* 
 
 ma
 
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 THOUGHTS OF A 
 
 PSYCHIATRIST ON THE WAR 
 
 AND AFTER
 
 THOUGHTS OF A 
 PSYCHIATRIST ON THE 
 WAR AND AFTER 
 
 BY 
 
 WILLIAM A. WHITE, M. D. 
 
 Supt. of St. Elizabeth's Hospital, Washington, D. C; Professor 
 
 of Nervous and Mental Diseases, Georgetown University; 
 
 Professor of Nervous and Mental Diseases, 
 
 George Washington University. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 PAUL B. HOEBER 
 
 1919 
 
 fi 
 
 ft
 
 Copyright, 1919, 
 By PAUL B. HOEBER 
 
 All Rights Reserved 
 
 Printed in the United States oj America
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 I. The Social Perspective . 1 
 
 / II. The Psychology of Con- 
 flict; the Individual 
 versus the group . . 6 
 
 III. The Integration of So- 
 
 cial Groups Culture 42 
 
 IV. Psychological Effects of 
 
 War 60 
 
 V. Psychological Causes of 
 
 War 75 
 
 VI. Some Tendencies Quick- 
 ened by War ... 88 
 
 VII. Individualism versus So- 
 cialism Love and Hate 104 
 
 VIII. The Socially Handi- 
 capped 130
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 PSYCHIATRY as a medical special- 
 ty, devoted to the treatment of men- 
 tal diseases, has for generations been con- 
 sidered under the limiting concept insan- 
 ity. Recent years have seen its evolution 
 from this limitation to include minor de- 
 grees of illness recognized as imbalances 
 of the personality make-up and included 
 in various disorders of adaptation class- 
 ified as the neuroses and psycho-neuroses. 
 A more intimate study of these conditions 
 has resulted in the recognition that all such 
 disorders were defects in the capacity for 
 adjustment, and these defects have come 
 to be more and more recognized as defects 
 [vii]
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 in adjustment to the social environment. 
 Human psychology has found itself sorely 
 limited when it confined its study solely 
 to man as an individual, and has come into 
 its true place and possibilities only when 
 it has learned to consider man as a social 
 animal. Society, while it is composed of 
 individuals, reflects its degree of develop- 
 ment in each individual psyche, so that 
 man and society occupy relations of mu- 
 tual interdependence, each profoundly af- 
 fecting the other. In his efforts to aid 
 the sick individual the psychiatrist thus 
 comes to consider of necessity the social 
 values that are reflected in the personality 
 before him. 
 
 In these serious days of social upheaval 
 
 the psychiatrist has been confronted by an 
 
 exceptional material of mental disorders 
 
 of adjustment, not only in the soldier 
 
 [viii]
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 population faced with the possibility of 
 being called upon to make the ultimate re- 
 nunciation, but in the civilian population 
 as well, torn by all the anxieties of having 
 loved ones at the front and by the necessi- 
 ties of the radical rearrangement of their 
 lives in innumerable ways at home. The 
 psychiatrist has, as a result, been confront- 
 ed with huge problems of large numbers of 
 individuals to treat and the further task of 
 attempting to fit all sorts of unusual types 
 of personality into some sort of social use- 
 fulness. Out of these experiences it is nat- 
 ural that the meaning of the present con- 
 flict and the readjustments necessary to 
 bring it to a successful issue and to carry 
 over success into the period of readjust- 
 ment should have been a matter for serious 
 thought. All about us new concepts are be- 
 ing born as old concepts are being given 
 [ix]
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 new meanings by the events of the day, and 
 the symbols which are used to indicate 
 them are being reenergized. Patriotism 
 has come to have a broader and a deeper 
 meaning which is making for an extension 
 of ideals and aims beyond geographical 
 boundaries, and thus is motivating new 
 forms of conduct. The psychological prin- 
 ciples underlying these changes are, as. 
 they appear to the author, briefly set down 
 in these "thoughts." 
 
 William A. White. 
 
 W
 
 Thoughts of a Psychiatrist on the 
 War and After 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE SOCIAL PERSPECTIVE 
 
 IN these days, when the militant up- 
 heaval of the world seems to be knock- 
 ing the props from under all of the estab- 
 lished conditions which had come to be 
 looked upon, thought about, felt, and 
 wished as stable, it would seem to be worth 
 while to try even though it be in a small 
 and perhaps, in some directions, an unin- 
 formed way to trace in the events that 
 are rapidly occurring the operation of 
 laws and principles which in the end will 
 [1]
 
 THOUGHTS OF A PSYCHIATRIST 
 
 make for evolution, for progress, for de- 
 velopment, and for better conditions of 
 living, in order that we may the more 
 intelligently go forward with the times 
 in a feeling of sympathetic cooperation 
 with that undying hope in those aspira- 
 tional values that we have always felt 
 somehow controlled the order of things. 
 The immense complexity of the condi- 
 tions involved makes, it seems to me, a 
 survey from every point of view of some 
 possible value in the hope that some com- 
 mon ground may be reached by approach- 
 ing the problems from all angles. The 
 uniformity of natural laws has made me 
 feel that perhaps as a psychiatrist, who is 
 constantly faced with the problem of regu- 
 lating individual lives, the point of view 
 developed in this work might be of service 
 in outlining principles which would be ap- 
 [2]
 
 ON THE WAR AND AFTER 
 
 plicable to the larger problems of society. 
 Because of the tremendous extent of the 
 present conflict, and only for that reason, 
 it seems to me, are we inclined to view with 
 alarm the ultimate resolution of the pres- 
 ent state of affairs. Such upheavals have 
 always been with us in the smaller prob- 
 lems of the parts of the social organism. 
 Individuals have always had the tragedy 
 of frustrated lives to face with the neces- 
 sity for radical readjustment or complete 
 failure as the alternatives; social groups 
 and even nations have had the same prob- 
 lems to meet, but never before has the 
 whole world been so put to it. It is the 
 scale on which the present situation is 
 drawn that destroys our perspective rather 
 than the nature of the problems that are 
 involved and which, therefore, because we 
 cannot escape a personal reckoning with 
 [3]
 
 THOUGHTS OF A PSYCHIATRIST 
 
 the results, suffuses the whole situation 
 with that feeling of anxiety which grips in 
 the face of overwhelming forces that push 
 us irresistibly into the very midst of the 
 great unknown. 
 
 But mankind has not changed overnight, 
 and it must be that we can observe, if we 
 but look with seeing eyes, the same in- 
 stincts, the same tendencies that we have 
 all along been familiar with as we have 
 watched man struggle with his problems 
 elsewhere, writ so large perhaps as, by that 
 very token, to be out of the field of our 
 clear vision, so big, so in evidence that we 
 fail, for that very reason, to see them. It 
 is reminiscent of that game of our child- 
 hood when we hid an object by putting it 
 in the most conspicuous place in the room. 
 
 All this is not to say that we are not on 
 the eve of momentous and far-reaching 
 [4]
 
 ON THE WAR AND AFTER 
 
 changes, but the beginnings of these very 
 changes have for years been taking root all 
 about us and reach in their origins to those 
 instinctive springs of human conduct that 
 we are already familiar with in other rela- 
 tions. It is rather, I apprehend, here as 
 elsewhere, the desire not to see rather than 
 the fact that there is nothing to see that 
 makes us blind. 
 
 [8]
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CONFLICT: THE INDI- 
 VIDUAL VERSUS THE GROUP 
 
 THERE are everywhere small groups 
 of pacifists who decry war, who do 
 not believe in fighting, but who do believe 
 in the possibility of a peaceful settlement 
 of all difficulties. But so far as we know, 
 fighting has been one of man's universal 
 ways of reacting ever since he has been 
 upon the earth, and this is true not only 
 of man, but of all animate creation, so long 
 as our concept of fighting is not war alone. 
 Conflict is universal in some form or other, 
 and not only is it not possible to avoid it, 
 but it lies at the very basis of the manifes- 
 [6]
 
 THOUGHTS OF A PSYCHIATRIST 
 
 tations of life itself. What do I mean by- 
 such a statement? 
 
 In so far as life consists in the adapta- 
 tion of the living being to its environment 
 it involves a continuous overcoming of re- 
 sistances, from the painstaking carrying 
 of each grain of dirt by the ant as it tun- 
 nels out its nest to the molding of clay and 
 iron into the brick and steel framework of 
 a great building; and the evolution of life 
 to higher forms implies an ever-increasing 
 capacity for better and better, that is, finer 
 adjustments. Life is always at war with 
 the elements, and is destroyed by too much 
 heat on the one hand or too little on the 
 other, by too much water or too little, in 
 short by the very elements themselves 
 upon which life depends if the adjustment 
 falls outside certain limits. Life in its 
 myriad forms has to adjust itself to all the 
 
 m
 
 THOUGHTS OF A PSYCHIATRIST 
 
 varying conditions of environment, and 
 somehow struggles through all the stur- 
 dier for the hardships suffered. The "sur- 
 vival of the fit" means that only those who 
 are able to weather the storm are able to 
 live. Nature acts like a careful breeder, 
 throwing out all stock that is inferior, 
 that is incapable of surviving the hard- 
 ships inflicted by a given set of selective 
 agents heat, cold, dryness, moisture, high 
 altitude, special enemies, etc. And when 
 it comes to man we know that a young 
 man's future is by no means assured by re- 
 moving the obstacles from his path, rather 
 the contrary. Character is developed by 
 overcoming obstacles, not by going around 
 them. 
 
 But it is not this struggle with the en- 
 vironment that I wish to emphasize, im- 
 portant as it may be. It is the struggle 
 [8]
 
 ON THE WAR AND AFTER 
 
 within which is of supreme significance 
 the struggle of man with himself, the old, 
 old struggle which has been emphasized 
 over and over again by religion and by the 
 poet and the artist. It is the struggle of 
 man, ever on the upward path from sav- 
 agery to civilization and then to an ever 
 better civilization. This is the struggle 
 which, it seems to me, must be understood 
 if we are to understand war. 1 
 
 1 In order that the nature of this inner conflict 
 may be understood it will be helpful to refer to 
 certain historical facts in the growth of the science 
 of psychology. 
 
 Psychology, until about a generation ago, was 
 largely tinged with metaphysical speculation. It 
 was based upon the results of introspective exam- 
 ination rather than upon the results of objective 
 observation which had come to be the method of 
 the other natural sciences. It was among the last 
 of the sciences to adopt the method of experi- 
 mental verification and to take its place in the lab- 
 oratory along with the rest of them. When it did, 
 however, finally evolve to the laboratory stage it 
 
 [9]
 
 THOUGHTS OF A PSYCHIATRIST 
 
 The human animal, like all animals, has 
 certain fundamental instincts which it 
 
 occupied itself with experimental refinements. 
 Vision was examined to define its range, not only 
 in terms of distance, but of lateral extent; the 
 visibility of the cardinal colors was examined in 
 the same way and then the range of color vision 
 itself, that is, the number of color tones that were 
 distinguishable; the degrees of brightness were 
 arranged in a scale in a similar way; and the ra- 
 pidity, measured in hundredths of a second, with 
 which the observer could respond to the several 
 visual stimuli was recorded. The other sense 
 organs were examined in like manner and laws 
 were evolved based upon the nature of series of 
 least observable differences in stimuli. Psychol- 
 ogy, in this state of its development, was in reality 
 only a refined physiology of the sense organs, 
 defining their capacities for reaction in more defi- 
 nite terms of time and space and of the physical 
 characteristics of the stimulus. 
 
 For this psychology, which was a refined physi- 
 ology, the sensation was the irreducible unit out 
 of which all that was mental was built up. If I, 
 for example, see a book lying on the table before 
 me, this experience can be analyzed into its com- 
 ponent sensory units. The color of the book, 
 lighter where the light strikes it, darker in shadow, 
 
 [10]
 
 ON THE WAR AND AFTER 
 
 spends its life in endeavoring to satisfy. 
 Just what these are, how they are to be 
 
 is analyzable into its component sensory qualities; 
 the perception of its distance is dependent upon 
 sensations (unconscious) of the stress and strain 
 of the eye muscles as they move the two eyes into 
 a position which brings the book into clear vision, 
 into focus; the perception of the object as a book 
 is again dependent, not upon immediate sensations, 
 but upon a combination, an association of these 
 with remembered groups of similar sensations, 
 which groups, occurring over and over again in the 
 course of our lives, have, with the aid of memory 
 associations, gradually built up the concept book: 
 the perception of the roughness or smoothness, as 
 the case may be, of the cover, is also but sensa- 
 tional material, but here again, largely inferred 
 from past touch experiences rather than dependent 
 upon present sensations. The sensation is the unit 
 out of which consciousness is built up by a pro- 
 gressive series of combinations into percepts, con- 
 cepts, abstract ideas. 
 
 This is a workable method of studying certain 
 mental processes so long as we are dealing with 
 subjects that can be interrogated, but for studying 
 the mind in its manifestations in animals other 
 than man it is impracticable. Here a method of 
 objective observation becomes necessary, and ac- 
 
 [11]
 
 THOUGHTS OF A PSYCHIATRIST 
 
 classified, is a matter of considerable dif- 
 ference of opinion, but they include the 
 
 cordingly the animal psychologists had to build up 
 a science from which introspection, which had so 
 long remained the keynote to all things psycho- 
 logical, was completely eliminated. The necessity 
 for the elimination of introspection resulted in re- 
 finements of method which shortly came to be ap- 
 plied to the study of human psychology. The 
 refined physiology of the sense organs gave way 
 to a study of the observable conduct of the indi- 
 vidual by the new school of "behaviorists." 
 
 The behaviorists no longer asked such questions 
 as, What is the least increase in the strength of a 
 stimulus that is perceivable? but, What is the indi- 
 vidual doing? This was a much more pertinent 
 question for psychology to answer, for it is a ques- 
 tion which must be answered in terms of the whole 
 individual and therefore in terms that are truly 
 psychological, while the earlier form of question, 
 because it could only be answered in terms of the 
 function of a particular part of the individual (an 
 organ, such as the eye), is for that very reason, 
 answerable in terms which are clearly physiolog- 
 ical. For example, a man leaves his house, walks 
 down town, stops at a real estate broker's, signs 
 certain papers, gives a check and receives a deed 
 in return. The answer to What is the man doing? 
 
