Chapter XVII: Some Character Types (1)

There is one kind of energy discharger that we may call the hyperkinetic, controlled practical type. This group is characterized by great and constant activity, well controlled by purpose, with eagerness and enthusiasm manifested in each act but not excessively.

1. A. is one of these people. In school he specialized in athletics and was a fine all-round player in almost every sport. When he left high school to go to work he at once entered business. His employers soon found him to be a tireless worker, steady and purposeful in everything. In addition to carrying on his duties by day, A. studied nights, carefully choosing his subjects so that they related directly to his business. Despite the fact that his work was hard and his studies exacting, A. had energy enough left to join social organizations and to take a leading part in their affairs. He became quickly known as one of those busy people who always are ready to take on more work. Naturally this led to his becoming a leader, first in his social relations and second in his business. Always practical in his judgments and actions, A. fell in love with the daughter of a rich family and married her, with the full approval of her relatives, who were keen enough to see that his energy, power and control were destined for success.

The leading traits that A. manifests hinge around his high energy and control. He is honest and conventional, devoted to the ideals of his group and admires learning, but he is not in any sense a scholar. He is a poor speaker, in the ordinary sense of that term, but curiously effective, nevertheless, because his earnest energy and sturdy common sense win approval as "not a theorist." But mainly he wins because he is tireless in energy and enthusiasm and yet has yoked these qualities to ordinary purposes. The average man he meets understands him thoroughly, sympathizes with him completely and accepts him as a leader after his own heart.

So A. has become rich and respected. As times goes on, as he is brought more and more into contact with large affairs outside of business; as a trustee of hospitals and a director of charitable organizations, he broadens out but not into an "unsafe" attitude. He pities the unfortunate but is not truly sympathetic, in that it rarely occurs to him that success and failure are relative, that an accident might have shipwrecked his fortunes and that his good qualities are as innate as his complexion. For this man prides himself on his strong will and courage, whereas he merely has within him a fine engine in whose construction he had no part.

2. The hyperkinetic, controlled, impractical person. B. is, in the fundamentals of energy and control, singularly like A., but because of the nature of his interests and purposes their lives have completely diverged so that no one would ordinarily recognize the kinship in type. B. is and always has been a worker, enthusiastic and enduring, and he has stuck to his last with a fidelity that is remarkable. He is very likable in the ordinary sense,--pleasant to look at, cheerful, ready to joke, laugh or to help the other fellow. Nevertheless, he has only a few friends and is a distinctly disappointed man at heart, because his interests are in the ordinary sense, impractical.

B. early became interested in physiology. From the very start he found in the workings of the human body a fascination that concentrated his efforts. Poor, he worked hard enough to obtain scholarships and fellowships in one university after another until finally he became a Ph. D. Here was a great error from the practical standpoint; for had he become an M. D., he would have had a profession that offered an independent financial future. But, in his zeal, he did not wish to take on the extended program of the physician, and he saw clearly that he might become a better scientist as a Ph. D. He became a teacher in one school after another, did a good deal of research work, but has not been fortunate enough to make any epoch-making discoveries. He is one of those splendid, painstaking, energetic men found in every university who turn out good pieces of work of which only a few know anything, and from which in the course of time some genius or lucky scientist culls a few facts upon which to build up a great theory or a new doctrine. He married one of his own students, a fine woman but unluckily not very strong, and so there fell on him many a domestic duty that a thousand extra dollars a year would have turned over to a maid.

Thus B. is an obscure but respected member of the faculty of a small university. He teaches well, though he dislikes it, and he is happy at the times when he works hard at some physiological problem. He loves his family and has vowed that his son will be a business man. He feels inferior as he contemplates his obscure existence, with its precarious financial state, its drudgery and most of all the gradual disappearance of his ideals. He is frank to himself alone, wishes he had made money, but is apt to sneer at the world of the "fat and successful" as less than his intellectual equal. He compares his own rewards with that of the successful man knowing less and with a narrower outlook.

Thus, through success, A. is broadening and becoming something of an idealist. B. is narrowing and through failure is losing his ideals. This is not an uncommon effect of success and failure. Where success leads to arrogance and conceit it narrows, but where the character withstands this result the increased experience and opportunity is of great value to character. Failure may embitter and thus narrow through envy and lost energy, but also it may strip away conceit and overestimation and thus lead to a richer insight into life.

3. The hyperkinetic, uncontrolled or shallow. This type, although quick and apparently energetic, is deficient in a fundamental of the personality, in the organizing energy. This deficiency may extend into all phases of the mental life or in only a few phases. Thus we see people whose thinking is rapid, energetic, but they cannot "stick" to one line of thought long enough to reach a goal. Others are similarly situated in regard to purposes; they are enthusiastic, easily stirred into activity, but rarely do their purposes remain fixed long enough for success. As a rule this class is inconstant in affections, though warm and sympathetic. They gush but never organize their philanthropic efforts, so that they rarely do any real good. Often the most lovable of people, they are at the same time the despair of those who know them best.

