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Laa disgrammas suivants illuatrant la mOthodo. 1 2 3 1 2 3 4 5 6 MIOOCOrY tlSOlUTION TBI CHAIT (ANSI ond ISO TEST CH«RT No. 2) 116 ■■■ 12.0 ^li^ll^ ^ /APPLIED IIVMGE Inc ^^^ 1653 East Main Slr««t S'.S Rochester. New York 14609 USA r.^B (716) *B2 - 0300 - Phone ^= (716) 2eS - S9S9 - Fax /T-^ O:,/ n^ ^ i^dtw^ ^ ^^ KV IJ, V 1^^ I , ■) o v>/.; iV f^ u ',•. ^?-c Eve- 1 A 2 -< THE SECRET SPRINGS THE SECRET SPRINGS By Harvey O'Higgins Author of "Fkoh the Liri" Etc. HARPER W BROTHERS PUBLISHERS NEW YORK AND LONDON mil Tn Srut Spumcm Owijht. i,«,. b, Hamir O'HIota, FHa.n) In thi United Sum of Amaia, S 903 33 CONTENTS aa. Mil I. Introduction 3 II. In Lovb and Makuaob ij III. In Health 44 IV. In Childhood 76 V. In Hapfiness and Success log VI. In Theodokb Roosevelt 139 VII. In Character and Conduct 153 VIII. In Dreams 186 IX. In Rrugion 316 THE SECRET SPRINGS THE SECRET SPRINGS CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION •AFTER aU," Doctor X said, "the science I~\. of medicine is beginning to be of some use. It IS really learning how to cure." This did not surprise me. I had always taken it for granted that medicine cured. But he added : "It is finding the secret springs of health and the roots of happiness." And ttiat made me sit up. I knew that iJoctor X was a diagnostician who had a high place m his profession. I had learned, by recent expenence in my own person, that he had more medical skill than .-my other phy- sician I had been able to stumble on in some ten years of painful traipsing roundabout among them. We had struck up a visiting acquamtance after office hours, and I had found him a man of philosophic canniness in the discussion of human aflfairs. And when THE SECRET SPRINGS he said that medicine was finding the "secret spnngs" of health and the "roots" of happi- n^naturaUy I began to ask eager questions. What were the secret springs of health? And what were the roots of happiness? His answer grew and lengthened until it spread itself over as many nights as the stones that Scheherazade told the Sultan. It seemed to me more interesting, too, than the Arabian tales. It was not merely fan- tastic, incredible, miraculous indeed. It was scientific and convincing also. It was a new department of human knowledge as aston- ishing to me as the modem wonders of elec- tucity might be to a man of the Middle Ages. And it was more than this. It was the explanation of a thousand mysteries in human character and conduct that had puz- zled me as a professing fictionist and an amateur student of social problems. It was an answer to such diverse questions as these, for instance: Why do the daughters of the rich so often many chai^eurs and the sons of peera mate with chorus girls? Why is there such peace and contentment in smoking tobacco or in chewing gum? Why does a man on the battlefield go blind with shel-shock and recover his sight when his hospital- »mp is toipedoed and he jumps overboard? 4 INTRODUCTION How can a rdigious belief work the miracle (rf a faith cure? Why do young boys usually fall in love first with older women, and what is the attraction that dderly rou^ have for young girls? Why do we so often seem to hate most the penon whom we most love? What is the source of the ahnoet universal ad- miration for that great conquering enemy of nan- Icind, Napoleon Bonaparte? Why is an artistic genius so often the most thin- skinned and sensitive and yet the most arrogant of persons? Why has Puritanism so failed as a religion? And why do our /jnerican churches hold the women more easily than chey hold the men? What is the explanation of love at first sight? Of the common illusion among lovers that they have met the beloved one in a previous exist- ence? Of the poets' theory that a loving couple are two halves of a divided personality now happily reunited? Why are so many people bom to a religious &ith or a political opinion which they subsequently in- dorse and support with all the authority of reason ? Why does a wife so often think of her husband as "a great child," even while he has exactly the same superior parental attitude toward her? Why are men and women such bundles of con- tradictions, acting against their recognized interests and their expressed convictions, yielding to un- reasonable impulses ungovernably with their eyes 5 THE SECRET SPRINGS op-. «d Mad to motiv* « th«n.elye, tJutt .,« « MeooWeaAge of happtaos «,d alertnewof MOW dowunhappinew produce tU health? Whvk 51,'^r'^'f *'-*'' WhyfethenZn" of wcce- «, oonnnonly followed by deep dep«S^ Z»^:Sr^J' -^ ^"'^ "•d labor ^ ^ nmgi wben we fed great emotion? ^d so on, and so forth, almost without thl ?ir°* "fn that I put these riddles to the doctor and that he answered them By no means. He talked of cases and cures of the theory of medicine upon which he wi which he was proving that the theory wa^ He estabhshed broad conclusions aboS^ and women, their minds and bodi« tW conduct, their opinions, their chaSSsaS their relations to one another. TS'«^ d^ons lay the answer, to the q^tSs ttlL^'''""*^*^^- B^tthecc^cluSS J^!^^.- ^^ ''° "^"^ to him thaTthe ^«ahzat.ons about art which a painted nught throw off in talking of how he bS 6 INTRODUCTION painted one picture or another. The • or in might ^ ** P"^""* exhortation, at you who send me cases heuS how iJ'h^-^''"^ and cured some of «« 1 ^ ^^J^ diagnosed would su8P^m»^*r."°* difficult, they the U^^t^?^}^«J^^-^>^yfr^ medical mart3T" P"P°* *« be a a»Jh3e^3?^^S5*i"^P^ts the most faS';ro J'^^r- ^ ^^^^ °* began as a gen«S Zj^- P^y^^ans. He a specialist r^ P«ctit,oner and became as an anny suil^ cff *^ «« orthodox and of heaJtS2"th«^* T^ °^ ^°^- renting iTS; ^ f^^^^ and experi- chology and tttt f^l-^^l °^ """bid psy- oance. He became a doctor INTRODUCTION ofthe mind as well as the body. He b^m to work cures in obscure and stub- b« oranything-you tnfw!!,? ^^^ ^^^ "^ked one found me vSh itTriTf ^ ^* '«* some her hand at all A^, *°'^ '"^ '* wasn't 'I-.- • • Ftmny"thinJ^^Ev'"^°««' all about thmk of her let^fthfl^ /"'''• ^hen I hand as having ZLl^ °' '"^^ -^rble f-t'Sri2!"LiJ,f,Hehadbeenin 'It not only'broK hJ^ ^ ™"hle hand. «^1 with wh^j he n^i?'," engagement to a DoctorXpointsJut^??^*^:!,^ h-f!^ happy," to a girl with whom hannTn ^ ^"" ^^^^ly PracticaUy impossSle »f '"' ^°^ him, was n^«ndi„g that"^" he VT'',^ ^^' ^^^ --herly. and devotS ^o^ritS' IN LOVE AND MARRIAGE " never had been, and never could be, that Mrt of person. He fell in love with her at first sight— 'compulsively,' as we say. If anyone at the card table could have seen into his mind and warned him against being hypnotized by a pair of pretty hands, he would probably have replied: 'She's a beautiful character— I can tell it by her hands. I know it intuitively. I've always been that way.'" Intuitively! That is the word. When we say we know a thing "intuitively" we mean that we know it without knowing how we know it— by some mental faculty that is not reason, nor deduction, nor conscious thought at all. And by so saying we recognize the existence of what science now calls "the subconscious mind." But if it is from this subconscious mind that we get our "intui- tions," where does the subconscious mind get them? Where did the lawj-er, the slave of the marble hand, get his "intuition" about hands? When you fall asleep you lose conscious- ness. Your conscious mind ceases to work. It rests and is refreshed. But you dreajm! Some part of your mind continues to work busily, imagining scenes, inventing or recall- ing incidents, enjoying fantastic adventures. You may remember these when you wake 19 THE SECRET SPRINGS *.rp or you may not. That i<. *« ~ ever And among those pictures we find punous thing is that th7 i^e is not t' Si'T^^"'^ -^ of nose and S;*^?^*t^-^e^--"ed:^^ Whole emotion of instinctive love, s^,^ IN LOVE AND MARRIAGE later years, the sight of any physical charac- teristic of the mother may have the same effect on him. TTiat is why the lawyer was married by a marble hand. His "mother image" had been formed around that one feature, a beautiful hand. The sight of such a hand aroused in him all the emotion of instinctive uffection. He was tmaware of this, because it took place in his unconscious mind. He explained it to himself by arguing that hands were an index to character. He had for- gotten about the marble hand. He did not remember it tmtil Doctor X's questions re- called it to him and brotight it back from his unconscious memory. Does all this seem far-fetched? Well, let us leave it for a moment and go with Doctor X. He has a patient who was married not by a marble hand, but by a red lamp. "He is rather unusual," Doctor X says, "because he remembers quite clearly the mother image which he carried in his mind in his boyhood days. It was a picture of his mother as a beautiftil young woman, slender and graceful, with smiling brown eyes and wavy hair. I wished to follow the replacement of that image in his mind by the image of the imaginary sweetheart, who usually succeeds the mother image in the THE SECRrr SPRINGS wnetner be had ever had a tnonfoi «;_* of an ideal girl in his ycS." ^ ^"^"^ He could not recall any. No H» h-^ He was sure of that, until Doctor X sooke of W not as an ideal girl, but as "a cSSS "Ob yes," he' said. "Of courae Ire- a kind of Turkish itx«n, with mS L^ tapestries— all of it in a rJ Jr^ t "S^'ho*,? f describing it amusedly. The light made her look like a perfect peach-shming on her haii-«,rt of^w hau;-and her eyes were bro^. V^tS shadow, and she was-^h, gee. shT was say to myself: 'No, you don't! No such §e°:/°^^-'; And say, when I iwl" q„£,;*°PI^- H« looked at the doctor "Why, that's so!" he said "I'd for gotten that! Well, I'U be jiggered." 33 IN LOVE AND MARRIAGE "PotBiotten what?" "Why, the first time I took Alice home from a dance," (Alfce is his wife.) "I had never been in the house before, and they had one of those red lamps in the hall— a big entrance hall with Turkish rugs and hangrngs-and when she took off her evening clo^ and stood with the red light shining on her hair that way, smiling as she said good night to me, it just went through me hke-well, I think, if I'd been able to find my voice, I'd have proposed to her on the ^t. I know I went away convinced that she was the one woman m the world for me. And I was right. We've been as happy as any two people ever could be." Apparently he had never before connected the lamp in the hall with the lamp in his dream; and he had never noticed the like- ness between the real girl and the dream girl— much less related either of them to the "mother im^e" with its "smiling brown eyes and wavy hair." When Doctor X asked him whether his wife reminded him of his mother at all he replied : "No. Not at all. Not in any way." Subsequently he spoke rather impa- tiently of one of his wife's characteristics; that she was always oversympathetic with people — "not her own sort of people." 93 THE SECRET SPRINGS He said: "She always goes out of her way to say 'Good morning' to the park pohcemaii. and stops to talk to those neglected-looking kids you see on the street, and she used to take flower seeds up to an old flagman on a railroad crossing." "And that irritates you?" the doctor asked. "No," he Slid, "it doesn't irritate me exactly, but-I don't know. I feel sort of jealous, I think." It seemed an odd ground for jealousy. Ihe doctor changed the subject, but a few moments later— when he was sure that his patient _had forgotten the connection— he asked. Were you ever jealous of your mother— as a boy?" "Sure I was," he laughed. "I remember, once, when I saw her kiss a neighbor's boy I was so sore I laid for the kid and beat him That would account for his feeling about IMS wife s mterest in the children on the street. But what about the park poUceman and the others? _ "I mean older people," Doctor X said- poor people and men in uniform " "WeU," he recoUected, "I came home trom school one day and found mother with a couple of poUcemen in the dining room, 34 IN LOVE AND MARRIAG:: gi^ them coflfee and sandwic les. Then had been a fire up the street, an ! they wer, dripping water all over everything. I ain k that was what made me mad-the way thev WCTe mussmg things up. And the fire wa^ l"^. I °'**'. *° ™y^' 'I g«ess they wwen t such a pair of heroes, even if they did get wet • and I didn't see why she was maJang such a fuss about them." "It was characteristic of her, was it?" ^^doctor asked, "to do things for people. ^JIPX^^'" -f f^^- "^^^ ^as a good deal hke my wife in that respect." Here, then, was another subconscious mother image that had acted as a match- maker. But you will notice that the young lover, m his daydreams, had added a red lamp, and that the lamp became the "sym- , }l ■'^^J* ^^ «"°t'°n of love was exploded m him. You will notice, too, that he was jealous of his wife whenever she duphcat«l an action that had made him jealous of his mother, although it was absurd for him to be jealous of such actions in his wife, and he knew it. r, "^ ^*"^ ^"^^ P*""^* is not necessary," Doctor X points out, "to fom this parent mage. It may be formed from pictures, or me repcMts of others; or it may take the THE SECRET SPRINGS aspect of a nurse or a raardian n,,^ ■»^e hi„ jeate of ht^lt;5^^ *^* the outwani appJanT^p^"*- sprung on the consc ous mind of a ^^ «t fiS »5hf^.f ' <«l'l«««<>» »f love wasftiSi '^T "^^ *'">« "ml table fm™ li ® affections could save him "- ThisTsrrr^^p"^- °"««^ Wind ■■It fe^?^^^^ '"^J' ^« ^y- "Love is ma. It IS the unconscious, unreasoning, IN LOVE AND MARRIAGE instinctive mind that is operating, and the r^nmg mind jobs it only to explain, to make reasonable, to "rationalize" (as the psychologists say) the emotions by which reason is stampeded-just as the lawyer had rationalized the effect of fine hands on his affections by arguing that hands are an index 01 character. And the presence of this dream image in the subconscious mind accounts also for some other common delusions of love It accounts, for instance, for the ro- niantic belief of the poet that he has met his beloved one in another life. "When I was a long in Babylon and you were a Chnstian slave-" That other life is the dream life of the subconscious mind in which the poet has known the image that now appears before him in the person of his sweetheart. It accounts for the poetical theory that the lover is m search of the other half of his incomplete personaUty, and that true love consists m the union of two halves of a pmonahty fitting as perfectly as the divided com of the lovers in the fairytale. The two halves that fit are the actual image of the sweetheart and the dream image in the lover's nund. And it accounts for many of those to- a? THE SECRET SPRINGS mantle mysteries, and compulsions, and de- moniac powere that have been attributed ^plnH f ^uT^ love-the power to delude, to overwhelm reason, to nullify ex penence and generally to make the lover behave like a victim of h>-pnosis, a blind puppet, a ndiculous marionette DoctorX^ys: " I have a patient who has been ideally happy in her married life. She w^ also ideally happy with her father. She tells me: 'He never criticized a woman m his life. I could always go to him and get anythmg I wanted. He never whipped me. He was always frani. I never hS reason to hide anything from him.' " He died when sho was sixteen. Doctor X wished to trace the transference of this father image to her husband. He asked how she nad come to marry. "I always had lots of admirera," she said ti ".Tt ^^ ^y preference for any of them mtil I met Royce," Royce is her husb^d. "I liked him the moment he stepped on the dancing floor. He was taU and dark and slender. He had the best face. And there was an air of absolute cleanliness about lum that I learned later was true rf his mmd as well." "How tall was he?" the doctor asked He s SIX feet two." IN LOVE AND MARRIAGE "His clean-mindedness was like your father's ''Yes. Exactly." ''What was your father like, physically?" He was tall and dark and slender. H" wore a beard, but he had dean-cut features." 'How do you know? Did you pver see him without the beard?" "No, but mother had a picture of him as a young man, and he had the cleanest face " "How tall was he?" "Six feet three inches." Here the role and make-up were all ready for the actor who could carry them off. The moment he stepped on the stage the herome of the love drama began at once to play her part opposite him. Since he de- veloped the necessary qualities of character to stabilize the instinctive attraction, the love has been permanent and the happiness endurmg. It is not always necessary, however, for the actor to have the necessary qualities of diaracter. By some mechanism of projec- taon, those qualities may be stripped from the dream man and foisted upon the lover. He may be dressed up in the borrowed garments of the heroine's mental image with- tmt the least discomfort to her. She will be blind to his faults, without any senile of I *9 THE SECRET SPRINGS infatuations of voun age IS called a rejuvenation." aere. The point is that she consideredh«^ anothSdaJ?" ""^ ""^^ ""^ »>"«band Why not? It was not at aU clear why not. The 30 IN LOVE AND MARRIAGE ^^^ *^* ^ ^^ *«^«t him seemed S^f °'*^;. ^^^ ^°^i^d to the fact that he was the sort of man he was. and not some other sort of man. ^Jtlu°^^l ^?^ ^^^ conversation by askmg her whether her father was stiU alive No, sherephed. "He died when I was only three years old." uiJiS "^fu"" f}^' "^^^ ^^"^^ be your hl^j, ^ 'f"? ^'^^ °^^"be him to me- nis physical characteristics." She described him rather vividly, laughing He returned to the question o her hSf- "^^^^^^/l""^*^- ThenhelsJ^', WLat did your father look like? " She replied with an equally vivid de smption of her father, IhoughTe ht ^oT^.^^^t'^t''^ "^ y°^g *hat she could not possibly have remembered him. And stranger still, her description of hei^ fathe^ was almost woM for word, a repStion o ^%^P^^oi her ideal of a husband Doctor X pomted out this oddity to her. She seemed bewildered by it. She did n?t Wwhereshe had acquired the vivid pict^e invit^^^' ^t.^8«est«i. "you have invented m your childhood a 'father image- s' THE SECRET SPRINGS J^itToT?'*^ ^ •''*' °' "^ • *»«« ^LJrCZ^- "E-'J-tJy that's i„^ "And in your later youth you have «n- Well, then," the doctor said, "does it occur to you that you are unhappy withWr ht^band because he is not ySd^S^ ari!^ ^^? T°'^^ ^°^ ^'^^ that. She KSfS*'*- It was as a husband that Doctor X left the matter with her. lUe next tune he saw her she said: "T have been thuiking over what you sujteested about my husband. I believe yT^ Sf •• Shrifli^.'^^f^^tofa^'S me. She laughed. "As a matter of fact I don't thmk he's half bad as a TrZ^ as husbands go." "suauu That is a very simple instance of one of t^l^mmonest causes of unhappiness in ^^hfe. Let us go a cut deeper in the "I have a patient." Doctor X says, "a woman who married an unrejuvmkted 3a iN LOVE AND MARRIAGE father image. That was a mente. regression on her part, due to the failure of a youthful love aflfair in which the image had been rejuvenated as ai. ideal lover. Unhappy be- cause of the failure of this love affair; she tad repressed the memory of it, and the Ideal image had been carried down in the repression-as it often is. The father image had replaced it-as it often does. Wh«i she was about to marry her present husband her mother warned her, 'He is just like your father, and he has always been difficult " Her father had, in fact, been short- tempered, cntical, and unjust. Once, when She was about seven years old, he had accused her of something of which she had lettmg her explam, he had spanked her in the presence of a boy friend. 1 ae indignity was ahnost unendurable. It had remained m her naemory as the picture symbol of parental injustice. But she had aU a young girls mstmctive love for her father She had repressed her anger and resentment. It nanamed m her subconscious mind as a rnass of undrained emotion— as an "affect " as the psychologists say. One evening, at the dinner table, her husband wrongly accused her of something that had been done by a servant, and he 33 THE SECRET SPRINGS 5P0ke angrily to her in the presence of a dinn» guest. By so doing he accurately reproduced the scene that had occurred with her father. There foUowed a volcanic erup- toon out of aU proportion to the cause of it. All the undrained emotions of her relations with her father were set free. And they nanained free, thereafter, in her relatioM with her husband. Any sort of happmess with him became practically impossible, berause, loymg him as she had loved her fattier, she felt all the resentment and anger and dishke against him that she had stored up, unexpended, against her fat'ier. 