itself serious enough to warn parents to be
straightforward in answering their children’s queries
regarding sex subjects.

Havelock Ellis, the foremost authority on the psy-
chology of sex, does not exaggerate when he as-
sures us:

‘* Even if there were no other reasons against tell-
ing children fairy tales of sex instead of the real
facts, there is one reason which ought to be decisive

[ 84 ]
THE CHILD WHO SULKS

with every mother who values her influence over her
child. He will very quickly discover, either by in-
formation from others or by his own natural intelli-
gence, that the fairy tale that was told him in reply
to a question about a simple matter of fact was a lie.
With that discovery, his mother’s influence over him
in all such matters vanishes forever, for not only
has a child a horror of being duped, but he is ex-
tremely sensitive about a rebuff of this kind, and
never repeats what he has been made to feel was a
mistake to be ashamed of. He will not trouble his
mother with any more questions on this matter; he
will not confide in her; he will himself learn the art
of telling ‘fairy tales’ about sex matters. He had
turned to his mother in trust, she had not responded
with equal trust, and she must suffer-the punishment,
as Henriette Fiirth puts it, of seeing ‘the love and
trust of her son stolen from her by the first boy he
makes friends with in the street.’ ”*

Joy is a natural consequence of a child’s affection

1Further discussion of this important subject will be found in
the chapter on ‘‘ Night Terrors.”
[ 85 ]
HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

for, and faith in, his parents. Resentfulness, bitter-
ness, sullenness, are natural consequences of loss of
affection and faith. The parents of a sullen child
must always ask themselves if, through deception of
any sort, they have forfeited the child’s esteem for
them. They must further ask themselves if, by in-
tentional or unintentional unkindness of a persistent
sort, they have embittered the child. They must
also put to themselves the question: “ Have I in
some way erred so as to make my child sullen by the
force of a bad example?” And, lastly, they must
not forget to probe, through the aid of a skilled
physician, for possible physical causes of mental and
nervous stress.

If they do not adopt this course, if they allow the
child to go on sulking, or if they increase his sulki-
ness by mishandling him, let me again warn them
that they may be hopelessly limiting his chances for
success and happiness in manhood. Character dis-
tortions of some sort are certain to result; even his
bodily health itself may be affected. For, just as

[ 86 ]
THE CHILD WHO SULKS

sulkiness often is a product of some physical dis-
order, so may it, in turn, become a cause of physical
disorder. To sulk is essentially to be in a disturbed
emotional state, and recent scientific research has !
established that such states, particularly if intense ;
or long continued, have a highly unfavourable influ- |
ence on the bodily organism. This has been most —
clearly shown in the case of anger and worry, the
former of which always is, while the latter often is,
basic in sulkiness.

All parents, indeed, ought to familiarise themselves
with the physiology of anger and worry. Once really
appreciative of the possible bodily effects of these
emotional states, they would, on the one hand, be
more careful to train their children early in emo-
tional control, and, on the other, would be more chary
about subjecting them to conditions involving emo-
tional stress. Anger—and, equally, worry—is liable,
for one thing, to derange profoundly the workings of
the digestive organs. How profoundly it may de-
range them has recently been demonstrated conclu-

[87 ]
HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

sively by some remarkable scientific observations on
animals and human beings.

A prime requisite to good digestion is a free flow
of saliva and gastric juice when food is chewed.
There must literally be a preparatory automatic
“ watering ” of the mouth and stomach. Ordinarily,
this begins as soon as food is taken into the mouth—
if one is hungry, it begins at the mere sight of food.
But it has been proved that, no matter how appetis-
ing the food, the digestive flow stops almost alto-
gether under the influence of anger.

This was first demonstrated by a Russian physi-
ologist, Pawlow, experimenting with dogs so condi-
tioned that he could see into their throats and
stomachs. When a dog was irritated—as by show-
ing it a cat which it was prevented from attacking—
the flow of saliva and gastric juice instantly stopped,
and did not begin again for some time after the dog
had been calmed. Even a slight degree of irrita-
bility in the animal was sufficient to stop gastric
secretion.

[ 88 ]
THE CHILD WHO SULKS

The same result has been repeatedly recorded by
other scientists experimenting with cats, rabbits,
guinea pigs, children, and full-grown men and women.
One observer, a medical man named Hornborg, had
as a patient a small boy in whom disease had caused
an external opening large enough to allow a view
of the workings of the stomach. Doctor Hornborg
found that if he gave this boy food, after first anger-
ing him, his eating of the food was not accompanied
by a flow of the gastric juice, which ordinarily flowed
promptly and freely.

And, besides stopping the secretory processes of
the stomach, anger stops its muscular movements as
well, and also the movements of almost all the alimen-
tary tract. Hence, food eaten during or soon after
an outburst of anger or petulance is not properly
taken up by the alimentary canal for final digestion,
absorption, and elimination. Which means, it need
scarcely be pointed out, that every part of the body
suffers in some degree through diminished nutrition.
And certain specific discomforts are likely to be ex-

[ 89 ]
HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

perienced—sour stomach, gastric pains, headache,
and so forth.

Equally striking is the effect of anger on the liver.
One most important function of the liver is to store
glycogen, or “ animal starch,” which is a source of
energy when liberated from the liver into the blood
in the form of sugar. Under normal conditions, an
exceedingly small amount of sugar—all the body re-
quires—is liberated. The liberation of a greater
amount is a waste; and, if long continued, its exces-
sive liberation has a fatally weakening effect on the
system, constituting the serious disease known as
diabetes.

Now, as has lately been proved by an American
investigator, Doctor W. B. Cannon, of Harvard
University, anger, or strong emotional excitement of
any sort, immediately causes the liver to liberate
sugar in excess. Doctor Cannon found this to be
true in the case of both animals and human beings.
Almost always a man examined after he had been
angry or excited showed clear indications in the

[ 90]
THE CHILD WHO SULKS

liquids of his body of glycosuria, or excessive sugar.
Here is Doctor Cannon’s summary of one of his most
interesting observations:

“C. H. Fiske and I examined twenty-five mem-
bers of the Harvard University football squad imme-
diately after the final and most exciting contest of
1918, and found sugar in twelve cases. Five of these
positive cases were among substitutes not called upon
to enter the game. The only excited spectator of
the Harvard victory who was examined also had a
marked glycosuria, which on the following day had
disappeared.” *

Further than this, on testing the blood of excited
and angry animals and people, Doctor Cannon dis-
covered that it held in excess another substance
which, like sugar, is usually present in the circula-
tion in exceedingly minute quantities.

This substance, called adrenin, has some extraor-
dinary properties. It is secreted by two small
glands back of the kidneys. If artificially extracted

1“The Bodily Effects of Pain, Hunger, Fear, and Rage,” pp.

15-16,
[91 ]
HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

and injected into the blood of a human being in any
appreciable amount, it instantly has the effect of
creating a sharp rise in blood pressure, the blood ves-
sels being constricted and the heart beat appreciably
increased. It also alters the distribution of the
blood, driving it from the abdomen to the head and
limbs. And for the time being it enormously in-
creases muscular power and abolishes all feeling of
fatigue.

Exactly similar effects, scientific research has
proved, are brought about by the quantity of adrenin
set free in the blood during periods of anger or other
emotional stress. That is to say, not only does
anger temporarily stop stomach action and abnor-
mally stimulate the sugar-releasing function of the
liver: it also imposes an unusual strain on the heart
and the blood vessels.

Likewise with worry. It affects the heart, blood
vessels, liver, and digestive organs as anger does.
Even in the lower animals, and when occurring in
comparatively slight degree, worry puts a stop to

[ 92]
THE CHILD WHO SULKS

stomach movements and digestive secretions. Thus,
in discussing with me the physiology of worry, Doc-
tor Cannon stated:

“To give a significant illustration of how worry
affects animals, as well as people, I might mention
the case of a young male cat, the movements of
whose stomach I studied by the aid of the Réntgen
rays.

“For observation purposes, it was necessary to
attach the cat to a holder. He made no resistance
when this was done, but kept up a slight twitching
of his tail from side to side, indicating that he was
at least somewhat anxious as to what was going to
happen to him.

“For more than an hour I watched his stomach
by means of the rays, and during that time there
was not the slightest beginning of peristaltic activ-
ity, the waves of muscular contraction being entirely
absent.

“In another instance, that of a female cat with
kittens, something happened to create an anxious

[93 ]
HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

mood while the cat was attached to the holder.
Until that moment the cat had been contented, and
the work of digestion was proceeding normally. But
now the movements of the stomach entirely ceased,
and the gastric wall became relaxed. Only after the
cat had been petted and began to purr did the stom-
ach movements start again.

“I have observed the same thing in dogs and
guinea pigs. <A very slight emotional disturbance is
enough to affect their digestion unfavourably.”

Affecting specifically the brain, heart, arteries,
stomach, intestines, liver, and glands of internal
secretion, worry also has a general adverse effect on
the nervous system.

This adverse effect is unmistakably expressed by
the haggard, drawn, gaunt aspect of the man who
habitually worries, and by his persistent sensations
of fatigue. What has happened is that his nerve
cells are being deprived of the nutrition they need
in order to energise him properly. When, on the
contrary, the worrier succeeds in changing his mental

[94]
THE CHILD WHO SULKS

state—when he contrives to look at things confi-
dently and contentedly—then, in the words of Pro-
fessor George Van Ness Dearborn, there is a result-
ant and most beneficial increase in “the operative
enthusiasm of the nervous system and of its affectors,
the muscles and the glands.”

The moral to parents is obvious. Keep children
as joyous and happy as possible. By instruction
and example, start them early in the path of emo-
tional control. Protect them from needless causes
of fear, worry, and anger. And make special efforts
to prevent the development or continuance of that
curious and most injurious mental attitude—the at-
titude of sulkiness—grounded in anger and fre-
quently grounded also in sentiments of worry, envy,

hatred, and even despair.

[95]
JEALOUSY
IV
JEALOUSY

N the preceding chapter reference was made to
jealousy as a cause of sulkiness in children.
Jealousy is itself a woful handicap of child-

hood, and may be followed by disastrous conse- -
quences of many kinds. It has even been known to
prompt children to acts as tragic as any committed
by jealousy-driven adults. To cite a single instance:
In a small country town there lived a family of
three persons—father, mother, and young son.
Comfortably circumstanced, the parents testified
their affection for their only child by loving care
and gifts innumerable. Their great aim in life
seemed to be to bring joy and pleasure into his life.
The boy, for his part, reciprocated their love, and,
[99 ]
HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

though of a somewhat nervous temperament, was
bright, vivacious, and amiable. There was nothing
to mar the happiness of the family circle, which, to
the delight of both parents, was one day enlarged by
the addition of a little daughter.

They had taken it for granted that the coming of
this baby sister would be equally pleasing to their
boy, then nearly twelve years old. But his attitude
towards her was indifferent, even cold; and, as time
passed, he showed a dislike for the child as inexplica-
ble as it was disappointing to his father and mother.
Also, his disposition gradually changed. He was no
longer high-spirited, but became moody and de-
pressed. He would sit by himself for hours, lost
in mournful reverie. His parents, rightly suspect-
ing that something was preying on his mind, tried to
get his confidence. He put them off with evasive
answers, or brusquely asserted that he was “ all
right.”

The true explanation came to them in startling
and gruesome fashion. Late one afternoon, his

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JEALOUSY

father being absent from the house and his mother
occupied downstairs, the boy made his way to the
room where his tiny sister was peacefully asleep in
her crib. Only a short time passed before his
mother’s return upstairs, but in the interval the
little one had been smothered to death by her jealous
brother.
Such an instance of juvenile crime incited by the
_ demon of jealousy is fortunately rare. But it by no
means stands alone, and while the hand of reason
usually restrains even jealous children, in no indi-
vidual case is it possible to say with assurance that
tragedy will not result if jealousy gets firm lodgment
in the child’s mind. If for this reason only, parents
should regard with concern any repeated manifesta-
tions of jealousy, in no matter how mild and seem-
ingly harmless a form. As a matter of fact, how-
ever, many parents are not in the least disturbed
when their children give evidence of being jealous.
Some parents seem to be positively pleased at signs
of jealousy in their children, interpreting them as
{101 ]
HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

proofs of the ardour of the children’s love. One
thoughtless mother put it thus:

“ My little Jack is so fond of me that he cannot
bear to see me show attention to any other child.
It is really amusing how displeased he gets. He will
push the other child away, climb into my lap, and
almost smother me with kisses. If I persist in pay-
ing attention to somebody else, he will pout in the
cutest way until I take him in my arms again.”

It may, to be sure, be difficult at times to refrain
from smiling at the absurd behaviour of jealous chil-
dren. Just the same, jealousy is never a smiling
matter and is always something which parents should
try to root out without delay. The jealous child,
if uncorrected, is all too likely to grow into a jealous
adult, with tendencies which bring misery to himself,
and which, if it becomes a question of sex-jealousy,
may bring death to others. The parent who fails to
attack jealousy when it first shows itself need not
be surprised at any distortion of character or vagary
of conduct that appears in later life. Jealousy, in-

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JEALOUSY

deed, may have strange and startling physical conse-
quences. Here, for example, is a story from the
experience of a veteran physician:

“I was once summoned to visit a lady who was
represented as being very ill. On my arrival I was
shown to the so-called sick-room, where three per-
sons were present—an old lady, her daughter, and
the daughter’s husband. All of them seemed in good
health. When I inquired which was my patient,
there was silence for a moment. Then the daughter
said:

“*T am the patient, and my complaint is jeal-
ousy. I am jealous of my husband, and if you do
not give me something to relieve me I shall go out
of my mind.’

“This, on the face of it, seemed preposterous.
She was a tall, fair, beautiful woman of about thirty.
The husband, on the contrary, was several years
older, a short, swarthy, plain man. It seemed to
me more reasonable to suppose that he might have
cause to be jealous of his wife, rather than she of

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HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

him. But she persisted in her statement, and de-
clared that she had good reason to feel jealous.

“The husband insisted he had done nothing to
justify her jealousy. She reasserted he had. In
the midst of an outburst, distressing to listen to, she
fell into a queer fit. With rhythmic regularity, she
went through various spasmodic convulsions. At
one moment she would stand at full length, her body
arched forward. The next instant she was in a sit-
ting position, with her legs drawn up, her hands
clutching her throat, and a guttural noise coming
from her mouth. Then she would wildly throw her
arms and legs around; after which she would rise
to go through the same performance.

“It was necessary to give her a drug to quiet her.
I learned that she had been subject to these attacks
ever since she began to feel jealous of her husband.
Inquiring more closely, I found that, quite without
reason, she was specifically jealous of him in connec-
tion with a certain woman in the small town where
he carried on his business. Thereupon I advised him,

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JEALOUSY

for the sake of her health and his own peace of mind,
to remove to another town. This having been done,
her jealousy abated and the convulsive seizures
ceased.”

Of course, this mode of treatment—if treatment it
should be called—gave no guarantee that the jeal-
ousy and the consequent convulsions would not recur
under other circumstances. What the jealous wife
really needed was psychical re-education to give her
a saner philosophy of life, enabling her to get a
better grip on her emotions, and, through this, to
control better the workings of her nervous system.
Here we touch on what is far and away the most
important fact in the problem of jealousy—a fact
unappreciated by too many parents, and, for that
matter, likewise unappreciated by most writers on
the pedagogy of childhood.

This fact is that jealousy, being always an evi-
dence of uncontrollable emotionality, and itself serv-
ing still further to weaken emotional control, may,
and often does, give rise to functional mental and

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HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

nervous troubles. These may appear during child-
hood, or their appearance may be postponed until
adult life, as in the instance cited above. In either
event, their underlying cause is always the same:
failure to train the individual during early life to
react with calmness, courage, and moderation to the
stresses of existence.

In the case of a person of naturally phlegmatic
nervous constitution, lack of such training does not
do so much harm, for the reason that excessive emo-
tional reactions are unlikely to occur, no matter
what the provocation. But when there is any marked
degree of sensitiveness in the nervous organisation—
as there usually is in our land: Americans being con-
spicuously of the so-called nervous temperament—
the need for training in emotional control becomes
imperative. In the case of persons who have inher-
ited any tendency to nervous ailments, persons bur-
dened with what is technically known as a neuro-
pathic diathesis, absence of this training may be
disastrous.

[ 106 ]
JEALOUSY

Parents, accordingly, will make no mistake in re-
garding any persistent manifestation of jealousy in
their children as—like sulkiness—a danger-signal of
real urgency and as indicating a special need for
careful upbringing. Also, they should not be sur-
prised if jealousy begins to show itself at an ex-
tremely early age. Some instances are on record of
its appearance before the end of the first year.
The naturalist Darwin noted its presence in his son
at the age of fifteen and a half months. Arnold L.
Gesell, one of the few scientists to make any ex-
tended research of jealousy, found that “ infants
will variously hold out their arms, fret, whine, or
burst into violent crying, cover their face with their
hands, or sulk, when their mothers caress or hold
another baby.” From the end of the second year
jealousy is much in evidence, and is most variously
motivated.

Commonest of all, perhaps, is the jealousy occa-
sioned by the advent of a little brother or sister,
who is looked upon as a rival for the parents’ affec-

[ 107 ]
HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

tions. Or jealousy may be felt against one of the
parents, little boys being frequently jealous of their
fathers, and little girls of their mothers. Seemingly,
they are unable to tolerate the love their parents feel
for each other and would monopolise the affection
of the parent of whom they are fonder. Again,
there may be jealousy, sometimes of a violent sort,
with regard to material possessions. Greatly to the
profit of toy-makers, innumerable children have
broken their toys to pieces in jealous rage at another
child having been allowed to play with them. So,
too, there may be jealousy with regard to food. A
child will often eat food of which he is not really
desirous, rather than see another gain pleasure
from it.

As the child grows older, other objects and situa-
tions cause in him the unpleasant reaction of jeal-
ousy. On this point—the shifting causes of jealousy,
through later childhood into adolescence—I cannot
do better than quote at some length the findings of
Professor M. V. O’Shea, of the University of Wis-

[ 108 }
JEALOUSY

consin, as given in his “Social Development and
Education,” a book of great value to parents and
teachers:

“The jealous attitude is manifested most strik-
ingly in children from the fifth year on, in situations
where competitors seek to exalt themselves in the
eyes of those who have favours to distribute, or where
the deeds and virtues of rivals are extolled by out-
siders. Let K. begin to describe in the family circle
some courageous or faithful deed he has performed,
or painful experience he has endured, or duties he
has discharged, and C., his natural rival, will at once
seek to minimise the importance of the particular
act for which praise is sought, so that K. may not
be too highly thought of. Then C. will endeavour
to attract attention to his own worth by describing
more meritorious deeds which he has himself per-
formed. He cannot easily submit to the attempts of
his rival to gain the admiration of the company be-
fore whom he wishes to exhibit himself. But it is
different in situations where K. and C. are united

[ 109 ]
HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

in their interests, in opposition to other groups.
Then C. is glad to reinforce the testimony of K.
regarding his valorous deeds; and the principle
works in just the same way when C. is seeking for
favour, and K. is the jealous witness or the faithful
, comrade.

‘It must be impressed that jealousy is an atti-
tude assumed only by individuals in those situations
in which they are competing for the same favours.
Two children may be intensely jealous in their own
homes; but they may abandon this attitude abso-
lutely when they go into the world and compete as a
unit with other groups. Normally, the jealousies
between members of a family tend to disappear in
the measure that their interests broaden, and they
form new connections in the world. That is to say,
according as persons cease to be keen rivals, they
tend either to become indifferent to the successes of
one another, or they may even rejoice in the good
fortune of each other, and lose no opportunity to
celebrate one another’s virtues and merits. This

[ 110 ]
JEALOUSY

latter stage is not reached, however, until rivalry,
and so conflict, wholly ceases, and the contestants
come to appreciate that their interests are mutual,
and each can help himself best by extolling the other.
This is frequently seen in adult life, especially in
political and professional partnerships. .

“As a general principle, the smaller the group
of individuals who are in competition with one an-
other, and the narrower the range of their interests,
the more intense will be the jealous attitudes devel-
oped. As the group increases in membership and
their interests and activities become more varied,
particular competitors normally come to occupy a
less and less important place in any one individual’s
attention. It is as though the energy which in a re-
stricted situation finds an outlet in one channel,
perhaps, is discharged through various channels
when the circle of persons and the range of interests
to be reacted upon are enlarged. It is probable that
most strictly social attitudes become less pronounced,
though they are likely to become more habitual,

[111]
HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

according as the occasions which call them forth are
multiplied.

“This principle has an interesting application to
the child when he enters school. His new personal
environment makes such demands upon his attention
and energy, in order that he may take the first steps
in adjustment thereto, that the jealous attitudes are
not aroused for some time, though they are liable to
appear as he begins to feel at home in the new group.
The beginner is usually in the learning or adaptive
attitude; he is never, at the outset, resentful towards
individuals in the group who may secure greater
attention than himself from the teacher or his asso-
ciates. The novice in school seeks, above everything
else, to win the favour of those who, for any reason,
are prominent in the group. He does not normally
oppose his personality to that of any one who stands
well with the crowd, or who has the support of tradi-
tion in his particular expressions. .

“ As the child grows to feel at ease in adjustment
to the situations presented in the school, he com-

[ 112 ]
JEALOUSY

mences to assume attitudes of disapproval, as well as
approval, of the expressions of his associates, and
even of the teacher. In due course—often by the
fourth year in school, possibly earlier—he begins to
manifest some feeling of jealousy towards those of
his group who attain greater prominence in the work
of the school than he does himself. However, accord-
ing to the observations of the present writer, this
feeling is not a dominant one at any period in the
elementary school, except in the case of particular
children who are displeased at any distinction in
recitations or in conduct attained by their class-
mates.