M. is a woman who makes a fine first impression, is very pretty, with nice manners and a quick, flattering interest in every one she meets. She is usually classed as intelligent because she is vivacious, that is, her mind follows the trend of things quickly, and she marshals whatever she knows very readily. As one who knows her well says, "She shows all her goods the first time. You really do not know how slender her stock in trade is until you see the same goods and tricks every time you meet her." Needless to say her critic is a woman.

M. is interested in something new each week. The "new" usually fascinates her, and she becomes so extraordinarily busy that she hardly has time to eat or sleep. She is always put on committees if the organization heads do not know her, but if they do, she is carefully slated for something of no importance. After a short time her interest has shifted to something else. Thus she passes from work in behalf of blind babies to raising funds for a home for indigent actors; from energy spent in philanthropy to energy spent in learning the latest dances. Her enthusiasm never cools off, though its goal always changes.

Fortunately she is married to a rich man who views her with affection and a shrug of his shoulders. Her children know her; now and then, she becomes extraordinarily interested in their welfare, much to their disgust and rebellion, for they have long since sized her up.

She has often been on the verge of a love affair with some man who is professionally interested in something into which she has leaped for a short time. She raves about him, follows him, flatters and adores him, and then, before the poor fellow knows where he is at, she is out of love and off somewhere else. This mutability of affection has undoubtedly saved her from disaster.

Were she not rich, M. would be one of the social problems that the social workers cannot understand or handle, e. g., there is a type who never sticks to anything, not because he is bored quickly, or is inefficient, but because he is at the mercy of the new and irrelevant. Without sufficient means he throws up his job and tries to get the new work he longs to do. Sometimes he fails to get it, and then he becomes an unemployed problem.

This type of uncontrolled energy reaches its height in the manical or manic phase of the disease already described as manic depressive insanity. The "manic personality," which need not become insane, is characterized by high energy, vivacious emotions, rapid flow of thought and irrelevant associations.

4. The mesokinetic--medium or average in their energy (feeling and power)--run the range of the vast groups we call the average. This type is spurred on by necessity, custom and habit to steady work and steady living. Possessed of practical wisdom, their world is narrow, their affections only called out for their kindred and immediate friends. Their interests are largely away from their work and as a rule do not include the past or future of the race. Usually conservative, they accept the moral standards as absolute and are quick to resent changes in custom. They follow leaders cheerfully, are capable of intense loyalty to that cause which they believe to stand for their interests. Yet each individual of the mass of men, though he never rises above mediocrity, presents to his intimates a grouping of qualities and peculiarities that gives him a distinct personality.

C. is one of those individuals whose mediocre energy has stood between him and so-called success. At present he is forty and occupies about the same position that he did at twenty. As a boy he was fond of play but never excelled in any sport and never occupied a place of leadership. He had the usual pugnacious code of boys, but because he was friendly and good-natured rarely got into a fight. He liked to read and was rather above the average in intelligence, but he never tackled the difficult reading, confining himself to the "interesting" novel and easy information. He left high school when he was sixteen and immediately on leaving he dropped all study. He entered an office as errand boy and was recognized as faithful and industrious, but he showed no especial initiative or energy. In the course of time he was promoted from one position to another until he became a shipper at the age of twenty. Since this time he has remained at this post without change, except that when he got married and on a few occasions afterward, when the cost of living rose, his salary was raised.

C. is married, and his wife often "nags" him because he does not get ahead. She tells him that he has no energy and fight in him, that if he would he could do better. Sometimes he takes refuge in the statement that he has no pull, that those who have been promoted over his head are favorites for some reason or another, and he rarely recognizes the superiority of his immediate superiors, though he is loyal enough to the boss. He lives in that "quiet despair" that Thoreau so aptly describes as the life of the average man, and he seeks escape from it in smoking, in belonging to a variety of fraternal organizations, in the movies and the detective story. He is a "good" father and husband, which means that he turns over all his earnings, is faithful and kind. Except that he admonishes and punishes his children when they are "bad," he takes no constructive share in their training and leaves that to the mother, the church and the school. He and his wife are attached to one another through habit and mutual need, but they have some time since outlived passion and intense affection. She has sized him up as a failure and knows herself doomed to struggle against poverty, and he knows that she understands him. This mutual "understanding" keeps them at arm's length except in the face of danger or disaster, when they cling to each other for comfort and support. This is the history of many a marriage that on its surface is quiet and peaceful.

The hypokinetic types. We cannot separate energy display from enthusiasm, courage, intelligence, persistent purpose, etc. If I have made myself clear in the preceding pages of this book, you will realize that no character of man works alone, but all feeling, thought and action is a resultant of forces. Nevertheless, there are those in whom the fire of life burns high and others in whom it burns low, and either group may be of totally different qualities otherwise.