 [12]
 
 ON THE WAR AND AFTER 
 
 hunger instinct, the sex instinct, the in- 
 stinct to fight enemies, the instinct to seek 
 
 would be that He is buying a house. If all of the 
 observable data are present the question can be 
 answered, some behaviorists say, without reference 
 at all to the data of introspection. However, there 
 can be no question but that psychology had made 
 a great advance when it came to deal with conduct, 
 in fact it, for the first time, was primarily inter- 
 ested in material that was truly psychological. 
 
 It remained for the psychoanalyst to take the 
 next step which, while it continued to deal with 
 conduct, did not ignore the introspective data. He 
 saw the importance of recognizing that the mind 
 was an expression of the individual as a whole and 
 that in the field of the psyche were fought out 
 those battles of the instincts each of which tried 
 to capture the individual and bend all of his ener- 
 gies to its purpose. Conduct thus becomes the 
 final result in action of the various instinctive ten- ^ 
 dencies as they struggle for ascendency and suc- 
 ceed, fail, or more frequently reach some com- 
 promise. 
 
 In this struggle of the instinctive tendencies, 
 this constant "battle of motives," each tendency 
 fights, so to speak, to bring to pass the realization 
 of its own particular trend, it seeks certain ends, 
 it tries to compass them, it desires to bring them 
 
 [ 13 ] 
 
 "/
 
 THOUGHTS OF A PSYCHIATRIST 
 
 safety, the parental instinct and the in- 
 stinct of gregariousness. The parental in- 
 stinct might, perhaps, be classified as a de- 
 
 about, in short it wishes for certain results. The 
 "battle of motives" for the control of the indi- 
 vidual thus becomes a battle of wishes and that 
 motive or that wish succeeds which is the stronger. 
 The individual does what, in the last analysis, he 
 wanted to do. In terms of conduct the man bought 
 a house, but if we also take into account the data 
 of introspection we find in addition that he wanted 
 to buy a house in the country which he could look 
 forward to as a home when he retired from busi- 
 ness. The wish has replaced the sensation as the 
 ultimate psychological unit. 
 
 The replacement of the sensation by the wish 
 as the unit of mental life has not only been of 
 momentous importance from a purely scientific 
 standpoint, but it has had the effect of humanizing 
 the science of mind. Psychology can no longer be 
 content to deal with abstract scientific concepts, 
 but it must deal with actual, living human material, 
 with men as they are, with their aspirations and 
 disappointments, their hopes, their fears, their 
 loves and hates. Psychology has become human- 
 ized. (See Holt, Edward B.: "The Freudian 
 Wish and Its Place in Ethics." New York, 1915.) 
 [14]
 
 ON THE WAR AND AFTER 
 
 velopment of the sex instinct on the one 
 hand and the instinct of self-preservation 
 on the other, in which the result of satisfy- 
 ing the sex hunger the child is desired 
 both as a means of security in old age and 
 also as a means of projecting one's self into 
 the future, the instinct for immortality. 
 All of the instincts may be classified into 
 two fundamental ones, namely, the self- 
 preservation instinct (type hunger), and 
 the race-preservation instinct (type sexu- 
 ality ) . Or from another point of view, the 
 attitude of the individual towards the ob- 
 ject of instinct, into acquisitive tendencies, 
 the effort to acquire the object (type love) 
 and avertive tendencies, the effort to de- 
 stroy or avoid the object (type hate, sub- 
 types anger and fear). 
 
 These instincts in their primitive mani- 
 festations condition the ways of reacting 
 [15]
 
 THOUGHTS OF A PSYCHIATRIST 
 
 of the lower animals which make up be- 
 havior. They cause all of those more or 
 less complicated series of activities that 
 produce the phenomena of mating and all 
 those subsidiary activities including the 
 care of the young, and those other activi- 
 ties that have to do with attacking and 
 overcoming other animals either for food 
 or as enemies, and the means of escape, 
 flight, etc., from enemies of overwhelming 
 strength. 
 
 The progress of mankind from savagery 
 to civilization does not consist in the de- 
 struction of these instincts, but in the sup- 
 pression repression of the primitive 
 ways of satisfying them and the utilization 
 of the energies so repressed to find satis- 
 faction in ways that are progressively 
 more and more removed from the primi- 
 tive types. This is the process of sublima- 
 [16]
 
 ON THE WAR AND AFTER 
 
 tion. What are the forces that bring about 
 this change? 
 
 The force which deflects the primitive 
 instincts of love and hate from immediate 
 satisfaction by at once acquiring the loved 
 object or destroying the hated enemy, is 
 that group of necessities which arise as a 
 consequence of man's living together in 
 groups, the so-called instinct of gregari- 
 ousness, or the herd instinct. So long as 
 one animal could stand alone it not only 
 might satisfy its instincts to mate and to 
 kill, but it was to its distinct advantage to 
 do so, for only by so doing could it insure 
 its own existence and the continued exis- 
 tence of the species. When, however, as 
 with man, it became evident that for pur- 
 poses of protection from superior enemies 
 it was desirable to herd in bands, there 
 arose the factor of the welfare of the group 
 [17]
 
 THOUGHTS OF A PSYCHIATRIST 
 
 as a distinct end in itself, often, if not al- 
 ways, of superior importance to the wel- 
 fare of the individual members. To kill 
 a member of the group, for example, tend- 
 ed to weaken the strength of that group 
 and, by that same token, to make it less ef- 
 fective as a protective device for the in- 
 dividual members, the one who did the kill- 
 ing as well as the others. Therefore there 
 arose a situation in which the interests of 
 the individual and the interests of the herd 
 were not the same, they were opposed and 
 in consequence the group being more pow- 
 erful than any individual member of it, the 
 interests of the individual had to give way 
 to those of the group. Killing, therefore, 
 had to be done only with the consent of 
 the herd when it felt that its interests as a 
 group demanded it. Individual feuds 
 tended to give place to the more orderly 
 [18]
 
 ON THE WAR AND AFTER 
 
 procedure of trial and condemnation. The 
 instinct to kill was therefore sidetracked 
 into a more devious path for its satisfac- 
 tion, a path beset with all sorts of ob- 
 stacles from the standpoint of the indi- 
 vidual's cravings, but one which served 
 the interests of the herd far better. The 
 instinct, from being satisfied by actual kill- 
 ing, came to seek satisfaction in the sub- 
 limated forms of condemnation, trial, etc., 
 and if perhaps the criminal were acquitted 
 it failed by so much in attaining its goal. 
 It is the same with the acquiring of food. 
 The interests of the herd society de- 
 mand that food shall be acquired as a re- 
 sult of work ; work is paid for with money, 
 and the money in turn may be exchanged 
 for food. The interesting point here is 
 that the work shall be of a character to 
 [19]
 
 THOUGHTS OF A PSYCHIATRIST 
 
 benefit the herd, it must be socially accept- 
 able, a socially useful form of work. 
 
 Here, then, in this opposition of the in- 
 terests of the individual in his efforts to 
 satisfy his fundamental instincts and the 
 interests of the herd, is a basic problem 
 upon the successful solution of which de- 
 pends the success of man's efforts to reach 
 ever higher goals in his struggle upwards. 
 This is the fundamental conflict which 
 conditions man's activities as a member of 
 society. What is the method of its solu- 
 tion? 
 
 In the process of evolution organisms 
 have developed of ever-increasing com- 
 plexity in correspondence with an equally 
 increasing nicety of adaptation to the com- 
 plexities of their environment. This has 
 meant, among other things, that no single 
 function or organ of the entire organism 
 [20]
 
 ON THE WAR AND AFTER 
 
 has evolved to the exclusion of the other 
 functions or organs; each has developed, 
 but in subservience to the needs of the 
 whole. Organisms have not developed 
 that were all digestive apparatus or all 
 brain, or all liver or kidney or other organ. 
 Each organ, while developing, has had its 
 functional growth fitted into the needs of 
 the whole. The digestive apparatus needs 
 a brain to direct the finding and appropri- 
 ating of proper food, the brain needs a di- 
 gestive apparatus to furnish it nourish- 
 ment, and both need adequate excretory- 
 organs to prevent the waste products 
 which accumulate from clogging their deli- 
 cately ad j usted mechanisms. This process 
 of developing the parts in the service of 
 the whole is the process of integration. 
 
 The process of integration applies 
 equally to the instincts which, after all, 
 [21]
 
 THOUGHTS OF A PSYCHIATRIST 
 
 may be reduced to efforts towards the sat- 
 isfaction of organic needs ; the hunger in- 
 stinct is primarily the effort of the stom- 
 ach to satisfy its cravings; the instinct to 
 fight is the effort of the so-called kinetic 
 system, of which the muscles are obviously 
 the most important part, to gain satisfac- 
 tion in safety by the destruction of a dan- 
 gerous enemy, and so forth. Now the well- 
 rounded, integrated individual is one in 
 whom all of the instincts operate, but in 
 the service of the needs of the whole indi- 
 vidual. Thus we eat when we need food, 
 we fight when fighting is necessary to elim- 
 inate the danger from an enemy threaten- 
 ing destruction, and so with the rest. 
 
 When, for example, any one instinct is 
 enabled, for any reason, to gain the mas- 
 tery of the whole organism so that it domi- 
 nates its activities, that individual is sick. 
 [22]
 
 ON THE WAR AND AFTER 
 
 The dominance of the hunger instinct 
 makes the glutton, of the sexual instinct 
 the Don Juan, of the acquisitive instinct 
 the miser or the thief, and he is sick because 
 the instinct domination from which he suf- 
 fers has resulted in activities which are not 
 useful to the herd. He becomes asocial or 
 antisocial, according as to whether his ac- 
 tivities are negatively or positively inju- 
 rious to the herd. 
 
 It is the same with the social organism. 
 It is made up of many different groups 
 each engaged in its own peculiar activities, 
 doctors, lawyers, mechanics, soldiers, engi- 
 neers, clergymen, laborers, farmers, ar- 
 tists, etc. ISTow if any one of these groups 
 should come to dominate the activities of 
 the whole social organism, it too would be 
 sick. Society needs all of their activities, 
 but it needs them, as the body needs its or- 
 [23]
 
 THOUGHTS OF A PSYCHIATRIST 
 
 gans, subordinated to the needs of the 
 whole. Farmers are needed to produce the 
 food, railroad operatives are needed to 
 transport it, doctors to care for the sick 
 and prevent disease, lawyers to assist the 
 administration of justice, clergymen to 
 minister to the spiritual needs. It is only 
 when all work together for the common 
 good of the whole that the society is ade- 
 quately integrated and so healthy. If, for 
 example, the shoemakers should dominate, 
 then every one would be at the job of mak- 
 ing shoes without thought of the necessity 
 for getting food or the administration of 
 those necessary laws upon which all co- 
 operation must depend. Such a society 
 would be manifestly sick, but, too, it would 
 of necessity soon cease to exist. 
 
 An exceedingly important aspect of 
 this process of integration, and one which 
 [24]
 
 ON THE WAR AND AFTER 
 
 it is necessary to bear in mind, is that in- 
 tegration is in itself a process of develop- 
 ment, and failure of integration is, there- 
 fore, an indication of lack of development 
 or of relative immaturity. This is, of 
 course, only another way of saying that 
 the domination of any particular instinct 
 is detrimental to the social usefulness of 
 the individual and therefore tends to unfit 
 that individual for the fullest life as a 
 member of the social group. 
 
 The failure of integration, the domina- 
 tion of particular instinctive trends, inas- 
 much as it renders the individual asocial 
 or antisocial, thus brings to bear the opera- 
 tion of the herd critique directed against 
 such individuals and such activities as are 
 so conditioned. The operation of this herd 
 critique seems therefore to force the indi- 
 vidual along lines of activity which shall 
 [25]
 
 THOUGHTS OF A PSYCHIATRIST 
 
 be socially useful. It represents the force 
 of the herd making for its own ends and 
 compelling the individual to abandon re- 
 press the immediate gratification of his 
 own instincts and the utilization of the en- 
 ergies thus turned aside in sublimated 
 forms of activity which shall be useful to 
 the herd. To put it another way: The 
 force which, in its negative aspect makes 
 for repression the herd critique pro- 
 duces in its positive aspect the desire for 
 the reward of social esteem. 
 
 This double negative and positive aspect 
 of the herd critique is characteristic of all 
 progressive tendencies. They are first re- 
 pressed and only later become the objects 
 of desire in a sublimated form. We repress 
 those instinctive cravings which lie near to 
 the surface, which we are only a little dis- 
 tance from really wanting to yield to. 
 [26]
 
 ON THE WAR AND AFTER 
 
 After having developed a firm sublima- 
 tion, however, we can allow our instincts 
 fuller play. Love may thus literally re- 
 place hate. For example, the savage kills 
 with relatively little repugnance, but as so- 
 ciety develops the instinct of overcoming 
 our enemy in the primitive and final way 
 has to be repressed for the common good. 
 Later, however, the work of killing be- 
 comes a highly exalted profession in the 
 soldier when it is elevated to an end high- 
 er than the satisfaction of an individual 
 hatred, namely the end of the saving of the 
 group nation from destruction by an- 
 other group. Similarly, but more subtly, 
 the instinct to build as expressed by the 
 child in playing in mud and dirt has later 
 to be repressed, because it becomes obnox- 
 ious to the grown-ups, but in the course of 
 development the child who expressed this
 
 THOUGHTS OF A PSYCHIATRIST 
 
 early interest in building may find satis- 
 faction in progressively more acceptable 
 ways and means and become an engineer 
 or architect. His instinct has remained 
 the same but it is applied in more socially 
 acceptable and useful ways, it has become 
 sublimated. It is, therefore, not the in- 
 stinct that changes, but its application. 
 Development might thus be expressed by 
 a description of the objects of interest as 
 they successively replace one another and 
 represent progressively more socially val- 
 uable activities. 
 
 The same method of reasoning can be 
 applied to the social group, and we recog- 
 nize development in this larger aspect as 
 based upon the nature of the objects which 
 social groups seek to attain. The essential- 
 ly imperialistic group that is bent upon 
 conquering weaker groups and using them 
 [28]
 
 ON THE WAR AND AFTER 
 
 as sources of revenue, slaves either in the 
 primitive physical sense of that term or 
 the more developed economic sense, is ad- 
 mittedly lower in the scale of social de- 
 velopment than the society that exercises 
 a protecting function over weaker groups 
 and helps them develop along the lines of 
 their natural tendencies. 
 