“In the fourth grade of a certain elementary
school of a Western city there are three backward
boys who have been in this grade for two years,
though they are bright enough in the things of the
street. They are in a more or less hostile attitude
towards all that goes on in the schoolroom, probably
because they cannot succeed in it themselves, and so
they would like to escape from it or destroy it. Now,

[113]
HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

they make it unpleasant, so far as they are able, for
all the boys in the grade who apply themselves to
their tasks and get ‘good marks.’ On the play-
ground these dullards * pick on’ the ‘ bright’ boys;
and in the school they. ridicule them by ‘ snickering’
at them, or ‘ making faces’ at them, and so on, with
the result that they deter some boys from doing their
best in the schoolroom. ‘These same three ill-ad-
justed boys will make fun of their mates who come
to school ‘ dressed up in fine togs.? They are them-
selves attired in plain clothes suited to the rough
experience of the street, and they resent the adop-
tion of different styles by any of their associates.
Further, they show jealous feeling towards boys
who come from ‘better’ homes than their own, or
from more ‘ aristocratic ’ parts of the city. .

* Tt will not be necessary here to do more than to
mention the chief incitement to jealousy after the
beginning of the adolescent upheaval, and lasting
well on into middle life. The testimony of autobiog-
raphers, as well as the observations of psychologists,

[114 ]
JEALOUSY

indicates that rivalry for sex favours gives rise to
most of the jealous attitudes of the adolescent up
until full maturity is reached. Often, no doubt, it is
the main cause of the jealousies of some people
throughout their lives; but, normally, other and
more general interests become stronger and more
vital as maturity is approached. But, from the age
of fifteen or sixteen on to twenty-five, or beyond,
the sex needs and interests are supreme, and the
individual is sensitive to sex relations above all
others. No pain is so keen at this time as that which
arises from slight or indifference from persons of
the opposite sex, and no experience will stir an indi-
vidual so deeply as that which threatens to deprive
him of the exclusive possession of the affections of
the one he loves.”

Whatever the cause, I repeat, parents should never
delay in combating repeated manifestations of jeal-
ousy, in order to make sure of preventing possible
acts of extreme violence, subtle distortions of char-
acter that may persist through life, and neurotic

[115 ]
HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

maladies of gradual or rapid development. To bring
home concretely to every parent who happens to
read these lines the danger menacing his own jealous
child in this last respect, I cannot do better than
cite from real life a few instances of nervous trouble
directly and demonstrably due to jealousy.

An eminent neurologist had for a patient a
young girl whose illness took the form of frenzied,
almost maniacal, outbreaks. It was necessary at
times to control her forcibly, and the fear of her
family was that she was on the highway to insanity,
if she were not already insane. The neurologist
noticed that she became most violent when her
mother approached her bed. She would then cry out,
strike at her mother, and wildly order her to leave
the room. The mother was in despair at this be-
haviour, assuring the neurologist that she could not
account for it, as she had always treated her daugh-
ter most affectionately—a statement which other
relatives corroborated.

To get to the bottom of this mystifying case, the

[ 116 ]
JEALOUSY

neurologist determined to make use of what is known
as the method of dream-analysis. This method has,
as a fundamental principle, the theory that most
dreams, especially the dreams of childhood, repre-
sent the imaginary fulfilment of wishes which cannot
be, or have not been, realised in the waking life. In
the present instance, the application of dream-analy-
sis proved most helpful. It showed that, asleep no
less than when awake, the girl’s mind was occupied
with ideas unfavourable to her mother, and was domi-
nated by a wish that her mother were dead. This
was indicated by a number of dreams, in some of
which she saw herself and her sisters dressed in
mourning, while in others she was attending the
funeral of women who resembled her mother.
Quite evidently a mental conflict was in progress,
the girl sufficiently appreciating the sinfulness of the
death-wish to resist its full emergence into conscious-
ness, even during sleep. But its presence and per-
sistence, as revealed by the dreams, made it clear to
the physician that he was dealing, not with actual
[117 ]
HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

insanity, but with a case of hysteria motivated by
jealousy of the mother. Further analysis disclosed
an abnormal fondness for the father, in whose affec-
tions the little daughter wished to reign alone.

Sometimes the hysteria traceable to jealousy pre-
sents symptoms ingeniously calculated to compel
sympathetic attention from the parent who other-
wise would continue to divide his or her affections
in a manner displeasing to the jealous child. Thus,
a small boy became subject to attacks of severe bod-
ily pain, which came on, usually, at night, and were
relieved only when his mother took him to bed with
her, sending his father to sleep in another room. In
this case, and in similar cases that have been studied
by medical specialists, it is not a question of con-
scious deceit. The pain or other hysterical symptom
is wholly the result of the sentiment of jealousy hav-
ing so worked on the mind of a neurotically predis-
posed child as to cause a subconscious fabrication
of symptoms certain to gain loving care.

Likewise, some children, and particularly children

[118]
JEALOUSY

of an inferior mentality or those handicapped by
physical defects responsible for a seeming or real
neglect of them by parents and playmates, will,
under the influence of jealousy, become so disturbed
nervously as to indulge in eccentricities of conduct,
having for their object the compelling of the atten-
tion they feel they have been denied. For example,
jealousy often is at the root of the pathological
lying of neurotic children, who, on occasion, do not
hesitate to bring outrageous charges against inno-
cent persons. Their purpose is not to injure these
persons; they tell their morbid lies simply because
they wish to become objects of interested and sympa-
thetic attention. For the same reason, other jeal-
ousy-dominated children sometimes concoct elaborate
deceptions, notably in the way of what are called
“ poltergeist ’ performances.

From time to time newspapers report stories of
haunted houses, in which small articles of furniture
and bric-d-brac are flung about by mischievous
ghosts—hence the name “ poltergeists ’—that re-

[119]
HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

main invisible. When investigation is made, the
“ ghost ” usually turns out to be a small boy or girl,
who frequently is regarded as being merely a naughty
child, and is punished accordingly. This is a mis-
take. It is not naughtiness, but hysteria. And, not
infrequently, it is hysteria brought on by jealousy.’

President Hall, of Clark University, who has made
a special study of children’s lies, fittingly comments:

“ Without knowing it, these hysterical girls feel
disinherited and robbed of their birthright. Their
bourgeoning woman’s instinct to be the centre of
interest and admiration bursts all bounds, and they
speak and act out things which with others would
be only secret reverie. Thus they can not only be
appreciated but wondered at; can almost become
priestesses, pythonesses, maenads, and set their
mates, neighbours, or even great savants agog and
agape, while they have their fling at life, reckless of
consequences. Thus they can be of consequence,

1In my ‘Psychology and Parenthood” pp. 223-227, will be
found the details of a typical poltergeist performance.

[ 120 ]
JEALOUSY

respected, observed, envied, perhaps even studied.
So they defy their fate and wreak their little souls
upon experience with abandon and have their su-
preme satisfaction for a day, impelled to do so by
blind instinct which their intellect is too undeveloped
to restrain. And all this because their actual life is
so dull and empty.” *

Nor does the mischief done by jealousy in the case
of nervously inclined children stop here. It is par-
ticularly important for parents to know that there
may be a postponement of its evil effects. That is,
though the jealous child, while a child, may not show
more than a general nervousness and may seemingly
outgrow his jealousy without ill effect, it is entirely
possible that in later life mental or nervous troubles
may appear as a result of the subconscious retention
of the jealous notions that have long since vanished
from conscious remembrance. I might cite a number
of instances strikingly illustrative of this, but will be
content with giving only one—the case of a man

1‘ Educational Problems,” vol. i, p. 363.

[121 ]
HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

about thirty years old, who did not dare go outdoors
because he was obsessed by a fear that he would kill
the first person he met in the street.

“My life,” he told the physician whose aid he
sought, “is one long torment. There are days when
I have myself locked in my room, as I cannot venture
on the street with the murderous longings that fill
my mind. I spend much of my time planning alibis
to escape the consequences of the murder I feel sure
I shall commit. Is there any hope for me, short of
imprisonment in an asylum for the dangerously
insane? ”

This man, as his answers to the specialist’s ques-
tions made clear, was actually of a splendid charac-
ter and highly cultured. His one peculiarity was
this dangerous obsession. Psychological analysis to
trace its origin was undertaken, and led back to his
childhood. It had, as the setting giving it force and
keeping it alive, a deep-seated jealousy of his father,
experienced before the age of seven. More specifi-
cally, it originated in a murderous wish, entertained

[ 122]
JEALOUSY

one day when father and son were walking together,
to push his father from a mountain-top into an
abyss. The child had at once recognised that this
wish was wicked. He had violently repressed it, had
tried to forget it, and had seemingly succeeded in
doing so. But in his neurotic subconsciousness it
had remained alive, to incubate and grow, until it
finally blossomed into the murderous and pain-
fully persistent obsession against people in gen-
eral.

wes Surely, it is worth while to watch for and eradicate
jealousy in childhood. Surely, too, it is worth while
to develop emotional control in your children while
they still are very young, and to avoid giving reason a
for jealousy by showing a real neglect in satisfying
their natural craving for sympathy and love. On
the other hand, it is equally important to avoid being
over-attentive to them. This, as brought out in de-
tail in the second chapter, is the great danger to
be feared when there is only one child in the family,
the exuberance of the parental love filling the child

[ 123 ] ,
HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

with exaggerated ideas of his own importance that
are sure to be rudely jostled when he comes into
contact with other children.

From these other children, as from his school
teachers and casual visitors to his home, he will un-
consciously demand the adulation shown by his par-
ents. Failing to receive it, jealousy is all too apt
to seize him, and, out of jealousy, nervous symptoms
or character kinks are a probable result—symptoms
and kinks which may, perhaps, never be entirely
overcome.

What, then, is the moral of all this? What prac-
tical suggestions may be made that will help parents
to cope with the problem of children’s jealousy?
For one thing, and most important, there must be no
showing of favouritism, if you have more than one
child. By your whole attitude towards your chil-
dren you must make plain to them that each one
ought to be, and is, equally dear to you. Of course,
however, this does not mean that you should go to
the foolish extreme of some parents, who carry the

[ 124 ]
JEALOUSY

principle of equality so far as to give identical pres-
ents to their children. This does not serve as a cor-
rective and preventive of jealousy; rather, it simply
panders to it, and is, at bottom, a confession of help-
lessness on the parents’ part.
/ The real need is to give your children a home en-
vironment of such a character that the instinct of |
human sympathy will be highly developed in them.
Jealousy has its roots in selfishness, in an over-devel-
opment of what may be called the ego-centric in-’
stinct. The jealous child is pre-eminently a child
unduly occupied with thoughts of self. His personal
desires and his personal interests are of paramount
importance to him, just because he has not been
taught that the one truly self-satisfying ideal of life
is to find joy in bringing joy to others. To be sure,
he cannot be taught this by direct instruction when
he is very small. But indirectly, through the subtle
force of suggestion, he can be taught it even then, if
he is given a good parental example.
His parents themselves, not merely to prevent the
[ 125 ]
HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

budding of the sentiment of jealousy, but for the
sake of the child’s moral education in general, must
set him an example of unselfishness. In their rela-
tions with each other, with their friends, with casual
visitors to their home, they must maintain an altru-
istic, rather than an ego-centric, attitude. Showing
true love for their child, they must—and this is
especially necessary in the case of an only child—
cause the child unconsciously to realise that he is
not, and should not be, the sole object of their
thoughts ; that they have other interests, other duties
in life. Unless he is constitutionally abnormal, a
child brought up in such an atmosphere of general,
self-forgetting kindliness is almost certain to acquire
the same healthy philosophy of life that his parents
have—a philosophy inimical to jealousy in every
form.

As an aid to the same end, it is important to begin,
at as early a time as possible, to train the child to
occupy his mind actively with games and studies of
educational significance. It is a fact which scarcely

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JEALOUSY

needs demonstration that the child in whom love of
study and interest in subjects of study are developed
at an early age will be a child unlikely to become un-
healthily occupied with thoughts of himself. He
will have too many and too strong external interests
to have either time or desire for morbid self-com-
muning.

In fine, you may set this down as certain: the
more you inspire in your children external interests
in play and work, doing this partly by direct teach-
ing and partly by setting them an example of indus-
trious activity, the less reason you will have to fear
that they will fall victims to the handicap of jealousy
or to the nervous maladies resultant from any
form of excessive preoccupation with thoughts of
self.

If, however, despite your best efforts, your child
. does develop jealous characteristics in marked de-
. gree, the safest and wisest thing you can do is to
' take him at once to a good specialist in the treat-
ment of mental and nervous troubles. It may be

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HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

that the jealousy is only the resultant of some unsus-
pected error of his upbringing, but it may also be
symptomatic of some serious disorder requiring care-
ful medical treatment.

[ 128 ]
vV
SELFISHNESS

= EALOUSY,” I stated a few pages back, “ has
its roots in selfishness, in an over-develop-

ment of what may be called the ego-centric
~instinct.” Aside from its réle as a developer of
jealousy, selfishness is indeed one of the major handi- |
caps of childhood. Moralists have long urged on
parents the importance of early training to prevent
their children from becoming selfish, They have
rightly pictured selfishness as among the greatest of
human blemishes, giving character an ugly twist and
making impossible that harmonious adjustment with
other people which is indispensable to individual
happiness and social progress. But it is not merely
to be condemned from the moralist’s point of view: it

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HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

also is to be condemned from the physician’s. Selfish-

ness does much more than injure character: it may

even ruin the health of those afflicted with it. To -

put the matter briefly, training against selfishness is
imperative in early life, if only as a safeguard against
the functional nervous and mental maladies so com-
mon to-day.

When parents fail to teach their children to con-
trol their emotions; when they foster in them exag-
gerated notions of their importance by giving way
to the children in everything, being over-solicitous
about them, performing duties for them which the
children should early be taught to perform for them-
selves, selfishness is an almost inevitable outgrowth.
The children, in addition, may become quite unfitted
to cope with the stresses of existence. And they may
further become so psychically disorganised that, if
after a time they no longer find themselves always
having their own way, there may develop nervous
symptoms which not merely are the product of an
inner emotional storm, but are strangely designed to

[ 132 ]

s
SELFISHNESS

fulfil the nervous one’s latent wish to remain the
centre of interest and influence. Or, more bluntly
stated, nervous attacks frequently are sheer mani-
festations of selfishness. It is selfishness that gives
rise to them, and, though the victim may not be at
all conscious of the fact, they represent an abnormal
effort of the personality to attain selfish ends.

This is not theory. It is an established truth, and
is demonstrable from the case-histories of many
nervous patients, adults and children alike. And,
with increasing use of the most advanced methods of
mental analysis, the influence of selfishness in causing
nervous ailments is certain to become more widely
appreciated than it is at present. Not that selfish-
ness is the causal factor in all nervous cases. It
would be absurdly false to assert anything of the
kind, but the proportion of cases in which it does
figure is astonishingly high. Parents need to know
this; they need to recognise that failure to curb
selfishness during the formative period of childhood
may mean nervous wreckage, as well as the distort-

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HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

ing of character. In the case of a child of so-called
“nervous temperament ”—a child, that is to say,
who begins life with an unstable nervous organisation
by reason of inherited weaknesses—nervous wreck-
age is almost certain to be the result of neglect to
take precautions against the growth of selfishness.
The full effects of parental neglect in this regard
may not be visible for many years, but frequently
they become disconcertingly evident while the child
stillis young. A case reported to me by a well-known
American neurologist and psychopathologist is de-
cidedly to the point in this connection, and may well
be given in some detail.

It is the case of a girl of fourteen who was brought
to the neurologist because of nervous symptoms
which took the form of periods of anxiety and depres-
sion, alternating with outbreaks of great irritability.
The girl, her mother stated, seemed to have lost
interest in everything. At times she would sit mourn-
fully weeping; at others, fall into a passion for no
apparent reason. More than once she had declared

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SELFISHNESS

that she wanted to die. She could not, or would
not, give any explanation of this most singular
behaviour.

Making a diagnosis of functional, rather than
organic, disease, the neurologist resorted to dream-
analysis to get at the hidden causes of trouble. At
his request, the girl related several dreams, all of
which had the noticeable peculiarity that in them
the dreamer herself was, to an unusual extent, the
dominant figure of the dream-action. Another strik-
ing feature of her dreams was that many of them
had to do with imaginary experiences of a painful
character befalling either the dreamer’s father or
her brother. Mindful of the theory that dreams are
directly or indirectly representative of secret wishes,
the neurologist questioned his little patient about her
family life. She frankly admitted that she disliked
her father, and was not overfond of her brother.
She disliked the father—or, as she vehemently said,
“hated ” him—because he scolded her. Her coldness
towards her brother arose from the fact that her

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HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

mother had fallen into the habit of tactlessly holding
him up as a model of good behaviour.

“I love my mother, though,” she added, “ because
she is good to me, and generally lets me do what I
want.”

Summoning the mother to a private conference,
the physician learned that,-from early childhood, his
patient had been very obstinate and self-willed. Her
mother, through mistaken affection, had pampered
her. She had literally made herself a slave to the
daughter, even to the extent of giving up evening
engagements that she might sit by her daughter’s
bed, gently stroking her head until she fell asleep.

“She cannot sleep unless I do this,” said the
mother, “ and though I have lately tried to discon-
tinue it, I cannot, because she cries and shrieks until
I come to her.”

To the neurologist the situation was now perfectly
clear. The daughter’s nervous symptoms were mani-
festly the not surprising reaction of a personality
untrained in emotional control and unexpectedly con-

[136 ]
SELFISHNESS

fronted by a novel and painful state of affairs—the
mother’s half-hearted attempt to break away from
her self-imposed slavery. However, it would hardly
do to tell the mother that her early mismanagement
of the child was responsible for the neurotic condition
which had developed, and that this neurotic condi-
tion was, in reality, only a subconsciously originated
device to reassert the daughter’s waning authority
over her mother. What the neurologist did say was:

** Madam, if you want your daughter to get well,
you must at once stop this practice of stroking her
to sleep. I must ask you to begin to-night. Send
your daughter to her room, leave her in bed, shut
and lock the door, and let her shriek. This may seem
hard and cruel, but it is actually a greater kindness
than a continuance of the stroking would be. It is,
indeed, a first and necessary step in her cure.”

The mother obeyed. For two nights the house re-
sounded with the girl’s cries. The third night she
went to bed and to sleep without a protest. Then
the physician once more sent for the mother.

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HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

“You are soon leaving town for the summer, I
understand,” he said. “ What are you going to do
with your daughter? ”

“ Why, take her with us, of course.”

You must do nothing of the sort. Instead, send
her to a girls’ camp. She needs contact with other
girls; she needs the discipline such contact will give
her. It is far and away the best medicine she can
have. Her recovery depends solely on her developing
a new point of view, a mental outlook that will ex-
tend beyond herself. This is what a good camp for
girls can give her.”

The outcome vindicated his words. That fall the
nervously depressed girl came back from a summer in
camp radiantly happy and with a vastly altered dis-
position. Since then her parents have had no trouble
with her.

Please, however, understand clearly that she was
really a sick girl when her mother took her to my
neurological friend. It was not simply a question
of dealing with a “naughty ” girl. The depression,

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SELFISHNESS

the tears, the attacks of irritability were not deliber-
ately put on to excite sympathy and to play on the
mother’s affections. This assuredly was their basic
purpose, but they were the product of subconscious,
not conscious, mental action. They were the result-
ant of an emotional stress, the responsibility for
which rested not with the girl herself but with her
mother’s unwise treatment of her. If she had be-
come neurotic, it was because her mother had made
her so. What she needed, and all she needed, was
psychic re-education, and this she obtained through
the neurologist’s common-sense method of cure.

The fact that such cases are indicative, not of
mere naughtiness, but of the action of an inner force
operating independently of the victim’s conscious
volition, will become more apparent when I add that
sometimes the symptoms causing medical aid to be in-
voked are physical instead of mental. In one typical
case of this sort a neurologist was summoned to ex-
amine a small boy who had been attacked by a pecu-
liar weakness of the legs. To all appearance, he was

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HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

in perfect bodily health, but when he attempted to
walk his legs gave way, and he would fall, unless
quickly supported. The most careful testing failed
to reveal any organic cause for this condition, and a
diagnosis of juvenile hysteria was made. It was
learned that the boy’s trouble began soon after he
had met in the street a badly crippled, semi-paralysed
man, whose appearance had evidently made a deep
impression on his mind, as he spoke of it, when he
got home, in terms partly of astonishment and partly
of fear. There could be no doubt that the sight of
this man had acted as a “ suggestion” to cause the
development of a somewhat similar condition in the
boy himself. The question remained, why should
the mere seeing of a crippled man have sufficient sug-
gestive force to bring on an hysterical crippling?
For undoubtedly the boy must have had not a
few equally distressing experiences long before this
one.

On investigation it turned out that at the time
he saw the cripple he was under considerable mental

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SELFISHNESS

strain, A petted, spoiled child, he had rebelled
against being sent to school. He would much rather
stay home and play by himself or with his mother.
His parents’ desires in the matter were as nothing
to him: it was what he wanted that was the im-
portant thing. For once, though, the parents in-
sisted on being obeyed by their thoroughly selfish
boy. He had to go to school, and go to school he
did, until the hysterical paralysis set in. This
paralysis, of course, was somewhat inconvenient,
since it limited his opportunities for play, but it at
least had the advantage of keeping him from attend-
ing the school that he detested. The boy himself
was not in the slightest conscious of the part thus
played by selfish wishing in the development of his
diseased condition. He was really frightened at
finding himself unable to stand and walk. Never-
theless, so strong was his antipathy against school
that it was some time before the suggestion of paraly-
sis was broken down by appropriate psychothera-
peutic treatment.
[ 141 ]
HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

Other cases even more extraordinary are recorded
in medical annals. One “ spoiled child,” a little girl
not five years old, had a series of convulsive attacks,
following the unexpected refusal of her parents to
grant a request that involved risk to her if they
granted it. After the convulsions she was paralysed
in her lower limbs, and the parents, terrified, called
in an eminent specialist in nervous diseases. Fortu-
nately, the specialist recognised almost at once that
it was a case of hysterical paralysis, brought on by
lack of discipline and lack of training in emotional
control, and he obtained the parents’ permission to
isolate the little girl and treat her as he deemed
best. His treatment was harsh, but exceedingly
effective. For two days he starved the child, then
put a bowl of bread and milk some distance from her
bed. The suggestion of food was too strong for the
suggestion of paralysis. Without further ado, she
skipped nimbly out of bed and secured the bowl.
But the specialist did not reproach her for being a
naughty girl. His reproaches were for the parents,

[142]
SELFISHNESS

to whom he gave some greatly needed advice as to
her future upbringing.

