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THE PROBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHHjD 
 
THE PROBLEM OF THE 
 NERVOUS CHILD 
 
 BY 
 ELIDA EVANS 
 
 INTRODUCTION BY 
 
 C. G. JUNG, M.D., LL.D. 
 
 *' He who reads to criticise seeks only to 
 
 hide his own defects, but he who reads 
 
 for understanding will find the truth." 
 
 Ancient Maxim 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 PODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 
 
 1920 
 
A^ 
 
 
 Copyright, 1920, by 
 DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY, Inc. 
 
 4 
 
 ■<^o^ 
 
 Q%e <fiuinn & Soben Company 
 
 BOOK MANUFACTURERS 
 RAHWAY NEW JERSEY 
 
 APR i3l92U 
 0)C(.A565540 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 By De. C. G. Jung, 
 
 Zurich, 
 
 Switzerland. 
 
 I HAVE read the manuscript of Mrs. Evans' 
 book, The Problem of the Nervous Child, with 
 great pleasure and interest. Mrs. Evans' knowl- 
 edge of her subject matter is based on the solid 
 foundation of practical experience, an experience 
 gained in the difficult and toilsome treatment and 
 education of nervous children. Whoever has had 
 to deal with nervous children knows what an 
 amount of patience, as well as skill, is needed to 
 guide a child out of a wrong pathological atti- 
 tude into a normal life. This book, as the reader 
 can see on almost every page, is the fruit of an 
 extended work in the field of neuroses and abnor- 
 mal characters. Despite the fact that there are 
 numbers of books on education, there are 
 very few that occupy themselves with a child's 
 most intimate problems in such a careful and 
 painstaking way. It is self-evident that this con- 
 tribution will be of great value to any one inter- 
 ested in educational questions. But the physi- 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 dan should be particularly indebted to the au- 
 thor, as her book will be a valuable co-operation 
 in the fight against the widespread evil of neu- 
 roses in adults. /More and more the neurologist 
 of today realizes the fact that the origin of the 
 nervousness of his patients is very rarely of re- 
 cent date, but that it traces back to the early im- 
 pressions and developments in childhood. There 
 lies the source of many later nervous diseases. 
 Most of the neuroses originate from a wrong psy- 
 chological attitude which hinders the adjustment 
 to the environment or to the individual's own re- 
 quirements. This wrong psychological position 
 which is at the bottom of almost every neurosis 
 has, as a rule, been built up during the course of 
 years and very often began in early childhood as 
 a consequence of incompatible familiar influences. 
 Knowing this, Mrs. Evans lays much stress on 
 the parent's mental attitude and its importance 
 for the child's psychology. One easily overlooks 
 the enormous power of imitation in children. 
 Parents too easily content themselves with the 
 belief that a thing hidden from the child can- 
 not influence it. They forget that the infantile 
 imitation is less concerned with the action than 
 with the parent's state of mind from which the 
 action emanates. I have frequently observed 
 children who were particularly influenced by cer- 
 tain unconscious tendencies of the parents and, 
 in such cases, I have often advised the treatment 
 
 vi 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 of the mother rather than of the child. Through 
 the enlightenment of the parents, their wrong in- 
 fluences can at least be avoided, and thus much 
 can be done for the prevention of later neuroses 
 in the children. 
 
 The author particularly insists upon the im- 
 portance of watching the manifestations of the 
 sexual instinct in childhood. Any one concerned 
 with the education of abnormal children will con- 
 firm the existence and the frequency of sexual 
 symptoms in these children. Despite the fact that 
 sexual activity does not belong to the infantile 
 age, it frequently manifests itself in a symptom- 
 atic way, viz. as a symptom of abnormal develop- 
 ment. An abnormal development does not pro- 
 vide sufficient opportunity for the normal display 
 of the child's energies. Thus, the normal outlet 
 being blocked, the energy accumulates itself and 
 forcibly seeks an abnormal outlet in premature 
 and perverted sexual interests and activities. 
 Infantile sexuality is the most frequent symptom 
 of a morbid psychological attitude. According to 
 my view, it is wrong to consider sexual phenom- 
 ena in early childhood as the expression of an 
 organic disposition; most of the cases are due to 
 an environment not fitting the child's psychologi- 
 cal nature. The attitude of the child toward life 
 is certainly determined by the inherited disposi- 
 tion, but only to a certain extent; on the other 
 side it is the result of the immediate parental in- 
 
 vii 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 flnences and of the educational measures. While 
 the inherited disposition cannot be changed, 
 these latter influences can be improved by suitable 
 methods, and thus the original unfavourable dis- 
 position can be overcome. Mrs. Evans' book 
 shows the way, and how to treat even the most 
 intricate cases. 
 
 KirsNACHT, near ZiJBlCH, 
 October, 1919. 
 
 VUl 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER 
 I 
 
 Statement of the Pboblem 
 
 PAGB 
 
 1 
 
 II 
 
 The Development of Eepression 
 
 . 31 
 
 III 
 
 Symbolic Thought . . . . 
 
 41 
 
 IV 
 
 The Child and the Adult . 
 
 . 62 
 
 V 
 
 Mental Behaviour of the Child 
 
 . 84 
 
 VI 
 
 Defence Reactions . . . . 
 
 113 
 
 VII 
 
 The Parent Complex . 
 
 . 130 
 
 VIII 
 
 Buried Emotions .... 
 
 . 160 
 
 IX 
 
 Child Training . . . 
 
 . 181 
 
 X 
 
 Muscle Erotism . . . . 
 
 . 195 
 
 XI 
 
 The Tyrant Child . . . . 
 
 222 
 
 XII 
 
 Teaching of Right and Wrong . 
 
 . 246 
 
 XIII 
 
 Self and Character . 
 
 . 269 
 
 
 Index 
 
 . 297 
 
THE PROBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CBILD 
 
THE PROBLEM OF THE 
 NERVOUS CHILD 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM 
 
 The purpose of this book is to aid those parents 
 who in the training or education of their children 
 have arrived at the point where the methods al- 
 ready used have proved inadequate. The child 
 does not respond normally to their most earnest 
 endeavours, and the parent, if he or she has 
 thought much about the matter, has become 
 slightly perplexed, if not actually desperate. I 
 have aimed, not at adding another to the already 
 Long list of textbooks explaining psychoanalytical 
 treatment for nervous troubles, but only at pro- 
 viding a simple introduction to the subject from 
 the special point of view of the relation between 
 parent and child. My attempt to present so large 
 a subject in so small a compass will require me to 
 make statements in a seemingly dogmatic man- 
 ner, without supporting them with proofs, which 
 I should, but for lack of space, be most happy to 
 give. "With few exceptions, I have avoided the 
 use of technical terms, which are almost neces- 
 
 1 
 
THE PROBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHILD 
 
 sarily used in describing the ideas fundamental 
 to psychoanalysis. The book, therefore, is ad- 
 dressed primarily to the steadily increasing num- 
 ber of parents who are sufficiently courageous 
 (and never has courage been so essential in every 
 sphere of life as it is at the present day) to over- 
 come their prejudices against scientific methods 
 of managing children. 
 
 One of the practical results of the newer psy- 
 chology of the unconscious is the discovery of a 
 means, never before systematically used, of 
 arousing the child's interest in his school environ- 
 ment ; another, which is much more striking in its 
 novelty, a means of adapting a child to the home 
 environment. This seems the more strange, as 
 it is thought by many that, of all places, the home 
 is the one where the child is expected to be the 
 best fitted. Most of the students of child-training, 
 at any rate that part of them for whom this book 
 is intended, will have had no scientific study of 
 the laws of human development but will have tried 
 in a more or less systematic way, to profit by the 
 lessons of their own childhood in guiding youth 
 along the difficult path of infancy and the still 
 more arduous path of adolescence. And if it is 
 desirable to use as few technical terms as possi- 
 ble, it is still more desirable to avoid abstruse 
 discussions. I shall, therefore, give only the end 
 results of present-day research and observation 
 on the subject, with examples of cases. 
 
 2 
 
STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM 
 
 THE NEGATIVE CHARACTER 
 
 These cases will show that every child has a 
 negative character as well as a positive or affirma- 
 tive one. The child takes pleasure not only in 
 complying with the suggestions of parents and 
 others but also in going contrary to them. This 
 universal tendency to go against advice or direc- 
 tion is what I mean by this negative character. 
 To be sure the negative character of the child is 
 of great value to him in his contact with the world 
 in later life; but it is most important that the 
 parents should not be the most frequent object 
 of this negative activity. The parents, on the 
 other hand, should know how to manage the in- 
 stinctive resistance of their children, a resistance 
 which is essential to the rightly developed char- 
 acter of all humans. Its manifestations are 
 therefore inevitable in children, who are the most 
 natural of humans. The parents who see this 
 trait as a necessary trait of all character, will 
 realize that it has only to be directed from the 
 home outward to the world to become one of the 
 most valuable traits possessed by the child. They 
 will, therefore, be the more anxious to understand 
 how the expression of this negative character in 
 the home can be diminished by the child's home 
 training. For in the home, where peace and har- 
 mony should reign, it is desirable to have as little 
 friction and antagonism as possible. 
 
 3 
 
THE PROBLEM OF THE NERVOIJiS CHH^D 
 
 There is a reason why the negative character 
 of the child is sometimes brought out and devel- 
 oped to the uttermost in some homes, while the 
 atmosphere of others does not furnish the condi- 
 tions for its growth. This cause frequently lies in 
 the actions of the parents, in their treatment of 
 the child. Most parents, however, and most teach- 
 ers, who ought to be prepared on this point, as 
 soon as the information contained in this and 
 similar books ^ can be assimilated, are profoundly 
 ignorant, through no fault of their own, of the 
 way in which their own actions affect the children 
 under their care. 
 
 As soon as the child can use words he is almost 
 universally, by parent and teacher alike, supposed 
 to be able to reason with the thoughts which these 
 words represent to adults — a very illogical sup- 
 position for the adult to make. If the child's 
 physical ability to say ^^ ethics," ** moral princi- 
 ples, '^ ^* psychology,'' ^^epistemology," implied 
 an understanding of what the terms meant, then 
 and only then would teacher and parents have a 
 right to expect a child's acts to be moral. But the 
 parent, acting with an inevitable unreason, ex- 
 pects in the child an understanding of the thmgs 
 
 1 Compare Wilfrid Lay: Man*s Unconscious Conflict (N. Y., 
 1917) and The Child's Unconscious Mind (1919). 
 
 4 
 
 / 
 
STATEMENT OF THE PEOBLEM 
 
 denoted by words which the child himself can only 
 hear and pronounce. Now and then this discrep- 
 ancy flashes into momentary clearness to the pa- 
 rent who hears a child innocently repeat some 
 profanity or obscenity which he may have picked 
 up on the street. 
 
 The first signs of interest and activity in sur- 
 roundings are shown by the asking of innumera- 
 ble questions. They are simple and disconnected. 
 Where? Who? Why? How? The limited ex- 
 perience of the child causes much repetition. 
 Words are learned before meanings and accepted 
 uses of words. Mere perception is intellectually 
 developed into conception. If in answering these 
 questions we go far ahead of the child's experi- 
 ence of life, our words have no meaning for 
 him. Here is a pitfall for the unwary parent 
 or teacher who is ignorant of the slow growth 
 of the child's power to think. A parent often 
 mistakes for real knowledge a child's facility in 
 picking up words and his apt attempts at using 
 them. 
 
 The child has eyes and sees not, has ears and 
 hears not, simply because he has not had the ex- 
 perience which alone constitutes true seeing and 
 hearing. For this reason there arises a very pe- 
 culiar and generally unappreciated condition. 
 The child seems to understand because he can 
 repeat words. Therefore the parent, having 
 caused the child to learn and repeat a number of 
 
 5 
 
THE PROBLEM OF THE NEEVOUS CHH^D 
 
 words which express high moral aims, fatuously 
 thinks the child understands and wishes to attain 
 those aims. 
 
 An illustration is seen when parents are trying 
 to arouse a feeling of repentance in a child, who 
 has wilfully disobeyed, and insist that the re- 
 pentance be shown in a set phrase of ^ * I am very 
 sorry, please forgive me for being so naughty." 
 There has been no change of heart in the child 
 nor greater understanding of moral responsi- 
 bility, but the parents usually feel they have won 
 a great victory and are ignorant of the fact that 
 the child has not meant every word he repeated. 
 When he is again allowed to go out and play he 
 rarely shows any desire to better his future con- 
 duct. If there has been punishment he goes out 
 to find something to smash or to beat up his com- 
 panions, but if he has a gentler nature and the 
 life current does not flow so swiftly within him, 
 his bruised feelings are too sore for action. And 
 such quiet reactions are mistaken for repentance. 
 As I look back over the youthful years of a gen- 
 eration ago, I find that the boy or girl who would 
 really say '^I ought not to have done that. My 
 parents know what is best for me and I will never 
 do it again'' has often been dissipated in college 
 life, and morally weak. Through thoughtlessness 
 parents acquire a habit of taking it for granted 
 that the child should put a high valuation on the 
 parents' services, which, however, the child can- 
 
 6 
 
STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM 
 
 not do, as he has not yet sufficient reasoning 
 power to appreciate them. 
 
 The mental disposition of the child, really so 
 little understood by parents, is entirely deter- 
 mined by his very early environment, unless he is 
 physically burdened by afflictions visited upon him 
 by the sins of his forefathers. This disposition is 
 composed of a veritable potpourri of family influ- 
 ences, and is frequently a great obstacle to the 
 individual in his endeavour to accommodate him- 
 self to the world outside of the family. It is the 
 unquestioned duty of the parent so to influence 
 the child, not alone by words but also by the much 
 more potent actions of everyday conduct, that 
 his natural cravings and instinctive activities 
 may be guided to a conscious purpose and intelli- 
 gent action, and that he may be able to climb over 
 the family environment and attain the essential 
 characteristics of an independent man. 
 
 IMITATION 
 
 The discrepancy between the child's ready use 
 of words, the meanings of which he does not un- 
 derstand, and his great difficulty in grasping thei 
 moral relations of his acts is explained by the 
 fact that his first means of fitting himself into his 
 social surroundings are imitative. Even we 
 adults, when suddenly set in a novel social en- 
 vironment, are likely to feel awkward in our 
 
 7 
 
THE PKOBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CBILD 
 
 anxiety to appear experienced. We carefully 
 watch other people and do as they do. Not all 
 imitation, however, is deliberate. An example is 
 the contagious cough that runs around the con- 
 gregation in church, or the fit of yawning that one 
 bored or sleepy person catches from another. We 
 may be surprised to find ourselves thus coughing 
 or yawning, and so far is it from being intentional 
 that we may find it difficult to stop. 
 
 In the child imitation is even more spontaneous. 
 It has indeed a very important function to per- 
 form, as it puts the present-day child in posses- 
 sion of a degree of proficiency in various forms 
 of activity which he would not be able to acquire, 
 unless he had them before his eyes in actual oper- 
 ation. These are things which the race has 
 needed and taken long ages to develop. But the 
 child, seeing them, can imitate them readily, or 
 at least can attain in a short time a proficiency in 
 actions which have been brought to perfection 
 only by evolution during the development of the 
 race. 
 
 The remark is often made that children in one 
 family, even with the same bringing up, are so 
 different. Twins of the same sex, though perhaps 
 having strong facial resemblance when children, 
 will in later life develop different tendencies. 
 Observation shows us that in large families chil- 
 dren are not treated in the same way. It is not 
 possible for pare^rits to do so, Parents are inflU" 
 
 8 ■ 
 
STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM 
 
 enced in the treatment of children by the fact that 
 each hour of the day brings to the parents varying 
 emotions, disappointments, joys and sorrows. 
 The child's hourly experience in the home thus 
 depends both upon the reactions which the pa- 
 rents have made to their surroundings when they 
 were children, and upon the effect on the mother 
 and father of the surroundings which the child 
 may or may not have comprehended. Thus ai\ 
 accident to parents which the child may have seen, 
 but in which he has not himself been injured, such 
 as the runaway of a horse, may have the effect 
 of causing the child ever after to dislike horses. 
 Also it may have the other effect of making the 
 parents over-careful about the child's experience 
 with horses. Or the parents' attitude toward 
 ^ach other may have the effect of determining the 
 sunny or cloudy temperament of the child, a qual- 
 ity which is likely to persist into later life and be- 
 come a mental habit. 
 
 Another factor in the home influence of the 
 child is that of prenatal conditions. The mother, 
 through some unpleasant experience during her 
 pregnancy, may have formed an unpleasant as- 
 sociation with the child which will affect her sub- 
 sequent treatment of it. Or financial troubles 
 may have occurred to make the child an unex- 
 pected burden. Again, the carrying out of paren- 
 tal theories of bringing up children may be at- 
 tempted with a first child, and with later children 
 
 9 
 
THE PEOBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHH^D 
 
 abandoned, on account of lack of perseverance, or 
 other human weakness. The father, remembering 
 the escapades of his own youth, is frequently on 
 the watch to nip in the bud any indication of such 
 actions on the part of his son who, born with a 
 different innate disposition and a totally differ- 
 ent mental environment, and not knowing the 
 father's suspicions, must either use violence in 
 breaking away from the tight grasp of over- 
 powering authority or become a weakling and a 
 failure. 
 
 The parents' problem is to impart their knowl- 
 edge and experience in such a way as to encourage 
 the child's intelligence and not to balk it with pro- 
 hibitions; to discipline it and not to repress it; 
 to train it up, and not to choke it with their own 
 fears. The child's mental development should 
 neither be discouraged nor allowed to run wild. 
 How best to train the child's mind morally and 
 intellectually, thus producing the finest character, 
 will be more clearly understood, if the parents are 
 able to grasp the fundamental principles of men- 
 tal behaviour. 
 
 The truth of the old adage that example is bet- 
 ter than precept is rarely realized by parents. 
 Not only do we appeal, in teaching any dexterity, 
 such as penmanship, mainly to the example of a 
 perfectly written word to be copied, but in golf 
 or tennis, for instance, one learns more from the 
 coaching of a professional than from any number 
 
 10 
 
STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM 
 
 of textbooks that may be read. Furthermore, 
 the proverb refers chiefly to the tendency of ex- 
 ample to call forth an impulsive imitation that is 
 largely determmed by admiration, A parent's 
 attempt to inculcate pure utterance is fruitless if 
 he has the accent of a Cockney, or to enforce clean 
 hands and other personal neatness if the parents' 
 hands are unwashed and their house is in disor- 
 der. Children imitate parents without being 
 aware of it and even unobserved by the parents. 
 Possibly the children imitate the parents out of 
 sheer adoration, and in this case there should be 
 some excellence in the model to be adored. The 
 parent who is unable to understand, and to ac- 
 commodate his ways to his children must either 
 learn what is wrong with himself that his child 
 does not thrive, or the child will come into painful 
 conflict with a world of external reality outside of 
 the home. The child with a wrong home environ- 
 ment will seldom fit into the world, and will have 
 one painful experience after another to show him 
 his faulty adaptation to life 's requirements. The 
 parent must study himself as the gardener studies 
 the soil, temperature and climatic conditions, and 
 must observe the child as the gardener observes 
 the plants during every period of their growth. 
 He must know as intimately as possible the na- 
 ture of both, the plant and its environment, in 
 order to bring it to perfect blossom and plenteous 
 fruit. 
 
 11 
 
THE PEOBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHILD 
 
 PSYCHOAN-ALYSIS 
 
 The preparatory psychoanalytic work of tak- 
 ing a nervous child's history in clinics or in pri- 
 vate practice shows that even before the fifth 
 year of the child's life may appear the first indi- 
 cations of a conflict which is later to take place 
 between the group of parental wishes and the 
 child's struggles to establish his individual iden- 
 tity — a conflict which must be the cause of the 
 nervousness that has led the parent to take the 
 child to the psychoanalyst. 
 
 In the following chapters, by relating several 
 cases which have come under my care and instruc- 
 tion by the analytic method, I hope to show how 
 the parents in following out their ideals of train- 
 ing or education have obstructed their children's 
 adaptation to social environment. Many parents 
 observe in their children acts that they cannot un- 
 derstand. Moreover, even their most successful 
 experiences are accompanied by a number of fail- 
 ures in either the school^ home or business life of 
 some of their children. One boy does not get on 
 as he should, another deteriorates in character or 
 bodily health under what seems the same treat- 
 ment that improves his brother. In such cases 
 the parents are tempted to consider the boy's nat- 
 ural badness or dullness at fault, while the more 
 advantageous course would be not only to study 
 
 12 
 
STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM 
 
 their own methods, but also to make a careful 
 diagnosis of the boy's nature. 
 
 During an analy^tic treatment the analyst is 
 comparable to a bridge over which the patient 
 escapes from the troubles originating in his 
 childhood into another sphere of thought where 
 the point of view is completely changed. The 
 tears, restlessness, general unhappiness and ina- 
 bility to fit into the niche where he has been placed 
 by birth or circumstances, give place to an en- 
 tirely new mental situation. Through analysis 
 the patient is shown that life is like a country 
 where he must pass through varying degrees of 
 heat, cold and humidity. To the child, especially, 
 life in the workaday world is indeed often very 
 cold and causes him to feel that no one loves him. 
 Home life, on the contrary, may have been very 
 warm, loading him with caresses, with privileges, 
 with toys and playmates. The home influence 
 may have projected itself abroad in travel and 
 in whatever else the fond parents (judging of the 
 child's needs by their own desires) can think of 
 to help the child through his difficulties. In such 
 instances the parents' inevitable judging of the 
 child by themselves does the child much harm, for 
 the circumstances are so different. When an 
 adult, for example, is needing rest to recuperate 
 from his output of energy, he is likely to require 
 the child to be quiet, although the child is needing 
 
 13 
 
THE PEOBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHHiD 
 
 a larger opportunity to use his accumulated and 
 increasing energy. 
 
 SUPERHEATED FAMILY ATMOSPHERE 
 
 Not only is the home life of some children un- 
 duly warm on account of excessive shelter, but 
 that of other children is too cold. The feeling of 
 coldness from which the child often suffers is 
 caused either by a lack of sympathy and under- 
 standing on the part of the parents, or by the 
 parents* being too much occupied with their own 
 problems to lower their minds to the child's level, 
 and merely envying the child because he seems to 
 be free from care. In this journey of life, which 
 we must travel with each child, we must ourselves 
 be f arseeing. We must watch for the obstructions 
 which he is apt to encounter and, as soon as he 
 sees them, we must explain them to him, being 
 very careful not to explain more than he sees. 
 We have been over the path before and know 
 what is coming, but his mind is too much occupied 
 with the wonders around him to look ahead. He 
 must travel slowly to see fully. He must develop 
 slowly so that the mind and body keep pace to- 
 gether. 
 
 Just as the child suffers because of instincts 
 aroused too early, or from a mind stimulated with 
 knowledge it cannot assimilate, and as the body 
 suffers indigestion from too much and too rich 
 food, so a kind of moral indigestion results from 
 
 14 
 
STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM 
 
 appetites that are awakened hut which cannot be 
 gratified. Like a hothouse plant forced to early 
 blossom, the precocious child may be admired for 
 being so *^ bright'* when so young, but like the 
 Easter rose bush and lilies, he stops budding. 
 Some unwise college professors, in experimental 
 work, have forced the minds of their children to a 
 remarkable development so that the adolescent 
 was doing the work of an adult in mathematics 
 and philosophy. They proudly announced to the 
 world the great discovery that a child's mind 
 should receive intensive training beginning as 
 early as four years old, because those early years 
 are the most receptive and the mind is free from 
 the problems of later life. After several years we 
 learn that the end of those abnormal develop- 
 ments has been an attempt to restore the ex- 
 hausted energy in a nerve sanitarium, or by a 
 term in jail. 
 
 As I have intimated above, the conduct of a 
 child follows a pattern usually formed by the en- 
 vironmental influences which are operative before 
 the fifth year, a pattern which may be slightly 
 modified by experiences accumulated thereafter. 
 At adolescence deep physical changes, which have 
 been going on, cumulate in making a man or a 
 woman out of the body, but the mind frequently 
 develops at a different rate. There comes a great 
 longing for freedom to try the new-found power 
 of manhood or womanhood. Then the parents see 
 
 15 
 
THE PROBLEM OF THE NEEVOUS CHHjD 
 
 in the boy or girl the **know-it-alP' attitude (so 
 trying to the home circle), feelings of superiority 
 to authority or criticism and sudden paying of at- 
 tention to personal appearance, with an increased 
 interest in the opposite sex. **The sudden awak- 
 ening of feelings and passions, redundant energy, 
 rapid mental processes, scintillating wit, as in 
 plays upon words and phrases and unique ideas, 
 hopefulness and enthusiasm, vigorous and reten- 
 tive memory, hasty decision, persistence to the 
 point of obstinacy, scorn of obstacles, represent 
 the attitude toward a world opening to the ex- 
 panding vision as new and strange, and reveals 
 a crisis in growth the significance of which is not 
 to be underestimated. ' ' 
 
 These symptoms of new life springing up in 
 the child should be welcomed by the parents as 
 indicating that another man is being added to the 
 great army of life. It only needs the first love 
 affair to show that the age of puberty is being 
 successfully passed. I shall explain later the 
 consequence of the adolescent age not being 
 successfully passed through. From research in 
 that field we have learned that age is not properly 
 counted by years, but by the all-around develop- 
 ment of the individual. 
 
 INTELLIGENCE TESTS 
 
 At the present time a great deal of attention has 
 been attracted to the intelHgence tests adopted 
 
 16 
 
STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM 
 
 by several universities in this country to sup- 
 plement or take the place' of the regular entrance 
 examinations. This grading of general intelli- 
 gence has been already carried to quite a scien- 
 tific accuracy, but the all-around development 
 just mentioned is essentially different from the 
 intelligence measured by these tests, and should 
 not be confused with it. The psychical develop- 
 ment to which I refer here, may be absent in per- 
 sons whose intelligence is shown by the tests to 
 be of the highest order. On the other hand, the 
 psychical development concerns the intimate per- 
 sonal relationships of the individual, primarily to 
 the members of his or her own family. Many 
 people quite adult in physical size and strength 
 have yet the mental conduct of infants, not neces- 
 sarily with regard to practical affairs but with 
 regard to their emotional reactions toward their 
 personal environment. In the intelligence tests ^ 
 very definite means of demarcation are obtained, 
 such that it is possible to say that an individual 
 is exactly ten years old, mentally, twelve years, 
 or fourteen years, or an average or superior 
 adult. Beyond these classes it is impossible to 
 differentiate people with regard to intelligence 
 alone. In the matter of the psychical development, 
 however, it might almost be said that there are an 
 infinite number of gradations between the indi- 
 
 lAs described in The Measurem^t Of Intelligence bj^ Louig 
 M, Terman, New York, 1916. 
 
 17 
 
THE PROBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHILD 
 
 vidual who is emotionally an infant and the one 
 who is a fully developed adult. 
 
 One sees many old infants, who go around un- 
 attended, being physically anywhere from fifteen 
 to eighty calendar years of age, but in initiative 
 and self-reliance merely babies. The fact that 
 they usually enjoy poor health attracts the atten- 
 tion and interest of some one, who seeks to make 
 them more comfortable. If they marry they fre- 
 quently become the mothers or fathers of nervous 
 children and are likely to wreck the marital hap- 
 piness of any normal spouse to whom they may 
 be linked. These elderly infants who have been 
 seeking infantile means of satisfaction all their 
 lives are seen in many strata of society. We have 
 examples in the men who live in clubs. Short of 
 being rocked to sleep their wants are anticipated 
 and attended to in the most comfortable fashion, 
 the men always holding a pipe or a cigar in the 
 mouth for something to suck on. Women, too, 
 find infantile satisfaction in playing bridge or 
 giving their children entirely into the care of 
 nurse-maids with as inefficient oversight as is the 
 carelessness of little girls who play with dolls. 
 People with fads are playing with life as children 
 play at living, and I have been surprised to find 
 that men and women, retiring to the life of a nun- 
 nery or monastery for the sole purpose of avoid- 
 ing the responsibilities of living, yet think them- 
 selves examples of goodness. In them we see a 
 
 18 
 
STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM 
 
 regression to lives of meditation and stagnation, 
 virtually a return to a prenatal existence. Surely 
 there is greater glory in meeting and conquering 
 temptations than in hiding away from them. 
 
 EARLY INFLUENCES 
 
 In assisting at the psychological examination 
 of several thousand men in a city lodging house I 
 was interested to observe the retarded mental de- 
 velopment shown in the history of the alcoholics. 
 There was usually a mother or sister who had 
 made a comfortable home for the patient. *^I 
 kept steady work until after her death, and then 
 I had no one to care if I went to the devil, and 
 the barroom was always warm with something 
 to eat and drink, to warm up a fellow's spirits." 
 When asked why they had not married, the reply 
 was the usual one: **Well, if I could have found 
 a girl who was worth marrying I would have been 
 glad to marry, but I never could find the right 
 girl, and yet I wanted to marry to have a home 
 of my own.'' This really meant that if he could 
 have found a girl who would have been a mother 
 to him, and cared for him as tenderly, he would 
 have married, but the girls had also revealed 
 their wishes to find in him more than he had to 
 give of love and sympathy. He was really unfit 
 to marry because he wanted all the sympathy in 
 the home. And so we see the character of the 
 
 19 
 
THE PROBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CBILD 
 
 alcoliolics undermined by the considerate mother 
 care which only a child needs, and we find the man 
 of adult years giving evidence of being a victim 
 of the early environmental influences. While ap- 
 parently an adult, he is, in the unconscious, still 
 a child. 
 
 The efforts of a child to express its individu- 
 ality are not welcomed by the parents, who are, 
 on the contrary, sorely puzzled and think by 
 stricter discipline still to retain and guide the 
 youthful life which is trying so hard to break 
 away from the parent stem.^ One of the ques- 
 tions asked of the nervous patients in the psycho- 
 logical clinic of Johns Hopkins University at Bal- 
 timore: *^At what age occurred the emancipation 
 from the parents?" brought out the interesting 
 fact that in the alcoholics, epileptics and other 
 neurotic patients, a strong family influence had 
 existed long after the adolescent period. Occa- 
 sionally parents are inclined to feel that they 
 own their children body and soul and that their 
 children are created for the sole purpose of pro- 
 viding for the parents in their old age. This 
 great war has taught us that we are unable to 
 control our children's lives, and that our children 
 must themselves secure the freedom of all the 
 
 1 Novelists have realized the baneful effects of undue parental 
 authority following preconceived notions. George Meredith in 
 The Ordeal of Richard Feverel vividly depicts the tragic 
 results of bringing up an only son on a " system " in isolation 
 with a view to keeping him uncontaminated by the world. 
 
 20 
 
STATEMENT OF THE PEOBLEM 
 
 world for mankind to live in. While too much 
 discipline was fatal to freedom, on the other hand, 
 too much freedom, without proper training in its 
 use, is also destroying life, as in Eussia. Our 
 children are a trust, and are created for the 
 preservation of the race. The life that lives for 
 self-preservation only, wants everything for it- 
 self, is jealous of all who have more success of 
 whatever kind, that thinks a child is for the abso- 
 lute use of the home interests, is infantile and go- 
 ing against the instincts of the human race. On 
 the other hand, a human life living solely for race 
 preservation is unthinkable as a part of social 
 life. In truth, one of these is quite as anti-social 
 as the other. 
 