'Moreover," the doctor says, "her feelings agamst her father had accumulated in a sense of humiliation that showed in blushine in her girlhood, ttiough the blushing was of a teansitory character. As a consequence of her unhappy relations with her husband she developed chronic blushing— a so-called vasomotor reaction in which the congestion and painful beating of tiie blood vessels of fece and neck led her physician to believe tliat she had a thyroid disturbance. It was on this diagnosis that she came to me. "I found that she had no ttiyioid trijuble. She was physically healttiy. She was suffer- ing only with the psychic conflict ttiat had resulted from marrying an unrejuvenated 34 IN LOVE AND MARRIAGE father image. She was cured by bringing that conflict into her conscious mind and resolving it, with her husband's aid." Let us put aside, for the present, the question of how such a conflict can be cured by "bringing it into the conscious mind." Let us leave out of immediate consideration the whole matter of disease and its treat- ment by such methods. Let us confine ourselves to the question of how this sub- conscious love image and the emotions attached to it affect the happiness of married life. The case that I have just described is evidently a somewhat abnormal example of what is a fairly common situation. We have all, I suppose, been puzzled by the amount of irritation that often develops be- tween husband and wife over some ap- parently trivial matter. We call it "a tempest in a teapot." The most devoted love does not seem capable of saving them from moments of the most furious anger and resentment The cause may be as small as a teapot, but the tempest can be a home- wrecldng tornado. The one whom we most love we seem to be capable of most hatine Why? ^ The child's first love is for its parents. But its parents are also its first guides and 35 THE SECRET SPRINGS aritics. They give it its first dMdpline K ^ed by suppressed emotS S SS-" the childhood^rfor tSe^S^K, t^ Wormed into the adSrCit^S or wife, there is a weaker reoressinn T^f^ antagonistic emotions. Si^S i^' ^ J-^v^bly under any critSn.'S^ J Kindness, or mjustioe. Moreover, in the happier moods of married lite the inheritance of the chiMJinJiT Dand will have moments in which he «^ tiit\hrher.,.''-Th:^^-r- TO act as if her husband were her fnfTi^ pmicularly if she has invS^eS h^tf"^ d^culties with financial affairs oSl? these moments will conflict. The wSe^o IS most consistently daughter-llke^'duti! •WV t° ^°^ *^t her husband fc nothmg but a great child," b<«^S? she manded mothering. And the husband ^ be em-aged to find himself treated Sif^ 36 IN LOVE AND MARRIAGE '2;j™*v.»m be difficult b«»^ tte "Tsmg out of the subconscious influences of her past relations with her father. ^ DcvSV*.l^*'°". ^^'^'^ be impossible" £jf^ th^i^°^P''r' "^ '* were not thlt love in the noimal man or woman k » ^S,«'r''?" ^'^S ^ douWeTal. it ^ love ilmer^y t'^e SveTSiS *^^^ blast away aU the olS^l^JJ^J ftend betweai the lover and the tovS It S^to J^' fr'^ental rea^^." { U ^'Jy ^^^"^ °' protective love, it IS a wiUmg giant that sublimates ite ^SE "'.'^^ highest forms of cXrS de ^opm«it. But in the absence of pSStfve mme. it is not a goal in itself; and if it 37 THE SECRET SPRINGS be made a goal personaUty soon crumbles. But, if protective love is the ideal aimed at, the sex instinct automatically takes its place as naturaUy as a kiss or a caress. Without that ideal, sex love is as disastrous as free dynamite. Pood craving has its value m the goal which food-given strength enables you to attain. Sex craving has its value m the goal of home happiness and race happiness which sex-given strength en- ables you to attain in mate and chil'^ren " It is there that Doctor X's theory and practice diverge most widely from the Freudian emphasis on sex. I shall have to return to that question later and take it up at length. Meantime, I wish to give a few more examples of the subconscious in- fluence of a parent image causii^ unhap- piness in married life. J is a contractor whom Doctor X once teeated for a disease that need not come into the story. His father had been a tyrant to both mother and son. He had opposed the boy s education, and J had been given only one year's schoolii^. His antagonism to- ward his father and his sympathy for his mother had overweighted his instinctive love for her. He ran away from home at seventeen, and within a year he was earning enough to take his mother away from his 38 IN LOVE AND MARRIAGE fethja-'s tyranny and support her. She hved with him until her death, which occurred when he was forty-two years old Tluee years later, at forty-five, he married a widow of forty. The probability of an unrejuvenated inother image in this case was so great that the doctor hazarded the suggestion, "Your wife markedly resembles your mother, doesn't she?" "Why, yes!" he said. "How did you Imow? I have a photo of my mother in the dining room, and everyone always takes it for a picture of my wife." The father's oppression had given him a feehng of inferiority from which he had never recovered, and that feeling had greatly hampered his career. The unrejuvenated mother unage had made him unhappy with his wife. Strangest of aU, he was repeating his own father's tyranny in his relations with his stepson— his wife's son by her previous marriage. He was so unkind to ttis boy of seventeen that the stepson had threatened to run away from home. _ "The philosophers," Doctor X comments, mamtain that experience is the best teacher. I find that the subconscious mind learns nothing by experience. It redupKcates the drama of its childhood over and over, even 39 111; THE SECRET SPRINGS ro jjoctor X, a nervous wreck, alwavs numerable m her tnanied life, and affliS mth a n^vous trembling whenever she h^ abeU. The drama of her tragic marriage had begun at breakfast one rZni^^ a ^oonful of porridge on the tablS She had scarcely had a happy moment wi^ a phobm for beUs. Why? She felt ttS i^W ^ l-Z'J ^.^PPy- *^t there wL no«ung m Me for her, that aU her natural affection had died in her and had bS replaced by a cold sense of fear The doctor found that she had been an iSrS ^«r*'<^°^te child, but her fathS had been a stem and undemonstmtive man. and her mother had been too busy ort«^ cold to accept her caresses. At a vS early age she devoted her«Jf to a S which she used to nurse and care for. vS ever her own mother neglected he! Z found relief for her injured feelings in Svi^ ^ her affection on this infant For ™ reason-which she could not reJl ™ sound of a ragpicker's beU always threw the 40 IN LOVE AND MARRIAGE ^5 ^*?.P/f '^y^ of fear, and it was her ^dehght to comfort the infant and "It is necessary to notice here," Doctor X says, "that such a child's attachmentfo^ a baby ,s not a manifestation of the maternal S"'*^- w ' ""'" ^^ identifies heS^ ^,^ ^ "^^* ^d P^^y^ ^ dual mother ^d role. That is why my patient, by tend^ly carmg for the baby, recompensed herself for her mother's neglect. It is ^ reason also why the baby's fear of a beU f^TSuZ"''^'^"^ '*^^ ^ ^- «-> The baby died. Disconsolate, she turned to a partot, and the panot died. She d^ veloped a passion for paper doUs, but she m^e a htter of paper, cutting them (mt and her mother threw them in tZ Se declmng that she couldn t have the ho^ S^H^'^*^^;?*'^- Allheratt^S at affection or self-assertion were met yri^ mtiasm. She heani her neighbors Sl^S ^iLTr? ^ 'T'^'- H-rteachS seemed to dishke her. And so forth. PT«i • *^\*"°e' of course," the doctor ^Uuns, "she was imputing to the outS world actions to account for unieasonaWe and mstinctive feelings in hetsel?^ She was very shy and self-conscious. One • 41 IM li ill II! THE SECRET SPRINGS day, while she was handing an etaser to a boy in the classroom, a teacher misunder- stood what she was doing and shamed her before the whole class by accusing her of holding hands. Moreover, she was reported to her mother. From that time on she felt that she "would rather die" than be seen talking to a boy. She became reserved, lonesome, hypersensitive to criticism— deeply affectionate, but morbidly unable either to show affection or win it. In this state she fell in love with the young man whom she finally married. The period of her engagement was happy beyond words. She felt that at last she had found the absolutely uncritical protection of a great love. On her honeymoon her happi- ness seemed greater than ever. And then she spilled porridge on the tablecloth, and her htisband reproved her irritably. Presto! The whole structure of conscious happiness came tumbling down in ruins, wrecked by an explosion of the subconscious emotions in the cellar of her mind. She began to re-enact with her husband the early drama of her relations with her parents. Every bell that she heard became the rag- picker's bell, warning her never to love, be- cause her love was always to be rejected, disastrous, tragical. All the morbid fears IN LOVE AND MARRIAGE axid repressions of her childhood flooded her mind, and nothing that her husband could do was of any avail to reassure her. This is an abnormal and exaggerated case, but It will serve to show the strength of subconscious influences on married hap- piness. Let me give, finaUy, an example of complete and incu.able unhappiness in marriage as the result of a subconscious, infantile "fixation" of affection. Mrs. K is an Irishwoman of forty who came to Doctor X to be treated for a chronic headache. She had been bom in Ireland, one of twelve children, and at the age of ten her overburdened mother had given her sole charge of her baby brother. For ten years she had raised this boy as if he were her own child. The other sisters had gone to school, but she had insisted on staying home to help with the housework and care for the baby. She cried if she were separated from him. Although she was the hand- somest girl of the family, healthy and amiable, at twenty yeai's of age she had no beaus and did not encourage any. She was wholly devoted to her small brother. Then her parents forced her to leave home and come to America. She was desperately unhappy and homesick here. She developed various diseases, and finally, after eight 43 THE SECRET SPRINGS years, found herself with "a gastto-intestinal ulcer, so weak and emaciated that she returned to Ireland to die. ti her home and in the company of her brother-pnow eighteen years old— she mi- raculously regained her health. In four months she was completely cured. He wished to come to America, so they re- turned together. He married, and so did sfte. But she was unhappy in her married H T u^^^ ^"^ ^^ headaches. Hot health became so bad that she went West to visit her brother; her headaches stopped, and she became as "fat as a oie " she said. *^^' Her brother died. As the result of a fall from a street car, her headaches became mcessant^ Nothing relieved them, and when Doctor X first saw her her head had been aching contmously for nearly ten years _ An illness of this type," he says, "follow- mg an injury, is commonly blamed on the ac^doit. In reality, the injury is only the last blow t^t breaks down the weakened machine. No physician had been able to tod any physical cause for Mrs. K's head- adie. There was none. She was wholly nnsarable m her married life because her brother had become the fixed symbol of aU happiness values for her. The fixation was 44 IN LOVE AND MARRIAGE quite unconscious. She only knew that she had been happy with him and that she was absolutely unhappy without him. She was V^}? unaware of the secret of her ill health. I find that the conversion of a mental pain mto a bodily pain is a common device fOT freemg the mind of unbearable distress. The body is readily sacrificed to save the mmd. If the conversion does not occur to accomplish this indirect drainage, the mmd may break down. I was convinced that if we removed Mrs. K's headache msamty would certainly follow. In any case' happmess in her married life was quite im- possible for her. She should never have married." These, then, are a few of the cases on which Doctor X founds his modified Freudian theory of the existence of the subconscious love image and its influence in love and niarnage. I shaU have to return to the subject again when we come to the question of the unconscious origins of ill health. Let me conclude, for the time being, with a few more examples of how the presence of this Ideal love image in the unconscious mind «plams some of the puzzling phenomena of courtship and married life. Why, when we "marry in haste," do we usually "repent at leisure"? Because love 45 f i THE SECRET SPRINGS atfc-t sight is an emotional «plosion that l^ httle or no relation to the ob^ct causing It. and repentance follows when ^ SSgr" develops in the inti^'S? B«^^ "!'*** "*'^8^««< often unhappy? St^^iir^'^ ^^°.^ **«^°*«^ ^ aaugftter, and an unrejuvenated mot>i«. "nage o: father image thwarSfgn^^J a happy married relation. Why do the daughters of the rich so of t«, English aristocracy many chorus girk? Mt to the sole care of servants at the time when the love image is being fonned in ™e subconscious mind. As a consequence a Jauffeur or a chorus girl, reprSiTSme cWtenstic of this debaSd inS^f.Tt^ the^spark to the whole ti^ of^Lt?,S Why is a girl who was a coquette before ^arn^e so rarely contented^hJ^S uS of W-"" ^""/^y^^^ was due to a ^ac of fixation m her ideal ima?e an,l thU ms^bility commonly persists^S'S^^ consaous loyalty has been deeply engaged The marriage of mature judgment or the mamage of convenience, ofteSbe 46 IN LOVE AND MARRIAGE aiuse the ideal image has not been consulted That IS true, also, of aU arranged maniaees' aU lovdess nu«iages. ItiT^elK^ thecontmental marriage, and it is one of the reasons, perhaps, why infidelity so often ^es there-the ideal image seeks ^ counterpart outside of wedlock ^^ The pofect marriage would seem to be JL°^h *^* 'f ?^ ^ ^*« adoles.^5 wh«m the parait miage has been rejuvenated m ^olescent fantasies and the subcoSoS instmct of race perpetuation is aUowed its natural fulfilhnent. That instinct, blockS by the common measures of birth control dams up m undrained subconscious presst^ that produce what are called "amde^ neuroses" and other morbid causes of S ^ET^- ■u'' ^"^ *^^ ^^ ^«*ss of the caUed the subhmation" of the race in- ^ct-as for example, among men who sub- lunate m then- work, creatively, and am^ women who sublimate their ^t^S pulse m efforts of charity and social reform CHAPTER III W BBALTH A RABBIT hears the bark Of a dog. At ^hi^'^^ ^ '^"'^ ^ discoveiS. the rabbits heart speeds up and its bl\'""'^« the sinking of the S„ *^"« •^"* conscious ^mSd 4f a ^'^*' *^^ ""''- which blindnei oTdea?„^ ^^^ ^"»" the conscious i of STSS ^"* explained them to himS uT ^ "^ digestive disorder ^e^T^Jt^ "^? ."^ 50 ^~ IN HEALTH ^^^ned, unconaciou. emotion^an un- "~gn«ed wboonadous wiah-the wish to «Mpe And when some final shock weak- f«r ^ wl^y symptom. A man. in fact, goes bUnd or deaf from shell-shodc £f^Kil,^P'^7" "^^ instinctive fear nas wished him so. if I?* ^ °'.«heM;shock is simple enough rf the patient ,s safe from the dang«^o£ bemg returned to the trenches. &verS thousand cases we« cur«J by the signing phcated by the fact that sheU-shock is^t ad.^ of cowards, but of brave men. ll afflcts only the man who refuses to aUow Wlf to be conscious of a feeling of fear. He could be saved from the disorder accordmg to Doctor X. if amy doctS would go through the training cLpTsS make some such speech as this: battlefield you will feel fear. Your body wdl register fear uncontrollably. This is mstinctive^ It cannot be pr^ventS^' It IS fear, not cowardice. Do not attempt to oppress ,t Say to yourself: 'My body K scared, but I am not. It is "getting ready to run but it is not going to ru5 back; It is gomg to run forward. It is not SI THE SECRET SPRINGS going to retreat, but to charw • k shock ST 1, "''^ <=»« of pore shdl- Why? birH Iho* t, . ®^^ "» animals. The IN HEALTH comes; it has to go. A bird whose instinct It IS to build its nest in a certain way cannot change the method; and it cannot leave-the nest uncompleted. The action cannot be directed or controlled by the animal; the mstmct IS unconscious and it is compulsive Uvihzed man represses his instincts. He tnes to control and direct them. And commonly he succeeds, but more commonly he merely represses their direct expression and they escape into action in some dis- gtiised form." , Now is this really true of the other mstmcts of man— instincts less powerful and compelling than the instinct of flight and its^ emotion of fear? Let us see. ''I have recently had a patient," says Uoctor X, 'who was referred to me by a nose and throat specialist to be diagnosed. He was suffering with what seemed to be a constant and uninterrupted hay fever His tonsils had been removed and the septum of his nose had been straightened, but without effect. My examination showed that he was suffering with a chronic con- gestion of the blood vessels on the inside of '"^ nose— a sort of persistent 'blushbg.' The blush of shame or anger was not ongmally confined to the face. An angry naked baby shows its resentment by turning S3 THE SECRET SPRINGS flushing occW^ona It, P'PY^i-that this body fl^^ t& i^^ '^"^ skin of the My patient's snuffing sn«-„-«„r suggested the min^ SSon^^f "^ repressed anger that I sWff I^ °^ * tion f„,n> his^no^:: LtS.?-^^ ^^"°^- thSd JJe^^^'^'^' ^tb sevenU j^t.%rcei:°Ser^-St.^^^^^ IN HEALTH corporation were getting their employees tempted from mUitary service on th?p^ Z^J^ ^^ ^^^ - - ^^ ^ further probing, this proved to be a v«y sore pomt with him. He knew tha? Sl£?T'^'^^* '*°*^ ^ S^* 'leed of his ^ledtechmcians. Many of the men wished to volunteer for special service. The wives 2«^! n .^^ ^n^Plaining that the neighbors 5^ ^J"^"** **^* *^" ^«=^ti^« heads dutvh^ff^'""^:'"^- Yet he felt in duty bound to convince the men and their J^ves that the executive order was^^^S just. He was, consequently, angrv at hfe supenors, angr, at himse/hunSitS t his position, and full of exasperated reseirt- m«it at the whole busin^AU of Se was loyaUy repressing. It was appar^J only m his uritated nose. fi^rent "I explained to him what I thought was ^uT^'' Doctor X continuS "h1 replied simply that the theory opened a new field of thought to him: and he ^dshed to «»^er it With that,'he left mr When he returned he had solved his r -!r*!l.^\«P^''™"«^*- AnexlLiati.^ showed that his nose was already cleaS w THE SECRET SPRINGS assertion Tth^whou'^"'" ^f'^^'^ ^If- pr^ce of a dog hal tt "?""" ^^ "^« m ignoring th^ t th^tt'^fT" ^ unaware of the aninml buth.l?,^ ^^"^ by the rising o{Th^i^l^^'^°y^ time-and tie W ora^^d^'^'^in- " either to smooth down her W^"! ^'^"^ vated by the alkali 7,Z fu-^ ^^gra- home in the We^an^T °^ *"f ''"y^"^ d^-aming of bu^^'a "^^ ^.^^ ^y -PingtotheS^%^tpSfSa' so IN HEALTH ^J^r^^ ^ subservience of his comneraalwork. It was part of his cure to wS^\^ to look forward tTuS That is to say, the patient was immediately relieved by reordering his life so as toSow SrS'';^ "f "^ °' self-asserticT to ^^J^u ^'^ ^. P«™anent cure was provided for by bnnging his suppressed sub «msaous wish into his consdo^S ^d aUowmg It to drain off there self?aS;*h; ^c^Jted It as an excuse for turning back S'"dlTm'"ff^-^-worir.' P^yed truant toSTtotftiT^ddS' ^ he returned home for dinner WsS' J^.f^?^,!'«nt after him with aliS" ^c? hS* *«' ^ ^^ ^« h« resisted aTd struck back. He was severelv beaten lee tured mto a state of horror ^t Tn^ifZ ^^stnick his father, and sSt to the »nn to apologize for his truancy 6s m THE SECRET SPRINGS The whole incident made a profound im- on the ceUo at home, and lifted the bov when he lay in bed listening ^^ 'That little drama of the Fourth of July, says Doctor X, "proved toTthe key to my patient's whole characS I found that, in his dreams. auESTwas a^waj^ symbolized by the razSbLkS pbw-horse which he used to f oU^SS forth through the rows of com. Ifo^ that in his daily life, whenever the gen™ impulses of aflFection were brought iSST i^^^T ^* ?