 A most important aspect for an under- 
 standing of mechanisms of repression and 
 sublimation is the way in which we project 
 ourselves into these various situations. 
 This, for reasons that will appear, is not, 
 however, obvious. For example the per- 
 petrator of a grave social offense is hated. 
 The obvious reason for our hate is that the 
 offense brings misery and suffering to 
 others. Looked into a little more care- 
 fully, the hate can be seen to have self -pro- 
 tective aspects. The criminal's act is cal- 
 [89]
 
 THOUGHTS OF A PSYCHIATRIST 
 
 culated to destroy the existing order of 
 things, and unless it is put down vigorous- 
 ly, the criminal apprehended and pun- 
 ished, that is, confined against further sim- 
 ilar activities, we ourselves may suffer 
 from his activities. And punishment is 
 rationalized largely by the belief that it 
 will be deterrent to others who may be 
 similarly tempted, despite the fact that ac- 
 tual experience by no means shows that 
 prevention of crime is proportionate to 
 severity of punishment. Further than this 
 the temptations to which the criminal 
 yielded are vaguely unconsciously ap- 
 prehended as of a character to tempt us, 
 and so in hating the criminal we are really 
 bringing to bear the so-called antipathic 
 emotions, our avertive tendencies, upon 
 those tendencies which we unconsciously 
 recognize within ourselves and so forcing, 
 [30]
 
 ON THE WAR AND AFTER 
 
 so to speak, ourselves along the upward 
 path of development away from socially 
 destructive forms of conduct which would 
 tend to disintegrate that very social or- 
 ganization upon which we so much de- 
 pend for opportunities to realize the best 
 that is in us. This projection of ourselves 
 into such a situation is therefore but a 
 symbolization of our own inner conflict 
 between our ideals and our instinctive ten- 
 dencies as they are seen in operation in the 
 conflict between, in this instance, the crim- 
 inal and society. 2 
 
 To elaborate this thesis a little further 
 from the point of view of the relatively un- 
 developed, infantile, character of unsocial 
 activities : The child of two or three years 
 
 2 I have elaborated this point of view in the 
 chapter on the criminal in my book "The Princi- 
 ples of Mental Hygiene," published by The Mac- 
 millan Company, New York, 1917. 
 
 [31]
 
 THOUGHTS OF A PSYCHIATRIST 
 
 that appropriates something that does not 
 belong to it is not treated either as a crim- 
 inal or with hate. It is corrected, often in 
 a more or less facetious way, to the end of 
 bringing it to understand the differences 
 between mine and thine. Our attitude, 
 while one of repression, is also one of edu- 
 cation and emotionally is kindly and indul- 
 gent. Toward the criminal, on the other 
 hand, it is one of repression, punishment, 
 and hate. Why the difference? It is be- 
 cause in the child's activities we recognize 
 something that belongs to the child period, 
 while in the criminal we see a form of ac- 
 tivity which should have been left behind 
 in the process of growth and development, 
 should have become a part of the individ- 
 ual's past. We see the anachronism of an 
 infantile type of conduct in an adult set- 
 [32]
 
 ON THE WAR AND AFTER 
 
 ting and as such stamp it as wrong, as un- 
 natural, because it does not conform to the 
 normal, that is, the usual. Similarly with 
 other forms of abnormal conduct. We are 
 coming to see in all of them ways of ex- 
 pressing the instincts which are relatively 
 undeveloped, infantile. Among the so- 
 called "insane" the examples are without 
 number. In the mentally ill patient who 
 has to be cared for as a child we see an in- 
 dividual who has returned to certain infan- 
 tile ways of reacting by a process known 
 as regression. We may be disgusted with 
 such a reaction, but we are indulgent and 
 helpful on the theory that the patient is ill. 
 Such conduct does not call for hate, be- 
 cause it is only calculated to injure the 
 sick individual; it is only passively, so to 
 speak, antisocial and not actively and ag- 
 [33]
 
 THOUGHTS OF A PSYCHIATRIST 
 
 gressively antisocial as in the case of the 
 so-called criminal. 3 
 
 To put it somewhat differently, the herd 
 critique is directed against antisocial 
 types of conduct, and antisocial types of 
 conduct are types which are relatively in- 
 fantile types and anachronisms because oc- 
 curring in an adult setting. The object of 
 the critique is to press the activities of the 
 individual into channels that lead to con- 
 duct useful to the herd and so is, after all, 
 a form of projected critique against those 
 tendencies in ourselves which would lead 
 us into forms of conduct essentially selfish. 
 This sort of repressive mechanism is nec- 
 essary because we all have the same instinc- 
 tive cravings and only differ as we learn to 
 
 3 For a further discussion of mental illness as 
 asocial and criminal conduct as antisocial see my 
 "Principles of Mental Hygiene." 
 
 [34]
 
 ON THE WAR AND AFTER 
 
 get satisfaction from those objects and 
 forms of activity which are socially useful, 
 that is, when we get away from the neces- 
 sity for the immediate satisfaction of those 
 cravings in primitive and concrete ways; 
 until, in other words, we have learned to 
 sublimate. 
 
 One more important principle can be 
 illustrated by a further analogy between 
 society and the living organism. What the 
 organism does to neutralize its cravings 
 and to relate itself to its environment is a 
 function either of some organ or of the 
 organism as a whole. When the function 
 becomes efficient and is maintained for a 
 considerable period of time there results a 
 structure which is laid down to carry on 
 the function. The function of the circula- 
 tion of nutrient fluids in the lower mono- 
 cellular organisms is carried on in a seem- 
 [35]
 
 THOUGHTS OF A PSYCHIATRIST 
 
 ingly haphazard sort of way, the fluid 
 flowing here and there throughout the cell 
 in no previously laid-out channels. In the 
 higher organisms there has been developed 
 a circulatory system which fulfills this 
 function in a very efficient way. This lay- 
 ing down of structure to fulfill function I 
 have called the structuralization of func- 
 tion, and it is one of the prominent char- 
 acteristics in the evolution of organisms. 
 Thus the circulatory system may be said 
 to be the solution, in structure, of the prob- 
 lem of getting the nutrient fluids to the dif- 
 ferent parts of the organism. From the 
 same point of view the lungs are the organ- 
 ism's solution of the problem of utilizing 
 oxygen, the gastro-intestinal tract the so- 
 lution of the problem of utilizing proteids, 
 starches, and fats, the liver the solution of 
 the problem of using sugar, etc. 
 [36]
 
 ON THE WAR AND AFTER 
 
 Similarly in society. Railroads repre- 
 sent in part the circulatory system, which 
 is society's solution of the problem of 
 transportation, which is so crudely carried 
 out in primitive communities; the groups 
 of tailors and cloth makers represent so- 
 ciety's solution of the problem of supply- 
 ing clothes, etc. 4 
 
 These various solutions serve their sev- 
 eral purposes so long as no great demands 
 are made upon them different from those 
 which called them into being. For exam- 
 ple, the kidneys work very efficiently until 
 called upon to excrete substances for which 
 their efficiency was never developed, as, for 
 
 4 For a further discussion of the principles un- 
 derlying integration and the place of the psyche in 
 development see my article "The Significance for 
 Psychotherapy of Child's Developmental Gradi- 
 ents and the Dynamic Differentiation of the Head 
 Region," Psychoanalyt. Rev., V, January, 1918. 
 
 [37]
 
 THOUGHTS OF A PSYCHIATRIST 
 
 example, alcohol or corrosive sublimate- 
 Analogously certain social groups break 
 in an attempt to adjust to conditions 
 which they have never been developed to 
 meet. The hand weavers suffered great 
 hardship as a result of the introduction of 
 machinery to do the work which they had 
 learned to do by hand. The readjustment 
 threw large numbers out of work and into 
 great want and privation. A new type of 
 worker had to be developed to meet the 
 new conditions. In the development and 
 evolution of organisms the history of or- 
 gans is quite similar ; for example, the sub- 
 stitution of lungs for gills when animals 
 left their watery habitat and became ter- 
 restrial. 
 
 The significant facts are that new struc- 
 tures arise to meet new conditions and that 
 the old structures have to be discarded, de- 
 [38]
 
 ON THE WAR AND AFTER 
 
 stroyed. The greater the demand for read- 
 justment the more extensive the destruc- 
 tion. It is as if development went on in 
 a certain direction as far as it could go 
 and then, because the limit had been 
 reached in that particular direction, what 
 had already been developed must be de- 
 stroyed and a new start made towards a 
 different objective. In this process not in- 
 frequently the race or the species comes to 
 an end because it is incapable of sustaining 
 itself during the period of readjustment. 
 Development has as one of its aspects de- 
 struction disintegration of all that stands 
 in the way. In the moral sphere we call it 
 renunciation. The alcoholic must re- 
 nounce alcohol if he wishes to become so- 
 cially rehabilitated. 
 
 I have devoted so much space to the set- 
 ting forth of certain principles of human 
 [39]
 
 THOUGHTS OF A PSYCHIATRIST 
 
 behavior and drawing analogies between 
 the living organism and society because it 
 seems to be essential to have this larger 
 viewpoint in order to approach the prob- 
 lem of war in a judicial, unprejudiced 
 frame of mind. The state of mind pro- 
 duced by war is so laden with the emotion 
 of hate that our vision is likely to be re- 
 stricted within the limits of that emotion 
 and so fail us in acquiring that broader 
 outlook which I believe so essential in deal- 
 ing with all things human. Then again we 
 are still inclined to be immature in our 
 judgments of others, to see them only in 
 terms of individuals like ourselves, and so 
 fail utterly in evaluating characters which 
 have grown up and developed in response 
 to conditions different from those with 
 which we are familiar. For this reason 
 alone whole races, with us for example, 
 [40]
 
 ON THE WAR AND AFTER 
 
 the Orientals remain everlasting mys- 
 teries. We must learn to see individuals, 
 races, species as but reactions of adapta- 
 tion, more or less successfully integrated, 
 to meet the problems which have con- 
 fronted in them the unfolding of the great 
 creative energy in the face of the obstacles 
 which have blocked their pathways. 
 
 [41]
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 THE INTEGRATION OF SOCIAL GROUPS 
 
 CULTURE 
 
 WE are now in a position to consider 
 some of the special psychological 
 problems presented by war. We shall 
 find, among other things, that a very im- 
 portant distinction must be made as to 
 whether we view the phenomena from the 
 standpoint of the individual or from that 
 of the group to which he belongs. 
 
 I have stressed the analogies between 
 the living organism and society. The evo- 
 lution of the living organism has been 
 along the lines of the development of or- 
 gans which are structures laid down to 
 [42]
 
 THOUGHTS OF A PSYCHIATRIST 
 
 answer demands made upon the capacity 
 for functional adaptation. In the same 
 way society, by the process of the speciali- 
 zation of activities by separate groups, has 
 responded to the demands made upon it in 
 a quite similar way. And further, just as 
 in the evolution of life organisms have be- 
 come more complex in the sense that their 
 several parts were more and more special- 
 ized for particular functions that is, they 
 developed more organs so societies have 
 become more and more complex and have 
 come to include a greater and greater num- 
 ber of specialized groups. In both the liv- 
 ing organism and in society the progres- 
 sively increasing number of organs are 
 able to function effectively because they 
 have been integrated, that is, their several 
 functions have been so related that, while 
 they each serve their own special ends, 
 [43]
 
 THOUGHTS OF A PSYCHIATRIST 
 
 their activities are subordinated to the 
 good of the whole group, thus bringing 
 about a hierarchy of organs which repre- 
 sent structuralized functions. 
 
 Among interrelated social groups each 
 group has an end which is purely individ- 
 ual and another end which is directed to 
 the good of the larger group of which it is 
 a component part, and so on if this larger 
 group is a member of a still larger one. 
 From the standpoint of each group, there- 
 fore, there are two fundamental interests, 
 namely the interests of the individual 
 member of the group (be it the individual 
 as such or a social group within a nation, 
 or a nation within a league of nations ) and 
 the interests of the group as a whole. As 
 already explained, these two lines of in- 
 terest frequently intersect. It obviously 
 depends, therefore, to a great extent from 
 [441
 
 ON THE WAR AND AFTER 
 
 which point of view, the individual or the 
 group, a given action is observed whether 
 ib will be considered a desirable form of 
 activity or otherwise. This fact is of prime 
 importance in considering social activities 
 as they are expressed either in the conduct 
 of the individual or the acts of a nation. 
 For example killing is a crime when com- 
 mitted by a person in his individual capac- 
 ity, unless, of course, in self-defense, but 
 when committed by a soldier it is highly 
 commended for the reason that in his ca- 
 pacity as soldier he is acting for the group, 
 serving its interests. This distinction be- 
 tween individual and group has, too, to be 
 further modified on the basis of the point 
 in development which each has attained in 
 the general scheme of evolution. The con- 
 flict between the interests of the individual 
 and those of the group, the eternal desire 
 [45]
 
 THOUGHTS OF A PSYCHIATRIST 
 
 of the individual to find the fulfillment of 
 his inner needs, the recognition that they 
 can only be adequately fulfilled through 
 and not in opposition to the group, the 
 needs of the group and the necessity for 
 forcing the individual to bring them to 
 pass, are the conflicting, crossing, and sup- 
 plementary lines of force that make for 
 the final results. Just as multicellularity 
 was a necessary precondition to speciali- 
 zation of cells so that each could best real- 
 ize its own possibilities and develop func- 
 tion to the highest point of refinement, so 
 society is a necessary precondition to the 
 highest development of the individual and 
 the fullest utilization of his powers. 
 
 I have also stressed the process of inte- 
 gration in the description of the develop- 
 ment of organs and groups and their rela- 
 tions to one another with the corresponds 
 [46]
 
 ON THE WAR AND AFTER 
 
 ing subordination of their respective indi- 
 vidual ends to the good of the larger whole. 
 It therefore follows in general that the 
 older organs and groups have solved their 
 respective problems up to a certain point 
 better than the younger ones, and are thus 
 more capable of functioning efficiently, of 
 course on the assumption that they have 
 not come to the end of their capacity for 
 readjustment and are therefore fixed. The 
 heart has solved the problem of propelling 
 the blood and done it so effectively that its 
 structure is capable of very little modifica- 
 tion and also susceptible of relatively little 
 variation in functional capacity or modi- 
 fication at the behest of other organs, for 
 example the lungs. So with old social 
 structures such as the medieval trade 
 guilds, which were relatively stable. Sta- 
 bility is a desirable end, inasmuch as it 
 [47]
 
 THOUGHTS OF A PSYCHIATRIST 
 
 makes for efficiency within the limits of its 
 capacity for adaptation, but undesirable in 
 the face of necessities for radical readjust- 
 ments just because of those limits. 
 