 THE COUNTRY CHILD 
 
 The child, born and bred in the country, and 
 especially on a farm has, other things being equal, 
 an immense advantage. He has had plenty of 
 space to roam in, seeing the farm animal life and 
 learning nature's lessons in the cleanest and most 
 wholesome way. The city-bred child, crowded in 
 an apartment, hotel or even in a private house, is 
 robbed of many of his rights, the greatest of which 
 is the right to be a child, with dirty hands and 
 face, noisy with his playmates, and with an om- 
 nivorous appetite, even to the stealing of goodies 
 from the pantry. The ** barefoot boy with cheek 
 
 21 
 
THE PROBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHH^D 
 
 of tan,'* tousled hair, straw hat and tnrned-up 
 pantaloons was not a nervous child. His father 
 and mother were too busy with their day's work 
 to surround the child with an atmosphere of 
 ^^don'ts/' *' musts" and cleanliness. He played 
 hard all day, brought into use all his muscles, 
 shouted to his comrades, acted upon the impulse 
 of the moment with the freedom all children need. 
 Play is but a preparation for life and the child's 
 play imitates work. The country boy with his 
 chores to do night and morning, bringing eggs 
 from the nests, feeding the chickens, driving the 
 cows to and from pasture, bringing in wood for 
 the kitchen fire, learns self-control in the natural 
 way. He does not suffer from the repression of 
 the city child who has the same wishes and im- 
 pulses to roam unmolested. In his roamings the 
 city child meets many temptations, much knowl- 
 edge is presented to him before he has asked for 
 information, and life unfolds so rapidly that he 
 cannot develop in the sure and leisurely manner 
 of the country boy. 
 
 UNWHOLESOME CITY LIFE 
 
 Largely owing to these problems of the crowded 
 city life, through whose perils parents with diffi- 
 culty guide their children to a strong manhood, 
 science has come forward to their help. In the 
 methods and teachings of psychoanalysis, parents 
 
 22 
 
STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM 
 
 will learn that their anxiety is to be relieved, and 
 that their child is not a case for discipline or 
 punishment, but is sick in mind and soul, as is 
 the body when in a fever. At first glance this 
 may not seem to be much relief, because it is 
 apparently easier to punish and to discipline a 
 fault than it is to cure a disease, and because 
 the punishment is felt to be both appropriate and 
 necessary; but a study of the mental development, 
 conscious and unconscious, of the child will show 
 that the treatment of the child ^s peccadilloes by 
 punishment is absolutely futile. The view of the 
 nervous or incorrigible child as a child mentally 
 diseased is alarming only if there is no known 
 cure for the disorder. But when it is clearly seen 
 that there is a plain and simple curative pro- 
 cedure which any parent can follow, the situation 
 is immediately relieved of a very unpleasant ten- 
 sion by the removal of blame from the child and 
 the placing of the parents' activity where it be- 
 longs. After these newer theories become known 
 through the restoration of children to a more 
 normal adjustment, the race will slowly but surely 
 feel the results in better self-control and stronger 
 reactions to life. 
 
 PSYCHOAl^ALYTIC METHOD 
 
 The theories of psychoanalysis are distorted 
 by so much inexperience and ignorance, by impu- 
 
 23 
 
THE PEOBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHD^D 
 
 dent and fraudulent pretenders, both medical and 
 otherwise, as scarcely to be recognizable. In- 
 stead of placing the strongest, cleanest ideals be- 
 fore life for inspiration, these quacks tear down 
 all ideals, oftentimes with licentious and immoral 
 teaching. Psychoanalysis is a cleansing process, 
 separating the wheat from the chaff. It teaches 
 the necessity of truth, enabling a person to dis- 
 tinguish the good from the bad influence in his 
 own life. It is educational in that it imparts a 
 knowledge of logical reasoning, and much general 
 information is usually imparted along the lines 
 of history and literature. Psychoanalysis, or an- 
 alytical psychology, means an analysis of the 
 mind, that is, a separating and studying of the 
 thoughts of an individual to discover the under- 
 lying motive, the existence of which is unknown 
 to him, to trace them back to their origin by meth- 
 ods of association. It is to be understood that 
 ideas, which occur in this procedure where the 
 person who is being analyzed sits in quiet, com- 
 fortable surroundings in the presence of the psy- 
 choanalyst alone, are not governed in their ap- 
 pearance by definite purpose. The patient sits 
 quietly and simply lets his mind run on. It is be- 
 lieved that in these circumstances the unconscious 
 is supplying at least the motive force which 
 brings these presentations into consciousness. 
 They are, therefore, called *^ descendants of the 
 repressed.'' By this so-called ''free association 
 
 24 
 
STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM 
 
 method^' one thought arouses another thought, or 
 group of thoughts, bringing up in turn still others, 
 and so on, until after careful listening and silent 
 comparison of the words of the patient, the ana- 
 lyst can discover a ^^seed thought'' from which 
 all the complex mental underbrush has grown. 
 These comparisons might be likened to a kind of 
 surveying by which the surveyor locates and 
 measures the distance of a point which is to him 
 inaccessible, a measurement which, by the way, 
 requires all the experience of a trained psycho- 
 analyst to make. A complete doctrine of mind 
 and soul would include the consideration of many 
 topics, such as that of immortality, lying outside 
 the range of psychology, as we shall understand 
 the term. In this work we have to do with mental 
 happenings or operations, as we find them in our- 
 selves, namely, desires, emotions, acts of per- 
 ceiving, thinking, deciding and other actual men- 
 tal events and their conditions. Psychology is 
 thus the study of the way in which minds behave 
 at all levels of the conscious and unconscious. In 
 a psychoanalytic treatment, on the other hand, we 
 help the person to change that behaviour from in- 
 fantile to adult mental behaviour. 
 
 In many ways the mind of the child behaves 
 differently from that of the adult. There is pro- 
 gressive development from the helplessness of 
 infancy to the relative independence of maturity. 
 From this viewpoint the aims and methods of the 
 
 25 
 
THE PEOBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHttD 
 
 psychoanalytic observer do not differ fundamen- 
 tally from those of chemistry or physics, and jnst 
 as in other sciences, the results of this procedure 
 may be invalidated by careless observation, by 
 imperfect analysis and by rash generalizations. 
 In both chemistry and psychoanalysis, observa- 
 tion, and the inference from it, present special 
 difficulties due to the material with which we 
 have to deal. But those difficulties do not free 
 us from the necessity of acquiring first-hand ac- 
 quaintance with the facts. Furthermore, the psy- 
 choanalyst is interested in things as they are, as 
 well as in things as they ought to he, 
 
 THE LIBIDO 
 
 The fact that our thoughts and feelings cannot 
 be measured by a foot rule does not make them 
 any less real. A spell of melancholy, lawlessness, 
 tears or any form of unhappiness is a fact to a 
 child or an adult. In some respects the human 
 soul in any one of these states is comparable to 
 an ocean liner slowly steaming through a fog. 
 The driving force of the individual, as well as 
 the ship, moves more slowly in a melancholy or 
 tearful condition. There is a fear of danger 
 ahead, a danger unseen and unknown to the indi- 
 vidual but felt emotionally. This emotional force 
 or urge is in every form of life, whether vegetable 
 or animal. It is life itself. We cannot say that 
 
 26 
 
STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM 
 
 the vegetable kingdom has an emotional urge, but 
 we may call it a psychic urge. 
 
 ** Every clod feels a stir of might, . . . 
 
 An instinct within it that reaches and towers, 
 And, groping blindly above it for light, 
 Climbs to a soul in grass and flowers." 
 
 This thing we call life, which sends forth the 
 leaves and grass, sends the bird out of the nest, 
 weans the kitten from the mother cat, sends ani- 
 mals many miles away, going days without food, 
 facing danger of destruction, in order to find a 
 mate, is the same force which fills the adolescent 
 child with wishes to assert his own individuality, 
 to overcome all restraint and authority. It is this 
 force which brings the first love affair to the boy 
 or girl — Ei most important event, for it marks the 
 passing of childhood. We call this force the 
 libido. As its existence in the soul is the most 
 vital fact in all life, normal and abnormal, so its 
 whereabouts is the most important problem to 
 solve in all cases of nervousness; and so we 
 hope that the reader will clearly understand the 
 meaning of the term. It may seem strange to be 
 talking about the whereabouts of the libido de- 
 fined as a life force, but it is a real condition and 
 is otherwise expressed by saying from what kinds 
 of activities the individual gets his satisfaction. 
 **His satisfaction" implies that everybody does 
 
 27 
 
THE PEOBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHILD 
 
 get some sort of satisfaction from whatever he 
 is doing with his life force. It is ^'his'' satisfac- 
 tion because what he is doing is his act more than 
 any one's else. In cases of nervousness, however, 
 the libido is found to be occupied in, and the indi- 
 vidual to be gaining his satisfaction from, his 
 unconscious thoughts and other activities which, 
 not being suited for social living have been re- 
 pressed into the unconscious where they continue 
 their activity just the same, although the indi- 
 vidual is unaware of it. 
 
 The libido, then, is comparable to a moving 
 force of nature, such as the current of a river, 
 which must flow on continuously. The libido 
 never stops, as time never stops, and must flow 
 on to the outlet (or until it is insuperably 
 blocked). As the stream at its source starts in 
 a narrow channel and grows broader toward the 
 mouth, so does life from the beginning move on 
 in small and narrow ways, growing deeper and 
 broader as it progresses. There must be a cur- 
 rent, and a channel for the river to follow, or it 
 would become stationary like a pond or lake. 
 
 The child's life must similarly be led into a 
 channel as the waters in irrigated land are con- 
 trolled so that they may produce something as 
 they are absorbed by the growing plants. But 
 the process of forming this channel is so slow 
 that we cannot see its change from day to day. 
 It is only at certain times that we notice it. Thus 
 
 28 
 
STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM 
 
 no water spills over the dam until it is full. The 
 most noticeable change in the child's life is when, 
 like the clod climbing to a soul in grass and flow- 
 ers, the child at the age of puberty, suddenly 
 shows a soul in the first love affair. If the child's 
 libido should too suddenly flow from its narrow 
 channel over a broad expanse, the current would 
 be too suddenly dissipated, and would be lost. 
 Similarly the child's life loses its healthy growth 
 if it is too early overheated by too much emotion. 
 The same injury results whether it is sexual emo- 
 tion, too keen social rivalry, excitement from too 
 much intellectual work, or from too frequent 
 stimulation by adults. The child should remain 
 a child until he passes through the various phases 
 of physical development, and gains the physique 
 strong enough to withstand the greater emotions 
 of life. A small current of electricity will make 
 no perceptible change in the wire which carries it. 
 A greater current will heat the same-sized wire, 
 and too great a current will burn it and turn it 
 into a gas. Similarly in a channel made of earth 
 to carry the water for irrigation. A stream of 
 the proper size will flow through it without dam- 
 age. An obstruction will cause the water to rise 
 and overflow where it is not wanted. We can 
 readily see that, just as an obstruction will dam 
 a stream to overflowing, so the libido of the child 
 or of the adult may be blocked by an obstruction 
 and dammed till it overflows. This produces a 
 
 29 
 
THE PEOBLEM OF THE NEEVOUS CEILD 
 
 disorder in life 's development caused by the ina- 
 bility to fulfil all its requirements. The result 
 in any human being is likely to be illness, either 
 physical or mental. There will be a complete dif- 
 fusion of the libido, a dissipation and weakening 
 of the urge of life, and when the mind retires abso- 
 lutely from reality and growth, a person is called 
 insane, and was formerly regarded by the world 
 at large as incurable. 
 
 30 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 THE DEVELOPMENT OP REPBESSION 
 
 The child's life must follow a path directed 
 by training, but to the parent the results are for 
 a long time so invisible that the parents' efforts 
 seem in size like drops of water compared with 
 the ocean which is the size of the result aimed at. 
 The results of the parents' efforts, however, are 
 cumulative and are always equal to the efforts; 
 only it is as hard for the parents to see the im- 
 mediate results as it would be to see the physical 
 effect on the wall of a room of the sound waves 
 carrying his words of advice or correction. The 
 part of child-training so discouraging to parents 
 is the impossibility of seeing an immediate con- 
 crete effect of their word or act. It is impossible 
 that the effort of today on the part of the parent 
 should have a result today upon the child — at any 
 rate, a result considered adequate and sufficient 
 by the parent. It is quite as impossible that the 
 effort of today should not have an invisible re- 
 sult today, and a visible result tomorrow and next 
 year and in twenty-five years. The result visible 
 tomorrow is so small as to make a pathetic con- 
 trast with the intensity of the effort; the result 
 visible next year is greater, but then the parent 
 
 31 
 
THE PROBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHHjD 
 
 has forgotten the treatment given the child a year 
 ago, and does not connect the 1919 behaviour of 
 the child with the 1918 advice. If it could be 
 deeply enough impressed upon the parents that 
 almost all mental effects are long distance effects, 
 even when they are visible, it would do much to 
 reassure them in their confident treatment of 
 their children. Also it should not be forgotten 
 that the immediate effects are produced, never- 
 theless, in spite of the fact that they are not per- 
 ceptible. 
 
 EFFECT OF ACTION SURE 
 
 Their not being perceptible arises from two 
 causes. The first is that it takes a long time for 
 a character to be built. The second is the inevi- 
 table unconscious tendency in every one to resist 
 an inunediate acknowledgment of the persuasive 
 force of some other person. Every child when 
 positively, either gently or aggressively, told to 
 do something by teacher or parent reacts to that 
 expression of authority in the only way possible 
 for it, that is, by a natural antagonism, unless the 
 expression of authority in the beginning was the 
 best for the child life. As a plant or vine always 
 grows toward the creative sunlight, so does a 
 child grow toward a proper environment unless 
 previous years have held back the child's energy 
 and stunted growth. It is absolutely universal in 
 all but the most highly civilized persons, both 
 
 32 
 
THE DEVELOPMENT OF REPRESSION 
 
 young and old. It accounts for the necessity of 
 training the soldier to act promptly at the officer's 
 word of command. His natural antagonism has 
 to be drilled out of him. It is removed in other 
 circumstances in a spectacular manner in * liberty 
 loan drives" and in revival meetings. In such 
 circumstances the individuaPs natural and abso- 
 lutely blameless antagonism to complying with 
 the verbal suggestions of the authority is swept 
 aside for the moment, and acting instinctively 
 and imitatively he follows the direction given 
 him. 
 
 But the fact remains that the effects of human 
 suasion are always retarded, if compared with 
 the parents' desire for immediately perceptible 
 results. Considering the number of elements 
 which have to be modified in changing so com- 
 plicated a thing as human conduct it is hardly 
 right to call them retarded, although they neces- 
 sarily seem so. It is, therefore, all the more im- 
 portant that parents should be absolutely secure 
 in their realization, first of the necessity of con- 
 tinuing their efforts, and second of the fact that 
 no effort is without its result. In fact, it cannot 
 be too much emphasized and no action of any 
 kind is without its present (imperceptible) and 
 later (perceptible) result, a result which is, how- 
 ever, frequently attributed to the wrong cause, 
 through the forgetfulness or imperfect observa- 
 tion of the parents. 
 
 33 
 
THE PEOBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHHjD 
 
 WHERE THOUGHTS GO 
 
 What becomes of the thoughts of an individual 
 when they retire from reality as in a delirium? 
 Why do they change in character? It long re- 
 mained a mystery. We knew the thoughts still 
 continued, but they took on a different nature and 
 seemed to us confused. If one familiar with nerv- 
 ous and mental troubles listens to a person talking 
 in his sleep, he finds the methods of the sleeper's 
 thinking similar to delirium, or the wandering 
 thoughts of an insane patient, for in both cases 
 the mind is not working in terms of reality, as 
 our normal mind works when we are awake. Five 
 hundred years before Christ, the Greek philoso- 
 pher Heraclitus said, ^'For those who are awake 
 only one universal world exists. During sleep 
 every one returns to his own.*' It has taken 
 2,500 years to realize the truth of Heraclitus' 
 words, and at last men are gradually becoming 
 aware of the fact that we live not only in our 
 waking world, but at times in another world, that 
 of our dreams. We know that great nervous 
 shocks have sometimes proven too difficult for a 
 person's mentality. We say such a person loses 
 his mind, becomes unbalanced, a statement which 
 is generally accepted. But the question remains, 
 How does he lose his mind? Where does it go? 
 What becomes of it? He does not die. On the 
 contrary, he continues living and thinking, but 
 
 34 
 
THE DEVELOPMENT OF REPRESSION 
 
 differently. We can more truthfully say that his 
 mind is not lost, but is changed from conscious to 
 unconscious thinking, a topic of which I shall have 
 more to say later. And when a person is upset 
 or has become unbalanced, the same figure of 
 speech shows that his mind, in being upset, falls 
 from the conscious to the unconscious variety of 
 thinking. When the conscious mind is empty and 
 vacant the balance has a greater weight thrown 
 on the unconscious scale and it goes down, while 
 the conscious scale goes up in the air. 
 
 UN"co]srscious thinking 
 
 The unconscious thinking then, as our figure of 
 speech suggests, belongs to a lower level. It is 
 hidden from our consciousness. We are abso- 
 lutely unaware of the wishes and problems of the 
 unconscious. They are repressed and put away 
 as impossible of fulfilment. The conflicts in the 
 unconscious smoulder, like a smothered fire in a 
 bale of cotton, unseen and yet burning. Con- 
 scious wishes pull us one way, the unconscious 
 pull us in the other direction. The wishes of the 
 conscious thought are governed by the religious 
 and ethical education received from our parents, 
 our teachers and our governments. Such educa- 
 tion is necessary to a child, he must be instructed 
 in the laws of right and wrong which his ances- 
 tors to the best of their experience have worked 
 
 35 
 
THE PROBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHILD 
 
 out as needful to preserve the raee. But while 
 the child and the adult follow these laws, enforced 
 by a superior power, they still would like to fol- 
 low their natural inclinations, and thus the con- 
 scious wishes are repressed and apparently for- 
 gotten. In the unconscious they have all the 
 time existed and have accumulated, smoulder- 
 ing, irritating and sometimes bursting forth 
 when the individual is not able to effect a 
 complete repression. They result in illness, 
 criminal acts, insanity or any of the countless 
 irregularities of living. With all the ideals 
 and higher aims of life there is in each adult a 
 lower layer of wishes, which in childhood is form- 
 ing and is very near the surface, wishes for 
 things he would like to have but cannot obtain, 
 for things he would like to do but is not allowed. 
 Children do not give up wanting these unobtain- 
 able things, nor do adults, but repress the wishes 
 for them; that is, they still exist but are not 
 spoken or thought of consciously. As the child 
 grows, these repressed wishes accumulate. As 
 our wants change, many of them fade away, but 
 the more vital ones continue through the entire 
 life, so deeply repressed and buried from con- 
 sciousness that we do not know they exist, and 
 yet, if our environment is such that our vital in- 
 stincts in childhood for self-preservation, or iii 
 adulthood for race preservation, cannot be satis- 
 fied, they stiU disturb our consciousness. This 
 
 36 
 
I 
 
 THE DEVELOPMENT OF REPRESSION 
 
 accumulation of repressed wishes, which are 
 often of an animal nature, and which we have ap- 
 parently forgotten, constitute the unconscious. If 
 the environment of a child is not too difficult, not 
 too weakening from improper or uneven disci- 
 pline, if the force of growth, both mental and 
 physical, the urge and interest of life, the libido, 
 is allowed a proper outlet, and the child has been 
 taught a proper control of his libido, then he will 
 move on in successful growth. The repressed 
 wish in the unconscious must be strong indeed in 
 forcing a person against the power of his own 
 rationality to do that for which he knows he will 
 be punished, perhaps even lose his life. Emotion 
 and intellect here come sharply into contrast. We 
 judge it weakness of character when the uncon- 
 scious wish becomes too strong to be ruled by the 
 intellect; the heart has ruled the head, whereas 
 the head should rule the heart. 
 
 REPRESSION 
 
 Psychoanalysis shows us the parallel between 
 the nervous child and the criminal. In both the 
 repression of the libido has been too great in- 
 stead of being used with self-control. Repressed 
 thoughts and wishes are uncontrolled thoughts 
 and wishes shut up, intended to be hidden away 
 from sight and sound, in the unconscious, so that 
 they do not lead the individual to commit acts of 
 
 37 
 
THE PEOBLEM OF THE NEKVOUS CHILD 
 
 lawlessness. The difference between repression 
 and self-control is enormous, but yet not generally- 
 understood. An example may be given of a wild 
 animal, untamed and not broken to domestic use, 
 such as the horse. Eunning at large he would 
 trample down life and be a great danger. If he 
 is caught and shut up he is repressed but still 
 wild; if tamed, broken to harness, he can be con- 
 trolled, goes at our bidding and becomes a most 
 useful beast of burden to help supply our needs. 
 Like steam, or any other of nature's forces, the 
 libido when compressed, bursts out, doing great 
 damage to whatever encloses it. It is an irre- 
 sistible force which we must tame and control, 
 so that it may serve us. The individual must 
 drive his libido or, like an unbroken horse, it will 
 run away with him. The child 's libido is attached 
 to himself, being almost exclusively nutritional in 
 its nature, and to his parents who contribute 
 toward his own personal and individual develop- 
 ment. At adolescence the libido naturally, be- 
 cause of the reproductive urge, seeks to become 
 detached from the childhood love of self and of 
 parents and to attach itself to some thing or per- 
 son other than the family. Modern parents do 
 not know that the word ^* parents'' means those 
 who procreate the child, and that when the physi- 
 cal need for the parent ceases at about twelve to 
 fourteen years they cease automatically to become 
 parents in the true sense and become, or should 
 
 38 
 
THE DEVELOPMENT OF REPRESSION 
 
 become, an only slightly distinguishable part of 
 the child's (now the individual's ) reality. The 
 parent as procreator is necessary, however, not 
 merely at the time of conception but for much of 
 the directive influence which creates character up 
 to the time when the child should be pushed out 
 of the parental nest. The erroneous views of 
 parents have been well expressed by Meredith in 
 the following words: 
 
 '^It is difficult for those who think very earn- 
 estly for their children to know when their chil- 
 dren are thinking on their own account. The ex- 
 ercise of their volition we construe as a revolt. 
 Our love does not like to be invalided and deposed 
 from its command, and here I think yonder old 
 thrush on the lawn who has just kicked the last 
 of her lank offspring out of the nest to go shift 
 for itself, much the kindest of the two, though 
 sentimental people do shrug their shoulders at 
 these unsentimental acts of the creatures who 
 never wander from nature. Now excess of obedi- 
 ence is, to one who manages exquisitely, as bad as 
 insurrection. " ^ 
 
 Nature's effort to separate the child's libido 
 from the original family ties is expressed in the 
 first love affair. Also in the desire to escape 
 from authority, to live independently, to run away 
 for the love of adventure, in short, to experience 
 
 1 The Ordeal of Richard Feverel, N. Y., 1906, p. 275. 
 
 39 
 
THE PKOBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHILD 
 
 all the fulness of life. These are all paths lead- 
 ing to the bridge which must be crossed from 
 childhood into the great unknown world, so beau- 
 tifully described by Longfellow, who had an intui- 
 tive knowledge of the adolescent fears when he 
 wrote : 
 
 '^Standing with reluctant feet 
 Where the brook and river meet, 
 Womanhood and childhood fleet! 
 
 Gazing with a timid glance, 
 On the brooklet's swift advance, 
 On the river's broad expanse! 
 
 Seest thou shadows sailing by, 
 As the dove, with startled eye, 
 Sees the falcon's shadow fly?" 
 
 The beginning of repression in the child is the 
 beginning of the accumulation of unconscious 
 wishes, which we express in our symbolic thoughts 
 and actions. In joy and laughter repression is 
 relieved, but in cursing and anger it is increased, 
 as I will attempt to explain in the following chap- 
 ter. 
 
 40 
 
CHAPTER in 
 
 SYMBOLIC THOUGHT 
 
 Veby young children do not make, as adults do, 
 clear distinctions between persons and things. 
 The infant gradually learns the difference be- 
 tween his toes, his head and the chair on which he 
 bumps it. And when a distinction is made be- 
 tween self and things that are not self, the objects 
 appear more like persons than things. The young 
 child speaks and thinks of things as if they had 
 thoughts and sensations like his own. This per- 
 sonification, or likening of inanimate things, 
 shades off in adulthood into a use of metaphor 
 and simile as when we say, knowing we do not 
 speak literally, the whispering breeze, the mur- 
 muring brook, the leaping flame, the mother earth, 
 the road climbs up from the valley, the wind 
 drives the clouds, the sunlight dances on the wa- 
 ter, *^the moon shepherds the stars,'' ^ **How 
 sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank."^ 
 The attempt to be absolutely literal in describing 
 anything is foredoomed to failure only because in 
 order to do so we should have to use individual 
 words for each individual object. The Arabs 
 
 1 Vergil, JErieid, I, 608. 
 z Merchtmt of Venice, v. i. 
 
 41 
 
THE PEOBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHILD 
 
 have done so, approximately, in having over 2,000 
 words to denote different kinds of horses. 
 
 Indeed it is not alone because onr language is 
 inadequate that we cannot rid ourselves of the 
 tendency to read our actions and emotions into 
 the objects we perceive. The tendency is a very 
 deep and natural one, having been inherited from 
 our remotest ancestors, who thought just as a 
 present-day child may think, that a living spirit, 
 having personal attributes, is in all inanimate 
 objects. The literature of primitive races shows 
 they found ^'tongues in trees, sermons in stones, 
 books in the running brooks '* and life in every- 
 thing. We know that in the childhood of the 
 race, and in the childhood of the individual man, 
 the mind works the same, and is subject to the 
 same phases of development. 
 
 PEIMITIVE THOUGHT 
 
 There is accordingly a great difference in this 
 respect of personification between adult and child- 
 ish thinking. The remarkable fact is, however, 
 that both kinds go on side by side in many adults, 
 the archaic type having greater influence on the 
 actions of some individuals, and the modern in 
 others. To express it otherwise, the conscious 
 mind of man has been educated according to re- 
 ligious and ethical ideas, while the unconscious 
 mind, of which we have no knowledge in our wak- 
 
 42 
 
SYMBOLIC THOUGHT 
 
 ing hours, unless specially warned of it, has had 
 no education. The unconscious mind of the adult 
 works in the same archaic modes, and without 
 moral laws, as does the conscious and unconscious 
 mind of the child, or for that matter as did the 
 minds of our primeval ancestors. Modern adults, 
 just as primeval adults did and modern children 
 do, in the unconscious desire to kill or destroy 
 whatever interferes with their gratification, but 
 the intellectual power has become sufficiently om- 
 niscient to see with comprehensive glance the re- 
 sults of such an existence without law and order. 
 When we lose consciousness, either in sleep, in 
 delirium, or under the influence of anaesthetics, 
 our minds are not blank but are working rapidly. 
 A person talking in his sleep will give verbal ex- 
 pression to the most vital wishes, which would 
 shock his waking mind. They find utterance but 
 do not enter his own consciousness. If they do, 
 they are always expressed in symbolic form. The 
 most direct path for these primordial desires to 
 find their way into the consciousness of the person 
 who has them is through the dream of the night. 
 In the form of animals and of inanimate things, 
 or of other people than those really intended by 
 the dream wish, persons, and even abstract ideas 
 are represented. It has been definitely ascer- 
 tained that the thoughts that occur in sleep are 
 concerned primarily with problems and unfulfilled 
 wishes. They are the problems presented by, and 
 
 43 
 
THE PROBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHH^D 
 
 the desires existing in, the archaic unconscious, 
 but problems which the dreamer's waking life 
 could not solve and desires which his waking ac- 
 tivities could not fulfil. 
 
 COMPOSITE NATURE 
 
 The indirect, figurative or symbolical nature of 
 the thoughts that come to consciousness in the 
 dream, is shown in many ways. Various persons 
 in the dream generally symbolize some quality of 
 the dreamer himself. If he dreams he saw Mr. 
 X. and Mr. A., the associations with Mr. X. and 
 Mr. A. are frequently somewhat as follows : *^Mr. 
 X. is a very undesirable acquaintance because of 
 his stinginess, meanness, and dishonorable deal- 
 ings. Mr. A. would be a fine fellow, but he never 
 has the courage of his convictions and never 
 forms a definite conclusion." This means that 
 the dream is attempting to tell the dreamer ''You 
 have those qualities but do not realize them." It 
 is much as if the dream were a different person- 
 ality. It is indeed the personality each one has 
 in him but does not know he has. In this way he 
 gives himself an estimation of what is really his 
 own valuation of certain of his own qualities as 
 they appear to a part of his mind which is awake 
 when he is not awake. 
 
 For instance, in a hospital ward one of the 
 .men patients had been visited by his fiancee. That 
 
 44 
 
SYMBOLIC THOUGHT 
 
 night the nurse said to me: ^^That chap talks in 
 his sleep. Perhaps he will interest you.'' Later 
 when the lights were low we heard a voice call 
 ** Helen.'' Moving the screens around his bed 
 awoke him. He was annoyed and said he had 
 been dreaming he was in the old orchard at home 
 and a big cow stood there looking at him. Helen 
 was the name of his fiancee. He had symbolized 
 her as a cow, thereby expressing indirectly his 
 strong unconscious wish to live his childhood 
 over again with Helen, who would thus have to 
 play the dual role of wife and mother. There is 
 nothing extraordinary in the cow's impersonating 
 two women, as every dream image may be com- 
 posite, representing more than one person. 
 
 IDENTIFICATION 
 
 Something of this reading himself into his ob- 
 jects begins with the child at a very early age, for 
 when he begins to talk he takes many inanimate 
 things to be alive and active. He will scold his 
 toys. If he bumps himself against the table it is 
 as much the table's doings as his. When we trip 
 over an obstacle and hurt the shinbone, how much 
 satisfaction we feel in giving a good kick to the 
 offending obstacle, for down deep in us all is the 
 feeling that the obstacle should have gotten out 
 of the way and was malicious in hurting us. Intel- 
 lectually we know that the rocker on a chair is 
 
 45 
 
THE PROBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHttD 
 
 inanimate, but when we are bruised and sore 
 from coming in contact with one we feel that the 
 protruding thing molested us. The intellectual 
 knowledge that the rocker is inanimate is a con- 
 scious thought, but the feeling that the rocking- 
 chair should have moved aside and not stood in 
 our path to hurt us comes from the unconscious. 
 Not only do we all thus endow inanimate things 
 like rocking-chairs with life, but in a dream 
 brought by a patient, the rocking-chair is a symbol 
 of something more than a chair, and to learn what 
 the chair symbolizes in the unconscious we must 
 trace back the thoughts which come to mind con- 
 cerning it. We call these thoughts *^ associa- 
 tions" and the associations with a rocking-chair 
 were: *^ Cradle, childhood, mother." The asso- 
 ciations with the foot were ^^ Getting somewhere, 
 it carries us through life, takes us over a path we 
 are going." Now, when we analyzed the wish 
 to kick the rocking-chair we found the conscious 
 wish came from the unconscious wish to kick the 
 mother out of our way. She had prevented us 
 from getting somewhere in the path we wished 
 to tread, and should have moved aside to let us 
 go on in the world as we wished, but with mali- 
 cious intent she has stopped our progress. Or, 
 while she may have surrounded us with such an 
 atmosphere of ideal sweetness and goodness that 
 clings to us, we have to put her influence aside to 
 make progress. She wants us to notice her and 
 
 46 
 
SYMBOLIC THOUGHT 
 
 to remember that she has the power of hurting us, 
 a point of view on our part which will be under- 
 stood from the parent-complex which I have de- 
 scribed in another chapter. 
 