°^ mysteriously eSuffid at the least sign of injustice/The «W iSti^'wir *^! ^ of his chflS repeated with various changes in the cast but no change in the chaiJteR. SeS government had taken over the fatheX ^e^d the bui^u chief was SibsISutSg t3TOnny had become a revolt against social P^ofS l*'^". ? -^^orS I'ear of the father's punishment had become a morbid fear of losing his job. ni^ storm m his boyhood had become the «cuse 66 IN HEALTH «fffl health. His m health, however, was «actty the sort that would foUow if one subjected one's body to the shatt^g b! fluence of continual anger T ^f ^ ^SS'h^K T ?Pl^*tio° was that overwork had broken down a bodv alwav«: un^eloped because of the eflF^S^of S »S^ we have health ruined by an early b^dpng of mstinctive trends aid by^e amflict of emotions resulting from the con ibe patient has been helped by makinir i,;,r. aware of the conflict, bySng^L^ Sn^ nund. But it is^Bt to cu^' hmi because ,t fe impossible to change hS ^JtXT.'^'fy^** ^' reduplication If tJe symbols of the childhood drama thirfc?*!^ °"^°^ ^^ «*^ge things about ^n ^^J'^y "^ Pictures-in "symbols" -^ Its mstmctive emotion, can iSTtart^ up by the reappearance of one of these symbols away from its context. x'^c^r- "^ r°^'" ^y« Doctor «,H ^^^ me suffering from insomnia and depression. No reason for her ™ drtion was apparent until she admitt^ a Pecuhar circumstance: she could not sleeo 67 ** 'fe' THE SECRET SPRINGS i~!^^ L the chair always fiUed her with dread. She had refused to 'humor this nonsense m herself by getting rid of the chau- and had struggled against the feeling, .fir^^^^^'le^tly a symbol. OfwSat? iTie patient was a woman of culture who felt very keenly the loneliness of ap- proachmg old age. She had bulwarked herself agamst thoughts of age and death by surroundmg herself with youthful friends and compamons. One of these friends, of whom she w;as most fond, had been accus- tomed to sit m the now dreaded chair. Two days after such a visit the friend had suddenly died of pneumonia. Death had been leamng over that chair. But my patient would not aUow the fear of death to have a place in her mind. Consequently the feehng appeared only as an unexplain- nSS»f ^v°^.*^^ '=^' ^ msomnia con- nected with the sight of the chair, and a mysterious illness and depression. Another patient had a violent hatred of red of the odor of peppermint, of sticks of candy, and of dark women, particularly if they wore anything red. Any of these symbols was sufficient to affect her with an emotion of dread and repulsion, and the feehng of fear had been active in warping ■li IN HEALTH her life, ruining her health, and thwarting her happiness. All these symbols were easily traced back to a day in her early childhood When a gypsy woman had tried to abduct f!n'i.^5^ ''f"^ ^^ *^^y frani her home wth a stick of peppermint candy, striped in red and white. "StiU another patient, a married woman, devoted to her husband, became morbidly afraid that she was losing her mind. For no apparent reason, at unaccountable mo- ments, she would develop the most violent nervous agitation and rush out of the house quite distraught, to seek refuge with her naghbors and confide her fears to them lUese attacks began in a wave of dread so unr^sonable that it seemed to her as if her mmd were giving way. As so«i a» I twolc her back to the actual moment of eada seizure it becaaae appw«rt that several of them baa begun with the ringi,^ of a telephone bdl. One had ^«s upon sight of a coat of a pecwliar color. Still another was comwcted with the rigii^haod cushion at an autombbtie. "The explanafiea was so simplie that the only mystery was her anconsdoiMoeas of ^t I found that one night, about u t'<*x:k her telephone beU had na^ while her h«E- OUOC wac (mt awtonK^jdin*. and a itianie THE SECRET SPRINGS voice had abruptly communicated a bit ? *° '*- thoughts, but Jou^„T Z^^- •" °y actiOTB • Ami 1, " ^°* ^ ioto my SSLdt yotS?* *^ "^^"^"^ ^ able tofind a ^vT ' ^°" ^ ^^ «»°« «tobeSo?lJS:;^'^^"'*>''^'^*«> Whether Doctor X wishes to amie it or fi| IN HEALTH matake about our other inrtiactive and onfuljmpulaes as the miUtary authorities ^ve N«n fflakmg about our instinctive fear. By teaching us that we must suppress audi thoughts from our minds with shame and self-reproach, they have betrayed us aU into various forms of moral sheU-shock that have defeated the ends of moraUty. For the battlefield may aciiin its purpose by blmding Its victim, our other suppressed mstmctive wishes succeed in evading our niOTal censors by adopting similar disguises And whether Doctor X wishes to argue It or not, this new light on our moral piob- lems IS going to force as great a change in our ethical and religious teaching as the tneOTy of the subconscious mind is ah-eady making in the practice of medicine. It is the beguming of a new quarrel between science and religion beside which the con- ti-oversies over the Darwinian theory wiU seem mild oiough. And it is the beginning ot a hope that after centuries of failure to amtool the instinctive animal in man— his passions and his cruelties-ethics and phi- losophy have at last been given a clue to problems that have been the despair of rthics and philosophy since man began to think about himself. 75 il I CHAPTER IV IN CHILDHOOD H^^ r *"*• *•'*"• ^th three great facts about ourselves: oursubconsSS stujcts work; our instincts are as compSsive w,^ us as with the anin^s. and move Tb^ means of mstmctive emotions that rerister ZT^' T "^^ ^^^ *^«^ emotions from Tn «^^^'' '"«*^'l°f Jetting them drain S m "^ousness they are likely to reappS ^n«^ •■ ^"^hermore, these instinctive emotions m man, as in the animals have startmg signals, which we call " symbols "- such as the "love image," wS is th^ we M^ liable to be as mechanically moved Sly S n't-' ^,the rabbit is aut^CS cauy set m motion by t^e hark of a dog ^tiS^- T' .'' "•'^ -''« ''hole of the mS^Sr^ ^f""^.- ^*^« subconscious mind is the mmd with which we are bora. 76 IN CHILDHOOD It 18 the mind that controls us before we devdop a consdous intelligence, a thinldng ™md^ at all. It has a recorf of infantilf «q)er.«»ces and conclusions that persist in And tW ^"^^^ """ "' "^^"^ of them. And these have a powerful, though un- consaous, mflu^ice on us in our later%eiS. J^ us see what some of these influ^ces is ^hlJ^^ ^ ?°?^ °"*' ^^°^ a child except that oxygen is supplied fronT tht mtenxa^ body and not thS.gh ti^Thild' Ztin. 1 ^ T' ^T^'^'^S- It« heart is JS2*th. ,? '% °*^f "'^^^ functioning tihl "JiL * V^'^*'"" °^ ^^^* physicians caU the vegetative nervous system "-that is SielLTf'^K K^"^. °' «««=iousnes^^ St ^tT ^ *'«."^ beating for months, so Stiln Jr»,^'i!'^. ^ P'ote'^tive habit of action which makes it more independent of ^scious thought than other Ss L^ Impressions are being registered on Te bram. but they are impressions of perfS ff*^tf,?^t. The whole period is one tS hecaUs-theperiodofomnipotentindolLe/' Our msane asylums," he says, "are full of minds that have reverted t^ ihis Lte SiiteteH" ^"'^If ^^ contentment which is mutated by the warm bath, the nest or 77 MldOCOPY IBOlUflON TBT CHART 'ANSI and ISO TEST CHART No. 2) ^ APPLIED IIVMGE Inc ^Sr 1653 laU Main Slr«l P,f Rochsster, Sea York 14609 USA '^S: (716) *83 - OJOO - Phone ^BS (71G) 786 -S9B9 -Fax THE SECRET SPRINGS burrow, or the mother's arms. It is the mertia which the utterly broken man ex- periences. We see it very clearly in the 'cavern dreams' of a certain class of psy- chotics. It is the goal of escape for many who commit suicide." Immediately upon birth, this condition of mdolent contentment undei^goes a terrifying change. The body is assailed by sensations of roughness and cold and shocking dis- comfort. It is also assailed by the danger of suffocation, because the maternal supply of oxygen has been cut off and the lungs are not yet workirig. The child in its agony utters a cry. That cry saves its life. The lungs receive their oxygen. The danger of suffocation is averted. And the symbol of what Doctor X calls "the magic cry" is established in the child's subconscious mind. "It is probable," he says, "that the agony of birth also establishes in our subconscious mind the fear of death by suffocation as the great symbol of danger. In most people the first expression of panic under physical or psychic stress is the cry, 'I can't get my breath!" Nervous patients — neurotics — always tell you that in crowds or on street cars they 'feel suffocated.' The convulsive 'chest heaves' of the moving-picture hero- ines in distress simulate a normal expression IN CHILDHOOD of the same nattire. And the escape from su£focation — the act of breathing — comes to be a symbol, too. Throughout life, there- after, a deep breath becomes the expression of every sort of escape, of every feeling of freedom or of power. It signalizes the escape from the oppression of an enemy's presence as well as the removal of a mental worry. A sigh expresses the wish for free- dom from a weight of care. The proud man puffs out his chest." The infant, with its lungs supplied, feels its next discomfort in a hungry contraction of the stomach which obtrudes upon the quiet contentment of breathing. The magic cry is again resorted to, and food is supplied to sucking movements. Sucking is thereby demonstrated to be a device that dispels discomfort, and the infant uses it, thereafter, to allay discomfort of any kind. The "pacifier," the "comforter," has power not only over hunger, but over cold, lonesome- ness, and pain. It continues to have that power in the subconscious mind throughout life. At first, the unconscious impulse takes the form of thumb-sucking. The older child, when it is embarrassed, puts its finger m Its mouth. The laborious young penman sucks his tongue. Adults suck the insides of their cheeks or bite a penholder when 79 THE SECRET SPRINGS they are puzzled. The cigar, the quid of chewmg tobacco, the cigarette, the chewi^ gum, or the caramel are adult aids to a c^ dition of suckmg satisfaction. Eating has a power of restoring self-confidence that ex- ceeds mere food values. it !Sf ^^- ^^*'' '^ '^P°rts discomfort o Svfr' ?!? **"' ""^.^^^^ themother lo reaeve it. Skm warmth and smo^ ^^ness become a fixed "pleasure value" J TlS subcaasciousmind. To sit by a warm fire m a soft smokmg jacket, sucking a pipe or tnat differs m no material way from the comfort of the third day of life, VdTt re! stores confidence because it r;peats a^d reproduces a 'stage sef-so to Sak-tSt J finn'T". ''^"^ *° ^^ subconscious mind. 1 tad that many patients suffering with Sir ^^'i that the Turkish bath, the ^a^ge and many rather faddish t;eat- ments of nervous diseases owe their value to the feeling of security which arises from aB unconscious connection with the 'security values of e^ly childhood. Any stroking of the skm, for mstance, appears to have an unconscious connection with the pres- 8o IN CHILDHOOD motile/'^*' fi^ object of recognition, the The cradled child, by virtue of his majric cry, hves in a sort of semiomnipotence^He is a pCTfect egoist. He is completely self- ^tered, rejoidng in "oi^an pleasures" wholly. He IS happy in the .satisfaction of his physical needs. His first appreciations of pleasure and power are shown in the performance of his bodily functions. His first convictions of weU-being apparently anse from the good "feeling tones" that are reported to his unconscious mind from aU his vital organs. "And I find in my prac- tice, says Doctor X. "that these values persist as thmgs of basic importance to happmessm later life. All the organs of the body seem constantly to be sending mes- sages to the subconscious mind, reportine theu- condition. And the sum of thek reports makes what we call the 'feeling' of weU-being or its opposite. If the total of these feehng tones' is adverse, we are gl* ""^^ «*«e Amy in chddidi terror had sought her mother^ protection she had found ther« only a fL lAe her own, and this fear had re^istS 86 IN CHILDHOOD S^r^'^^*?" "^^ *^* >* ^as now deep in her subconsoous mind. It came out S ^htm her dreams. All the accumulati adents and uncertainties of its first steps uuhe world were waiting in nightmares fo •'"ny. That much -•'as plain It was also discov ble from Amy herself scftool had taught her the necessity of ^ppressmg her fea,^ as " babyish, '^j^.Ae had evidently been trying to ^^pp^ess them ohL ^\/^:^'^ not ^ress the physical changes that go with fear, and it wL S phyacal effects that were being mistS for the symptoms of thyroid disTurbance. The cure was difficult, because it was first naessary to cure the mother-which waTa ^er«xt matter. However, on Scn^i? SX^if .**^* ^^ ^'^ ^^ being HtSuv g^^ to death, it became poLble fc^ JJ^ X to use her maternal love against *5,l-Zf ' *" ^^' "^y « fear of death. &tvV^"°^ trngovemaUe anxieties f«w ^ ^f ^^y^ ^<='"^ed not only her ^1^ ^f.daughter's life and safety! but a dread of financial disaster, showing tself X^"^"^- "And miserliness?' !)S>r X rem^l^, ",, ^j ^^e commonest masks that the fear of death assumes " ^^ 87 THE SECRET SPRINGS Jli^l\u^ i*^; ""^ "^^ toward health by Uie development of that instinct of love for the opposite sex which comes with adolescence. Such is nature's way of com- pletmg the detachment of the iild frotn 2fi ^^- }! ^y ^^ « ^^^^ ^o ^^^''^Z}^^ ''^ °^ ^«^ty '^Wch her mother failed to give her. she may grow to be a fairly normal and happy wo^. Her mother has done her what may easily ?^S2ed^' "" "^"^ *^* **°°°' ^ • J?®^ *^, another case, involving not the mstmct of fear, but of affection- 1 ^T '^^.^ Doctor X recently an Insh boy of mneteen or twenty who was havmg trouble with his eyes. He was a clerk WOTking on accounts in a busmess office. His eyes were "aU to the bad," as tL^ Ki ^^f ^^ tried to work ok his books black specks appeared around the figures: and if he persisted in trying to WnfL^if T^^ accumulated until they Wotted the figures out. He was frightened He was afraid of losing his sight. He had gone to an oculist; and the oculist, having failed to find any defect in his ej^es. hJd sent him to Doctor X. "I found him," he says, "a fairly healthy 56 i IN CHILDHOOD S^ S^^ ^^" appealing and intim- idated look m his eyes which I supposed came from his fear for his sight. Aph?S examination discovered nothing to £SSu mstory with him to find whether some Uoctor X supposed that the repressed in- SSairth^f^''^ '""^ -^"^ ^'""t natural at the boy's age. Not so. He was ?riL^,'°K^*?""y^^>- He had no S feends. He did not go around with yo,L^g people much. He gave most of his spail tune to his mother She was a widow S a small income. They lived together, with- out a servant, in a little flat, and the^ were plannmg any career. He had no definite a^ibition At fifteen he had thought s^! he fi ° • ''""^^ ^°' ^^^ priesthS but separate him from his mother. Being a devout Roman Catholic, he was now ig amraids by gomg to church twice every Sunday She accompanied him. ^ The doctor said: "Ifs too bad she's Rowing old. What will you do wTens^e ^He had touched the spring. "If I had 89 I .1 1 i'lil ^ THE SECRET SPRINGS poked my finger into an unbearable sore spot, he says, "I could not have brought a more convulsive expression of pain to his face. His eyes filled with teara. He could not speak." "Was she ill?" "No. She was not very strong, but he did not let her work much." "Wasn't she lonely when he 'vas awav at work?" "Yes, but he always hurried home at noon to see how she was, and he had had a tele- phone mstaUed in the flat so that he might caU her up whenever he felt anxious about her. "The thought of her death, of course, was temble. He remembered that at fifteen he had decided he would like to die if she died Now that he was unable to work, he stayed at home with her, helped her to keep the flat m order, went shopping with her, and either played cards with her in the evening or sat smoking while she read the newspaper to him." *^ "Did the black specks interfere with his card playing?" "No They were only really bad when he worked with figures at the ofiice. She did not let him use his eyes much at home." In short," the doctor says, "it was 90 IN CHILDHOOD evident that the black specks in his eyes were J IC1V ^^"^^ mechanism by which he was fulfilling his subconscious wish to escape from his work and stay home with his mother I e^lained to the boy what was the matter with him. I advised him to yield to his mstmctive wish for the love and protection of his mother's care and to remain at home for the present. I also persuaded him to lean on me. By that last item of advice I obtained what we caU a 'transference.' His father was dead. I was accepted by htm unconsciously, in the place of that father unage' which is often so strong an mfluence in life even when no father is remembered. I began to share with his mother m his childish need for a place of security and refuge from the world. "The specks in his eyes disappeared at once, but the remainder of his cure is going to be no easy matter. At his best, he will never be able to play an independent part m life. If he marries, it will probably be a woman older than he, to whom he will transfer his 'mother image', but this will lordly occur till after his mother's death He will always be a shrinking, sensitive, dependent person, content with a humble but secure position on a small salary, in- capable of initiative, honest, devoutly re- s' THE SECRET SPRINGS ligious, below the ftVAr=„« • n>ore l^XS'^ «^ ^ that is both was brought to Doctory^ * ^ * "^ ^^^ sufferingleith two^ W'^°"* ^ ^^ ^^o, nervous sniffing and •^.r*'^^ « ^°'itin"al avez^on of thf ' e^ef He S' %""^ automobiles that =1 . f ^'^ * ^ear of sight of o?e tn^r*"*^ *° ^ Ph^bi^: the panic, anH w£ au^S"? "^^-^ ^t° « to cross a s reTTif S. ™P°^We for him jght HehrciSxss?" his lessons at school w,-o * ,.'^°^ "» P-nounced himt^taclSe ^''^e? ^ STet^-^^tn^-r^eT^Srair been sentTo SS Vl^'^ «« ^ cialist," to discover wW^ht, ^^ "P^" IN CHILDHOOD him as if he were in his father's study hearing the tale of his latest wrongdoing and expecting consequences not pleasant to anticipate." His parents were healthy and well-to-do He was weU built and fairly well nourished. A thorough physical examination found no obvious disease. He was like a watch that hM no apparent mechanical defect and yet refused to keep time. "If such a boy had been brought to me tMi or fifteen years ago," the doctor says, I should have been able to do nothing for him except give him some cahning drugs for his nerves and assure his mother that he would probably 'outgrow' his troubles. But nowadays we can do a little better than that. I got his mother to leave him with me, and as soon as I had somewhat gained his confidence I began to explore his mind. It seemed that his chief difficulty in school was with arithmetic. He could not do 'sums.' I gave him Hsts of figures to repeat after me, and I found that very often when I ifave him a 2 he repeated it as a 5 Apparently he did that without being aware of It. I tried him often enough to be sure that the substitution was what we call a 'compulsion' and not within his control Then I asked him, 'Who is 5?' 93 THE SECRET SPKINGS Oii6 WflS 5 if o'clock she gave hSI:.".'"^"'^ ^* ^^^ them, aiiusL S tS?^""' P^^J^g with "And who " th^^' *!"^« *^"° dories. Two proved t h^'Zu^^' "« 2?" a Miss W, who h J *f^**^ at school, and the teachS «t W '^?^' ^^^ a 2. loved 5's aS helov^^r^'"^?'