Hysterical pains, contractures, swellings, even hys-
terical blindness, have been observed in children who,
after having been unduly indulged, feel that their
father or mother, as the case may be, is no longer
as attentive to and lenient with them as they would
like. More frequently, under such conditions, the
symptoms of nervousness are chiefly mental, or, if
physical, are confined to muscular twitchings, slight
involuntary movements of the face, head, hands,
and similar manifestations. Unhappily, the true
significance of these is often overlooked. They are
thought to be defects which the child will “ outgrow,” |
and in many cases they certainly are outgrown, to
all appearance. But, if the moral weaknesses under-
lying them—the self-centredness, the deficiency in
emotional control—are not in the meantime cor-
rected, at any crisis in adult life there is likely to
result a nervous breakdown or ,a serious attack of
hysteria. Indeed, in not a few cases of adult hys-

[ 143 ]
HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

teria, the causal agency of selfishness is unmistak-
ably in evidence to those accustomed to interpreting
nervous symptoms. There are plenty of men and
women whose chronic neuroticism is motivated by a
subconscious craving to be the centre of attraction,
or to be perpetually dominant in the family life.
There are other unfortunates who, when their will is
seriously crossed, take refuge, like the boys and girls
just mentioned, in various forms of nervous disease.
The curious experience of a New England physician,
Doctor A. Myerson, for some time connected with the
Boston Psychopathic Hospital, is by no means as
unique as might be thought.

This physician was summoned to attend a woman
suffering from what was supposed to be a cerebral
hemorrhage. She no longer was able to move her
right arm, right leg, or the right side of her face,
and had entirely lost the power of speech. For many
months previous to the onset of this deplorable condi-
tion she had been troubled at irregular intervals by
headaches, nausea, and fainting spells. The patient

[ 144 ]
SELFISHNESS
herself and her friends had little doubt that she was

in so serious a condition that recovery could not be
expected. But Doctor Myerson, making use of the
most up-to-date methods of neurological diagnosis,
soon was able to reach a reassuring verdict. It was
a case, he found, not of organic, but of functional
paralysis—in fine, a case of hysteria. And, in the
end, by employing what is technically known as the
method of “indirect suggestion,” he actually re-
educated the paralyzed woman both to walk and to
talk.

Meantime, he made a searching inquiry to ascer-
tain just why she had been stricken by hysterical
paralysis. He discovered, for one thing, that the
patient’s fainting and vomiting spells and her head-
aches had usually followed bitter quarrels with her
husband—and usually had the effect of placing vic-
tory on her side. There was one point, nevertheless,
on which the husband was immovable. He was a poor
man and could not grant his wife’s insistent demand
to move to a more expensive neighbourhood. He

[ 145 ]
HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

would not have granted it if he could, for in the par-
ticular neighbourhood to which she wished to move
she had friends whom he regarded as undesirable.
It appeared that the attack of paralysis and speech-
lessness had been preceded by an exceptionally bitter
quarrel over this question of moving—“ a quarrel
which,” to quote from Doctor Myerson’s report,
“had lasted for a whole day and into the night of
the attack.”

Thus, the attack itself could be correctly inter-
preted as the supreme effort of a self-centred, neu-
rotic personality to gain a desired end. But, while
making this interpretation, Doctor Myerson was
quick to add, in his report on the case, that the at-
tack had not by any means been brought on through
the patient’s “conscious purpose or volition.” It
was all an affair of her subconsciousness, working in
a blind, abnormal, irrational way to help attain the
object of her conscious desire. That her subcon-
sciousness should work so abnormally and so disas-
trously was chiefly due, beyond any doubt, to the

[ 146 ]
SELFISHNESS

absence of adequate training in self-control and emo-
tional restraint.

But it is not only as a strange, irrational mode of
fulfilling a wish that hysteria and other nervous dis-
orders may become manifest in selfish people. With-
out this element of wishing entering in at all, nerv-
ousness is particularly likely to attack the selfish.
Many nervous conditions are directly brought on by
conscious or subconscious fixing of the thoughts on
the bodily processes. We are so constituted that
our internal organs work best when we pay no atten-
tion to them—or, more strictly, when we pay no
attention to the physical sensations to which they
give rise while working. If, for any reason, our
attention is turned to and held on these sensations,
they at once become exaggerated, and the organs
giving rise to them tend to function badly. In this
way any bodily organ may be disturbed in its action,
and general symptoms of nervousness result through
nothing but over-attention.

An eminent New York physician, Doctor J. J.

[147]
HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

Walsh, who has given special thought to this aspect
of the problem of nervousness, states the case more
fully, as follows:

“If something has particularly attracted a pa-
tient’s attention to some part of his anatomy, and if
his attention is concentrated on it and allowed to
dwell long on it, his feelings may be so exaggerated as
to tempt him to think that they are connected with
some definite pathological condition, and he may even
translate them into serious portents of organic dis-
ease. If a patient once begins to waste nervous
energy on himself because of solicitude with regard to
these symptoms, then it will not be long before feel-
ings of tiredness, incapacity for work, at times in-
somnia and certain disturbances of memory, are
likely to be noted. Then the neurasthenic picture
seems to be complete.

“This is the process so picturesquely called
* short-circuiting,? by which nervous energy ex-
hausts itself upon the individual himself instead of
in the accomplishment of external work. Many of

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SELFISHNESS

the worst cases of so-called neurasthenia have their
origin in this process. It is true that this set of
events is much more likely to occur among people of
lowered nervous vitality, but, under certain condi-
tions, it may develop in those who are otherwise in
good health up to the moment when the attention
happened to be particularly called to certain feel-
ings. The physician can start these patients off
anew, after improving their physical condition, if he
can only bring them to see how much their concentra-
tion of mind upon themselves is the cause of their
symptoms.

Now, of all people likely to be thus afflicted, the

selfish man or woman is by all means the likeliest,

oo 1

simply because his or her every mode of thinking
revolves about self. It is the selfish man’s wishes, his
pleasures, his grievances, his reverses, that are of
supreme importance to him. When, moreover, his
early upbringing has been such as to leave him sadly
short in emotional control, any passing disturbance
1 ““Psychotherapy,” pp. 559-560.
[ 149 ]
HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

in the workings of his internal organs may easily
hold disastrous consequences for him. He worries
over little ailments—as, for example, a slight attack
of indigestion—to which people of less self-centred
nature would give little or no thought. And, by his
persistent worrying and his persistent over-attention
to the way his stomach works, it may not be long
before he has become a victim of chronic nervous
dyspepsia.

Of course, unselfish people who are lacking in
emotional control, or carry about with them the
unassimilated memory of childhood emotional shocks,
may likewise become nervous invalids of one sort or
another. But they are much less likely to do this
than selfish people are, if only because the unselfish
are not so eternally occupied with themselves. They
have externalised their thoughts; they have neither
time nor inclination to think about trivial aches and
pains. Unless overwhelmed by an unexpected emo-
tional shock—for instance, by the sudden death of a
beloved relative or by the shock of some great fright

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SELFISHNESS

—they are likely to go through life comfortably and
normally enough. On the other hand, the selfish
person is always in danger of becoming morbidly |
introspective, with resultant damage to the function- ;
ing of his nervous system.

Besides all this, there is the important considera-
tion that to be selfish means to be unhappy. Even
if actual nervous ailments of a serious sort are
escaped by the selfish, unhappiness in the social rela-
tions and in the family relations is certain to be ex-
perienced. It is my firm belief that, more than any
other single cause, selfishness is responsible for mis-
understandings and increasing bitterness between
husband and wife, ending all too often in a break-
down of the sacred institution of marriage. To deal
successfully with that dread problem of to-day—the
divorce evil—we must, I submit, first appreciate how
basic in marriage failure is the factor of selfishness.
To this theme I now invite the attention of my
parent-readers, for it is a theme of particular interest
to them. If I am correct, it is through education

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HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

for marriage and, most of all, through education
against selfishness that the divorce problem can most
surely be solved.

What a problem it is! And a problem that has
been steadily growing in seriousness. In the twenty
years from 1867 to 1886, according to figures com-
piled by the United States Census Bureau, 328,716
divorces were granted throughout the country. In
the next twenty years—that is, from 1887 to 1906—
divorces aggregated the enormous total of 945,625.
In other words, in a period of only twenty years
nearly two million men and women in the United
States had their marriage ties legally severed, the
break-up being at the rate of about one hundred and
thirty divorces a day.

And this increase has been progressively growing
year after year. In 1867 there were only 9,937
divorces for the entire country. In 1906 no fewer
than 72,012 divorces were granted. Four years ago
an unofficial estimate put the annual divorce crop
at nearly one hundred thousand, or, roughly, one

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SELFISHNESS

hundred divorces for every one hundred thousand of
population. The same estimate indicated that one
marriage in every twelve ends in divorce.

Nor do these figures afford a complete view of the
extent to which marital infelicity obtains in the
United States. Every year thousands of marriages
virtually, or actually, terminate without recourse to
the courts. Men and women who have entered into
the marriage state really in love with each other,
develop so-called “incompatibilities of tempera-
ment ” which transform love into indifference, even
hate. Reluctant to seek divorce—perhaps conscien-
tiously opposed to it—they continue to live together,
husband and wife in name only, or they arrange a
voluntary separation. Many others escape from
what they have come to regard as an intolerable yoke
by the easy expedient of desertion, not necessarily
followed by court proceedings. It is impossible to
give exact figures, but unquestionably the number of
marriages which collapse in divorce is a compara-
tively small proportion of all unhappy marriages.

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HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

Taking the increase in divorce, however, as a con-
crete, definite measure of marriage failure, the prob-
lem of explanation and remedy remains obviously and
sufficiently urgent. And it must be said that as a
rule the offered solutions are either evasive or super-
ficial.

Some investigators, despairing of finding any solu-
tion, insist that the increase in divorce is an unavoid-
able product of the complex, strenuous life of modern
civilisation. Others, much of the same mind, advo-
cate “ trial marriages ” as a palliative. Still others,
singularly lacking in courtesy, or of a myopic vision
so far as women are concerned, throw the blame on
the “ feminist movement,” on the increasing emanci-
pation of woman from her old-time position of slavish
inferiority. Finally, there are investigators who,
noting that the increase in divorce has steadily been
gaining momentum since the Civil War, attribute
this to the difference in economic conditions before
and after the war. In effect, they say that there are
more divorces because the country is wealthier, the

[154]
SELFISHNESS

inference being that increased national prosperity
has had an unsettling effect on the national life.

That this contention is sound cannot be gainsaid ;
but it does not go deep enough. Of itself, it no more
explains the increase in divorce than it does the in-
crease in crime and the increase in mental and nerv-
ous disease, equally in evidence since the Civil War.
These, too, there is warrant for affirming, have in-
creased because of changed economic conditions. It
remains, however, to ascertain the precise factor or
factors brought into operation by this economic
change to account for the growth in crime, insanity,
nervous troubles, and divorce. And, in this connec-
tion, it is most interesting and important to observe
that, so far as concerns crime, insanity, and nervous
troubles, recent research has made clear exactly why
there has been an increase and how this may best
be checked.

It is now recognised that, psychologically speaking,
crime, insanity, and nervousness represent an imper-
fect adaptation to the environment in which the

[ 155 |
HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

criminal, the lunatic, or the nervous person lives.
This failure of adaptation may be due either to in-
born lack of capacity to meet the requirements of the
environment, or to lack of proper training.

Not so many years ago it was the consensus of
scientific opinion that in most cases of crime, insan-
ity. and nervousness the victim was hopelessly handi-
capped from the start by the nature of his being.
There was much talk of “inherited criminality,”
“congenital brain defects,” and “ neuropathic in-
heritance.” But observation and experiment have
compelled an almost complete abandonment of this
doctrine of fatal degeneration. To-day scientists
largely hold that not more than 1 or 2 per cent. of
criminals can be stigmatised as criminals by birth;
that insanity is not inheritable, like eye-colour or
hair-colour; and that nervousness is, at bottom, an
acquired, rather than inherited, disorder.

Accordingly, if crime, insanity, and nervousness
are on the increase, it follows that faults of training,
rather than innate and unescapable tendencies, are

[ 156 ]
SELFISHNESS

the responsible factors. More specifically, crime, in-
sanity, and nervousness have increased because no
adequate effort has been made, by appropriate train-
ing, to fit the individual to withstand the extra strain
put upon him by the economic changes of the past
half century.

Still further, modern scientific research has dis-
covered the specific training fault which, more than
anything else, accounts for the failure in adaptation.
Stated briefly, this fault consists in neglect to de-
velop moral and emotional control during the first
years of life.

In the case of criminality it has been proved, by
repeated experiment tried on a large scale,’ that
even the descendants of a long line of criminals, if
carefully trained in early childhood, will lead upright
lives. In the case of insanity, the discovery that
the three principal causes of mental disease are ex-
cessive indulgence in alcohol, sexual indiscretions,

‘and emotional stress, points directly to the impor-
1 See “Psychology and Parenthood,” pp. 8-18.

[ 157]
HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

tance of training, aimed at the development of moral
control. But most impressive, as emphasising the
need for beginning this training at an early age, is
the evidence accumulated in the case of those func-
tional maladies, hysteria, neurasthenia, and psy-
chasthenia—evidence which we have already dis-
cussed in much detail in these pages.

Study the history of every case of “ nervous break-
down,” of psychasthenic fear, of hysterical anxiety
and disabilities, of neurasthenic aches and pains, and
there will always be found a background of emotional
intensity and self-centredness, persisting from early
childhood. Hence, the demand of the modern neu-
rologist and medical psychologist for training in
youth that will foster control of the emotions and
that will habituate the individual to forget self in
useful activities. ‘“ The mind occupied with external
interests will have neither time nor inclination to
feed upon itself.”

If, therefore, the one sure check to the increase in
crime, insanity, and nervous disorders is moral train-

[ 158 ]
SELFISHNESS

ing in early life, can it be doubted that the same
process offers the strongest means of checking the
tendency to flood the divorce courts?

Ninety-nine divorces out of every hundred, it is
safe to say, result from errors of thinking and liv-
ing—errors directly traceable to shortcomings in
early training. Selfishness and lack of control—
these, I insist, are the usual elements out of whic
divorces grow. And what are these but bad habits,
for which good habits might have been substituted
had proper precautions been taken by the parents in
the plastic, formative period of youth? Even in
respect to the sexual phase of marriage—that phase
in which so many marriages come to grief—the
trouble, when trouble occurs, may, in most cases, be
wholly attributed to parental thoughtlessness or
ignorance. On the sexual side, as on all sides of
married life, the great need is for education for
marriage.

It is not my intention here to go into details. It
must suffice to say that investigation has shown that

'[ 159 J
HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

the sexual impulse begins to manifest itself in sundry
ways far earlier than most parents appreciate, and
that unless care is taken to observe and offset eccen-
tricities of behaviour possibly containing a sexual
element, permanent harm may result.

For example, there often is a sexual element in the
cruelty with which not a few children treat play-
fellows or household pets. The exaggerated affec-
tion little boys sometimes display for their mothers,
and little girls for their fathers, is to-day likewise
regarded by many medical psychologists as a sexual
signal calling for educational measures to insure a
more even distribution of affection for both parents.
These same psychologists insist that at the first
obvious signs of interest in sexual matters—as when
the child begins to ask questions about his origin—he
should be given frank, if tactful, elementary instruc-
tion in the facts of sex. Recall the quotation pre-
viously made from Havelock Ellis in this connection.
Evasive or untruthful answers will not do. They
only fix the attention more strongly on the subject,

[ 160 ]
SELFISHNESS

and from this fixing of the attention a dangerously
morbid interest in things sexual may develop.
Clearly, parents who would do their full duty by
their children have no easy task before them. Yet
everything combines to show that unless they make
a business of parenthood—and, in especial, unless,
by direct instruction and the force of good example,
they develop in their children the virtues of self-con-
trol and self-forgetfulness—the after lives of those
children, when themselves married, will be anything
but happy, and may, in addition, be lives marred by
some form of serious nervous or mental disturbance.

[161 ]
BASHFULNESS AND INDECISION
VI
BASHFULNESS AND INDECISION

OCTOR W. BECHTEREW, a distin-
guished Russian physician, was one day
visited by a man of extraordinary ap-

pearance. Cheap and shabby clothing fitted the vis-
itor’s gaunt frame badly; his gait was shuffling; his
whole form and manner testified pathetically to an
overwhelming burden of poverty, anxiety, and dread.
But what was most remarkable about him was a pair
of enormous black spectacles, giving a horribly gro-
tesque aspect to his pallid, bearded face. It was
with difficulty that Doctor Bechterew concealed the
astonishment he felt and courteously inquired what
he could do for his strange visitor.

“T have come,” was the hesitating, almost stam-

[ 165 ]
HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

mering, reply, “in the hope that you can cure me of
my bashfulness.”

“ Your bashfulness? ” repeated the physician, with
a quizzical, but kindly, smile. “Is that all that
troubles you? ”

“It is enough,” answered the other, vehemently.
*“ Doctor, it has made life a hell for me.”

** And for how long have you been bashful? ”

* Virtually since childhood. I can positively place
its beginnings in my schooldays.” His words now
flowed swiftly, torrentially. “Long before I left
school I noticed that I felt awkward and uneasy
when anybody looked directly at me. I found myself
blushing, stammering, turning away, unable to look
people in the eye.

“ After I left school and went to work, matters
became much worse. In business I had to meet
strangers all the time, and in the presence of stran-
gers I felt absolutely helpless. My bashfulness in-
creased to such an extent that I began to invent
excuses to stay away from my work, and to remain

[ 166 ]
BASHFULNESS AND INDECISION

at home in a miserable solitude. But this did not do;
I had to earn my living. In desperation, I hit on
the idea of wearing these black spectacles.”

“So that people cannot see your eyes? ”

“Exactly. They have helped me wonderfully;
intrenched behind them, I feel comparatively safe.
But I detest them, and I long to be like other men.
Is there no cure for me? ”

Bizarre, startlingly unique as this must seem, it,
after all, differs only in the single detail of the spec-
tacles from hundreds of other cases which might be
cited. All over the world are men and women who
suffer agonies from an oppressive, and to them inex-
plicable, sense of timidity when brorght into contact
with other people. Many, to be sure, make a brave
effort to conceal the true state of affairs, compelling
themselves to mingle more or less freely in society,
despite the torturing apprehensions they then feel.
Others of less stubborn mould either seclude them-
selves or deliberately choose careers that leave them
much in solitude. Sometimes, for that matter, the

[ 167 ]
HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

choosing of such careers is an affair not of choice,
but of necessity. A man of thirty-four confided to
his physician, Doctor Paul Hartenberg:

“I began life as an assistant to my father in the
wholesale liquor business, my work being such that
I did not realise my extreme bashfulness. But it was
made very clear to me when, owing to my father’s
failure, I was obliged to seek employment elsewhere.

“T applied for and was given the position of man-
ager in a large café. It was part of my duty to
keep order among the employees, and, to my dismay,
I found that I was not equal to this. Whenever I
had to exert my authority I was strangely embar-
rassed; I stammered, trembled, and, worst of all,
blushed like a girl. The employees, as you may
imagine, were not long in perceiving how timid and
bashful I was, and affairs rapidly came to such a
pass that the owner of the café angrily dismissed
me.

“TI then became a clerk in a department store.
But, alas! my deplorable bashfulness was again my

[ 168 ]
BASHFULNESS AND INDECISION

undoing. If a customer looked at me when asking a
question or giving an order, I blushed, became so
embarrassed that I had to turn away, and, in my
confusion, paid no attention to what the customer
was saying. If the latter repeated his words I be-
came more disturbed than ever, trembled, perspired,
and acted so queerly that people thought I was
drunk.

** Again I was dismissed, and again I found em-
ployment, this time in a smaller store. The result
was the same. Thus I passed from position to posi-
tion, always descending in the social scale. What do
you suppose I am doing at present? I am washing
dishes in the cellar of a restaurant. It is not pleas-
ant work, but it at least shelters me from the terrible
gaze of strangers.”

This, fortunately, is an exceptional case. Yet it
is certain that many a man is to-day holding a posi-
tion far below that for which he really has ability,
simply because he is too bashful to assert himself,
dreading not so much the increased responsibilities

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HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

of more remunerative work as the fact that it will
bring him more conspicuously and intimately into
the view of other people. He feels in his soul, poor
fellow, that the result will be to plunge him into
unendurable confusion. It is an ordeal too great for
him to face, and he clings desperately to the inferior
position, which, from his distorted point of view, has
the merit of allowing him to go through life unnoticed
and, consequently, untroubled.

What, then, is this bashfulness which exerts so
widespread and baneful an influence? Whence does
it take its rise? And how is its victim to go about
the task of overcoming it? These are questions of
vital significance, particularly in this age of complex
civiligation and strenuous competition, in which the
bashful man is at a tremendous disadvantage. Hap-
pily, he appreciates this, and resorts with increasing
frequency to the physician’s office in quest of advice
and aid. As a result, far more is known about bash-
fulness to-day than was ever the case before, albeit in
its most important aspects as yet known only to a

[170]
BASHFULNESS AND INDECISION

comparatively small number of psychologically
trained physicians.

These physicians recognise that there are two dis-
tinct types of bashfulness, the one chronic, the other
occasional, both of which represent an abnormal
exaggeration of the shyness which is a normal char-
acteristic of nearly every child, and which manifests
itself in blushing, fidgeting, hiding the face, etc.
Ordinarily, this organic shyness, as the psychologist
Baldwin has termed it, disappears between the fifth
and seventh year. But it may recur under special
conditions, and it is specially likely to recur, as
almost everybody knows from experience, under con-
ditions focusing public attention on the person.
Under such conditions—being called on unexpectedly
to speak in public, taking part for the first time in
theatrical performances, and so forth—bashfulness
of the occasional type is very much in evidence, its
symptoms ranging from tremor, palpitation, and
vasomotor disturbances to the paralysis of “stage
fright.” Neither psychologically nor medically is

[171 ]
HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

this type of bashfulness of much importance. As the
novelty of the conditions giving rise to it wears off—
when, for example, one has become accustomed to
public speaking—it usually disappears. Like the
organic shyness of childhood, it is merely a product
of inexperience, an expression of an instinctive reac-
tion that is possibly “a far-off echo from the dim
past, when fear of the unknown was a safeguard in
the struggle for existence.”