There are people of low energy discharge, and these it seems to me are of two main kinds,--the one where nothing seems to arouse or create powerful motives and purposes, and the other in whom the main defect is a rapidly arising exhaustion. The first I call the simple hypokinetic group and the other the irritable hypokinetic group.

The simple hypokinetic person may be one of any grade of intelligence but more commonly is of low intelligence. In any school for the feeble-minded one finds the apathetic imbecile, who can be kept at work by goading and stimulation of one kind or another, who does not tire especially, but who never works beyond a low level of speed and enthusiasm.

5. A more interesting type is T. He may be called the intelligent hypokinetic, the high-grade failure. As a baby he learned to walk late, though he talked early and well. He played in a leisurely sort of way, running only when he had to and content as a rule to be in the house. He was not seclusive, seeming to enjoy the company of other children, but rarely made any efforts to seek them out. He was quick to learn but showed only a moderate curiosity, and he rarely made any investigations on his own account. It was noticed that he seldom asked "why" in the usual manner of intelligent children.

He did fairly well in school; he had a wonderful memory and seemed to see very quickly into intricate problems. It was always a great surprise of his teachers that he was so bright, as one said, in comparison to his standing. Once or twice a zealous teacher sought to stimulate him into more effort and study, but though he responded for a short time, gradually he slipped back into his own easy pace. He went through high school, and on the basis of a splendid memory and a keen intelligence, which by this time were easily recognized, he was sent to college. He took no part in athletics and little part in the communal college activities. He had so good a command of facts and with this so cynical a point of view that he became quite a college character and was pointed out as a fellow who could lead his class if he would. As a matter of fact, nothing could spur him to real competitive effort.

We may pass briefly over his life. After he left college, he drifted from one position to another. Usually in some hack literary line. Were it not for a small income he would have starved. After a few years he become very fat and gross looking, and then came a kindly pneumonia which carried him off.

We must not mistake the stolid for the hypokinetic. There was a classmate of mine in the medical school, a large, quiet fellow, D. M., who got by everything, as the boys said, by the skin of his teeth. He worked without enthusiasm or zeal, studied infrequently and managed to pass along to his second year, at about the bottom of the class. In that year we took up bacteriology, the "bug-bear" as one punster put it, of the school. Just what it was about the subject that aroused D. M. I never knew, but a remarkable transformation took place. The man changed over, studied hard, read outside literature and actually asked for the privilege of working in the laboratory Sundays and holidays so that he might learn more. When this was known to the rest of the class, there were bets placed that he would not "last," but quite to the surprise of everybody D. M. gained in momentum as he went along. As a matter of fact, his interest on the subject grew, and he is now a bacteriologist of good standing. In fact, his lack of interest in other matters has helped him, since he has no distracting tastes or pleasures.

Thus there are persons of specialized interest and energy, and it may well be that there is for most of the hypokinetic a line of work that would act to energize them. The problem, therefore, in each case is to find the latent ability and interest and to regard no case as really hopeless. I say this despite the fact that I believe some cases are hopeless. The pessimistic attitude on the part of parent or teacher kills effort; the optimistic attitude fosters energetic effort.

6. The irritable hypokinetic. Irritability[1] of a pathological type as a phase of lowered energy is well known to every physiologist and in the practical everyday world is seen in the tired and sick. There are people who from the very start of life show lowered endurance, who respond to certain stimuli in an excessive manner and are easily exhausted. This type the neurologist calls the congenital neurasthenic, and it may be we are dealing here with some defect in the elimination of fatigue products. This, however, is only a guess, and the disease factor, if there is any, is entirely unknown. I do not pretend that the person I am to describe is entirely representative of this group. Indeed, no dozen cases would show all the symptoms and peculiarities of the irritable hypokinetic group.

[1] One must take care not to mistake the irritability which is the characteristic of all living tissue for the irritability here considered.

E. is a man at present thirty years of age. In person he is of average height, rather slender, with delicate features, somewhat bald, quick in action and speech. He flushes easily and thus often has high color, especially when fatigued or excited. This "vasomotor irritability," as the physicians call it, is quite common in this group of people, and in fact in all neurasthenia, whether acquired or congenital. Though I have described E. as belonging to the slender type of person, it is necessary to say that stout, rugged-looking people are often irritable and hypokinetic.