*^- ^^ loathed%'sasheitl v'f^V"^' and he the substituticT But th^.' *r ^«-- H«^ce become uncon^ io,^"* S/"^f u*^*'°° '^ad -which indicatedTh^t ^"'"^ ^'« control was talangad^S^,^*,S^--d instinct the'inlSlLn%^J2\^:;^^-^ckto na:^y affeSnate'^roCi ?"" "^ °'^'- niore than ordinarily Sus of *^'''' ^'^ sl'ared her love tA"*^ °^ anyone who iealous of his younger I!!,tr^°^^Wy found to be iiK rnZu > T'tlier, whom I had shown itself L q^s^i^^^^^ W,^^Uper.ecuti2r25^-^-- 94 IN CHILDHOOD bad temper. The nurse also favored the younger brother; she had interfered to protect him from Tommy; she had taken sides against Tommy; and she had generally turned the powers of his nursery world against him. Consequently Tommy was in a state of angry revolt that made him imposable. When his mother remonstrated with him he could not explain or justify his conduct. He didn't know what was the matter with himself. He bh'rted out that he 'hated' both his brother and his nurse. "The mother reproved him. She told him that it was a sin and a disgrace for him to hate his brother and his nurse. No little boy of hers could have such feelings. They were shocking. They pained her. They made her most unhappy. "To Tommy, of course, his mother's word was more th Ji a commandment from on high. By her reproaches his instinctive love for her was arotised to repress his emotions of angei and ill will against his brother and his ntirse. But his machinery of repression was still immature. The emotions that he was trsdng to repress had apparently escaped his control when they found the ss^mbols 2 and 5 behind which to masquerade. More- over, they were presumably coming out in an ungovernable dislike of his teacher when 95 THE SECRET SPRINGS his nurse." ^' "^^ ^« brother and what was vmnJ^withtr if"^"' *^ ^ his two 'S"i?e\nn^: B«t how about the roUing o?the lyLr ""^ «°^« and w.'^hTL'^rtS? u"j^'' ^ *^- fume. Tonuny had a S ^ !*""« P^"" where the odo/wXc .S 1£ Lf in the habit of wriiJcIiiTur; J,- ^ *^ malevolently andr^ ^* ^? ^* °°s« ^t it told the tShS^^that To J^" °*^"'" P"Py« at her, and tie t^^er STt^" ^^^ undesirable seat ^tS Si 7^?^ *° ^ as a punishment 'r °^ *he room continS to Siff^"™^ retaliated by hostility '"^ ^"^^ to expre^ out of the co^r S ^e^L'it^ ^T^ answers of a pupil on his Teft T^e . "'" tion was unjust an^ tv • "® accusa- 0PP0dtedireX.™S?£ril7^ "P' ^ the ever he was ^^^^S' ^^TiT'^^n- repressed the voi^fSf it h l^"^^"^' ^« -lied his eyes up'^'HS.ce thf tS""' ^"' 96 IN CHILDHOOD And the phobia about automobiles? Well, he had .'een one of his playmates run over by an auto on the street. It was probably this nervous shock that had weakened his repressive mechanism and allowed all his repressed instinctive emotions to escape in the disguised fonns which they had taken. In any event, it had given him a very natural fear of autos. He lived in a part of the city where he had to cross a m ain avenue to go to school; the avenue was always crowded with autos, of course. He did not wish to go to school, because he disliked his teacher. "Consequently," as Doctor X says, "his fear of autos became a phobia— an unreasoning, ungovernable fear —in order to prevent him from crossing the avenue to reach his school. Like all phobias, it disguised a hidden wish— the wish, in this case, to remain at home with his mother." That was the whole trouble, then. Tommy was not mentally defective. He was more than ordinarily bright. He was simply shaken and bewildered by the struggle to repress instincts and control emotions that were too strong for him. A child's jealousy of his mother's love can be as potent as a husband's jealousy of his wife. Imagine Othello, at the height of his jealousy for 97 THE SECRET SPRINGS and compeU^tJ^ ^ Desdemona's father ve|:^TfeSS;;SSU?'"^'^*^-^- undertook toZ,?t Tw^'^ ^^' ^'^ *« to make her s^LVv "^f "^'^ difficult Koven^We bS^^^ ^S^T"""^'^ """ a child? What ,-r^ • "^* '® anger in " An amVn^ • ^^^ "" ^ animal? path blcStylS' °' 'r ^^ 1^^ samefood He wSi^\^°?^ '^^^ the draw. SuddSr I^^^ f ^^"* to ^th- 8a^ the food Sa^Jr ^^Y.^'^aiy; and an animal inXht &,/, v ^ ^'^ ^^- O^ and a fren^ XfSn^' ^fcape impeded; of flight, enabLfhLT "'■'^^ ^^ ''^-stinct quest of his mate iV th™ I^ ^ ^"^' "^ ang^r reinfoS^'^: tSS'l?^ " ""^= prouuces jeakjusv—ft,- ^ °^ ^ and 98 IN CHILDHOOD It is a sort of emergeacy jack which springs the motor mechanism of the instinct looie trom mertia. of «w * '^^ °^. '^°^y'^ age the instinct of sdf-a^ion IS most active, most annoy- ing to his elders, and most certain to be di^edbythem. The checking of it is the most frequent cause of childish anger. Tommy was not only sufferitig with the anger of jealousy. He was being checked by his nurse m his instinct of self-assertion, and sunilarly by his teacher. "It was necessary to explain to his mother how valuable this instinct of self-assertion IS to the formation of a child's character how It gives him independence and self- rehance, and saves him in after years from a sense of inferiority and from aU the un- happmess of too great humility and sensi- tivraess and inability to face the hard reahties of life. It was necessary to show her also, how this instinct of self-assertion mght without injury be deflected into useful diannels-as the sheep dog, forbidden its wolfish tendency to kill, satisfies its instinct by running around the flock and herding if or the retriever, originaUy accustomed to eating its prey, satisfies the deflected in- stmct by finding and bringing back the game. 99 THE SECRET SPRINGS whoUy block anoE as^'t^*""* **" bmi that k h»M k , .^ " ^^^^ nugratory w uiBBK nun, aa the nurse harf Tt,«c had become a symbols t^\ The figure 2 as the 5 symbolS the fi*T!f ^' J"^* ness which he Sov^^^ ,,^*^ '^PP'" The all-powerful ^ih. *^ ^ ""other, into haS2 «r, *°^'*=^P*^'^'"ty^ny -bstituS^f^^S^r^^'^ '"*''' enough to oerstifl^A tv , * ^^ easy not ^pSe^.^^J^'^y .that he should that hiV?s?uiht tu^ ^> ^ *^" ^O'J^ also neiii^^^L ^- '^°^«' ''"* '* was nurse's 5Son^J^ ^'' '"°**'^ ^«^ the the te^er's clt^„VT?^°°™yf«»' couldT^?^'^''^'?-^ ^^«t until he canie in the Sort ^ "^ ''°'"^ °' '^«a«n« «e effort to connect again with his IN CHILDHOOD instinctive emotions the manifestations of them which had been split off. "Although an instinct compels some fonn of physical expression, it will accept a lesser expression for a greater one. The wolfish snarl of an animal showing its teeth becomes the polite sneer of the cynic, through what we call 'a process of physical minimization.' The blow of anger becomes the clenched hand. The face of the civilized man expresses emotions which woiild be given expression in action by the savage, and our faces are made more mobile by the process. In Tommy, the sniff accepted the duty of expressing anger the more readily because in many aninuls the sniff serves to denote angry disgust. "It was necessary to teach Tommy to say to himself, ' I'm jealous of my brother,' in- stead of sasring, 'I hate him.' It was also necessary to teach him not to repress his anger, but to vent it in some innocent way —to go into another room, for instance, and kick a chair instead of striking his brother. Instead of sniffing his resentment he had to be taught to say to himself: 'I'm mad. I'm good and mad!' so as to let the emotion loose in its proper channel. And, as a matter of fact, he was so young and his reprcosions were so near the surface that THE SECRET SPRINGS the whole thing worked like nuwic Ob M. ^ J^^'' ^^ °^ automobiles wu n5 tonger a phobia. The rest was in h". moT er. hands, and she managed beautifuUr^ T „^°^ay T' mui;'tL??t;r£^ ^r *° -i^^ ask money for it ' "^^"^ ^^« the heart to f-ce^ they feel u^^JJ^S^ ff^^^ed any success they freH, '"^^ ^^* achieved an"^ 'n wstinct n^.3* -he satis- tl^tisdepr^TsinrT'/^^^^^/ ^^^^^^ satisfaction of a^ inTtW^!^'' "^ fact, the IN CHILDHOOD hood the satisfaction of the instinct has been marked as shameful. If every crude attempt of the child to be self-assertive had been branded as something offensive, as egotistic 'showing off,' and so orth, it will foUow that any :dult triumph of the instinct of self-assertion, any conquest of opposing obstacles, wiU be foDowed by an emotion of gudt or shame that wiU be felt as a de- pre^on. The early self-expressions of the child rehearse piacticaUy all the dramatic situations of later life. When the later action comades with the early rehearsal the same emotions foUow. If these emotions are conflicting emotions, we get a condition ot ambivalency,' as we caU it. And this condition locks up more good energy in man- kind than any other one mental trouble. It IS scarcely imaginable how many useful impulses are blocked by the necessity of , carrymg them forward against a feeling of depression which parents have engendered years before by branding natural childish tendenaes as 'naughty' or 'ridiculous' or bad.'" il ! CHAPTER V W HAPPINESS AND SUCCESS "^es it. it is inert All ifl "'*'"'=* duced at the caH 'of • .-^ ^^"^ '« P™- satisfactory ^ply toffS'fl?" *'^ practice, that the samT^Sg 'is rSof^^^ The enerrv whiVh ^^ 11 ^ f . °* "^n. ««not KS^ L^,"r^ ^ °^ work instinct. -Se^cc^'^Pl^y; *°"^=I^ an cannot be m«^^. '''f '^ ^« P^^s^e trends. The h»n?^ ^?°^ instinctive cannot be^vSt TcenT""?^ "I ^^^ lOo IN HAPPINESS AND SUCCESS winds during their canoe voyages. They put in the bow of the canoe a box that has holes in all its tovi sides. They close the holes on three sides and leave open only the hole that faces the desired wind. Then they attempt by means of incantations to compel the necessary wind to blow into the open hole Since they continue their incantations unti) the wind shifts, they have not yet learned to doubt the success of their magic. "Our method of trying to obtain success- ful and happy good habits, without in- vestigating the direction of our currents of energy, is just as primitive as the use of the Polynesian wind box. And it is less successful — ^because the currents of the air are variable, and a favorable wind will arrive if you wait long enough. Whereas the currents of instinctive energy are fairly constant, and there are courses which you will never be able to sail except by continual tacking." This is the conclusion to which he has come after working with hundreds of cases of loss of energy, ineflBdency, failure, and un- happiness, both in childhood and in adult life. " The energy," he says, "the happy energy of childhood is envied by us all. We have lost it. Why? Wha<; is the origin and secret of the eaergy of the child? 109 THE SECRET SPRINGS lation between^ child-^."^?'"*'^^ «" actions. The cWM «l^fl '"'>*=*-' ^^ h« "eeds without thirH? ""' "^*'"^^-« stinctive oleasur^r) ^ ^"J°ys ^s in- of his instinctive ^;.- "^P*"^^^ none stinctiveena^flLT?*"?"^-. ^ ^s in- intheaniW^Smfn'f^^ ^*° ^'^t'on, as It goesTS'goi'S £?r "°«>«^- Its resources So ^^ ^ ^V'' P°^«- of aU "T fin/i • ^*n the child the ad^t Xe^'S • ""' *^^ «>«^ o^ of the child. Ser "t"^ "" ^^^ ^«^ mental energy JtTSflU /' P^^^^^al or trends. It^Kf^?^.^°"S instinctive fleeted, or 'Si^tS*^?' *''^^'^«^' d- eonscious mind bS it 'J '^\'^y' ^^ the released ^^^ '^by JheT* ^ °"^^'y mstinot." ^ *"^ operation of an and success. SuiLde/.°°'' °^ ^^PP^^^ ^d go ahead? ^tt miXl""^ ^"^^''^^t^ '^'e were all living in a sS of F^""'^^' ^ ^e are not. oL whS J^ -r^**^^- ^"^ conspiracy aga&S S!^ "^h^tion is a stincts, to chSL^r^,°^ ""^ ^° in- «ence. Moriver d5i?!^?^''? ^^^^ ^ndul- civilization Itself is largely IN HAPPINESS AND SUCCESS the product of our herd instinct, and the conflict between the desires of the individual and the demands of society is a conflict that is paralleled in man himself by a conflict between his ego instincts and his herd instinct. Hence Doctor X's dictum, "Suc- cess and happiness lie in the complete expression of self, transmuted into social values." To drop theory and come to cases, let us take the instinct of self-assertion. It is one of the strongest of the animal instincts. It is one of the strongest of the child's in- stincts — and of the man's. And it is a much discouraged instinct in our social IKe, in spite of the fact that it is the very backbone of character and the motive power of success. What are we to do with it? How are we to handle it so as to obtain a pros- perous and happy issue of its unconsdotis and compulsive power? Consider it in the child. It begins to assert itself offensively as soon as he has learned to walk. He is a selfish little ^oist. He will not, for example, share his candy with his sister. What does his mother do? She probably tells him that selfishness is a sin, that God will punish him for it. And by so doing she may begin in the mind of the child — partictdarly if the child is a girl — I." ■ 'i THE SECRET SPRINGS OM of those reliirioua *«««;-* ^ scious Ideals 3iStw?^>*'^ "n- ^ end by Wi^^"T.,™P^ses that of a i;:^ J ^^^-iP^^ the gxx^wth -^t-St^S".*"^ <=M«^ for «=ont«"y ii^stinct ofsSXil"^^ "P the press the self-assStiS^^ ^^* *° «»P- fneet and fight Wonp'.^^ *^" do^s «ve it from d^tSS if ^'^"^ to cowers, cringes, ^'^J. ^t surrenders, humbled attitude, Tith^' ^"'^V- « a pressure and a do» „ , * ^"^^^ Wood ?fterwa«i the LqulT'fn' '"'^ ^^»«^ "^stinct autoWiSu?^^P?" ^^^ ^e PVsicalchange^S^^.!^^*! the same saves it from^meZTlS.^'^^S^^^ ^ ^°^ ^PeratTr'thT^J^d ^* '"^'h- panying emotion is X f r ^*' *«=«»- Ite perfect product is th/^"^ °^ ^^ame. His instinct of iif ^"^^ ^^ild. blockedlffis age happily study of the subcon^^ ^.^^° "^^'^h the for the V^eriSn^,^ "^^^ ^ P«I»ring And it wTrS S^^T-\ ^"^ ^^^ who gave i? SS S ]S:°^T ^°^ *>^«» "So Uve that ^ ^JT Ju^"^ °' "'"duct: ^^e and tell ff ^^^^ ^ ^l"^ *^ trying to look his oto h^^ •' .-^^ ^'^ own need of herf «^ , "^^tinct-his and tell it to go to hT°'T'T° *^« «y«. is that if yoTsSccii^if^^^^ ^^ *~"We -^^cts I ^SH^J^^^^^^f^of your inyoS/^k^Jt^r^^fl^-isertion others? WheS:;t^oS£>if?'^ '^ '° equals meet for the firc^t- ^mencan consciously coSroS .S^* .*r* ^'^'^^ ^ub- self-assertion ofSi ^Sr ^ "i^'^^^^* ^^ in his ego. TVo^SnS "^.^^'^ «~wling other's th«aS^°an7SrS' '^ t* ^^ superiority at once Sm^v ^"^*'°° °f J' once. ^Primitive man used to IN HAPPINESS AND SUCCESS do the same thing. In ctvilized aociety, the usages of courtesy and politeness compel the men to suppress the expression of their bridling self-assertivenrss, to shake hands and affect friendship. But their subcon- scious minds shake hands as two prize fighters do in the ring. The battle between them proceeds nevertheless. One of them perhaps follows the good American custom of bluffing, meets with obstinacy or negation, and takes away a rancor that is due to his own bafSed instinct. Or he is himself bluffed and feels a sore antagonism under his asstmied deference, and carries away a craving for revenge. In either case the anger which he feels against the other man is in reality his anger at his own failure to dominate. And all this anger is lost motion, instinctive energy wasted, effort out of place. The wise man will recognize the futility of such instinctive nonsense between modem equals. If you are wise, then, you will meet your fellow man, knowing that he is a self -machine whose sparks are no concern of yours, and willing to gi'ant him the fullest self-assertion that is compatible with the rights of others. The man whom you so meet will feel no obstacle to his self-assertion and he may be arrogant or he may not. The chances are : 5 THE SECRET SPRINGS ■miable ftdiaTuJT.i >^ w^* an miad towS7ou P'"*°* *~»« <^ «fve your own iatLtit^^L . t^°" ^ P™- afther with h^^yo^neS J2'"'"' *° «° interest in anvtf,fn^ v ..^ **?»*« an 'eaUy a paiTrf i^ "^^ ^ «»t is seIf-iL«»ti^ess Jri.Si^P/r^°°- His you as an asset wT, ™"«*«tely embrace '^ meet ^on ^?°??^ ^«° ^^^ ■^doffiS^y^^fn^jfness. In- t-peration may soon A™^ ^^' *''«' «>- And wheth^LTwfcnT ^^''"'^P" much happier a^d J!^ ^ °°*' y^" wiU be «^ if yS haJ^i"^ "^"^y^ with him to stamjedelou i^n^'^J'""'^ ^'"c* and foug^ourth'titirS* "^*^. ^ •f ''een you. prinStiS ^S.'^P^^^ty stmct molded SSLd^"" *" ^ ^- IN HAPPINESS AND SUCCESS busben magnates and the Napoleons of Wan Street, who are often mere cave men in their desire to dominate. They destroy themselves and the property that is in their control unreasonably, unintelligently, under an instinctive impuke to down a conflicting ego. Half the quarrels within a poliiical party have the same origin. A recent Speaker of the House in Washington publicly confessed, wit'i instinctive pride, that during his first term as Congressman he had voted and worked always in opposition to every measure introduced by a certain member- whether the bill was good or bad — because that member had crossed him in an am- bition. The struggles between capital and labor, between the employer and the em- ployee, have often this instinctive origin as an economic basis. TTie wise employer, recognizing the ego instinct in his employees, tries to enlist that instinct in his own service. He gets up efficiency contests and selling competitions which he rewards with prizes or promotions. He devises ways in wWch to make the success of the business add to the success of the workmen, by profit-sharing and bonus pajrments. He persuades the employees to buy stock in the corporation. Or, as in England recently, he lets the workmen elect "7 THE SECRET SPRINGS a representative to the boani r.f u ■ "management, and divwls V^ ^"'""^ with them a£t^thJ-T^ ^ ^'^^ Profits his service the ego^instS^ tJf ?°f ^^ ^ self-assertion thJ^ '°?^'n«. the mstmct of W?SK?ihe 'M ^^*'^? ^°'*^°*=t of Ws men. T^ri!! , <^«°ocratization of industrv " JtheviS?hS'iS-:£t"' to run if ^y^n^o-^tSfK"-^^^ s^e-rth^-t^ir^^- mutter that thS^wantlL.^" *^°*'""« *« way to Lti3^rtff°^'^^°"^^^^d«o'ne ployees a^K., •"^*"'*=* » y°^ em- If you are an employee at wnrV • IN HAPPINESS ANO SUCCESS: happened to put him in a fuiy of it-dij^nation, and every day his impulse of revolt was blocked by the dead wall of fear. If he angered his boss, what about his job, his wife, his children, his old age? "He had to swallow his wrath. It proved indigestible. He came to me to be treated for indigestion. He was cured by a magic device which you might caU 'the king in disguise.' We started with the assumption that, smce he had to work for an employer, he was a slave. We agreed, next, that it was m the nature of taskmasters to be cruel. He was a humble slave, serving a cruel task- master. Good. As an honest slave, he would do an honest day's work for his day's wages, put the money in his pocket and go home. But there, he could throw off the hvery of slavery. With Ws wife and children, in his own home, among his friends, dispensing the fruits of his toil, he could be a king. That was his real life. There was his true happiness. "And then when he returned to his work, why not go as a king in disguise? Why not accept the terms of his slavery as a disguised king would, submitting to them amusedly until he could drop the livery at the day's end and return to his kingdom? "Why not, indeed! He tried it, and it 119 THE SECRET SPRINGS ^ J^ indigestion. The boss cannot ^l^i?"u°°''- H« has escaped fxom the ^tTi-T^''^^''^- He is no longer tom^ conflicting and futile emotions. His blocked mstinct has been deflected, and he IS happiCT and more successful both in his home and his work." There is a lesson here that goes beyond tL^ T ^^^- ^" Americans put o^- selves mto our work more than foreign peoples. A^ we are more successful than they yes But we are not so happy. Why? X "tw T'^^ ™y patients," says Doctor A that the secret of happiness lies in the phi^e, 'Somebody cares. '"^Success in yo^ work may depend on the energy that is ^^ed under the instinct of selfass^L " But happme^ depends much more on the satisfaction of the instinct of affection I do not believe that there can be any happi- ness where this instinct is frustrated, nw- any amplete unhappiness where it is satis- fied No failure in life is hopeless without a failure m love. And no man or woman, Sk'?^ .^^^"^^.' "^^^^^^ «"^«t,-n^%^ mel^i!/^ t^.^ *°*' '^°^'^ encouraged ple™^ or hdp d=4l^^r '"'^ I" bto^fc^^ST'^ »«»» of power th»t IN THEODORE ROOSEVeLT by taking something out of himself and puttmg It on paper where he could see it. Beyoad all else in value, these two acts of self-assertion were made successes by reason of thetr receiving the warm encouragement of his hero, the father. "Here we see the beginning of a pattern ^conduct which tended to unconscious repetition thereafter, as a character trend. Roosevelt, aft^ any period of stress in his adult hfe, could win a sense of renewed self- ^nfidence by collecting big game trophies and writing about them. These two devices were used again and again to the end of bis days. They became a symbol of self- assurance that was as potent in his old age as It had been in his early boyhood " As an indication of the strength of the ^o instinct in the boy, you will notice that he called his museum not the "Mayne Reid ^M T. °^ i!?