Altogether different is the case with those who are
habitually bashful, of whom the world holds many
thousands. Here, obviously, some factor or factors
other than inexperience must enter to cause the
chronic timidity which has the special quality of
afflicting its victim only when in the presence of other
human beings. This, indeed, is the distinguishing
characteristic of bashfulness, as was pointed out
long ago by Charles Darwin, in his statement that
bashfulness seems to depend on “ sensitiveness to the
opinion, whether good or bad, of others.” Darwin
also held—and his view still is the prevailing one—

[172]
BASHFULNESS AND INDECISION

that the sensitiveness of the habitually bashful ms
relates mostly to external appearances. That is {
say, he is bashful because he knows he is awkwar
because he is dressed out of style or not in keepin
with the special occasion, or because he suffers fro
some real or fancied bodily defect. To the objectic
that there are plenty of awkward, badly dressed, ar
physically deformed men and women who are not :
all bashful, the advocates of this theory fall back c
heredity as ‘the ultimate determining factor, insis
ing that it is an inborn weakness which makes tl
bashful man or woman supersensitive to the opinic
of others regarding his or her personal appearan
and demeanour.

Now, recent research seems to leave no doubt th:
heredity does operate to some extent in the causatic
of bashfulness, since most bashful persons—at an
rate, among those who come under the care of ph:
sicians—have a strain of the neurotic in their famil
histories. On the other hand, it has been quite :
positively established that the matter of extern

[173 ]
HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

appearances has a causal relation to bashfulness in
comparatively few cases, though it may act as an
aggravating element. In case after case the first
manifestations of true chronic bashfulness have been
traced to a period in life far antedating any anxiety
on the person’s part respecting the way he walks or
dresses or looks. More than this, when the bashful
themselves are questioned as ‘to the causes of their
bashfulness, they usually either profess entire igno-
rance, dr emphasise mental, rather than physical,
factors.

“ T attribute my bashfulness to no physical cause,”
is a characteristic response. “I attribute it to
a certain weakness of mind, to my lack of self-confi-
dence, to fear of ridicule, and especially to a nerv-
ous excitement which I feel whenever others look
at me.”

Of course, apart from the doubt which such a
response casts on the external appearances theory
of bashfulness, and its emphasis on the mental, as
opposed to the physical, factor, it really throws

[174]
BASHFULNESS AND INDECISION

scarcely any light on the question of causation. Just
as there are many awkward, badly dressed, and de-
formed people who are not bashful, so there are
many modest and sensitive ones who go through life
in wholly normal fashion, perhaps untroubled even
by bashfulness of the occasional type. Quite evi-
dently there still is an underlying something which
has to be taken into account before one can fully
understand chronic bashfulness.

That something the modern medical psychologist
is beginning to believe he has discovered through
proceeding on the assumption that bashfulness is
far more than a mere innate weakness or character
defect; that it is, in reality, a functional nervous '
trouble, differing only in degree, not in kind, from.
hysteria and other psychoneuroses. That is to say,,
the medical psychologist assumes that, as is now
believed to be the case in every psychoneurosis, the
bashful man is the victim of subconscious memories
of distressing incidents in his early life; incidents
which, in his case, have had the effect of arousing in

[175 ]
HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

an exaggerated degree sentiments of shame or
fear.

The supersensitive child, having seen or heard
something that profoundly shocks him, or having
committed some petty or really serious fault, feels,
on the one hand, that he has a shameful secret he
must guard carefully, and, on the other hand, fears
that people can read his secret in his eyes. Hence,
he develops feelings of awkwardness and embarrass-
ment when others look at and speak to him. He
fidgets, blushes, stammers, trembles; in a word, dis-
plays all the symptoms indicated by the term bash-
fulness. In the course of time one of two things will
happen: either increased knowledge will reassure him,
and he will, as the saying is, outgrow his bashfulness ;
or the hidden fear and shame—even though the
original occasion for them may have completely
lapsed from conscious remembrance—will fix them-
selves firmly in his mind, causing a habit of bashful-
ness which may torture him all his life.

Whether this new theory as to bashfulness of the

[ 176 ]
BASHFULNESS AND INDECISION

chronic type holds good invariably, it is as yet im-
possible to say. Certainly, it has been verified in an
astonishingly large number of cases. Time and
again, applying some one of the delicate methods by
which they tunnel into the most obscure recesses of
the mind, medical psychologists have dragged into
the full light of conscious recollection forgotten
memories which the victims of bashfulness themselves
recognise as connected with the onset of their abnor-
mal timidity. Often their bashfulness completely
disappears, or is markedly abated, as soon as the
memories responsible for it are recovered. Or, when
an immediate cure is not wrought, one is pretty sure
to result after an explanation of the evolution of the
trouble and the application of appropriate sugges-
tions to develop self-confidence and will power.

To illustrate by citing a few instances from life,
let me give first the case of a young New England
man, who, as usually happens, did not resort to a
physician until his bashfulness had begun to inter-
fere with his earning a livelihood.

[177 ]

le
HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

“T have not the slightest idea what is the matter
with me,” he told the neurologist whom he consulted,
“but the fact is that for a good many years I have
felt strangely timid when meeting people. I believe I
am naturally of a courageous disposition—certainly
I do not suffer from cowardice in the ordinary
sense—but I actually blush and tremble if spoken to
suddenly or looked at intently. Lately I notice this
has been growing worse.”

“Can you tell me,” the physician asked, “ just
when you first noticed that you were bashful? ”

“No, I am sorry to say I can’t. I only know that
it began while I was a boy.”

Nevertheless, by the aid of a method of psycho-
analysis, or psychological mind-tunnelling, it was
ascertained that, subconsciously, he did know ex-
actly when his bashfulness began, and also was well
aware of its cause. From among the forgotten, or
only vaguely remembered, episodes of his boyhood
there emerged, with exceptional vividness, a memory-
picture of the time when he first went to work. He

[ 178 ]
BASHFULNESS AND INDECISION

recalled with painful intensity the figure of his em-
ployer, a stern, cold, hard man, with piercing eyes.

‘* Those eyes seemed to be on me everywhere I went.
They seemed to be watching for the least mistake I
might make. I began to wonder what would happen
to me if I did make mistakes. Then I began to feel
incompetent and to fear that he would notice my
incompetency. I grew nervous, awkward, timid.
Whenever he spoke to me, I jumped, I blushed, I
trembled. After a time I did the same when anybody
spoke to me.”

“ And sometimes you still think of that first em-
ployer who frightened you so much? ”

“T try not to, but I know I do.”

To the neurologist the cause of his patient’s bash-
fulness was now evident. The fear, the anxiety, the
over-conscientiousness engendered by the employer’s
attitude, working in the mind of an ultra-impression-
able boy, were quite enough to initiate a habit of
abnormal diffidence. Tactfully, the physician made
this clear to the patient; earnestly he impressed on

[179 ]
HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

him the idea that the unpleasant experience of which
he spoke was a thing of the past, and was nothing.
of which he now need stand in dread; and tirelessly
he reiterated the suggestion that the patient had it
in his own power to exorcise the demon of bashfulness
created by the painful subconscious memory-image
of those early days. In the end he had the satisfac-
tion of sending him on his way rejoicing in a perfect
cure.

Strikingly different in its inception is a case that
came under the observation of Doctor Bechterew.
In this instance the patient was a young woman of
excellent family and most attractive appearance.
The symptom of which she chiefly complained was an
abnormal blushing. When with the members of her
own family, no less than with strangers, she would,
at the least provocation, feel the blood suffusing her
face and would turn distressingly red. To avoid this,
she kept much to herself, and led a lonely, miserable
life.

Questioned by Doctor Bechterew as to the length

[ 180 ]
BASHFULNESS AND INDECISION

of time she had‘been thus afflicted, and any prior
occurrences which might have given her a real and
urgent reason for embarrassment and blushing, her
answers at first were wholly unenlightening. But
little by little, probing with the skill of the trained
psychological cross-examiner, he drew from her the
details of a pathetic experience.

At the age of seventeen, it appeared, she had been
thrown much into the company of a married man
old enough to be her father. A friendship had
sprung up between them, but, on her part, there had
certainly been no thought of anything beyond friend-
ship, until one evening at a garden party he asked
her to walk with him in a secluded part of the
grounds.

“‘ While we were talking together,” she confided to
Doctor Bechterew, “ he suddenly asked me if I cared
for him—if I cared enough to leave home and spend
the rest of my life with him. His avowal of love
shocked and shamed me. I hastily left him and, with
burning cheeks, rejoined the other guests.

[181 ]
HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

“© As soon as possible, I made my excuses and went
home. It seemed to me that my face betrayed my
secret. Afterwards I could not speak to or even
think of that man without blushing. Now that you
have made me recall the circumstance, I feel sure
that out of that terrible experience has gradu-
ally been developed the habit of bashfulness and
blushing which has made life almost unbearable
to me.”

Contrast with this a third case: the case of a
young Jew, robust and alert-looking, a wagon driver
by occupation, who applied to the Vanderbilt Clinic
in New York City to be treated for what he vaguely

“ nervous trouble.”? Referred to Doctor

termed a
A. A. Brill, already mentioned as a specialist in
nervous disorders, he confessed that the malady for
which he sought relief was nothing more or less than
bashfulness.

“It may seem strange to you,” said he, “that a
fellow like me should be bashful, but I am so timid
when with strangers that I scarcely know what I am

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BASHFULNESS AND INDECISION

doing. I speak and act like a fool; my hands trem-
ble; I trip over things.”

“Can you give any reason why you should feel
so awkward and embarrassed? ”

* Not the slightest. I often have tried to explain
it to myself, but all to no purpose. As far as I can
tell, it is without a cause.”

“ Still, it must have a cause, and we will do our
best to discover what that is.”

Step by step, in the course of several days’ investi-
gation by psychoanalysis, Doctor Brill led the
patient through the details of his past life. In this
way it was definitely ascertained that the bashfulness
of which he complained dated from his twelfth year.
Delving among the forgotten memories of that early
period, Doctor Brill presently unearthed one which
the patient, the moment he recalled it, recognised as
being coincidental with the beginning of the excessive
timidity that had brought him such suffering.

It was the memory of a boyhood escapade that had
at the time caused unusual remorse, shame, and fear

[183 ]
HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

of discovery. He had fancied that others could read
in his eyes what he had done; he became afraid to
look at people or to have them look at him. Awk-
wardness, embarrassment, bashfulness grew apace,
and remained characteristic of him even after he had
forgotten all about the affair from which they
sprang.

Thanks, however, to the recovery of this lost
memory-image, and of other subconscious reminis-
cences which had intensified the feeling of shame, it
was now possible for Doctor Brill to institute psy-
chotherapeutic treatment that eventually resulted
in acure. Incidentally, it also resulted in materially
improving the young man’s position in life. Freed
from his bashfulness, he developed unexpected ambi-
tion, and eventually became the owner of a well-pay-
ing business.

Similarly, boyhood weaknesses and failings, carry-
ing with them profound feelings of shame and appre-
hension, were found responsible for the bashfulness
experienced by Doctor Hartenberg’s dish-washing

[ 184 ]
BASHFULNESS AND INDECISION

patient and Doctor Bechterew’s visitor with the black
spectacles.

Always, in truth, the story seems to be the same:
there has been in the chronically bashful man’s early
life some specific shock, fright, or anxiety, which, “
provoking in a supersensitive mind feelings of ex-
treme embarrassment, has established a bashfulness
that may not fully yield to any method of treatment
until the remote and usually forgotten cause is re-
called to remembrance.

Happily, this requirement is not always necessary.
As an eminent medical psychologist once said to me:

“It is my experience that, in many cases, a cure
can be brought about simply by developing the
patient’s will power, either through suggestion in ~
hypnosis, or through psychic re-education in the
normal waking state. In such instances, it is enough
to explain to the patient that his bashfulness un-
doubtedly had its origin in some shock which he has
forgotten; that while, in the beginning, he may have
had reason enough for feeling bashful, that reason

[ 185 ]
HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

has long since been outlived; and that his present
bashfulness is actually nothing more than a bad
habit, the result of self-suggestion.

* Attacking the problem this way and applying
strong counter-suggestion, it frequently is possible
to effect a cure without a tedious preliminary ran-
sacking of subconscious memories. When, however,
this method fails, psychoanalytic investigation be-
comes indispensable.”

Manifestly of even greater importance than the
cure of bashfulness is its prevention. This, on any
' theory of its causation, and especially on the view
here advanced, is primarily a matter resting with
parents. The appearance in a growing boy or girl
of symptoms of habitual uneasiness and embarrass-
ment when with other children or older persons
should be regarded as a reason for real anxiety.
Actually, however, as in the case of children who
show extreme or persistent jealousy, most parents
are inclined to dismiss such symptoms from their
minds with the careless remark, “ Yes, he’s bashful ;

[ 186 ]
BASHFULNESS AND INDECISION

but that’s nothing. He’ll outgrow it.” Unfor-
tunately, he may not outgrow it without definite aid
and guidance.

For one thing, the effort should immediately be
made to develop in him interests, whether scholastic €
or athletic—preferably both—that will take him out “
of himself.. Whatever else may be said of bashful-
ness, it is always, like selfishness, a sign of excessive
preoccupation, conscious or unconscious, with ‘
thoughts of self. The bashful boy, no less than the
bashful man, is abnormally self-centred. And, be- «
sides endeavouring to weaken his extreme egoism,
there should be a systematic attempt to cultivate self- _-
control and self-reliance; while, at the same time,
his confidence should be tactfully sought, to draw
from him a statement as to anything that is particu-, -\ ‘
larly perplexing or worrying him, and thereby to -
gain a vantage point for effectually banishing doubt
and anxiety from his mind.

To banish doubt and anxiety from his mind! I
am put in remembrance of another serious life handi-

[ 187 ]
HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

cap, allied to bashfulness in having as a basic ele-
ment lack of self-reliance and self-confidence, and,
like bashfulness, originating in childhood experiences.
This handicap is the habit of futile doubting and
reasoning, whether about matters of importance or
matters of no importance. In some people the habit
of futile doubting is so extreme as to amount to a
veritable disease. Again, let me make use of an
instance from real life to bring out concretely the
condition I have in mind.

To a neurologist in the city of Washington there
came a man thirty years of age. There was nothing
in his appearance to set him apart from other people.
He was intelligent-looking, well dressed, well man-
nered, and he did not seem at all out of health. But
this, in effect, is what he said to the neurologist:

Doctor, I have come to you as a last resort, and
if you cannot help me I do not know what I shall do.
I'am mentally all in pieces. My mind is so weak
that I cannot even decide what clothes I ought to

put on.
[ 188 ]
BASHFULNESS AND INDECISION

“ My indecision shows itself the moment I awake
in the morning. I start to get up; then it occurs to
me that perhaps I ought not to get up immediately.
So I lie down again, wondering just what I ought to
do. I am beset by doubts. Not until somebody
enters my room and insists on my rising can I bring
myself to do so.

* At once a terrible conflict begins within me as
to the clothes I should wear. Every article of my
clothing has to be carefully considered. It is as if a
vital problem had to be solved. Sometimes, after I
am dressed, the thought strikes me that my under-
wear may be too light, or too heavy, or that some-
thing else is the matter with it.

“Then I have to undress and put on fresh under-
wear, which I minutely inspect. Or, perhaps, it is
my shirt that troubles me, or the pattern of my neck-
tie, or the suit I have put on.

“ Always I fear that I have made a mistake in
some way. Dressing consequently becomes an end-
less process to me. Even with help—and I nearly
£189 ]
HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

always have to be helped—it is two or three hours
before I am finally dressed.”

Consider also the case of a morbid doubter who
was successfully treated by that well-known New
England medical psychologist, Doctor Boris Sidis.
In this case, doubting was only one of several dis-
ease symptoms. Here, somewhat abridged, is Doctor
Sidis’s own account of his patient’s indulgence in
trivial doubts:

“The patient is troubled by a form of folie de
doute. He is not sure that the addresses on his let-
ters are correctly written; and, no matter how many
times he may read them over, he cannot feel assured
that the addresses are correct. Some one else must
read them and assure him that they are addressed
correctly.

“ When he has to write many letters, sometimes a
sudden fear gets possession of him that he has inter-
changed the letters and put them into the wrong en-
velopes. He has then to tear open the envelopes and
look the letters over again and again, to assure him-

[ 190 ]
BASHFULNESS AND INDECISION

self that they have been put by him into the right
envelopes.

“ Similarly, in turning out the gas jet, he must
needs try it over again and again, and is often forced
to get up from bed to try again whether the gas is
‘really ’ shut off. He lights the gas, then tests the
gas jet with a lighted match, to see whether the gas
leaks and is ‘ really ’ completely shut off.

“In closing the door of his room, he must try the
lock over and over again. He locks the door, and
then unlocks it again, then locks it once more. Still,
he is not sure. He then must shake it violently, so
as to get the full assurance that the door has been
actually and ‘really’ locked.” *

This second illustrative instance brings out vividly
a fact that deserves to be emphasised—the fact,
namely, that, at bottom, these doubting manias are
only exaggerations of a phenomenon of common oc-
currence. There are times when virtually everybody

is tormented by doubts regarding matters that ought

1** Studies in Psychopathology,” 1907, pp. 22-23.
[ 191 ]
HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

not to cause any indecision or perplexity. More-
over, while comparatively few people feel the need of
going to a physician to be cured of abnormal doubt-
ing, there are many others who might advantage-
ously seek the specialist’s aid. People are often
blind to their great weakness in this respect, though
their friends may see clearly that their vacillation
with regard to things great or small constitutes a
defect that of itself accounts amply for their in-
ability to make headway in the world and rise above
mediocrity.

Like the Washington neurologist’s patient, if in
less degree, there are people to whom the choice of
clothing presents a prodigious problem. To others,
the choice of foods is a never-ending puzzle. At
every meal they find themselves sadly at a loss to
decide what they shall eat. Others, again, acting in
much the fashion of the young man treated by Doc-
tor Sidis, conjure up visions of possible mistakes
and mishaps in connection with the writing and mail-
ing of letters, the opening or shutting of doors and

[ 192 ]
BASHFULNESS AND INDECISION

windows, the carrying of umbrellas, etc. Also, there
are doubters of a kind well described by an observant
physician :

“There are people who doubt whether their friends
really think anything of them. They think that,
though they treat them courteously, this may be
only common politeness, and that they may really
resent their wasting their time when they call on them.
They hesitate to ask these people to do things for
them, though, over and over again, the friends may
have shown their willingness, and, above all, by ask-
ing favours of them in turn, may have shown that
they were quite willing to put themselves under obli-
gations.

“They doubt about their charities. They wonder
whether they may really not be doing more harm
than good, though they have investigated the cases,
or have had them investigated, and the objects of
their charity may have been proved to be quite de-
serving. They hesitate about the acquisition of new
friends, and doubt whether they should give them

[ 193 ]
HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

any confidence, and whether the confidences they have
received from them are not really baits.” *

Here, decidedly, we have a state of affairs not
only breeding unhappiness, but involving a vast
waste of nervous energy. This it is that chiefly
makes the yielding to trivial doubts a menace to
human welfare. To conserve energy for useful pur-
poses, we are so constituted that ordinarily the little
acts of everyday life—our rising, dressing, eating,
attending to household or business details of a rou-
tine character—are done by us automatically. We
take it for granted that we do them correctly, and,
usually, we so do them. If now and then we make a
mistake, we think little about it. Rightly, we regard
it as of no account, compared with matters of more
importance. Thus we conserve our energy for our
life work. Whereas the doubter about trivialities
fritters his energy away.

And, now, taking up the question of the causation
of this costly habit of doubting about trivialities,
1J. J. Walsh’s ‘‘ Psychotherapy ”’, p. 736.

[194]
BASHFULNESS AND INDECISION

let us turn once more to the cases of the two morbid
doubters who consulted the Washington and Boston
specialists.

In both of these cases, psychological analysis was
undertaken to ascertain the causes of the exagger-
ated tendency to doubt. In both it was found that
the patients had been subjected in childhood to con-
ditions almost inevitably productive of a profound
distrust of self. This was particularly true in the
Washington case. The patient in this case was the
only son of parents whose love had led them to be
over-solicitous about him. When he was a little
fellow they could not bear to have him out of their
sight, lest something should happen to him. They

had anticipated his wishes, done for him things that “

he might very well have done for himself; and, when
he did attempt to do things for himself, they inter-
vened to help him.

The result was an enfeebling of his consciousness
and of his will. The man grew up without initiative.
People had always done things for him, had always

[195 ]

c

4,
HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

decided things for him. How could any one expect
him to decide anything for himself? It was not that
he was naturally weak-minded, weak-willed; it was
that his training had engendered in him conditions
making for mental confusion and instability of
purpose.

Such was the outcome of the neurologist’s psy-
chological study of his case. It held the possibilities
of a cure, through psychic re-education, having as its
starting point the emancipation of this child of thirty
from slavish dependence on his parents. And, in the
end, after nearly two years of patient effort, a cure
was actually effected.

In the second case, distrust of self had been pro-
duced in quite another way. This patient’s parents
had not spoiled him by over-attention. On the oppo-
site, they had not given enough thought to the im-
portance of developing in him emotional control, the
need for which was particularly indicated in his early
childhood by great dreaminess and sensitiveness of
disposition. His special need for training in the con-

{ 196 ]
BASHFULNESS AND INDECISION

trol of his emotions was further evinced by the vio-
lence of his reactions to happenings of a disturbing
nature. Once, for instance, when he unexpectedly
met a deformed, paralysed man, he fell to the ground
in a faint.

This should have been sufficient warning to his
parents that they must make every effort to stiffen
his character and to protect him from needless
shocks. As a matter of fact, they exposed him to
conditions that would have been harmful to any
child. During his early years he was thrown much
into the company of an old grandfather afflicted with
sundry physical and mental ailments, among them the
doubting mania in an extreme form. Also, he was
allowed to witness the death agonies of several rela-
tives.