As a child E. "never could stand excitement or strain," as his mother says. What is meant is this: that he became overexcited under almost any circumstances and became profoundly fatigued afterwards. As we have seen, the intense diffusion of excitement throughout the whole body is a sign of the childish and inferior organism; as maturity approaches and throughout childhood excitability decreases and is better localized. When a noise is heard an infant jumps, and so do people like E., but the better controlled merely turn their head and eyes to see what the source of the noise may be. This lack of control of excitement extended in E.'s case to play, entertainment, novelty of any kind, crowds and especially to the disagreeable excitement of quarrels, fights, terrifying experiences, etc. Under anger he trembled, grew pale, and his shouts and screams were beyond control; under fear he became actually sick, vomited and showed a liability to syncope of an alarming kind. E. was not the selfish type of the neurasthenic; he was gentle and kind and ready to share with everybody, a lovable boy of an intensely sociable nature. Nevertheless, his high excitability and his quick fatigue made it necessary to shelter him, for any effort at toughening merely brought about a "breakdown."

Here we must reemphasize the fundamental importance of the fatigue reactions. The normal fatigue reaction is to feel weary, to desire rest and to be able to rest and sleep. The abnormal reaction, one directly opposed to the well-being of the individual, is to feel exhausted, to become restless and to find it difficult to sleep. There are children who thrive on excitement and exertion; they sleep sounder for it, they recuperate readily and gain in strength and endurance with every ordinary burden put upon them. There are others to whom anything but the least excitement and exertion acts as a poison, making them restless and exhausted. Not all children who show this perverse fatigue reaction grow up with it. It may be only a temporary phase of their lives, but while it lasts it is very troublesome.

In E.'s case the overexcitable hypokinetic stage lasted until about the ninth year, and then there was a great improvement, though he still was of the same general type. He became a fairly good runner for a short distance, learned to swim, though he stood the cold water poorly, was clever and graceful as a dancer and was quite popular. At sixteen he left school to enter business, because of the straitened means of his family. He entered into adolescent period later and suffered greatly from his sixteenth to nineteenth year from, fatigue, hypochondriacal fears, and had to have a good deal of medical attention at this time. Sex questions perplexed him, for he became quite passionate and at the same time had much moral repugnance to illicit relations. His sexual curiosity was intense, and he read all manner of books on the subject, went to the burlesque shows on the sly and almost became obsessed on sex matters.

At this stage he made only a mediocre showing in his business career, though his evident honesty secured him promotion to a clerk's position. After his nineteenth year he seemed to gain again in energy and endurance and was fairly well until his twenty-eighth year, though he had to nurse his endurance at all times, developed very regular habits of sleep, diet, etc., and in this manner got along. Once he had an opportunity to join an organization which would have paid him a better salary, but the hours were irregular, and it would have demanded much exertion and excitement, so he passed it by.

In 1917 he joined the army, partly because of patriotic motives, partly because he was convinced that army life might develop his endurance and energy. He was sent to an army post in the South and within two months of his entrance had "broken down." He was sleepless, restless, was irritable and "jumpy," had lost appetite and the feeling of endurance. Life seemed intolerable, though he had no desire to do away with himself, for he had no quarrel with life itself but was disgusted with his inferiority. He was hospitalized, but this did little good and he was afterwards discharged as medically unfit.

This, of course, hurt his pride, but essentially he was greatly relieved. He made but slow improvement until through the munificence of Uncle Sam he was given a new start in life through the Vocational Reeducation Board. Like many other city men, he has dreamed of the "chicken farm" as the ideal occupation free from too much work and yet lucrative. This, of course, is a mistaken notion, but while learning the work he is happy and is slowly regaining his energy. What time will bring forth no one can tell, but this is certain: throughout his life he will have to rely on good habits, carefully adjusted to his energy, in order to protect himself from the bankruptcy that so easily comes on him. A philosophy of life which will help to control his irritability is necessary, and the intelligent of the hypokinetic irritable acquire the habits and the philosophy necessary for their welfare.

Any neurologist could cite any number of such cases with varying traits of character, high intelligence or feeble-minded, controlled in morals or uncontrolled, happily or unhappily situated, whose central difficulty is an irritable and easily exhausted store of energy. They are easily excited and excitement burns them out; that is the long and short of their situation. Sex, love, hatred, anger, strain, fear in all its forms, illness,--all these and many other emotions and happenings may break them down. Such people, and those who care for them, must not make the mistake of thinking that rough handling, strenuosity, will cure what is apparently a fixed character.

There is an irritable, high-energy type--irritable hyperkinetic--that is well contrasted with the foregoing. This explosive personality works by fits and starts but does not wear out, merely, as it were, settles down to his ordinary pace when he rests up. He is like a six-day bicycle racer who plugs along but every now and then sprints like mad for a few laps and then comes back to a pace that would kill the average rider. I shall not trouble to cite such a case, but I can think of at least one man of good attainments who is of this explosive hyperkinetic type. He responds to every demand with a burst of energy, and his quota of ordinary activities is simply appalling.

Neglecting the further types of energy display for the simple reason that this quality shades off into every conceivable type and is also a part of every nature, we turn to the types of emotional mood display. With these it is necessary to consider excitability as well, and the most interesting beings are here our objects of study.