^**^^ «^«*°^'" nor the Manhattan Museum," nor anything else but the "Roosevelt Museum." uZiiS^ this self-assertiveness had been left unde- pressed by the father may be gathered from Roosevelt s accomit of the only whipping his father ever gave him. He had Wtten his sister on the arm. He ran and hid under a table in the kitchen, but before he hid he armed himself with some dough, which he THE SECRET SPRINGS S:ot from the coot vm. . «t him. "havC the J *?^^ «>« do««h **'«» I «mldSa?i advantage of huaX an «ct of p^e. h^t S?^ ""«^* have been jjj-y as not the thought of a cow^ 'fis parents as u^ ^holesome pl^^n^t i*^*^ P^e him fluences by the fa^^ f^ ^^ fondly in- ?^WbeS^2^*^tr^ health ^,S he would WbSn ^ ^''^''^ «=hool wh»e y-^ bruS^f S^ *«> the cheS « important, b2a2e1t^^««^d- This ^^^«rtiveness fr^^-* P^vented his self- "cental h^^^'Ss^^^'"''^-^^- °"t of the gristle." **^cter were "weU "ativetSf,^ t.S«^ly detenni- rf asOmia," he wriS^-r^^'^an attack myself to MoosehSd f^J ^^ ^t off by ^ ride tmSrf^l i^,*^ ^*^«^ who were about mv^if *=°"P^e of boys f'xAiaorecompetS? ^'^T^f^*'' ^ut ve^ ^ ^ a foreonlained an^ '^' ^^^ ^"^^ that IN THEODORE ROOSEVELT miserable for me. The worst feature was ttat when I finaUy tried to fight them I discovered that either one singly couM not only handle me with easy contempt, but prevent me from doing any damage what- ever m return." Here was a bitter discovery that all the devices of fancy and half fact, which had hitherto given him a feeling of security, were useless m a clash with real life. He could not physically hold his own with his feUows. He was thrown back on the raw instinct of self-assertion, and the energy of that in- stmct m him is shown in the way he sought out his next device and the patience with which he perfected it. "I made up my mind," he writes, "that I must try to learn so that I would not again be put in such a helpless position ; and having becOTue quickly and bitterly conscious that I did not have the natural prowess to hold my own. I decided that I would try to supply Its place by training." This new device was also backed by the encouragement of the hero-father. "Accordingly, with my tather s hearty approval, I started to learn to box. I was a painfully slow and awkward pupil, and certainly worked two or three years before I made any perceptible im- provement whatever. My first boxing IJ9 THE SECRET SPRINGS "^h!5^ John Long, an ex-pme fighter X* prized sSsS'rs.rr'"'^ alluded to it anH t * l ^' "> fi°d for a nunSi'o^'^ei?^'- ''"^^ "^* >*• deflTe'.'- Klfi:*',^ "°^t-* °^ -Jf- defensi^e ideS rf t^^"' '^"^ "^V the achieved a Ssi^ci'^ '%?r' ^^<^ the pride and eSS^-tJ^^/°"°^«l ^ successfuJ attemnT^r « *"^^ ^""^ any hen,-boxt/-*ri* rSi^'^SL."^"' sociated with the wT? *u ' °**»me as- man who could howT''"'^ -^ ^ ^^^less Roosevelt w^ at £t ""^ '" *^^ ^^^W- the oppressi:^ 5 he fa^tTnh'^-^T '"»" ness; and this zm^de^JJu^'^ ^^■ had lifted theX £? of boang. which sorcery of the uton<^^ ^°' ^ t^« ^ devi^thatStisf^^n?.-''!^"^ *° ^- The conscio^^ptS S'SaS: C ^ '- conscious criticism ' T i^o ^ **^^e to sympatS Si thl ^ "^^^'^ ''^^n able %hters/ he^ti "^^ °"tcry against prize as Polinal powT '^^^^^^ facts as assets digiousmeniOTvanrf i, .^^ ^'^ays a nro- his "RoosSS;'' tl^ •* ^^ "tS B«t he never had the^l?\*!^al ^t^ 'wa the meditative fflindttat IN THEODORE ROOSEVELT broods over facts and reUtei them to one another m theories. He did not gather them instinctively because of his interest in them, but instinctively because of their value to him. They remained, therefore, as dry and detached as the facts in a dictionary. But his memory, being animated by his strongest instinct — his ego instinct — was always one of hir, keenest faculties. That, perhaps, is the explanation of the fact that with such a store of material in his memory, he was nevertheless always liable to think commonplaces and write platitudes. He was a fairly good student at collie, but not brilliant. Since his period of shel- tered daydreaming had lasted up to the ap of fourteen, and he entered college at eighteen, he must have been much younger in mind than his classmates. He did some boxing and wrestling, "but never attained to the first rank in either, even at my own weight." His social instinct was as yet un- developed, and his college life did not develop it. The collie fHendships of which he speaks are friendships with tutors and professors. He took no part in the collie debates. His chief interests, he says, were scientific, yet a scientific career made no appeal to his subconscious ideal. Therefore, although he "fuUy intended" at one time »43 TM SECJIET SPItlNGS politics. ' '"' «»ddenJy went into Why? died and left hittT^lr^ His father had ^I'ving. Neithe^bSiStw ''^'Mo'- appealed to his idealof ^' . ' "** ^''^nce its own. He Ld «n ^^^««»>ess holding divided intothe^^or^""- ^° « ^^Id «^'^'«™hig. His fri^rl« », '^'^ the lations were not contT«ii»ri i! . ^^ °^»an- that they W "i^"^''^ ^"'"enien'"; horse^';«n^^orJ^^^J saloonkeepers >«h and hnSHnd^n^" ""^^ ^^« with." He writS- "T^^*^**°deaJ «£ were so. iTS^yJ^J^ed that if I knew did not belone to 1^ * *^^ P^'P'e ?nd that the o^S^X^^r^'* <='^. intended to be Me ofW^ "^"'^ *^«t ^ More importer tha^fjf'^r^ *=^" ^ a field i^wS £ ^'' ^^ ^^ politics hold his oS^rit a s;* '? '^^s «s . as m a^xing nng. He told IN THEODORE ROOSEVELT his friends that if the "rough and brutal proved too hani-bit for me, I supposed I wouU have to quit, but that I catidnly would not quit until I had made the eflFort and found out whether I was reaUy too weak to hold my own in the rough ^ tmnble/' And he adds, later: "I no mSJ «^ed speaal consideration in politics than I would have expected it in the boxing "°f "t • r^^ *° *^ squarely to othen^ and I wished to be able to show that I could hold my own as against others." Fortunately, added to this self-assertive defiance of his subconscious fear of in- fenonty, he had an ideal of rectitude derived from his father. And he had a sympathy wiUi the under-dog which came of his own early weakness and dependence. What he did not yet have was any development of his social instinct, any sense of the herd as the source of the power by which the herd was governed, any identification of himself with the mass of the people He wntes of his first tenn in the legislature: At one period I became so impressed with the virtue of complete independence that I proceeded to act on each case purely as I POTonally viewed it, without paying any iieed to the principles and prejudices of MS ^ THE SECRET SPRINGS desS;«i, J^,:«72i* ;^ ««t I speedily and anything at all; and T ^ °^^accQmplishing invaluable lesson^ S^^J^^* *hf activities of lif» ^"^'^ ™ aU the practical highest se^ci JSs'T ^ '^'^'^ ^ hi^tion with his^tews ^ «««* in cam- that Se°?^i\^^'«^ of his cha^cter which mcTof us i^,'"^^*"^ « lesson «*ool yani A^ r^ ^ <*il*^n in the late, li^iake^ cSS.-^ ''^°' '^«1^ duct. Jt X noT"S S'^^ ^?^ «»- fying hiS"^;°srhSnr^ ^ ''^-" always a ruler r^i.- • ^- ^^ remained holdS hifrv^^ttS^^/^lessS^I public rectitudTkn? a ^J'f. ^^ °^ -e:S'^;>?Ue^^«Sjdtnt at the end of his ^em^* • ^*1 ^hen, lature.hewent West^l*^ "" *^« l««is- -ew pattern of f^I^iSi^-JLi^^^ IN THEODORE ROOSEVELT r? "\**^^orld~namely, the Rough Rider. Md added hun to his gaUeiy of heroes. Hen Roosevelt built himself up, physically And here he learned anoth^ deVice S feM^^^tohitfet. "Servingasdeputy sheriff, he says, "I took in more than one man who was probably a better man than I was with both rifle and revolver: but m each case I knew just what I wanted to do. and. hke David Harum. I 'did it fcst. whereas the fraction of a second that the other man hesitated put him in a position wbM« It was usel. ss for him to resist " He came back into politics from the West with his character trends whoUy formed and all his mstmctive devices perfected. Doctor X sums up briefly what those trends and devices were: iJi"^ ^^^I' nearsighted, asthmatic boy, loving his father, wishes to be like him i^ fearl^sness and holding his own. This wsh IS the unconscious issue of the impulse of self-assertion. It becomes the dynamic wish of his life. j"«u«. "Sickness separates him from the realities of Me, specially as they would have been met in the pubhc school. He can only dav- dr^ and read. He gratifies his dynanric wish by pretending that he participates in the adventures of his book heroes. These 147 THE SECRET SPRINGS means to obtain iwf lS% f% ? '^^ magic device^ SS ^e^ iL"' *" is approved It tw^^' ?^ succeeds and strenuous life.' '^^^ ^^- Hence 'the tn ",S «»^tration of power necessary reahty creates an unbounded egotism T^ ^otism has to be maintained th^ahS^ as a protection to the innatTcSSSni coinl a ^^ * ^"^ "^^ poKtidan be- ^eisappro1ed*%?^2;;^;-^and 148 IN THEODORE ROOSEVELT "There stiU remains unsatisfied the ad- venture wish of childhood where the hero wins by knowledge of nature and power over m£ ^1° ^^ "^^J^^ the wish is MfiUed. The plainsman becomes the model rf acquired power, self-reliance, and the art Si^P^M^*- ."^^' '^^ B« Stick, the Rough Rider regiment, the hunting expedi- tions^tiie tnps to Africa and SouthAmS. «o„fS£^f ^*°"' P^y'''=^ ^S°^' *e stren- uous hfe of adventure, political craft, collect- ing and wntmg were all masks and devices to obtain for the feeling of inferiority the safety of the position of 'fearlessness and holding one's own.' " w,-J?^i,l^^^, ^Plai'iswhy Roosevelt, with aU his fearlessness, never showed the placid courage of serene self-confidence It explains the unceasing bustle of "self- assertiveness which made his public life so clamorous. It explains the predatory and conquenng air of his communion with Wature, as compared with the manner of such a naturalist as John Burroughs, for example. It explains his fearlessness in action as contrasted with his lack of fear- lessness m thought. It explains why he wrote so much, and yet wrote so little that was of any philosophic value. And it ex- plains much else. THE SECRET SPRINGS be for ^ H^w^itff ^l-^' ^°^ And he woufdlrf ^°^J^**^^t-" because his UtrioSw.^/h' nationalism, of his ego, Sd he^oS^ilr.^^°° first • as he wouJd be for hW S^^'^ let his opponent be the samT^ ^-and reform 3own f^^ He would hand a ^bel agSst^y ^^^ in''^.^^^ attempted to dep,^ E^J^ P^JJ^k^^ tbat were in command of hilz^ *^* Po^er split his^^ °f Ins own party he would If he formed a new party he wo„M ^ -in7fiSft£t "^ r^ -t -w"f wasL'g Sj^^jP^^bopeless. He He had an iictivri?^^ ^ °^«- to hold his own in tj: wSd^ "^ " °«^- na^^hirif i^/L'iLr^.'^T^ ^- coUect men as he rvSil!^"* ^""^ ^« ^°^^ of his ego • Bui'h^i^ S^*'' ^ ^PP°rt of men. as he was of f^\^ ^ P°" J^^S^ IN THEODORE ROOSEVELT about men— their usefulness to him. And he would be easily deceived by any enemy who avoided making the signal that aroused his drfensive pugnacity and who came into his confidence in the disguise of a friendly aide Anyone who will take the trouble to read Roosevelt's Autobiography, with this thcopr of him in mind, will find many other proofs of Its correctness. And he will find something else. Says Doctor X: "We have been beUev- mg that a child's character is formed by admomtion and precept on the part of the parent, the teacher, and the Churdi, and by wiU power and perseverance on the part of the child. It is becoming evident that this behef is whoUy false. The child's character is formed, as Roosevelt's was formed, by an unconscious wish, that arises out of his imitation of some loved elder, ^om he impersonates in thought and act' "nus wish owes its great power to the fact that It is a part of the great instinctive energies of life, and, Uke aU desires, supplies its own dynamic drive. As a rule, the need to use will power merely indicates some defect of character-some state of opposition m energies that should be working in harmony. "Roosevelt himself believed that he used "THE SECRET SPRINGS will DOWer Tf * to be like hfafaSi !1 ^,^ his desire find, deserves to Tani?** ^**^"' *° ^^ ff hers of histo,? ^^^L"^' •«««* character in binLif „,,^^'.*^ t^its of jnu-tate to^va^" ^g^ his son could his son by indiffer^Sor S ♦ °^^ a«enated he encouraged S'L^'^b?^^'"*. ^^ every attempt at self^™^ apProving bis how simple ^ howST*"?' °° "^^ter ^« njade^it PoibTe for1"iwM ^ t' 1°^- 'nf«iorandhandicapSfro^lt' P^^f'^y of his itruggle wiS Efe S" l^f ^^^^inning the most consnir,,™T: achieve one of ^h^VrgenS-- P^Bal succ^ thist\"SJr'^£'-« cannot often do of l?ve and conS.^*^ ""1^^ ^^^hol receive her love feTh^" Jl° ^ct so as to fewanls. To S Jo i tff*^ °^ human « the deepest of ^ts^^ her sonow ' Iov« "s often too impfSt tn \% ™°*her's ^«^ous fee£s"5'°^^^«ind all the «cape to theT^L «?cunty that the ^.. burrow gives the hun^ ^i"^ "SS^ij^^-^t^ a well-known — ng^l^St'his^i IN CHARACTER AND CONDUCT « cool *o all her acou^^tT' fr«h-air fiend " "ent. and so forth ?iiT°" ^ "°"««- «tics take their Sni^*!^ character- to her by h» n^Zf^ *^^ * story told When she^L C"S. "^ «^y Pr^oo? her anguished moS^T^^^°°«^ ^^. thetic, watching the dS ^*^°"* «° "«». IN CHARACTER AND CONDUCT ratpintion, by twinginr the infant rapidly through the air, holding it by the arms. The mother's account of her sufifering, while ■he watched the doctors, and the young girl's Imaginative sympathy for her ow 1 u^er of fu ffocati on as an infant, had ma.l- surh -., impression on her that the uncon cy . , mei b- aniam of respiration had been .:; , le • Any diflSculty in breathing, whethe, al or imag- inary, put her in a panic whi- h r.o j, -j-si..'i> =. ,11^ of reason could allay. Hei:c:c the 1 ft. ot of a high wind that "took away" !.,- 1 -eaMi. Hence, too, the feelinf of suffocicn u\ tunnels. Subways, Pulhnan bertlj , losed rooms, etc. An unconscious imitation of the mother or father may easily form ideals of conduct ttiat will determine the course of a whole life. Here is a young woman who at the age of five found her mother crying "as if her heart would break." She was morbidly devoted to her mother, and when her mother told her that the father had left her for another woman she conceived a violent hatred for him. "All men are bad," the mother said. " They always hurt those who love them." At seven, this child told the family doctor that she "would never marry," because all men were "bad." As a young woman in 159 THE SECRET SPRINGS ^?;!^S~' "^'. *« ^'^^ that pris remained unmarried hw^o^.^ *v had "such low S^ cr^^ *^^ '"«' to men b«t Ti,! • ®^* ^^ attractive tW "^^ '■'•°^«* um-esponsive to she began to S?n!i?^ *° "'*^' ^^ now a 'S^.e'SnXaS^T:;^^'^ -r.:et£t-v^"-^^^^^ "A man teUs me." says Doctor X. "that i6o IN CHARACTER AND CONDUCT ^ is better for him than medicine, and brtter for all men. He has every sort of mtelhgent and saentific ai^ument to support S?; ., ^ patently. It begins to appear ^\i^ fr^^Jv^ ^°^ ^ ^ peculiai^^t ,S ^\^^ ^^ ^™P' " °^^ ^ey trousers, and a dnrt^ at the throat. His friends r^ ^ ^^ ^^'^^^ t'ut he sticks to It. Good. As we go on with our talk 1 learn tfiat as a boy his father was his great hours in the open, and had the time of their hv^. It develops that on these jaunts the father always wore the costume that is now so neo^sary to the proper enjoyment of those clothes, is more valuable to him than any medicme he can take." The unconscious imitation cf the father or mother IS responsible for the fact that so many of us are "bom." as we say, to a rebgious faith, a poUtical party, a profession. or even a habit. In religion or politics the unconscious mind having accepted the fejth as nght in childhood, the conscious S^ «"l^ I^ f'''^^ ^ the argmnents that suppOTt the faith and gives them forth as reasoned conclusions. The choice of the profession is made in boyhood, and the practice of It IS subsequently accepted as a i6i THE SECRET SPRINGS fiMB are two brothere, both of «*«« smoke constantiv T»,i. ,L wnom One of my patients," says Doctor Y when she left tji,_ v j j™"^ worse than con^S^abSt T ^ • "^ t^"^"^*^* ^d '"wng aoout It; he IS irritated if his IN CHARACTER AND CONDUCT r^* ^V^ \^* with a brim that keeps the sun out oL her eyes; and she has to suffer in ord^ to look beautiful to him. Under the doctors questions he confesses that his mother— to whom he was most devoted— always wore bonnets. He cannot remember havmg ever seen her in a large hat. And here is another patient who is always teaming his wife to wear earrings. Earring, to him have a peculiar fitness. They seem to make the face more balanced and beau- ITu ? admires espedall" the very ornate wid bangled earrings of the crinoline period His taste IS explained by the discovery of a pirture of his mother wearinj such e^'ngs and by her recolIectiMi that, as a babv Ac used to let him play with tke earrings to «top his aying. , .Say« Doctor X: 'The wbconsdous or- «in of manjr of owr aerthetic t«tes and idMb of beauty is yet to be explored. It exfUams wfixy jtaadards of beauty vary m d>ff«ent couaerie^ for example. And « acTOWBts for mseoj idiosyncrasies of taste MM* are otherwiic quite puzzling." A bu^ess man, engaged in promoting new iBve«ments, suffers from lack of sdf- confidence. He has a pecuHar trait of cbara*^: be is very lavish in his tips, and wften be dmes m a restaurant he Iwibes the '^■^:J;^'hti^:MA¥\:'M?^: -ts THE SECRET SPRINGS waiters, the head waitpr tv,^ u .. what not to Si ST'w *"" ^y '^ attention. It?s a S. ** "^^^ «><* that whenever Li ^^^n^.his friends have aU tiiT^anSn X '^f' ^e has to behind hisdi^ £ i° *j! P'** ^di«« tWs chamctt^'ic fa tJ& *? i^' «-? a sort of snobbishness St^^^u ^^f Doctor X finds that tul ^J"^^^ by it. in India. Hfa faJS ^^ ^^T^ ^«« ^o™ He had a iSJe ««^ was a high official. whoXved^f>,r "^ °^ °**'^« «*vants -as a'-sectSy vre"^''^T^*7^*=« haSTfalrbSnS^ieii^^rr '^°" will need all your se^^nfif^ ''^'^'^ y°" you lunch Tt wilTS ^°" P'^ ^hil« aids to banning »„!, ^ unconscious T64 ^' : IN CHARACTER AND CONDUCT They are supports. And this man's aeed of the 'loyal subject' is so common in J^^^ that it mai.es the tipping system Now let us examine some less superfidd character trends. An aggressive young architect, who came to Doctor X in the ordinary course of practice, showed this strange characteristic- it he were elbowed out of his place in the queue at a ticket office, he not only felt no resentment at the injustice, but he accepted It with pleasure and relief. On going into the natter, it appeared that he always yidded his place in any such situation not with meekness or subserviency, but with scCTet satMaction and a queer sense of good luck. pe analysis of this uncommon reaction, says Doctor X, "explained two other pecuharities of the patient. The first was that as an architect he had a strong aversion to planning terraced effects in courts and gardens. The second was that He had an exaggerated faith in luck, and seldom worried over any lack of success in a project, but attributed every failure to SOTne sort of vague fate that overruled his efforts. These characteristics were explained by a reminiscence of his childhood. His earlv «6s ' THE SECRET SPRINGS day while he"« ^°^j^^^- One upper terrace a enwn o7>v, ^f? °° *° werepreparmgthK-«!i^il%^°'' ^ shooting butte- or ^f IC^^ *<> 8° to the of mimaryZsdZ,^^'^°°^ was a sort tripped himThSL ?^ "* ** «^« this boy a gun exolodefl n„ tu\ ™* moment bt^SSle w''r«:t«^ace. The juxnp, SS^ Sl^2^ '"'^^ ^ taken the did not W wW^^'^'P^tient. who after him £ aTSe f.^^^^^ *°<^ "« terraces ih? fef L * ^1 ^**°" °f the somersault LfI*^^o7,,^^.f«Jy ^^ ^ The second WatteSi^v* ^** ^^ ^^• he woke to wZtSttS ^3^^^°- He Sd°'tK;^5"** ^'-^ -^th hom,r. the accide1t^*i^^^« ^ *'"''«ht his turn and tt.i7 ^ Jumpmg out of he felt that if he had no.t ^\^^^ time, io6 * IN CHARACTER AND CONDUCT Aal at the funeral services in the school uf hL ,"^^^ '^* ^ the relatives of his dead playmate looked at him accusingly 5^^^"*?