All this was bound to leave a lasting imprint on
his mind and his nervous system, filling him with
vague fears, both as to life in general and, in par-
ticular, as to his own ability to live successfully. It
was impossible for him to escape the knowledge that

[197 ]
HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

he did not endure the difficult and the unpleasant as
well as other children did. And, with this knowledge,
distrust of self, a sense of inferiority, took firm hold
of him.

Nevertheless, he contrived to get along passably
until he entered college. He was nervous and a
little “ queer,” but not markedly so. When, how-
ever, he found it necessary to study unusually hard
for some examinations, a breakdown came. Various
disease symptoms, physical and mental, developed in
him, including the habit of perpetually fretting and
doubting about things of small significance. In his
case, that is to say, faulty training in childhood had
laid the foundation for a serious psychic weak-
ness, to the full development of which a physical
condition — fatigue — had acted as the immediate
cause.

In most cases of morbid doubting that have been
psychologically analysed, parental mistakes have
similarly become apparent. There may be—there
usually is—a constitutional tendency to nervous

[ 198 ]
BASHFULNESS AND INDECISION

troubles. But the parents have not appreciated this.
Or, if they have appreciated it, they have failed
to offset it by education especially designed to ;
strengthen the will and inspire self-confidence, and
by measures having as their end a sound physical
upbuilding. Also, they have failed—and this is of
the utmost importance—to externalise the personal
interests, so that self-consciousness shall be at a
minimum.

This does not mean, however, that the unfavour-
able results of the parental mistakes cannot be reme-
died later in life. There is reason to believe that,
even in most extreme cases of morbid doubting—ex-
cept the comparatively few cases where organic
brain disease is responsible for the doubting—it is
possible to effect a cure. As has been said, both of
these patients were cured, and their cases may be
regarded as fairly typical of this variety of mental
affliction at its worst. Accordingly, when the tend-
ency to trivial doubts is less marked, there is the
possibility not only of cure, but of self-cure, pro-

[ 199 }
HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

vided that the doubter recognises exactly wherein he
is deficient.

Self-consciousness, timidity, distrust of self, a con-
scious or subconscious feeling of inferiority, and
often a lack of physical vigour—these are the ele-
ments that chiefly contribute to the growth of a tend-
ency to anxiety and indecision about trivial things;
these are the weaknesses that specially need to be
overcome. As a preliminary measure, the doubter
should make it a rule to take exercise daily in the
open air, and to see to it that his living and sleeping
quarters are kept well ventilated.

Indecision, even in the most energtic of men, is
frequently a resultant of deprivation of fresh air.
To reach decisions, to settle doubts quickly, a well-
nourished brain is indispensable. And no brain can
be well nourished unless the blood flowing to it is
amply supplied with oxygen. Of all persons, there-
fore, the habitual doubter is in need of plenty of
fresh air and of physical exercise to build up his
organism as a whole and increase his powers of re-

[ 200 ]
BASHFULNESS AND INDECISION

sistance to fatigue. For the same reason, he needs
an abundance of good food.

Physical upbuilding, moreover, will have the desir-
able effect of increasing his power of concentrating,
attention on some serious life interest. This, above
everything else, is what the doubter needs to do. He
must develop an ardent interest in something worth
while—his work, a useful hobby, occupation of some
sort. The trivial doubter—the doubter of any kind
—is pre-eminently a man or woman devoid of a keen
life interest. If a life interest were present, there
would be neither time nor inclination to dissipate
energy in useless doubting. If you, my reader, rec-
ognise in yourself one of the doubting kind, you will
appreciate the truth of this. You will admit that
you have little enthusiasm for your work, little in-
terest in anything that would keep you from being
too occupied with thoughts of self.

Developing such an interest, self-consciousness will
diminish, self-confidence will grow. Gradually, less
and less attention will be paid to the petty details

[ 201 ]
HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

of daily existence that formerly gave so much con-
cern. They will be pushed more and more into the
background of the mind, will be managed automati-
cally, as it was intended they should be managed.
No longer will your indecision be a source of pitying,
perhaps amused, comment by your friends. Instead,
they will have occasion to comment, with pleased sur-
prise, on the vigour and promptness of decision in
all things that has taken the place of the old in-
decision.

One word more:

Exactly as hygienic measures are helpful in the
cure of indecision in adults, so are they helpful to
prevent the development of indecision—and bashful-
ness—in children. Parents will do well to bear this
in mind. But, as in the prevention of selfishness,
jealousy, and so forth, reliance on hygienic measures
alone is not enough. It is all very well to see that
children get plenty of good food, abundant muscular
exercise, and much life in the open air. This is ex-
cellent and necessary. Also, however, they must be

[ 202 }
BASHFULNESS AND INDECISION

given wise moral training—training that will make
it habitual for them to think and act vigourously, to
keep their emotions well in hand, to be interested in
much besides themselves, and to develop the feeling
of self-confidence and the spirit of initiative.

Now, let us turn to still another preventable and
serious life handicap having its origin in the days of
childhood—the handicap of stammering.

[ 203 ]
STAMMERING
VII
STAMMERING

HERE lies convenient to my hand at this
moment a thin, pamphlet-like volume
that tells the story of one of the strang-

est, among the many singular and tragic blunders
which medical science has made in its progress to
knowledge. It is a translation from the German of
Doctor J. F. Dieffenbach’s “ Memoir on the Radical
Cure of Stuttering.” Assuredly, Dieffenbach’s
* cure ” was radical enough, for it consisted in noth-
ing less than the excision of a large, wedge-shaped
section from the stammerer’s tongue! In this little
book, published in 1841, and embellished with several
ghastly full-page engravings, is described, with great
professional gusto, the first of these terrible opera-
[ 207 ]
HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

tions as performed, without the merciful aid of any
anesthetic, on an unhappy boy of thirteen. The
result was a “ complete success.” Says Dieffenbach,
writing a few weeks after the operation:

“ At the present time not the slightest trace of
stuttering remains, not the slightest vibration of the
muscles of the face, not the most inconsiderable play
of the lips. His speech is, throughout, well toned,
even, and flowing.”

Thus was inaugurated a period of butchery that
lasted until—almost before the year was out—it was
observed that those “cured” by this sanguinary
means usually began, before long, to stammer as
badly as ever, and also that those who were not
* cured” had a tendency to die. Yet Dieffenbach
was no charlatan, no “ quack.” He was a reputable
surgeon who honestly believed that he had discovered
the true remedy for stammering. And, if the passage
of time has intensified the tragedy and absurdity of
his method and has relegated his glowing account of
it to a place in the literature of medical curiosities,

[ 208 ]
STAMMERING

there is this to be said of him—that he has had
plenty of successors who have erred almost as
seriously in their attempts to solve the problem pre-
sented by the widespread and baffling malady of
stammering.

In fact, up to within quite recent times the record
of the struggle against stammering has been one of
continuous failure. There has been a steady accu-
mulation of methods of treatment, from surgical
operations of a less drastic type than Dieffenbach’s
to the use of various articulatory and respiratory
exercises and devices, without any appreciable effect
in the diminution of stammering. Even to-day the
great majority of physicians and lay specialists—to
whom, by a sort of tacit agreement, the medical
profession has largely relinquished the task of deal-
ing with stammering—labour to next to no purpose.
At this very moment there are in the United States
at least three hundred thousand persons who stam-
mer, fully half of whom stammer so badly that they
are severely handicapped in the gaining of a liveli-

{ 209 ]
HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

hood. Thousands of these have resorted to medical
advice, or have attended so-called schools for stam-
merers, with lastingly beneficial results to few. Small
wonder that there is, among stammerers and their
friends, a tendency to believe that stammering is one
of the hopelessly incurable maladies of mankind.

And this would undeniably appear to.be true, as
regards many stammerers. On the other hand, it
may confidently be said that nearly all cases of stam-
mering are actually susceptible of marked improve-
ment, often amounting to 75 or 90 per cent. of a
cure; and that a number of cases can be completely
cured. Such a statement, to be sure, could not have
been safely made even a few years ago. This for
the reason that only lately has there been any really
systematic effort by scientifically trained investi-
gators to study the phenomena of stammering, with
a view to ascertaining, with scientific exactness, its
true nature and causation.

Stammering, it has long been recognised, is not a
malady of uniform symptomatology, like tuberculo-

[ 210 ]
STAMMERING

sis or typhoid fever. No two stammerers stammer
precisely alike. They stumble over different letters
and sounds; time, place, and circumstances have
varying effects on the degree of their stammering ;
and the physical spasms and contortions that so
often accompany this trouble differ in different stam-
merers, There is, too, a great variation in the onset
of stammering. Mostly, it is true, it manifests itself
in childhood, from the age of four to eleven. But it
may not set in until much later in life; and, when it
does begin in childhood, it begins under much diver-
sity of conditions.

Sometimes a child stammers almost as soon as he
has learned to speak, though seldom, if ever, coin-
cident with the learning. Often, the first appear-
ance of stammering follows some disease like measles
or diphtheria. Or, again, a child who has been speak-
ing quite well, suddenly begins to stammer, and per-
sists in stammering, after being brought into contact
with people who are themselves stammerers.

“T was entirely free of stammering,” declares a

[ 211 }
HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

clergyman, in a typical statement, “till I was five
years old. At that time of life there was a gentleman
who occasionally came to my father’s house, and
stammered very badly. I distinctly remember one
afternoon trying to imitate him; when, unfortunately,
he heard me, and was very indignant. So ashamed
were my parents at my conduct that, after he had
gone, I was taken to task and punished severely for
it. Ever since that night I have been afflicted with
this most distressing malady, in spite of all my efforts
to overcome it.”

Compare a statement by a Philadelphia physician,
Doctor D. Braden Kyle:

“Several years ago I saw three interesting cases
of stammering. Two of the cases were imitation.
These two lads, who were associated with a boy sev-
eral years older, the worst stammerer I ever saw,
clearly imitated him. As they were constantly to-
gether, the imitation was almost continuous. They
certainly developed into expert stammerers. In less
than two years they were confirmed stammerers, and

[ 212]
STAMMERING

it was impossible for them to speak at all without
stuttering and stammering.”

Facts like these, I repeat, have long been observed
and commented on by specialists in the treatment of
stammering; but they have, for the most part, been
dismissed as mere “ oddities,” while emphasis has
been laid on the single fact that, in the majority of
cases, stammerers have had parents or other rela-
tives who themselves stammered. “ Heredity,” con-
sequently, has been assumed to be the one and suffi-
cent explanation of all stammering; and it has also
been assumed that what is inherited is either an
anatomical or a physiological defect. Hence, in too
many instances, the use of the surgeon’s knife; and,
hence, the invention of innumerable systems designed
to train the stammerer in the correct use of his
breathing and articulating organs—in a word, sys-
tems intended to teach him how to talk.

But, as even the most enthusiastic exponents of
these corrective systems are now beginning to appre-
ciate, whatever else the stammerer may need, he does

[ 213 ]
HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

not need to be taught how to talk. For he can talk
well enough on occasion. Nothing is more signifi-
cant, from the standpoint of assisting to a clear
understanding of the nature of stammering, than the
fact that there are uncommonly few stammerers who
have any difficulty in speaking when nobody is with
them. On this point, every stammerer with whom I
have been in touch is in remarkable agreement, and
others who have had a far wider acquaintance with
stammerers testify to the same effect. For example,
Mr. Charles L. Rowan, of Milwaukee, a gentleman
who has stammered for years and has made a close
study of the subject, informs me:

“When I am alone—and the same is true of other
stammerers—I have no speech difficulty whatever,
and can talk or read aloud for hours with ease. It
is only when I am with others that I halt and stam-
mer in my speech. Sometimes I talk in my sleep, and
the folks tell me I do not stammer then. But, if I am
dreaming, and in the dream imagine myself talking,
it is always in a stammer.

[ 214]
STAMMERING

“TI have also noticed that most stammerers talk
better when the subject is light and frivolous than
when it is something serious. And they talk better
when conversing with people whom they regard as
inferiors. I know a man who is a section foreman,
and he says he can give orders to his negro and
Mexican labourers perfectly, but if the roadmaster
comes along he cannot talk to him at all.”

And a stammerer from Spokane, Washington, in-
forms me:

“T would like to say that there are periods when
I can talk much better than for corresponding
periods. Indeed, there are times, generally a few
days at a time, when it is most difficult for me to talk
with even a slight degree of correctness; and, then,
there are periods of as long, or longer, duration when
speech seems to flow with more ease, though never
perfect, except for a few words in succession.”

More than this, according to one diligent investi-
gator, the majority of stammerers fail to stammer
if addressed in such a way that their replies are

[ 215 ]
HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

made without their realising that they are talking.
Says this observer: .

“ Suppose a stammerer is engaged in a deep study
and unaware of your presence. You speak to him
softly. He answers readily, without hesitation, in
an absent manner. Again, you ask a careless ques-
tion, implying by your manner that you do not
expect or desire an answer; to this he quickly and
easily replies also. Now, look straight at him and
pointedly interrogate him. See, when it becomes
necessary for him to speak, how he is thrown into
confusion.”

It has further been found that most stammerers
are at their worst when in the presence of strangers.
Some stammer scarcely at all when at home with
their relatives and intimate friends. On the opposite,
there are some who stammer worse than usual when
with relatives. Not so long ago I learned of one
stammerer—a young lady who had stammered from
early childhood—whose trouble was most in evidence
when she was talking with her mother. Almost all

[ 216 ]
STAMMERING

stammerers, too, enjoy temporary relief from their
speech defect when greatly startled, angry, or other-
wise excited.

Decidedly, then, it is not from anatomical or
physiological inability to speak that a stammerer
suffers. It is, rather, from a psychological inability.
That is to say, the facts just mentioned indicate
strongly that stammering is primarily a mental
malady—that it is due to the presence, in the mind
of the stammerer, of some idea or ideas that inhibit
the normal functioning of the organs of speech.
This conclusion is confirmed by the additional cir-
cumstance that nearly every stammerer who has
been questioned on the subject admits that he is per-
petually tormented by a haunting dread of not being
able to express himself clearly to others, and so of
exposing himself to their ridicule, contempt, or pity.
Many, indeed, affirm their conviction that if they
could only overcome this dread they would be free
from their affliction. “I believe,” is a characteristic
utterance of stammerers, “ that if I were to wake up

[ 217 ]
HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

some morning with total forgetfulness that I had
ever stammered, I should never stammer again.”

Still more significant is the fact that, of the many
methods which have been invented for the treatment
of stammering—and which include such curious de-
vices as beating time with every word, and wearing
artificial supports under the tongue—all have had
to their credit a certain—however small—proportion
of genuine cures. This would suggest, not that they
have been intrinsically valuable, but that, in the
cases cured, they so impressed the mind of the stam-
merer with their therapeutic virtue as to banish his
long-entertained belief that he could not talk like
other people. For that matter, recent experiments
go to bear out the view that almost any method, no
matter how fantastic, will cure some stammerers, if
only they have a lively faith in its efficacy.

For example, there was once brought to the Bos-
ton City Hospital a woman of thirty-five, who,
though formerly speaking without any difficulty,
had begun to stammer in a frightful manner, follow-

[218]
STAMMERING

ing a violent quarrel with her husband. She could
utter scarcely a sound, except weirdly inarticulate
noises, and these only by a great effort. The phy-
sician to whom her case was entrusted soon became
satisfied that she was suffering mainly from a pro-
found belief that she would never be able to talk
again; and he therefore endeavoured to reason her
out of this, but to no purpose. Finally, he aban-
doned the attempt, and, after leaving her pretty
much to her own devices for several days, impres-
sively said to her one morning, in a tone of great
authority:

* Well, Mrs. Blank, I have been looking carefully
into your case, and I find there is one way certain to
cure you. It may be a little painful, but I know you
will not mind that, as long as it is going to make
you entirely well.”

So saying, and with an air of the utmost confi-
dence, he began to apply to her an electric current,
just strong enough to make her wince. Only a few
treatments of this sort were found necessary to en-

[219 ]
HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

able the hospital authorities to discharge her as
cured—and she stayed cured.

Of late, consequently, with growing recognition of
the dominant psychic factor in stammering, there
has been an increasing tendency—though as yet it is
far from universal—to employ psychological meth-
ods in treating stammerers. The effort is made to
instil confidence in the sufferer—to convince him
that he need only exercise his will power to bring
about his own cure. In a good many cases, and fre-
quently with gratifying results, resort is had to hyp-
notism, the “suggestion” being reiterated to the
patient, while in the hypnotic state, that in the
future he will experience none of his overwhelming
sensations of dread and anxiety and will speak as
fluently as persons who have never stammered. Or
he may be treated by psychic re-education, which
consists essentially in the development of volitional
control by suggestions tactfully imparted in the
ordinary waking state. All of which unquestionably
marks a tremendous advance over the theories and

[ 220 ]
STAMMERING

practices based on the alleged anatomical or physi-
ological defects of stammerers.

There is this to be added, though, that, sanely
beneficial as is the psychological treatment of stam-
mering, it often happens that the confidence-inspir-
ing suggestions given to stammerers do not “ take.”
The stammerer, albeit he may perhaps show improve-
ment for a time, remains without clear articulatory
power. When this occurs, the natural tendency
among those treating him—in view of the demon-
strated truth that stammering is the effect of a
peculiar state of mind—is to throw the blame on the
patient instead of on the method. Yet, actually, it
is the method that is at fault—or, to be exact, it is
the failure to apply the method, which itself is thor-
oughly sound—in such a way as to remove from the
stammerer’s mind not only the fear that haunts him
and helps to perpetuate his stammering, but also the
ideas in which his stammering originated.

Here we come to the central fact in the whole prob-
lem of stammering—a fact which, when it is widely

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HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

enough known and appreciated, is certain to exert a
far-reaching influence on the prevention of stam-
mering, as well as its cure. Until very recently, few
have been aware of this fact except a small group of
foreign investigators, physicians with a psychologi-
cal training, whose special business it has been to
determine scientifically the possibilities, the limita-
tions, and the exact procedures to be followed in
supplementing, by wholly mental treatment, the ordi-
nary medical and surgical treatment of disease.
Impressed by the predominance of the mental factor
in stammering, these investigators were particularly
impressed by some of the peculiarities mentioned
above—as, the ability of almost every stammerer to
speak well when alone or when in a state of abstrac-
tion. Such peculiarities, they knew from long ex-
perience, bore a strong resemblance to oddities in the
behaviour of victims of hysteria, psychasthenia, or
other psychoneurosis, in all of which disorders there
is a tendency for symptoms to disappear when the
sufferer’s attention is momentarily withdrawn from

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STAMMERING

them. Accordingly, it seemed to the investigators
quite possible that, in the last analysis, stammering
was not so much a disease in itself as a psycho-
neurotic symptom.

They were well aware, for reasons already set
forth in these pages, that psychoneurotic disorders
have their origin in emotional disturbances of one
sort or another, which, occurring to a person of
nervous temperament or rendered neurally unstable
by a faulty upbringing, react adversely on the entire
organism. Exactly what happens is that the emo-
tional disturbance—whether it be a fright, a grief,
a worry, or what not—while perhaps completely for-
gotten by the victim, so far as conscious recollection
is concerned, remains subconsciously alive in his
memory, is ever seeking to emerge again into con-
scious remembrance, and, failing to do this, takes its
revenge, so to speak, by the production of disease
symptoms ranging from mere eccentricities of
thought and behaviour to symptoms mimicking those
af true organic disease.

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HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

Also, the investigators knew that the particular
form these mentally caused symptoms take depends
chiefly on the kind of. suggestions received from the
sufferer’s environment. If he chances, for instance,
to have a relative or a friend who is a paralytic, he
may, in time, develop pseudosymptoms of paralysis
himself. Or, if his nervous equilibrium be sufficiently
upset, he may develop them from merely hearing or
reading about them. Whatever the symptoms he
manifests, his malady is curable—precisely as it was
produced—by mental means alone. Often, a counter-
suggestion, to the effect that henceforth the psycho-
neurotic person will be perfectly well, is enough to
work his cure. Or, permanently curative effects may
be had only when, by special techniques devised for
the express purpose of rummaging through the sub-
consciousness, the forgotten memory, or memories,
responsible for the psychoneurosis are brought to
light, and the specific suggestion directly or indi-
rectly made that from that time they will do no
harm. Sometimes, experience has shown, the mere

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STAMMERING

recalling of them to conscious remembrance is enough
to put an end to the disease symptoms they have
caused.

On the view that stammering is similarly a psycho-
neurotic symptom, and that, when it fails to yield
to treatment by general suggestion, it is because the
subconscious memories underlying it are too intense
to be thus subdued, this group of investigators under-
took to treat it as they would any stubborn psycho-
neurosis. The outcome of their experiments has been
such that I feel justified in declaring that science
has at last penetrated to the true inwardness of
stammering. These psychologically trained phy-
sicians have taken stammerers who had well-nigh
exhausted their hopes and their resources in a futile
quest for normal speech, and, after subjecting them
to the searching methods of psychological analysis,
have sent them on their way rejoicing, either in a
perfect cure or in a lasting improvement far beyond
their expectation.

Citing a few instances of actual occurrence, a

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HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

German member of the group, Doctor B. Dattner,
was once consulted by a stammerer of thirty-six, who
had been burdened by his speech defect from boy-
hood. He had first stammered, he told Doctor Datt-
ner, after an attack of diphtheria, at the age of
nine; and he had for some time been treated on the
supposition that the diphtheria had caused a peculiar
kind of throat paralysis." This treatment failing,
he had sought relief by other means, always without
more than temporary benefit. Like many another
stammerer, he spoke of the abnormal dread that har-
assed him, especially when with strangers, and ex-
pressed the belief that if he could conquer this he
would be free from his stammer.

“ Ah, but,” Doctor Dattner pointed out, “do you

not realise that, after all, your dread is caused by—

1It is important to recognise that certain organic diseases
of the central nervous system do sometimes, through destruc-
tive action on the lower speech centres, cause incurable speech
defect resembling stammering. Thus, a “stammerer” whom
I referred to Doctor Coriat was found to be a victim, not of
true stammering, but of the effects of a paralysis-causing
organic disease experienced in early life. This condition, how-
ever, is of infrequent occurrence; and its presence can be
readily determined by « neurologist.

[ 226 ]
STAMMERING

not the cause of—your stammer? It has helped,
doubtless, to keep it alive and to aggravate it. But
it has not been the thing that originally made you
stammer. That we must seek elsewhere.”