 THE CENSOR 
 
 In the sphere of the unconscious lies the 
 hidden cause of nervous and mental troubles. 
 This is the case because the health of the body 
 depends upon the perfect condition of the func- 
 tioning of the nerves. The energy which trav- 
 erses them, called the libido, requires an un- 
 obstructed passage for the outflow of the creative 
 energy which is expressed in acts of friendship, 
 affection and sympathy, and in the emotions 
 which these acts arouse. If these creative emo- 
 tions are in any way held fast within the body 
 and do not find opportunity for expression, the 
 free expression of libido is blocked. Through the 
 technique of psychoanalysis is discovered the at- 
 tachment in the unconscious, the obstruction 
 which blocks the free expression of the creative 
 emotions. In the case of dreams the thoughts 
 of the unconscious meet the conscious at the mo- 
 ment of awakening and arouse the conscience. 
 This awakening conscience instantly rejects the 
 wishes which the mind has been dwelhng on dur- 
 ing sleep because, according to the conventions of 
 the social environment, these wishes are im- 
 
 47 
 
THE PEOBLEM OF THE NEEVdUS CHH^D 
 
 proper. We call this element of conscience tlie 
 censor because it either blots out the frankly ani- 
 mal desires, arising in the unconscious, thus leav- 
 ing us unaware of them, or else it transforms 
 them by means of the symbolism of the dream 
 so that we do not recognize them for what they 
 are. Thus again we are unaware of them. 
 
 THE CONFLICT 
 
 But the power of the unconscious is elemental 
 in its strength and it constantly pushes outward 
 for expression in consciousness. It is always 
 trying in some way to evade or avoid the censor 
 or deceive him into allowing the thoughts to enter 
 consciousness. We speak' sometimes of this con- 
 flict between the unconscious desire and the cen- 
 sor as the conflict of good and evil. We listen to 
 the sermons of the still small voice, without in the 
 least understanding the significance of the strug- 
 gle or realizing the identity of the two contest- 
 ants. If we could clearly see within us the Twen- 
 tieth Century struggling with 10,000 years B.C., 
 we should not have so sorry a time of it. 
 
 When the life energy has been properly trained 
 in such a way that, in place of primeval means of 
 satisfaction, it freely takes the forms of substi- 
 tute satisfaction supplied by modern civilized 
 life, the life energy or libido is free in its ex- 
 pression and helps us with its marvellous vitality 
 
 48 
 
SYMBOLIC THOUGHT 
 
 toward the filling out of a well rounded life. 
 When the libido, on the other hand, has been sti- 
 fled and buried in the unconscious, then the primi- 
 tive emotions of jealousy, envy, and hatred pre- 
 vail and stunt the life by depriving it of its in- 
 ward and outward growth. They surely stunt the 
 life because in civilized communities the outward 
 acts of malice, which would have in prehistoric 
 times been performed, are prohibited and the 
 violence which would have been wreaked upon an 
 object is now virtually turned upon the individual 
 himself, who experiences these emotions. That 
 fear and rage have an injurious effect upon the 
 body has already been mentioned. This is quite 
 as injurious an effect, if not even more so, when 
 the destructive emotions are suppressed as when 
 they are worked off in destructive acts. Here 
 lies the gist of the whole thing. No emotions 
 should be swallowed. The results of doing that 
 are a *^ rotten" disposition mentioned elsewhere. 
 All emotions should be given free play under con- 
 trol. Therefore, only the constructive ones which 
 help in the process of building the tissues of the 
 body should be cultivated. The means whereby 
 this substitution may be effected are outlined 
 elsewhere. 
 
 In almost all forms of nervousness there is a 
 conflict going on in the patient's life between the 
 two forms of thought, the archaic and the mod- 
 ern. One of these, in the unconscious, is pulling 
 
 49 
 
THE PROBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHILD 
 
 the nervous patient back, and yet he is absolutely 
 unaware of it. The other is the natural urge to 
 outward growth which is striving for expression. 
 This identifies the natural urge with the force of 
 conscience representing social development in the 
 soul of the individual. For the natural urge or 
 libido is, at one and the same time, both in har- 
 mony with and at variance with the selfish de- 
 sires of the individual. The self -preservative or 
 nutritional aspect of the libido sometimes comes 
 into direct conflict with the race-preservative or 
 reproductive, and at no time more than the pres- 
 ent, when the birth of a child is of so vast an 
 economic importance in the lives of the parents. 
 When a person is pulled two ways by equal 
 opposing forces, he stands still as in a tug-of- 
 war. Thus, if the unconscious pulls him strong- 
 est he grows more and more nervous as the years 
 advance and the urge of conscious life grows 
 less — the urge which is the call of his fellows to 
 get up and out and accomplish something which 
 is socially productive. His nervousness is due 
 to his weakness in the conflict which in spite of 
 age still continues between the individual and so- 
 ciety. This nervousness or mental unbalancing is 
 inevitable, because the libido will regress and be- 
 come primitive in its nature and stronger than 
 the censor of consciousness, through the weak- 
 ening of the ties between the individual and 
 society. 
 
 50 
 
SYMBOLIC THOUGHT 
 
 THE PHANTASY 
 
 When the real, which is the social and con- 
 scious, life of an individual is neither satisfied 
 nor happy, his mind is more and more occupied 
 with what is called ^'building castles in the air.'* 
 We call such thinking " phantasying/ ' It is a 
 make-believe existence and is seen in day dream- 
 ing and in the night dreams as well. One becomes 
 rich, famous and beautiful, has revenge on those 
 he envies, destroys any one or anything in his 
 way, and surrounds himself with a fairyland of 
 music and beauty and whatever pleases his senses. 
 In day dreaming a person often becomes so in- 
 tense in his phantasies that he is not aware of 
 those around him. I have watched patients get 
 rid of unpleasant duties by bringing on a dreamy 
 spell, when they felt as though they were floating, 
 the mind drifting like a boat on a lake without a 
 current, the face without expression, the eyes un- 
 seeing and dreamy. It requires strong, vigorous 
 thoughts to bring such a person back to reality, 
 and then reality must be made sufficiently inter- 
 esting to keep such a weak mind directed toward 
 it. The phantasies of day dreams, as well as 
 night dreams, closely resemble tales of mythology 
 and fairy lore, when the race was in the child- 
 hood of its development. How many working 
 girls have had Cinderella dreams, how many chil- 
 dren with despotic government at home have had 
 
 51 
 
THE PEOBLEM OF THE NERVOUS GRJLD 
 
 Jack the Giant Killer dreams, and adoles- 
 cent dreams of Aladdin and his Wonderful 
 Lamp? 
 
 The dream is the via regia to the unconscious, 
 because in the dream images we have as nearly 
 as possible the manifestation of what has been 
 repressed into it. The dream uses an older form 
 of thought which is a survival of archaic modes 
 of expression, for as the body bears traces of 
 anatomical and physiological development so does 
 the human mind from the threshold of antiquity 
 show psychological development. We have in- 
 stances of earlier forms of thought in the sym- 
 bolism of allegories and parables of the Bible by 
 which moral or spiritual relations are typically 
 set forth with the essential qualities of brevity 
 and definiteness employed in dream pictures. A 
 beautiful example of symbolism in the parable 
 is in 2 Sam. XII, 1-9, and an equally beautiful 
 allegory in the 80th Psalm tells of the deliver- 
 ance of the children of Israel from Egypt as the 
 planting and growth of a vine : 
 
 *^Thou hast brought a vine out of Egypt, 
 thou hast cast out the heathen and planted it. 
 
 **Thou preparedst room before it, and 
 didst cause it to take deep root, and it filled 
 the land. The hills were covered with the 
 shadow of it, and the boughs thereof were 
 like the goodly cedars. ' ' 
 52 
 
SYMBOLIC THOUGHT 
 
 In the fable we again see symbolic thinking 
 where irrational beings and sometimes inanimate 
 objects are, for the purpose of moral instruction, 
 made to act and speak with human interests and 
 passions. In the fable human passions and ac- 
 tions are attributed to beasts, while in the para- 
 ble the lower creations are used to illustrate the 
 higher life. Likewise fairy tales and myths arose 
 in a primitive age and go back to the remotest 
 antiquity. There is a close affinity between the 
 fable, allegory, parable, fairy tales and our 
 dreams in that they amplify and elaborate moral 
 instruction. The dream has a moral message to 
 the sleeper and contains the undeveloped part of 
 our minds, also the repressed part made up of 
 whatever each life has repressed because of the 
 difficulty of fitting it in with the conscious life 
 that he has to lead. Some people repress the 
 best part of themselves owing to mistaken ideals 
 of duty, and in them the repressed part contains 
 pictures of helplessness, imprisonment, confine- 
 ment, fright, fear. 
 
 In the dream we trace a compensating function 
 of the unconscious, so that those thoughts and 
 tendencies of a personality, which in conscious 
 life are too seldom recognized, come spontane- 
 ously into action during sleep when the conscious 
 process is disconnected. 
 
 The question might be asked. How can the 
 dream contain a message to the sleeper if it can- 
 
 53 
 
THE PROBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHH^D 
 
 not be understood? To this I must answer that 
 understanding does not always consist in an in- 
 tellectual process but in an emotional reaction. 
 
 There are many other things in dreams be- 
 sides repressed wishes. There is much future in 
 them, also much of the racial past never before 
 conscious, therefore never repressed. 
 
 In the dream thoughts we see what has been 
 most successful in passing the censor, and we 
 have but to remove the disguises from the 
 thoughts as presented in the dream to find out 
 what the symbols of the dream really mean, to 
 be able to discern the trends of the unconscious 
 as they actually are. The dream is the best way, 
 and almost the only way, of showing the patient 
 the cause of his neurosis. The neurosis itself is, 
 to be sure, one of the manifestations of the un- 
 conscious desire, but it is a very elaborate one 
 and sometimes impossible to unravel. The dream, 
 on the contrary, is an epitome of the conditions 
 causing the neurosis, and when analyzed, under- 
 stood and grasped as a unity, can be used as a 
 starting point for numberless excursions into the 
 unconscious, by means of the *^free associations.'' 
 It is like a plan of a city by which we can clearly 
 see how .0 get to any part of it. The dream has 
 multitudinous avenues leading to all the districts 
 of the soul. Working out the psychology of 
 thought by association of ideas is not original 
 with the modern psychologists, it was used by 
 
 54 
 
SYMBOLIC THOUGHT 
 
 Aristotle. It is stated that lie worked out a fairly 
 complete system of psychology, and stated an im- 
 portant psychological principle — that of the as- 
 sociation of ideas. 
 
 So true an expression of the real unconscious 
 trends is the dream that the experienced psycho- 
 analyst can clearly see during the narration of 
 the patient ^s first dream the exact cause of the 
 trouble. And here is where the shallow psycho- 
 analyst, like the dogmatic, dictatorial parent tell- 
 ing the child categorically what he must do and 
 laying a load of injunctions upon him, makes the 
 mistake of telling the patient at the first inter- 
 view the whole story of his neurosis, and of not 
 letting him work it out for himself. The aca- 
 demic information, whether in technical or plain 
 words, makes no impression, because the intellect 
 does not directly govern the unconscious. Con- 
 scious intellectual control of the archaic primor- 
 dial urge within us there must be, but we can get 
 it only indirectly through the emotions, for the 
 emotions govern the unconscious. It expresses 
 itself through and in emotions, it is accessible by 
 the way of the emotions. Therefore, there must 
 be an emotional reaction felt by the patient before 
 he can feel a conscious wish strong enough to 
 supplant the unconscious wish. He cannot sim- 
 ply be told to have an emotional reaction any 
 more than the child really feels ashamed when 
 an indulgent parent tells him he ought to be 
 
 55 
 
THE PEOBLEM OF THE NEEVOUS CHHjD 
 
 ashamed for what he has done. Very often, if 
 not always, the feeling aroused by such language 
 on the part of a parent to a child is merely an 
 imitation of the indignation which the parent 
 feels (or feigns) and not the emotion of repent- 
 ance verbally demanded. 
 
 The slow realization on the part of the patient 
 is necessary because the development of charac- 
 ter aimed at in psychoanalysis is a natural 
 growth, and not an instantaneous change made by 
 the ^* presto'' of a magician. Just as the limbs 
 of a child grow larger by infinitesimal increments 
 of single cells, so must the character be formed 
 by allying one act after another with the creative 
 emotions. The symbolism of the dream shows 
 us the means of doing this. From interpreting 
 the dream one comes to interpreting the waking 
 life in the same way. This is not to say that 
 waking life is a dream, but that the dream is 
 really an integral part of waking life, just as the 
 flower is an integral part of the plant. And just 
 as the flower can be that particular '^flower in 
 the crannied wall'' and no other one or no other 
 kind of flower, simply because it is the fullest ex- 
 pression of the life force of that plant and that 
 particular kind of plant, so the dream is but a 
 petal of a flower of the unconscious. And just 
 as the flower bears in its corolla, sometimes hid- 
 den from view, the male and female elements of 
 its reproductive system, so does the dream con- 
 
 56 
 
SYMBOLIC THOUGHT 
 
 tain, but generally hidden, the fructifying ele- 
 ments of our mental life. As there are some 
 kinds of flowers which require the services of the 
 bee to cause a cross fertilization and as the shape 
 of those flowers is determined by the anatomy of 
 the bee, and its colours designed to attract the bee 
 from afar, so does the soul of certain types of peo- 
 ple require the directive influence of another soul 
 in order most fruitfully to liberate the powers of 
 that certain type of personality and bring them 
 to fullest development and richest fecundity. 
 
 It is not mere fancy that I compare the soul of 
 a neurotic child to a brilliant flower. Neurotics 
 are in one sense a higher type of evolution than 
 the self-sufficient street Arab, just as wind -ferti- 
 lized plants are of lower order than those which 
 employ co-operation of other organisms. 
 
 The vital point of it all, and the thesis of this 
 chapter in particular, is that the ultimate truths 
 of the soul cannot be expressed literally, but re- 
 quire symoblism to represent them as adequately 
 as they can be pictured or intoned in human 
 thought. A purely scientific account of any nat- 
 ural phenomenon describes it literally as far as 
 it is possible to find literal language for external 
 phenomena. ^^Dirt is matter in the wrong place." 
 Where science cannot find such language, it in- 
 vents arbitrary symbols such as CO2, H2O, H2SO4, 
 etc. Human thinking not rigidly directed by 
 formulae, though I admit the directed form has 
 
 57 
 
THE PEOBLEM OF THE NEEVOUS CHH^D 
 
 its proper place, represents anything (that must 
 be represented) necessarily through the medium 
 of parables, fables, similes, allegories, myths, 
 metaphors. This is due to the mind's inevitably 
 identifying itself in infancy with the world. This 
 infantile mode of thought persists in varying ex- 
 tent throughout the whole of many persons' later 
 lives. In fairy stories we have the elaborate de- 
 velopment which an adult mind, with adult expe- 
 rience and passion and desire, produces through 
 the medium of very unscientific metaphorical 
 language. The child and the unconscious in the 
 adult have the same figurative mode of expres- 
 sion, but without the artistic elaboration. 
 
 It is not to be understood that the symbolic 
 thoughts of the dreams of night or day or the 
 symbolic acts of everyday life have more than a 
 very general loose correspondence between dif- 
 ferent individuals. It is not a case of interpreta- 
 tion of dreams and acts such as the old-fashioned 
 dream books give us, or like the wholly artificial 
 * language of flowers," or ^^handkerchief flirta- 
 tion," the first of which is partly, and the last is 
 wholly, an arbitrary and artificial code. The un- 
 derstanding of a dream is impossible without 
 some of the '^free associations" of the dreamer, 
 and if the same dream pictures were presented 
 for analysis by two or more persons, they might 
 mean utterly different things for the several 
 dreamers. *^ Water," for instance, might 
 
 58 
 
SYMBOLIC THOUGHT 
 
 mean *4ife'^ in one person's dream and ^* death" 
 in another's, according to the relation of that idea 
 to other ideas occurring to the dreamer's mind in 
 connection with the water. 
 
 SYMBOLISM PRESEBVES SLEEP 
 
 A common misapprehension about dreams is 
 expressed in the phrase ^^ sleep troubled by bad 
 dreams" which seems to imply that the dream is 
 a disturber of sleep. On the contrary, the sym- 
 bolism of the dream is the preserver and main- 
 tainer of sleep in that it, the dream, may repre- 
 sent in grotesque and apparently irrelevant pic- 
 tures a desire which, if it were shown in its true 
 form, would immediately awaken the sleeper and 
 fill him with shame and remorse, which might 
 keep him awake for the rest of the night. So 
 the dream generally completely disguises the un- 
 conscious wishes, and the ideas as they appear 
 in consciousness are harmless enough to be tol- 
 erated and told with a smile next morning at 
 breakfast. 
 
 This does not mean to say, however, that the 
 unconscious wishes should remain unknown to the 
 dreamer, particularly if, as in the case of a nerv- 
 ous person, there is some element in his life which 
 is preventing him from living it fully and joy- 
 ously. In such a case the dream should have, as 
 should the neurosis, the fullest study. It should 
 
 59 
 
THE PEOBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHILD 
 
 be remembered, too, that no one can successfully 
 do that for himself, not even the most trained 
 psychoanalyst, because the viewpoint of the 
 mirror held up by the other person is absolutely 
 essential. 
 
 MANIFEST vs. LATENT 
 
 Psychoanalysis is the scientific special investi- 
 gation of symbolic thought and action, or the 
 study of all mental manifestations as symbolic. 
 It is necessary to look beneath the surface to dis- 
 cover in the unconscious the original thoughts of 
 which our conscious manifestations are but a rep- 
 resentation or reshaping of the thing it stands 
 for. In this sense nothing is what it appears to 
 be. Not only is the manifest content of the dream 
 a disguise of the real unconscious desire actuating 
 the dream, but the actualities of every kind with 
 which we are surrounded are, with few exceptions, 
 disguises of the vital tendencies of our most red- 
 blooded human life. The disguise is most gro- 
 tesque in the night dream. Lying as he was in a 
 cot in a hospital ward, what apparent interest had 
 the patient in a cow in an old orchard? "What 
 impression does any one get from his unstudied 
 dreams except that of the most unaccountable 
 bizarrerie? But the thoughts connected with the 
 dream show the dream's intimate affiliation with 
 our everyday life; and the acts of our everyday 
 life, when unity is sought for in them, fail as 
 
 60 
 
SYMBOLIC THOUGHT 
 
 signally as does the unanalyzed dream, to show 
 any unity or any definite purpose. Therefore 
 many adults and most children need the clear-eyed 
 view of their lives as a manifestation of a larger 
 life. Psychoanalysis can help them calmly to see 
 things as they are and act accordingly and to 
 secure the reaction of the most wholesomely 
 creative emotions which make for health and 
 strength developed to the utmost. 
 
 61 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE CHILD AND THE ADULT 
 
 As a test of growth, of the successful attainment 
 of adulthood, we may take the fact that the child 
 thinks only of himself, of what he likes and needs 
 to satisfy his cravings for self-preservation in 
 order that he may grow so as later to contribute 
 to the race. He may be called selfish in the com- 
 mon acceptance of the term, but he is necessarily 
 so, and usually finds much difficulty in repressing 
 that variety of selfishness, for it is really his own 
 self-protection. Nature demands that the young 
 receive solicitous care, food and protection, in 
 order to bring them to full growth for creative 
 purposes. The higher the form of life the more 
 protection does nature give her young. In ani- 
 mals the young are cared for through the time of 
 helplessness and then weaned to independence. 
 As the instincts of the child for self-preservation 
 are used to promote his growth, so the adult's in- 
 stincts, when he falls in love, studies a profession, 
 becomes a scientist, or follows the call of art, lit- 
 erature or commercial life, or in some other way 
 helps on the progress of the race, are for race 
 preservation. But if the environment of the child 
 is full of obstacles from unreasonable discipline, 
 
 62 
 
THE CHILD AND THE ADULT 
 
 viz. from too much indulgence, from examples of 
 companions who are too much indulged, from too 
 early development, from quarrelling parents or 
 unhappy home life — then the repressed wishes in 
 the unconscious become more difficult to keep out 
 of consciousness and there begins a conflict be- 
 tween the repressed wishes pulling in one direc- 
 tion and the parental wishes pulling the child in 
 another. What happens depends upon the poten- 
 tial with which the child was born, or if I may 
 coin a phrase, upon the strength of the *^ psychic 
 muscle'' of the infantile life struggling to grow 
 away from the child to maturity. 
 
 If the child has a powerful make-up, he will 
 resist the environment, break away from it, be- 
 come a runaway, lawless, incorrigible, perhaps a 
 criminal. If he has sprung from neurotic soil he 
 may be too weak to break away and escape. The 
 discouraged libido will then sink down in the in- 
 dividual, and there is often a severe physical ill- 
 ness. The body in such cases becomes an easy 
 prey for disease germs, while the mind seeks a 
 world of phantasy to dwell in, which is pleas- 
 anter than reality, or, veiled in symbolism, con- 
 tinues the conflict, hidden from conscious thought. 
 
 UNCONSCIOUS PROBLEMS 
 
 The child whose mind is occupied with uncon- 
 scious problems has no power of concentration, is 
 
 63 
 
THE PEOBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHILD 
 
 dreamy, abstracted and often tearful. Discipline 
 or punishment lias no effect. He remains absent- 
 minded and will say he is not thinking of any- 
 thing. In the face of these circumstances we 
 should remember that he does not know his uncon- 
 scious wishes and problems. It is for us, the psy- 
 choanalysts, to analyze his unconscious and 
 show him what is interfering with his conscious 
 efforts, and then we help him free his libido and 
 provide an outlet for it. In the analysis of an 
 adult we must also show him the unconscious 
 problem and wish, but he must free his own libifio 
 and provide an outlet for it, for the adult can 
 more or less control his environment. The child 
 cannot do so and must be removed from it. 
 
 Dr. Jung of Ziirich conceives the libido as 
 analogous to energy, as understood in the physi- 
 cal sciences, and accepts for mental phenomena 
 the fundamental principle of the conservation of 
 energy, namely, that the total energy of the uni- 
 verse is constant. In the processes of nature no 
 energy is created or destroyed. Increase or de- 
 crease of energy in one form corresponds respec- 
 tively to a decrease or increase in some other form 
 or forms. In the conception of the Zurich school 
 the libido or urge of life is constant.^ If it is not 
 
 , 1 Physical energy is either static or dynamic, and physical 
 science has shown that it is the constant tendency of all the 
 dynamic energy in the world to become static. Thus the dynamic 
 energy of the sim collected by the leaves of trees a million years 
 ago is released in the coal which we burn in our furnaces. But 
 it requires the expenditure of a large amount of dynamic energy 
 
 64 
 
THE CHILD AND THE ADULT 
 
 being used in constructive work, it is a destruc- 
 tive force, and has the moral effect of sending the 
 individual backward rather than forward on the 
 highway of life. The individual is not aware of 
 going backward. He may be in good physical 
 health, but if there is a loss of libido in the con- 
 scious sphere, there is an increase in the uncon- 
 scious mental activity. Again, the correlations of 
 the libido are like those of energy in physics. 
 That is, the transformation of one kind of energy 
 into another is called in the terminology of psy- 
 choanalysis the sublimation of the libido, and 
 operates as the steam engine, transforming the po- 
 tential chemical energy of the coal or wood and of 
 the oxygen of the air into mechanical energy. 
 In the sublimation of the libido we transform the 
 creative energy into science, art, literature, com- 
 merce, etc. But however much transformed, life, 
 time and the libido, are constant, are ever mov- 
 ing on. 
 
 In forbidding athletics, games, dancing, learn- 
 ing to play on musical instruments, or in placing 
 prohibitions on the many lines of activity of child- 
 
 of mankind to transform in mining, transportation and stoking 
 the static energy of coal into the dynamic energy of steam. Uii 
 the other hand, it would seem as if in human and animal life 
 there was an unending fund of dynamic energy, as if evolution 
 had been designed for the purpose of energizing the inert, in- 
 organic matter of the universe. Therefore the human mind rep- 
 resents the latest step in evolution toward the formation of an 
 organism for collecting, transforming, preserving and again 
 liberating energy. The libido is the human expression of this 
 pontinuous dynamic energy. 
 
 65 
 
THE PKOBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHILD 
 
 hood, not infrequently parents unknowingly ar- 
 rest the libido of their children. It is a serious 
 offence against the laws of life. We often hear it 
 said : ' ^ We shall keep that child young, we are in 
 no hurry for him to grow up. We are not anxious 
 for high marks in school, we want him to get 
 well.'' Growth and improvement must work to- 
 gether, or we cannot preserve youth; but if we 
 try to keep the child from growing we make him 
 ill, because we are acting no more intelli- 
 gently than the children who stunted a kitten's 
 growth by trying to ''cure" it with doses of 
 whisky. 
 
 CHILD MUST BE ACTIVE 
 
 When we reprove a child for being noisy or 
 restless, we are reproving him for being a child, 
 and are doing our best to stunt his growth. Could 
 anything be more stupid? We cannot allow him 
 to shout and jump in the drawing-room, but we 
 should provide a place and time for him to do so. 
 We are all transformers, turning air, food and 
 sunlight into energy. The great creative force of 
 life is the sun, which frees energy as electricity 
 is freed. We should send the child out into the 
 sunlight and under the blue skies, either literally 
 or figuratively. We speak of a sunny disposition 
 as a great personal charm. How stupid we are if 
 we do not realize that a child needs sunlight with- 
 
 66 
 
 X 
 
THE CHILD AND THE ADULT 
 
 in as well as without the house. The opening out 
 of a new leaf in the spring is no more inevitable 
 than is the response of the child to the sunny dis- 
 position. The bud with its sap constitutes a coii- 
 dition in which the warmth of the sun cannot fail 
 to produce the expansion into a glossy green leaf. 
 Quite as inevitable as the effect of the sunny at- 
 mosphere upon either child or leaf is that of the 
 cold, gloomy atmosphere which is sometimes 
 spread by certain people. A nervous invalid tell- 
 ing of her aches and pains brings clouds into a 
 home. An irritable father, however real may be 
 the cause of his feelings, has no right to disturb 
 the home atmosphere. The skeleton in the family 
 closet, hidden because of pride, must be destroyed, 
 and the door left wide open. The financial prob- 
 lem of living beyond the income, and the mal- 
 adjustment of the nouveau riche are both equally 
 destructive. The former brings heavy clouds of 
 misery and despair; the latter is as the burning 
 tropical sun, drying out the freshness and frag- 
 rance of youth. 
 
 GUIDING THE LIBIDO 
 
 In the terms of the Swiss school we must, with 
 sufficient discipline, ** guide the libido" of the 
 child through an environment such that it keeps 
 the understanding evenly balanced. Telling the 
 truth in answering all questions is the only way 
 
 67 
 
THE PROBLEM OP THE NERVOUS CHELD 
 
 to keep the confidence of our children, and if we 
 are too prudish to overcome our resistances to the 
 vital truths, for which the childish mind is ever 
 searching, we should know that our children will 
 regard us with suspicion. This does not contra- 
 dict what was said above about the child ^s learn- 
 ing too much, or being too emotional, for it has 
 been found that the refusal to answer a child's 
 questions is much more exciting to him than a 
 ready and cheerful answer. A lying answer 
 arouses strong destructive emotions in the child. 
 A lying parent is like a corrupt contractor who 
 uses mud instead of mortar in building a brick 
 wall. At some critical time the wall collapses, but 
 the contractor has fled to another country. The 
 child never is harmed by simple and frank an- 
 swers which it can understand. Only when the 
 answer contains more than the child can assimi- 
 late does it contain the wrong ingredient (mud). 
 In fact everything that is not assimilated is mud 
 in the structure of the mind, just as the unas- 
 similable matter taken into the stomach is re- 
 jected. To the pure all things are pure. If our 
 own ideals have been true, if our minds have not 
 been perverted when we have glimpsed life at its 
 source, we can present its mysteries to our 
 children as spiritual truths, and teach them 
 that all conception and birth are beautiful, 
 whether it is the unfolding of a rosebud or a 
 chUd. 
 
 68 
 
THE CHILD AND THE ADULT 
 
 THE FAMILY SKELETON 
 
 An illustration of the bad effect on the child of 
 a family skeleton's concealment by the parent is 
 seen in the case of a girl whose father was a 
 drunkard. This fact was kept from the child as 
 long as possible, with the result that when finally 
 she came to know it, at the age of sixteen years, 
 she took it as an insoluble problem, because it had 
 been kept secret from her, and was therefore re- 
 pressed. When in later life she came upon the 
 problems connected with becoming a mother her- 
 self, she was not able to devote her entire energy 
 to the solution of those problems, because a part 
 of her energy was absorbed still in pondering, 
 whether consciously or unconsciously, on the 
 drunkenness of her father. In her unconscious 
 thoughts of the dream world she saw a man 
 struggling up a hill, sometimes slipping, stum- 
 bling, and as lie neared the top something would 
 hit Mm, knock him down. He would fall, roll 
 down to the bottom of the hill and lie there as 
 though stunned and looking like a drunken man 
 asleep in the gutter. He would gradually awaken 
 and start again, sometimes pulling liimself up by 
 tiny twigs, which strangely seemed to ^ear his 
 weight, but again something would send him fall- 
 ing down to the depths. 
 
 Her father was the man in the dream, strug- 
 gling to rise in life ; the reproaches of her domi- 
 
 69 
 
THE PROBLEM OP THE NERVOUS CHttD 
 
 neering mother sent Mm down again. His love 
 for the patient was symbolized as the tiny twigs 
 which pulled him up. Again and again she 
 queried : Why could not her father overcome the 
 force which knocked him down? I hope when the 
 reader finishes reading this book he will under- 
 stand the answer to the question. 
 
 Her father's morbid condition should have been 
 no problem to her, and it would not have been, had 
 it not been invested with so much emotional value 
 on account of the long secrecy and the subsequent 
 sudden revelation. She should have been told of 
 it in a perfectly matter-of-fact way, and then she 
 would not have wondered, when she became a 
 mother, why her father was a drunkard. In won- 
 dering why her father had so disgraced the family 
 she expended too much energy to be able to give 
 enough to her own personal problems when she 
 herself became a mother. 
 
 TJNASSIMILATED THOUGHT 
 
 How can we tell whether the child's mind con- 
 tains any or little or much unassimilated or re- 
 pressed matter? This is a very important ques- 
 tion, for on our ability to give it a scientifically 
 correct answer depends our knowledge of whether 
 we are doing our best for our children or not. Of 
 course it goes without saying that if we do not 
 make a scientific study of the child's mental 
 
 70 
 
THE CHILD AND THE ADULT 
 
 processes, we are not doing as much for him as 
 we should do if we were all able to examine him 
 by the methods of the expert in the most modem 
 form of psychology. This degree of care is not 
 possible for parents in general. While they can- 
 not be expected to go into intensive child rearing 
 with the same business-like devotion to systematic 
 methods as that of the breeders of animals (even 
 guinea pigs destined for vivisection receive more 
 intelligent care than the majority of children!), 
 they could yet, with a little more knowledge, avoid 
 certain errors in bringing up their children. They 
 could also do some things which would not natu- 
 rally occur to them to do without suggestions re- 
 ceived from scientific sources. 
 