* h*- There was a senS . The whole mcident, " says Doctor X. " strik- h^^JtS''*'? ^^ impressionable boy, left han w^th a horror of terraces, a fatalistic dep^dence^ luck, and an imp;ired £SS 1^-^'°" that permitted him to «c^t second place m anything with a feeling 1. * ^^ '^^ty- He was quitH^ aware of the origin of these chaiiristlS. SL^c Tu' <=°°°«^«1 them with the madents of his school days." A settlement worker came to Doctor X brotei down with overwork and gSric disorder. Her chief symptoms wS ^' and vomiting. "These," says he, "are ^ pressions of unconscious disgust. I^k^ her what phases of her woS amonftS P^r had first given her a feeling of d^fgi^! With an expression of aversion and a S^. ^'nl ^^"^ something away she S k.i^f^^'?^^' They made me St ^^,^Pf°Pl« didn't seem to mind, and I couldn't mideretand that, but they ^ souls like other people ank I felt it was my duty to endure the unpleasant 167 ,j. ™^ SECRET SPWNOS '^W^SSe1^^.2rt Christ never f««ed to me tStl7iS^ ****««•• I* duty. SoIfouXoffmw"l."yChriatiaa "^^ « t^'<^ iJictert R ^^ ^'«'«od girl mother who bST^I^^ ^'^■tion bf a the house was «„ °*^« vermin in that amounS^t^.^^S^We dis^^ f J hid been teu^t to SJ,f ^^^ ^^ °f body or mind S !ru"°*^^''°^^ess P°r had been a proStT^ '*'°°« «>« hermstincts. "W^^ff ^ ""artyrdom of fays Doctor X. "3 »K "^^^^^ *he body," « conduct they S ^*" *^^ are oppo^d Her iUness wS^S^^P^^tate th/b^ of fe which h^cSl^^^^t a comi "f « 1"hconscic^y"^i^. ,t^am,ng had Another of hT^.^'^hle for her." y-^ woman ^aTyS"!" « -««-to^o h«ht to portray %^?^- .* novelists de- ventions S^'t^^ '^ defiant of con "-t"«]^H-S^- ^'"-^^if-islS-^Ltt^ IN CHARACTER AND CONDUCT worriee her family by driving her motor car too fast, especiaUy at night, when she de- lights to take long, lonely rides through the countryside. She is ungovernably impatient with anyone who procrastinates or comes 1^ to an appointment— although she is often late herself. She cannot bear to be deceived, or put oflf with vague explanations, or treated w. ii anything but downright trutii and seriousness even in the most trivial concerns. And she is always quarrel- ing with her fianc6 because he has an easy- going and good-natured way of evading her earnestness and putting her oflf. All these qualities and characteristics of hers she re- gards as virtues, although they are accom- panied by a great deal of emotional friction that keeps her upset and unhappy and nervously unwell. The explanation of her character lies whoUy in her childhood. Her mother was an overanxious and unreasonably apprehen- sive woman whose every admonition to her daughter b^au with a "don't." The girl had a restless vitality and a strong self- assertiveness. She early revolted against her mother's timidities. Warned against going out alone in the dark, it became her childish delight to steal away from the house at night and make more or less fearful ex- 13 169 I THE SECRET SPRINGS SS:^^t;«l*«-hood. and this anything tha?^f*W^ I* «lole«ence. "otherl^:'^^°J/^«' by «>« beloved I*ter, anything cZn^T u 1?^*^ **<*«• fascination ^fr?lr^2^*'°"^d the'same ^e^-^SJ^r^^^^^S'-^achild SW^arthaf^S-^^^^^^^ They used to get rid^w ^ ^^^ed them, on her-sendinrh^ nn *'? P^^J^ Wcks off togetherSr^: SlT' ''"^« ber to play blindiZ-fb^tT ^'"''« away while she w^hM^^,f°? "^™«? tending that W ^^f. .. ^^^''^^'-^rpre- house. n^Zc^'i^Y^} ir^to the rage, planning rw^e^ ^^ "^ « daily decepti^Tn? S how^^l^^ ^^^^^^t «=P«^ally if it fe^„J°^ good-natured- of aU p«^rtion t;7ts^^t^-« ^'"^ °"* IN CHARACTER AND CONDUCT was always promising her wonderful things for next week-Shetland ponies, and any- thing else that she could think of-and who always cheerfuUy disappointed her and en- joyed mischievously the fury of childish rage with which she attacked him. It was a sort of game with him. He never failed to persuade her that he would bring the gift, and the more enraged she was the more he enjoyed it. With all her dislike of procrastination and ?^« ^1*^ °^ promises in others, she finds It difficult herself to keep appointments, be- cause she hates to be tied down to an hour or a course of action. It lessens her in- dependence, and she revolts unconsciously She IS ateiost invariably late in keeping her engagements, although she arrives breathless havmg hurried all the way. EvCTy student of human nature knows that character comes out most strikingly in aSaus of love. It is interesting to see how the vanous peculiarities in love and marriajte as exemplified in Doctor X's cases, fall intd groups. There is the group of those who, for any one of a score of reasons, have failed to grt the parent's affection in childhood. When the failure is complete, and the parent image has not been the symbol of affection, the »«K»OCOfr tBOWTION TEST CHAtT (*NSI and ISO TEST CHAKT No. J) 1^1^114 ^^ (716) 3S8-59B9-Fa, THE SECRET SPRINGS ijistinct of love is blocked and a haonv inarnage made impossible. The pieS^ the same failure of the In™ 7^ cnarm, pr^iuce the "vamplL" U°^' "°^«^ "^^ un n?" t? ^^f ^™"P °f patients is .made «P of those who have sufferM =. ^I^, tiorrpLJ'^i;;^?,^?°^r^'*affS a^ompamrb^?^ii;,tS:trr^,^ fear of disappointment. It islS anH fuspicious. AndifthisdualiyifweSd ™1°~ ,. ^^ indecision and "ambi tlSfl ~^>" psychologists^ i^' cnoice or come to a fi,^ ^ • • ."**^ * simplest mat^. ^ ^ ^^°° "> '^^ ExcKsive love from the parent sets th^ basic characteristics of anothSuo ilk ^^t ^t^^ transference of the youne affection to a mature ^person, or to a typf IN CHARACTER AND CONDUCT identical with the parent, or to a family relative, such as a cousin. Or the con- sciousness of dividing the mother's love with the loved father may produce in the son a feeling of pleasant security in loving an engaged girl, or a widow, or any woman who has been previously possessed by some one else, and a similar effect may ensue with a daughter. Or excessive love from the parent may lead to "narcissism"— which is ex- aggerated self-approval — ^to a craving for indulgence and adulation and a self -worship so extreme that the child fails to develop the true protective instinct in love. Such a boy or girl is above being protected and is too selfish to protect. The boy makes his mother a slave to his self-esteem and there- after exacts abject and slavish service from all women. His amatory emotion is a sexually formed self -ambition and never real love. The same thing will be true of the girl. In the countries where parents are com- monly harsh in their authority, as for instance in Russia, the ideal of woman conquest in man and of the vampire tjrpe in woman will be more frequent than in such a civilization as ours, where children am more indulged. The recurrence of the vam- pire in the novels of Tui^enev, and the 173 THE SECRET SPRINGS other Russian realkte u • ^ •, . with their raX fri ' '*"^."«^°"t'^' Observe also the Jn, i^ "^^'^^ fi«=«on. literatureTf the sensS^.'^ '" continental ing with an "iSo '> ""'' T^° '"^ ^^^r- parental dominance f^ complex" due to PlaceistakeriruTno^i-"^^- J°">« and self-assertive hero 1' ' ^ '?^ustious , The division of^^ct. ' T '^'''^'■" latter lines gives us cwf- ^'°"S ^h^se ing types-fSnoll '^^^'■^^^"ntrast- AnxeriS the SSo£nicT/ ,""?^^^- ^° prevalent in the s^k'" '''^ '" ^"^-^dibly crops out ^ the ^ "'"^"^ "™d. It •'NWn^of^,^re:^f'.tSf/^^-t the of finance," "the M=^^i ' ,*"® Napoleon There is ;ven a llT'T °^ *^ *^^*^'--" ^^the NapVontuI"?^!:^ t r') "?' to those caotain.! «f • j *" referring busts and^rtraTtsld .T"^ 7 ^ ^'"ecf and P^enn^f^vestth^^'r'."''^' fan, or her bed or her L^ • J^^^Phnie's likeUnclePon?^evo?nWeSSTJ?^'-' °^' Pmch the ears of th^rF •'^'^'^^eay, PeriaJ playfS^es^' ^ntu"'"'^ ^'^ ^■ conscious^miSrtJr Z^f''^ -^■ power and domination f.T • Personal Pelling. And th^- ^ ^^^^ and com- i-erestinNapo&\rZ,:e1i3P^f^ '74 IN CHARACTER AND CONDUCT Hamlet's appeal is to the sensitive and depressed who are the conquered instead of the conquerors of reality. Poets, artists, and dreamers meet that fate. The sickly child, imable to triimiph in the physical contests of the playground, attempts to compensate with mental attainments, takes to books and the consolations of fantasy, and becomes the imaginative dreamer. As a boy, he is awkward, self-conscious, shy, and sensitive. If he becomes notable as an artist, the ego that made him precocious now makes him domineering and vain, but the subconscious feeling of inferiority persists, and he is touchy in his vanity, envious, self -distrustful, subject to easy depression and discourage- ment and imbelievably petty at times. The poet Byron's clubfoot was the physical index of these qualities in him. The dia- 'iolical contradictions in the poet Pope are inexplicable without his crooked spine. The novelist Dostoievsky had an "inferiority complex " so marked that it may be studied in some of his stories as in a clinic. Most of the vagaries of the "artistic temperament" come from the subconscious sense of in- feriority and the internal conflict that accom- panies it. All of this suras up to the conclusion that character is almost wholly a product of the I7S THE SECRET SPRINGS ideal ZZi'Z: Tnv 'IS^*!? ^^ ^ the ideal Ut^u , ^ departure from the parent and tLw ^^^ "^Auences of jfc^gtSs.'irth^ifrss 2d^ai;r,:-'^thert:s^^^^^^ parent. ™irSso ^-f"^*^ "P°° the port to the Slief^^St'^thr^'^*^ ^"P" comer stone of the t hnll • ^^'^ ^' «"« Outside of the home t^^ '^f ^• single factor in the f^.,*^^ "f^* Patent lies in the rSctfonf ^ u°° °^ cliaracter i^tinctoJLnnXon ''^F^^'"'^ "^'^ says Doctor X^ 'S I'n, T'*^'*'°"^'" with danger S ph^sicKT^^ ^"^^^ themselv^ in bS^n/"* ^.^ ^^ess pressions. In t^TSL ^ emotional de- life they 'S^ Ln^y i^^ of savage different^dan^. ''^'^^^ *° « totally . - "^^en man first became free to fo^ liiat difference seemed IN CHARACTER AND CONDUCT when they died was to him the spirit, the invisible soul. Our word 'spirit' is the Latin word for breathing, spiritus. 1 his soul he believed immortal, but he beheved also that it was threatened by evil influences and that it could be protected by various sorts of incantations. His in- stinct of fear, with its depressing power over bodily functions, became involved in the protection of the soul, and man reacted more to the fear of losing his soul than to the fear of l^ingHs life. It is an example rf the transference of an instinct from a toddy to a mental habit. The importance of this mstinct of soul fear at the present tune IS due to the influence of our religious education on the mind of the child ^'He is tau^t to believe in original, an- cestral sm He IS taught that he will lose his soul unless he is saved or restored to a state of grace. He is firat reduced to a conviction of sin'— which is a profoundly depressive instinctive fear reaction-and he IS then rescued from this depression by means of 'salvation,' and the anguish of despair is replaced by the elation of success. Nearly all rehgions use this device. "The instinctive mind is thus tuned to 177 THE SECRET f ?RINGS react to the depression of the eullt «f «„ .t ha. now „ „e.„ rfeLSS ^'J? mentby whc ha cmed it is typical ' g^able to do more than a hat-day'fwoT He was depressed, dejected, without en^Sv' No physician had been able to discover Tv X^^:^ ^.'^' *=^"«^ °f his condS A thorough examination convinced me tw Ssrjr^f rb?^",!; «^r^p^- ofcomp,ete"ra,'Ltt.^'Srta:t:r '•ke a cowed and beaten aniiT t^fS 178 IN CHARACTER AND CONDUCT prevented from crawling away to hide I began to go into his 4tor? in s^Si o! the sources of his failure " the c^"^ 'Y ^" ^"^ ^" Oon. outside farmer h,if », " ^ °* ^ neighboring tW He wS? to tf:S?^S":^,P^'*^ eait ir*^*^' ^.' ^^^^ *° marr, He was earnmg enough to support Htfe, Si S 179 ■IHE SECRET SPRINGS "a good iSCrirr- a^"^' *" ^" '»^«^' For three yS ^' ''"'^ ''<' ""^^ her. They had a^ii? V^ '*'"** '""PP^" emotion of C ttJirt)r^ 1° ^'^ horribly. H^locJtrT^T^^^ to the countX ^^? tT -^'^ °'"^««* her died, he^rrid i th? ' P^""*' ''^^■"« rented theVfl^' a^d' KL"^° ^ live with his wifr b.J^ u-.j iT * "^*™ *« «« his wSril »: 5S 2i* ■•■jmnuti.j" IN CHARACTER ANT CONDUCT the right thSg S? Ws Sfe t ''^'^ *° ^° nights and to W S, !^^' *°/o home at succeeded in cSc?L v '^ /°'' ''"•• He his conduct '4rS £L5"to'h°"''^ "'^ and indigest. mT^^f ^^^^ "«"»« The doctOT told hi^L'^*' «"* «*«ker. that she coS? n^ ht ^T '^.t'^ '>^«' months. He r^^u ."^°^ than three used to sa?thin^ "J^ "'"^ ^^ '"oSS hann to iS ^"^J^^ ^^'^'i do actual this was SSnse^buf^^^^^ ^^t 'nsomnia, and bisli^Zl - ^^*" to have with sle^SsnS £^„ ""^ ""^^ h°^We able avmiS^Thi''!^^^' «" ^>nconquer. home, a disgust of hL^^' ^ J^^^^ ot his "1.™ he did M „ t "' ^SM lo «e h.^ affwUon, but hi^.S T^' ""O"' '^-«.^™x,'rib°.°srbrss' THE SECRET SPRINGS to marry her, and his revulsion at this guilt and his struggle against it reduced him to the iinal stages of insomnia, indigestion, and nervous collapse. "What he was now suffering," says Doctor X, "was a physical disgust of illness in his home and a moral disgust of his evil thoughts. Both were being suppressed. Their total effect was being loaded upon the reaction of instinctive failiu-e, and the result was handled by the conscious mind as a form of disease. The predominating emo- tion was the subconscious horror of sin. "We worked out very clearly that his subconscious ideal of a wife was a girl like his mother, and that it was his subconscious ideal of conduct to love her as his father had loved his mother. It was evident that his present wife did not fulfill the one ideal any more than his conduct fulfilled the other. Both ideals ware compulsive. Both aroused instinctive thoughts which were also compulsive and could not be controlled. But these thoughts need not be felt as moral guilt, provided they were not acted upon. He was at liberty to think as he pleased as long as he did his duty and harmed no one. "He agreed that he had been staying away from his home because of his aversion 183 IN CHARACTER AND CONDUCT to a disease which his childhood training had taught him to loathe. He recognized that his failure to take his money home and his loss of interest in his work were both due to the fact that his ideal of a home having failed him, he had lost interest in the means by which he should support his household. He saw that his conduct had unconsciously betrayed the thoughts which his conscious loyalty was repressing. I showed him that his loss of interest in work and his wish for the death of his wife were only the instinctive attempt to escape from what he was forcing himself to do. I convinced him that there was no sin in having ich thoughts so long as he kept them to h' jeif and did his duty to his wife. " Moreover, it was clear that his desire to marry his boyhood sweetheart was not bom merely of a wish to escape. It was due also to his subconscious desire to marry a woman like his mother. There was no sin in this so long as he did not express the desire and thereby catise any one unhappiness. He agreed. Being now free from the conviction of sin, he began to find relief also from the sense of moral inferiority and self-disgust. His insomnia passed. After a time we found that his nausea had disappeared. Then his indigestion began improving. 183 THE SECRET SPRINGS "Recognizing the matter-of-factness of feeUngs that were instinctive, he began to take an interest in eaming money to fulfill his duty to his wife, with the added sense of penance and reparation. He allowed himself the natural hope that if his wife died, he might marry his first sweetheart. He is now doing a good day's work comfortably and with better health. He is comparatively happy and his skin disease is ciu-ed." The whole case is an excellent example of how a man's conduct will imconsciously and vmcontrollably fulfill an instinctive wish when that wish is most vigorously repressed, and of how easily the conduct can be controlled when the wish is allowed to drain oflE in consciousness. "The remedy," as Doctor X puts it, "is not to grant a license to the instinctive impulse, and not to attempt wholly to dam it up, but to give it sufficient sluiceway in thought. Dominating impulses often dwindle to a trickle as soon as you make in consciousness a waste weir for the dam." And the moi^al of this whole matter of the influence of the subconscious mind on char- acter and conduct is the old moral, "Make it thy business to know thyself." You are being constantly affected, and very fre- quently betrayed, by a sort of hidden sprite 184 IN CHARACTER AND CONDUCT within you that acttmtes you often as if you were a marionette. If you could find out what he is doing, you might either check him if he were misleading you or you might bring your conscious mind to aid him if he were guiding you aright. The difficulty is that you cannot see him by any effort of introspection, for he disguises himself against your conscious self-examination very cun- ningly. You can, however, go over the record of your past and see how he has led you. You can find him working in your emotional reactions— particularly when these are more violent than the occasion warrants — in your instinctive likes and dislikes, in your ideals and ambitions and unreasoned choices and beliefs. And best of all, you can catch and study him in your dreams. It is this business of interpreting your dreams that we must next consider. CHAPTER VIII IN DREAMS THE Freudian interpretation of dreams is a bewilderingly complicated matter, about which there have been written a bewildering number of complicated books. To the or- dinary reader, the orthodox Freudian seems to be pursuing his dream divination through an intricate maze of sex symbolism, foUowing it round and round with the pale frenzy of a monomaniac who has become rather dizzy, though he still remains determined. He is giddily difficult to foUow, and he becomes mcreasmgly unspeakable the farther he goes Fortunately, Doctor X is not an orthodox Freudian. His interpretation of dreams is at once simpler and more printable. Let us take an example. One of his patients is a married woman who came to him with an apparent derange- mMit of the heart which her family physician had diagnosed as perhaps due to goiter He had referred her to Doctor X as a speciaUst m such diseases of the internal gland.. i86 IN DREAMS ?r.^ * ^°^*^ "° S°^*«^- He found nothing to account for the functional dis- turbance of the heart and the choking feeling of which she also complained. He lesui^ however, that she was often attacked by th^ symptoms at night in her sleep. He that had preceded her awakening to the distress of such symptoms. She recalled the followuig mghtmare: hi^.^-l!!,'^^'"^. ^^^ "^^ ^^ leaving h^ gu-mood home in Buffalo on a ste^ boat. She was alone, and she was carrying an umbreUa that seemed to her to be a prized grft from her mother. The umbrella shpped from h«- hand and feU overboard. Overwhehned with a frantic sense of tragic loss, she plunged overboard herself, resolved to lose her bfe rather than lose her mother's gitt. She sank. She was drowning Her struggles awakened her. Put she woke to a choking sense of fear and despair, with ho- heart beating madly; and both the ^?^^°t^^ *^^ palpitation continued ail the next day, and the next. She felt as It some terrible disaster impended. On the third day, alarmed by the rapidity of her pulse she consulted her family doctor and told hun of the dream in which the symptoms had oegun. He decided that the palpitation 187 THE SECRET SPRINGS of the heart was due to a goiter and that the dream of drowning came from the difiBculty in breathing caused by the heart disturbance. Doctor X concluded '.hat this diagnosis put the cart before the horse. Disregarding the Freudian symbols in the dream, he said to her: "I should judge from your nightmare that when you left the happiness of yotu- childhood home you suffered a great loss. You have failed to repair that loss in spite of desperate efforts to do so, and you've come to the point where the fear of never repairing it leads you to wish for death." She burst into tears. She confessed that what he had said was true. She was very unhappy. She had tried to conceal it from herself. She had :jev^ admitted it even to her mother. "It would kill my mother if she knew how unhappy I am," she said. "I think of it as little as I can. I busy myself with war work and try to forget." What was the cause of this unhappiness? "I have never loved my husband," she said, "and I have no child to love. I'm so imhappy I wish I could go to sleep and never wake again." Now, how did the nightmare picture this tragedy? Doctor X took the details of the dnam i88 IN DREAMS drama one by one, and asked her to tell him what incident in her life each^e/ Leaving her childhood home on b^ a trHv'l'r"^^ ^" '' ^^ hone^: trip by water Her childhood had been most happy. She had been stamp^ So "^amage by the whirlwind ^SfoH dommeenng amy officer. She had not loved hmi wildly, but his many good mmlitS had convinced her that he wluM iSkel l^t^w"'^''- °" ^^ honeymcT^She learned that he disliked childrerTand waJ detmied not to have ^ny What was the most priceless gift she had t^f ^"^^"'^ ^^"^ ^^ mothS It^ gu-l, she had daydreamed of giving such a love to her husband and her clS? and of L Sf d'^fi'nl^ T^ "J! atmosphere of ;^Sioa f ^i ^t.