“You mean in the attack of diphtheria? ”

“Not at all. I mean in something that happened
to you before you had diphtheria—something which
so exceedingly distressed you that it was continually
uppermost in your thoughts, and which finally
worked on you so much that when your nervous sys-
tem was weakened by the diphtheria it gave rise to
your stammering. Now, we are going to try to dis-
cover what that something was, and, when we have
done so, it will be possible really to cure you. Can
you recall any particularly disagreeable incident of
your childhood occurring at any time before you were
ill of diphtheria? ”

“No,” said the other, after a little reflection, “I
think that I was perfectly happy as a child, and
certainly I was treated kindly.”

“ Just the same, something must have happened

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HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

at that period to disturb you very much. Let us
find out, if we can, what it was.”

To this end, Doctor Dattner now made use of the
“free association method of mental analysis,” which
consists in requesting the patient to concentrate his
attention on his symptoms, and state without reserve
the thoughts coming to him in connection with them
—the theory being that, if there is any exceptionally
distressing idea underlying them, the current of his
spoken thoughts will, soon or late, reveal it. In the
present instance, this method at first brought forth
only trivial and commonplace memory associations.
But, after a time, a reminiscence of intense emotional
colouring suddenly emerged.

It related to an episode of the stammerer’s eighth
year, shortly before his attack of diphtheria, when
he was pounced upon and frightened almost into con-
vulsions by a huge black dog. This had virtually
faded from his conscious memory; but now, as he
sat in the quiescent mood enjoined on all patients
undergoing psychoanalytic treatment, it welled up

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STAMMERING

into full recollection, every detail of it being vividly
recalled—the sight of the dog, the emotions of fear
and horror, the hysterical shrieking that followed his
escape, the difficulty his parents had in convincing
him that he was unharmed. He used to lie awake,
he remembered, thinking of the dog; he used to
dream of it; the thought of it was always with him.

“ Precisely,” said Doctor Dattner, drily. “ And,
you see, the thought of it is still with you, for look
how graphically you have described it all. The
trouble is that it has been leading an independent
existence, as it were, in the depths of your mind,
with all its original emotional intensity. Your stam-
mering, I can assure you, has been nothing more
than the external manifestation, the symbol, of its
continuing presence, and of the deadly power it has
had over you—sensitive, impressionable child that
you must have been. But I can also assure you that
your stammering will now come to an end; for we
have not only found its cause in the subconsciously
remembered shock of your boyhood, but we have

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HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

actually removed that cause by the very fact of
recalling it to your conscious recollection and, con-
sequently, finding a normal outlet for the repressed
emotions.”

Altogether, it had required just six hours of
psychoanalysis, at the rate of about an hour a day,
to recover this horror-encrusted memory of the
stammerer’s -childhood. But, with its recall, and
strikingly validating Doctor Dattner’s confident pre-
diction, he once more began to enjoy the blessing of
a facile, flowing speech.

In another case—treated by the American neurol-
ogist, Doctor Coriat, who has made extensive use of
psychoanalytic methods—the patient was a man of
middle age, who stammered not only when he spoke,
but even when he wrote, repeating letters and sylla-
bles in anything he tried to put on paper. He had
been to two stammering schools and had been dis-
charged from both as cured, but each time had
speedily relapsed.

As in the case of Doctor Dattner’s patient, psy-

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STAMMERING

choanalysis demonstrated that the causal agency
of his stammering was a lingering subconscious rem-
nant of distressing emotional states experienced in
childhood. Only, in this instance, the distressing
states related, not to an unexpected, stupefying
fright, but to painful reveries indulged in as a child,
and occasioned by certain unpleasant stories he had
been told regarding the end of the world and the
fate of the sinful.

“ These,” he recalled, “ took complete possession
of my mind. I became convinced that the end of
the world could not be long delayed, and I was in an
agony of terror. Constantly I kept asking myself
what I should do to escape destruction. I knew I
was a bad boy—very bad. Nothing could atone for
the sins I fancied I had committed. But I kept my
fears to myself ; I did not dare confide them to others.
Night and day I worried about them, picturing to
myself the terrible happenings of the approaching
time of doom.”

Until psychoanalysis brought them up to the sur-

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HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

face of consciousness, he had long ceased to think of
these foolish imaginings of childhood. He had as
entirely forgotten them as though he had never enter-
tained them. But, as the event showed, it was their
malign influence, working on a nervous system
already infirm by defects of inheritance, that had
produced a psychoneurosis which, in his case, had
taken the form of a speech disorder through the
suggestions unconsciously absorbed by watching his
mother, who likewise suffered from a peculiar variety
of stammering.

Another of Doctor Coriat’s patients—a young
woman—impressed him, from the day of her first
visit, with her extreme timidity and self-conscious-
ness. Both were so pronounced as to be abnormal,
and he immediately suspected that they, in common
with her stammering, would be found linked with
subconscious memories of occurrences that had tended
to deprive her of proper appreciation of her abilities
and rights. She proved a good hypnotic subject,
and, knowing that in hypnosis long-forgotten events

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STAMMERING

are easily recalled, Doctor Coriat questioned her as
to her previous history.

“Can you remember,” he asked her, “ just when
it was that you began to stammer? ”

“It was when I was a very little girl.”

“Had any one or anything greatly frightened
you before then? ”

* Yes.”

“What was it?”

“Tt was my father.”

Then followed, in answer to further questions, a
long series of reminiscences of the severe discipline
imposed on her in earliest childhood by her father, a
stern, hard man. As she related them, she seemed to
feel again all the emotions that they had provoked—
the shame, grief, fear, doubt, longing for sympathy.
Literally, she lived though them anew, and to the
trained understanding of the physician it was evident
that she had never really. forgotten them—although,
in the waking state, she was able to recall her child-
hood only vaguely—but had subconsciously dwelt

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HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

on them all her life, to the wrecking of her self-con-
fidence, as well as the causing of her troubles of
speech. Only by completely blotting them out,
through psychotherapeutic means, could her restora-
tion to health be effected.

Similarly, it has been found that emotional dis-
turbances are at the bottom of stammering when it
develops, not in childhood, but in adult life. A par-
ticularly instructive case, because of the insight it
affords into the ingenuity with which the expert
psychoanalyst gets at the truth in even the most
complicated cases of functional nervous or mental
disorder, is one that was successfully handled by
Doctor A. A. Brill, already mentioned in these pages,
a pupil of the pioneer Austrian psychoanalyst, Doc-
tor Sigmund Freud. Doctor Brill’s patient was a
man who, after an early life untroubled by speech
defect, had begun to stammer from no discernible
cause, and had been stammering for a number of
years before he consulted the New York specialist.
Several weeks of psychoanalysis elicited nothing that

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STAMMERING

would account for his trouble, and Doctor Brill was
in much perplexity, until he one day noticed that the
words on which his patient chiefly stammered were
words beginning with or containing the letter “ k.”
It occurred to him that this letter might have some
significant association in the stammerer’s mind, but
the latter denied that it could have.

However, after psychoanalysis had proceeded
further, Doctor Brill learned that there had been an
event in the patient’s life, though occurring some
little time before the development of the stammering,
that had made a most painful, even agonising, im-
pression on him. He had been engaged to a young
woman who had eloped with his closest friend; and
this had so wrought on him that he had vowed never
to utter her name again.

“ And what was her name?” asked Doctor Brill.

The stammerer stared at him and burst into a
violent tirade.

“ Haven’t I just told you,” he cried, “that I
have taken an oath never to speak it? What business

[ 235 ]
HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

is it of yours, anyway? What bearing can it have on
my trouble of speech? ”

“Only this bearing—that it may be the means of
curing you. Come, now, I am sorry you have taken
an oath, because you will have to break it and tell
me the name.”

“T’ll die first.”

With this he seized his hat and dashed out of the
doctor’s office in a frenzy of indignation. Doctor
Brill did not see him again for a month. Then he
returned, repentant. He would tell the name, he
said, on condition that Doctor Brill did not write it
down in the detailed record which, as is customary,
he was making of the case. To this a prompt assent
was given, and the troublesome name was as promptly
made known. As Doctor Brill had expected, it began
with K. He then said, leaning forward and showing
his sheet of notes:

“See, I have kept my promise. I have called her
Miss W. And, now, we'll soon have you quite well.”

But on his next visit the patient was in despair.

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STAMMERING

He was, he protested, stammering worse than ever.
Words that had never given him any trouble before
were now almost unpronounceable by him. On inves-
tigation, it turned out that they were, one and all,
words in which the letter “ w ” had a place.

“ At last,” said Doctor Brill, “we know for a
certainty what has made you stammer. It was the
foolish oath you took, which served to sustain in
your mind the memory of the terrible experience you
went through on account of your faithless sweet-
heart. Vowing never to utter her name, yet think-
ing constantly of her, you have unconsciously made
it difficult for you to utter even words in which the
most prominent letter of that name—its initial—
occurs. And, now, since she has become Miss W. to
you, as well as Miss K., you are stammering on words
with “w,” as well as words with “k.” We must
free you from the torment of that vow and of the
pent-up emotions that go with the forbidden name,
and then you will never stammer more.”

To this mode of dealing with stammerers could

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HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

anything be in stronger contrast than the brutal
Dieffenbach technique? The latter exemplifies, if
in an extreme form, the folly of attempting—as is
so often done, even to-day—to treat stammering on
a basis of imperfect observation. The former shows
the happy results that may be obtained when it is
attacked in the light of thorough investigation. No;
it is neither by the surgeon’s knife nor by the use of
mechanical appliances or physiological devices that
stammering is to be really conquered, but by intelli-
gent application of the wonderful remedial measures
which modern medical psychology has worked
out.

Stammering, to recapitulate, is not at bottom an
anatomical or physiological trouble. Its individual
peculiarities, varied as they are, all tend to prove
that it is a mental malady, symptomatic of a psycho-
neurosis having its origin in subconscious emotional
states. The réle that heredity plays in it is merely
to provide the soil in which it can flourish. Of
wholly mental causation, it is curable by mental

[ 238 ]
STAMMERING™

means, whether by faith in the efficacy of any method
of treatment, however intrinsically worthless that
method may be; by “ suggestions ” of a general char-
acter ; or, if needful, by specific recall and eradication
of the “ forgotten memories ” that underlie it.

Lest, however, I raise hope unduly, I would at
once add that not even the most expert practitioners
in psychoanalysis, or in any other psychological

mode of treating stammering, are justified in guar-

it 29

cure in
¢

anteeing an absolute or an “ approximate

every case. Experience is showing that the “ emo-
tional complexes ” responsible for stammering are,
in many cases, so deep-seated—and often so en-
tangled in later complexes—that it is virtually im-
possible to get at them by any present-known method
of mind tunnelling. And, in many other cases, the
process of psychoanalysis is so slow and tedious that
the stammerer is all too likely to lose heart and aban-
don the effort at cure.

Consequently, in respect to stammering, preven-
tion becomes of more than usual importance. And

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HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

the prevention of stammering, I trust I have already
made amply clear, rests chiefly with parents. It is
again primarily a question of guarding the young
from needless emotional stresses, of early training to
foster in children calmness, courage, self-confidence ;
so that, when inevitable shocks and trials come, they
will have no power to overwhelm the mind and give
birth to stammering or any other neurotic evil.

{240 J
FAIRY TALES THAT HANDICAP
VIII

FAIRY TALES THAT HANDICAP

ise VERY ugly thing told to the child, every
shock, every fright given him, will remain
like minute splinters in the flesh to tor-

ture him all his life long.”
Thus the famous Italian scientist, Angelo Mosso,
a good many years ago. The facts of more recent
research into the psychology and psychopathology
of childhood, as reviewed in the preceding chapters,
vindicate Professor Mosso’s statement to an extent
and in ways undreamed of by him. Nor is it only the
emotionally disturbing things seen, heard, or experi-
enced by children that may have a decisively adverse
influence on their development. Harm may similarly
and equally be done by the books and stories they

[ 243 ]
HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

read, even to the extent of provoking or accentuating
nervous maladies. Particularly mischievous in this
respect, because of their wide reading by children,
are certain fairy tales which many parents—nay, I
might say, nearly all parents—consider quite suit-
able for young readers.

You smile incredulously at the suggestion that a
fairy tale could possibly affect a child harmfully.
Still more preposterous seems to you the idea that
the harmful effects of fairy tales—if such harmful
effects actually occur—may be carried over into
adult life. But, listen:

To the Doctor Brill of the letter “k ” stammering
case just narrated, there once came a young man of
twenty-eight, afflicted with a strange and alarming
malady.

“Doctor,” he said, “I want your candid opinion
as to what is the matter with me. Physically I feel
well, but mentally I am badly off. In fact, I fear I
am insane, and dangerously so. For a long time I
have been tormented by a strange desire to bite and

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FAIRY TALES THAT HANDICAP

stab people and to torture them in all sorts of
ways. I yearn for the times when everybody carried
the dirk and dagger and could kill when offended.
As yet I have restrained my mad impulse, but I am
in terror lest I give way to it. Is there anything
you can do to help me? ”

The mere fact that he thus clearly recognised and
candidly confessed his mental state was in itself a
hopeful sign. But Doctor Brill was well aware that
it might be extremely difficult to cure him, perhaps
impossible. Everything would depend, in the first
place, on whether the young man were actually in-
sane or merely the victim of a psychoneurotic obses-
sion. If the latter, there was a possibility of his
being cured, provided the subconscious region of his
mind could be explored with sufficient thoroughness
to get at and root out the ideas underlying and re-
sponsible for his dangerous obsession. Satisfying
himself that it actually was a case of psychoneurosis,
Doctor Brill began the work of mental exploration.
And, knowing that submerged ideas are pretty sure

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HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

to reveal themselves, directly or indirectly, through
the character of a person’s dreams, he began by
directing the young man to make a written record
of his dreaming.

‘Whenever you have a dream,” he told him, “I
want you to write it down as soon as you awake, and
bring me an account of it.”

Before long, Doctor Brill was in possession of a
remarkable collection of dreams, many of which, as
he had expected, were of an exceedingly unpleasant
character. Analysing these dreams, a curious fact
at once became evident—namely, that the patient’s
mental life was largely occupied with imaginings that
related, not to the world of everyday existence, but
to the people and events of mythology and fairy tale.

Always, too, in his subconscious imaginings, ideas
of death and violence were uppermost. During the
dream-analysis he recalled with special vividness such
themes as the beheading of Medusa, the cruelties of
Bluebeard, and the freezing to death of Eva, heroine
of Bryant’s “Little People of the Snows.” Even

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FAIRY TALES THAT HANDICAP

trivial details in the settings of these and similar
fairy tales were remembered and brought out in his
dream-associations with a fulness that astonished the
patient himself. Dr. Brill comments:

‘** He was very imaginative, so that the harrowing
adventures enacted by fairies, genii, and Greek dei-
ties, on which he was constantly fed, were deeply in-
terwoven with his own life, and he built up for him-
self a strange, archaic world. He liked to be alone,
and often wandered away from his companions, to
act through, in his own way, the adventures of which
he had just heard or read.

“ He himself traced the selection of his profession
—that of an actor—to these boyish actions when he
tried to imitate the fleet-footed Mercury, some char-
acter from fairyland or the “ Arabian Nights,” or
some savage Indians. He thus imagined himself fly-
ing, and beheading monsters above the clouds, or
penetrating to the centre of the earth in the form of
some wicked magician, all the time passing through
the most harrowing scenes. By a process of con-

[ 247 ]
HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

densation, he fused ancient characters and episodes
with persons and actions of reality, but his fancies
usually began with some god-like or demon-like myth
and gradually descended to human beings.

“ During the first few weeks of the analysis he
was in the habit of merging into a dreamy state while
reproducing associations, and often became so ex-
cited that the work had to be temporarily inter-
rupted.” *

It was unnecessary to seek much further for the
explanation of the obsession of torture. In large
part, at all events, this was quite evidently the ex-
pression in consciousness of the gruesome images
with which the patient’s mind had been filled by the
tales told him in his childhood. Though faded from
conscious remembrance, they had remained with him
subconsciously, to influence for evil the current of his
conscious thoughts. Or, to put the matter tersely:
Had tales of cruelty and violent death not been told
him in his early days, he might never have been

1The New York Medical Journal, March 21, 1914.
[ 248 ]
FAIRY TALES THAT HANDICAP

afflicted in manhood with his morbid longings to
inflict pain.

Of course, if this case stood by itself it would be
of no great significance. But the fact is that during
the past few years—or since physicians began to
appreciate the part played by childhood impressions
in causing mental and nervous disease—evidence has
been accumulating to indicate that the almost uni-
versal custom of telling fairy tales to children does
entail grave risks to their character and their health.
The child of normal nervous constitution is likely to
be affected only in character; the supersensitive,
neurotic child may be hurried, by the tales he hears
or reads, into some more or less serious mental or
nervous malady.

Let me hasten to add that this does not mean that
the fairy tale should be entirely banished from the
literature of childhood. It means only that parents
should exercise more discrimination than they usually
show in selecting fairy tales for their children. The
rightly chosen fairy tale is indeed an almost indis-

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HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

pensable aid in the early education of children, for
reasons that are admirably summarised by an
American educator, Mr. Percival Chubb, in these
words:

** One value in fairy stories for the young is that
they embody and commemorate the man-child’s first
rude assertion of the lordship of mind, and subserve
the development of a later sense of spiritual free-
dom and autonomy. Another is that they are ex-
pressive, as all art is expressive, of the idealistic
hunger at the heart of men. Again, as forms of art,
they select and co-ordinate those facts which bring
out the spiritual meanings of life. That is, they
release from the unsifted materials of experience the
imprisoned ‘ Soul of Fact.’ And not only do they
embody the basic moral insights and interpretations
of childish man, but they express the simple and
larger emotions, and so feed the heart of the child.
They quicken, too, the imagination—that master-
faculty without which the sympathy which is man’s
highest and richest endowment fails of fruition.

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FAIRY TALES THAT HANDICAP

They are an aid to culture by giving an outlook upon
all nations and kindreds, all countries and conditions
of life. Finally, along with their allied forms of
literary invention, the myth, saga, fable, and so on,
they are a condition to understanding the innumer-
able allusions with which the literature of the world
is studded.” *

All this is assuredly the function of the fairy tale,
but frequently it is frustrated by the kind of fairy
tales children are allowed to read. For one thing,
the imaginative faculty is scarcely stimulated in a
healthy fashion when the mind is led to dwell con-
stantly, as in the case of Doctor Brill’s patient, on
thoughts of cruelty and pain. Nor can the fairy
tale be said to have exerted a healthy influence in
such a case as that represented by a little girl who
was brought for treatment to another medical psy-
chologist, and whose morbid irritability, disobedi-
ence, and crying spells were, by psychological

1 Proceedings of the National Education Association, 1905,
p. 871 et seq.
[ 251 ]
HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

analysis, traced to an excessive jealousy of her
brother. In the course of the analysis the discovery
was made that the girl had frequent dreams of
seeing both her mother and her brother cruelly
treated. In one dream, witches shut her mother in
a cave to starve to death, and threw her brother
into a large caldron of boiling water, leaving her to
perish miserably.

“ This dream,” the little girl naively explained to
the physician who was analysing her mental states,
“is just like the fairy tales I read.”

Other dreams of cruelty were likewise found to
be drawn from the reading of unpleasant fairy tales.
So that, although in this case jealousy was undoubt-
edly the chief cause of the nervous condition for
which treatment was required, fairy tales also played
a part in directing the course of the little girl’s
morbid thinking and her difficult behaviour. Warned
by this revelation of the dream-analysis, her phy-
sician made it a point to notify her mother that
unless steps were taken to change the girl’s reading

[ 252 ]
FAIRY TALES THAT HANDICAP

matter she might develop traits of character—harsh-
ness, coldness, indifference to the sufferings of others
—that would handicap her throughout life.

Or, instead of causing an abnormal harshness, the
fairy tale abounding in gory elements may breed an
equally abnormal timidity, passing sometimes be-
yond the category of a character defect to that of
Positive disease. A typical instance is found in the
experience of a young New York boy.

“Our son,” his parents told the physician, to
whom they took him for treatment, “has suddenly
become excitable and nervous, afraid to go outdoors
alone, and still more afraid to sleep alone. If left to
himself after having been put to bed, he often wakes
out of a sound sleep, shrieking for us. When we go
to him he seems dazed, and for some moments does
not recognise us. But he cannot tell us what has
frightened him, and in the morning does not remem-
ber his alarm.”

From this brief description the physician at once
recognised that he had to deal with a case of what is

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HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

technically known as pavor nocturnus, but better
known to the lay public as “night terrors.” Hav-
ing had a thorough training in medical psychology,
he was well aware that night terrors are grounded
in disturbing experiences of the waking life. Accord-
ingly, he questioned the parents closely.

Insistently they denied that anything had occurred
to cause their son undue anxiety or alarm. Then the
physician resorted to psychological analysis of the
boy’s mental states and, before long, made the dis-
covery that his mind was full of frightful images of
giants, wizards, and slimy monsters. Promptly he
summoned the father and mother to a conference,
and asked them:

“Have you been reading or telling fairy stories
to your boy lately?”

“ Why, yes,” the mother replied. ‘“ He is passion-
ately fond of them, and I tell him some every day.”

“ And what, may I ask, are the stories that you
tell to him most frequently? ”

“© Jack the Giant Killer’ is one. He is also par-

[ 254 ]
FAIRY TALES THAT HANDICAP
ticularly fond of ‘ The Boy Who Did Not Know How

to Shiver.’ ”

“Well, madam,” said the physician, gravely, “I
must ask you either to stop telling him fairy tales
or to choose for him fairy tales with less gruesome
elements in them. He is a boy of nervous tempera-
ment, and, figuratively speaking, he has been poi-
soned by the fear-images that are so abundant in the
stories he has heard. Take him out into the open
air, turn his thoughts to other things, and be more
discreet in your choice of reading matter for him.
Unless you do this, there is-danger that he will yet
suffer from something far more serious than night
terrors.”

The truth of this last statement may be concretely
re-enforced by another citation from recent medical
experience—the case, not of a young boy, but of a
man of thirty, who came to Doctor Brill with a re-
markable story.