 Conduct, therefore, has to be judged 
 from the point of view of the relative ma- 
 turity or immaturity of the reacting indi- 
 vidual, organ, or group. For the savage 
 there is one standard of conduct, a primi- 
 tive one; for the civilized individual an- 
 other and much higher standard is the 
 measure. So for certain nations that are as 
 yet in a relatively immature stage of civili- 
 zation the standard is much different from 
 that of more developed, higher evolved 
 nations. And again nations may have 
 evolved to a point which demands higher 
 types of individual and social conduct, but 
 it does not follow that when such nations 
 attempt to unite their efforts into a larger 
 [48]
 
 ON THE WAR AND AFTER 
 
 group, a league of nations, the standard 
 will remain as high. Quite the contrary. 
 The higher integration is in a youthful, in- 
 fantile, primitive, undeveloped, immature 
 state and so, even though the constituent 
 nations are highly evolved their group ac- 
 tions may take on the characteristics which 
 we have learned to associate with a rela- 
 tively immature state of development. Ly- 
 ing and deceit of all kinds are pretty well 
 tabooed as types of individual reaction, 
 but they are still in evidence in the diplo- 
 matic inter-relations between nations. In- 
 ternational relations are higher forms of 
 reality situations which have not yet de- 
 veloped mature and efficient types of reac- 
 tion which have been laid down in an en- 
 during structure of custom and law. The 
 several political units look upon each other 
 as natural enemies and seek to overcome 
 [49]
 
 THOUGHTS OF A PSYCHIATRIST 
 
 each other by relatively immature, primi- 
 tive, unsublimated methods. Nations in 
 their international relations have then to 
 repeat the story of evolution much as does 
 each child from the moment of impregna- 
 tion to adulthood. The individual mem- 
 bers of the race, however, are already high- 
 ly evolved as individuals, and in this new 
 process of integration are called upon to 
 make adjustments relatively of an im- 
 mature kind. This necessity for going 
 backward on the path of adjustment has 
 been variously called reversion, regression, 
 and dedifferentiation. It involves a cast- 
 ing aside of already acquired adjustments 
 and reverting to an historically earlier 
 type which had been found useful in the 
 past experiences of the individual or the 
 race. In evaluating human conduct dur- 
 ing a period of war, therefore, a distinc- 
 [50]
 
 ON THE WAR AND AFTER 
 
 tion has to be made between conduct which 
 is representative of the level already at- 
 tained by the individual and the level of 
 the race in its newest efforts. 
 
 The apparently new phenomena which 
 seem to have been added during a state of 
 war are these phenomena of regression, 
 and they are apparently new because we 
 see them become manifest in persons who, 
 as individuals, had always maintained a 
 high standard of personal conduct, but in 
 the new conditions imposed by war become 
 violent partisans from whom reason seems 
 temporarily to have vanished and who, 
 contrary to everything in their past his- 
 tory, become apologists for every kind of 
 regressive tendency. 
 
 Such manifestations surprise because 
 we had come to think that they were im- 
 possible, in other words we have thought 
 [51]
 
 THOUGHTS OF A PSYCHIATRIST 
 
 that the ground gained by culture was 
 gained for all time and so we are always 
 unprepared to see such gross lapses. Our 
 belief that all that has been gained by cul- 
 ture will be held is after all nothing but a 
 wish, and it is because it is a wish, because 
 the belief has back of it the motive power 
 of a wish, that we are so unprepared to 
 find that it is not true, and this despite the 
 fact that we are surrounded by evidences 
 of its untruth all the time. That enormous 
 group of the dependent, defective, and de- 
 linquent classes testify in each individual 
 member to the actual fact of regression to 
 earlier cultural levels of reaction. 
 
 This matter of regression is one of the 
 most important psychological mechanisms 
 to understand if we are to have any real 
 comprehension of man's cultural advances 
 and set-backs. I have already indicated 
 [52]
 
 ON THE WAR AND AFTER 
 
 how each organic need tends to reach satis- 
 faction, but how a conflict arises the net 
 result of which is to press all such needs 
 into the service of the larger whole, be that 
 individual or group. This outer compul- 
 sion to serve the larger end can only be 
 successful at the expense of pressing back, 
 repressing, certain components of the 
 energy representing those organic needs 
 which are not addressed to this larger pur- 
 pose, but, on the contrary, which are ad- 
 dressed to finding immediate, concrete, 
 and selfish satisfaction. Such energies can 
 thereafter only be effectively expended, 
 in a way satisfactory to both the individual 
 and the group ends, in a sublimated form, 
 which means that immediate, concrete, 
 selfish satisfaction must be replaced by a 
 more remote, less concrete, and relatively 
 unselfish type of reaction. The criminal, 
 [53]
 
 THOUGHTS OF A PSYCHIATRIST 
 
 for example, wants something money 
 and proceeds to take it. This is a primi- 
 tive, immediate, concrete, selfish way of 
 gratifying his wish. The more highly de- 
 veloped man goes by a much more devious 
 path to the goal. He works and earns the 
 money. Perhaps he studies for years to 
 fit himself for the work. He spends weeks, 
 months, perhaps years in slowly accumu- 
 lating as much money as the thief takes in 
 an hour. And the work that he does is 
 socially useful, it is constructive. For ex- 
 ample, he may be a machinist, a builder, a 
 tradesman, or any one of a thousand things 
 which serve society. He gains the grati- 
 fication of his wishes in ways that are rela- 
 tively highly evolved, that yield less imme- 
 diate satisfaction and substitute a goal to 
 be attained at some future time, that are 
 less concrete because for the actual 
 [54]
 
 ON THE WAR AND AFTER 
 
 money, for example, a way of living is 
 largely substituted and which are less 
 selfish because the activities which are cal- 
 culated to earn the money are useful to the 
 social group of which he is a member. 
 
 From these illustrations it must be evi- 
 dent that repression is an essential feature 
 in cultural progress. What is not quite so 
 evident, however, is that the repressed ma- 
 terial is essentially of the same character 
 in all of us. We have all traveled the 
 same path of development, all started with 
 the same instinctive needs, all been sub- 
 jected to the same repressive forces. To 
 be sure all persons are not alike; they ex- 
 hibit differences of character just as they 
 exhibit differences of other sorts, for ex- 
 ample, differences of feature. But it is 
 with character as it is with the features, 
 the similarities are much more in evidence 
 [55]
 
 THOUGHTS OF A PSYCHIATRIST 
 
 than the differences. It is true that no two 
 people look exactly alike, but it is also 
 true that all have two eyes, a nose, and a 
 mouth. The variations must be rung on 
 this substantial background of similari- 
 ties. That it is so with character we can 
 easily believe when we realize that the 
 human species is five hundred thousands 
 of years old. With such a past shared in 
 common the differences must be relatively 
 very small. The repressed material goes 
 to form what is known as the unconscious, 
 that is, that region of the mind which 
 makes up its past history but of which we 
 are not in ourselves aware. 1 
 
 Inasmuch as the repressed material 
 the unconscious is the same, to all intents 
 
 1 For a discussion of the basic elements of char- 
 acter see my "Mechanisms of Character Forma- 
 tion." Published by The Macmillan Company, 
 New York, 1916. 
 
 [56]
 
 ON THE WAR AND AFTER 
 
 and purposes, in all of us, it might be well 
 to inquire briefly of what it consists, for 
 we would expect, if this is true, to find that 
 it was such material that invariably came 
 to the surface in states of regression. 
 
 The essential nature of the unconscious 
 can be summed up in the single word self- 
 ish, or self-seeking. It knows only its own 
 individual interests and would go directly 
 to its goal irrespective of anything else. 
 Other individuals' inconvenience, suffer- 
 ing, or even death are of no account to it. 
 Immediate satisfaction of desire by the 
 means most readily available is its only 
 formula, the seeking of pleasure and the 
 avoiding of pain its only object. The un- 
 conscious, therefore, contains the records 
 of our past as we have painfully climbed 
 the road to civilization. It contains those 
 tendencies to gluttony, to lust, to lie and 
 [57]
 
 THOUGHTS OF A PSYCHIATRIST 
 
 deceive, to hate, cruelty, and murder which 
 characterize the savage and the child, 2 and 
 upon the sublimation of which the prog- 
 ress of civilization depends. 
 
 But this inventory of the unconscious 
 discloses precisely those characteristics 
 which we find coming to the front in war- 
 time and which, when exhibited by persons 
 we have learned to respect, so much sur- 
 prise us. The explanation is evident. 
 That great region of our past which we 
 all hold in common has been uncovered 
 and instinctive tendencies which had been 
 repressed now again come to the surface 
 and call for satisfaction. It is the phe- 
 
 2 This may seem a rather extreme statement with 
 regard to the child, but unbiased observation dis- 
 closes the child as essentially selfish, although the 
 extreme manifestations of this selfishness are com- 
 monly held in check. In the child criminal, how- 
 ever, they come to the fore. 
 
 [58]
 
 ON THE WAR AND AFTER 
 
 nomenon of regression. The psychic en- 
 ergy, instead of flowing to outside inter- 
 ests, turns back and refloods the channels 
 along which it flowed in the process of 
 development. 
 
 [59]
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 PSYCHOLOGICAL EFFECTS OF WAR 
 
 THE phenomena of regression, the 
 failure of sublimation, take on simi- 
 lar characters in the individual and thus 
 also in the group which reflects the con- 
 joined reactions of its individual members. 
 I have already indicated in a general way 
 the nature of some of these reactions, the 
 primitive ones of hate, cruelty, and deceit. 
 In the individuals these tendencies mani- 
 fest themselves in killing, looting, burning, 
 rape, and all manner of bloodshed and vio- 
 lence, such as bring about the general feel- 
 ing of the collapse of civilization. Some of 
 these reactions show with especial clear- 
 [60]
 
 THOUGHTS OF A PSYCHIATRIST 
 
 ness the regressive tendencies. It is the 
 sex instinct, for example, which, in the 
 course of cultural development, is most 
 subjected to repression and suffers infinite 
 distortions in its efforts to find expression 
 and free itself from the fetters of innu- 
 merable taboos. Quite characteristically, 
 therefore, do we find that acts of sexual 
 violence and lawlessness characterize the 
 conduct of the unrestrained soldiery. The 
 sex instinct in its manifold manifestations 
 which under repression produces in times 
 of peace, for the most part, neuroses which 
 are crippling to the individual only, in 
 times of war leads to overt acts of concrete 
 indulgence often at the expense of the lives 
 of others. Loosed from the usual bonds of 
 convention and social restraint it tends to 
 outcrop in veritable orgies of lust. 
 
 It is quite similar with other socially re- 
 [61]
 
 THOUGHTS OF A PSYCHIATRIST 
 
 pressed tendencies. Hate manifests itself 
 in wanton destruction, an infantile type of 
 reaction, that reminds us of the angered 
 child that breaks up its toys and tears up 
 its books. Some of these hate reactions 
 show peculiarly their infantile sources, 
 such as the defilement of temporary quar- 
 ters in captured towns, even of the relig- 
 ious utensils and paraphernalia of church- 
 es. This latter is a direct manifestation 
 of the infantile reaction of antagonism to 
 authority, secular or spiritual, which marks 
 the course of the emancipation of the child 
 from parental domination. It has at once 
 the meaning of the overthrow of authority 
 and thus the enhancement and dominance 
 of the personal ego and that other primi- 
 tive characteristic of overcoming an enemy 
 by destroying a symbol of that enemy. 
 This is in accord with the primitive and 
 [62]
 
 ON THE WAR AND AFTER 
 
 childlike faith in magic based upon a be- 
 lief in the omnipotence of thought. If one 
 only thinks a thing hard enough it must 
 be true. Savages use such methods to de- 
 stroy a foe when they resort to charms and 
 incantations. We do the same in our re- 
 sort to prayer and especially to lurid post- 
 ers representing the annihilation of the 
 foe. Similar principles underlie the vio- 
 lent assertion of what we will do and insist 
 upon, of perfervid statements setting forth 
 our invincibility and the sanctity of our 
 purposes as opposed to the ultimate neces- 
 sity of surrender by the enemy and his es- 
 sentially selfish and criminal purposes. All 
 such statements seem to gain strength and 
 acceptance, not in proportion to their in- 
 nate reasonableness, but in proportion to 
 the emphasis with which they are enunciat- 
 ed. Reason seems to have been tempora- 
 [63]
 
 THOUGHTS OF A PSYCHIATRIST 
 
 rily dethroned and pure feeling, emotion, 
 takes its place as the motive force of con- 
 duct. The wish becomes truly the father 
 to the thought. The long battle for the 
 control of the emotions, of instinct, by the 
 intelligence, seems to have been lost and 
 man slips back to be again dominated by 
 his feelings. 
 