 And then again we either do not welcome our 
 children but feel the additional care as too heavy 
 a burden, or we too eagerly await the arrival of 
 our first child and plan to make him a model. 
 How, then, can a child be free to grow as nature 
 has intended, if we are making of him either a 
 burden or a plaything for us to exhibit? The child 
 needs guidance from the hour of birth but not re- 
 straint or repression. He needs all his energy for 
 his play which is a preparation for earning his 
 livelihood. But while the child's libido is being 
 guided and trained into strong growth, it must be 
 free. The child must feel free and yet have re- 
 spect for authority which leads to obedience. 
 From force of habit we impose raanjr unnecessary 
 
 71 
 
THE PROBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHHiD 
 
 '^don'ts'* upon children. The old story of 
 **Mary, go and see what the children are doing, 
 and tell them to stop** shows onr selfishness and 
 ignorance. We misinterpret the many phases of 
 growth which the child must live through, if we 
 think the desire for toys, printing presses, stamp 
 collecting Indian belongings, circus doings, tin 
 soldiers, railroads, electrical devices (the last 
 named coming at puberty just before the first love 
 affair) are all extravagances which should be 
 refused. 
 
 CAIiF LOVE 
 
 The manifestation of puberty which evokes the 
 most perverse behaviour on the part of the parent 
 is the child's first love affair. Rarely do the par- 
 ents, if they show any reactions at all, show the 
 one most helpful to the child. The first love affair 
 of the boy usually fills the mother with alarm. 
 Her unconscious then gets the best of her. She 
 feels that she has lost her boy. At the age of 
 puberty she has literally and physically lost her 
 hoy, as he has become physically a man. She 
 should not, but she usually does, wish to keep him 
 a boy physically. The young man should then be 
 her son, rather than her boy, in both the mental 
 and the physical spheres. Parents should wel- 
 come with great relief the appearance of the first 
 love affair. Although they may still need guid- 
 ance in this first love affair it means go much, as 
 
 72 
 
THE CHILD AND THE ADULT 
 
 it is the beginning of the self-reliance and respon- 
 sibility of the man with his hopes and ambitions. 
 The boy or girl should at that age receive as little 
 advice and admonition as possible, beyond the 
 necessity of continuing whatever line of work, 
 whether in school or business, in which he is en- 
 gaged. The first love affair should come at about 
 the age of fifteen, and is a delicate subject be- 
 tween parent and child, as those deep, vital emo- 
 tions are too sacred and wonderful to youth to be 
 lightly mentioned. Parents should never ridicule 
 the first love affair, nor yet encourage it. When 
 the twelve to fifteen year old son calls his mother 
 into his darkened room after he has retired and 
 says : * * Oh, mother, I cannot go to sleep. I keep 
 thinking of Elsie all the time," she should not be 
 shocked or dismayed. She should encourage him 
 to talk about Elsie, not for the purpose of increas- 
 ing his affection for her, although most mothers 
 mistakenly believe that will be the result, but to 
 open a safety valve. 
 
 The more he talks about Elsie the less deeply 
 will he feel. He will, on the contrary, be ready 
 to pass his ^*calf love'' on to the next girl who 
 smiles at him. While the mother is inevitably 
 though unexpectedly pained at the son's love af- 
 fairs, she will later be surprised, if she has with- 
 held opposition, and has been patient in listen- 
 ing to the praise of Elsie, to hear him say: 
 ** Mother, I have loved you so much better since I 
 
 73 
 
THE PEOBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHH^D 
 
 have loved Elsie. I used to think you didn't love 
 me any, because you wouldn't let me do things, 
 and always made me do things I didn't want to 
 do. But I know you had to do that, because the 
 things you made me do are just the things Elsie 
 likes to have me do." And so the son returns to 
 the mother with a different kind of love. She is 
 not the only ideal woman, but she is the ideal 
 mother, and her son will give her a more sympa- 
 thetic love. What is more it will be strong and 
 protecting. He will even feel reproachful that he 
 has been such a trouble to her. Later on, if she 
 has been the right kind of mother, he will under- 
 stand and appreciate her self-sacrifice for him. 
 Not every mother is the right kind. She is some- 
 times too infantile, or what is commonly called 
 selfish, to devote her energies to her children. 
 Then, too, she may be potentially the right kind, 
 but, if money is scarce, she makes the grave mis- 
 take at the earliest possible age of requiring her 
 children to work and support her, instead of sup- 
 porting herself. 
 
 A father's feeling upon learning of his daugh- 
 ter's first love affair is often that of resentment 
 and anger. He would like to forbid the presence 
 of any young man in his house. If he has sown 
 some wild oats himself, he condemns young men 
 in general as scamps and rascals. Fortunate, in- 
 deed, is the girl who can go freely to her father 
 and say: **0h, father, Jack cares for me and I 
 
 74 
 
THE CHILD AND THE ADULT 
 
 am so happy! Isn^t he good-looking? He is just 
 wonderful!'' If there is no opposition, the first 
 love affair is usually outgrown in a few months ; 
 and it should be, as rarely do adolescents grow 
 and develop in unison. Early love affairs 
 do not make happy marriages, and so wise 
 parents change the environment with school 
 or visits, to broaden the experience of their 
 children. 
 
 WOBK AND PLAY 
 
 One of the most difficult tasks which often con- 
 fronts parents in directing childhood into adult 
 life is to assist the child to separate work and 
 play, to arouse a desire to work and to do some- 
 thing for others, even though it involves a sacri- 
 fice. As we see in the Swiss conception of psycho- 
 analysis, the child's libido must be free to be put 
 into his daily environment. Whatever the day's 
 work may be, all the interest and energy of the 
 individual, if his libido is free, will be put into it, 
 with a feeling of satisfaction within himself. The 
 pinch of necessity and fear of breaking conven- 
 tional laws are the only forces that compel many 
 an adult to work, but any adult working under 
 this compulsion has strong infantile reactions to 
 his environment. The adult who has ** crossed 
 the bridge" from childhood to maturity works be- 
 cause he feels better for it, because there is always 
 
 75 
 
THE PEOBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHILD 
 
 a force pnsMng him on, because he gets satisfac- 
 tion out of the work itself. He does not complain 
 of difficulties, but just *^ naturally" works, be- 
 cause he is a man obeying nature's creative im- 
 pulse, whether following the simple existence of 
 a day labourer or the more complicated life of a 
 master employer. 
 
 A man can work with creative satisfaction only 
 when his needs of development have been fulfilled. 
 As the child is blindly groping for the satisfaction 
 of his needs, he cannot work or play with the same 
 steady purpose as the adult. Attention in a child 
 is very short-lived. Prolonged concentration 
 upon a single object is impossible. He may oc- 
 cupy himself a while with toys that he can move 
 about and manipulate, and then his attention is 
 claimed by other practical activities. He is inter- 
 ested in what he can do by way of actual move- 
 ment, but he has looked at a thing, or listened, 
 long enough as soon as he finds that it leads to 
 nothing else. The chances are that the reason a 
 child does not follow a parent's admonitions is 
 because the parents are expecting too much under- 
 standing from the child and have therefore re- 
 quired of him the impossible. 
 
 This also holds good of a child in school, his 
 impulses being mainly toward movement and do- 
 ing, not toward thinking and knowing. He will 
 watch and listen, now longer than he did a year 
 ago, but chiefly because his practical interests are 
 
 76 
 
THE CHILD AND THE ADULT 
 
 wider, and more of the objects around him afford 
 openings for action. He is still impatient of mere 
 thinking. He has a body which requires constant 
 exercise, and it is absurd to expect a child to 
 remain long sitting in one position or standing in 
 one position and unwise to force him to do so. 
 Sensible instructors recognize these facts and ar- 
 range for change and recreation in the school, but 
 at home the parents are too prone to blame a child 
 for wilful disobedience, which isn^t wilful at all. 
 The child's attention must at first move with his 
 natural cravings and instinctive activities (his 
 libido). The parents' difficult task is to recog- 
 nize this limitation and to realize how much less 
 their words mean to the child than to themselves, 
 not from the child's lack of respect for the 
 parents, but from his being too inexperienced to 
 be able to comprehend and grasp their meaning. 
 One has to make the appeal to voluntary atten- 
 tion, and this appeal has to be made for some time 
 in order to make the child learn things that seem 
 dull, although the discipline of learning them will 
 be beneficial. He will later on learn that knowl- 
 edge is invaluable, as for instance the multiplica- 
 tion table, when he begins to work at payment for 
 labour by the hour. No child enjoys the drudgery 
 of committing the tables to memory, but at an 
 early age he should begin his financial career by 
 being given a small sum of money for simple ac- 
 tivities, and later he will be very glad to use his 
 
 77 
 
THE PEOBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHILD 
 
 arithmetic in multiplying his number of hours 
 by the rate per hour. 
 
 UNSOLVED CHILDISH PROBLEMS 
 
 Some of the problems are not solved in child- 
 hood, and the dissatisfaction due to their being 
 unsolved persists into and complicates matters in 
 later life, as for instance : Why mother and father 
 should go to Europe and have a good time and 
 leave the son behind, or why he cannot have an 
 auto, keep late hours vdth other boys, but is sent 
 away to military school where smoking is for- 
 bidden and there is very strict discipline, while, as 
 a contrast to his fate, other boys of his age are 
 *' hitting it up'' at home and enjoying the freedom 
 which he would himself so much enjoy. Another 
 boy had an exceedingly strict and severe father 
 who, for a slight disobedience of his orders, de- 
 prived the son of a very great pleasure. He was 
 required to stay at home while all the other mem- 
 bers of the family went to see a big parade. The 
 disproportion of this punishment would appeal to 
 any one, but to the boy himself it was a crushing 
 force which took from him all initiative. Since 
 his own will was overridden on every occasion by 
 the domineering father, he came to the conclusion 
 that all efforts on his part were useless, and, as it 
 appeared on the outside, he never made any. 
 
 But the truth was that his efforts were exclu- 
 78 
 
THE CHILD AND THE ADULT 
 
 sively mental though not conscious, for in his 
 unconscious he was continually mulling over the 
 question why his father had been so unreasonable 
 in his treatment. When he came for analysis he 
 had forgotten all the circumstances and knew only 
 the mere fact that he had no initiative. The re- 
 sult of the analysis was to show what had de- 
 prived him of his initiative and also that his 
 father was not so strong a character. On the con- 
 trary, he had been, as many domineering persons 
 are, merely compensating with an exterior im- 
 periousness for an essential but unconscious sense 
 of inferiority. This should suggest to all parents 
 the possibility that when they feel it incumbent 
 on themselves to be exceedingly severe, it is quite 
 possible that they too are overcompensating in 
 their attitude toward the child for their own un- 
 conscious feeling of inferiority. And we know 
 that the more unconscious is this feeling, the 
 stronger will be this overcompensating severity. 
 We cannot be extremely severe unless the reasons 
 for not being so are obscured by the unconscious 
 mental activity. Otherwise, the milder and more 
 rational, but no less strong attitude, the one which 
 will have the greater good effect on the child's 
 future, will naturally come to the surface in us. 
 Even a conscious f eehng that we are too indulgent 
 with the child will sometimes cause us to compen- 
 sate consciously for this weakness ; but an uncon- 
 scious feeling of inferiority is generally mani- 
 
 79 
 
THE PEOBLEM OF THE NEEVOUS CHILD 
 
 fested in the adult in a conscious desire to be 
 absolute master over the child, to impress his will 
 on it and to have absolute and instant obedience. 
 
 In this self-deception, which most parents prac- 
 tise upon themselves, the psychoanalyst finds the 
 cause of much that is morbid in the early-cowed 
 individuaPs later life. His parents have treated 
 him according to the particular twist which they 
 have been given by their own unconscious, and he 
 sometimes becomes positive and assertive because 
 he had unassertive parents and vice versa. It is 
 not the children alone, however, who feel this spe- 
 cial trend of the character of the parents. Other 
 people notice it, too, but are less affected by it in 
 proportion to their own experience in the world. 
 But on a child the parents ' unjust acts (or unwise, 
 if there be an implication of blame in the word 
 unjust), has an effect which is all the greater on 
 account of the helplessness and plasticity of the 
 child's nature. 
 
 The unjust and overbearing parental atmos- 
 phere in the world of nervous children cannot be 
 cleared because the parents cannot see the actual 
 facts of the case. But the neurotics who have 
 been treated by psychoanalysis show that a large 
 proportion of them have become neurotics because 
 of adverse environment in childhood, consisting 
 of a parent or both parents who did not under- 
 stand the effects of their severity or over-indul- 
 gence upon their children. 
 
 80 
 
THE CHILD AND THE ADULT 
 
 FIXATION OF LIBIDO 
 
 If the environment of the child (at the time 
 when reasoning power begins) is in greatest con- 
 flict with his instincts, then the libido is held fast 
 upon problems of his life, which should not remain 
 unsolved for him. A failure on the part of the 
 parents to give him the solutions of these intimate 
 problems will result in the child's facing even 
 greater and wholly unnecessary conflicts in later 
 life. This mental condition of the adult, where 
 he is troubled by problems which should have been 
 solved for him in his childhood by his parents 
 (the best service they can ever do him), is techni- 
 cally called a ** fixation'' of the libido. In such 
 case a part of the att^tion, even in later life, is 
 centred (though unconsciously) upon questions 
 which are essentially childish ones, and cannot be 
 disengaged from them to be wholly devoted to the 
 problems which are essentially adult ones. This 
 is the true cause of the infantility which I have 
 mentioned above as characterizing many club men 
 and women bridge players. 
 
 It is sometimes a very difficult matter to re- 
 lieve this fixation, to separate the libido of the 
 adult from the object to which, on account of per- 
 fectly excusable parental ignorance, it has in 
 childhood become attached. The results of this 
 fixation are most serious, because not the entire 
 libido is attached to its infantile object, but only 
 
 81 
 
THE PROBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHILD 
 
 a part of it, the other part being successfully di- 
 rected toward the appropriate adult object. The 
 result is a ^^ splitting of the libido,** but the por- 
 tion of the energy, affections, etc., that remains 
 fixed on the unhappy problems of childhood is so 
 ^reat that the remainder of the libido is not suffi- 
 cient to cover the educational, social, financial and 
 other demands of the adult *s everyday life. In 
 the childhood of such a person the ordinary de- 
 mands of his school and home life crowd out the 
 thoughts of the unsolved problems. 
 
 These thoughts, however, are not annihilated. 
 They merely disappear from the surface, and sink 
 into the unconscious where they remain repressed. 
 Although they are not recognized by the adult as 
 a disturbance, because they were forgotten some- 
 time between childhood and maturity, they are 
 ever pressing the mind of the adult in order that 
 they may gain relief by breaking through into 
 conscious life and thought. They seek an outlet 
 through emotions in laughter, anger, swearing, 
 tears. Laughter is a great opening and relief to 
 the repressions. The adult, therefore, finds him- 
 self not interested in his surroundings, but absent- 
 minded, abstracted and gazing into space with 
 no conscious thoughts. On the contrary, the 
 thoughts which would have been conscious, had 
 they not been repressed, are held in the uncon- 
 scious. Sometimes there occurs in the conscious 
 life of the adult the blankest apathy, an utter f ail- 
 
 83 
 
THE CHILD AND THE ADULT 
 
 ure of family affection, because all the affection is 
 held in the unconscious by the unhappy incidents 
 of child-life which are still rankling there, irritat- 
 ing, disturbing and poisoning the mind. They are 
 like a wound healed over, but looking red and 
 angry on the surface, and with unclean conditions 
 underneath. 
 
 Psychoanalysis, like the surgeon's knife, in 
 opening the unclean wound, opens the mind, dis- 
 covers what are the disturbing thoughts and then 
 helps the patient to remove them. In a child such 
 a condition as the splitting of the libido or a fixa- 
 tion, can usually be seen on the surface and the 
 cause will be found to exist in the child's environ- 
 ment. If the child can be placed in a new home- 
 life, the splitting is more easily healed, but each 
 visit to the former environment will reopen the 
 split, until the child has acquired sufficient age and 
 strength of character to withstand the shock of 
 meeting the obstacles which were his undoing. In 
 an adult, when the existing cause is buried deep 
 under many years of experience and ethical re- 
 strictions, a longer time for analysis of the sym- 
 poliG thought is necessary. 
 
 83 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 MENTAL BEHAVIOUR OF THE CHH^D 
 
 The child's problems are not confined to the home 
 life, but certain forms of nervousness manifest 
 themselves only at home. The school life, more 
 especially that of boarding-school and college, af- 
 fords a great relief to the unconscious struggles. 
 I have often heard children in the adolescent 
 years say they were looking forward with pleas- 
 ure to returning to their comrades and their 
 school life. The child who is not strong enough 
 to throw off the home influence, the being ' ^ tied to 
 mother's apron strings," or the overwhelming 
 awe of a despotic father, will find more suffering 
 at school if the teacher belongs to a large group of 
 instructors who study the principles of logical 
 thinking and apply those rules to all mental be- 
 haviour without appreciating the lack of reason- 
 ing power in childhood, and the conscious and un- 
 conscious problems of adolescence. How much 
 knowledge has the average teacher of a child's 
 mind? The difference between the mature and 
 the youthful mind deserves attention. The 
 younger a child is, the more closely is his mental 
 behaviour tied to the needs of the moment. The 
 child is incapable, as we have seen, of working 
 
 84 
 
MENTAL BEHAVIOUR OF THE CHILD 
 
 intentionally toward a remote end. He is work- 
 ing for self-preservation. For this reason steadi- 
 ness of purpose is not in him. It is the parents' 
 and teachers' business to help him toward that 
 end, but, in the meantime, not to make de- 
 mands upon him which presume his knowledge 
 of its existence. Making such demands must 
 lead to disappointment/ and possibly to injus- 
 tice. 
 
 We expect too much of children and in so doing 
 are unquestionably selfish ourselves. It is less 
 work for a teacher if a pupil recites a perfect 
 lesson, even in a parrot-like style. It is selfish 
 pride which a parent feels when a child is success- 
 ful in school, neat in appearance, obedient to com- 
 mands. *^That child is a credit to you," says a 
 neighbour, and the parent swells with that selfish- 
 ness which we call pride. Later on, when the child 
 begins to live for himself, there may be a debit 
 page containing what the parent owes the 
 child. 
 
 So when we say that to work toward an end, 
 to choose means of working, and to learn by ex- 
 perience, are general characteristics of mental 
 growth as we know it, we must remember that 
 these characteristics may be rudimentary and as 
 they develop have not always the same form. The 
 behaviour of infants makes toward ends whose 
 attainment brings satisfaction, but these ends are 
 not forethought, nor are they foreseen in the 
 
 85 
 
THE PKOBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHILD 
 
 imagination, as are the ends at which the adult 
 aims. We, the onlookers, observe merely that the 
 child's conduct is a process toward the removal 
 of some uneasiness, or the attainment of some 
 satisfaction, but the child himself does not regard 
 it in that light. In psychoanalytic treatment we 
 can see that mental and functional disturbances 
 are processes which the patient conducts for the 
 removal of some uneasiness in his life, an uneasi- 
 ness which comes from the too great difficulty of 
 the circumstances in which he finds himself, finan- 
 cial, domestic, moral, or what not, and thus post- 
 pones the hour of meeting them. Illness is fre- 
 quently the regression of the libido to child- 
 hood. 
 
 A CASE OF EEGEESSION 
 
 An example of the regression of the libido was 
 shown in the case of a man of thirty-seven, mar- 
 ried, and having one child, a daughter four years 
 old. He worked in a store owned by an older 
 brother and himself. The older brother and his 
 wife and children were better dressed and seemed 
 to have more money than the patient, whose wife 
 became jealous. She urged the patient to buy out 
 his brother's share of the store, also selected a 
 house she wanted the patient to buy for her. The 
 patient hesitated to assume so much financial re- 
 sponsibility, but his wife declared if he loved her 
 
 86 
 
MENTAL BEHAVIOUR OF THE CHILD 
 
 and the child he would be willing to do it. She 
 continually pressed him harder and harder to 
 rise up to a ^^ higher life'' as she called it, but 
 he, being the youngest of the three sons and 
 always treated as the little boy of the family, felt 
 unequal to satisfy his ambitious wife. His 
 thoughts became more and more confused, he 
 could not work in the store, complained of pain 
 and pressure in his head, especially the forehead 
 and eyes. He began the usual rounds of physi- 
 cians with prescriptions of rest, change and medi- 
 cal treatment, none of which relieved him of the 
 ambitious wife. He blamed himself for not doing 
 as she wished, he declared she was right and if 
 he could only get his head relieved he would buy 
 the store from his brother. The first dream he 
 brought showed himself as having climbed a 
 ladder — or something high — with a small boy. 
 There were thousands of people at the top — his 
 wife was there, but it was very noisy like a car- 
 nival and he did not like it. The little boy dared 
 the patient to jump down and said he would jump 
 with the patient. So the patient took hold of the 
 little boy and they both jumped down together, 
 the patient clinging to the boy. This is a perfect 
 picture of the patient going down into a neurosis 
 — to childhood — to get rid of his wife's ambitions 
 for him. He said his mother never cared whether 
 he worked or not. His father died when the pa- 
 tient was eight years old. 
 
 87 
 
THE PROBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHILD 
 
 ILLNESS A EEGEESSION 
 
 This statement of the regression of the libido to 
 childhood is one of the apparent paradoxes of the 
 newer psychology, and is to be explained in the 
 following manner : When a person is ill he is, in 
 more than one way, in a condition very like in- 
 fancy and takes the same satisfaction that an in- 
 fant takes out of the situation of being an infant. 
 He does not himself work, but others work for 
 him, ministering to his every need and necessar- 
 ily, of course, treating him as if he were an infant. 
 He has a nurse, who humours him, amuses him, 
 washes him, feeds him. He is free to indulge his 
 idle fancies. Any situation approaching this in 
 any way has in it more or less of the element of 
 infantility. It is quite natural for adults to look 
 upon an illness as a rest after great efforts or 
 mental strain, and it is quite comprehensible that 
 some adults, unconsciously if not consciously re- 
 gard the milder degrees of ill health as a means 
 by which they may control the situation, and, un- 
 consciously at any rate, wish to gain that control 
 at any cost, even at the cost of personal pain and 
 weakness. In such weakness there is great 
 strength, and the unconscious evidently avails it- 
 self of this opportunity to secure power, particu- 
 larly when the desire for power is blocked in other 
 directions, as it inevitably is in ill success or dis- 
 
 88 
 
MENTAL BEHAVIOUR OF THE CHILD 
 
 appointment of many kinds. For a person who 
 is really ill every one is ready to do favours, and 
 particularly for children, because nothing is as 
 pathetic as a sick child. In illness the child re- 
 gresses to the helplessness of the infant, and by 
 his very helplessness exerts a power over all the 
 persons in his environment. It thus happens that 
 the child who has a serious illness suddenly finds 
 himself with every one about him subject to his 
 lightest caprice. This unexpected accession of 
 power makes a deep and unforgettable impression 
 on him, and it is no wonder if he strenuously ob- 
 jects to losing his power. In fact, every one 
 knows how difficult it is to take away privileges 
 from any one. And the child is not expected to 
 have any sense of social obligation or to under- 
 stand that his requiring all the attention of at 
 least one person all the time is an economic waste. 
 In fact, very few adults think as much of this as 
 they should. 
 
 The aim of every individual should be economic 
 productiveness. This consists not merely in 
 growing grain or other agricultural products, or 
 mining, or even in commerce through making the 
 products by transportation available to many 
 people; but it also consists in giving pleasure 
 through works of art, thus furnishing the emo- 
 tional incentive necessary to any kind of produc- 
 tive activity. 
 
 89 
 
THE PEOBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHH^D 
 
 THE CHILDEEN OF THE KICH 
 
 From this point of view, only as much atten- 
 tion as is absolutely necessary should be given 
 to children, to keep them healthy and wholesomely 
 occupied, and to give them little by little the idea 
 that it is their duty also to become productive 
 in some way. From this point of view the rich 
 man's wife, who is usually in no way productive, 
 but only destructive of dresses, furniture, auto- 
 mobiles, etc., is the worst possible mother, for she 
 cannot give the example of productiveness to her 
 sons and daughters in the most impressionable 
 years of their lives. The idle rich mother, too, is 
 utterly unable to do other than harm her children 
 if she hands them over to nurses, governesses 
 and tutors, unless she be a business woman, be- 
 cause she has, on account of her idleness, no 
 proper concept herself of what true productive- 
 ness is. Children of such homes, therefore, are 
 brought up under very serious disadvantages 
 compared to those who are forced by circum- 
 stances to give heed to the call of the social en- 
 vironment, either to help in some way to earn 
 their living or to prepare to do so. And the 
 enforced limitation of the care of what are called 
 less fortunate children, and the lack of oppor- 
 tunity to humour them in illness, is in reality an 
 advantage, if they can be made to realize the inde- 
 pendence, which it will give them in later life. 
 
 90 
 
MENTAL BEHAVIOUR OF THE CHILD 
 
 In this connection it should be remembered that 
 the children of the rich are jealons of the privi- 
 leges and power of their parents, the girls are 
 jealous of the mother and the boys are jealous of 
 the father. All this goes on normally in the un- 
 conscious, even if the manifestations of it never 
 appear in conscious thought or action. Also the 
 parents are jealous of the youth and vitality, 
 sometimes, and freedom from responsibility which 
 the children enjoy. In most cases of difficult chil- 
 dren there will be found some one of these varia- 
 tions well developed in the unconscious of one or 
 both parties to any family situation. 
 
 Let the readers of this book examine their own 
 mental behaviour and observe how consciousness 
 is refreshed and vivified by a change of scene and 
 thought, to gain which we go to the theatre or 
 travel, and how monotony, as for instance that of 
 a prosy sermon, induces sleep and dulls conscious- 
 ness. How often both teacher and pupil watch 
 the hands of the clock for closing hour. But 
 should a telegram come that the teacher's dearest 
 friend was arriving how wideawake the teacher 's 
 consciousness becomes, as indeed does that of the 
 child if dismissed half an hour earlier than usual. 
 Change then there must always be, as long as we 
 are conscious, a change from work to play, from 
 play to rest, and so on, swinging like a pendulum. 
 This change preserves our balance, or we go con- 
 tinuously in a circle, moving to the place of begin- 
 
 91 
 
THE PEOBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHILD 
 
 ning. A life which moves on continuously without 
 rest finds itself back at the beginning, which is the 
 helplessness of illness or of second childhood. 
 The necessity for this change was realized thou- 
 sands of years ago, when we were given the fourth 
 conunandment. 
 
 THE DISPOSITION- 
 
 In spite of all the many changes in thought, 
 there is for all of us no change in the personal 
 identity of our experience. The pendulum keeps 
 moving the hands of the clock forward, and in this 
 sense there is no break in continuity. The man of 
 set interests has a fixed purpose, but the child 
 shows by the abrupt capering of his mind that he 
 does not possess fixity of purpose. While the 
 mind is developing, continually unfolding, the 
 process is an unbroken one, each new phase being 
 a modification of the experience of the previous 
 moment. In new circumstances our behaviour is 
 built upon the experiences of the past, is but a 
 development of them, and is not something en- 
 tirely new in every one of its factors. The ma- 
 jority of the elements making up any given ex- 
 perience is composed of tendencies produced by 
 past experiences, which, as they are modified by 
 the new surroundings, are changed. They do not 
 retain their original form but themselves produce 
 effects that may be traced as factors of subse- 
 
 92 
 
MENTAL BEHAVIOUR OF THE CHILD 
 
 quent mental behaviour. The sum of these 
 factors at any given stage of mental develop- 
 ment constitutes what is called the disposition. 
 By this I do not mean disposition as we speak of 
 a sweet disposition or a surly disposition, but a 
 much more inclusive and fundamental arrange- 
 ment of mental factors which make up the whole 
 of the individual 's personality. 
 
 It is evident that the mental factors entering 
 into the child's disposition, understood in this 
 broad sense, are very different from those of the 
 adult's disposition. The difference between child 
 and adult is much like that between a boy's push- 
 mobile and a high-powered motor car. Only one 
 who is deficient in judgment or sense would ex- 
 pect the same service from the toy as that from 
 the real automobile. But it is an almost universal 
 failing among parents to expect the child to be 
 like an adult in action and feeling, and it is 
 practically impossible for the majority of adults 
 to understand and make allowances for the limita- 
 tions of the child in the mental and moral spheres. 
 With remarkable irony the adult does make al- 
 lowances for the child's physical limitations, and 
 frequently goes out of his way to give the child 
 physical help where it is least needed, at the same 
 time expecting him to show traits of the mental 
 and moral character which are quite beyond his 
 stage of development. It is folly to send a boy 
 on a man's errand, but we are doing it all the time. 
 
 93 
 
THE PEOBLEM OF THE NEEVOUS CHILD 
 
 CONATION 
 
 I will now ask the reader to observe certain 
 broad aspects of mental life which have been im- 
 plied in what has been already said. We have, 
 for example, noticed that a certain purpose of 
 conduct, working to relieve uneasiness or attain 
 satisfaction characterizes the behaviour of the 
 child, and of animals, as the dog, and indeed that 
 this quality is significant of mental activity in 
 general. The student will recognize at once that 
 he is not merely a passive being, like a stick tossed 
 by the waves. He feels himself to be a craving 
 and a striving force, which we call the libido. He 
 is not content to be the sport of his environment, 
 but endeavours actively to fit himself to it, or to 
 adapt it to his needs. The actions of parents 
 often make it very difficult for a child to attain 
 any reasonable degree of satisfaction of this crav- 
 ing. Their treatment is sometimes like a con- 
 tinual attempt to do things for the child, to do 
 things which the child wants to do himself, and 
 will profit only by doing himself. Many a child's 
 play has been spoiled by the advent of an adult 
 who tries to tell the child how to do it, and in the 
 pnd does it '^for" him — a much mistaken idea of 
 the proper meaning of the word **for." Much 
 better would it be if the child were in such a case 
 treated with a good measure of what has been 
 neatly termed ^* wholesome neglect/' 
 
 94 
 
MENTAL BEHAVIOUR OF THE CHILD 
 
 COGNITION 
 
 This feature of mental behaviour, where the in- 
 dividual gets most satisfaction from expending 
 his own energies in the attainment of an end, be 
 it an immediate or a remote end, is what the psy- 
 chologist has in mind when he calls it "conative'' 
 (from the Latin conari — to strive) ; and the psy- 
 choanalyst calls it the urge or striving of the 
 libido, always tending toward some end which will 
 give, satisfaction. But we must also notice that 
 this mental activity is not a mere striving to no 
 purpose. There is a state of awareness of some 
 degree at every stage. The intellectual process 
 causes the dog to change his path when obstructed 
 by an obstacle, and enables a man to conceive the 
 principle of duty and of resisting temptation. 
 The fact that mental activity is always a process 
 of knowing in some way is expressed by the phy- 
 chologist as the cognitive aspect of mental be- 
 haviour (Latin cognoscere — to know). And every 
 stage of self-observation is a further stage in the 
 conation or purpose, and in the cognition of our 
 own behaviour. 
 