“Ever since my boyhood,” he related, “I have
fainted at seeing blood. Now I feel weak and dizzy,

[ 255 ]
HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

and sometimes I faint outright, at anything -vhich
merely brings into my mind the thought of blood.
I am afraid to talk to certain people because they
are likely to speak about accidents which make me
think of blood. The sight of a man who looks like a
doctor suggests an operation, and at once I feel
faint. On one occasion I fainted away while my
blood pressure was being taken. It was not that I
was afraid of having my blood pressure taken; it
was simply that the word ‘blood’ brought on the
usual attack. You do not appreciate the difficulty
I have in telling you all this. Every time I mention
the word to you I have to get a grip on myself. I
fear I must seem very weak and foolish, but I cannot
overcome the horror I feel. Unless you help me, I
do not know what I shall do. I cannot go on this
way indefinitely.”

In answer to Doctor Brill’s questions, he insisted
nothing had occurred in his life that could give rise
to his “ phobia,” or morbid dread of blood. He had
been in no bad accident, had undergone no serious

[ 256 ]
FAIRY TALES THAT HANDICAP

surgical operation, had witnessed no sanguinary
scenes of any sort.

Nevertheless,” Doctor Brill assured him, “ there
is a logical reason for your abnormal fear. It is
evidently buried deep in your mind; but there are
ways of getting at it, and get at it we must.”

Psychological analysis, patiently carried on for
many days, ultimately brought the truth to light.
His phobia, it appeared, had its real starting point
in early childhood, and, not least, in certain sensa-
tional fairy stories read to him by a nurse when he
was quite young—stories which he himself continued
to read at a later age.

“These bloody and horrible stories,” to quote
Doctor Brill, “ made a strong impression upon him.
He would form fancies about them on going to sleep
at night, substituting himself for the hero.”

“ Bluebeard ” was one story that especially im-
pressed him. Another was a charming tale about a
false princess who was rolled in a barrel, into which
long pointed spikes had been driven.

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HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

As he grew older, there had been the usual fading
from memory of these stories and the imaginings to
which they had given rise. But, subconsciously,
they had never been forgotten, and out of them there
had gradually developed the obsessive and seemingly
inexplicable dread of blood.

In another case, the “ Bluebeard” story respon-
sible for the night terrors of a sensitive little girl,
remained so indelibly fixed in her subconsciousness
that in adult life she often had nightmares, in which,
to her great distress, she was attacked by men who
were “frightful looking on account of their blue
beards.” Even more impressively illustrative of the
permanence and possible ill effects of tales of the
horrible heard in early life is the case of a man fifty
years old, who had to receive medical treatment be-
cause he “could not fall asleep without living
through—for at least an hour, sometimes even longer
—some distorted story from fairy books or my-
thology.”

That common phobia of childhood, fear of the

[ 258 }

«-
FAIRY TALES THAT HANDICAP

dark, is often traceable to fairy tales, and, in many
cases, persists in some degree through later life. Let
me quote, on this important point, the testimony of
a Washington physician, Doctor T. A. Williams,
who has made a special study of nervousness in
childhood:

“Morbid fears are a great distress to many
people. They have nearly always arisen in early
childhood, and have been inculcated by injudicious
nurses, tales of goblins and fairies being most pro-
lific in this respect.

“The ineradicability of fears, when inculcated in
early childhood, is clearly illustrated by a Southern
lady who, even in advanced age, dared not go alone
into the dark, although she had long ceased to believe
in the stories which had made her afraid to do so.
She realised this so forcibly that she would not per-
mit her three daughters to be told any of the alarm-
ing stories which most Southern children learn. This
resulted in the girls never having known what it
meant toc be afraid of the dark. Indeed, it was the

[ 259 ]
HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

habit of their school fellows to send them off into
dark and eery places to show off their powers.”

And, from one of the most experienced psychia-
trists of the United States, Doctor W. A. White,
superintendent of the great Government Hospital
for the Insane, at Washington, we have this em-
phatic statement as to the general relationship be-
tween fairy tales and mental diseases:

“ You will find, not infrequently, that the precipi-
tating factors in psychoses come from the books of
fairy tales which your children are allowed to feed
upon.”

Of course, as already intimated, a mental over-
throw from the hearing or reading of fairy tales
presupposes an undue impressionability on the vic-
tim’s part. But how are parents to determine whether
or no their children’s psychic make-up is such as to
render them immune from the possible mind-en-
feebling effects of “horror tales”? And, in any
event, let me repeat with all the emphasis at my
command, there is reason to believe that no child

[ 260 ]
FAIRY TALES THAT HANDICAP

can escape some stunting or distorting of character
if brought up on a diet of ultra-sanguinary fairy
tales.

As I write these lines, a stupendous war is raging
in Europe with a ferocity that appals the outside
world. Especially atrocious is the policy of one of
the embattled nations, formerly regarded as a leader
in modern civilisation. To attain its ends, this na-
tion has violated treaty obligations as though they
were of no consequence whatever; it has ruthlessly
slain innocent noncombatants, even the citizens of
neutral countries; wherever it has been victorious, it
stands accused of vile brutalities. In its attitude
towards its own soldiers it has displayed an almost
incredible callousness, hurling them to certain de-
struction with cold-blooded nonchalance.

Beholding all this, the people of other lands marvel
and question. That, in the twentieth century, even
under the stress of war, a civilised nation should
thus revert to barbarism seems to baffle explanation.
For myself, however, I am convinced that at least a

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HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

partial explanation is to be found in the fact that
the offending nation is one among whom the myth,
the legend, and the fairy tale have pre-eminently
flourished.

In the stories which distinguished scholars have
eagerly assisted to make available to the youth of
this nation, indifference to human suffering and
human life are too often conspicuous elements. Too
often they are tinged by more than a suggestion of
bloodthirstiness, cruelty, and the principle of re-
venge. When the childish mind has been fed upon
these, stimulated by them to unhealthy fancies, and
re-enforced in those instincts inherited from the
primitive, which it should be the business of educa-
tion to weaken and repress, is it to be wondered at
that, in the crisis of war, there has been a veritable
‘relapse to primitive savagery?

In some degree, moreover, all the warring nations
have been bred on fairy tales, and, in some degree,
all have exhibited the same tendency to the cruel
ways of primitive man. Throughout the world a

[ 262 ]
FAIRY TALES THAT HANDICAP

fairy tale reform is needed for the development and
maintenance of a true civilisation.

But, mark you, it is a reform that is needed, not
a banishment of the fairy tale. As some one has well
said, a child who never hears a fairy tale is develop-
ing a tract in his soul that, in later life, will grow
barren. More than this, cases are on record indi-
cating that unless the child’s instinctive craving for
the romantic and the ideal is satisfied by well-chosen
fairy tales, he may gratify this craving in ways that
shock his elders.

I will give one instance, by way of concrete illus-
tration. For knowledge of this I am indebted to
President Hall, of Clark University, and I give it in
President Hall’s own words:

“ Two immigrants in New York brought up their
daughter, born here, on a diet of literal truth, and
tabooed fiction, poetry, and imagination as lies.
She was bright, at twelve had never read a fairy tale
or a story book, but was continually dreamy and
ardent-souled, with a great passion and talent for

[ 263 ]
HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

music. Her mother once told her that she might,
perhaps, play some time to the President. Soon
after, at the dedication of Grant’s Tomb, she saw
Mr. and Mrs. McKinley. One day, soon afterwards,
she rushed in, breathless, saying that they had vis-
ited her school, heard her play, might adopt her,
would give papa a place in Washington, and so on;
but Mrs. McKinley was out of funds, and her hus-
band was in Washington.

* Accordingly, Gertrude’s father drew a hundred
from his fortune of fourteen hundred dollars in the
bank and sent it by his daughter, who brought back
costly flowers. Upon more excuses, more money was
loaned, and more presents were sent to Gertrude’s
parents—a canary, a puppy, a diamond ring. Ger-
trude conversed intelligently on political topics, and
her father gave up his position, as he was about to
accept a five-thousand-dollar job in Washington.

“ Then came the crash. Gertrude had never met
the President or his wife, but had made lavish pres-
ents and had bought many articles, which she had

[ 264 ]
FAIRY TALES THAT HANDICAP

stored with a neighbour ; and, to her parents’ especial
horror, had laid in a large stock of fairy tales and
other fiction.”

With justification, President Hall adds: “ This
points a moral against the pedagogic theory that
would starve the imagination.” *

In truth, the cultivation of the imaginative fac-
ulty by means of the fairy tale is one of the great
opportunities of parenthood. Only see to it that
the fairy tales employed for this purpose do not
reek of brutality and gore, of treachery and
cunning.

And see to it that elements like these are not
unduly conspicuous in any other kind of tales you
put into the hands of your children. Give them no
books to read, tell them no stories that may react
on a sensitive mind to the development either of
callousness or fear. Be careful even with regard to
the tales you tell your children in the course of their
religious education. Dwell on the rewards of good-

1 “‘ educational Problems,’’ vol. i, pp. 359-360.
[ 265 ]
HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

ness rather than on the punishments of sin. In the
religious instruction of the young, as in all other
instruction, over-emphasis on the grim and the ter-
rifying may have unfavourable consequences, persist-
ing to the end of life.

Recall, if you please, the case of the overworked
Boston young man, mentioned in “ Psychology and
Parenthood ” (p. 273). Obsessed with an idea that
he had committed “the unpardonable sin,” he was
surely drifting to some institution for the insane,
when he was fortunate enough to come under the
care of a physician familiar with the new psychologi-
cal discoveries and methods. Recall this young
man’s autobiographical statement, given to his phy-
sician, after the latter had helped him back to
health:

“My abnormal fear certainly originated from
doctrines of hell which I heard in early childhood,
particularly from a rather ignorant elderly woman
who taught Sunday-school. My early religious
thought was chiefly concerned with the direful eter-

[ 266 ]
FAIRY TALES THAT HANDICAP

nity of torture that might be awaiting me if I was
not good enough to be saved.”
You are careful as to the food you give your

child’s body. Be no less careful as to the food you
give his mind.

[ 267 ]
“NIGHT TERRORS ”
IX
“NIGHT TERRORS ”

EFERENCE has already been made more
than once, though only in an incidental
way, to the childhood malady of pavor

nocturnus, or “

night terrors.” In any book like
the present one the subject of night terrors is deserv-
ing of detailed discussion. Not only do night terrors
constitute a real handicap of childhood, but also
they constitute a handicap, the seriousness of which
is not yet appreciated by many people, and the true
nature of which is as yet known to exceedingly few.
In some quarters, indeed, there has been a disposition

 out-

to minimise this malady, because it usually is
grown ” by the eighth or ninth year. But, in reality,
its effects—or, rather, the effects of the condition

[271 ]
HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

of which it is a sign—may, and often do, continue
through life. Fortunately, the new knowledge that
psychology has gained concerning it enables parents
to frustrate its evil consequences and, in most cases,
to prevent its occurrence.

At bottom, night terrors are almost identical with
the nightmares of adult years. They are, to put it
precisely, juvenile nightmares, with the added feature
of profound disturbance in the waking state. The
one real point of difference between night terrors
and nightmares is that the former indicate a greater
degree of nervous strain. The child who is a victim
of night terrors generally has an hour or so of quiet
sleep after going to bed. Then he wakes, shrieking
for his mother. When the parents, alarmed, rush to
his room, they are likely to find him out of bed,
crouching behind a chair, or in the corner. His eyes
are staring and full of horror. He seems not to rec-
ognise his parents, though he will eagerly clutch at
them for protection. After a few minutes the attack
passes off, he quiets down, returns to bed, and sleeps

[ 272 ]
“ NIGHT TERRORS ”

soundly until morning, when, as a rule, he has no
conscious remembrance of his fears of the night
before.

While the night terror is at its height the child
may have ghastly hallucinations, representing a con-
tinuance in the waking state of the dream-images ©
that have distressed him. Also, instead of leaping
out of bed, he may merely sit up, or may find it im-
possible to move at all, as is the case with many
adults when coming out of a nightmare. A Chicago
physician, describing his experiences as a child,
relates:

“When I was five years of age, and during the
sixth year, I suffered from nightmare. I sat up in
bed and fancied I saw a monkey come down the chim-
ney and fasten itself to my shoulder and bite me,
and terrify me so that I would scream out. My older
sister would then come, wake me up thoroughly, and
satisfy me that it was but a vision.

“ Other nights I would feel a sense of oppression,
ringing in ears, a sensation of perceiving something

[ 273 ]
HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

very small, which, gradually at first, and then rap-
idly, assumed enormous proportions and vast whirl-
ing speed, and which, I imagined, whirled me off with
it—a buzzing in my ears, probably. Then would I
feel that animals—rats—would creep over me and
press heavily upon me, and I could neither move
hand nor foot, nor speak.”

The reference to the buzzing in the ears is typical
of the attitude that until lately has been taken by
almost all physicians in respect both to adult and to
juvenile nightmares. For that matter, it still is the
attitude of those physicians who are not familiar
with the findings of medical psychology. Night-
mare to them, whether in the old or in the young, is
altogether a question of physical causation. As they
see it, one need not look beyond bodily conditions of
some sort to understand the nightmares of adults and
the night terrors of children. Accordingly, treat-
ment by sedatives, dieting, and hygienic measures
has been the rule. Unfortunately, this by no means
always succeeds in bringing about the desired result,

[ 274 ]
“ NIGHT TERRORS ”

although such measures undoubtedly do benefit the
general health.

Seemingly, to be sure, they are especially success-
ful in the case of night terrors. But it is significant
that, even if left untreated, night terrors seldom
persist beyond the period of childhood. Then, how-
ever, those who have had them show a tendency, in
many cases, to be troubled by unpleasant dreams,
often taking on the character of most distressing
nightmares. The frequency of these may, or may
not, be diminished by the usual treatment of a dietetic
sort. On the other hand, observation has shown that
many persons afflicted with the indigestion and other
physical conditions commonly held responsible for
nightmares are not troubled by nightmare at all.
As one observer puts it, even a person whose stomach
is half destroyed by cancer may commit all sorts of
dietary indiscretions and not suffer from nightmare
in the slightest.

Evidently, then, physical conditions do not of
themselves account for nightmares and night terrors.

[ 275]
HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

One must look elsewhere for their ultimate cause.
This is what the medical psychologists have done,
and, doing this, they have discovered that the chil-
dren who are troubled by night terrors are always
children of a sensitive nervous organisation who have
been subjected to emotional stress. A child may be
nervously highstrung, yet entirely escape night ter-
rors, provided his mind be kept free from emotional
upheavals. But let anything occur to disturb him
emotionally in an excessive degree and he at once
becomes likely to suffer, not only from night terrors,
but also—as it has been a prime purpose of this
book to impress convincingly on every reader—from
nervous affections of a more serious kind. He may
even have “ day terrors,” seeing imaginary and ter-
rifying objects as vividly as the child who wakes in
panic from a distressing dream.

For example, a boy of eight was sent to the Wash-
ington neurologist, Doctor T. A. Williams, to be
treated for general nervousness, and, in particular,
for a tendency “to see things where there is really

[ 276 ]
“NIGHT TERRORS ”

nothing to be seen.” Doctor Williams found the boy
to be so nervous that it was hard for him to sit still
and to keep from wriggling excitedly about in his
chair. Questioned as to his hallucinations, he said
that these were mostly of a snake. He could not
describe the imaginary snake, except to say that its
head was like an eel’s. It seemed to come from no-
where, and presented itself to his astonished gaze
with a suddenness that caused him to scream and
run. His father gave Doctor Williams the addi-
tional information that these hallucinations were
experienced only when the boy was alone, and that,
though his day terrors were not followed by night
terrors, he would not go to bed unless some one were
in the room with him.

Questioning his little patient more closely, Doctor
Williams next learned that he had a veritable horror
of being alone at any time. As long as somebody
was in sight, he could enjoy his games, and would
readily run errands. Left alone, the imaginary
snake, or some hallucinatory wild beast, was almost

[ 277 ]
HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

at once seen by him. Further inquiry brought out
the significant fact that this fear of solitude had
actually been implanted in the boy by over-anxiety
on his mother’s part.

His horror of being alone was paralleled by her
dread of having him out of her sight. She was con-
tinually thinking, and talking, of risks he would
incur if he were allowed to be by himself. In this
way she had unconsciously infected him with a “ fixed
idea” that something dreadful was sure to happen
to him unless older persons were at hand to protect
him. This fixed idea preying on his unusually im-
pressionable mind, and keeping him in a constant
state of emotional strain, was the decisive factor in
the production of his day terrors. In proof whereof
it need only be added that his hallucinations and
general nervousness ceased to trouble him soon after
corrective training was begun, supplemented by
treatment by “ suggestion ” to rid him of the abnor-
mal fear of being alone.

Fortunately, though I might detail a number of

[278]
“ NIGHT TERRORS ”

other cases of day terrors, this affliction is of rare
occurrence, compared with night terrors. And,
from the point of view of the medical psychologist,
it is only to be expected that such should be the case.
As explained by Doctor Williams, in a passage which
gives a clear idea of the mechanism of night terrors:

“If I say to a small boy that a bear will eat him
up, the effect upon his emotions entirely differs,
whether I make the remark with portentous gravity
and horror, or whether I say it with bubbling jovial-
ity as, evidently, a huge joke. In the first eventu-
ality, the boy will rush to my side in terror and try
to be saved from the bear, and a phobia is in course
of construction; with the latter proceeding, the boy
will laugh consumedly, and it would not take much
to make him enter the cage and strike the bear. But,
even when terrified, a child feels a refuge in the pro-
tection of his elders during the day, when they are
rarely absent. . . .

“ At night, however, the child is alone, and his
little consciousness cannot find the support of others.

[279]
HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

Before the kaleidoscope of his dreams pass the
various images and accompanying emotions of his
waking life, so that if any of these images has become
linked with fear it is certain to bring with it terror,
as it surges into dream in the night, and the child
jumps up, awakened, in panic, finding no one near,
upon whom to lean.” *

In many a case of night terrors, no great psy-
chological skill is required to detect the influence of
emotional stress as the prime factor in causing the
alarming attacks. In one instance that has come to
my knowledge, a seven-year-old girl was brought to
a physician, with a history of both night and day
terrors. She was subject, her mother said, to at-
tacks of loud screaming, during which she seemed
dazed and in an agony of fear. The attacks some-
times lasted ten minutes, and immediately afterwards
the girl generally fell into a heavy sleep. Her night
terrors were of the usual sort, except that on the
occasion of the first attack she was in such a panic

1 Archives of Pediatrics, December, 1914.
[ 280 ]
“ NIGHT TERRORS ”

that she opened her bedroom window and threw
herself out of it. Luckily, it was early evening, and
her mother, walking in the garden beneath her win-
dow, was able to catch her and save her from harm.

“She had gone to bed as usual,” the mother said,
in detailing this episode, “ and seemed to be quite
well, though I remember I thought she looked a little
wild about the eyes. For an hour she slept quietly.
Then, as I later learned, she woke up moaning,
jumped out of bed, and made for the window.”

“ And,” asked the physician to whom the child
had been taken, “had anything out of the way oc-
curred to her that day? ”

* Nothing.”

“ Are you sure of that?”

“Well, nothing of real account, at all events. I
have been told that somebody jokingly said to her
that if she were not a good girl a black man would
come to her room and carry her off. But this did
not seem to disturb her much at the time.”

Hereupon, the situation became clear to the phy-

[ 281 ]
HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

sician. It was evident that, subconsciously if not
consciously, the thought of the supposed danger,
acting on a mind none too well organised by inher-
itance—there was epilepsy in the family—had ac-
quired sufficient force to bring on the attack of noc-
turnal panic and the subsequent attacks of day and
night terrors. Probably, moreover, this was not the
first time that statements of a fear-inspiring charac-
ter had been made to the child, so that this last
“* joke ” might well serve to agitate her excessively.
Compare with this the case of a four-year-old
boy, whose night terrors were accompanied by a
strange hallucination that he saw the devil, and that
the devil was trying to catch him. Every night for
several weeks he would wake after one or two hours
of sleep, would leap from bed with a shriek, and run
wildly around the room, calling on his mother to
save him and to drive the devil out of the house.
Impressed by the recurrence of this hallucination,
the physician in charge of the case questioned the
boy’s mother as to a possible explanation for his
[ 282 ]
“ NIGHT TERRORS ”

believing the devil was chasing him. Reluctantly,
the mother confessed that one day when her little son
had been unruly she had warned him that if he did
not behave the devil would come for him. It was
the night after she had thus foolishly threatened him
that he had his first attack of pavor nocturnus.
Armed with this knowledge, the physician began a
course of treatment which effected a cure in a week.
It properly included tonics and dieting to overcome
the indigestion and other physical ailments caused
by the strain of nervous excitement. But its prin-
cipal feature was treatment by suggestion, to dis-
lodge from the boy’s mind his morbid fear of the
devil.

Anything which causes the instinct of fear to func-
tion abnormally may act with decisive force in bring-
ing on night terrors. The telling of ghost stories and
other gruesome tales of the supernatural has been
productive of much harm in this respect. And, as
brought out in the preceding chapter, cases of night
terrors have similarly been traced to the hearing or

[ 283 ] -
HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

reading by children of fairy tales containing ele-
ments of the horrible. The child that is supersensi-
tive may be so impressed by these elements as to
brood over them and, in waking reverie, apply them
to himself. Thus they get fixed in the mind, to dis-
turb and alarm it, and, eventually, to find expression
in dreams of so unpleasant a character that night
terrors may be a result.

With the night terrors left untreated psycho-
logically, subsequent nervous ailments, perhaps life-
long invalidism, may further penalise the hapless
victim of parental thoughtlessness. I am reminded
of a certain patient of Doctor Sidis’s, a woman
afflicted with neurotic ills up to the age of sixty, and,
when she first consulted the New England specialist,
displaying a most complicated set of disease symp-
toms. She had kidney trouble, stomach trouble, fre-
quent headaches, insomnia, and general nervousness.
In especial, she suffered from an obsessive fear of
becoming insane. This fear, at times, was so extreme
that she would walk up and down her room night

[ 284 ]
“ NIGHT TERRORS ”

after night, “like an animal in a cage,” to use
Doctor Sidis’s expressive phrase. Repeated exami-
nations by different physicians had failed to bring to
light any evidences of organic disease of stomach,
kidneys, or brain, and a diagnosis of hysteria had
finally been made. Consequently, it became Doctor
Sidis’s special task to endeavour to get at these latent
memory-images that had acted with disintegrative
power on the mental and bodily processes, recall
them to conscious remembrance, and, by sugges-
tive treatment, rob them of their disease-producing
potency.