 Trotter analyzes very acutely the char- 
 acteristics of opinions as they are ex- 
 pressed in response to feelings or as the 
 result of experience. 1 When an opinion is 
 entertained with a feeling that it would be 
 absurd, obviously unnecessary, unprofit- 
 able, undesirable, bad form, or wicked to 
 inquire into it, then we know that the opin- 
 ion in question is held instinctively and not 
 
 1 Trotter, W., "Instincts of the Herd in Peace 
 and War." Published by T. Fisher Unwin, Ltd., 
 London, 191 6. 
 
 [64]
 
 ON THE WAR AND AFTER 
 
 as the result of individual experience. It 
 is held because of its obviousness, which is 
 another way of saying because it is dictat- 
 ed by the herd, that is, by the group of 
 which the individual holding it forms a 
 part. Opinions which are held as the re- 
 sult of experience do not offer such resist- 
 ance to being inquired into. There is no 
 such resistance to inquiry into the phe- 
 nomena of physics and chemistry, the 
 problems of mathematics, the proving of a 
 geometrical theorem; but about matters 
 of religion, morals, and politics it is large- 
 ly in evidence. When, therefore, in war- 
 time the individual regresses in his activi- 
 ties to lower ways of instinct expression 
 he naturally also renounces the higher in- 
 tellectual processes and drops to lower lev- 
 els of emotional reaction to account for 
 and to justify his conduct. 
 [65]
 
 THOUGHTS OF A PSYCHIATRIST 
 
 Another type of emotional reaction 
 which equally has its roots in the uncon- 
 scious is quite as common. I refer to the 
 reaction of fear. From the category of 
 qualities of the unconscious which I have 
 cited it might appear that unconscious ten- 
 dencies were all aggressive. The principle 
 of the ambivalence of emotions, that for 
 each feeling there is an exact opposite, 2 
 should have prepared us for the contrary. 
 The feeling of fear has its origin in the 
 necessity for change, for going forward 
 into the region of the unknown, into situa- 
 tions which we no longer control, for part- 
 ing with that feeling of omnipotence which 
 belongs to the period of infancy. The in- 
 fant, like the savage, has an exaggerated 
 feeling of his own power and the omnipo- 
 tence of his own thoughts. The savage 
 
 2 See "Mechanisms of Character Formation." 
 [66]
 
 ON THE WAR AND AFTER 
 
 tries to destroy the enemy by thoughts, 
 that is, wishes, expressed in various magic 
 ceremonies. The child wishes something, 
 food; he cries, and presto! the food ap- 
 pears. This fancied control over things 
 is not voluntarily given up, but only as a 
 stern necessity, the result of the uncom- 
 promising invasion into this fairy-land of 
 fancy of the cold, hard facts of reality. 
 Not only is this world of phantasy not 
 abandoned by the savage or the child, but 
 it is never given up, and deep in the uncon- 
 scious of man there always lurks that de- 
 sire for omnipotence which we once knew 
 when we still believed our thoughts 
 brought things to pass, as they do nowa- 
 days in dreams, and for that feeling of 
 safety we once knew as children when we 
 were always able to flee from danger to 
 the fostering care of a mother in whose 
 [67]
 
 THOUGHTS OF A PSYCHIATRIST 
 
 ability to protect us we reposed absolute 
 confidence. 8 
 
 The desire for things as they always 
 have been ; this attachment to the past, the 
 known, the familiar; the wish to continue 
 in situations to which we have become 
 fairly well adjusted and learned to control 
 is the basis of reactionary and conservative 
 policies of conduct, and it is when such rel- 
 atively stable and familiar situations are 
 destroyed and we are projected into situa- 
 tions with which we are no longer familiar 
 and which we cannot control, in short into 
 the unknown, that we react with fear. 
 Fear, therefore, evidences our attachment 
 to the past quite as truly as does hate. 
 
 Hate and fear are thus the two great 
 type emotions that rise from the uncon- 
 scious and take control of our conduct at 
 
 8 See "Mechanisms of Character Formation." 
 [68]
 
 ON THE WAR AND AFTER 
 
 times of regression. The characteristics 
 of conduct motivated by hate I have al- 
 ready indicated. The conduct that comes 
 from fear is primarily, of course, that 
 group of actions to which we give the 
 name of cowardice, and which is so severe- 
 ly censured by the herd in time of war be- 
 cause it is not useful to the group. There 
 is a considerable group of persons, both 
 within the military establishment and in 
 civil life, who break down under the 
 stresses of war conditions. They include 
 many types of personality make-up, and 
 the break manifests itself in all sorts of 
 ways, from mild neuroses to frankly psy- 
 chotic episodes. The consideration of this 
 group constitutes a special chapter in psy- 
 chopathology. 
 
 There is another aspect, however, of hu- 
 man conduct which war calls forth, which 
 [691
 
 THOUGHTS OF A PSYCHIATRIST 
 
 is not to be described in such grim terms. 
 War calls forth the loftiest type of aspira- 
 tions, the most exalted acts of daring hero- 
 ism and of self-sacrifice and unselfish devo- 
 tion of which man is capable. This again 
 might have been foreseen from the prin- 
 ciple of ambivalency. What is the deeper 
 meaning of this type of conduct ? 
 
 As already indicated, the aims of the 
 individual and the aims of the herd are of 
 necessity frequently in opposition. The 
 aims of the individual, as such, are essen- 
 tially selfish, while the aims of the herd 
 call for more or less reunuciation of sel- 
 fishness and devotion to the good of the 
 group, the larger whole, for conduct which 
 is in essence unselfish. Thus it comes 
 about that war picks up the problem of 
 the herd. During periods of peace and 
 prosperity individual aims come to be pro- 
 [70]
 
 ON THE WAR AND AFTER 
 
 nounced largely to the exclusion of social 
 ones. They are in fact often emphasized 
 to the point of evading social responsibili- 
 ties of all sorts and looking upon the de- 
 mands that grow out of such responsibili- 
 ties as intrusions and invasions of personal 
 rights and privileges. Such a state of af- 
 fairs to the extent that it emphasizes self- 
 ishness and leads to a state of mind that 
 courts the continuation of a stable state of 
 society with no changes, or at best only a 
 minimum of changes, is decidedly regres- 
 sive. Life cannot go on and develop bet- 
 ter conditions if it does not move forward 
 into ever new regions that present new 
 problems of adjustment. All these ten- 
 dencies war peremptorily sweeps aside. 
 The energies which were bound up in self- 
 indulgence become available for national 
 ends. Things are accomplished upon a 
 [71]
 
 THOUGHTS OF A PSYCHIATRIST 
 
 prodigious scale and all manner of changes 
 are brought to pass promptly and effec- 
 tively, which would have been well-nigh 
 impossible under the stagnant conditions 
 of peace. Men are whipped by the new 
 necessity into activity where energies had 
 been lying dormant, and the whole nation 
 takes on an aspect of activity quite differ- 
 ent from its former one of quiescence and 
 contentment. All of the multitudinous 
 new activities have, too, this premium of 
 social esteem, and so many a one whose 
 life had been valueless and who had been 
 wasting himself in useless dilettantism, is 
 able to effect a social rehabilitation for 
 himself, to reacquire a self-respect which 
 had been lost because he had not the 
 strength to overcome the numbing effect of 
 too much ease. War has not only its de- 
 structive but its constructive aspect. Jones 
 [T]
 
 ON THE WAR AND AFTER 
 
 very well puts it when he says : 4 "War 
 furnishes perhaps the most potent stimu- 
 lus to human activity in all its aspects, 
 good and bad, that has yet been discovered. 
 It is a miniature of life in general at its 
 sharpest pitch of intensity. It reveals all 
 the latent potentialities of man, and car- 
 ries humanity to the uttermost confines of 
 the attainable, to the loftiest heights as 
 well as to the lowest depths. It brings 
 man a little closer to the realities of exist- 
 ence, destroying shams and remolding 
 values. It forces him to discover what are 
 the things that really matter in the end, 
 what are the things for which he is willing 
 to risk life itself. It can make life as a 
 whole greater, richer, fuller, stronger and 
 sometimes nobler. It braces a nation, as 
 
 4 Jones, Ernest, "War and Individual Psychol- 
 ogy," Sociological Review, July, 1915. 
 
 [73]
 
 THOUGHTS OF A PSYCHIATRIST 
 
 an individual, to put forth its utmost ef- 
 forts, to the strange experience of bring- 
 ing into action the whole energy of which 
 it is capable. 
 
 "The results of this tremendous effort 
 are what might have been expected. On 
 the one side are feats of dauntless courage, 
 of fearless heroism, of noble devotion and 
 self-sacrifice, of incredible endurance, of 
 instantaneous and penetrating appre- 
 hension, and of astounding intellectual 
 achievement ; feats which teach a man that 
 he is greater than he knew. The other 
 side need not be described in these days of 
 horror. To appraise at their just value 
 these two sides of war, to sound the depths 
 as well as explain the heights, what is this 
 other than to know the human mind?" 
 
 [74]
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 PSYCHOLOGICAL CAUSES OF WAR 
 
 FROM the consideration thus far giv- 
 en to the psychological aspects of the 
 phenomenon of war, what can be said of 
 its causes, not its political and economic 
 causes, nor yet the causes that are put 
 forth by the nations engaged in the con- 
 flict, but its psychological causes? 
 
 Already I have indicated what some of 
 the causes might be. The fact that war to 
 no small extent removes cultural repres- 
 sions and allows the instincts to come to 
 expression in full force is undoubtedly a 
 considerable factor. In his unconscious 
 man really takes pleasure in throwing 
 [75]
 
 THOUGHTS OF A PSYCHIATRIST 
 
 aside restraints and permitting himself the 
 luxury of the untrammeled expression of 
 his primitive animal tendencies. The social 
 conventions, the customs, forms, and insti- 
 tutions which he has built up in the path 
 of his cultural progress represent so much 
 energy in the service of repression. Re- 
 pression represents continuous effort, 
 while a state of war permits a relaxation 
 of this effort and therefore relief. 
 
 We are familiar, in other fields, with the 
 phenomena of the unconscious, instinctive 
 tendencies breaking through the bounds 
 imposed upon them by repression. The 
 phenomena of crime and of so-called "in- 
 sanity" represent such examples, while 
 drunkenness is one instance familiar to all. 
 In vino Veritas expresses the state of the 
 drunken man when his real, that is, his 
 primitive self, frees itself from restraint 
 [76]
 
 ON THE WAR AND AFTER 
 
 and runs riot. The psychology of the 
 crowd shows this mechanism at work par- 
 ticularly in such sinister instances as lynch- 
 ings, while every crowd of college stu- 
 dents marching, yelling and howling down 
 the main street of the town after a suc- 
 cessful cane rush exhibits the joy of un- 
 bottling the emotions in ways that no in- 
 dividual would for a moment think of 
 availing himself of. 
 
 In addition to these active demonstra- 
 tions of the unconscious there are those of 
 a more passive sort. Not a few men are 
 only too glad to step aside from the burden 
 of responsibilities which they are forced to 
 carry and seek refuge in a situation in 
 which they no longer have to take the in- 
 itiative, but must only do as they are di- 
 rected by a superior authority. The gov- 
 ernment, in some of its agencies, takes over 
 [77]
 
 THOUGHTS OF A PSYCHIATRIST 
 
 certain of their obligations, such as the sup- 
 port of wife and children, and they clear 
 out, free from the whole sordid problem 
 of poverty, into a situation filled with dra- 
 matic interest. Then, too, if anything goes 
 wrong at home they are not to blame, they 
 have done their best, and what they have 
 done meets with public approval. Is it 
 any wonder that an inhabitant of the slums 
 should be glad to exchange poverty and 
 dirt, a sick wife and half starved children 
 for glorious freedom, especially when he 
 is urged by every sort of appeal to patriot- 
 ism and duty to do so? 
 
 But all these are individual factors that 
 enter into the causes of war. They repre- 
 sent some of the reasons why men like to 
 fight, for it is difficult not to believe that 
 if no one wanted to fight war would be pos- 
 sible at all. They too represent the dark- 
 [78]
 
 ON THE WAR AND AFTER 
 
 er side of the picture. War as already in- 
 dicated offers, on the positive side, the 
 greatest opportunities for the altruistic 
 tendencies; it offers the most glorious oc- 
 casion for service and returns for such acts 
 the greatest possible premium in social es- 
 teem. But it seems to me that the causes 
 of war lie much deeper, that they involve 
 primarily the problems of the herd rather 
 than the individual, and I think there are 
 good biological analogies which make this 
 highly probable. 
 
 I have already discussed the mechanism 
 of integration and indicated how the devel- 
 opment of the group as well as the organ- 
 ism was dependent upon the subordination 
 of the parts to the whole. This process of 
 integration tends to solve more and more 
 effectively the problems of adjustment, 
 particularly in some aspects, in the direc- 
 [791
 
 THOUGHTS OF A PSYCHIATRIST 
 
 tion of ever-increasing stability. It is the 
 process of the structuralization of func- 
 tion. This increase in stability, however, 
 while it has the advantage of greater cer- 
 tainty of reaction, has the disadvantage of 
 a lessened capacity for variation, and so is 
 dependent for its efficiency upon a stable 
 environment. As long as nothing unusual 
 is asked of such a mechanism it works ad- 
 mirably, but as soon as the unusual arises 
 it tends to break down completely. Life, 
 however, is not stable ; it is fluid, in a con- 
 tinuous state of flux, so while the develop- 
 ment of structure to meet certain demands 
 of adaptation is highly desirable and nec- 
 essary, it of necessity has limits, which 
 must sooner or later be reached in every 
 instance. The most typical example of 
 this is the process of growing old. The 
 child is highly adjustable and for that rea- 
 [80]
 
 ON THE WAR AND AFTER 
 
 son not to be depended upon; the adult is 
 more dependable but less adjustable; the 
 old man has become stereotyped in his re- 
 actions. Nature's solution of this impasse 
 is death. Death insures the continual re- 
 moval of the no longer adjustable, and the 
 places of those who die are filled by new 
 material capable of the new demands. But 
 it is the means that nature takes to secure 
 the renewal of material still capable of 
 adjustment that is of significance. From 
 each adult, some time during the course of 
 his life, nature provides that a small bit 
 shall be detached which, in the higher ani- 
 mals, in union with a similar detached bit 
 of another individual, will develop into a 
 child and ultimately be ready to replace 
 the adult when he becomes senile and dies. 
 Life is thus maintained by a continuous 
 stream of germ plasm and is not periodi- 
 [81]
 
 THOUGHTS OF A PSYCHIATRIST 
 
 cally interrupted in its course, as it seems 
 to be, by death. 
 
 The characteristics of this detached bit 
 of germ plasm are interesting. It does 
 not manifest any of that complicated struc- 
 ture which we meet with in the other parts 
 of the body. The several parts of the body 
 are highly differentiated each for a spe- 
 cific function. Gland cells are developed 
 to secrete, muscle cells to contract, bone 
 cells to withstand mechanical stresses, etc. 
 Manifestly development along any one of 
 these lines would not produce an individ- 
 ual possessing, in its several parts, all of 
 these qualities. Development has to go 
 back of the point of origin of these several 
 variations in order to include them all. In 
 other words, regeneration has to start with 
 relatively undifferentiated material. This 
 is excellently illustrated by many of the 
 [82]
 
 ON THE WAR AND AFTER 
 
 lower, particularly the unicellular animals, 
 in which reproduction is not yet sexual, 
 but by the simple method of division. A 
 cell comes to rest, divides into two, and 
 each half then leads an independent exis- 
 tence. Before such a division and while 
 the cell is quiescent, in the resting stage, 
 as it is called, the differentiations of struc- 
 ture which it had acquired in its lifetime 
 disappear, it becomes undifferentiated, 
 relatively simple in structure. This pro- 
 cess has been called dedifferentiation. 
 When all the differentiations which had 
 been acquired have been eliminated, then 
 division rejuvenescence takes place. 
 