I wish first to emphasize my belief that where there is a great natural variation in excitability and emotionality in individuals, there is not nearly so much in races as we think, and that social heredity is tradition and cultural level plays the more important role in this. My friend and colleague, Dr. A. Warren Stearns, has made a study which shows that while the immigrant Italian is excitable and quick to anger and of revengeful reactions, his American-born descendent has so far controlled and changed this type of reaction that he does not especially figure in police records, in murders or assaults. My own studies of the second and especially the third generation Jew show there is an almost complete approach to the "American" type in emotional display, in what is known as poise. This third generation Jewish-American has dropped all the mannerisms of excitability in gesture and voice, and his adherence to good form includes that attitude of nonchalant humor so characteristic of the American.

1. The generally excitable, overemotional type. This type is more common in the Latin, Hebrew and Celtic races. In some respects it corresponds to the hypokinetic irritable, but it is not necessarily hypokinetic. The artistic type of person, so called, is of this group, but is, of course, talented as well. Talent need not be present, and there are persons of no artistic ability whatever who show a generalized, excitable-emotional temperament. All young children show the main traits of this type, and there is something essentially simple about all these folk, no matter how civilized or sophisticated they get to be.

A. L., a woman of fifty, belongs to this group. She is a Jewess and now a widow. All of her life her character and temperament have been the same, and though her experiences have been varied she has not in any essential altered. This last is rather characteristic of the group, for experience has but little effect on their emotional reactions.

A. L. cries very easily and readily, but her tears are easily dried and her joy is grotesquely childlike. She is readily frightened, worries without restraint and finds a melancholy satisfaction in the worst. At the same time, her fears do not persist and are easily dissipated by encouragement or good fortune. She is readily angered and "raises a row" with great facility and without restraint. For this reason her relatives and friends become panic-stricken when she becomes angry, for they know that she does not hesitate to make an embarrassing scene. In the efforts to conciliate her they are apt to give her her own way, as a result of which she is the proverbial spoiled child, capitalizing her weakness.

Our Jewess uses her emotions for effect, which means that she has become theatrical. Though there is reality in her emotional display, time and the advantages she has gained have brought enough finish and restraint to her manifestations to gain the designation artistic. True, it is a crude artistry, for intelligence does not sufficiently guide it, and her art is used sometimes indiscriminately and inopportunely. As she grows older the value of her tears is less, and she is becoming that prime nuisance, the elderly scold.

Among the emotional types well recognized by the neurologist is that known as the cyclothymic. In the individuals of this group there is a periodicity to mood (rather than to emotions). There is a definitely pathological trend to the cyclothymic, and in its most marked form one sees the recurring depressions and excitement of Manic Depressive Insanity.

Aside from these pathological forms, there are persons who show curious periodic changes in mood. They become depressed for no especial reason, are "blue" for day after day and then quickly return to their normal. Sometimes these blue spells alternate with periods of exaltation and happiness, but in my experience this is far less common than periodic blue spells, a kind of recurrent anhedonia.

L. D. is ordinarily what is known as a vivacious person. Bright, talkative, keen in her discriminations, she has all her life been at the mercy of strange alterations in mood, alterations which come and go without what seems to others adequate reason.

As a child L. D. was sick a great deal. She showed an unusual susceptibility to infection, and it was not until she was nine years of age that she attended school regularly. Her illnesses made it impossible to discipline her, and so she has always been a bit "spoiled," though her kind and generous nature makes her a charming person. But more important than the fact that she could not be disciplined is the lowering of energy that these sicknesses produced, a lowering marked mainly by a liability to fatigue and depression.

Let there come a sickness, and this woman's stock of hopeful mood goes and there results a loss of interest in life, a loss of zest and joyousness.

A digression,--and a return to the theme of the first chapter of this book. The dependence of the mental life on bodily structure, equally true in the both sexes, is exquisitely demonstrated in woman. In many women there occurs an extraordinary increase of sex desire just before the menstrual period and in some to the point where it causes great internal conflict. Others show moderate depression and even confusion at this time, and to the majority of women some mood and thought change is taken for granted. At the menopause mental difficulties to the point of insanity are witnessed, and in some cases the change is permanent. Back of mood is the entire organic life of the organism, and back of the nature of our thoughts and deeds is mood.

A peculiarity of fatigue is remarkably well shown by this person. When she is tired or convalescent a depressing thought sticks, becomes an obsession, a fixed idea, to the plague of her life. Thus when she was nursing her first baby the night feedings exhausted her. One night, half asleep and half awake, with the vigorous little animal pulling away at her breast, she watched the pulsing fontanelle on the top of the baby's head, and the thought came to her how dreadfully easy it would be to injure the brain beneath. Her heart pounced in fear, she almost fainted at the thought, and yet it "stuck" and came back to her with each random association. I need not detail how the idea recurred a dozen times a day and brought the fear that she was going insane. She stopped nursing the baby at night, got a good rest, and the idea disappeared. She was "able to shake off" when rested that which was a hideous obsession when fatigued.