 FEELING 
 
 But, the student will say, and rightly too, that 
 we have not yet exhausted all we find in our 
 mental behaviour. We are not merely knowing 
 and striving creatures, making toward ends and 
 
 95 
 
THE PEOBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHILD 
 
 aware of objects, but we have left out all the 
 warmth and intimate character of the life that is 
 peculiar to each person. We have left out the 
 feelings, what the psychologists call the affective 
 side of mental behaviour. Our experience is not 
 merely conation plus cognition (striving plus 
 knowing). It is at the same time being affected 
 in some way, a mode of feeling which we call the 
 emotions. Thus the striving and knowing in the 
 effort toward adjustment of self to environment 
 is accompanied by the emotions with reactions of 
 forces constructive or destructive. The emotional 
 reactions of affection, pleasure and interest we 
 call constructive, those of fear, anger or dis- 
 pleasure are destructive. In the child, pleasure 
 depends largely upon the relation of sensory ex- 
 perience to the trend of activity at the moment. 
 No experience is pleasant to us if it interrupts and 
 obstructs our work and desires. Successful prog- 
 ress is pleasant. When the ball or shot goes just 
 where it is aimed, the pleasure and satisfaction 
 are more intense. If we can teach our children 
 that an unexpected obstacle can for a moment be 
 unpleasant because it baffles, but the pleasure is 
 great when it is overcome, we do them a great 
 service. Not by commands but by encouragement 
 can we best teach them. On the other hand, an 
 insurmountable obstacle in the path of a child's 
 growth and progress against which he struggles 
 vainly, as a prisoner against prison walls, is un- 
 
 96 
 
MENTAL BEHAVIOUR OF THE CHILD 
 
 pleasant proportionally to the strength of his de- 
 sire for that which it prevents him from attain- 
 ing. The more anxious one is to keep an appoint- 
 ment, the greater one^s annoyance if the automo- 
 bile breaks down on the way. Here again the 
 parents and teachers must be careful to take fair 
 measures of the children under their care, and not 
 to judge the young minds by their own. Children 
 are more easily discouraged by obstacles ; the end 
 to be achieved does not loom so large in their lives 
 as we imagine. We need to make their courses 
 relatively smooth or they soon lose heart. It is 
 impossible to overemphasize the great importance 
 of the child's inability to keep in view the purpose 
 for which we want him to work. They are also 
 weaker than we in the power of analysis, and in 
 face of difficulties they often make wild attempts 
 at the truth to protect themselves in fear of the 
 overpowering authority. Then we call them un- 
 truthful. Indeed we find that a lad's method of 
 dealing with difficulties is the more ^*wild,'' the 
 more anxious he is about the result. 
 
 The child whose mind is unable to follow the 
 monotony of school and lessons, who is either too 
 sluggish or too unstable, should be carefully 
 watched for the reactions which stimulate this 
 sluggishness or unstability. Keenest attention is 
 sometimes aroused by change in what is familiar. 
 Change, if not too extreme, gives scope for more 
 vigorous exercise of our activities of perception 
 
 97 
 
THE PROBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHILD 
 
 and thought, while monotonous experience con- 
 stricts them. Unsatisfactory results with chil- 
 dren may not be the child's fault, but the teacher's 
 or parents', who are not able to keep their own 
 problems in the background when dealing with 
 children. The wild, free nature of the child may 
 be so restricted and restrained by his surround- 
 ings that he cannot give vent to the natural rough 
 and tumble of his nature. The effeminate side of 
 his nature is gradually overdeveloped. 
 
 AN "impossible" BOY 
 
 A boy of fourteen came under my observation 
 for being * impossible at home." He was rather 
 undersized, but healthy in all respects, — good di- 
 gestion, sleeping well, etc. — although rather deli- 
 cate in appearance. He delighted in teasing the 
 servants, often causing them to leave after a few 
 days, which brought despair to his mother. His 
 method of teasing was to jump at them around 
 corners or open doors, going into the kitchen and 
 freely helping himself to anything he wanted, 
 leaving the ice-box door open or spilling on the 
 floor or table whatever he helped himself to. He 
 was utterly regardless of any one's feelings or 
 convenience. The family cat and dog rushed 
 away when he approached, for he always jumped 
 and shouted at them. He "shooed" the canary 
 to make it flutter around in the cage. In fact, 
 
 98 
 
MENTAL BEHAVIOUR OF THE CHILD 
 
 pets were impossible where he was. He talked 
 much of murder and of people committing suicide. 
 Walking on a village street one foggy night we 
 passed a yard with much shrubbery. ^'A fine 
 place for a murder/' he commented. When a 
 missing member of the family was inquired after, 
 he would say: *^I guess he has jumped out of the 
 window," or **He has gone into the bathroom to 
 make an end of himself." 
 
 Analysis made it evident that there was a 
 severe conflict going on in the boy's unconscious 
 about what to do concerning some unbearable 
 situation. His real enemy, the killing of whom 
 would have been one solution of his mental con- 
 flict, was his father. Of course no one, not even 
 the boy himself, was aware of this, though any 
 one who knew all the details of the case and took 
 in the whole situation impartially and merely as 
 a concrete physical and spiritual environment of 
 the boy, could realize that the father was the 
 greatest obstruction to the boy's natural cravings. 
 The boy was treated with absolute lack of under- 
 standing, or even consideration, by a completely 
 selfish father. The libido which meets rebuffs 
 at every turn naturally seeks to destroy them, 
 even though on the outside the unfortunate in- 
 dividual complies with all the requirements made 
 upon him. The boy never was consulted as to 
 what he would like to do, and after a while formed 
 the habit of obediently saying, ^*Yes, father," to 
 
 99 
 
THE PROBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHILD 
 
 every command, and became externally a very 
 passive, ladylike boy. It was this superficial 
 meekness which caused the conflict above referred 
 to. It was this situation which irresistibly turned 
 the child's mind to thoughts of murder and death. 
 Naturally these thoughts could not be consciously 
 associated with the real cause of them, the father, 
 and so the boy expressed, by his treatment of the 
 pets, the servants, and by stealing the food from 
 the ice-box the unconscious desires for destruction 
 which were gradually developing in his mind. At 
 the present time he is not well, occasionally faints 
 away and is said to have a weak heart, and no 
 wonder. He will hold a position for several years, 
 but with no interest in advancing, just *^ staying 
 puf and plodding along. The father congratu- 
 lates himself he has managed well in bringing up 
 that boy. Ten years hence, when he sees the boy 
 in the same position without advancement he 
 will blame the boy, while we have seen that 
 the boy himself, was aware of this, though any 
 assertion. 
 
 Another case with different results. There was 
 the same type of despotic father, who freely used 
 corporal punishment, spoiling both the rod and 
 the child. When twelve years old the boy was 
 fun-loving, with superabundance of energy, and 
 his mischievous pranks or disobedience, such as 
 being late for dinner, careless in his toilette and 
 other boyish failings, were severely punished with 
 
 100 
 
MENTAL BEHAVIOUE OF THE CHILD 
 
 hard thrashings. The boy would be sent to bed 
 where he would cry and sob with the physical 
 pain, to say nothing of the wounded young man- 
 hood. This boy had too mi^ch spirit to become 
 crushed and effeminate. He was physically large, 
 and became hard and lawless, was expelled from 
 school, would not work, ran away to a western 
 mining camp, gambled, was utterly v^^ithout pur- 
 pose and became the problem of the family. 
 
 ANOTHEE CASE 
 
 Another boy, now thirty-three, drifted from one 
 position to another, but has never been able to 
 separate himself from the home influence, which 
 was this time a mother who would never allow 
 him to play in ways which soiled his clothing. He 
 was dressed in velvet suits, and shown how much 
 more attractive he was than the bad boys with 
 dirty hands and ^'smelly" clothes. He grew tall, 
 became a scholarly lad with polished manners, led 
 his class in college, then developed dramatic 
 tastes, playing always in tragedy. His parents 
 were horrified with his stage propensities and 
 forbade them. Then came a nervous breakdown 
 and an analysis was sought, after which he had a 
 taste of real freedom of life in a cowboy's exist- 
 ence. Afterward he entered business life. Many 
 other cases could be cited of the adult life unfitted 
 for success, cases in which, when an analysis has 
 
 101 
 
THE PROBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHH^D 
 
 set them right, we have seen that the emotional 
 life had been totally inadequate in youth. 
 
 There is a period called the latency period of 
 childhood which occurs about the time of the sec- 
 ond dentition, when the helplessness of childhood 
 is succeeded by a full-fledged young animal who 
 wants to try his new-found powers. He is ready 
 to run wild, if opportunity offers, and then is the 
 time parents should make home the most attrac- 
 tive place and freely allow the boy's companions 
 to come and go. ^^I have only one son, but I 
 might just as well have a dozen, the house is 
 always full of boys,'* said a wise mother, who 
 endeavoured to make home the most attractive 
 place for her son and placed no restrictions on 
 muddy shoes and noise. However, she mastered 
 the situation by building a playhouse in the yard 
 of their suburban home. A partition was built 
 across one end, and there were placed the treas- 
 ures. The outer room was the general meeting 
 place of all the boys in the neighbourhood. An 
 occasional feast of sandwiches, cake and lemon- 
 ade made the house popular, and while other 
 mothers were telephoning for their sons to come 
 home, this mother's mind was at rest. Her son 
 was always home, yet having perfect freedom of 
 play and action. He organized a boys' club, with 
 
 102 
 
MENTAL BEHAVIOUR OF THE CHILD 
 
 flowing robes for the officers, and how real and im- 
 pressive it was to those boys! And yet the im- 
 posing robes were most simple, and inexpensive, 
 made of that material known as *' Turkey red.'* 
 (Red the colour of life.) A secret motto and grip 
 were agreed upon. Each boy had to sharpen his 
 wits to present some original thoughts for their 
 meetings in order to claim attention from the 
 others. Years have passed since that particular 
 playhouse was used. Many of the boys later 
 held high military positions in the army in the 
 great European conflict. Did the opportunities 
 offered in that playhouse for arousing ambitions 
 of leadership carry those boys through to high 
 positions of trust? I think so. Unconsciously 
 those boys had learned the secret of success, 
 namely, to be doers, not dreamers. ^'Do noble 
 things, not dream them all day long.'' They 
 wanted to show the other boys of the village that 
 to belong to their club was an honour, and they 
 were kept busy wondering how to manage and 
 
 make the outside boys realize that the club 
 
 was a real club and going to last forever, so real it 
 seemed to them. 
 
 A wise mother, with a troublesome boy who was 
 always backward in school, although very bright 
 otherwise, found it interesting to read of the 
 school days of many prominent men and learn that 
 Spencer, Carlyle, Ruskin and Shakespeare were 
 poor students. She wondered exceedingly why 
 
 103 
 
THE PEOBLEM OF THE NEEVOUS CHILD 
 
 such minds who became world-renowned, should 
 have had such boyhood troubles. She dimly sus- 
 pected the studies were not right nor suitable for 
 her boy, but questioning him did no good. He 
 did not know what he wanted, while the father de- 
 clared she was only finding excuses for the boy. 
 Schools and colleges are dimly seeing that the 
 student may know better what interests him than 
 the professors, and thus they are offering elective 
 courses, where a student may select the subjects 
 which appeal to him. True, the student may fol- 
 low the line of least resistance, and select the 
 easier subjects to enable him to get a college de- 
 gree, but why does he do it I There is a reason 
 why he prefers play to work for which he is not 
 entirely responsible. He will work through and 
 college will help him get a firmer grasp of him- 
 self. Our knowledge is not entirely gained from 
 textbooks and it is one of the many surprises 
 awaiting a young physician that he must learn to 
 make a diagnosis where he cannot follow the text- 
 book. And so the college gives only a founda- 
 tional knowledge for the young man to build his 
 life on. In this respect the teacher, especially if 
 he has not sufficient understanding of the psy- 
 chology of behaviour, sometimes makes it difficult 
 for his pupils by narrowing do^^m the object of 
 college training to what is learned from pedagogi- 
 cal textbooks. The college boy has probably 
 grown out of the purely instinctive and emulative 
 
 104 
 
MENTAL BEHAVIOUR OF THE CHILD 
 
 stage of behaviour, but as a rule his interests are 
 in the adolescent stage. If the boy learns from 
 fear of his professors and of disgrace, as well as 
 duty and self-respect, the knowledge learned re- 
 mains external to him. Attention with eifort 
 is never proof for long against distracting in- 
 fluences. 
 
 Thus the teacher should regard the appeal to 
 voluntary attention as a step toward formations 
 of new interests in the beginning of college life. 
 In the preparatory school the students' impulses 
 are mainly toward movement and doing, not to- 
 ward thinking and knowing. Sensible instruction 
 recognizes this fact and although the school disci- 
 pline results in submissive, orderly classes, regu- 
 larly learning tasks, we know the boys lead two 
 lives and that richness of interests belongs to the 
 life out of school. Therefore, the preparatory 
 schools, taking their students through the adoles- 
 cent age, so full of temptations and dangers, must 
 limit their privileges, keep strict watch over their 
 habits and require complete obedience. Upon the 
 entrance to college the student meets a changed 
 condition. There is absolute freedom, he can 
 smoke, stay up all night if he chooses, but the ex- 
 periences of the freshman show him the foot of 
 the ladder which he must climb in some humilia- 
 tion, especially if he joins a fraternity. While 
 college hazing is condemned because it reached 
 such extremes that life was endangered, the fresh- 
 
 105 
 
THE PROBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHILD 
 
 man cap, required by the older students, is one of 
 the greatest safeguards to the new liberty of the 
 college boy. He must always wear it. Breaking 
 the rule meets with swift and sure punishment and 
 is more efficacious than that administered by legal 
 processes. The college professor will arouse the 
 interest and intelligence of his pupils by present- 
 ing his information so that they can assimilate it 
 and not merely repeat it by rote. He wants them 
 not only to remember, but to understand, for in- 
 telligence grows, like an organism, only by what it 
 can assimilate. 
 
 ATTENTION 
 
 Attention is a selective process. If yuu listen 
 intently to music you cannot at the same time 
 watch the faces of the audience; if you are ab- 
 sorbed in a book you may not hear the clock 
 strike. In all attention you are aware, though 
 more vaguely, of other things beside that upon 
 which you are more intent. If you read the para- 
 graph attentively your attention is concentrated 
 upon the meaning, but you must also see the 
 printed words, though not as clearly as if looking 
 for a word misprinted. When we try to concen- 
 trate upon a particular subject we make mental 
 movements of adjustment. In the child we see 
 signs of inattention and know he is unable to make 
 the mental adjustment. The parent and teacher 
 should be careful to distinguish this inability to 
 
 106 
 
MENTAL BEHAVIOUR OF THE CHILD 
 
 pay attention in pupils and children from merely- 
 misdirected attention. The latter is due to bore- 
 dom with their lessons and to the superior attrac- 
 tion of other things ; the former is very probably 
 due to hunger, ill health, fatigue or bad ventila- 
 tion of the class room (and in the home, to too 
 much confinement and repression), thus throwing 
 the child too much upon himself when he needs 
 outside activities. The difference of bodily atti- 
 tude is a sure guide for watchful eyes. In one 
 case the child is alert, looking for something or 
 thinking actively about something; in the others, 
 his whole body relaxes, his eyes look dull and face 
 lacks animation. Is it not absurd to punish a child 
 for inattention? Worse than absurd, for the inat- 
 tention is usually caused by our ignorance. 
 
 The amount of initiative and perseverance a 
 child shows is important. He is usually very per- 
 sistent in his play, works up to his strength in 
 attempting to lift heavy weights. Do not help 
 him. The chances are you will annoy him and he 
 will not learn his strength. Mme. Montessori 
 wisely warns us not to seize the shovel when the 
 child is filling his pail with sand and fill it for him. 
 He needs the muscular exercise and the motor 
 control he is gaining. Notice the child's delight 
 in his success. Try to put yourself in his place 
 and endeavour to feel the satisfaction which re- 
 sults from his accomplishing the full pail of sand 
 which he lifts and empties. What a stunting ef- 
 
 107 
 
THE PEOBLEM OF THE NEEVOUS CHH^D 
 
 feet on that child to fill the pail for him ! In the 
 psychoanalysis of an adult, how often we find the 
 beginning of the problems so disturbing to success 
 to have been misdirected efforts in childhood, not 
 one effort, but many, which grouped and woven to- 
 gether have made a bizarre pattern of life. It re- 
 quires delicate handling to separate the warp and 
 woof of past experiences and arrange them in a 
 strong, well-woven material to stand the great 
 strain of life's pressure. 
 
 There are times in our own lives when we need 
 great strength and power to meet the sorrows and 
 disappointments we have to face. How do we get 
 the strength, where does it come from! Why are 
 some leaders and other people of splendid 
 physique and great courage, truly efficient and 
 capable? If, when you were young, you had a 
 large circle of acquaintances and visited them, 
 seeing intimately the daily family life, recall the 
 personality and influence of the parents, the re- 
 actions of the children, and you will find the ques- 
 tion answered. In a large family of children with 
 a capable father and too gentle and indulgent 
 mother you will find more capable daughters than 
 sons. Seldom more than one capable son, even if 
 there are several. While an erratic or nervous 
 father, with a capable mother, produces able sons, 
 and daughters who have difficulty in adjusting 
 their lives to their environment. The only child 
 has been condemned as being spoiled, a weakling, 
 
 108 
 
MENTAL BEHAVIOUR OF THE CHILD 
 
 selfish, disagreeable to associate with or to marry. 
 Herbert Spencer was an only child. Every family 
 has an ^'only child,'' the one who receives more 
 attention and encouragement, which may destroy 
 him or open larger opportunities for success, de- 
 pending upon the parents. We, therefore, do not 
 condemn the only child. 
 
 BUEBANK ON EDUCATION 
 
 Luther Burbank has shown us by his work in 
 changing the character of the fruit that the early 
 development is the most important. Just as we 
 make a white blackberry by a selective process, 
 so we can make a black life a white life by a proc- 
 ess of elimination used in psychoanalysis. Bur- 
 bank plants acres of seeds. As soon as those 
 seeds have grown through the first phase of seed 
 development which means that a good root-growth 
 has started, he walks through the rows of plants 
 and marks those he wants preserved, the rest are 
 thrown away. He works thus for years and by 
 elimination, in time, changes the colour of the 
 blackberry, takes the seeds from the orange, the 
 pit from the plum. While those changes are not 
 all considered an improvement and the white 
 blackberry is not on the market and perhaps 
 would not be accepted, so tenaciously do people 
 cling to methods of the past, we learn what can be 
 done with life by the elimination of certain traits 
 
 109 
 
THE PEOBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHILD 
 
 and trends of character througli psychoanalysis . 
 These may be fears, phobias, functional neu- 
 roses, or hysterical pains, which physicians can 
 never cure, although they often use the knife in 
 their belief that the body controls the mind, as 
 though our brains were in the ends of our muscles 
 instead of the ends of the nerves. We can turn 
 misery into happiness, and make a useful and ac- 
 ceptable human being out of an invalid and some- 
 times out of a criminal/ The applications of these 
 psychological methods will not be admitted by 
 people who want to give way to the lower instincts 
 buried in the unconscious. We are not ladies and 
 gentlemen in the unconscious thought; only by 
 self-control in following the conventions of life, 
 observing laws which civilization has worked out 
 as best for the preservation of the race, do we 
 become gentle. The unconscious mind is primitive, 
 archaic, savage. The savage does not want to 
 preserve the race ; he is not an adult in the pres- 
 ent-day meaning, he belongs to the children of 
 the race. 
 
 A man of Mr. Burbank's philosophical cast of 
 mind could not fail to give a vast deal of thought, 
 j&rst and last, to the question of a possible applica- 
 tion of knowledge gained in the experimental 
 garden to better development of the human race. 
 
 1 It is an interesting fact that Germany would not accept the 
 methods of psychological analysis, as Professor Freud has stated 
 in his review of the countries using these methods of relieving 
 the nervous patients from their sujfferings. 
 
 110 
 
MENTAL BEHAVIOUR OF THE CHILD 
 
 Mr. Burbank has not only thought but has written 
 and talked on the subject very extensively. He 
 has, concerning the development of the human 
 plant, very pronounced ideas that are the out- 
 growth of his experimental studies with plant life. 
 In psychoanalysis we understand that the same 
 general principles apply to all life. It is exceed- 
 ingly interesting to find Mr. Burbank approach- 
 ing the same knowledge through the vegetable 
 kingdom. He has been able to make tangible appli- 
 cation of his studies in this field. As a practical 
 horticulturist he has observed that everything de- 
 pends upon the treatment the seedling receives the 
 first few weeks or days of its life. He takes in- 
 finite pains to provide just the right environment 
 of soil, conditions of moisture, sunlight and shel- 
 ter from the wind. He has seen it demonstrated 
 times without number that the future growth and 
 strength of the plant depended upon this early 
 treatment. Making application to the human be- 
 ing, he believes that few people fully understand 
 how largely the body and mind of the child are 
 moulded by the environing influence of infancy. 
 He urges very strenuously that life should be 
 made agreeable for the young child, that it be 
 kept in the open, allowed to play, to come into con- 
 tact with nature, and to do the things in which 
 childhood naturally delights. "When the child has 
 reached the school age Mr. Burbank would have 
 its tasks less laborious and exacting than they 
 
 111 
 
THE PEOBLEM OF THE NEEVOUS CHHiD 
 
 sometimes are. He would pay heed to all stages 
 of the child's bodily development, knowing full 
 well that fine blossoms do not come from dwarfed 
 plants. 
 
 In a word, he would make the environment of 
 childhood and adolescence healthful, stimulative 
 and pleasure-giving. Only by so doing can Mr. 
 Burbank secure the best results with his plants, 
 and only by a comparable line of action in our 
 treatment of the child, can we count on making 
 the most of the coming human generation. 
 
 112 
 
 i«: 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 DEFENCE REACTIONS 
 
 We know that extreme conditions in the environ- 
 ment are hurtful or even destructive to certain 
 forms of life, as the cold of the polar regions chills 
 and prevents life, extreme heat burns and de- 
 stroys, emptiness starves and an excess cloys and 
 bursts, — but we perhaps do not apply that knowl- 
 edge to the mental, psychic and emotional environ- 
 ment of life. We use the metaphors of '^throwing 
 cold water,'' ^* throwing a wet blanket,'' ** damp- 
 ening one's ardour," in the sense of chilling en- 
 thusiasm, and as in a sudden shock creating func- 
 tional disturbance. We speak of the ^^ white heat 
 of passion," which seems to burn up the oxygen 
 of our blood as though by a fiery dose of alcohol. 
 We speak of * 'bursting with news ' ' and of ' ' starv- 
 ing for fun and a good time. ' ' Curiously enough, 
 we often speak without realizing that in using 
 such figures of speech we are stating vital condi- 
 tions, and we would feel it weakness to consider 
 them seriously. To give way to enthusiasm, to 
 demand happiness when we have made strenuous 
 effort, and to insist upon a recreation of pleasure 
 and satisfaction after a hard day's work seem to 
 us rather a weakness of character than our just 
 
 113 
 
THE PROBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHILD 
 
 due. So difficult is it for us to outgrow the habit 
 of thought of our puritanical ancestors, suitable 
 to their simple life but ill adapted to entirely 
 modern needs. When the urge of life pushing out- 
 ward, from the invisible and unknown force 
 within, which we call nature, meets any of the 
 unfavourable conditions an effort is made by this 
 life to protect itself against destruction from 
 these conditions. The animal life in frigid zones 
 protects itself by very thick fur ; there is no vege- 
 tation and heating food is supplied in fats. In 
 the tropics the animal life is protected from the 
 burning rays by thick foliage, while plentiful 
 fruits provide cooling food instead of the heating 
 fat and blubber of the Arctic regions. Hitherto, 
 no attempt has been made to understand the neu- 
 rotic patient as one who fails to establish an ade- 
 quate defence against the unfavourable environ- 
 ment and who seeks refuge in a neurosis and ill- 
 ness, thus to escape the unbearable — or, as one 
 who is so overcome by his surroundings that he 
 attempts no defence and is being destroyed by this 
 leech-like fastening of another human where his 
 life force is drawn out. 
 
 Excessive affections, or, as we say, ** being loved 
 to death '^ furnish an atmosphere comparable to 
 the heat of the tropics which has the same etfect 
 upon the person subjected to it as does the intense 
 heat of overpowering affections. Intense heat 
 from a tropical sun affects the head and brain, and 
 
 lU 
 
DEFENCE EEACTIONS 
 
 so the victim upon whom excessive affection falls 
 is withered and blighted. We find this true in 
 married life where the lov,e of one mate seizes the 
 other mate with a death-like clutch, leaving no 
 freedom of action. This is very well described in 
 a poem by James Oppenheim, called **The Cling- 
 ing Arms. ' ' 
 
 **Push off the clinging arms! 
 There is only death in this strangle-hold ; 
 
 even if we call it love . . . 
 The mother who cares too much for her child, 
 Or the husband for his wife, 
 They are keeping sheltered and confined what 
 
 should be free and hardy, toughened for 
 
 battle ! 
 
 **Nay, there is no real love in this binding: 
 
 It is more often a sense of waste and futility, 
 
 And a fierce bickering and quarreling . . . 
 
 Shake free! 
 
 Know love in freedom; know love in separa- 
 tion : 
 
 Give the soul its own self to support it, and 
 take off your arms ! 
 
 Do honour to the divinity of another human 
 being 
 
 By trusting its power to go alone.'' 
 
 The nervous person does not present a well- 
 rounded life; on the contrary, the outline of his 
 development will show an indentation reaching to 
 childhood. During an analysis the curve down- 
 
 115 
 
THE PROBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHILD 
 
 ward should be lifted, gradually filling out to a 
 well-adjusted line, which, however, must be ef- 
 fected by the patient himself, as he sees the dif- 
 ficulty to be overcome and marks the weak spot in 
 his development. The defence reaction which a 
 person has used to protect his sensitive make-up 
 is the attempt at defence by reacting with some 
 manner of compensation to himself against the 
 threatening danger. When a child is forced to 
 obey unreasonable wishes of those in authority — 
 parents or teacher — he, by resisting all authority, 
 defends himself from the threatened destruction 
 of the ^* something within him that wants to 
 (grow'' and which may be called character. Such 
 resistance is called negativism, and you may be 
 very sure sometime in the life of that individual 
 there has been an unwise, over-exacting authority. 
 
 DEFENSIVE SPEECH AND SILENCE 
 
 Another instance of defence reaction is seen in 
 aphasia, when a person cannot use the right words 
 to express his thoughts and apparently loses con- 
 trol of speech. In the unconscious there is a 
 secret which the aphasia victim is afraid of be- 
 traying, and he guards it by using inappropriate 
 words. A more detailed description of such cases 
 will be given in a later work. Again we see the 
 effort of self-protection in the silent person. He 
 uses his silence as a defence against betrayal of 
 
 116 
 
DEFENCE REACTIONS 
 
 both conscious and unconscious wishes, feeling 
 dimly their presence by a great longing and lone- 
 liness. He really does not know why he cannot 
 study or work continuously toward a goal and is 
 dissatisfied, abstracted and silent. Weak intel- 
 lectual power frequently sets a defence reaction 
 of extreme care about the personal appearance. 
 A deformity or crippled condition, too, will try to 
 compensate with a defence reaction by attempting 
 to appear very learned, very talented, or very 
 vivacious. The person affecting such learning has 
 little or no knowledge, but a mere smattering of 
 words and catch phrases. The talents are not cul- 
 tivated for the pure enjoyment of an emotional 
 outlet but are forced and lack spontaneousness. 
 Life is full of defence reactions by which the in- 
 dividual seeks self-protection from uncomfortable 
 situations. 
 
 But, on the other hand, a life sometimes starts 
 amidst surroundings where no form of defence is 
 possible, no adaptation can be effected, and the 
 individual life submits to a complete surrender. 
 A stunted growth results and we call a child in 
 such circumstances ^^ retarded.'^ In later years 
 there may be wild bursts of temper, even epilepsy, 
 as futile efforts toward defence reactions. The 
 life which surrenders, rather than sets up a de- 
 fence reaction, remains exceedingly infantile ; the 
 mind makes no effort to reason out any given sit- 
 uations or decide which course of action to follow, 
 
 117 
 
THE PEOBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHILD 
 
 and becomes very indolent. There is frequently 
 thymus trouble, the child grows very large and 
 heavy, face full and with high colour; but he is 
 mentally and physically lazy. I have found the 
 cases showing thymus trouble which have been 
 brought to me for analysis, have revealed a his- 
 tory of favouritism and petting. Neither the child 
 nor the parent has realized that fact, and the 
 parents are sometimes quite indignant with the 
 questions asked in taking the history of the case, 
 as if science should not interfere with personal 
 feelings. 
 
 AN IDOLIZED DAUGHTEE 
 
 One case was a woman of forty. She was the 
 youngest of five children, her father was a physi- 
 cian. At the birth of the fourth boy, the mother 
 was very ill for a long time ; as years passed and 
 no other children were born the mother longed for 
 a daughter. After nine years of waiting the fifth 
 child, a daughter, was born. This child received a 
 most royal welcome. The brothers told of a wil- 
 ful, spoiled child who was never corrected; the 
 boys always had to wait upon her and were never 
 allowed to make a sound to disturb her. They con- 
 sidered her a princess, very beautiful, very won- 
 derful, and she accepted their worship as her 
 right. She was openly told how pretty she was 
 when a child. (In later life she was stout and her 
 face was so red, full and heavy, it gave her a look 
 
 118 
 
DEFENCE REACTIONS 
 
 of coarseness.) The whole family had to deny 
 themselves that she might have dainty clothes. 
 She was very devoted to her mother, showed no 
 affection for her father and was only moderately 
 fond of her brothers. To her mother she was 
 always the little baby girl, and she reacted as such 
 without any attempt at defence. At school she 
 was not popular with other girls as she wanted 
 her own way and would not stand contradic- 
 tion. 
 
 As the adolescent age passed she had no love 
 affairs. When she saw her former schoolmates 
 marrying, she was sad, and built up imaginary 
 romances about herself. Her brothers married, 
 but she was too irritable to keep any friends, quar- 
 relled with every one but her mother. There was 
 no mental retardation, which I believe to be 
 largely due to the intellectual tastes of her family. 
 They read aloud evenings ; at the table conversa- 
 tion was very instructive and she unconsciously 
 absorbed the subjects and information others 
 were talking about. After the mother's death, 
 when our patient was thirty years old, the family 
 funds were very low, and she tried to live with her 
 married brothers. No one, however, could show 
 her the same watchful, tender care as her mother 
 and she quarrelled with all her relatives. As she 
 was well-educated, she attempted clerical posi- 
 tions, but she became an idiot savant, a well-edu- 
 cated woman, very wise in theory, but with no 
 
 119 
 
THE PROBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHILD 
 
 more knowledge of life than an infant. She re- 
 turned to live alone in her father's honse, found 
 a ready market for the family heirlooms of furni- 
 ture, silver and jewels and lived on the proceeds 
 until they were all sold. 
 