 From this point of view we may see in 
 war the preliminary process of rejuvenes- 
 cence. International adjustments and 
 compromises are made until they can be 
 made no longer; a condition is brought 
 [83]
 
 THOUGHTS OF A PSYCHIATRIST 
 
 about which in Europe has been termed 
 the balance of power, until the situation 
 becomes so complicated that each new ad- 
 justment has such wide ramifications that 
 it threatens the whole structure. Finally, 
 as a result of the accumulated structure of 
 diplomatic relations and precedents a situ- 
 ation arises to which adjustment, with the 
 machinery which has been developed, is 
 impossible and the whole house of cards 
 collapses. The collapse is a process of 
 dedifferentiation during which the old 
 structures are destroyed, precedents are 
 disavowed, new situations occur with be- 
 wildering rapidity for dealing with which 
 there is no recognized machinery available. 
 Society reverts from a state in which a 
 high grade of individual initiative and de- 
 velopment was possible to a relatively 
 communistic and paternalistic state, the 
 [84]
 
 ON THE WAR AND AFTER 
 
 slate is wiped clear and a start can be made 
 anew along lines of progress mapped out 
 by the new conditions rejuvenescence is 
 possible. 
 
 War, from this point of view, is a pre- 
 condition for development along new lines 
 of necessity, and the dediff erentiation is 
 the first stage of a constructive process. 
 Old institutions have to be torn down be- 
 fore the bricks with which they were built 
 can be made available for new structures. 
 This accounts for the periodicity of war 
 which thus is the outward and evident as- 
 pect of the progress of the life force which 
 in human societies as elsewhere advances 
 in cycles. It is only by such means that an 
 impasse can be overcome. 
 
 War is an example of ambivalency on 
 the grandest scale. That is, it is at once 
 potent for the greatest good and the great- 
 [85]
 
 THOUGHTS OF A PSYCHIATRIST 
 
 est evil : in the very midst of death it calls 
 for the most intense living; in the face of 
 the greatest renunciation it offers the 
 greatest premium; for the maximum of 
 freedom it demands the utmost giving of 
 oneself; in order to live at one's best it 
 demands the giving of life itself. "No 
 man has reached his ethical majority who 
 would not die if the real interests of the 
 community could thus be furthered. . . . 
 What would the world be without the 
 values that have been bought at the price 
 of death?" 1 In this sense the great cre- 
 ative force, love, and the supreme nega- 
 tion, death, become one. That the larger 
 life of the race should go forward to 
 greater things the smaller life of the in- 
 dividual must perish. In order that man 
 shall be born again he must first die. 
 1 G. Stanley Hall. 
 
 [86]
 
 ON THE WAR AND AFTER 
 
 Does all this necessarily mean that 
 war, from time to time, in the process of 
 readjustment, is essential? I think no 
 one can doubt that it has been necessary in 
 the past. Whether it will be in the future 
 depends upon whether some sublimated 
 form of procedure can adequately be sub- 
 stituted: We have succeeded to a large 
 extent in dealing with our combative in- 
 stincts by developing sports and the com- 
 petition of business, and we have largely 
 sublimated our hate instinct in dealing 
 with various forms of anti-social conduct 
 as exhibited in the so-called "criminal." 
 It remains to be seen whether nations can 
 unite to a similar end and perhaps, by the 
 establishment of an international court, 
 and by other means, deal in a similar way 
 with infractions of international law. 
 
 [87]
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 SOME TENDENCIES QUICKENED BY WAR 
 
 TO what ends are these elemental forc- 
 es tending? No man can tell. It 
 is the essence of life to produce the unex- 
 pected. The psychoanalyst reduces the in- 
 stinctive trends of man to a very few, but 
 what an endless variety results from their 
 combinations, their differences of more or 
 less, their compromises, distortions, and re- 
 pressions! One is reminded of the few 
 basic elements in the human face, and yet 
 no two of the countless millions are alike! 
 The pattern of the fine lines on the finger 
 tips is different in every individual. The 
 possibilities are practically infinite. And 
 [88]
 
 THOUGHTS OF A PSYCHIATRIST 
 
 yet these tendencies are strong and seem 
 to be pointing in certain general directions, 
 and one may at least endeavor to pierce the 
 future by means of speculation. 
 
 Democracy has been defined as a state 
 of society in which "Every man is free to 
 do that which he wills, provided he infring- 
 es not the equal freedom of any other 
 man." * It would seem that social organ- 
 ization was tending in the direction of in- 
 creased individual freedom, retaining and 
 building up only such institutions as min- 
 ister to the end of personal freedom by cre- 
 ating a milieu in which it can be safely 
 exercised and brought to its fullest pos- 
 sible fruition. Combination, association in 
 groups, is essential that each person may 
 be secure to work out the best that is in 
 him. The scholar, for example, the re- 
 
 1 Herbert Spencer. 
 
 [89]
 
 THOUGHTS OF A PSYCHIATRIST 
 
 search scientist or the artist, could not ex- 
 ist in a primitive society all of the energies 
 of which had to be focused upon the prob- 
 lems of obtaining food and protecting it- 
 self from enemies. Peace, industrialism, 
 a reasonably stable structure built upon 
 principles of law and order, specialized 
 classes for producing the necessities, for 
 defense and policing, are necessary that ac- 
 tivities represented by science and art may 
 be developed. In the world struggle now 
 in progress those societies that are based 
 upon the autocratic authority of some one 
 man or class of men absolutely to control 
 the destinies of the group and its individ- 
 ual members seem to be disintegrating, 
 and the indications are clear that forces are 
 at work that are attempting to give birth 
 to a more clearly democratic form of gov- 
 ernment which will guarantee a greater 
 [90]
 
 ON THE WAR AND AFTER 
 
 measure of individual freedom. This 
 would appear to be the big possibility that 
 will ultimately come to pass, perhaps not 
 immediately, but as a result of those forces 
 which the war has stirred into action. 
 
 This fight for individual freedom is not 
 new. It has been going on for ages and 
 is exemplified every day in the conflict be- 
 tween parents and children. The family 
 contains within itself elements that make 
 for its ultimate disruption, as has been 
 especially emphasized by psychoanalytic 
 investigations. The basis of the conflict 
 is the effort of the child to become emanci- 
 pated from the control and protection of 
 the home, so that ultimately he may be 
 able to go forth into the world, free from 
 such necessities, capable of standing upon 
 his own feet, and in turn found a family 
 of his own. This is the original form in 
 [91]
 
 THOUGHTS OF A PSYCHIATRIST 
 
 which the conflict against constituted au- 
 thority is cast and must mean, in the end, 
 the overthrow of absolutism and the tri- 
 umph of democracy, an end which will ul- 
 timately come to pass even if this present 
 war should fail to accomplish it. Whether 
 it shall be accomplished in whole or in part 
 the results can hardly fail to effect prog- 
 ress in this general direction. There are 
 many indications as to the specific lines 
 along which this advance will take place. 
 Perhaps the most conspicuous advance 
 in this direction, aside, of course, from the 
 signs of a growing spirit of democracy in 
 the European countries, is the movement 
 for the emancipation of women. This 
 movement can obviously no longer be 
 stemmed by reactionary and conservative 
 statesmen ; it can be no more than delayed. 
 The signs of the times are clear. Woman 
 [92]
 
 ON THE WAR AND AFTER 
 
 is coming rapidly to occupy a social and 
 legal position that will be in every way on 
 a footing of equality with the other sex. 
 The war has hastened this movement as 
 nothing else could, because it has demon- 
 strated beyond argument that woman can 
 do all the things that man can do and do 
 them quite as well. The necessities of the 
 warring nations have given her an oppor- 
 tunity to show her ability in almost every 
 walk of life and she has stood the trial 
 successfully. 
 
 Another movement in the same direc- 
 tion, not quite so obvious in its results, 
 has been the taking over by the govern- 
 ment of certain public utilities, in partic- 
 ular the railroads and the telegraph sys- 
 tems. This is but a part of that reaction 
 against absolutism, that tends always to 
 exploit the individual, that is directed 
 [93]
 
 THOUGHTS OF A PSYCHIATRIST 
 
 against autocratic, capitalistic groups that 
 grow up within a nation and which in their 
 operation produce the same sort of ham- 
 pering of the individual that monarchies 
 do in larger measure. 
 
 As a part of this movement against the 
 autocracy of capital there is developing 
 an attitude towards large enterprises, 
 which means that the employer of a large 
 number of men has something further 
 to look to than his balance sheets. 
 He has a distinct social obligation, because 
 it is after all the organized society of which 
 he is a member that makes such enter- 
 prises possible, and he must give some- 
 thing back to society, in the form of serv- 
 ice, for the privilege thus accorded to him. 
 This means that he must look after the 
 welfare of his employees, their health, and 
 more particularly their working condi- 
 [94]
 
 ON THE WAR AND AFTER 
 
 tions. Work must be made as safe and 
 wholesome as possible. Employers' lia- 
 bility acts, workmen's insurance, old-age 
 pensions, factory sanitation, child labor 
 laws, all point in that direction. We will 
 probably see much more development 
 along these lines, in particular a civil pen- 
 sion act by the government and very prob- 
 ably a much more specific recognition of 
 unions. 
 
 The possession of wealth itself is com- 
 ing to mean something more than just 
 having a lot of money. It is coming to 
 imply social obligations in the way it is 
 used. Society permits the existence of 
 conditions which make the accumulation 
 of wealth possible. It will soon under- 
 take to say something about the way in 
 which it can be used. Public displays of 
 extravagance and wanton waste are long 
 [95]
 
 THOUGHTS OF A PSYCHIATRIST 
 
 since taboo, while in the growing tax on 
 income we see the beginning of a move- 
 ment of repression which will ultimately 
 result in an increased sense of the public 
 obligations of great wealth. Money is but 
 a symbol of power, of energy ; and energy 
 is of no value when it is idle. Taxes are 
 one way in which the potential energy 
 represented by money can be made kinet- 
 ic; the money must be put to work, and 
 when in addition the work that the money 
 is put to is socially useful the significance 
 of taxes, both for the public weal and also 
 by bringing a measure of social esteem to 
 the wealthy, is evident. 
 
 Another movement of similar signifi- 
 cance is the taxing of inheritances. A so- 
 cial organism, like the individual, becomes 
 senile and relatively defunct in proportion 
 to the degree in which its ways of reacting 
 [96]
 
 ON THE WAR AND AFTER 
 
 become fixed, static; that is, in propor- 
 tion to the degree in which its activities 
 are controlled by its past and are unable 
 to go forward in a relatively fluid, dynam- 
 ic state in the process of adaptation to 
 the ever-changing conditions which prog- 
 ress imposes. The laws of inheritance 
 which permit persons to devise their prop- 
 erty as they wish have been means whereby 
 large accumulations of wealth have been 
 kept intact, and controlled, no longer even 
 by the living, but from the grave. It goes 
 without saying that no human being is 
 wise enough to look forward into the fu- 
 ture, for a generation even, and say what 
 will be the best way of using large powers, 
 and any attempt to do so must, in general, 
 lead to socially undesirable results. In- 
 heritance taxes prevent the direction of 
 large powers from being exercised by past 
 [97]
 
 THOUGHTS OF A PSYCHIATRIST 
 
 generations ; they tend to mobilize the en- 
 ergy to best meet present needs. Both of 
 these economic tendencies, the taxing of 
 incomes and inheritances, have been great- 
 ly accelerated by the necessities which this 
 war has created. 
 
 These movements are but examples of 
 a growing demand for an advanced, what 
 has been called a "new democracy." The 
 old slogan "all men are born equal" has 
 had to be materially modified in the face 
 of hard, incontrovertible facts. It was 
 a manifest absurdity to claim that the born 
 idiot was the equal of any other child. He 
 suffers, as do all with congenital defects, 
 from a handicap which can never be over- 
 come. Some handicaps may be com- 
 promised with, as a missing limb, or 
 actually be made an asset, as a grotesque 
 deformity which the possessor may use as 
 [98]
 
 ON THE WAR AND AFTER 
 
 a means of livelihood. Some may even be 
 overcome, as in the case of Demosthenes 
 the stutterer, who became the greatest 
 orator of Greece; but the mere statement 
 of such differences implies inequality. And 
 so the assumption that all men are born 
 equal was modified to mean "equal before 
 the law." Without dilating upon the man- 
 ifest shortcomings of this formulation, for 
 it is obvious that financial resources do 
 exercise a modifying influence in the ad- 
 ministration of the law, it is equally evi- 
 dent that this formulation falls short of 
 our present ideals Those ideals can now be 
 better expressed by the phrase "equal op- 
 portunity" for all. This means that no man 
 shall be deprived of a chance to attain suc- 
 cess, and that, as a result, the constitution 
 of a democracy shall be based upon merit 
 rather than upon birthright or an acci- 
 [99]
 
 THOUGHTS OF A PSYCHIATRIST 
 
 dental social position. The almost uni- 
 versal tendency to take public positions 
 out of the control of political favoritism 
 and make them subject to civil service re- 
 quirements is the concrete expression of 
 this attitude, imperfectly as this special 
 mechanism may have functioned in par- 
 ticular instances. In all these senses not 
 equality, but "inequality is of the essence 
 of healthy social life," for manifestly some 
 men are better equipped by natural ad- 
 vantages to do some things better than 
 others. In a society in which merit gets 
 its full recognition, each person would 
 tend naturally to gravitate, as they do of 
 course now, but in a less hampered way, to 
 that position he could fill best, and thus 
 his differences, the factors of inequality, 
 would be utilized to the best advantage. 
 Another factor at work in this present 
 [100]
 
 ON THE WAR AND AFTER 
 
 war situation which makes for a democ- 
 racy of equal opportunity has been a con- 
 script army with promotions based upon 
 service record. The consequent assem- 
 bling of large numbers of men in camps 
 without distinction of social class has un- 
 doubtedly had some tendency to break 
 down these distinctions, a tendency which 
 is undoubtedly further advanced when 
 they come to share the hardships of actual 
 service conditions at the front. A part of 
 the mutual distrust of men in different 
 walks of life is based upon their ignorance 
 of each other. Living together, facing dan- 
 ger together, tends to wipe out such dis- 
 trust built upon lack of acquaintance and 
 respect, and helps to weld the individual 
 members of the social group into a more 
 sympathetic and understanding union. 
 This same argument applies as well to 
 [101]
 
 THOUGHTS OF A PSYCHIATRIST 
 
 men of different races, nationality, relig- 
 ious creeds, political persuasions, and in 
 fact to all of the differences which ordi- 
 narily tend to split up society into smaller 
 groups mutually ignorant of each other 
 if not actually antagonistic. 
 