Indeed, one might speak of persons of this type as hypothymic as well as cyclothymic. The hypothymic are those whose stock of courage and hope is easily exhausted, who become easily discouraged. They are borrowers of energy and vigor, they need sturdier folk around them; often they are said to be sensitive, and while this is sometimes true, it is more often the case that they are more affected. That is, two persons may notice the same thing or suffer the same sickness, but the so-called sensitive has a reserve of courage and energy that disappears, whereas the other has enough left in stock so that he does not feel any change.

The extraordinary complexity of human character is well illustrated by C. D. She is hypothymic or cyclothymic to the little affairs of life and to the minor illnesses. Yet when her family fortunes were greatly imperilled by a financial crisis, she stood up against the strain far better than did her husband, a man sturdy and buoyant in most of the affairs of life. His ego was more concerned with financial fortune than was hers, and against this ill she was the philosopher and not he.

We may well contrast L. D. with her husband. He belongs to the sturdy in emotions and morals,--the stable. Dark days and bright days, sickness and health, fatigue and rest seem to impair his courage, hope and general cheerfulness of mood but little. He has a high organic balance and a well-built-up philosophy. I started to say of him that he is an optimist, but this is not true. He is cheerful, but he does not sing, "Tra la la, all the things that are, are good." He says, "There are bad things, but I must carry on and fight the good fight." His is a philosophy of courage and endurance, but not of optimistic twaddle. He is too wide-brained to speak of life as "all good" when he knows of inherited disease, cruelty, preventable poverty, gross neglect and unmerited misfortune. Yet he lends hope and comfort to the afflicted, and he has an unvarying comfort for his cyclothymic mate.

He has built up his ego around a business, one in which there was sunk not only his own fortune but that of a host of friends. When this was so threatened as to seem inevitably lost, his ego was deeply wounded, he lost courage and hope and then needed the strength of his wife. This she gave, and when the tide of affairs turned, his own courage was ready and unimpaired. We are like trees,--the hard, strong, knotty parts of our fiber are distributed in irregular fashion, and he who seems strongest has a weak place somewhere. Attack that, and his resistance, courage and hope disappear.

While there are the types of mood and emotional make-up, there are curious monothymic types, people who habitually tend to react with one emotion or mood.

The fear type. It must again be emphasized that we cannot separate emotion, mood, instinct, intelligence in our analysis. And so we shall speak of individuals of this or that type when what we mean is that they reacted habitually and remarkably in one direction. Thus with the man F., who has quick imagination, and whose ability to forecast is inextricably mixed with a liability to fear. It is true that some do not fear because they do not foresee, and that placidity and calmness are less often due to courage than to lack of imagination.

F. feared animals excessively as a child and injury to himself as a boy, so that he played few rough games. To a large extent his parents fostered this fear in him by carefully guarding and watching him, by putting him through that neurasthenic regimen so brilliantly described by Arthur Guiterman in his story of the aseptic pup. Yet he had a brother as carefully brought up as himself who became a rough-and-tumble lad, with as little likelihood to fear as any boy. So that we may only assume that F.'s training fostered fear in him; it did not cause it.

At the age of thirteen the fear of death entered F.'s life, the occasion being the death of an uncle. The mourning, the quick fleeting sight of the dead man in the black box, the interment of the once vigorous, joyous man in the earth struck terror into the heart of the boy. From that time much of his life was controlled by his struggles with the fear of death, and his history is his reaction to that fear. At fourteen he astonished his free-thinking family by becoming a devout Christian, by praying, attending church regularly and by becoming so moral in his conduct as to warrant the belief that there was something wrong with him. Indeed, had a psychiatrist examined him at this time, there is no doubt he would have diagnosed his condition as a beginning Dementia Precox. But he was not; he simply was compensating for his fear of death.

At sixteen he entered an academy where he was forced to go into athletics. The fear of injury and death plagued him so that he broke down, but this breakdown did not last long, and he reentered athletics and did fairly well. Indeed, in order to break himself of fear, he became outwardly a rather daring gymnast, hoping that what he had so often read of the sickly and puny becoming strong and vigorous through training would be true of him. As soon as he reached a stage in school where compulsory training was dropped, he discontinued athletics, with much inward relief. In fact, pride, fear of being considered a coward, was mainly responsible for his efforts in this direction.