 ^'Be good to little sister,'' were the mother's 
 dying words to her sons, and when they found the 
 sister with an empty house and in need, they 
 brought her food and money. They had tried to 
 remonstrate with her to stop the sale of the be- 
 loved heirlooms and told her she was intensely 
 selfish. In great rage she had ordered them out 
 of the house. When the end of the sales came, she 
 accepted the food, or money in her usual way — as 
 her just rights — but she set up some hallucina- 
 tions which her weak personality had no power 
 to overcome. She thought that all food or money 
 which came within three feet of her was poison 
 to any one else, and the air within three feet of 
 her body was tainted and poisonous to others to 
 breathe, showing that she knew in her unconscious 
 she had lived in an unhealthy way. She could not 
 or would not touch metal (she had sold family 
 silver and jewelry) and was afraid of it. She 
 would not touch her foot to the floor and said it 
 was wrong to walk — she refused to walk. (She 
 had followed wrong paths all her life.) Very late 
 in life she attempted to defend herself against 
 further ruin by the mode of defence which out- 
 wardly seemed to be hallucinations. 
 
 120 
 
DEFENCE REACTIONS 
 
 AN IDOLIZED SON 
 
 Another instance of a life being clogged and 
 cloyed with sweetness was that of a boy born the 
 eighth child after seven sisters. The parents had 
 quite despaired of having a son, and the mother 
 said she really felt she was in heaven when told 
 her child was a boy. She never tired of looking at 
 the baby son, held him in her arms, was reluctant 
 to part from him, even to lay him down to sleep. 
 He was a large, heavy child, evidently the exces- 
 sive fat was due to overfeeding. His mother said 
 that as a young child he tired very easily and 
 would lie down when the others were playing. He 
 was backward in walking and talking. It occurred 
 to me the child was kept in a constant state of 
 fatigue from so much handling from the seven 
 sisters who were always begging to hold him, and 
 the mother, who used to carry him to a vacant part 
 of the house for the joy of holding him undis- 
 turbed. He was made the pet and plaything of the 
 family until his eighth year. 
 
 His mother had intended teaching him herself, 
 but when he refused to learn she concluded it was 
 because she did not know how to teach the begin- 
 ning of the ^^ three R's'' and sent him to a pri- 
 mary school. After a week his teacher refused 
 him as a pupil, he would make no effort to learn, 
 she said. A governess was engaged, who declared 
 the boy was deficient. The parents became thor- 
 
 121 
 
THE PEOBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHn.D 
 
 oughly alarmed and carried the boy from one 
 specialist to another with discouraging results. 
 Radiographs of the brain were taken — no dis- 
 coveries were made. The large, overgrown boy 
 was declared to be of low mentality. He was sent 
 to a school for deficient children and there learned 
 reading, writing and some simple arithmetic. 
 Then he was again taken to specialists for some 
 encouraging news, but the mental tests placed him 
 as a child of six years. None of these physicians 
 had any knowledge of analytical psychology, 
 therefore did not realize the great importance of 
 the environment, in which the child had lived, as 
 being the chief factor in promoting or retarding 
 development. 
 
 When he was eleven the boy was sent to an- 
 other home among older children and to a boys' 
 school where he had to learn to take his place. 
 He was shocked at the boys' rough play; they 
 threw chalk and erasers at each other, teased him 
 by taking his lunch and hiding his cap. When told 
 he must learn to defend himself among boys, he 
 rose to the occasion and in a month the boys found 
 they got the worst of it in their attempts to tease 
 him. He learned his daily lessons and the intelli- 
 gence increased very rapidly. 
 
 DEFENCE AGAINST CHILDEEN 
 
 There are occasions when parents should set up 
 defence reactions against their children. When, 
 
 122 
 
DEFENCE EEACTIONS 
 
 for instance, a child, more especially a boy, still 
 lives on at home long after he should be leading 
 an independent existence there is great danger of 
 weakening the boy's character. He will wait to 
 be forced to do things rather than act on his own 
 initiative. It is so nice to put the responsibility 
 of our actions on some one else, to sleep soundly 
 until called and to have some one make us go to 
 bed when we are too lazy to make the effort to 
 get up and go. Laziness is an inherent quality of 
 animal and human life, and should not be con- 
 fused with the need of rest after exertion. Chil- 
 dren who have had too much waiting on by fond 
 parents are apt to become what we call ^* spoiled,'' 
 which is indeed a descriptive term. 
 
 A family of father and mother with three sons 
 and a daughter — all grown — are living in one 
 apartment of eight rooms without a maid. Such 
 a nervous lot of people are they that one wonders 
 why they cannot understand the need of separat- 
 ing, and yet I have heard the parents congratu- 
 lated upon being able to have the children all with 
 them. One son is morose and silent, which is his 
 defence against too much family, another son is 
 incorrigible, never home, was expelled from every 
 school and will not stay long in any business. 
 The third son is an alcoholic and the despair of 
 his family, the daughter is very irritable, tearful 
 and apparently a delicate girl. The father is 
 very sarcastic and in a teasing way constantly 
 
 123 
 
THE PEOBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CBILD 
 
 annoys his family. The mother is a woman of 
 artistic tastes which she has no opportunity to 
 gratify because of her large family cares. The 
 sons would like to live away but feel it would 
 break up the home if all left, and that the parents 
 need them; the parents hold their children tightly 
 and yet wish the sons could get an independent 
 start. 
 
 Another illustration is a family of eight chil- 
 dren : one alcoholic son, one deficient son, one in- 
 corrigible son, ^Ye daughters quarrelling, argu- 
 ing and generally disturbing one another. The 
 parents have the mistaken idea of keeping them 
 all home. 
 
 Alcohol is a favourite method of defence 
 against cramped, shut-in conditions of life. It is 
 used by those who need greater emotional outlet ; 
 and the would-be alcoholic, deprived of his drink, 
 may seek more violent methods of relief in crimi- 
 nal doings. Alcohol is both a compensation and 
 defence and a safety valve for the blocked libido. 
 
 TICKLISHNESS 
 
 The sensation of ticklishness is another defence 
 reaction. An interesting instance of that was 
 seen in the case of a fourteen-year-old boy who 
 had gone the rounds of clinics and was shown in 
 the Academy of Medicine as the beginning of a 
 Dementia Praecox. He had no appetite. He was 
 
 124 
 
DEFENCE EEACTIONS 
 
 said to liave various hallucinations of the sense of 
 sound; he heard voices, or his mother's voice, 
 calling him; he also had hallucinations of taste, 
 where everything tasted salt ; and of touch, when 
 every night he had the most terrible sensation of 
 being tickled all over the surface of his skin. It 
 began as soon as he went to bed. He could not 
 sleep and lay with his knees drawn up to his chin. 
 He was declared to lack emotional reaction; he 
 lived in a small apartment with mother and older 
 sister and brother but cared for none of them. 
 Upon investigating the environment, I found the 
 boy was sleeping with his mother. He was as tall 
 as she, &ve feet, six inches. I ordered a couch 
 prepared for him by the open windows of the 
 dining-room. The mother was reluctant to try it ; 
 she thought it unnecessary, but the first night the 
 boy slept instantly, and always afterwards. After 
 a few months of analysis the hallucinations en- 
 tirely disappeared; he ate heartily and returned 
 to school, when the mother concluded it was not 
 necessary to have her dining-room used as a sleep- 
 ing room, that what I had told her was all non- 
 sense and as the boy was well he could just as 
 well sleep with her again. She told him not to 
 tell me about changing his room. He did not, 
 but he came to me with the same pale face and 
 thick, glaring-looking eyes. The day for his next 
 visit his mother in great alarm came just ahead 
 of him. The boy had not eaten for two days, she 
 
 325 
 
THE PEOBLEM OF THE NERVOI^S CHn.D 
 
 said he could keep nothing on his stomach. After 
 severe questioning as to what had happened to 
 cause a return of the illness she confessed with 
 tears what she had done. As soon as he slept 
 alone he was well again and his mother was con- 
 vinced. 
 
 DEFENCE AGAINST WOEK 
 
 Not all children who set up defence reactions 
 are doing so for their betterment ; they may serve 
 as an excuse to avoid some unpleasant task, or as 
 an excuse for laziness, or as a fear of conse- 
 quences. An untruthful child may be afraid to 
 tell the truth for fear of punishment. I have 
 heard parents declare the trouble with their son 
 was that he was afraid of no one, and had no 
 respect for authority. In the latter sentence they 
 hit the nail on the head. They had tried to instil 
 fear into their children's hearts, mistaking fear 
 for respect, and they had succeeded. The child 
 had a superabundance of energy which escaped in 
 mischievous pranks and which he hid by fibbing or 
 any way he could. He feared them, but in teach- 
 ing him fear they lost his respect. He saw their 
 weakness and errors, and began to steal. They 
 were wealthy and lived in a luxurious home but 
 denied the boy as much spending money as he 
 asked. Of course the boy was very unreasonable 
 and wrong to want to begin life on the top where 
 the father stopped. And through an analysis he 
 
 126 
 
DEFENCE REACTIONS 
 
 had to learn this. In this case the father was 
 wise. He saw the boy improving, the face show- 
 ing more character, with better application to his 
 school work, so concluded it would be very desir- 
 able to understand the reasons and methods of 
 improvement and sought to learn them. He 
 wanted himself analysed, too, thinking it rather a 
 joke, as he only wanted to know what I had taught 
 the boy. When told he could not understand any 
 one^s life without thoroughly understanding his 
 own, he was rather incredulous but said he ** would 
 try it for three months. ' ' At the conclusion of the 
 three months he continued until six months had 
 passed, and then began collecting material for a 
 book which he would entitle, * * The Explanation of 
 Human Behaviour. '^ Like so many people who 
 submit to a psychoanalysis, he said, *^If only I 
 had known this when I was young 1 ' ' 
 
 Psychoanalysis primarily stands for truth and 
 teaches the necessity for truth, strange as it may 
 seem that such teaching should come from scien- 
 tific rather than religious following. To be true 
 to ourselves we must know ourselves. There is 
 nothing new about that idea, it was taught 
 twenty-three hundred years ago by one of the 
 wisest of ancient Greek philosophers. If we thor- 
 oughly understood ourselves we would not blame 
 our children for their actions of defence against 
 us, our patience would not be tried by such seem- 
 ing ingratitude, and we would know better how 
 
 127 
 
THE PROBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHILD 
 
 to defend ourselves against our children. The 
 latter is a vital necessity of the times if we would 
 live on and secure ourselves against too great 
 demands of our adolescent children, or our spoiled 
 and too much petted children, or our misunder- 
 stood and unhappy children. As the father above 
 quoted said : he knew one thing for sure, which his 
 analysis had shown him, and that was, he would 
 never have another strike in his factories, al- 
 though once he had had riots with attempts at 
 arson. But he should compel them all to go to 
 school, young and old, and should provide means 
 of recreation and amusement, for his employees 
 were much like children who must be trained in 
 the right direction until they would go naturally. 
 Many children must be kept at their tasks and 
 education until after their adolescence, and it 
 needs a firm and constant pressure to overcome 
 a child ^s unwillingness. 
 
 Jerky discipline is an indication of nerves or 
 laziness or an exhausted libido on the parent's 
 part. No one has unlimited power, and when 
 tired the strong character stops to rest, while the 
 weak one goes on beyond his or her endurance, for 
 reasons usually very selfish. It becomes a form 
 of exhibitionism. Excessive giving, where one 
 has not the power or means to give, is another 
 defence; excessive talking is also used uncon- 
 sciously to keep away unpleasant thoughts. Won- 
 derful wisdom is contained in the Biblical adinoni- 
 
 128 
 
I 
 
 DEFENCE EEACTIONS 
 
 tion to *^ judge not/' I was much surprised when 
 a soldier from the battlefields of France, in an- 
 swer to my efforts to brace him up from the shock 
 of seeing so much suffering, wrote that the 
 mental anguish a soldier suffered going into battle 
 was not so great as that of a child when misunder- 
 stood by his elders. The soldier is going ahead to 
 fight for what he knows is right, but the child is 
 held back by his helplessness in the face of what 
 he thinks is wrong. 
 
 129 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE PAEENT COMPLEX 
 
 A COMPLEX is a group of emotional ideas, or ideas 
 gathered around a wish that is too painful or too 
 unethical, to exist in conscious thought. It domi- 
 nates its victim with a ceaseless urge, a condition 
 which is popularly called ** nerves/' So intimate 
 a part of an individual are his complexes, that it 
 is as impossible for him to become aware of them 
 without the help of the analytical psychologist as 
 it is for the eye to see itself on its retina. And 
 as we have recourse to an oculist to have the de- 
 fective vision corrected by appropriate lenses, 
 so when the family situation becomes acutely 
 troublesome, the same sort of recourse may be had 
 to the analytical psychologist, to correct the de- 
 fects of the mental ^dsion. 
 
 Because these ideas constituting the complex 
 are unknown they have all the more power over 
 the individual. The parent complex is the emo- 
 tionally toned group of ideas which the child in 
 his own unconscious mind has unintentionally and 
 unwittingly formed about the concept of father 
 and mother. So fundamental and so all-impor- 
 tant is the parent complex, formed in childhood 
 but persisting into adulthood, that in many cases 
 
 130 
 
THE PARENT COMPLEX 
 
 the adult finds himself unable to live his own inde- 
 pendent existence, and is plainly seen to be suffer- 
 ing from some form of nervous disorder. Years 
 of experience have shown that the chemical action 
 of drugs relieves such cases only temporarily. 
 
 In the play within the play in Hamlet, when the 
 Duke Gonzago is murdered. King Claudius can 
 sit no longer. His feelings overcome him and issue 
 in the act of calling ** Lights, lights !'' and rushing 
 from the room, thus fulfilling Hamlet's prophecy 
 when he said : 
 
 **The play's the thing 
 Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king." 
 
 Emotional actions are the signs of the complex 
 but are not the complex. The ideas around which 
 have gathered the painful emotions are lying deep 
 in the unconscious. In most people they escape 
 into consciousness only occasionally, showing 
 themselves as a sensitiveness or being **sore on" 
 some subject. If a person is ** touchy" about 
 some topic, he shows that he has a complex con- 
 nected with it. 
 
 CAUSE OF PABENT COMPLEX 
 
 The cause of the complex formed about the idea 
 of the parent is that the first impressions of child- 
 hood are stamped with incredible depth on a mind 
 which is in some respects as soft and plastic as 
 
 131 
 
THE PROBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHH^D 
 
 wax. But it is in other respects to be compared 
 not with wax, which does not grow, but with 
 human or animal tissue which does grow, magni- 
 fying the original impression. I have sometimes 
 wondered if these impressions did not begin at 
 the hour of birth, as in the case of the child who 
 refused to nurse his mother, but would nurse from 
 a rubber nipple on a bottle. Was there in this case 
 a too vigorous presentation of the subject at the 
 first attempt to nurse 1 Again, a newly-born child 
 being laid aside a long time before his first bath, 
 owing to the critical condition of his mother, was 
 really neglected during his first hours of life, and 
 all his later life he had the feeling of being un- 
 loved until his marriage, which was satisfying. 
 Be that as it may, it is possible that the number 
 and weight of these impressions upon a child's 
 mind in a highly organized type of society are so 
 great, as in a large city where there is much ex- 
 citement due to the close contact with many 
 people, that the natural growth of the child's own 
 nature is surcharged by too frequent demands and 
 impressions. There are many degrees in the force 
 and liveliness with which they strike on the mind, 
 varying from the soft yielding to the nearly in- 
 elastic mind, which later will suffer less from his 
 complexes. In these early and impressionable 
 years the child has thoughts and desires which 
 should be allowed to grow to the best advantage, 
 cultivated, pruned and trained for better growth, 
 
 132 
 
THE PARENT COMPLEX 
 
 but not with the mistaken idea that training con- 
 sists in mental wrenching this way and that, of 
 beating back the child's wishes without sympathy 
 and by the dominating power of parent or 
 teacher. 
 
 In order to realize the true situation, we have 
 thus to keep clearly in mind the impressions which 
 are being made upon the child's mind and the 
 growth of the mind itself, which shows that there 
 is an innate force having its own tendencies in its 
 own instinctive directions. If this individual urge 
 in the child, which craves to grow its own way, is 
 allowed to develop in a rationally normal manner 
 with only enough direction to make it conform to 
 social living, the impressions of childhood, 
 whether they be unhappy or too exciting, will be 
 outgrown. Much as it may shock those adults 
 who value very greatly the memories of child- 
 hood, it must be emphatically stated that the child- 
 ish impressions should be obliterated so that the 
 impressions of later life may take effect. This 
 does not mean that no memories should survive, 
 but that the importance of the early impressions 
 should give way before the larger values of the 
 later experiences. The persistence of the early 
 experience continuing unchanged into adulthood is 
 one of the greatest of misfortunes and causes the 
 individual to have, when later he is in the adult 
 environment, a mode of thought, a pattern of re- 
 action showing childish traits which ought long 
 
 133 
 
THE PROBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHILD 
 
 ago to have been outgrown. The scar on a young 
 sapling is covered year by year with a fresh coat- 
 ing of bark and finally outwardly effaced, but if 
 the development of growth were diagrammed, the 
 rings of growth would look like this : 
 
 "While a well-rounded life without the scar would 
 be represented by a number of concentric perfect 
 circles. We thus come to realize that there are 
 two different types of people, one of which has and 
 the other which has not been subjected in child- 
 hood to impressions which were too strong to 
 allow the natural tendencies of growth to be fol- 
 lowed. 
 
 In contrast to the individuals whose minds are 
 essentially infantile are those who have developed 
 a real adulthood, in character as well as physio- 
 logically, and cover over or fill out the deep im- 
 pressions of childhood. The impressions in child- 
 hood should not be too violent, and if the tender 
 growth of the child-life, representing a something 
 
 134 
 
THE PARENT COMPLEX 
 
 whicli wants to grow in its own way, meets resist- 
 ance and positively aggressive opposition it cannot 
 expand, and the impressions remain. Althongli 
 the physical body may grow, the soul of the child 
 is held fast, and the retardation or complete stop- 
 page of its growth forms an abnormal condition 
 which from this starting-point plays a greater and 
 greater role in the life of the individual. 
 
 MOTHER LOVE 
 
 As all life grows toward the sun, which fur- 
 nishes warmth and energy, so does the child grow 
 toward the person who furnishes him with warmth 
 and satisfaction of his desires. The first warmth 
 is given by the mother to the child in its prenatal 
 existence, the instinct for nutrition is satisfied by 
 her; in supplying its needs the emotional life of 
 the child is called forth and in that early time 
 occur the beginnings of the yearning desire we 
 call love. Is it any wonder that the childhood 
 which is made so attractive by the sympathy and 
 devotion of the mother is very hard to leave I 
 She carefully watches the material wants, her 
 touch is gentle and caressing. Always she ap- 
 proaches with adoring looks and encouragement, 
 soothing injured feelings with sweetest tones and 
 encouragement. There is established the most in- 
 timate relationship between mother and child — 
 why should the child wish to grow up ? How many 
 
 135 
 
THE PEOBLEM OF THE NEEVOUS CHHjD 
 
 of us without knowing it carry the infantile pat- 
 tern of reaction to life, and the weary ones, when 
 suffering is great, cry out from the heart : 
 
 ** Backward, turn backward, Time, in thy flight, 
 Make me a child again just for tonight. 
 Mother, come back from the echoless shore." 
 
 Thus these emotional feelings, which become at- 
 tached to the ungratified ideas and wishes, sink to 
 the unconscious and form what we call the * ^ com- 
 plex'' and there the libido or energy is used to 
 gratify the wishes of the complex. If too much of 
 the libido is kept with these complexes in the 
 inner, unknown realms of the unconscious instead 
 of being worked off naturally on an external world 
 of reality, there is a retardation of the healthful 
 adjustment to reality, with consequent slowing up 
 of energy, and with ill health, unhappiness and 
 lack of ambition. Such patients think they are 
 blaming every one but themselves for their fail- 
 ures^ when they are really blaming every one for 
 not being parents to them. The emotions which 
 are appropriate to childhood are fixed or made 
 permanent, and the emotions appropriate to adult- 
 hood are never experienced at all, even though the 
 patient may be fifty years old. 
 
 A housewife's complex 
 
 The complex, although crowded out of con- 
 sciousness, is ever struggling for expression. It 
 
 136 
 
THE PARENT COMPLEX 
 
 is shown in the jokes and attempts at humour, 
 unexplained forgetting, absent-mindedness, mis- 
 takes in speech and slips of the tongue, certain 
 opinions, moods, dominant traits of character and 
 the phantasy-thinking of day-dreams. The pa- 
 tient 's conduct and feelings are all determined by 
 the nature of his complexes. The night dream 
 contains the picture of the complex, but as the 
 educated mind of the dreamer meets the naked 
 wishes of his complexes he covers them, as it were, 
 with a veil of symbolism — for example: a pa- 
 tient told me of the great relief she felt when she 
 smashed a goblet against the bricks of her chim- 
 ney — ^^^My husband makes me just wild when he 
 comes to say good-bye on a Monday morning, in 
 his easy-going way, and asks what I am going to 
 do today when I have the entire house to restore 
 from Sunday disorder; and his niece, who is visit- 
 ing us and has made much of the disorder with 
 her company, remarks what a lovely time she is 
 having and goes off to her dressmaker, leaving 
 me to do all the w^ork. I grabbed up the goblet 
 and threw it with all my might against the stones 
 of the fireplace and the crash gave me the great- 
 est relief.^' She showed her unconscious wish to 
 destroy the niece but symbolized her as the goblet. 
 Our patient was held by her complexes and blamed 
 her husband for not feeling the tender solici- 
 tude of a father for her, instead of which she 
 should have accepted her housekeeping as her 
 
 137 
 
THE PEOBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHH^D 
 
 profession and been prond to be a capable 
 woman. 
 
 The family complex is a reiterated story of our 
 nursery days which would bore us to death if we 
 could but see it in all its bread, butter and jam 
 realism, but it is for most of us hopelessly dis- 
 guised in symbolism, so that we cannot see it as 
 it really is. It goes back to the days of nursing in 
 babyhood and persists into adult life. There is 
 constantly going on in the depths of the uncon- 
 scious the fulfillment of our unsatisfied longings. 
 The unlovely life in sordid surroundings, but long- 
 ing for gaiety, is surrounded in the unconscious 
 by music and dancing; the lonely life, in the un- 
 conscious, seeks love and would be revenged on 
 those who have denied it; the overburdened life 
 kills and destroys those who have imposed the 
 burden ; poverty is surrounded by riches. 
 
 To the elaboration of these phantasies the 
 major part of the libido is directed, and when too 
 much of the emotional life is held in the family 
 ties, the technical term ^ incest phantasy^' is ap- 
 plied to it, with the sickening horror of life so 
 well told in the Greek play of ^^CEdipus'' written 
 by Sophocles, and also given expression in the 
 group classifications of Totemism, which enables 
 the tribes to lead an exogamous existence. From 
 time immemorial the instinctive aim of life to keep 
 its energy free for its own creative purposes has 
 not changed, but along with it has existed also 
 
 138 
 
THE PARENT COMPLEX 
 
 the desire to remain in childhood, a trend which 
 we find in the very primitive tribes. To overcome 
 it, the custom was practised of taking away a boy 
 at the age of puberty from the mother for a cer- 
 tain period. By very primitive people in the early 
 cultural stages the youth was instructed in the 
 rites of magic believed by his tribe to appease 
 the mysterious powers of nature which control 
 life and its necessities. This custom has de- 
 scended to us in the form of Confirmation in the 
 Church, when youth is supposed to assume re- 
 sponsibility and the sponsors are no longer an- 
 swerable for consequences. 
 
 THE INCEST PHANTASY 
 
 We must call special attention to the term ** in- 
 cest phantasy '^ which is the form of phantasy- 
 thinking holding so much of the libido in the uncon- 
 scious situations where the individual is unable 
 to sacrifice the infantile wish and where the 
 further development of energy toward objects 
 outside of the family is prevented. The interests, 
 conversation, affections and wishes of a person 
 with a strong incest phantasy remain, as it were, 
 glued to the family, and as one cannot marry 
 one's own family the whole aim of nature is lost 
 sight of and morbid and abnormal phenomena ap- 
 pear. A woman of thirty-six came for analysis, 
 saying she suffered unbearably from her subcon- 
 
 139 
 
THE PEOBLEM OF THE NEEVOUS CHILD 
 
 scious. It was never quite clear what she meant 
 by her ^^subconscious.'' She was married and 
 had several children. Her thin, nervous-looking 
 face indicated a form of melancholia ; her history 
 showed a father image held always in her mind as 
 the ideal man. He had been kind, thoughtful, 
 lovely and sympathetic, and life with him was 
 always happy, yet he had committed suicide. 
 
 Her husband, on the contrary, expected so much 
 of her, she said, and never understood her 
 troubles. She worked so hard on their small in- 
 come and talked much of her many sacrifices. 
 Her analysis, however, showed that she was un- 
 willing to make the one sacrifice necessary, the 
 sacrifice of her childhood wish. Her weak father 
 could not face difficulties and left the world; her 
 mother had to bear the burdens. The patient had 
 desired a musical education, but the father had 
 not sufficient funds and would not or, as she 
 thought, could not work. He was so lovely, she 
 said, she did not mind going without the musical 
 education. 
 
 But the question was put to the patient, **What 
 would life be if every one was so lovely f The 
 obvious answer was, **We would lead a vegetative 
 existence, the libido would be stored in each one; 
 death and annihilation would result.'' At the 
 present time she has worked out her problems and 
 is very appreciative of her home, children and the 
 sterling character of her husband. In her uncon- 
 
 140 
 
THE PARENT COMPLEX 
 
 scious she was living over her past life, taking her 
 mother's place and trying to make her father 
 happy so that he would not commit suicide. 
 
 When the daughter imagines herself taking the 
 mother's place, what does it really mean? In the 
 unconscious thought she will be her father's wife. 
 Is it any wonder that she appears pale, has 
 nausea, indigestion and insomnia? And the son 
 will have the same unconscious thought if the 
 mother is too sweet and indulgent, and becomes 
 his ideal of the dearest and loveliest woman. 
 Thus we see exactly how it is that the personality 
 of the parents plays a most important part among 
 the influences of childhood. 
 
 If the parents cannot give their offspring the 
 proper environment necessary to start a vigorous 
 life, the chances are that the child will reach years 
 of maturity still wishing and seeking uncon- 
 sciously the ideal parent. In every woman he 
 meets, the boy will look for the qualities he thinks 
 the ideal should possess. If his mother has been 
 too exacting, irritable from troubles the nature of 
 which the child cannot understand, neglectful of 
 home and children from her own lack of mental 
 growth, all the more will the boy seek the mother 
 image in all women and particularly in the woman 
 he marries. 
 
 The mother image is the mother pattern; this 
 is the pattern which his experience of his own 
 mother leads him to form. What he finds good in 
 
 141 
 
 jCw 
 
THE PEOBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHILD 
 
 her he takes as part of the pattern for the mother 
 he wants for his own children, and as he wants his 
 own children to have all the good he may have 
 missed in his own childhood, he takes the oppo- 
 sites of what bad or inferior qualities he may have 
 found in his mother and adds them to the already 
 too exacting specifications. When he finds a girl 
 who resembles his mother in any particular, his 
 instinctive desire for love goes out to her and, if 
 he be of a certain neurotic temperament, his in- 
 stincts totally blind him to the qualities which his 
 chosen one does not possess to make her the exact 
 replica of his pattern, and the intellectual realiza- 
 tion of these ditferences come later with a shock. 
 The strong man accepts his mother as merely 
 human, made of strength and weakness, and has 
 consideration for her declining years ; he will have 
 the courage of his convictions, the curve of his de- 
 velopment will be well-rounded, no indentations 
 going back to childhood ideals. 
 
 The daughter, with her different biological aim, 
 is likewise seeking her ideals. As the aim of the 
 male is to go forth to find some one to cover and 
 to give to, so the female shows her instinctive 
 desire to be covered and to receive. Woman's suf- 
 frage may be a tacit admission on the part of man- 
 kind that he has not done the protecting as well 
 as he should. A perfect protection would have 
 left no desire among women to share in that func- 
 tion, a condition which from a biological point of 
 
 142 
 
THE PARENT COMPLEX 
 
 view, might be called a perversion of the natural 
 aim. Just because man has failed to perform his 
 duty he has called upon women to help him, he has 
 taken the work from her hands ; for he makes her 
 bread, her jams, jellies and preserves, he spins her 
 cloth, makes her dresses, her hats, he makes her 
 fashions of dress and makes her pay as exorbi- 
 tantly for her tight and narrow skirts and scanty 
 waists as if she wore the voluminous skirts of 
 years ago. He thus to a certain degree causes the 
 woman to become perverted, as biologically her 
 only function is to be protected in the home and 
 not go out into the world and take a part in pro- 
 tecting it. 
 
 THE FEMININE IDEAL 
 
 When very young the baby girl shows her pref- 
 erence for masculine strength. She finds great 
 comfort in the support of a pair of strong arms 
 which lift her up and hold her. A boy would 
 wriggle and squirm to get away. All her life she 
 looks for strength in her ideal man, physical 
 strength, strength of purpose, intellectual 
 strength, according to whatever have been the 
 early influences that have moulded her character. 
 In trying to dissolve a strong father complex in 
 a young woman unhappily married, I found the 
 father image had loomed large before the girl 
 when she became engaged. She confessed that 
 her husband was a great disappointment. He was 
 
 143 
 
THE PEOBLEM OF THE KEEVOUS CHILD 
 
 so different from her father who was so comfort- 
 able to have around; but her husband kept the 
 house in disorder, threw newspapers everywhere, 
 cigar ashes in everything. Upstairs their room 
 was topsy-turvy if he was in it for a few minutes ; 
 he was so rough in his salutations when he came 
 home, picked her up and kissed her three or four 
 times, which was most trying when she was en- 
 deavouring to look her best for the dinner table. 
 Father was so different, he was so neat and quiet, 
 his chiffonier was in order and Jack^s was tossed 
 about. After dinner father sat down by the fire, 
 with his cigar and newspaper, an essential factor 
 of the home circle. She understood later that the 
 enthusiasm of youth demanded action, and that 
 when her father was young he was not the sedate 
 man she knew. She was trying to be a wife after 
 the model of her aged mother. 
 
 A woman of thirty-eight went quite to pieces 
 after her husband's death when she had to attend 
 stockholders' meetings, consult lawyers about the 
 details of property management, and keep bank 
 accounts. She found mankind unresponsive and 
 could not understand why she was expected to 
 protect her own business interests. Large bills 
 were sent to her for services rendered. Again, 
 the father complex prevented the self-reliance she 
 might have felt, and she approached every man 
 as though he were her father and personally in- 
 terested in her. 
 
 144 
 
THE PARENT COMPLEX 
 
 Another case is that of a woman over forty 
 years of age whose father had died when she was 
 a child. She always longed for masculine strength 
 to lean on. When four years old she had been ill, 
 her father had carried her in his arms, an indul- 
 gence which had greatly relieved her tired little 
 body weakened by fever. Ever afterward she 
 longed, when tired, for strong arms to support 
 her; the touch of a coat sleeve against her face 
 satisfied a deep yearning in her soul. When she 
 married she told her husband how much she had 
 longed for and missed her father, and the hus- 
 band, who was ten years older, promised to be 
 both father and husband to her. This promise 
 comforted her greatly, and the ever-ready coat 
 sleeve, with strong arms to support seemed to be 
 the end of her longings. However, the coat sleeve 
 and the masculine strength were the beginning of 
 troubles. She was constantly ill, refused to sleep 
 in the same room with her husband, declared con- 
 jugal intimacy was the curse of married life. Yet 
 no glimmering of the truth came to either of them, 
 that when the husband promised to be both hus- 
 band and father, he was causing his wife to put 
 ^two persons in one, so that she married her own 
 father, in exactly the way that many girls would 
 like to do. In her dreams she saw her father 
 wearing her husband ^s clothes, sitting on her 
 front door steps, always waiting for her, until she 
 finally realized how impossible to have both a 
 
 145 
 
THE PEOBLEM OF THE NEEVOUS CHILD 
 
 father and a husband in one, and that she no 
 longer needed a father. 
 