 Thus do we see the conditions of war 
 giving opportunity for the expression of 
 two diametrically opposed tendencies : the 
 tendency to create the greatest possible 
 opportunities for individual expression 
 individualism, and the tendency to sub- 
 ordinate individual energies to the service 
 of the group socialism. 2 This opposition 
 
 2 I have used the word socialism here not be- 
 cause it is perhaps an ideal word, but because it is 
 as good as any other, inasmuch as all sorts of vari- 
 ations of theory are included under it and like 
 terms which might have been used, such as collec- 
 tivism and communism. In the sense here used it 
 means only that necessary subordination of the in- 
 dividual to the group. 
 
 [102]
 
 ON THE WAR AND AFTER 
 
 represents the ambivalency of attitude 
 towards the mutually opposed and oppo- 
 site sides of the same fundamental prob- 
 lem. 
 
 [103]
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 INDIVIDUALISM VERSUS SOCIALISM LOVE 
 AND HATE 
 
 IT is inconceivable that the great forces 
 which have been set in motion by the 
 war should become quiescent the moment 
 peace is declared. They will proceed to 
 operate if for no other reason than that of 
 inertia. A great moving force of opinion, 
 like a great body, cannot come to rest un- 
 less opposed by equal forces operating in 
 the opposite direction. Then again this 
 is no incidental war of conquest in which 
 a nation of superior strength simply cap- 
 tures an inferior race a long distance from 
 its base and reduces it to economic slavery. 
 [104]
 
 THOUGHTS OF A PSYCHIATRIST 
 
 It is a world war in which fundamentally 
 different principles, autocracy and democ- 
 racy, are contending for the mastery. 
 
 As already indicated, the struggle for 
 personal expression, individualism, be- 
 gins in the home in the natural antago- 
 nism of parents and children, and has thus 
 for its purpose the emancipation of the 
 child. So, here, autocracy represents the 
 relatively paternalistic type of govern- 
 ment in which the monarch, representing, 
 being symbolic of, the father, exercises a 
 restraining and controlling direction of the 
 individual, symbolic of the child, from 
 which the individual is always desiring to 
 free himself. A democracy, in which the 
 people choose their own ruler, approaches 
 that eugenic ideal which has sometimes 
 been facetiously expressed by saying that 
 children should be able to choose their own 
 [105]
 
 THOUGHTS OF A PSYCHIATRIST 
 
 parents. Already those who are looking 
 into the future are recognizing the fact 
 that the problems of the reconstruction 
 period may be as large or larger than those 
 of the war itself. 
 
 The contest will take on the form of a 
 conflict between the two always-present 
 tendencies which may be best formulated 
 as socialism and individualism. Psycho- 
 logical conflicts take on the character of 
 mutual antagonism between diametrically 
 opposed tendencies, and it may be said of 
 these two formulations, as of psychological 
 conflicts in general, that both are right 
 and both are wrong, for they only repre- 
 sent the two sides of the same issue the 
 issue of gaining the greatest expression. 
 The group is fighting for the greatest op- 
 portunities for its expression, but in order 
 to gain its goal it needs the highest de- 
 [106]
 
 ON THE WAR AND AFTER 
 
 velopment of its component members 
 the individuals that compose it. The in- 
 dividual is fighting for the greatest oppor- 
 tunities for his expression, but in order to 
 gain his goal he needs the highest develop- 
 ment of the group of which he is a member 
 as a milieu in which, and only in which, 
 he can bring to pass his personal am- 
 bitions. 
 
 Also, like all conflicts, a reaction which 
 goes to either extreme is destructive. A 
 complete reaction toward individualism 
 with a consequent renouncing of all social 
 ends would result in lawlessness and a 
 state of comparative anarchy, which in the 
 process of development would bring into 
 power men untrained to the exercise of 
 authority and unfitted by natural endow- 
 ments to lead the virtual substitution of 
 a new autocracy of inefficiency. A com- 
 [107]
 
 THOUGHTS OF A PSYCHIATRIST 
 
 plete reaction toward socialism with the 
 renouncing of all individual aims would 
 result in the establishment of a govern- 
 ment which did not concern itself with the 
 welfare of the individual units an autoc- 
 racy of power which would in turn array 
 all individualistic tendencies against it. 
 A compromise between the two extremes 
 is necessary to get the maximum of benefit 
 and the minimum of harm from each. 
 
 In ordinary times men divide them- 
 selves into two camps variously named, 
 conservatives and progressives for in- 
 stance, which represent these two tenden- 
 cies, and out of the clash of these opposing 
 factions a generally useful compromise re- 
 sults. In times of revolution the reaction 
 is wont to go to extremes and produce a 
 state of affairs from which it takes a long 
 time to settle down to a workable middle 
 [108]
 
 ON THE WAR AND AFTER 
 
 ground. Then is the psychological mo- 
 ment for great constructive leadership that 
 is wise enough to hold the masses to- 
 gether with some constructive policy- 
 while taking advantage of the fluidity of 
 the situation to bring to pass such radical 
 reforms as will preserve, as a permanent 
 gain, as many of the possibilities as have 
 been inherent in the period of readjust- 
 ment and which represent real progress. 
 This is work for those men of genius which 
 such times, sooner or later, call forth. If, 
 however, the process of dedifferentiation 
 goes beyond a certain point it would seem 
 as if it had to complete itself, so to speak, 
 before reconstruction can begin. 
 
 The most difficult and the most imme- 
 diate problem that confronts a victorious 
 nation is its treatment of its defeated foe. 
 This is made especially difficult, because
 
 THOUGHTS OF A PSYCHIATRIST 
 
 it must come after a period during which 
 every effort has been made to weld to- 
 gether each party to the conflict in a united 
 front against the enemy, and the methods 
 that are used for this purpose are the 
 methods dictated by hate. The banality 
 of the appeal to popular sentiment; the 
 reiteration and emphasis laid upon unsup- 
 ported statements and upon plain, evident 
 wishes, demonstrates that the moving 
 forces that unite the group are emotional 
 and largely regressive. The appeal to 
 patriotism, of course, as already implied, 
 has its distinct constructive and progres- 
 sive aspects. Reason, at least so far as it 
 is called upon at all, especially in the early 
 stages of a conflict, is confined to finding 
 arguments with which to support the 
 emotional attitude the mechanism known 
 as rationalization. This mechanism is well 
 [110]
 
 ON THE WAR AND AFTER 
 
 in evidence in the effort usually made by 
 both parties to the conflict to show that 
 the war was started by the enemy, whose 
 attitude was purely offensive, while for 
 themselves it was as purely defensive. Sim- 
 ilarly, each side, by the same mechanism 
 of rationalization, supports a claim to the 
 inherent righteousness of their cause and 
 the unrighteousness of the cause of the 
 enemy. 1 This is the fluid, emotionally 
 
 1 Perhaps no better material offers for the study 
 of these mechanisms than the stories circulated in 
 times of war of the atrocities committed by the 
 enemy. Of course atrocities are committed, and 
 many of the stories are true or founded in truth, 
 but equally many of them are made of whole cloth 
 and represent projected wishes of what the author 
 of the stories would like to do and like to believe 
 true in order to justify his hate and retaliatory 
 measures based upon it. See in this connection 
 Jung, C. G., "Collected Papers on Analytical 
 Psychology," chap. IV, "A Contribution to the 
 Psychology of Rumor." Published by Moffat, 
 Yard & Co., New York, 1917. 
 [Ill]
 
 THOUGHTS OF A PSYCHIATRIST 
 
 laden situation into which a truly great 
 leader may project himself and, gathering 
 up all the loose ends of reason and feeling 
 alike, formulate the whole movement in 
 terms that cement, direct, and lead popu- 
 lar thinking. It is the great opportunity, 
 too, for turning the enormous energies of 
 the herd into channels which shall effect 
 constructive ends, for utilizing the free 
 energies for the larger purposes by detach- 
 ing them from their several purely selfish 
 attempts at realization and directing them, 
 through the medium of some symbol such 
 as "making the world safe for democracy," 
 into activities which shall be of service in 
 the largest sense. 
 
 Hate, pure and simple, is always de- 
 structive in its tendencies. It can be used 
 constructively only indirectly, by being 
 directed against persons, institutions, ways 
 [112]
 
 ON THE WAR AND AFTER 
 
 of thinking which it is necessary to clear 
 away in order to substitute something bet- 
 ter. A new building cannot be con- 
 structed out of the bricks of an old one 
 without first tearing down the old struc- 
 ture. The utilization of hate in this way 
 makes it serve creative ends. The danger 
 is, of course, in failing to keep it in leash. 
 It is just this danger of hate over- 
 stepping the necessary limits of its con- 
 structive task that makes the reconstruc- 
 tion period so full of difficulties. Each 
 war contains the material for the next war 
 in the excessive advantages which the con- 
 queror takes by imposing humiliations 
 upon the conquered, as, for example, in 
 depriving him of territory. This latter is 
 the typical example which stands as a men- 
 ace to the resumption of friendly relations. 
 It is felt as an injustice, and the day is 
 [113]
 
 THOUGHTS OF A PSYCHIATRIST 
 
 looked forward to when the wrong can be 
 righted, the lost possessions regained, and, 
 too, some additional territory taken be- 
 sides to redress the humiliation suffered. 
 The formulation of peace terms, therefore, 
 taxes the ingenuity of the greatest minds 
 to effect an adjustment that will be last- 
 ing. 
 
 Until recently, to be sure with notable 
 exceptions, there has been no thought of 
 a lasting peace between nations. Inter- 
 national relations were always strained 
 and armed force was trusted as the only 
 efficient argument. Now, on the contrary, 
 the air is filled with speculations on the 
 possibility of a more stable basis for inter- 
 national relations which will make war, if 
 not impossible, at least less easily possible. 
 Some psychological speculations regard- 
 ing the principles involved may not be out 
 [114]
 
 ON THE WAR AND AFTER 
 
 of place. As previously indicated, re- 
 actions of nations as well as individuals 
 may be classified on the basis of their rela- 
 tive maturity or immaturity from the de- 
 velopmental point of view, and the criteria 
 for such a judgment rest in the extent to 
 which the reactions show that instinct is 
 directed and controlled by reason, and 
 also in the degree of the integration shown 
 by the breadth or height of the highest 
 aims. The former criterion needs no fur- 
 ther comment; the latter will bear some 
 further explanation. In the primitive 
 manifestations of life the larger good is the 
 welfare of the cell only; other cells re- 
 ceive no consideration. In a somewhat 
 more advanced stage of multicellularity in 
 which the organism is represented by a 
 loosely associated group of cells, the larger 
 good compasses the group, and so on. So 
 [115]
 
 THOUGHTS OF A PSYCHIATRIST 
 
 with primitive man, he is largely selfish, 
 but the larger good as he knows it in- 
 cludes the group of which he is a member 
 often nothing more than a small wan- 
 dering tribe. Later in the history of de- 
 velopment the tribes are larger and may 
 even be united in groups of tribes or 
 nations, and as there is this progressive 
 increase in size and complexity with cor- 
 responding integration the larger good 
 comes progressively to apply to the larger 
 and more heterogeneous association. So 
 nations come to be held together by the 
 common purposes of the individuals com- 
 posing them, but at the same time to ex- 
 ist in a constant state of antagonism, if 
 not actual warfare, with other nations. 
 This conflict comes to be in part expressed, 
 among civilized nations, in their diplomatic 
 maneuvers for advantage, and in an estab- 
 [116]
 
 ON THE WAR AND AFTER 
 
 lished economic and industrial rivalry. It 
 tends to be maintained, in no small part, 
 by the lack of acquaintance with each 
 other maintained by differences of lan- 
 guage, religion, and customs and by 
 natural geographical barriers such as 
 mountain ranges, rivers, and oceans, and 
 by distance in general, both of which tend 
 only slowly to give way to improved means 
 of intercommunication. The inhabitants 
 of neighboring countries may thus come to 
 be looked upon not only as aliens, but as 
 natural enemies, only waiting the oppor- 
 tunity to seize some advantage of conquest 
 and from whom they must be prepared at 
 all times to defend themselves. Like the 
 wild animals of the jungle they know no 
 friends except those of their own kind. 
 The question now is, whether, in view of 
 the wide prevalence of the interest in a 
 [117]
 
 THOUGHTS OF A PSYCHIATRIST 
 
 permanent peace there are possibilities of 
 developing an integration at a higher level 
 than a national level, namely, at an inter- 
 national level. 
 
 On the face of it, it would seem, in fact, 
 it must be, that the nations of the world 
 are more favorably circumstanced for an 
 attempt of this sort than ever before. The 
 enormous development of international 
 trade relations, the correspondingly great 
 improvement of transportation facilities, 
 the increase in the travel between coun- 
 tries that lie wide apart, the substitution 
 of the teaching of the dead languages by 
 the modern languages in our schools and 
 universities, the study of the histories, de- 
 velopment, science, literature, and art of 
 foreign countries, have brought us into 
 far closer contact with our contemporaries 
 all over the world than ever before, and 
 [118]
 
 ON THE WAR AND AFTER 
 
 must have had a considerable effect in 
 wiping out that feeling of mystery about 
 other peoples which makes us feel them 
 as alien and tends to keep alive a spirit 
 of distrust, fear, and hate. While the 
 study of such sciences as anthropology, 
 ethnology, comparative philology, and 
 psychology have taught us that in reality 
 all men are kin. Whether or not the pres- 
 ent time is ripe for such a wider expansion 
 of human interests as is implied in a 
 "league of nations" remains to be seen, 
 but at least to try to effect such an ad- 
 justment as is implied in an effort to 
 bring the great nations of the earth to a 
 common understanding is not only a move 
 in the right direction, but, even if it fails 
 to accomplish all that its most ardent ad- 
 vocates wish, it cannot fail because it is 
 rightly directed to bring the goal nearer, 
 [119]
 
 THOUGHTS OF A PSYCHIATRIST 
 
 to speed the day of its actual accomplish- 
 ment. It may be hoped that if all na- 
 tions cannot get together in a league of 
 nations, at least some of them can, and 
 that future problems will be on the higher 
 plane of integrating such groups. 
 