Step by step, by a method of psychological analy-
sis of his own invention, he took his patient back
through her life history. He found that, in middle
life, she had had several distressing experiences, but
none of them adequate to account for her hysteria.
Always, there remained an obscure element which did
not become clearly outlined until, in the course of the
analysis, childhood memories began to emerge. Then
it appeared that there had been a period of night

[ 285 ]
HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

terrors, the source of which was definitely traced to
a shock experienced at the age of five. At that age,
through some mischance, the patient had been allowed
to spend some time with an insane woman who was
in a maniacal state.

Of a sensitive nervous organisation to begin with,
she was overwhelmed by this experience. She could
not get the image of the insane woman out of her
mind, and the fearful thought kept coming again and
again to her, “Do little girls ever go insane?”
Then followed the night terrors, to be “ outgrown ”
in due course. But the analysis revealed that,
though the memory of her experience with the in-
sane woman had gradually faded from conscious
recollection, it had never been subconsciously forgot-
ten. Even now, fifty-five years later, she still saw
this woman in her dreams. It was the baneful influ-
ence of this shock that had given rise to her obsessive
fear of insanity and had prepared the ground for
the condition of abnormal suggestibility making pos-
sible the hysterical imitation of organic kidney and

[ 286 ]
“NIGHT TERRORS ”

stomach disease. As was proved by the outcome
of Doctor Sidis’s psychotherapeutic treatment.

Now the question comes: If night terrors are so
portentous a danger-signal, how prevent the develop-
ment of the mentally disturbed and nervously
strained condition which they indicate? This ques-
tion has, perhaps, been sufficiently answered in pre-
vious chapters. Here I would simply reaffirm that
emotional control is the great object to be kept
steadily in view. It is, indeed, significant that night
terrors are most likely to appear in children having
a nervous, excitable father or mother. The emo-
tionality, the chronic worrying and anxiety of the
parent infect the child by the power of psychic con-
tagion and make him fall an easy prey to any dis-
quieting experience.

And if, despite well-ordered moral training and
the benign influence of a good parental example, the
child shows a tendency to develop night terrors—
what then? Well, here is how one psychologically
enlightened parent nipped in the bud a fear-bred

[ 287 ]
HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

condition that might have resulted in night terrors
or in some specific nervous ailment of the waking
life:

“ For several weeks my boy, three and a half years
old, had been visiting the zodlogical garden every
afternoon, in the company of a French maid of ex-
ceptionally forceful character, and apparently free
from the superstitiousness of the average nurse.
For a long time all went well, until one evening the
boy began to cry soon after he was left for the night.
At this unusual occurrence, I mounted the stairs and
inquired the cause of the boy’s trouble.

** He said there were lions in the house and that he
did not want to stay alone, as he was afraid they
would eat him. The source of the idea had been that
the lions had roared more loudly than usual on that
particular afternoon, and he had been much im-
pressed, standing for some time quite motionless
before the cage, though terrified. I soon convinced
the boy that the lions had to remain in their cages,
and could not get out; hence, there were none in the

[ 288 ]
“NIGHT TERRORS ”

house, so that there was no occasion to fear. Of
course, it was first necessary to give him the feeling
of security gained by embracing me; and, secondly,
to begin the conversation by talking of something
else—I have forgotten what.

“In this way the state of terror was dismissed,
and the feeling of protection was induced before we
returned to the subject of the lions. Then we made
rather a joke of the funny roaring of the lions before
we had finished, and he finally lay down, with the
solemn purpose to go to sleep and think, as I sug-
gested, of the tramcars and motors passing outside
his open window. It was all very simple substitu-
tion, but it was the prevention of what might have
become a serious fear-psychosis if injudiciously
handled.” *

It should be added that special need for training
in emotional control is indicated if a child begins to
be troubled, not by night terrors, but by another
and more common childhood malady—somnambu-

1 Archives of Pediatrics, December, 1914.

[ 289 ]
HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

lism. The child who talks or walks in his sleep, like
the child attacked by night terrors, is, for some
reason, nervously unstrung; and, it may confidently
be said, is usually unstrung because of the presence
in his mind of disquieting ideas, conscious or sub-
conscious. On this account, the parent should not
be satisfied with the measures ordinarily employed
in dealing with both night terrors and somnambulism
—the prescribing of tonics and sedatives, outdoor
exercise, abstinence from tea and coffee, reduction in
meat in the diet, and so forth. Undeniably, these
measures often result in a complete cessation of the
nocturnal symptoms. But, even if, as a result of
medication, exercise, and dieting, the disquieting
ideas causing the symptoms no longer manifest their
presence by the attacks that have alarmed the par-
ents, these ideas still are left in the mind, perchance
to cause still more alarming symptoms later. Ac-
cordingly, the really prudent parent, besides dieting
his child, will endeavour to get at the mental source
of trouble.
[ 290 ]
“NIGHT TERRORS ”

Sometimes he can do this by closely observing the
behaviour of the child in his waking moments, and the
trend of his waking thoughts. Or he can do it by
gaining the child’s confidence and questioning him
as to any fears, worries, or griefs that may be dis-
turbing him. If, as will often happen, the child in-
sists, it may be in all sincerity, that nothing is
troubling him, there is yet another avenue of infor-

_Mation open to the parent—namely, by questioning
the child about his dreams. Through studying his
dreams, in fact, it is possible to gain clearer insight
into his mental life than perhaps by any other means.

Again and again, as we have seen, the modern psy-
chologist has made use of dream-analysis with illumi-
nating results. Parents can and should similarly
analyse their children’s dreams. And I feel justified
in predicting that parents of the future, alert to
detect and correct any undesirable trends in their
children’s mental and moral development, will make
frequent use of dream-analysis as an aid in success-
ful child-rearing.

[ 291 ]
HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

The helpfulness of dream-analysis to parents
comes from the fact that the dreams of children usu-
ally relate either to things which the children dread,
or things which they desire. This is also true of the
dreams of adults, as shown by the analysis of thou-
sands of dreams. In the case of adults, however, the
fear or the desire mirrored by the dream is nearly
always masked by the variety and seeming absurdity
or incongruity of the dream-images. As when, for
example, a complicated, fantastic dream of adven-
ture in an out-of-the-way part of the world is found,
on examination, to be connected with a secret long-
ing for marriage. Accordingly, prolonged and
tedious analysis is often needed to get at the true
meaning of an adult’s dreams. In the case of chil-
dren’s dreams, the opposite is the rule. There is
little repression or distortion, the dream dealing
directly with what is uppermost in the dreamer’s
waking mind, and emphasising the fears or fulfiling
the wishes of his waking life.

This is what makes dream-analysis both easy and

[ 292 ]
“ NIGHT TERRORS ”

profitable to parents. Once aware of the wish-ful-
filling réle of dreams, no parent need experience diffi-
culty in interpretation if his small boy reports to him
a series of dreams like the following:

“It was after school, and I went with other boys
to a candy store, and the storekeeper told us we
could have anything we wanted. We had a fine time.
I filled my pockets with chocolates and caramels and
peanut candy, besides what I ate while I was in the
store.

“Twas at a party, and there was plenty to eat
and drink. We had sandwiches and lemonade, ice
cream and cake. After it was over, they told us we
could take away all the food that was not eaten.

“ There was a fire in the next street, and I went
to see the firemen at work. It was rainy and cold,
and somebody brought out coffee and cake for the
firemen. There was more than they could eat, so
they gave me some.”

Dreamed by a small boy living in a poor home,
dreams like these would be of a pathetic, rather

[ 298 ]
HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

than sinister, import. For they would represent the
imaginary fulfilment of wishes unrealisable in the
waking life, and would thus be a subconscious pro-
test against the cramping limitations of poverty.
Even so, whether the youthful dreamer were the son
of poor parents or the son of parents comfortably
circumstanced, it would be an unescapable inference
that, when awake, he was inclined to think over-
much of his stomach. Wherefore, dreams like these,
if dreamed with any frequency, would unmistakably
suggest the desirability of training to check a tend-
ency to gluttony and greed.

The frequency with which dreams of a given type
are dreamed has, indeed, much to do with their sig-
nificance as indicators of character defects. An
occasional dream of gorging one’s self—or, say, of
being the centre of attraction at an evening party—
would not be valid ground for indicting a little boy
of greed, or a little girl of vanity. But, if such

dreams are habitual, or if, despite a seeming variety
in the dreams reported by son or daughter, there is

[ 294 ]
“NIGHT TERRORS ”

discernible an undercurrent of desires incompatible
with strength and beauty of character, then the wise
parent will not delay in supplementing dream study
by educational measures to correct the indicated
defects.

And, as emphasised by the experiences of many of
the youthful nervous patients whose case-histories
have been given in this book, dream-analysis should
particularly be utilised to help children who—being
free from adenoids, eye-strain, or other adverse
physical conditions—show a sudden and unfavour-
able change in disposition. Some cause of emotional
stress is undoubtedly present, and it may be taken
for granted that the child will betray, through the
content of his dreams, what is troubling his mind.
Dream-analysis will thus give insight into secret
jealousies, secret desires, secret fears, secret mental
conflicts of many kinds, that are provocative both
of unfavourable changes in character and of outright
ill health.

One such conflict, to which I have already referred

[ 295]
HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

when discussing the handicap of sulkiness, is conflict
over sex questions. Frequently, to the parents’
astonishment, it will be found that the actual cause
of timidity, reticence, moodiness, or depression of
spirits in a formerly happy child, is a mental con-
flict due to the child’s vain endeavours to work out
fully satisfactory answers to delicate questions which
the parents have not answered when put to them by
the child, or have answered in an evasive fashion.
Children are far more discerning than most parents
give them credit for being. Also, they often are
more interested than most parents suppose in some
of the fundamental problems of existence—and espe-
cially the problem of their own nature and origin.
The scientific study of dreams, indeed, has furnished
an additional and powerful argument against the
common practice among parents of veiling in mys-
tery or concealing with well-intentioned falsehoods
the facts of birth and of sex.

But let me quote, at this point, the findings of an
English medical psychologist, Doctor Ernest Jones,

[ 296 ]
“NIGHT TERRORS ”

of London, who has specially studied the reactions of
children to the policy of silence and mystification
regarding sex matters.

“The extent to which such matters occupy the
mind of the young child,” says Doctor Jones, “ is
always underestimated by adults, and is impossible
to determine by a casual examination, for, on the
one hand, the later memories for these years are
always deficient and erroneous, and, on the other
hand, this aspect of the child’s mind is rarely acces-
sible to direct inquiry, on account of the barrier
always existing on the subject between child and
adult. As the child grows older, the desires and
tendencies in question meet with such obstacles as an
increasing sense of shame, guilt, wrongness, remorse,
and so on, and are fought against by the child, who
now half-consciously strives to get away from them,
to forget them, or, as it is technically termed, to
“repress” them. The repressed mental processes
are later thus forgotten, and, along with them, a
major part of the mental experiences associated

[ 297 ]
HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

with them in time. This is the reason why so little
of early childhood life can be recalled by the adult.
“The desires, thoughts, impulses, tendencies, and
wishes thus repressed do not, however, die; they live
on, but come to expression in other forms. Their
energy is directed along more useful paths, a process

known as “

sublimation,” and upon the extent and
kind of this sublimation depends a great deal of the
future interests and activities of the individual.” *

Under certain conditions, instead of smooth, suc-
cessful sublimation, there may be mental conflict,
with nervous or mental maladies as a possible result.
To this undesirable outcome the parental course
sometimes contributes materially. Again, I quote
Doctor Jones:

“Tt is almost a regular occurrence for children
of the age of four or five to turn from their parents,
to withdraw into themselves, and to pursue private
speculations about the topics concerning which they
have been denied information, whether by a direct

*The Journal of Educational Psychology, November, 1910.
[ 298 ]
“NIGHT TERRORS ”

refusal or by evasion. Phantasies of bitter resent-
ment against the parent commonly occur at: this
time, and often form the basis not only of a later
want of confidence, or even a more or less veiled
hostility as regards the parents, but also of various
subsequent disharmonies, neurotic disturbances, and
so forth.”

Of course, readers of these pages scarcely need
to be reminded, conflict over questions of birth and
sex is only one form of emotional stress that may
occasion night terrors, somnambulism, changes in
character, and unmistakable nervous ailments.
Whatever the stress, it will be indicated by the
child’s dreams, either directly or symbolically.
Which, of itself, is abundant reason for parents to
gain knowledge of at least the chief principles of
scientific dream-interpretation.

[ 299 ]
IN CONCLUSION
x
IN CONCLUSION

ROM what has been said in the foregoing

pages, it is an irresistible inference that the

greatest of all handicaps a child can have,
short of being born hopelessly deficient, is to be born
into a home where he will be exposed to mind-deaden-
ing or emotion-stressing influences—a home where
he will receive neither adequate mental stimulus nor
adequate moral training. Under such circumstances,
so profound is the influence of the early environ-
ment, his growth to a normal manhood is impossible,
unless other and more favourable influences from out-
side the home affect him with sufficient force to offset
the home surroundings. Fortunately, this happens
in many cases, but, as hospital, asylum, and court

[ 303 ]
HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

records testify in sad abundance, in many cases the
adverse home environment proves indeed decisive.

And, on the opposite, that child is unquestionably
getting the best possible start in life who is born
of parents appreciative of his mental needs, sincerely
devoted to him, but not over-devoted, watchful of his
physical health and alert to prevent him from becom-
ing a slave to his emotions. The purpose of both
this book and its predecessor, “ Psychology and
Parenthood,” has been to help this latter class of
parents and, perchance, to awaken other parents to
the need for giving more care and intelligent atten-
tion to their children than they have hitherto been
doing.

Certainly, the discoveries of modern psychology
and physiology have made it increasingly evident
that the business of child-rearing is, of all businesses,
far and away the most important to the race. And
it is a business that has become more important than
it ever was in the past, because of the greater de-
mands made on human mentality, and the more

[ 304 }
IN CONCLUSION

numerous sources of stress on human emotionality
that are involved in the increasing complexity of
civilised life. Either the clock of progress must be
stopped and the world revert to more primitive modes
of living, or else the men and women of the days to
come must be conditioned, through wiser educational
methods that begin in the first years of life, to adapt
' themselves more smoothly to the modern environ-
ment.

We do not want to stop the clock of progress.
But neither could we wish to see the people of the
world degenerate into a race of psychasthenes, neu-
rasthenes, and otherwise mentally or nervously dis-
organised men and women. Happily, means of at-
taining smoother adaptation, of increasing both the
mental vigour and the nervous resistance of the race
are now available. They are available, thanks chiefly
to the labours of the medical psychologists. And it
is my hope that, by stressing the adaptatory elements
in their discoveries and presenting them concretely
to the lay reader, I may have contributed something

[ 305 ]
HANDICAPS OF CHILDHOOD

to promote appreciation of these elements by parents
in general, and appropriate action for the benefit of
the growing generation. First and last, be it clearly
understood, it is on the development of a really effi-
cient parenthood that the future of society depends.

[ 306 }
INDEX

Adenoids, and mental back-
wardness, 23, 26; and
sulkiness, 70-71.

Anger, effects of, 87-92.

Ayres, L. P., 6, 7, 24.

Bashfulness, 167-187; two
types of, 171-172; causes,
171-176; cure, 177-186;
prevention, 186-187, 202-
203.

Bechterew, W., 165, 180-181,
185,

Binet, A., 3, 5, 9.

Binet-Simon tests, 9-10, 13-17.

Bohannon, E. W., 41-46, 48-
49.

Brill, A. A., 47, 58, 182-184,
234-237, 244-248, 251, 255-
257.

Cannon, W. B., 90, 91, 93.
Cases:
Abnormal irritability, 251-
253.
Abnormal timidity, 253-255.
Bashfulness, 165-169, 177-
185.
Binet’s dullard, 3-4.
Binet-Simon experiments,
13-18.

Crime from jealousy, 99-
01.

Curable dullness, 11- 13, 18-
19, 21-24, 25-28, 70- 71,
Day terrors,” 276-278.
Fear of blood, 255-258.
Fear of insanity, 284-287.
as from jealousy, 103-

Hysterical paralysis, 139-
147.

Indecision, 188-191, 195-
198.

Jealous dullards, 113-114.

Jealousy of mother, 116-
118.

Mental backwardness from
pene causes, 21-24, 25-
2

Nervous
139.

Nervous dullards, 11-13.

“Night terrors,” 273-274,
280-283, 284-287.

Obsession of sin, 266-267.

Obsession to murder, 122-
123.

Obsession to torture, 244-
249.

“Only children,” 37-40, 60-
51, 54-55.

depression, 134-

[ 307 ]
INDEX

Pathological lying, 263-265.
Physiology of emotions, 88-
89. 91, 93-94.
Stammering, 211-212, 214-
215, 218-220, 226-237.
Sulkiness, 67-69, 70-71, 72-
73, 77-79.
Unemployability, 63-65.
Children’s lies, 119-121, 263-
265.
Chorea, 74-75.
Chubb, P., 250.
Coriat, I. H., 48, 226n, 230-
233.
Cornman, O. P., 5, 7.
Crime, causes and prevention,
155-157.
Cruelty, sexual element in,
160.

Dark, fear of the, 258-260.
Darwin, C., 107, 172.
Dattner, B., 226-230.
Davidson, P. E., 28.
“Day terrors” 276-279.
Dearborn, G. V. N., 95.
Dieffenbach, J. F., 207, 208,
209, 238.

Divorce, statistics of, 152-153;
causes, 154-155, 159.
Dream-analysis, 117, 135, 252,

291-295.
Dubois, P., 79.

Ellis, H., 47, 84-85, 160.

Exercise, and moral control,
200-201.

Eye-strain, and mental back-

wardness, 26; and sulki-
ness, 72-73.

Fairy tales, 243-265; harmful
effects, 244-249, 251-261;
good effects, 249-251, 263,
265; the war and, 261-
262.

Favorite child, the, 55-59.

Feeble-mindedness. See Men-
tal backwardness.

Fiske, C. H., 91.

Fresh air, and moral control,
200.

Freud, S., 234.

Gesell, A. L., 107.

Hall, G. S., 120, 263-265.
Hartenberg, P., 168, 184.
Holmes, A., 18.
Hypnotism, 229, 232.

Imitation, 79-80.
Suggestion.

Indecision, morbid, 187-203;
causes of, 194-199; cure
and prevention, 199-203.

Indigestion, and sulkiness, 66-
68

See also

Inferiority, feeling of, 81-82,
113-114.

Insanity, causes and preven-
tion, 157-158.

Jealousy, 99-128; crimes
caused by, 99-101; paren-
tal attitude to, 101-102;
and disease, 103-106, 116-

[ 308 ]
INDEX

123; in early infancy,
107; causes, 107-115; pre-
vention, 123-127.

Jones, E., 296, 298.

Kyle, D. B., 212.
Luckey, G. W. A., 30.

Marriage, 151-161.

Maxwell, W. H., 7.
Mental backwardness, extent
of, 5-6; causes, 6-7, 9-13,
18-25, 28-30; treatment,

25-28; agencies to cor-
rect, 31-32.
Mental training, need for

early, 126-127, 187.

Moral training, need for early,
29-30, 38-39, 48-49, 52-
55, 76-79, 106-107, 132-
134, 149, 157-159, 199,
203, 240, 287.

Mosso, A., 243.

Meyerson, A., 144-146.

“ Nagging,” 82.

Nervous disorders, and back-
wardness, 12-13; “only
children” and, 44, 48;
faulty training and, 48-
50; “favorite children ”
and, 56-58; and _ sulki-
ness, 67-69, 72-75, 84; and
jealousy, 103-107, 115-
123; and selfishness, 132-
150; bashfulness and, 175-
186; indecision and, 188-
191, 194-199; stammering

and, 222-239; fairy tales
and, 244-249, 251-260;
“night terrors ” and, 276,
284

“Night terrors,” 271-299; de-
scription, 272-274; tradi-
tional explanation, 274;
modern view, 275-283;
need for treatment, 284-
287; prevention, 287-299.
ue mentioned, 38, 39,

Only child, the, 37-55; nerv-
ousness of, 44, 47-48; pre-
cocity, 44; social in-
adaptability, 44-45; ef-
feminacy, 46; in adult
life, 47-48; how spoiled, -
48-55.

O’Shea, M. V., 108.

Physiology of emotions, 87-95.

“ Poltergeists,” 119-120.

Precocity, 44.

Psychological clinics in
United States, 31-32.

Putnam, J. J., 48.

Race conservation, 304-306.

Religious instruction, 265-267.

Retardation. See Mental
backwardness.

Rowan, C. L., 213.

Selfishness, 131-161; and nerv-
ous disorders, 132-150;
and marriage, 151-161.

[ 309 ]
INDEX

Sex, mental conflict regard-
ing, 83-85, 296-299; edu-
cation in, 159-161.

Sidis, B., 190, 192, 284-287.

Simon, Professor, 9.

Somnambulism, 289-290.

Stammering, 207-240; Dief-
fenbach and, 207-208;
peculiarities of, 210-217;
psychological treatment,
220-221, 225-238; causes,
221-225, 238; organic dis-
ease and, 226; difficulty
of cure, 239; prevention,
239-240.

Rngzestion, 53, 80, 125, 224,

Sues, significance of, 65-
66; causes and treatment,

66-86; physiological ef-
fects, 87-94.

Teeth, and mental backward-
ness, 26; and sulkiness,
71-72, 76.

Underfeeding, and sulkiness,
69.

Wallin, J. E. W., 11-18.

Walsh, J. J., 148, 194.

White, W. A., 260.

Williams, T. A., 67, 68, 259,
276-280.

Witmer, L., 20, 21, 23, 25, 28,
31

Wood, P. R., 73.
Worry, effects of, 92-94.

[310]
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