 Who has not seen the joy of the daughter in 
 taking charge of the home when mother is away? 
 She sits at the head of the table, orders or pre- 
 pares father's favourite dishes, puts on the most 
 becoming gown, and feels very grown up in enter- 
 taining his friends. The son also has his diffi- 
 culties with a mother complex when he expects 
 his wife to be as careful and considerate of him 
 as his mother was, and he feels that he is not 
 understood or appreciated when he finds his wife 
 is expecting the same understanding from him. 
 When the parent dies before the birth of a child, 
 or in the case of an adopted child, it is more diffi- 
 cult for the child to separate the actual parent 
 from the wife or husband, for the child who has 
 never known a parent's love longs for it intensely, 
 even after years of maturity, and feels starved 
 for affection. An ideal of the perfect parent is 
 held and the realization of it constantly sought 
 until some soul-satisfying situation is met. 
 
 OTHER COMPLEXES 
 
 While each life must struggle with its com- 
 plexes, and no one escapes them, it is only when 
 the conscious life is strong and full of interests 
 that we do not suffer from the effects upon our 
 energy. As we have said, these complexes are 
 
 146 
 
i 
 
 THE PARENT COMPLEX 
 
 not confined to the family group but extend in 
 various directions, seizing upon unsatisfied de- 
 sires that are unknown to the person. Our pa- 
 tience is tried by the individual unable to adjust 
 his complexes. His aims are apparently selfish, 
 he is sensitive and peevish, takes offence on the 
 slightest provocation, is oftentimes a woman- 
 hater and runs away from feminine approach ex- 
 cept the beloved mother and sister, and vice versa, 
 is easily annoyed by children except those with the 
 same family ties. A person closely bound by his 
 complexes is dubbed a ^^ crank '' and woe to the 
 family or social organization of which he is a 
 member. He will narrow life to a ^*dog in the 
 manger'' principle, he cannot fill his surround- 
 ings himself, but no one is allowed near enough 
 to disturb or interfere with his wishes. In those 
 poor infantile souls generosity exists only in 
 spots. They lead what we call a *^ narcissistic" 
 existence. Such a person is too much in love with 
 himself to appreciate another person's view- 
 point ; the manifestations of their unconscious are 
 most unlovely, being spells of temper, depressions, 
 or ** nerves" in some form. Rarely do they give 
 where they cannot share the benefits, as a matter 
 of fact they can only give to the mother or mother- 
 substitute, because from her they reap such large 
 returns. Verily, in these days, with millions of 
 orphaned and homeless children, we need to turn 
 to our Bibles for counsel and guidance to help free 
 
 147 
 
THE PEOBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHILD 
 
 ourselves from our complexes, if we are too 
 prejudiced to seek more modern methods, and 
 open our hearts and homes to the children, **for 
 of such is the kingdom.'' I have been surprised 
 to see people I had hitherto respected, turn away 
 from the nervous child with condemnation, no 
 charity, faith or hope, no idea of rejoicing in the 
 betterment of the child or of helping with intelli- 
 gence, but exhibiting the most deplorable igno- 
 rance in considering the nervous child as a men- 
 ace to peace, and great selfishness in refusing the 
 slightest sacrifice to help restore the tired child 
 to robust health. 
 
 The complex existing in the unconscious 
 thought of the individual is symbolically pictured 
 or concretely expressed in the dream as chains 
 of steel that bind him. ^^I saw a man in a cofi&n 
 and the coffin was wrapped with chains of steel, 
 the man was barely alive. He writhed and 
 twisted, but could not force his way out as the 
 chains held him." The associations of sickness, 
 death, his mother in a coffin, and of a person being 
 linked with another as with chains, a word which 
 has been used to describe marriage, showed the 
 analysis to be that the patient was the man in the 
 coffin (which symbolized the mother) and that he 
 was bound to her memory as with links of steel, a 
 power he could not break but which could be re- 
 moved by another person if the patient had the 
 self-control to wait and not exhaust himself in 
 
 148 
 
THE PARENT COMPLEX 
 
 constantly showing his complexes (writhing and 
 twisting). The unconscious mother-hold is seen 
 in many instances of the old life (the parent) 
 clinging to, feeding on and drawing inspiration 
 from the young life (the child) held by ties of 
 family. 
 
 MOTHERS WOOING SONS 
 
 Last night in our hotel we watched the dancing 
 couples, among them a young soldier and a pe- 
 culiar looking woman. Her hair was auburn, 
 much curled and fluffed around her face. A nar- 
 row strip of black velvet high up around her neck, 
 passed directly under her chin. Rich jewels on 
 hands and dress, and a costume modish and in 
 perfect form, bespoke wealth and refined home 
 surroundings. Her slender figure was graceful, 
 but her face looked queer and purplish. As she 
 danced a pleased expression came. Was she some 
 genius, we wondered, whose curve of develop- 
 ment had been so uneven that she showed these 
 results'? Just then an old lady took the vacant 
 chair beside me. She was white-haired and 
 motherly. *^I see you are watching them,'' she 
 said. * * That is my daughter and her son. They 
 do have such good times together. But he has 
 been sick and still has no appetite. There, they 
 have stopped dancing, I must go and see that he 
 sits down to rest. ' ' And she left us. The mystery 
 was explained. It was only an old woman trying 
 
 149 
 
THE PEOBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHILD 
 
 to look young and remain young to hold her son's 
 love and attention, which should have been given 
 to a young girl. The black velvet around her 
 throat, high up under her chin, marked the effort 
 to hide the soft wrinkle which if filled out makes 
 the double chin. But the son, tall and good-look- 
 ing as he stood among other soldiers in the ball- 
 room, noticeably lacked their enthusiasm ; his face 
 was dull, hopeless and weak. The army has been 
 sought by many a man otherwise unable to free 
 himself from the family grasp and don'ts. The 
 mother also has an unconscious to reckon with. 
 If she only knew it, what suffering she would be 
 saved! If she would only step aside and let the 
 child go on to his goal she would see him turning 
 back to her, and she would rejoice in his glorious 
 strength of manhood. She would then be well re- 
 warded with the results of education begun under 
 her instruction, and he would complete the jour- 
 ney from adolescence to maturity. 
 
 Another case of the disastrous result of a 
 strong mother complex was found in the case of a 
 twenty-two year old boy who, in an unusual fear 
 of the number thirteen, symbolized the wish to 
 return to the mother. Such a horror he had of 
 the number that when a post-office money order 
 was sent him by his family on the Pacific Coast, 
 although he had reached his last cent, when he saw 
 the sub-station where his money was was marked 
 No. 13, he turned away. He knew no one to whom 
 
 150 
 
THE PARENT COMPLEX 
 
 to apply for help; I happened to be out of town 
 for two days, and as his pocket was empty he was 
 entirely destitute and without food for two days, 
 sleeping on park benches, seeking shelter in a 
 tunnelled walk when it rained. 
 
 His analysis showed many curious phases of 
 childhood, especially the mistake parents make in 
 allowing children in the rooms of father and 
 mother. He was an only child, and was always 
 brought into his mother's room mornings before 
 she was up. When about two and a half years old 
 he went into his mother's room one morning and 
 played around the bed and under the blankets, 
 hopping around as his little fox-terrier dog did. 
 His mother was disturbed and commanded him- 
 to be quiet, no further impression remained with 
 her but the young man never forgot it. Whether 
 he imagined it or experienced it, he declared he 
 never forgot the comfortable feeling of being so 
 near to her. The father, who was present at the 
 time, quickly put the boy out as being too noisy 
 and persistent in playing around the mother. An 
 intense dislike, which later became distrust, for 
 the father began. The boy brooded constantly, 
 screamed and refused to be away from his mother. 
 
 When he began going to school he was better 
 until the adolescent period began, when study and 
 school became impossible. He was silent and told 
 no one his thoughts. Doctors were sought, they 
 removed adenoids and tonsils, had his teeth cared 
 
 151 
 
THE PEOBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHH^D 
 
 for, fitted glasses to his eyes, not knowing what 
 was the cause of the boy's trouble. As his mother 
 wrote me, in giving the history: '^I left my hus- 
 band, closed the house, took J. away to the sea- 
 shore and devoted myself to him." It was the 
 worst thing she could have done ; he was pale, had 
 no appetite, slept badly; nothing improved him. 
 He began to call his father shocking names, re- 
 fused to talk, stood on a street for hours looking 
 the picture of misery. When spoken to he made 
 obscene answers. The only person he was at all 
 happy with was his grandfather. 
 
 One Sunday afternoon when walking with his 
 grandfather and another old man, he heard a ref- 
 erence to the figure thirteen as being unlucky, and 
 then began his horror of that number. He was 
 taken the rounds of nerve specialists, but with 
 no improvement, and finally sought a psycho- 
 analysis with a physician on the Pacific coast and 
 for the first time improved. He began school 
 again and continued through high school and two 
 years in college, then came another nervous break- 
 down. The boy himself by that time recognized 
 the need for further analysis, and felt an impera- 
 tive urge to go to the East. He was sent to me. 
 He was a sad looking specimen of humanity, 
 ragged, unwashed, uncombed. Safety pins were 
 used instead of cuff buttons. His shoes looked 
 water-soaked and were cut at the top in two slits 
 in a peculiar manner. Though he looked to be a 
 
 152 
 
THE PARENT COMPLEX 
 
 hopeless case, there were two redeeming features : 
 his clean-shaven face with his gold-rimmed spec- 
 tacles, and fine brown hair, falling in a soft wave 
 over his forehead in the maner an artist affects, 
 gave an air of hidden refinement. He was tall 
 and erect, his troubles had not bowed him down 
 as is usually the case with neurotics. I saw then 
 why he had been sent for an analysis. There was 
 resolution in those square shoulders, and an in- 
 tellect back of the face which scowled at me when 
 I asked his name. Later in the hour there came a 
 smile which was encouraging. 
 
 It was slow work to reconstruct a life which had 
 regressed so far to infantilism that he would not 
 even wash and dress himself. In the unconscious 
 he was plainly looking for a mother, as his own 
 mother had not been satisfactory. In the con- 
 scious life he was very ill, unable to think, to work 
 or care for himself, or even to get a room to sleep 
 in. He spent the first week in barrooms day and 
 night, sometimes drinking, as alcohol was a relief 
 to his pent-up emotions. As his analysis pro; 
 ceeded he brought in dreams of being caught in 
 nets, entangled in meshes, like a spider's web 
 when the fly is invited and tempted by promise of 
 the beauty which means death. The analysis of 
 the symbolism of the fly caught in the spider's 
 web was well shown when the mother wrote that 
 when she saw J.'s nervous condition she gave up 
 everything and devoted herself to him. He cer- 
 
 153 
 
THE PEOBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHn.D 
 
 tainly was entangled. As lie improved, Ms first 
 work was running an elevator for a few hours a 
 day. Then he would leave suddenly and it re- 
 quired more analysis to enable him to get a new 
 start. Each new start lasted longer until he was 
 working steadily, the desire for companionship 
 came and alcoholism stopped. 
 
 Another case of a twenty-three year old girl 
 with hysteria was sent to me for analysis. She 
 had long crying spells, complained of her heart 
 beating so hard, she was sure she had ** heart 
 disease,'' as she called it, although four doctors 
 had told her she had not. She was educated for 
 a school teacher but did not want to teach. She 
 was an only child, living alone with her mother, 
 her father having died a few months before the 
 patient's trouble began. We do not take a pa- 
 tient's history when beginning an analysis, ex- 
 cept when given by the parents, as we are con- 
 cerned only with the part of it impressed on the 
 patient 's mind which contains the environment af- 
 fecting the patient's difficulties, and that is 
 shown in the unconscious thought which comes to 
 light during an analysis. This girl gave her first 
 dream phantasies as follows: "'/ was starting on 
 a journey, and went past the place when I ought to 
 have changed cars. Some one was following me 
 everywhere I went, a man and a woman. I was 
 not afraid of them, hut they seemed to he hiding 
 every time I looked at them and I could not thi/nk 
 
 154 
 
THE PARENT COMPLEX 
 
 why I could not get rid of them, so I hid too, and 
 then they went past me and it was our minister 
 and his ivife. I could not see his face, hut I knew 
 it was he/^ 
 
 Without giving all the long list of associations, 
 I may say that the analysis showed the minister 
 and his wife to be the father and mother whose 
 influence she could not get rid of, or in other 
 words, her own childish wishes she could not set 
 aside, and did not recognize until she hid (was 
 sick) and then she knew that her childhood had 
 lasted beyond the adolescent age (she went past 
 the station when she ought to have changed cars). 
 When she fancied she had heart trouble she went 
 home and went to bed for a month and then she 
 felt better. She ended the conflict of her desires 
 by giving up to them in staying in bed. 
 
 The next dream showed more directly the cause 
 of her fancied heart trouble. She dreamed that 
 she had killed some one. She saw the person all 
 covered up in bed and could not see the face but 
 knew she was the murderer and would have 
 to pay for it. She had the impression that the 
 murdered person was a man. We know the 
 unconscious thought of the child is to kill any 
 one in his way. When asked what man had 
 interfered with her wishes she answered she 
 had had nothing to do with any man but her 
 father ; then she recalled a man teacher in college 
 who was very strict and whom she disliked in- 
 
 155 
 
THE PEOBLEM OF THE NEEVOUS CHILD 
 
 tensely. As the dream contains only our unrecog- 
 nized problems and wishes, it was evident the 
 teacher could not be the man of her dream, but he 
 symbolized another person, or quality, possessed 
 by some one who interfered with her wishes. The 
 distinctive quality of a teacher is superior knowl- 
 edge and authority. Who had been the person in 
 her life with superior knowledge and authority 
 who interfered with her wishes? I suspected the 
 father but wanted her to think it out. She began 
 to boast that no one could make her do what she 
 did not want to do ; her mother had learned better 
 than to ask for obedience. *'How about your 
 father!" I asked. She became quiet and thought- 
 ful. ^ 'He tried to make me mind, but I was pretty 
 bad. Guess I worried him to death sometimes. ' ' 
 
 That was the moment to free the unconscious 
 thought that she had killed her father, of which 
 she had been dreaming. ^'What did your father 
 die of r' 
 
 She answered quickly, '* Heart disease," and 
 jflashed a quick look of intelligence at me. 
 
 '*So you feel that you killed your father by 
 your wilfulness and wish to atone for it by suffer- 
 ing from the same disease of the heart?" 
 
 She had had no love affairs. No emotional out- 
 let was afforded her excepting the emotion of 
 hatred toward authority. It is impossible to 
 overestimate the importance of the fact that the 
 images in the dream represent the dreamer in dif- 
 
 156 
 
THE PARENT COMPLEX 
 
 ferent phases of her own character. For instance, 
 the girl dreams that her father is lying dead be- 
 fore her. She has killed him. But in her dream 
 he represents herself, and she feels she ought to 
 kill herself as a retribution for having killed him 
 in waking life, not really, but metaphorically, by 
 making him so unhappy that she broke his heart. 
 In the dream she knew she would have to pay for 
 it, the destructive hatred would destroy her, but 
 thus would she atone for her father ^s death and 
 be true to him. What a strong father complex held 
 that girl ! In her we have an example of the split- 
 ting of the libido ^ and perhaps the beginnings of 
 a Dementia Praecox. Her analysis was not con- 
 tinued. She tried several other physicians for a 
 diagnosis of heart trouble and then returned to 
 the town of her birth. 
 
 The cause of unhappiness in married life seems 
 possibly a topic far removed from the character 
 formation of the child, who is commonly believed 
 to know nothing about it. In a book devoted to 
 the nervous child, why say so much about marital 
 unhappiness? Because both the happiness of the 
 parents and of the child a quarter of a century 
 later are dependent upon the same thing. The 
 usual relation between the healthy mother and 
 child is so idyllic, and the later picture of unhappy 
 married life with ill health and misery is so hell- 
 ish, that many have wondered where began the 
 
 1 See page 82. 
 
 157 
 
THE PROBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHILD 
 
 little rift within the lute after the ecstasy of the 
 wedding day that could cause so great discord, 
 like sweet bells jangled out of tune and harsh. 
 But never before the present age has the cause 
 been searched for on scientific grounds. People 
 have been called foolish as though they were wil- 
 fully being unhappy. A great many opinions and 
 beliefs are given that have never been adequately 
 tested. We have jumped to conclusions, we have 
 been impatient for results. 
 
 THINKING vs. IMAGINING 
 
 We do not use our thoughts and imaginations 
 properly. The words ** thinking" and ** imagin- 
 ing'' are generally used very loosely and often 
 lead to confusion. Thinking is opposed to imag- 
 inative construction, thinking means judging and 
 reasoning and asking, and supposing according to 
 conception, and forming and testing of hypothe- 
 ses. Imagining means the combination of images 
 in new forms. Whoever has tried to make peace 
 between unhappily married people will readily see 
 what a failure in thinking the two ill-mated people 
 are guilty of, and what extravagances in imagin- 
 ing. Each one expects the other to do the think- 
 ing, and then violently contradicts and resists it 
 in trying to represent themselves each to the other 
 as being the injured party. How many men com- 
 ing home from their club or other evening's recre- 
 
 158 
 
THE PARENT COMPLEX 
 
 ation could feelingly re-echo Burns' lines from 
 Tarn O'Shanter: 
 
 ** Where sits our sulky, sullen dame 
 Gathering her brows like gathering storm 
 Nursing her wrath to keep it warm.'' 
 and do not understand the suffering in the heart- 
 ache of the *^dame" who is looking for fatherly 
 attributes in her husband, while he is expecting 
 the mother indulgence from her. He rather has 
 the right on his side, and while he seeks recreation 
 she should also re-create herself. How? Well, as 
 she must eat and sleep for her own re-creation, so 
 should she have her own interests for her own 
 mental and psychic development. 
 
 When the daughter marries (and this applies 
 equally to the son), in order to begin life as is gen- 
 erally thought, it is usually to continue life with 
 the ideal mate who, in the unconscious, is a com- 
 bination of father and husband. There is no moral 
 reasoning about marriage and its expectations, 
 but only an inexperienced imagination in mental 
 pictures from past wishes. When reality is found 
 to be different from those pictures of imagination, 
 the reality is not seen but only the vacancy where 
 the realization of infantile wishes was expected 
 to be found. The companionship in the new per- 
 sonality of the husband is perplexing to the 
 *' child- wife " no matter what her age may be. 
 Dickens shows her in the character of Dora in 
 David Copperfield, 
 
 159 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 BURIED EMOTIONS 
 
 To the uninitiated parent it often seems that the 
 child is acting from ^^pnre cussedness'' if he 
 neglects his work or seeks to escape from au- 
 thority. The destructive emotions of fear and 
 anger, about whose specific effects upon the body 
 we are now learning from medical researches,^ 
 do not in the child mean the same as they do in the 
 adult. The **pure cussedness'' of the child may 
 be quite a different affair from that of the adult. 
 The child, in his actions which seem to show these 
 emotions, is expressing his desire to grow both 
 physically and mentally, while the adult fre- 
 quently in the same emotions is manifesting his 
 unconscious desire not to grow. The child knows 
 that if he steals a cake from the pantry he is 
 breaking mother's rules of conduct, which are 
 made not to prevent him from growing, but for 
 another purpose. He has enjoyed the cake, and 
 has done nothing retrogressive except to displease 
 mother, who in many instances would be more 
 pleased than displeased if she but comprehended, 
 because in getting sweets from mother he is pay- 
 ing her the highest compliment he can. 
 
 1 Cannon : Bodily Changes in Pain, Hunger, Fear and Rage. 
 
 160 
 
BURIED EMOTIONS 
 
 The perversity of the adult, however, is quite a 
 different matter. In breaking laws which he is 
 himself supposed to have had a share in making, 
 he is going contrary to the rational side of his 
 nature which inevitably must have had more de- 
 velopment than the child's. The act of the crimi- 
 nal is a breaking out of emotions that have been 
 unfortunately buried in his unconscious. The ob- 
 structions to the growth and proper freeing of 
 the libido are seen in many forms of nervous dis- 
 orders. The lack of ability on the part of such 
 patients to drive their own libido, resulting in 
 their being themselves run away with, is seen in 
 the haunting fear characteristic of the anxiety 
 neurosis. A fear of being a coward, in a patient 
 who is really a strong, self-reliant character; a 
 fear of losing hair when the patient has a thick 
 growth of hair on a healthy scalp ; a fear of drop- 
 ping dead when he is a remarkably healthy per- 
 son, all indicate a repression of the libido. The 
 buried emotions have caused a fear in such a per- 
 son's soul that he is inadequate normally to 
 supply the demands of the most vital nature. The 
 emotions being buried in the unconscious are un- 
 able to follow the path of the libido as it seeks to 
 turn from its source to fulfil its function in the 
 world. It perforce turns back to where the light 
 and fire burn for it. 
 
 Thus begin the nervous and mental disorders 
 which develop in later life as the demands and dif- 
 
 161 
 
THE PEOBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHILD 
 
 Acuities increase. In order better to understand 
 the subject it will be necessary to look from the 
 modern analytic viewpoint to the exact nature of 
 the emotions. As the etymology of the word 
 e-motion shows, the emotions are a moving out- 
 ward. Nature intended the libido eventually to 
 gain its satisfaction by an outward going activity 
 from the individual, which would produce a result 
 of some change in the external world of real 
 things, and only incidentally and indirectly a re- 
 ciprocal or retroactive change in the organism it- 
 self. In recalling one's acquaintances one can 
 almost always say quite definitely whether any 
 given person belongs in that class of people who 
 get their satisfactions from external acts or in- 
 ternal activities or thoughts. William James has 
 divided people into two classes, tough-minded and 
 tender-minded. Tender-minded people get their 
 satisfaction from internal effects. Similarly, na- 
 ture has designed us to be primarily tough-minded 
 for she has made it impossible for an individual 
 physically to reproduce himself except through 
 an external act. Only when we get an adequate 
 emotional outlet do we feel the satisfaction of ac- 
 complishment. When we say that every life must 
 have an emotional outlet we literally mean that we 
 must move out of ourselves, we must (as we have 
 to liberate our libido) acquire a means of giving 
 outward manifestations to certain states of mind 
 such as tenderness, affection, love, friendship, 
 
 162 
 
BURIED EMOTIONS 
 
 sympathy, or any of the fine spiritual qualities 
 which are conducive to the reproducing and sav- 
 ing of life, in short, the creative emotions. 
 
 REPKODUCTION 
 
 In the lower forms of animal life the reproduc- 
 tive process practically constitutes life's entire 
 function. In any form of animal life the power- 
 ful law of attraction calls together the individuals 
 of opposite sex. At such times, so strong is the 
 mating instinct, it is as if one cell out of all the 
 huge mass of protoplasm in the male exercised 
 sole control over its entire movements, which are 
 directed solely by that one cell, for the purpose of 
 finding and uniting with just one cell in the mass 
 of protoplasm in the female.^ The result of this 
 union is a unicellular organism, in which the two 
 substances combine intimately and produce a new 
 cell having a more powerful energy of growth 
 than any other cell in the body of either male or 
 female. In some forms of reproduction which are 
 known as budding the new individual or bud lives 
 only at the expense of the old trunk, which gives 
 life to the new branches. But in animal reproduc- 
 tion the result of the union of the male and female 
 cells is a completely independent individual, un- 
 like the bud which is dependent on the branch 
 from which it grows. 
 
 1 See Ribot : Psychology of the Emotions. 
 
 163 
 
THE PROBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHILD 
 
 In the higher multicellular animals the individ- 
 uals possess a mobility secured through a nervous 
 system which becomes the mental director of the 
 living organism, and invests it with its indi- 
 vidual character. This extraordinary complexity 
 of organization is what allows the higher forms of 
 animal life, bees and other social insects and ani- 
 mals, and, above all, humans, to form numerous 
 social relations with other individuals — relation- 
 ships which are impossible in lower orders of ani- 
 mal life. This higher type of complicated organ- 
 ism is entirely dependent, for the preservation of 
 the species, upon the proper functioning of the 
 reproductive element, for the species would disap- 
 pear if the male cells could not find and reach the 
 female cells through the active movement of the 
 individual as a whole. 
 
 SPRINGTIME OF LOVE 
 
 Thus nature produces the marvellous phe- 
 nomenon, that of the desire to escape from all 
 authority and to go forth to find the mate, pene- 
 trating the entire nervous system of adolescent 
 youth. Body and soul being transfused by this 
 instinct makes, for a time at least, every action of 
 the individual a delight and an ecstasy. Every 
 activity being, at these times, in perfect align- 
 ment, directed toward the same goal, ^he individ- 
 uaPs complete unity with the mate uplifts him to 
 
 164 
 
BURIED EMOTIONS 
 
 the highest ideals. , This ardent desire and power- 
 ful impulse becomes the strongest motive, it is 
 the strongest instinct in every member of the 
 species. It arises to an overwhelming intensity 
 in every part of the nervous system as the age 
 of puberty is completed, and attracts the individ- 
 ual irresistibly to the opposite sex. The interest 
 and pleasure of self-preservation which has oc- 
 cupied the child's attention is effaced by this new 
 instinct. The desire to find a mate dominates 
 every phase of individual life. It fills our fiction 
 and our drama, telling over and over again the 
 old, old story that [the course of true love never 
 does run smooth, land relating the adventures and 
 misunderstandings of hero and heroine until they 
 marry and liye happily ever afterwards. It is 
 given expression in the lines of our poets. As we 
 look at nature we see everywhere the same desire 
 of one sex to attract another, in the song of the 
 bird, the hum of the insect and the blossom of the 
 plant. The young man and woman are domi- 
 nated by a major influence and see the world in a 
 celestial haze of colours which veil all the defects 
 and miseries of reality. Each swears impossible 
 things and believes in immortal happiness. A 
 reciprocal illusion transforms all life into a mi- 
 rage of bliss. Some, however, do not gain the 
 perfection of this bliss, even at the first awaken- 
 ing of these instincts, and in a few others there is 
 no bliss at all. The men and women we meet 
 
 165 
 
THE PROBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHILD 
 
 range all the way from zero to perfection in the 
 way their emotions respond to the environment 
 when it contains the elements of a possible love- 
 life. What the unmarried, both bachelors and 
 maids, and the mismated married persons all lack 
 is the proper and adequate expressions of their 
 emotions buried under a blocked libido. 
 
 DESEXUALIZATION 
 
 We can readily see the importance of the nor- 
 mal and timely development of the reproductive 
 power of life by contrasting it with the effects of 
 castration or ovariotomy, which profoundly af- 
 fect the energies, both physical and mental, of 
 both sexes. Men become thin, their voices high- 
 pitched and their chests narrow. They become 
 beardless, or nearly so, and lose the spirit of con- 
 quest which characterizes true manliness. 
 Women become fat, and sometimes take on mas- 
 culine traits. When we see that loss of sex power, 
 whether from castration, impotence or sterility in 
 the male, ovariotomy and barrenness in the fe- 
 male leads to neurosis and degeneration, it is 
 remarkable that we have not given deeper con- 
 sideration to this vital subject. During the 
 adolescent period children, as a rule, get very 
 little assistance from their parents who are unable 
 to help children in their love-life. Influen^ced by 
 their own unhappy experiences, they either err in 
 
 166 
 
BURIED EMOTIONS 
 
 representing to the child a condition which is 
 undesirable or in giving the child an inaccurate 
 even if not unpleasant impression of the sub- 
 ject. 
 
 A child should never be frightened or shamed 
 about sex. Many parents do both without know- 
 ing it. It is not possible for parents to give sex 
 instruction to a child if the parent is not abso- 
 lutely pure-minded about it, for the knowledge 
 should be presented as an impersonal and scien- 
 tific matter of fact. Otherwise, a child's questions 
 had better be answered in the business-like man- 
 ner of a specialist. It is a subject which must be 
 faced as soon as questions are asked, and truth 
 must be told in a general way. Without such in- 
 formation given a child when it asks, all sorts of 
 weird phantasies about sex may be passing 
 through the child's mind, which manifest them- 
 selves in many unusual acts, called abnormal. We 
 are so careful about feeding our children's bodies, 
 but how rarely do we feed their minds as success- 
 fully. Sex education cannot be shirked without the 
 risk of doing the greatest harm to a child in future 
 years, and equal harm may be done by filling a 
 child's mind with fear and horror of the whole 
 subject as the surest way of keeping the adoles- 
 cent from yielding to temptations. 
 
 By rough handling children can be taught to 
 fear anything; there is nothing but detriment in 
 fear, yet we consciously continue to teach an4 
 
 J67 
 
THE PROBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHILD 
 
 govern our children by fear long after their in- 
 tellect has grown. Fear of evil, however, is no 
 proper motive for refraining from evil. The weak 
 handling of the sex education, the awful silence 
 and mystery of the birth of a child, frightens with 
 breathless awe a growing girl. And from my 
 results in analysis of pregnant women, I believe 
 much of the obstetrical complications and pro- 
 tracted hours of labour can be traced to the 
 *' conspiracy of silence '' surrounding the young 
 girl. 
 
 AUTO-EEOTISM 
 
 It is most important that parents should care- 
 fully consider the effects, too, caused in their chil- 
 dren's minds, not by fear of any external activity, 
 but by pleasure derived from an internal one. 
 For, if through any cause, a child forms a habit, 
 which all children are prone to do, of securing 
 pleasure largely through internal activities (i.e. 
 thoughts) or from activities carried out upon his 
 own body, as all such activities must be if they are 
 not directed to the accomplishment of a concrete 
 result in the world of external reality, he will have 
 begun a habit which tends to shut him off from 
 the proper kind of intercourse with his fellows. 
 Should this isolating habit gain complete mastery 
 over his character he might as well be sent to a 
 sanitarium for good. How some children injure 
 
 168 
 
BURIED EMOTIONS 
 
 tliemselves in producing in themselves a relaxa- 
 tion of the libido in unnatural ways is clearly illus- 
 trated by the following case of a thirteen-year-old 
 girl. She shows also the results of too early forc- 
 ing of growth. 
 
 She was sent to me for analysis for petit mat 
 (spells resembling epilepsy). Her parents were 
 theatrical people in vaudeville. At three years 
 of age this child was taught songs and put on the 
 stage and earned for her parents $35.00 a week. 
 Her first attack was at ^ve years of age. The 
 doctor told them it resulted from indigestion. 
 Another attack came in a few months and the 
 spells continued but did not interrupt her stage 
 work. At eight years she was earning $85.00 a 
 week. The parents could show her only in the 
 states where the child labour law did not inter- 
 fere, and so they travelled from place to place. 
 The spells came at shorter intervals, from once 
 or twice a month to two or three a day. Their 
 character changed when she was about nine years 
 old, and became shorter. When she came to me 
 her face was pale and dull in expression. Her 
 eyes were dark and brilliant, they searched every 
 one to *^see if they are my friends.'* Friends to 
 her meant people she could be familiar with, 
 climbing on their laps, putting her arms around 
 their necks, or leaning her head on their shoulders. 
 In her vaudeville life she had seen many familiari- 
 ties which she tried to emulate with her friends, 
 
 169 
 
THE PKOBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHILD 
 
 but if not allowed to do so she used herself as a 
 substitute. She called it 'Moving herself." 
 