 To the end of helping to bring to pass 
 higher international relations certain at- 
 titudes of mind must be modified as they 
 relate to the international situation. To 
 put it briefly, the indulgences of hate must 
 be curbed. Hate, it must be understood, 
 can serve creative ends only when it tears 
 down to make possible better building. If 
 it exceeds this limit it becomes uncondi- 
 tionally destructive, and, it is worth while 
 to contemplate, far more destructive to 
 those who indulge in it than to those upon 
 whom its force is expended. Hate makes 
 little men and stands an everlasting bar- 
 [120]
 
 ON THE WAR AND AFTER 
 
 rier to the development of a broad, deep, 
 well-rounded character. 
 
 In a war such as the present one, for ex- 
 ample, force has to be used. The enemy 
 that would destroy must be made impotent 
 for harm ; our own physical integrity must 
 be preserved if we are to be in a position 
 to exercise our powers for the larger ends. 
 But force, so far as possible, needs to be 
 limited to such utilitarian purposes, it 
 needs to be used with a clear vision to 
 effect certain well-defined purposes, and 
 those purposes should compass large, con- 
 structive ends that will benefit us prima- 
 rily perhaps but surely will minister to the 
 wider purpose. If this be effected we will 
 in the end benefit far more by the results 
 that will accrue to us indirectly than if we 
 had kept in mind solely selfish aims. The 
 desire, therefore, to make our enemy suf- 
 [121]
 
 THOUGHTS OF A PSYCHIATRIST 
 
 fer, just for the purpose of gaining satis- 
 faction from his sufferings, must be put 
 aside once and for all as either a worthy 
 or a valuable object of war. 
 
 I am minded at this point to refer again 
 to the analogy, based upon the destruction 
 wrought, between reactions that are rela- 
 tively mature or immature. The analogy 
 is to the history of the treatment of chil- 
 dren. Without going into details I may 
 say that perhaps no page of history is 
 blacker, none testifies to more helpless suf- 
 fering, none shows man so unreservedly at 
 his worst. Children have been treated as 
 chattels, the innocent objects of hate in all 
 its gruesome forms; they have been en- 
 slaved, deprived of comfort, made the ob- 
 jects of every cupidity, maimed and 
 beaten, subjected to every indignity and 
 abuse, killed. Through it all there must 
 [122]
 
 ON THE WAR AND AFTER 
 
 have run a golden thread of love, but it 
 was stretched almost to the breaking point 
 many a time. Only lately have we 
 learned, in a practical way, that love, not 
 hate, is the open sesame to the child's char- 
 acter. Only through love do children 
 come to blossom forth into good and use- 
 ful personalities that hate served only to 
 warp and deform. Love must be the basis 
 upon which any lasting good can be built ; 
 hate only serves to cripple and retard. 
 The same lesson has been learned, or, more 
 correctly, is being learned, in the treat- 
 ment of infantile types of reaction as we 
 see them in the so-called insane, criminal, 
 and defective classes generally. Kindness 
 has stricken off chains that cruelty and 
 punishment have ever served to make the 
 heavier. While repression is a necessary 
 factor in education, it can never alone pro- 
 [123]
 
 THOUGHTS OF A PSYCHIATRIST 
 
 duce the best results, and even then it must 
 be imposed by love and only with the de- 
 sire of creating the most favorable condi- 
 tions of development by making the best 
 way at once the easier and the most desir- 
 able way. 
 
 As I have indicated, reactions of hate 
 always testify to a primitiveness in the re- 
 pressive process. Hate is the method of 
 repression before an instinct can be sub- 
 limated so as not to require it. The rela- 
 tively inefficient artisan may hate his com- 
 petitor who is more skillful, and perhaps 
 entertains desires to exert physical 
 violence against him. His children, who 
 have had larger opportunities for develop- 
 ment, may have learned that the best way 
 to overcome a competitor is to do better 
 work than he does, and if they are capable 
 of it hate is no longer an emotion of which 
 [124]
 
 ON THE WAR AND AFTER 
 
 they feel the need. We may fear and hate 
 a person whose opinions differ from ours 
 until we learn to know him and realize that 
 he is made of the same stuff as ourselves, 
 and is really striving for better things as 
 we are perhaps for the same ends by only 
 a slightly modified method. The clash- 
 ing of instincts gives way to the meeting of 
 minds. When men can realize that they 
 all are after the same things, that growth 
 is in the same general direction for all, 
 they will come to realize that they can bet- 
 ter effect their several purposes by pooling 
 their interests than by insisting too 
 strongly upon individual recognition. De- 
 votion to selfish ends makes enemies, con- 
 secration to service invariably commands 
 a following. "Everywhere, we learn only 
 from those whom we love." 2 
 
 2 Goethe. 
 
 [125]
 
 THOUGHTS OF A PSYCHIATRIST 
 
 If, therefore, it be true that autocracies, 
 absolute monarchies based upon the fiction 
 of divine authority, represent relatively 
 immature forms of government, we can 
 expect to change the spirit of people who 
 live under them only by bringing them to 
 our point of view. Ultimately this can 
 be done only by bringing them to see that 
 our way of seeing is the better, and they 
 will come to agree with us only if they 
 learn to respect us. Respect must be 
 mutual and based upon mutual under- 
 standing, which amounts to saying that 
 hate cannot bring it about, but only love. 
 A system of exploitation of a conquered 
 foe, a continuing repression with reprisals 
 and all the machinery of modern society 
 turned to the uses of revenge cannot bring 
 such a state to pass. It is not the way we 
 [126]
 
 ON THE WAR AND AFTER 
 
 would treat an erring child, nor should it 
 be the way we should treat a beaten foe, 
 whose error has been thai he was actuated 
 by standards of conduct we believe to be 
 lower less matured than our own. If 
 our cause is as holy as we are pleased to 
 think it, if the enemy is as primitive as we 
 are pleased to claim, then we have the 
 golden opportunity to show our superior- 
 ity after we have beaten him. If we do not 
 do it, then he still has the right to think 
 that our alleged convictions were but pro- 
 nounced with the lips, that they did not 
 issue from the heart. There must be a 
 "victory of justice" rather than a "victory 
 of power" if those instinctive tendencies 
 to hate are to be stilled in the hearts of our 
 erstwhile enemy and justice "must involve 
 no distinction between those to whom we 
 [127]
 
 THOUGHTS OF A PSYCHIATRIST 
 
 wish to be just and those to whom we do 
 not wish to be just." 3 
 
 I know the difficulties of proceeding 
 along the lines indicated, but the path of 
 hate has been pursued since the world be- 
 gan, and wars have followed wars. No 
 harm can come from trying some new way, 
 and when that way is the way Christianity 
 has always taught, those who have a pro- 
 found respect for the wisdom of the folk 
 soul may well be inclined to follow. The 
 difficulties of making a basis of peace sat- 
 isfactory to all of the multitude of inter- 
 ests involved are stupendous, as are the 
 obstacles to be overcome in establishing a 
 league of nations that will function. Of 
 such matter I am not competent to speak. 
 I can only call attention to certain psy- 
 chological factors involved. In any event, 
 
 3 President Wilson. 
 
 [128}
 
 ON THE WAR AND AFTER 
 
 the United States occupies a position of 
 supreme importance and incalculable pos- 
 sibilities in the council of nations, and I 
 believe that the amount of force she will 
 be able to bring to bear for good will de- 
 pend upon the possibility of putting aside 
 issues of selfishness and hate. It will need 
 a clear vision and great faith to see the 
 way and follow it. 
 
 The very clear principle involved is that 
 reprisals, or other punitive measures, are 
 useful when addressed to constructive 
 ends. Speaking in physiological terms, 
 they are useful for conditioning behavior 
 along desirable lines after the manner of 
 the conditioned reflex. When used solely 
 for selfish purposes, as a means of self- 
 indulgence in hate and self-exploitation, 
 they can only be expected to be destruc- 
 tive in their final results. 
 [129]
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THE SOCIALLY HANDICAPPED 
 
 NO man can say just what will be the 
 great problems after the war. We 
 can only see in a general way what must 
 grow out of present conditions, for it is of 
 the nature of life to grow as it advances, 
 and questions will arise which could not 
 have been predicted; but I will follow 
 along one of the problems in accordance 
 with the principles already laid down to 
 show where it may lead. I refer to the 
 problem of the crippled soldier. 
 
 To be crippled nowadays is to be dis- 
 graced. The loss of an arm or a hand so 
 often means drunkenness the night before 
 [130]
 
 THOUGHTS OF A PSYCHIATRIST 
 
 the accident, or lack of skill, or mental 
 dullness, and anyway it makes the man in- 
 ferior to his fellows if he was not before. 
 He cannot get a job as easily if at all, and 
 then only at some unskilled work or as a 
 mark of charity. The industrial cripple 
 is a marked man, literally, and tries to hide 
 his defect. An employers' liability act 
 which fixes the loss of an eye at a given 
 sum and makes total blindness a much 
 larger burden for the employer to bear, 
 makes that same employer chary of hiring 
 men already blind of one eye for fear the 
 loss of the other will subject him to com- 
 pensation at the rate for total blindness. 
 
 The war, temporarily at least, makes a 
 mutilation a badge of honor. The man 
 who has lost an arm in the defense of his 
 country is a hero and is proud of his loss. 
 In his pride it compensates him for his 
 [131]
 
 THOUGHTS OF A PSYCHIATRIST 
 
 loss, and perhaps may be a means of bridg- 
 ing the gap to the industrial cripple. With 
 so many obviously crippled men to provide 
 for there hasvcome as a stimulus to manu- 
 facturers that fine fire of enthusiasm to 
 help the boys who have sacrificed so much 
 by inventing means whereby they may 
 operate the ordinary machines of indus- 
 trial life efficiently. With the problem of 
 labor which will arise after the war, when 
 foreign countries will need their own for 
 the rebuilding of their home countries, the 
 cripple may find that the way has been 
 provided for his social rehabilitation. Such 
 a state of affairs may well lead to a re- 
 valuation of the cripple, a realization of his 
 usefulness and an effort to make his possi- 
 bilities available which will result, not only 
 in a modified attitude towards him, with 
 the necessary changes in law and custom, 
 [132]
 
 ON THE WAR AND AFTER 
 
 but may easily affect society's attitude to 
 all of its less efficient members all along 
 the line. 
 
 For every man, no matter how limited 
 in mind or body, there is something that 
 he can do that it is worth while that he 
 should do. Few can be 100 per cent, effi- 
 cient, but few need to be wholly lacking in 
 usefulness. The limited-service class of 
 the Army represents an acknowledgment 
 of this principle, which should really make 
 for a still broader viewpoint and govern 
 our relations with all, including those 
 classes now grouped under such mislead- 
 ing terms as criminal, defective, insane. 1 
 
 Parents do not abandon their children 
 because they are not as smart as their 
 neighbor's children. Society should do as 
 much and in the same spirit. Not only is 
 
 1 See "Principles of Mental Hygiene." 
 [133]
 
 THOUGHTS OF A PSYCHIATRIST 
 
 such an attitude useful to society, but the 
 cripple, the defective, is entitled to be con- 
 sidered in this way. Socialism is trying, 
 by methods of taxation among other 
 means, to abolish that state of helpless 
 poverty of so many that effectually de- 
 stroys all ambition, all hope. Poverty of 
 mind and body is deserving of as much 
 consideration if the "equality" of democ- 
 racy means equal opportunity. Every- 
 one is entitled to a chance to use that which 
 he has; it should be the object of social 
 organization to see that he gets it. The 
 type of young man who has been injured 
 by wounds represents the flower of our 
 manhood, and it would not only be unjust 
 but it would be a ruinous principle 
 from every point of view if he were rele- 
 gated, even in his own feelings, to a state 
 of uselessness. 
 
 [134]
 
 ON THE WAR AND AFTER 
 
 Just" as in the smaller groups within the 
 nations, it is but justice to treat the less 
 efficient, less mature individuals after this 
 manner, so in a group of nations the same 
 principle should hold. A league of 
 nations may include some one that is not 
 culturally in as advanced a state of de- 
 velopment as the others. Such a nation 
 should be given a chance to develop, and 
 repressive measures, like the punishment 
 of children, should never be resorted to 
 just to indulge hate, but only to make the 
 way of development the easier way. 
 
 Such statements as these, I know, espe- 
 cially when I speak in terms of inter- 
 national affairs, sound visionary, but I 
 am using such illustrations to point a 
 principle that I believe is true. Actual 
 
 conditions may make the application of 
 [185]
 
 THOUGHTS OF A PSYCHIATRIST 
 
 the principle impossible, but they cannot 
 destroy the value of keeping it in mind. 
 
 If this war makes at all for construc- 
 tive ends, those ends will be the granting 
 of a larger measure of opportunity to all 
 the handicapped peoples of the earth the 
 unfortunate among us, crippled in mind 
 or body, or by industrial and economic 
 repressions or by racial, religious, or 
 political prejudices, and a like opportunity 
 extended as between nations. Civilization, 
 which has been so taxed by the release of 
 the primitive instincts in an orgy of de- 
 struction, has by the very clearing away 
 of standards which had survived their 
 period of usefulness and became static and 
 therefore barriers to further progress 
 an unparalleled opportunity to rise to 
 greater heights on the path to higher in- 
 tegrations, greater possibilities of co^ 
 [136]
 
 ON THE WAR AND AFTER 
 
 ordinated action for the common good of 
 all. 
 
 In the life of individuals it often hap- 
 pens that a great misfortune is the 
 turning point in their careers and, bravely 
 met, may turn out to have been a great 
 beneficence. Unfortunately misfortune 
 does not always result in this way. Wars 
 in the past have often produced only suf- 
 fering, but such an end may not be the 
 only possible one. Has the time come 
 when the greatest of all national calamities 
 can be made the greatest of all national op- 
 portunities? Is there a developed, con- 
 structive statesmanship equal to turning 
 the tide towards the great constructive 
 possibilities? The Allied nations are in 
 a position to answer these questions. They 
 stand on the threshold of the greatest of 
 all opportunities. 
 
 [137]
 
 u 
 
 THIS ] 
 
 SOUTHERN REG^UBRARY a ^ ^ 
 from which It was borrowed. 
 
 OCT 61997 
 
 MAY 2 1 1997
 
 
 UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY 'FACILITY 
 
 in inn iiiii inn inn mil i"' 1111 
 A 'A OOO 044 600 5 
 
 3 1205 00463 2384
 
 Univers 
 
 Soutt 
 
 Libr