In college he fell under the influence of Omar Khayam and the epicurean reaction to death. He feverishly entered pleasure and swung easily from religious fervor to a complete agnosticism. He became a first-nighter, knew all the chorus girls it was possible for him to become acquainted with, learned to drink but never learned to enjoy it. In fact, after each sensual indulgence his reaction against himself led him to a despair which might have terminated in suicide were it not that he feared death more than the reproaches of his conscience. Then he fell under the influence of a group of men and women in his college town, philanthropists and social reformers, whose enthusiasm and energy seemed to him miraculous, and as he grew to know them he realized with a something like ecstasy and yet governed by intelligence, that in such work was a compensation for death that might satisfy both his emotions and his intelligence. Again to the surprise of his parents, and in the face of their prediction that he would soon "tire" of this fad, he entered into their activities and proved himself a devoted worker. Too devoted, for now and then he needs medical attention, and it was in one of these "neurasthenic" periods that I met him. I learned that the spur that kept him going, that made him energetic, was the fear that death would overtake him before he achieved anything worth while; that he hated to die and was appalled by the thought of death, but that he could forget all this in work of a socially useful kind.

F. might almost stand for mankind in his reactions to death. He seemed to me almost too good to be true as a demonstration of a pet thesis of mine, namely, that the fear of death is behind an enormous amount of men's deeds and beliefs. His reaction was of the compensatory type, where the fear arouses counter-emotions, counter-activities. F.'s is a noble response to fear, just as the cowardly reaction is the ignoble response.

I shall not depict the coward. There are some in whose lives the fear of death, injury, illness or loss is in constant operation to prevent activity, to lower energy and effort. One finds the coward very commonly in the clinics for nervous diseases, and in some cases the formidable term of psychasthenia is merely camouflage for the more direct English word. There is a type of the timid, who will not stand up for their rights, who receive meekly, as if it were their due, the buffets of fortune. This type is well exemplified in F. B., who passes through life cheated by every rogue and walked on by any strong-willed person that comes along. As a boy he was bullied by nearly all his playmates, did the chores, was selected for the "booh" parts in games and never dared resent it, though he was fully conscious that he was being put upon. When he went to work in a factory he was the one selected for all those practical jokes in which minor cruelty manifests itself. His parents also bullied him, so that he was compelled to turn over most of his earnings to them and was allowed to keep so little that he was shabby, half-starved and without any of the luxuries for which even his timid soul longed.

F. B. was mortally afraid of girls; they seemed to him to be terrible and beautiful creatures, very scornful and awe-inspiring. They made him feel inferior in a way that sent him edging from their presence, and though he sometimes surged with passion he avoided any contact with them.

As a good workman he received good pay, for he chanced, by the merest luck, to fall into the hands of a kind employer, who profited by his kindness, for F. B. gave more than a dollar of value for each dollar he received. Timid, he gave to the employer a great loyalty, which was in part based on his awe of any aggressive personality.

In society this man was tongue-tied, embarrassed and overawed by the well-dressed and prosperous-looking. His sense of inferiority was in no way compensated for, and to avoid pain he became a sort of recluse, doing his work and returning to his shell, so to speak, each night.

When he was thirty-six his mother died, his father having died earlier. This left him rather well to do, for his thrifty parents had well utilized his earnings. At once a thoughtful woman of his acquaintance, distantly related by marriage, set out to capture him, and by forcing the issue led him to the altar. Needless to say, she ruled the household, and F. B.'s only consolation lay in the crop of children that soon appeared in the house, for timidity is no barrier to parenthood. This consolation rather tends to disappear as the children grow older, for they become his masters. Such men as F. B. have a collar around their necks to which any one may fit a chain.

Does F. B. rejoice in inferiority, in the masochistic sense spoken of before? Is his humility a sign of inversion, in the Freudian sense, a sort of homosexuality? Possibly, and there are very crude and coarse phrases of the common man indicating a sexual feeling in all victory and defeat. But I am inclined to call this a sort of monothymia, a mood of fear and negative self- feeling coloring all the reactions.

I have previously cited the case of the man obsessed by fear in all the relations of life,--shrinking, self-acknowledged inferiority--who lost it with "a few drinks under my belt." "Dutch courage" drove from many a man the inferiority and the fear that plagued his soul. True, it drove him into a worse situation, but for a few moments he tasted something of the life that heroes and the great have. If we can ever find something that will not degrade as it exalts, all the world will rush to use it.

Of the monothymic types the choleric or angry are about as common as those predisposed to fear. The anger emotion is aroused by a thwarting of the instincts and purposes, and in the main the strongly egoistic are those most given to explosive or chronic anger. The angry feeling, however, must be controlled, else failure or social dislike awaits the choleric. When a man wins success he frequently allows himself the luxury of indulging his anger because he feels his power cannot be challenged. The Duchess in "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland," with her choleric "off with his head" whenever any one contradicted her, is a caricature, and a very apt one, of this type of person. We think of the bull-necked Henry the Eighth--"bluff King Hal"--as the choleric type, though here we also assume a certain cyclothymia, great good nature alternating with fierce anger.