^ ^^' childhood home. It wi fc *^^! r^^ "^^«- 1'^ ^i^ed now VVliat ,ireat loss by water had she suffered? M^-'n a fox temer as a pet. She was ashamed to say it, but she had lo^ 7£ httle dog more than any one in h«- Itfe her'Sat'[t'"°*^^" ,"" ^^^^^^^ ha'tdd fter that it was wicked to love an atiim^i so inordinately She f^lt that I ^ • ty» +u T^ ,/ • , "^^^ ^^1^ that she was givine to the dog aU the love that she might wf 189 i I THE SECRET SPRINGS lavished on her duld. She used to confide her troubles to it, and it would listen to her with its head cocked on one side. She was sure it understood. Then, one day, it disappeared. At nightfaU they found it still struggling feebly in the water at the bottom of a disused well. It was breathing when they rescued it, but it died in her arms. She broke down with an attack of nervous prostration, haunted by a picture of the httle animal fighting for its life in the icy water and looking up for the help which it had never failed to get from her before. The elect on her was as tragic as if it were a child of hers that had drowned. When did she first have the wish to die? When the dog died. And she had often wished it since. Life was a hopeless fight. There was nothing to look forward to. She still had her mother's love, but her mother was growing old and feeble. She would soon be gone. I. was a thought that had to be kept out of the mind. When she went to see her mother now the sight of her, aged and failing, brought nothing but pain instead of pleasiu-e. The dream, then, had merely taken some of the stage properties of the tragedy of her waking day and used them in a little sym- bolic drama that condense-i the sorrows of a 190 IN DREAMS by the fictitious incidents of the dream ^ ZTT'^ tje -otions that wc^ldlSS ^n felt if she had consciously reviewed the gnevous incidents of her unhappy iSaST TTiese incidents were being k^ ouTS^ £ c»nscious thought. Theattei5.ttorS,reL them had also forced them to assuS^^ dream. But though they were disguised emotions-the emotions that were beinjr d^ed up in her subconscious mind T? her wakmg deteimination to think of hi unhgpiness as little as possible From my standpoint," says Doctor X. the dream merely provided a certa^ SS t^ needed eniotional di^inage^ SterSItl • ^°^^'^ '^P*^'"^ persisted atter herawakemng showed tbatthedammed- ^ev"^^" H ^"'^ "^^" *° ^ Point^:^ they were dangerous to health. Here was relSS^L*'"' "'""^ ^^^ emotions'wl": released from repression, there might be senous consequences to the patient Ln^ tally or physicjJly." ° Accordingly he advised her that she shoidd go to her mother and unburden her ^roubles mstead of trying to bear thS alone. He prescribed, also, that she must 191 li I! i I 'im ii-i ■fij I THE SECRET SPRINGS accept her unhappiness, adjust herself to It, and cease living a false life of pretended contentment and secret grief. Having faced her losses, she could then consider what assets she had on the other side of her balance sheet to make life endurable. She had a sound body. She had youth. She had fnends. Instead of continually grieving because she had missed the goal of hw deare, she might attain a lesser goal of satisfied affection by bringing pleasure and happmess to others. She foUowed Ws advice, and she is now, ^■.w°^ ,^ .^y^' "'^^"' «°d contented within the hnuts of a narrower worid than the ideal one of her girlhood daydreams " Let us take another example. A patient dr.amed that he was in the barnyard of his boyhood home. An im- mense horse was pursuing him. He took refuge m the bam, but the horee broke down the doors. He fled in terror, and now his wife was with him. He saw before him astonewaU. If he could climb to the top of It he would be safe. He could easily do It, If he would abandon his wife. He decided against that. By a desperate effort, he reached the top of the waU and dragged his wife up after him, but he had diffiadty m mamtainmg his balance and he felt that iga IN DREAMS Doctor X said to him- "T ci,^ .^ • When the doctor asked hit*, ♦« « the disconnected dSof Jf ^^*^***'" incidents and memS ol W, ^f"^ "^'^ had also preventerl y,;^ t "eaitn, it THE SECRET SPRINGS SSwe*"^""*^ had thus bUghted his When he finaUy broke away from home he found employment under the govem- R^ ^l*'^ *'i^^"« ^ P°^ti°« when Roo^velt became President. Roosevelt was at that tmie his ideal. There was in his mind some association between Roosevelt and a powerful horse. On his way to vote for Roosevelt for a second term as President. An alarm had evidently just been rung in. for the doors of the engine house suddenly flew open and a team of fire horses plunged out at him. just as the horse had plunged through the bam door in his dreaS S barely escaped being trampled on Soon after election President Roosevelt cut dov,ii the staff of employees in the department m which the patient was work- ing. He was reduced to a lower position on a smaUer salary, and he just missed being thrown out of employment altogether. U was a great injustice to him. He had ever since considered Roosevelt as the embodi- ment of unjust authority. him °*^'t/''? !?°''^' *^^ ^^ been hard for home. He could have succeeded weU enough by himself, but it was not easy to support 194 IN DREAMS h.J^"' ^v.'^f .* «°«^ workman, but he had no political influence, and it war puU he said, not merit, that advanced a run in' the government service. It was t. , late tO£o mto any private enterprise. He was mowing old. and always there was the fear w^L ."?* ''^''^^ •" h'^ department would put him out of office and ^ndemn him to a poverty-stricken old age. Worry had undermined his health, and he felt that he might break down any day. It was by a very small margin that he was holding f^hoTy.^'""^* '^^ '"^'^^^ ^^ -i-' "From this dream," says Doctor X, "we got an insight into the secret of the patient's whole problem. He was the victim of a subconscious feeling of revolt-a revolt first XI2 ^u ^^'^r'' ^"*^°"*y' «"d then gainst aU analogous authority, against Roosevelt authority, against church author- .L * v T" *«^^'"^* ^^ authority of society itseU. He was maintaining an un- happy child's attitude toward life. He was the victim of a faulty adjustment to the nec^sary conditions of social existence. He was helped both in mind and body by getting him to recognize the unwisdom and un- J^^bleness of his false emotional '9S ii I m ■ll THE SECRET SPRINGS And here ia a third example: A young woman, who had been married about five years, came to Doctor X with symptoms of throat trouble which it was supposed might be due to some affection of the thyroid gland. She described these symptoms as "a sort of choking feeling." Under his questions, she tr:. .ed them back to their beginning in a nightmare. She had dreamed that she was in the Idtchen of her home, at night, washing the dishes. She heard a noise at the out- side door. It opened slowly and a hand appeared, holding an electric flashlight. An unknown man in a black mask sprang into the room with t. pistol in his hand. She screamed in terror, ran from the kitchen, and fell fainting on the stairs. She awoke in a stete of panic with a choking in the throat which persisted and became chronic. Doctor X said, "You are doing your duty as a wife, but you live in terror of something that threatens to disturb the peace of your married life." She was much embarrassed. "That," she replied, "is something that I can't talk about to anyone." On a subsequent visit she admi' ted that this "something" was a thought. "A thought," she said, "comes into my mind, ig6 IN DREAMS and I have to fight it down. It's a wicked thought and I'm afraid of it. It's the thought of a boy I quarreled with before 1 mamed. I didn't realize that I loved him until too late. I only want to be a good wife and make my husband happy, but ^'^ '^""^ continuaUy into my mind " The flaahhght suggested a flashlight which the boy had carried when he came to call on her, in the evening, at her country Home. The pistol, too, reminded her of a pistol with which he had armed himself because there had been some hold-ups in the neighborhood at the time. The masked man--who was unknown to her in th- dream— was the boy himself "It is a rule," says Doctor X, "that any unknown person m a dream is some one very w*>ll toiown to the conscious mind. The boy appeared as an outlaw because he represented the outlawed thought that was breaking into hCT mmd and producing fear at each assault " Her Ideal of wifely loyalty was so high that It would not permit her to have such thoughts of another man. The compulsive power of the thought came twm her opposi- tion to It, which created a dammed-up energy that had no drainage. "Admit to yourself that you like this boy. Doctor X advised her. "Allow all »9; i ! THE SECRET SPRINGS thoughts of him to enter your mind freely. They will soon fade away. He was for a time a symbol of happiness to you, and your repression has fixed the idea at that level. Admit that life with him might have been romantic, and think about it without guilt. You have a good husband. You are living a good, wholesome Ufe. You are interested m your home. Don't fight yourself. You are making yourself iU and unhappy." As a matter of fact, as soon as she took that mental attitude, the outlawed thought lost its compulsiveness. The dreams ceased and her throat symptoms disappeared. "Her thoughts of the boy," says Doctor X, "have become pleasant memories that do her no harm. Instead of fighting a secret sin, she smiles over a girlhood ro- mance of the past and accepts her present with a pride in her sense of fulfilled duty." And here is a fourth case: A patient, a married woman, was very much worried about her mental condition. The circumstances of her life were apparently happy. It was true that she had been miserable with her first husband, but she had divorced him, years before, and married a man to whom she was entirely devoted. She ba^ had a child by her second marriage, and all was well with her. 198 I- IN DREAMS &d her baby pi Iyi„g i„ ^ darkened room, ^^ntly djang There was a smaU red rt'e 'f ^?."^V^ ^ hypodermic needle, on the infant's neck. She felt that some r^?^*^'^^^, ^^ ^by ^ her abseTe Adark, ^sy-lookmg woman came into the rorai, and on seemg her the mother screamed with a shocking oath. "I'll kiU youT At ^' N?w ""n V*" l"^"^ °^ frightened horror. sworn KV^^rr' ^^ '^'^' "^ ^^^ °ever sworn hke that at anyone in my life, and I «r "^"^"^ ^^ ^^^ ^ feeling-to wSt to M anyone Does it mean thft my Sd IS becoming affected.? I feel as if it were." No, he said. "The drean is only the ^auung off of some veiy pow«f ul emot^Jn that you have repressed." . "But " she objected, "I have no repres- sions whatever. I'm quite happy. D^J^u think It could mean that some e\^l is thrL- emng my baby?" "ireai "Not at aU," he said. "Your dream is too symbohc and personal for me to gen- ^. but rf you will dismiss the drLm .tself from your thoughts for a momen" and answer my questions. I think we cai^ find out what it means. Tell me, who comes to your mind when I say 'a dark gypsy-Iooldng woman'?" ' Ill f 1 t *lll !'l f If ; ^1 THE SECRET SPRINGS Q^'^L^"!* husband's mother," she replied. She added, significantly, "But then, he looked just like her." "A hypodermic needle?" " My first husband was an addict. That was what made my life with him unendur- " An injury to the neck?" "My own neck. My husband choked me t"o lt.eS" ^' "" "^* ^^^ - "An innocent young girl?" . 'Myself. My husband married me, an Ignorant and romantic young girl and I,p destroyed all my iUusions. ifeSled^Jnt S^ ?• "^f Sometimes I felt I could have S|lt'ldeL:."'^"^^'^^^^^^^°— 3^ "I think you have there the secret of yourdream," the doctor said. "Your hus- band s actions raised a murderous hatred m you, and your self-esteem repressed it as vmworthy of your better self. For years this undramed hatred has been festering in you You should recall, instead of for- getting, aU those brutal scenes with him. and If necessary swear out any feelings that you 11 get nd of them. Better a sulphuro,^ atmosphere m your boudoir than a seething aoo *■ IN DREAMS J^p of suppressed bitterness in your mi^iT'J* '' T^^"^^ ^^^ ^^ ^^^ patients might have been saved much wo^ and Jl health If tJiey had understood the^ech- amsm and the functions oi dr^amine A dream ,s a 'jrm of thinking. iTn^ of us, thu^g ,s that form of mental activity m which thought is used as a tool to solve problems-«uch problems as making in- come meet expenses, planning a business deal or a course of action, evaluating another's motives, or arranging a vacation. "This form of thinking, which we may caU con- centration," Doctor X points out, "is de- the child IS trained to solve a problem in arithmetic instead of musmg on a wished- Sl ?. T ^^•o'"*'^ ^' swimming or playing baseball." But musing on a wished-to pl^ure IS also a form of thinking. We caU vt daydreaming. "Most of us," says Doctor A, have a contemptuous disrespect for daydreaming or reverie. It is, however, the most natural form of thinking. Itcome^ nearest to expressing our real selves. Its mc«t striking quality is the high degree of interest tiiat it has for us, and this deSee of interest indicates the strength of the instinctive desires by which such thinking *i!!li:!' THE SECRET SPRINGS is always energized. Daydreaming is con. cemed with the realization in fancy of our dearest ideals and most instinctive wishes, which reality has frustrated. Daydreaming, however, is censored by our waking in- telligence, which keeps fancy within the limits of possibility. In the dream of sleep, intelligence ceases to censor fancy, and our wishes have their way. We may daydream of what we wovild do if we had a possible raise of salary. In the dream of sleep the raise of salary arrives — possible or impossible — ^and the dream proceeds to live up to it." The simplest dream, then, is the fulfill- ment of an instinctive wish that has been frustrated by reality. But dreaming has another function. Our instinctive wishes are not only frustrated by reality. They are also blocked, in our waldng hours, by our codes of conduct, our consciences, our sense of what it is right or wrong to desire. Any interference with an instinctive impulse dams up energy, and any interference with instinctive thinking produces an anxiety which we feel as worry. "The common formula for the relief from worry," says Doctor X, "is to 'forget it.' But I find that worry is always due to a fear of failure to reach an instinctive goal, and the instinctive impulse continues in IN DREAMS spite of the forgetting. The unsatisfied instmct remains as an irritating form of energy somewhere in the mental life. The dream serves to drain this off. A recurring dream will cease as soon as the repressed emotion is allowed to enter the conscious mind freely. And I find that any incident having free entry into the waking thoughts rarely appears in dreams." It would seem, furt;her, that the power which repressed the instinctive thought while we were awake still operates while we are asleep and compels the outlawed thought to disguise itself. "The jilted suitor who forces himself to forget his inamorata," says Doctor X, "never sees her face in his dreams, but he suffers in his dreams pre- cisely the emotions that he would feel if he allowed the recoUection of her to enter his waking thoughts. The release of these repressed emotions has to be obtained in his dreams by adroit and hidden means Hence the more powerful his repression is the more difficult it will be to understand his dream." The dream mind, of course, can think only m pictures. If you feel yourself threatened by some menace, the menace will appear in your dream as a masked man at the door, as a huge horse in the 30j 1' ' THE SECRET SPRINGS bMnyard. or as some other object that is associated m your subconscious mind with ^Sl^n^T"- I* '« perhaps the sewt of the popular appeal of the moving £f^ °i '^^ subconscious mind And since the dream mind is the instinctive ^jif^f ^*^mg signals that we call ^bols '-It ,s natural that the dream pictures should so often prove to be symbols that are as old as art. The orthodox Freudian has done an enor- mous work of research in identi^ni these syimbols. He has. as it were. SS the words of your dream dictionaA., oS ^ one. and traced them back to their roots and onginal meanings. But he has too often made the mistake of studying S^ words apart f,x»n their context, and S£s made an erudite mystery out of sentences Doctor Xs method seems more sensible. tiLT'^\^^ ™°« ^th the emo- ^ contents of the dream than with the itself. He finds thut the emotion is always evident arid undisguised, because itTthe pu^ of the dream to release that emot on from repression. "The real part of the 304 IN DREAMS dream," he says, "is the emotion. In in- terpreting a dream, the initial question to ask yourself is what were the emotions felt m the dream. The details of the dream may at first be disregarded. Thi-: is difficult for the dreamer himself to do when he is attempting self-analysis. He will discover that he is always interested in the detaUs of the dream and gives little heed to the emotions." In our Puritan civilization, the commonest of all repressed emotions are the sex emo- tions. Repressions become involved with repressions in the subconscious mind, and the orthodox Fretidian, being on the look- out for sex symbols, finds them in many a dream whose main theme is by no means sexual. For instance, all the four dreams which I have given above contain sex symbols that imply some suppression of sex emotions, but to interpret those dreams wholly in terms of sex would be to miss their point. The Freudian interpretation of dreams is often dangerotisly wrong for that reason. "A dream is always egoistic," says Doctor X. "It is always concerned with the dreamer as its central figure." But it has a confusing trick of splitting up the person- ality of the dreamer into his known qualities. THE SECRET SPRINGS which are shown as separate actors in the dream. If you have a violent temper, like your friend B, B himself is likely to *W>^'" »n youi- dream as your "angry self. A feminine dreamer who reproaches herself with having strong mascuUne charac- tenstics will figure in her own dreams as a boy. Animals will often in dreams play the part of that self of the dreamer which he considers brutal or animal-like. For example, a dream enacts the struggle be- tween the dreamer and a tiger-cat. Associa- tion shows that the tiger symbolizes the dreamer's wild self, and the dream is a representation of a struggle that is actv-'Jy going on between the dreamer's ideal self and certain unbridled desires. One of Doctor X's patients, a young man dreamed frequently of a neglected dog whose pathetic condition moved him to excessive pity. He woke from these dreams in a state of depression that lasted throughout the day. He had a rather Spartan ideal of conduct and he was impatient of these maxis in himself. He took life stoically and he was suffering no unhappiness of which he would complain. By association. Doctor X discovered that when this boy's mother died she left a httle dog that was inconsolable. It would ao6 IN DREAMS sit outside the door of her empty room for hours, watching for her, or waiting on the stairs as if it expected to hear her step. The son went to endless trouble to make this grieving pet comfortable. He had been known to leave a week-end party and hurry home to make sure that the servants were not neglecting it. He found it dead, one morning, at the door of his mother's enipty bedroom, and this incident moved him extremely. Further association recalled a picture of himself as a very small boy sitting on the stairs outside his mother's room, with his shoes on the step beside him, waiting for her forgiveness for some childish misbe- havior, before he could go out to play. It became apparent that after his mother's death he had drained off his own grief and self-pity by his devoted care of her pet. The dog now figured in his dreams as his n^lected self. He was evidently repressing an excessive self-pity. He confessed, re- luctantly, that he was in love with a young woman who often wotmded him by her neglect. Examination showed that her neglect was largely imaginary — a fiction of his own tmconscious desire to seek occasion for self-pity. "The analysis of his dream," says Doctor X, "led to an adjustment that paved the way to a happy marriage." J07 m ' THE SECRET SPRINGS practices it:l/SSvS?