I have in mind G. as a type of the angry person. G. cannot bear to have any one contradict him. Either he swallows his resentment, if he is in the presence of one he cannot afford to antagonize, or else he starts to abuse the victim verbally. He is sarcastic or violent according to circumstances; rarely is he pleasant in manner or speech. Though he is honest and said to be well-meaning, his ego explodes in the presence of other self-assertive egos. When a man truckles to him he is angry at his insincerity; when the other disputes his statements, or even offers other views, he finds himself confronted by one who has taken deep offense. As a result G. has no real friends, and this has added fuel to his anger. Often he has made up his mind to "control" himself, to keep down his scorn and rage, but rarely has he been able to maintain a proper attitude for any length of time.

In the last analysis a high self-valuation is part of the chronic choleric make-up, a conceit of overweening proportions. The man who realizes his own proneness to err, and who keeps in mind the relative unimportance of his aims and powers, is not apt to explode in the face of opposition or contradiction. G. is as a rule absolutely sure of his belief, tastes and importance, though he is crude in knowledge, coarse in tastes and of no particular importance except to himself. He is the "I am Sir Oracle; when I ope my lips let no dog bark."

Anger is often associated with brutality or deeds of violence. There is cold-blooded brutality, but by far the most of it has anger behind it. I know one man who in his youth was hot-tempered, i. e., quick to anger and quick to repent, a charming man who gradually learned control and passed into late middle life serene and amiable.

One day he was driving his car when it became obstructed by two young rowdies driving another car. With him was his wife. When he expostulated with the men, one of them turned with a sneer and said something insulting at which the other laughed. The next thing my friend knew he was in the other car, striking heavy blows at the pair (he is a very powerful man.), and it was only the opportune arrival of a policeman that prevented a murder.

"Whatever came over me I hardly understand," said he afterwards sadly. "I used to have rages like that as a boy, but I have been very well controlled for over thirty years. I was a raging demon for a while, and it appalls me to think that in me there lurks such a devil of anger."

Akin to anger, akin to fear, is suspicion. There is a sullen non-social personality type whose reactions are characterized by suspicion. He never willingly gives his trust to any one, and when he hands over his destinies to any one, as all must do now and then, he is consumed with dread, doubt and latent hostility.

Every one is familiar with men like H. He is full of distrust for his fellow men. Himself a man of low ideals, he ascribes to every one the same attitude. "What's in it for you?" is his first thought concerning anybody with whom he deals.

He has a little store and eyes each customer who comes in as if they come to rob him. As a result his trade is largely emergency, transient trade, those who come because they have nowhere else to go or else do not know him. The salesmen, who supply the articles he sells have long since cut him off their list for desirable goods, and his only callers are those salesmen who are working up new lines and are under orders to try every one. H. has moments and days when he believes the whole world is against him, and on such occasions he locks his store and refuses to see any one. But at his best he cannot yield his ego to full free intercourse with others. It seems as though there were a hard shell surrounding him, and the world as it flowed around never brought love and trust through to him.

H. is not insane in the ordinary sense, but he is one of those paranoid persons we spoke of previously. Turn to L., a true case of mental disease, a paranoid whose career strangely resembles some of the great historic paranoids, for it must be remembered that man has been imposed upon by those who deceived themselves, who fully believed the strange and incredible things they succeeded in making credible to others.

The fantastic paranoid is made up of the same materials as the rest of us, except that his ego feeling is without insight, and his suspicion grows and grows until it reaches the delusion of persecution. L. was a bright boy, always conceited and given to non-social acts. Thus he never would play with the other boys unless he were given the leading role, and he could not bear to hear others praised or to praise them! Parenthetically the role that jealousy plays in the conduct of men and women needs exposition, and I recommend that some Ph. D. merit his degree by a thesis on this subject. When he was a little older he got the notion that hats were bad for the hair, and being proud of his own thick black mop, he went without a hat for over a year, despite the tears and protestations of his family and the ridicule of his friends. There is no one so ready to die for a cause, good or bad, as the paranoid.

He entered the medical school, and to this day there is none of his classmates who has forgotten him. Proud, even haughty, with only one or two intimates, he studied hard and did very good work. Now and then he astonished the class by taking direct issue with some professor, disputing a theory or a fact with the air of an authority and proposing some other idea, logically developed but foolishly based, as if his training were sufficient. It is characteristic of all paranoid philosophy and schemes that they despise real experimentation, that they start with some postulate that has no basis in work done and go on with a minute hyper-logic that deceives the unsophisticated.

Though L. was "bright," there were better men in his class, and they received the honors. L. was deeply offended at this and claimed to his own friends that the professors were down on him, especially a certain professor of medicine, who, so L. intimated, was afraid that L.'s theories would displace his own and so was interested to keep him down. This feeling was intensified when he came up for the examinations to a certain famous hospital and was turned down. The real reason for this failure was his unpopularity with his fellow students, for they let it be known to the examiners that L. would undoubtedly be hard to get along with, and it was part of the policy of the hospital to consider the personality of an applicant as well as his ability.