^,^l5°^ ^ of ill health anH »^u ^ ^® ^'^^ springB be cured As th^^ '''"** ^^ "ay possSTto watch t^."^. P":"^"' 't 's his dreams or ScaT^«'if ^^J"^*^"'" ^ the doctor ca? cSk S \T^^^' ^^'^ by means Tth^JL!^ Prescriptions mental disoSer^e '^'- •'!? *=^ °' dicatP tKT^ ' . oreams infaUiblv in- mcate the approach of insanitv T,t ♦. f* >s not a matter tr» ^^-. uJrY' °"* "^at book as tS Ani Sfj!*"'"^ ^ ^«* * 4liXVSS^^^^^,-^er. New had the ^e mS^n?^ ">telhgence, both agined t}^f^^^^ ^^"^^ They im- were handed ouVjSy fo^S^TS* ^.^"^ was one they had Se^^ f o t^ 5^ ""^T^ were faced by the cS.S J"^^- ^^ y me^certamty of complete IN DREAMS failuTB. It was too late to study the subject, and It was impossible to fake answers to the questions. They were baffled. And th^ were enraged at their own neglect and lack of foresight. These feelings were over- whebningly intense. On hearing this dream, Doctor X said to the surgeon, "Obviously, this means that you are faced by some problem that completely baffles you— a problem for which aU your study and experience offers no solution— and you are trying not to think about it." What was that problem? The surgeon indicated it with reluctance. He had grown up in an atmosphere of the strictest Puritanism. In later years he had lost aU belief in the tenets of the Puritan faith. He had accepted as his religion a sort of intellectual Uberalism in which reason was supreme. But he was baffled by the problem of eternity. "Nothing that I know," he said, "seems to give me the assurance of everlasting life that I crave." His sister was in the same case, confronted by the same mystery. Subconsciously, they both felt themselves unready for the great examination. Their suppressed anxiety showed in their common dream. "Our fear of death," says Doctor X, 109 THE SECRET SPRINGS "» reaUy a fear of eternity Th^ «.h«»« Jdou, mind ha. no fear of dea'S S^" It admits no cessation of its exiat^« Jnd c^mot picture any. It shows^^^SJ^r a s r»r "T* if the evil' whicri; «>«aU It after death. In this r«snect it arts exactly like the instinctive nS^'the mort pnnutive people. And so mamr of us have lost faith in the r^UrionTihid, lietyl^L." "■"'"''"* «"- °f °- One of his patients is a lady, happy in a second marriage and devoted to^h^ Sn been for some tmie under treattrent foi heart disease and had suffer^uch JS hSSr^°'-*^1,^^- DoctrXfo^^S SSt^ fT^'^^y ^^^' ''"t he learned v^ ^J^u^^^ ^°^^ ^* "ight with a very rapid heartbeat and a suflfocatin., sense of muninent heart failm.. He^^ her to recall some dream from wWcrS^ called the foUowing nightmare: ,„ \ was crossing a Uttle stream in the country. Norman and I were^w it at eadi end by a rusted wire. Norman jumped up and down on the log a™t fio IN DREAMS began to give way. I said: 'Norman, I have known this log since childhood, and it ^foJ^i^x?'*^ ^^"^flh- You must be careful. Norman continued to rock the 1^** .,.'* ^"^"^ ^^y- As we were about to faU into the dark water. I awoke screaming with terror." This dream was so typical that Doctor ^/^'^•^^^^V' Vou are afraid of death and the hereafter." "Nonsense!" she replied. "I'm not a bit afraid of death. It has no terrors wlwtever for me. I'm a good churchwoman." _ But when he asked her to teU him what incidents of her life were recalled by as- sociation with the separate obje ts in her dream a most enlightening series of mem- ones was discovered. When he asked her what happening was suggested by the word "water" she relied: I have always had a fear of water. The first fnght I recaU was due to falUng out of a boat when I was about four years old My father rescued me, but I thought I was gomg to drown." And when he asked her what came to her with the thought of "a country stream" she answered: "The stream near my home I crossed It when I ran for father the day brother died. It was my firet experienci aiz THE SECRET SPRINGS withdeatJi. I was only five. Brother was „ ", ^'^ ^*^° °'''^°^ ^"d at four he ^fr-n ^'^.^'^ him out in a white shroud One night, some weeks later, at dusk. I saw him aU in white. I ran screkm- mg to mother She said it was aU nonsense, but I knew I had seen him. I was afraid to go out at night after that. The next mto the house until after the funeral." The doctor said: "The log which pro- tects you m your dream from the fear of drowning is probably something that has served from childhood to protect you from the fear of eternity. The only protection K'lw '^ °f. eternity V religion wnat about your religion? " r JrL^'^u ''"'^^^* "P ^ Catholic," she rephed "but I have left that church I mamed at seventeen and my husband drew me away to his faith." Her son Norman was about to be operated on, and she was afraid that he SSi. "' ^^ ''°' ^^""s *° ^"y Anotho- common kind of dream, charac- tenstic of our day and age, is typified by the following specimen: The dreamer stands beside a pool. Terraced steps descend to the basin below. 313 IN EREAMS ^1%^°^^ ^ ^'^'' °f ^"^^'^ plants and the whole setting is Eastern and ratotic A moving object of some sort is dimly visible m the depths of the water. The dreamer pid^ up something to throw at It. His fnends beg him not to do it He P«sists. He throws at the creature in the pool and at once he has the feehng that he ^•ni°' r°°^- ^* °^ *« '^^ter there T^^ a tigress that leaps up the marble steps toward him. He flees in terror. The W^f^^°^ "l^'*"- "^ t"™s to defend hmiself, and the tigress has become an infmmt«i woman. He awakens, still fright- ened and trembling. ^ "The symbolism here is quite plain" says Doctor X, "and the subsequent 'as- sociation merely verified it. We are deal- mg with fear of woman. Such a fear seems n(hculous as a factor in repression, but I findit a factor of great and unrecognized im^nce m our civilization. Most men scoff at It— as this patient did— because a man must scoff at it in onJer to keep up his fiction that he is the lord of creation Like other fears which go back deep into our racial past, the fear of wom^is so strongly repressed that its only expression IS in subconscious thinking and motivation. Mans fear of woman is embodied in 213 THE SECRET SPRINGS myth legend, fairy tale, and folldore In- position of defenselessness. The stories of Adam and Eve, Samson and DelUah and Listen to a group of men in a club: 'Yes M was all right till he feU for So-and-so That was his ruin.' Man is afraid of an inn«-weaknessbywhichhemaybeens]aved." His fear shows itself in many odd, un- conscious ways. The film "vampires"^f TLe^^t"^ ""T"" ^^^" P'"^^*^ unpopular. The most popular woman stars are those who are most ingenue and sexless. This i^ the popular opposition to woman suffrage js obviously inspired by fear of woman The so-called "war between the sexes" is an expression of the same emotion. Repress- «ng and refusing to acknowledge thd?^fS Src^mSfr^'^^'^^^^-^-i-tice Doctor X sums up aU these problems in I T?; Emotions must be regarded ^ healthful currents of natural io^S. shotdd be used to furnish energy for in ^dual expression and coUecti^ service TnZ ^"'°*'?"^ ^"-e so regarded life assumes a new meamng and the individual develops ai4 ^ IN DREAMS new powers. As things are now, to be emotional is to be considered weak, senti- mental, or sinful. Pauline self-repression is the ideal on the one hand, and hypocrisy and license the result on the other. Both roads lead to a selfishness that defeats the collective ideal of nature and impairs the success of our civilization, which is itself the expression of the collective ideal." CHAPTER IX IN RELIGION f S^?f ^2,^^"'"'*=^°'^ J^ealth cannot h,-; f^-.^ -^"^ '" ^ P«««°t v^ho has lost IHS fa: h m immortality," says Doctor X concept only; there is no such thing as S k h ^^r'"'^'^- ^« subconSoS mmd IS basicaUy as reUgious as the mind ot the most primitive people. It has S we ^ almc^t caU a rehgious in^i„r Vru camiot achieve a happy and successful l2e stmct to happy and successful fulfilhnent." to^'! f ^^"«"«y astounding stateSLnt to come from a modem man of science What does it mean? "aence. We have aheady pointed out. in an earlier pSV^nTi;'" ''^ "^^ outgrorS penod of cradled ommpotence and berins HpT^ .~v?*^°* protection and suppS He looks to his parent for aid, as to a Ser power, and the parent consequently SL 316 Iji IN RELIGION a sort of supernatural be!?'"^ *^°et of the divine right out wf L,T^ f "^^'"'^ '^^^°*^ stretches Wsi.Tl'° ^^""^^ ^ ^ *=Md holds out cj. i-ope is a form of "nana " FatSi-anHri, ' ^"^ ^^ "^^^ Little cSSS;'^»^^^^''^.°"^°^ "Father of His wL •^atwTK'^,!'°'^^ ^^°' ^^' ^'^^ .'^^ acceptance of it Sow J^ ""^^ ^ mstinctive fear that ^owed as nervousness and palpitation, and th^ in turn were accepted as evident^ of physical and mental ruin. frJn"^ *^" " v"""^' ^"* h^ was held back from marnage by his conviction that he was fJ^^^r^ ^^- ^^ ^«*y took the fwrn of overwork and an overzealous at- JTill^irS'^^"'"- Both incased nis 111 health. He was rejected for life insurance. When the war broke o^t he was rejected by the training camp. Th«J 130 IN RELIGION that he would soon be rejected by^ paSi'ttS°'''-\'^y^ ^°^«d that the patient had imsuiterpreted biological facts The evil self was not an evil self b,,t .' I^tural instinct branded wi'h^h. "No real hann had been done his heTh. M^e ^et'^felf^ ^°^' ""' "^ -^-- ^o" f«, f- ■ ^^ ^°^ ^ the cause of his fe^ was dissipated, the palpitation and S hypertension disappeared. He saw that he S'^J"''''^- H« - longer heS! tated to become engaged. He left the t^ht rope on which he h.d been balanciS wU' ^"^^ *^* °° "^^^ grounT^s^: ^ «iergy was sufficient to do his 7oric ^th As his health improved, he obtahS a^s^on to the aviation servick He^^^S tS^S^^?'°°^?"^*=^- Fear of a demon dt^g?'™"""^ ^' ^"^*^ ^ ^°^^ all the I might fiU a volume with reports of ^ch cases as these from Doctor X's^rSc^ m«ejbly common cause of iU health and unhappmess. Let me add only one mor^ '31 THE SECRET SPRINGS a case that hallucinates the evil self as i personal devil, after the manner of ou; Puritan ancestors. A boy of eight years old was brought b] his psirents to Doctor X, suffering supposed!} with some sort of obscure nervous trouble His father was a minister, and the boy hac been strictly trained in the way that h« should go. Unfortunately, he did not gc in it. For one thing, he frequently rar away from home, and no punishment or his return seemed to deter him. After gain- ing his confidence, Doctor X learned that he did not run away voluntarily; the devil made him. He had seen the devil several times, at night. He was sure it was not a dream. He described Satan's appearance vividly— though conventionally. The devil was stronger than he, and he had to obey if the devil told him to do a thing. He ran away, the last time, because when he got up in the morning he put his shoes on the wrong feet, and then he knew that the devil had him. It was a sign. Useless to resist! He ran off to a neighboring military camp and hung around there all day. Of course he was whipped when he returned home. He felt that there was no justice in punish- ing him for a thing he could not help. Still— "It's a real relief," says Doctor X, "to 333 IN RELIGION put the blame on the devil and absolve yourself of guilt. When T ,,+t,Z^ *i. iX inlroot at citr u ^ i-uther threw his sS'ifi^hS o^^erL^iTon'^s: snZ^-ni ^^^ P^""^" '« attended by a special guardian who is malignant in SLr- acter ever ready to seize upon th^ W WiT \ , ?P^'^'- T^« medieval Churd^ .^°'^g^with this unnecessary evil self'nf ^tS^sob^^'^ °' unnec^SaTsS^'ari CTeated-disobedience, anger, jealousy self gmess. seH-conceit. pridl, yLity?Tmpi tm^ce. and so forth. These sins a^^eX pres^ons of the child's instinct orsS- SrSe'^^E' " '^^ ™^P™« °f ^« wnoie life Expressions of the counter vailmg instinct of self-abasement are pS TienTZT.'"'^'^- "-selfishness! "S Tr^tu "'^^^e^S' reverence for his eldera c^mes wftr""""/'!"^ °' inferiorit/S S ^A.^ ^^°''^'^ mainspring. The <*Jd, with his sex instinct als^ mfrked^ « 333 THE SECRET SPRINGS evil, is thus as nearly as possible predestined to unhappuiess. iU healuTand S^Thv the powerful influences of Td ^^^^ tiammg and faulty education ^' Aman needs to accept himself," says «>ctor .^ , "as a work of God or the IW with aU the respect and admiration thathe tokes any other great work of naTuiT He ism ^e class with a great waterfall, a de^ vem of ore a reservoir of natural e^ a It. And they should be observed not mSdv l^="'°Siann^ttfbll^^ Pn>duct. His weS^eL^:^ not' h°S m Sl"^' """'u^^ '^""^ the resS^ lU luck; they are both the predictable n„f come of discoverable laws. P^"'^'''^ °"t- The subconscious mind is the true thit,\r Z^iJ' T "^*^°"* fei'LS^^St" tmt^ T^" '^^t^^^'- it perceives as the IZ '^ *.^"=*' ^'^y- because it acts h^ Sii T*^ ^''^''' ^* ^ compSely fonned by nature to register the LST^ 334 IN RELIGION toe ^ « interpreted by the automatic mages of these receptors. The instincte n«Jster m emotions which are rigidly pro- duced by this subconscious mind in ac^ T^^- ^"^^°^- For instance, the subconscious registers aversion to a certain pe«on-a parent perhaps-^d the reaction of hate results without any regani to your mteUectual l^ef that it is'^widced to ff .w iiff 1 ^^^^ °* ^^ yo« make your mteUect by repressing the emotion the more necessity you will have of handling a hate-a grouch'— of unknown origin. The 1?!.,^"?°"? ^°" ^ °^ *•»« t™e origin of this hate the more liable you are to v«it it on innocent persons. An instinctive emo- Uon, once formed, must have an outlet and will get It. In losing the ability to regulate conduct m accord with emotion, you have lost control of life. Conduct can always be r^ulated in accord with convention, if you know what force you are trying to regulate. But when you attempt to regu- late conduct by regulating thought you only change the direction of conduct with- °'^1,1™P'^^S the conduct in the least." This IS the failure of much of our modem rehgion; it attempts to r^ulate conduct by regulating instinctive thought. Such thought "ii THE SECRET SPRINGS « compulsive and should be free T* from consaous thought repressed Uvli ^ ! T^"''*''" *y« Doctor X, "who "vea on a farm near Buffalo. It waT » good farm and he liked to live ij j! n^^sae'ritinriis^ old-fashioned woll =vl^ V "« ™d an estate deH^Tf '*.,'^^ '^ whole lived. therJtitltS^^*'^^"'- ««» £w--t?'-re&.^ wara the subconscious facts of i,-f« v- whaTtEtls ?an1"? n""*"- ^' '^ -. Shall i^aSS^ait^'SS IN RELIGION I^l^/'*^ ""1 ^PP^^ that come of mderstanciing the powers of our natures and drawing on the reservoirs of those powers. The greatest of our powers is that un- coosaous Ideal and aspiration which takes the form of the Hero Wish. It begins perhaps, as pure selfishness and the desir^ Z^A^°T"' ^°'^'^ation, but it is soon molded to more unselfishness by the desire for the parent s affection and approval, the approval of the parental God, Z app^S tLl^Tu- At adolescence, it tdces on forms of self-sacnfice and fulfills the ethics ol Chnst-perhaps because at this period the parent m^^ge has to be sacrificed to the new sex love and this sacrifice colors the v^ole unconscious ideal. The self-sacrifice ««itmues m love for a mate, for children, ^ttie family. And always the herd in^ stmct. that seeks the approval of our feUows, operates to make the ideal of value to soaety. Such a Hero Wish is the true Zliff «fy '.P«yche"-the stHMigest thing in hfe. And it is the calamity of our r^ ligion and our moraUty that we have marked ^o,^^.. ^t ^"^^^ ^P^^s of the fj? ^wi. ^"}^ animal impulses," and fought them blindly, and condemned them as havmg theu- source in "original sin." '37 THE SECRET SPRINGS ^ Pjyche is the ego. the pmSnalS if SLISL ^^r "^d» in its 8d^ S^^ And It has aspects in whichit of S^^-n^^* me conclude with t^«S« sa^w^w* Patient^an a«K~S' „, w^nege^g hi. p^, ,,,?^- ^«^ he ^t in campaigns of city planning and S^? ft "^^^ M P ^* ^ "«ty beautiS^ tuat had been built on a higher olat«„ ^mther in the clouds. S u^SS «>nipan,on was with him. After adSSJ IN RELIGION iJij. dty « moment he aaid to this companion, tr; ,.^°^ *" °*h" replied, "You're not lookmg at it from the proper angle." He reported this dream to the doctor without any suspicion of what it meant It meant, says the doctor, " that he had a doubt of my counsel-that he considered my advice, about using only his surplus tmie and money in furthering his city t^"iS' ^'^'^J^^ was perhaps not oJi tHe level Accordmgly, I explained myself m more detail, and he finaUy accepted the W**.*!!^- ,^' * "*"«■ °f V he had not been lookmg at my proposal from the proper angle-as the companion in his dream knew. But what faculty of the sub- consaous mmd was it that knew and gave me the warning that he thought my advice was not on the level, and that he so thought because he was not looking at the matter irom the proper angle?" In another case the doctor had been try- ing for months to uncover a very deep i^ression of guflt that was ruining a patie^ ne^th. The dreams which the patient re- ported showed that he was struggling to coifess what the concealed offense had ^ I he doctor kept on, encouiage'l. The patient, at last, "came through"; and the »39 THE SECRET SPRINGS m^Jr^ ««fidently to build up a cure His confidence was checked by the accS' although he was unaware of k~h.TZ- sented the doctorTSg b rjl ZT P^^g up a glittering ob^ otZ'^S r-tSj^il^/e'it^riso^r w£tfeir'*'""°*"^*'^«<=^asou]. sdoS'L?"^* '^^^'^ ^'^ °f the uncon- IN RELIGION S\^°'"- ^^d.body, as the child does when he wishes himself dead in order to gneve his parents, and sees himse^ SSeS by their sorrow. Now, the goal of oS otoce ajid immortality is no less thTShe wish to be a g«l Think what thisTeaS - You have a nund nine-tenths of whi^is vmccmscious, but none the less dynaStith the fixed goal of being godlike™d you agW theV""^'T•°" ^ ^ --^-^t "Therein lies the secret of the oower of S'.*^- ''^■^^'- ^^'^ whether yoSS^e I^.n ^.'* u ^ ^°^ ^^° became a iS«^r amaa who became a God, his creed is the union of a conscious belief with an uncon- scious conviction. And no matter wW the unconscious mind obtained Tit con vxtion this practical resS enSs.- X" cure and restoration of a defective Mrson! Jty IS not possible, in my e^S^e |f the patient has lost his beli? b^e .mmortality of the soul. As so<» S Se process of mental analysis showrmfthat ^patient ^ a fix«i atheism. I S^pX case. I have learned from many f^ures Sd tteV'" °° ^.°^^^'^ on whicTS buiM, that I am working in quicksand. I do not mean that I have any scien- 241 THE SECRET SPRINGS tific proof that man has a soul or ♦!,-♦ -l >s immortal n«f t t v^ ** "'•* >* uuuiunai. But I have atnmdant nm«* that he acts unconsciously asuViJ^ "mortal soul, and that 1^5? ^^ lum ultimately to health ^^ ^*^ vmless he actsL conS^aS^SS this unconscious convictioT^T ^^ power m him which we camiot seeSt ™* ^ we can see the electricity bS^X but we can use that nower }« wT r • ' sidan, th^, rC fa^L'Sf ^. ^ P^^' mortal soulVand L^aTtwTJ^ ^ ^■ in practice is the S^w «w?^ "" ^ it is true in fact" P«»f to me that POSTSCRIPT to be given his tamem Si, • ^'*^^ his ^yr^TM^^^^ *°. P««^e y™«y- AS the senes continued, his IN RELIGION M«^ty^ disclosed, for one reason or an- 2e^^ ^^ a number of persons that Mn^^ ""^ ^"^""^ a secret of Pdi- Sj ™r °^ »* and confess that he is Dr Bdwaid H. Reede of Washington. D C. TBB BMD