 The spells of petit mal usually came when she 
 was in the bathroom, or alone at night after she 
 had gone to bed. The parents thought the girl 
 was frightened, as the peculiar cry which epi- 
 leptics give preceded an attack. A lowered men- 
 tality and lack of physical growth had alarmed 
 them, they had kept her from school although she 
 begged to go, but from pride the parents kept her 
 hidden. They did not want to be disgraced by such 
 a child, they said, and school to the child meant 
 only a place to play with other children. The 
 analysis revealed the premature passion which 
 had blazed up and died down with the girl's 'Mov- 
 ing herself so frequently. The horrified parents 
 gave their fullest co-operation in helping to bring 
 up the life which had sunk so far down. Grad- 
 ually her face gained in expression, colour re- 
 turned, the eyes lost their hard, glaring look. It 
 was three years before she had clean, healthy lan- 
 guage and conduct, and even then she had not the 
 normal child's reactions, so slowly did that par- 
 ticular young life recuperate. 
 
 The foregoing case shows the results of too 
 great acceleration in the development of the emo- 
 tions. The next case is one of retardation and 
 stunting due to one of the causes I have mentioned 
 already in this chapter, namely, the scaring or 
 shaming of the child in matters of sex. 
 
 170 
 
BURIED EMOTIONS 
 
 AN INCOEKIGIBLE GIEL 
 
 A mother brought her sixteen-year-old daugh- 
 ter for analysis, saying that since her eleventh 
 year the girl had been growing more and more 
 incorrigible. She would not stay in school, had 
 no idea of time, was late for meals and other ap- 
 pointments, was slovenly in appearance, with 
 holes in the heels of her stockings showing above 
 her shoetops. The mother had thought that if 
 only the girl could be made to stay in a good 
 boarding-school, the other faults would be reme- 
 died, but whether far or near the girl would 
 always run away and go home. Once she was put 
 in a school over ^ve hundred miles away. The 
 mother hoped, as it was so distant, that the girl 
 would be too timid to travel so far among 
 strangers. Distance, however, had no effect, as 
 she left school one night after dinner, walked all 
 night and for thirty hours until exhausted and 
 then asked aid to reach home. 
 
 Although she was physically large and well-de- 
 veloped, she apparently cared nothing for boys' 
 or girls ' society. She denied all knowledge of the 
 reproductive process, although in this matter she 
 had been instructed most carefully by her mother, 
 though, as will be shown, the mother took care to 
 make her afraid of sex. She never wanted to get 
 up mornings and liked to spend the entire day in 
 her room, with the door locked, playing with her 
 
 171 
 
THE PROBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHILD 
 
 belongings. Her maid described ber as ^^just 
 fiddling and fussing, poking in ber bureau draw- 
 ers, or sitting on tbe floor as a cbild witb toys." 
 Her unconscious was found to be filled witb sexual 
 pbantasies. ^'A tramp was cbasing ber tbrough 
 a cornfield. Sbe was so f rigbtened and if be bad 
 caugbt ber sbe would bave surely died.'' Again 
 **tbere was a caterpillar as long as tbe stairs. 
 Some one said it was a caterpillar but it didn't 
 look like one. ' ' Sbe refused to describe it, otber- 
 wise tban tbat it was tbe most terrible looking 
 tbing sbe ever saw. Always in tbe unconscious 
 sbe was being pursued by some frigbtful form of 
 life, wbicb sbe symbolized as tramps, caterpillars 
 or fisb tbat jumped at ber. In otber words, sbe 
 was afraid to meet life. Life was frigbtful to ber, 
 baving been presented to ber in some ugly form. 
 Tbe mystery associated witb it alarmed ber. Sbe 
 refused to stand alone, and to assume any respon- 
 sibility, but sbut berself away from people in 
 order to continue ber cbildbood unmolested. Sbe 
 bad no example to imitate in growing up. Her 
 parents bad separated in ber eleventb year. Tbe 
 f atber bad a violent temper wbicb be freely vented 
 upon bis wife in tbe girl's presence. Tbe motber 
 bad large social demands, kept late bours, bad 
 mucb friction witb servants and witb tbe quarrel- 
 , ling busband. We plainly see bow tbe girl became 
 tbe innocent victim of ber unfortunate environ- 
 ment and, wben tbe strong demands of nature 
 
 172 
 
BURIED EMOTIONS 
 
 were felt in her adolescent years, she did not know 
 how to meet them, as mutual love and respect 
 were unknown to her. She, therefore, shunned all 
 knowledge and tried to remain in childhood. 
 
 wanted: a despotic husband 
 
 The splitting of the libido in childhood, referred 
 to in Chapter IV, page 82, is well illustrated in 
 the case of a married woman, Mrs. S., who was 
 sent to me for analysis to relieve the troubles of 
 her very unhappy married life. She was a 
 ** border line'' case, diagnosed as Dementia 
 Praecox. She had not married the man she most 
 loved, and had girlhood problems which had 
 greatly disturbed her happiness ; but the present 
 trouble had been in no way attributed to the 
 events of those years. The analysis showed the 
 mental trouble to have become manifest about the 
 twelfth year. Mrs. S. had a brother she was fond 
 of and a younger sister who was so entirely dif- 
 ferent that they never had any patience with each 
 other's idiosyncrasies. The disturbing member 
 of the home in her young life had been her father. 
 They never could please him. He was so irritable 
 and so easily annoyed that she always wondered 
 what she had done and always tried hard to please 
 him for a word of appreciation, but never suc- 
 ceeded. 
 
 When she was twelve years old, her father and 
 173 
 
THE PKOBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHILD 
 
 mother put her in a boarding-school and went to 
 Europe. She was bitterly disappointed, ^'Why 
 didn't they take me with them? They must have 
 brought me here just to get rid of me" was her 
 haunting thought. She was dull and listless, made 
 up her mind she would not study or learn any- 
 thing, and drummed on the piano instead of prac- 
 tising, as she expressed it in her analysis. 
 
 At one visit she produced the following dream : 
 *^0n a train with a neighbour I know very slightly, 
 cmd my mother. The neighbour buttons my 
 mother's shoes. I am with another acquaintance 
 who has six lovely children. I help a man to hatch 
 chickens. We put eggs in hot water on a stove vn 
 a garage or outbuilding. Put the chickens in a 
 pan of sawdust." 
 
 In the analysis it came out that she feels she is 
 not fit to button the shoes of a real mother as 
 she has never herself been a real mother. Al- 
 though she has three children, she feels she has 
 failed in her motherly duties. But with her neigh- 
 bour 's husband she would have been a better 
 mother for her children. She herself has had 
 lovely children, but has tried to feed them on saw- 
 dust. She had surrounded herself with sawdust. 
 Nothing will grow in sawdust. She had not 
 grown. 
 
 The haunting thought stayed with her after the 
 parents returned, when she began to evince an 
 extreme negativistic attitude toward everything, 
 
 174 
 
BtFRIED EMOTIONS 
 
 refusing to do anything her parents asked of her. 
 There was a ^ ^ scene '^ at the breakfast table she 
 told me of, when her father ordered boiled eggs 
 for their breakfast. She refused to eat them. He 
 said he would see if she would eat them or not, 
 jumped up from his chair, and started toward 
 her. She also left her chair, and he chased her 
 around the table until she left the room. He 
 ordered her to her room where she stayed and re- 
 fused to eat until a physician was called. She told 
 of the physician ^s puzzled face as he examined 
 her, and how he finally coaxed her not to make any 
 more trouble, but to be a good girl. He was an 
 old man and tender and gentle. She yielded to 
 him because he asked her, and not to please her 
 father, she said. 
 
 She married and had three children, a boy and 
 two girls. She knew, when she married, that she 
 did not love her husband, but admired his hon- 
 esty of purpose, his fine, strong, fearless determi- 
 nation to do right in a business world so full of 
 dishonesty and of not taking unfair advantages of 
 the weakness of others. 
 
 She told of a love affair with a man she knew 
 in her girlhood. She refused to marry him, but 
 did not know why, and a few months before the 
 birth of her first child she met him again. The 
 meeting probably caused a deeply emotional re- 
 action on her part. He had clasped her hand and 
 said nothing. She wished to throw herself into 
 
 175 
 
THE PEOBLEM OF THE NEEVOUS CHILD 
 
 his arms, but it was a public place, and she could 
 not. That was the last she knew of him. He 
 served as a phantasy to dream of, but while her 
 husband was exceedingly kind and indulgent to 
 her he was never satisfying. She thought he 
 should always compel her to attend to his wants, 
 showing the father ideal was the one she re- 
 spected. Her husband was successful in business. 
 By giving her diamonds, automobiles, a beautiful 
 house and furniture, he tried to cure the deep de- 
 pressions from which she suffered; but the more 
 he gave the more she hated him. Already clogged 
 with her emotions she was unable to reciprocate 
 until they all burst forth in a volcanic eruption. 
 
 She went for a cold to the doctor who had 
 coaxed her to be a good girl and eat. He advised 
 her to go to a hospital for a few days and rest up 
 and cure her cold. She did so, and then, as we so 
 often find, she grew worse and felt that she was 
 in a world of darkness. The terrible feeling of 
 slipping away from reality, and the blackness she 
 felt herself surrounded by lasted many weeks. 
 She clung to the fatherly physician until relieved 
 and gradually as reason returned he encouraged 
 her to submit to an analysis. She had found the 
 ideal father in her physician and the buried emo- 
 tions were brought to the surface. To take her 
 libido from the father and put it in husband and 
 children and home was too difficult at first. She 
 had to work her way slowly by finding herself 
 
 176 
 
BURIED EMOTIONS 
 
 alone and supporting herself. She worked in the 
 linen room of a large school. As she continued 
 her analysis her dreams changed as her wishes 
 changed. She saw a side of life hitherto unknown. 
 By comparison her home, husband and children 
 seemed ideal. She sent for her husband, asked to 
 be taken back. She had relinquished the child- 
 hood problems of whether or not her father loved 
 her, and if not why not, and was able to use aU 
 her energy in her home as wife and mother. 
 
 The cases already given in this chapter illus- 
 trate the results of fixation referred to in Chapter 
 IV. It is clear that in both of these girls the libido 
 had become attached to a type of emotional re- 
 action which was essentially infantile and that 
 this fixation prevented the thirteen-year-old girl 
 from developing both physically and mentally. 
 The sixteen-year old, while well developed physi- 
 cally, still remained a very young child emotion- 
 ally, having acquired an inability to face the reali- 
 ties of life, because they had been presented to her 
 by her mother in a mental picture that caused fear 
 to be the emotion regularly associated with the 
 topic instead of respect. This is a very common 
 policy on the part of the parents ; but the use of 
 fear as a motive in connection with sex is by all 
 odds the most supremely senseless method that 
 the folly of mankind could devise. A large pro- 
 portion of those in our nerve sanitariums are 
 there because of an unconscious fear of sex, im- 
 
 177 
 
THE PROBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHILD 
 
 planted in their souls by parents, nurses or com- 
 panions, and resulting in perversions of infantile 
 character. Parents usually think to secure per- 
 sonal purity in their children through the motive 
 of fear, but this prevention of impurity is worse 
 than the disease itself. It positively inhibits the 
 power of life. 
 
 CUEIOSITY 
 
 The cosmic urge to growth in children sooner 
 or later shows itself in the desire for more life in 
 a phase marked by curiosity as to how they and 
 other children were born, or *^ where they came 
 from.'^ Parents who regard such curiosity as 
 anything abnormal are indeed ignorant. It is but 
 one of the many expressions of the craving for 
 life. This cosmic urge, the straightest, cleanest, 
 purest thing in the world, as it exists in the child, 
 is in its freshness like an unblemished blade of 
 grass and frequently is smutched by the foul heel 
 of the parent who is fatuously unaware of what he 
 has done. This craving for life meets obstacles 
 of various kinds. In some children it pushes on, 
 nevertheless, however marred, while in others it 
 is blasted and seems not to grow at all. The ob- 
 stacles encountered may be, as we have seen, un- 
 reasonable demands made by a despotic father, or 
 by a domineering busybody of a mother, who 
 quickly represses any spontaneous outgiving on 
 the child's part and remains blankly ignorant of 
 
 178 
 
BURIED EMOTIONS 
 
 the significance of the manifestations of the 
 child's libido. Other bad influences too cause un- 
 desirable retardation or even acceleration of the 
 application of the libido to matters purely or sym- 
 bolically sexual. An accelerating influence is that 
 of companions or servants who have aroused too 
 early, by act or word, the sexual instinct which is 
 ever present but should be dormant until rightly 
 used in sublimation and in marriage. Too much 
 indulgence is also an accelerating factor. So are 
 quarrelling parents or a home life unhappy from 
 any cause. In such a case the repressed wishes 
 in the unconscious, usually consisting of desires 
 for freedom, where there is a domineering parent, 
 or, where the parents are unhappily mated, of de- 
 sires for an ideal parent to replace the disappoint- 
 ing one, break forth into consciousness in various 
 ways. Even a too great love for a parent who is 
 actually ideal will have the same result. 
 
 To summarize this chapter, which has to do 
 with the mainspring of all human action, I may 
 remind the reader again of the significance that 
 sexual reproduction has in the externalization of 
 the emotions. Possibly it would be better to say 
 that through the emotions which can be associated 
 with either internal or external activities, that is 
 unsocial or social ones, the child may be led by the 
 parent to attain the true adult attitude toward the 
 world. The importance of the higher type of re- 
 production is seen when we study the results of 
 
 179 
 
THE PEOBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHILD 
 
 what might be called a desexuaiization of the in- 
 dividual which, as I have tried to show, may be 
 either physical or mental, the mental being caused 
 generally by parental ignorance or inertia. Sex 
 education given in an absolutely impersonal 
 scientific way with the idea of impressing the child 
 with its exceptionless universality is necessary in 
 order to remove fear from his heart. He is once 
 and for all to be freed from the impression that 
 he is himself in any way unusual, abnormal, queer 
 or peculiar, and that the sexual life is essentially 
 bad or disgusting or to be repressed, but must be 
 controlled and sublimated in work. Having as- 
 sured ourselves that he suffers from no miscon- 
 ception on that point, we should carefully remove 
 all possible obstacles to the outflowing of his 
 libido upon activities connected with the world 
 outside the family; and we should strive to teach 
 him how to control his vital urge instead of re- 
 pressing it or having it run away with him. 
 
 180 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 CHILD TEAINING 
 
 The urge of life at the age of puberty is neces- 
 sarily felt by all adolescents. It is a difficult time 
 for children. A great psychological change is 
 taking place in them, as they are leaving their 
 playtime, their toys and their make-believes for 
 the real things of life. New demands for self- 
 control are made upon them, their wants are of 
 the nature both of child and adult. The boy imi- 
 tates the man, he wants to smoke, to go out nights, 
 he absorbs obscene stories which he proudly tells 
 as he struts around with the air of a bantam cock. 
 The girl tries to assert her individuality by a new 
 way of arranging her hair, by changing her mode 
 of dressing and by demands for greater freedom 
 in associating with her friends. 
 
 The natural appetites are inherited instincts, 
 whose roots are found in the remotest prehistoric 
 ages of the human race. Hunger for food is the 
 basis of the preservation of the individual and 
 hunger for the affections, for love and for friend- 
 ship is the basis of the preservation of the species. 
 All appetites (various modes of the manifestation 
 of the libido) imply a wish and belong to the 
 motor side of nervous activity. In them there is 
 
 181 
 
THE PEOBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHILD 
 
 some internal urge to outward action for the pur- 
 pose of satisfying hunger, whether for food or 
 love. The nerve mechanisms which function in 
 expressing the appetites are a lower order of 
 mechanism, being centred in the more primitive 
 nerve cells, and thus belong to a class of actions 
 otherwise called automatic. They function of 
 themselves apart from, and independently of, con- 
 sciousness, which, however, can and must gain 
 control of these instinctive activities during the 
 period of adolescence. 
 
 This automatic nature of the appetites gives 
 them the privilege, however, of drawing upon the 
 limitless force of the unconscious. They are in 
 a sense nearer to the source of life itself. With- 
 out our being aware of what we are doing, these 
 truly inward and vital forces send us forth to acts 
 which frequently are directly opposed to the high- 
 est conscious desires. If not controlled they have 
 the power to stunt and paralyse what might be 
 called the psychic muscles which in educated 
 people ought to be strongly developed. But in 
 many educated men this psychic muscle, by which 
 I mean more than ordinary will power, is so flabby 
 that they have not the strength to resist tempta- 
 tions. 
 
 The primitive man within them is never con- 
 trolled but is always keenly alive and active, en- 
 deavouring to secure the gratification of primitive 
 desires. When the unconscious gets control of 
 
 182 
 
CHILD TRAINING 
 
 their actions, they are as it is called ** carried 
 away*' by visionary schemes, investing the money 
 of their best friends, and even of the members of 
 their own families in the gamble of unwise specu- 
 lations. They are extravagant in gratifying their 
 tastes, knowing well, however, that they must neg- 
 lect their ethical and religious principles in satis- 
 fying these selfish and unsocial desires. They 
 must borrow from their self-respect in order to 
 pay for their indulgences. These phenomena all 
 show that the archaic nature of man is very near 
 the surface, constantly breaking through the thin 
 shell of civilization. The desire to get something 
 for nothing, to accumulate and to hoard, irrespec- 
 tive of the manner of acquirement (all unsocial 
 desires) would be carried to such extremes that 
 the race would become extinct, if they were not in 
 most cases outweighed by the stronger instinct of 
 reproduction in direct opposition to the accumu- 
 lating or hoarding instinct. The latter is a grasp- 
 ing, the former a surrendering attitude. 
 
 The fact of the fusion of the two cells at the 
 moment of inception of a human life, and the fact 
 that each parent in order to receive has to give 
 something, thus becomes the moral basis of the 
 necessity for apparent giving up, relinquishing 
 some part of the ego, of letting go instead of 
 grasping tightly. One must sow in order to reap. 
 The farmer has to bury expensive seed in the 
 ground; and in all spheres of human life giving 
 
 183 
 
THE PROBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHILD 
 
 has to precede getting, no matter what the kind of 
 gain, whether it be children or money. In science, 
 art, literature or labour we must give to our work 
 our best efforts, backed by all our interest and all 
 our cosmic jirge of life. No work is adequate ac- 
 tivity for our powers unless it is a work which 
 arouses our deepest and most pervasive emotions. 
 
 LIBEKATION OF LIBIDO 
 
 ^^ Liberation'' and * libido" are both from the 
 same Latin word which means a freeing, or desire 
 to be freed, from obstructions, and both are de- 
 scendants, together with English *4ove'' from the 
 common Sanskrit ancestor luhh — desire. It hap- 
 pens that the instinctive acts (through which the 
 individual frees himself, exercises his muscles or 
 any part of his personality and, at the same time, 
 secures the relaxation of the tension of his un- 
 conscious desires) frequently interfere with the 
 same sort of liberation of energy on the part of 
 other people. This is the cause of the inevitable 
 opposition between society and the individual, an 
 opposition which society has to exert, without 
 which it could not exist. But in order for the 
 community to prosper, the individual's instinctive 
 modes of liberation of energy have to be con- 
 trolled. This means the suppression of some 
 wishes and the training of others. One of the 
 simplest illustrations is the young child's in- 
 
 184 
 
CHILD TRAINING 
 
 stlnct to throw things. In throwing there is a 
 paroxysmal activity reaching an acme, which is an 
 absence of all control. As the freeing of energy 
 is accomplished in animals, including humans, 
 with the maximum degree ol the feeling we call 
 pleasure, that form of liberation which is least ac- 
 companied by any other conscious condition is the 
 most pleasurable. Throwing gives a child this 
 form of pleasure in a high degree. So do kicking, 
 jumping, running and the aimless exercise of all 
 the voluntary muscles. It explains the tremen- 
 dous popularity of baseball, where the players al- 
 ternate between comparative rest and a paroxysm 
 of action in which they liberate absolutely all of 
 their available energy, the players in their strikes 
 and runs, the ^^fans*' in their applause (see Chap- 
 ter X). In the baseball game this liberation is 
 secured in a manner which is acceptable to the 
 community while aimless throwing on the part of 
 young children has not only no social value but it 
 has frequently a real injury connected with it. 
 
 Figuratively speaking, then, the aim of child 
 training is to get the child to throw according to 
 the rules of a game. This requires him sometimes 
 to withhold his action and watch that of another 
 until his turn comes. One sees immediately how 
 difficult this waiting is, for young children. All 
 want to act at once. Now the energy which the 
 child is holding in, while he is waiting for his 
 turn has to be liberated eventually if not im- 
 
 185 
 
THE PROBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHILD 
 
 mediately. Furthermore, it ought to be accom- 
 panied by a pleasure as great as, and preferably 
 greater than, that of merely auto-erotic kicking, 
 jumping, hitting and throwing. But in some home 
 environments this is impossible. I shall have 
 more to say about these auto-erotic muscular ac- 
 tivities in a later chapter. Due to a very pardon- 
 able lack of knowledge on the part of the parents, 
 many children are suppressed without being given 
 the opportunity to discharge their accumulated 
 vitality, to liberate their libido, in ways which 
 give them pleasure. Instead they are forced to 
 discharge the accumulation in ways which are dis- 
 tinctly painful, or at least uncomfortable, for all 
 concerned, but particularly for the child himself, 
 who thereby acquires a habit of experiencing pain- 
 ful emotions. 
 
 PLEASURE IN PAIN 
 
 The habit of experiencing painful emotions is 
 acquired through the pleasure which is associated 
 with pain itself. Naturally, any discharge of ac- 
 cumulated vitality is accompanied with a distinct 
 sense of pleasure. But when the natural pleas- 
 ure experienced by all children at the time of this 
 discharge is associated with an adventitious pain 
 administered by parents, there is a link estab- 
 lished between pleasure and paiQ. The pleasure 
 is there in every escapade, clouded more or less 
 darkly with approaching or actually inflicted pun- 
 
 186 
 
CHILD TRAINING 
 
 ishment. Parents have universally thought that 
 punishment is necessary, and indeed it appears 
 to be the most potent and instantaneous means of 
 putting a quietus on the unsocial activity of the 
 child. But when at the end of the day the stream 
 is no longer wanted to run the mill, the miller does 
 not yell at it to stop running, nor does he try to 
 dam it higher. He diverts the water from the mill 
 race to the spillway, where it continues on its 
 seaward journey. The flowing of the stream can- 
 not safely be stopped, and the miller knows it. 
 The activity of the child cannot be stopped, but 
 the parent does not know this. He simply com- 
 mands '^Shut up!'' to something which if suc- 
 cessfully ^^shut up'' must sooner or later explode 
 in crime or burn slowly in neurosis. In the bash- 
 ful, diffident, shifting eye of the pale-faced, stoop- 
 ing, hollow-chested and round-shouldered child 
 we see the shut-up child, generally shut up by the 
 excusable ignorance of parent or hireling substi- 
 tute. Every one of these children is an economic 
 loss to the country, a centre of force which could 
 be devoted to the health and welfare of their f el- 
 lowmen, had not they been almost hopelessly 
 blasted like peach blossoms by an early frost — 
 the frost of the ignorance of those who attempted 
 (or did not attempt) to bring them up. 
 
 If, with everything he has to do, a child is 
 taught to associate unpleasantness instead of a 
 sense of power and triumph he is not only given 
 
 187 
 
THE PEOBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHH^D 
 
 a mental twist which makes him see everything 
 wrongly, but one which prevents him from acting 
 wholesomely in every most intimate relation of a 
 later love life. 
 
 CEEATIVE EMOTIONS 
 
 It cannot be too strongly emphasized that the 
 pleasurable emotions are the creative ones which 
 build up, or furnish the most favourable condi- 
 tions for building up, the tissues of the body and 
 thus making for both mental and physical health. 
 Nor can it be too strongly emphasized that the un- 
 pleasurable emotions are destructive and make 
 for both physical and mental illness. It should 
 above all never be forgotten that it is frequently, 
 if not always, possible for the parent or teacher 
 to choose which of these two emotions is to be 
 felt by the child in connection with any required 
 activity. Such choice is possible for the one in 
 charge of the child but never for the child him- 
 self, because he is only a creature of instinct who 
 must react with pleasure or pain according to pre- 
 historic modes of feeling until pleasure is recom- 
 bined with required or directed acts instead of 
 with undirected acts. This is exactly what is 
 meant by the trained or social liberation of the 
 libido — the direction of it from one thing to an- 
 other, either one of which may do quite as well 
 for the child as a means of getting the relaxation 
 of his accumulated tension. 
 
 188 
 
CHILD TRAINING 
 
 A very simple and concrete illustration of this 
 recombination is seen in the mother's suggestion 
 of a choice. *^Do you want/' she says, **to take 
 your magnesia in a teaspoon or a tablespoon?" 
 *'Do you want to sit in a chair or stand up?" 
 This offering a choice gives the child an oppor- 
 tunity of making the act, at first rejected as the 
 enforced requirement on the part of another, an 
 act almost completely his own. Then a bit of 
 praise as to how well he is taking the medicine, or 
 how fast he can take it, or some encouraging re- 
 mark will still further link the act with pleas- 
 urable emotion and the sense of power on which 
 the emotion is based. He may even be induced to 
 attain the acme of a throw in accomplishing an 
 act which is forced upon him from without, as 
 when a stick is tied by a long string to a loose 
 tooth. But the choice is the thing which gives 
 the child the chance to feel, '*I will take this. This 
 will be mine/' and to make in his soul the con- 
 nection between what ought to he done and what is 
 done with pleasure. 
 
 The entire mechanism of life is affected when 
 the free outflow of these creative emotions is 
 interfered with, whether they show themselves in 
 the play of children or in the affections, or the 
 serious work of adults. It is not alone the affec- 
 tion or the sympathy which is arrested but every 
 mental activity supporting .those higher mani- 
 festations, much as the stopping of a trolley car 
 
 189 
 
THE PROBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHH^D 
 
 for too long a time congests traffic and blocks all 
 the cars on the track behind it. Just so, if the 
 actions to which the mind prompts us are blocked, 
 those ideas in the mind are blocked and the actual 
 contractions of the muscles are impeded, resulting 
 in the innumerable forms of nervousness and in 
 the bodily or functional disturbances. The block- 
 ing of the libido has been mentioned previously. 
 I will give here an illustration of how a man suf- 
 fered from an actual lack of ability to express the 
 finer emotions, because in his childhood the op- 
 portunities for this outlet were denied to him by 
 the circumstances of his family environment. 
 
 AN EMOTIONALLY STARVED MAN 
 
 A man of forty-five came for analysis. He was 
 married and had eight children and a charming 
 wife, unusually patient with her nervous husband. 
 The children were all of good growth and mental 
 development. The patient had been one of a large 
 family, one of the older children. His parents 
 had been very poor, the father an unskilled 
 labourer, a hard unyielding man who was never 
 demonstrative of affection for his wife or chil- 
 dren, though he sometimes realized that a better 
 education would have lifted him up out of the con- 
 dition of day labourer. On account of her fre- 
 quent pregnancies, the mother was unable to keep 
 her home neat or to care for her children, who 
 ran in the streets like homeless dogs. The babies 
 
 190 
 
CHILD TRAINING 
 
 were often sick, and some died. The patient went 
 to the public schools, but was never asked to the 
 homes of other boys as his clothes were too poor 
 and ragged. He seemed to have been born with 
 more mental ability than the other children, those 
 at present living being all i^ailures, either sick or 
 of low mentality. In his childhood he was sur- 
 rounded with illness and filth, ugliness of scenery, 
 misery and neglect. He had no care from his 
 mother and no one to give his affections to, a 
 condition necessary for the spiritual health of 
 every child. He had a great horror of his de- 
 pressing surroundings, and somehow worked his 
 way through school and into college, and finally 
 became a successful business man. He was al- 
 ways very restless in his home life, and while his 
 children were very dear to him when they were 
 young he took little interest in them after they 
 were six or seven years of age, but gave his affec- 
 tion to the next baby. Although he admired and 
 respected his wife for being a perfect mother to 
 her children, he could not feel the warm love for 
 her that he desired to feel. 
 
 As the years passed on he was still uncon- 
 sciously reverting to the problems of his child- 
 hood. There had been no one for him to love, and 
 he still longed for the mother love denied him in 
 his youth, for some one to love ; but he could not 
 give his love to those around him or to any one 
 else, although he tried to find in a prostitute what 
 
 191 
 
THE PBOBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHH^D 
 
 lie lacked in Ms home. His life gradually grew 
 narrower. As Ms mother had died of heart 
 trouble, he had constantly in his mind the fear 
 that he had inherited her weak heart. He began 
 to have attacks, with great difficulty in breathing. 
 Doctors pronounced his heart strong but he did 
 not believe them. He was afraid to go away from 
 home, fearing one of his attacks would come on 
 and he would die. His sufferings grew more in- 
 tense, and he felt that suicide or insanity awaited 
 him. He had married Ms first love, and Ms con- 
 duct in the long run had been faithful to her, but 
 his fidelity brought him no comfort. All his crea- 
 tive activities in children and in large financial 
 successes were no satisfaction to Mm. Analysis 
 revealed him still struggling to express his child- 
 ish emotions, blocked by his unhappy young years 
 and to make them free to go forth from himself 
 to others, to his wife and children. He could not 
 love as a man. 
 
 Not being able to love as a man should love 
 implies that there are certain reactions on the 
 part of adults which a child looks for. The child 
 rightly expects his mother to do certain things to 
 and for him. This patient, who had not received 
 when a child the attentions which a child has a 
 right to expect from his mother, had still in his 
 unconscious what might at least be compared to 
 a tension so formed that it could only be relaxed 
 by a reaction, characteristically maternal, on his 
 
 192 
 
CHILD TRAINING 
 
 mother's part. It was the lack of this relaxation 
 in his childhood which caused it to play so great 
 and so detrimental a role in his middle age. For 
 example, he dreamed that he was taking dinner 
 with the President in a toy house, and he dreamed 
 of other very childish activities. The existence of 
 these thoughts in his dreams revealed his essen- 
 tial childishness, which did not, however, prevent 
 his being a successful man with very large inter- 
 ests in the business world. But in his family he 
 not only affected more his younger children, find- 
 ing them more companionable, but he expected 
 from his wife a variety of appreciation which 
 usually a child gets from his mother and no com- 
 pletely adult man looks for from his wife. Thus 
 we get a clearer idea of the nature of emotions 
 that are intrinsically childish. They are relaxa- 
 tions of tensions that are fixed in childhood upon 
 ideas that generally occur only in childhood. 
 When such fixations occur, and persist into adult- 
 hood, they account for most of the discontent and 
 dissatisfaction which clouds their spirits and 
 makes futile even material success and the unsel- 
 fish devotion of a loving wife. 
 
 This patient was still, in spite of his brilliant 
 business career, carrying the burden of his child- 
 ish misery, which had turned his affections inward 
 toward himself. Because of his fixations he could 
 not liberate his entire libido upon the adult world 
 in which he lived. 
 
 193 
 
THE PROBLEM OF THE NEEVOUS CHILD 
 
 In his case, the buried creative emotions, which 
 had been so thwarted and rebuffed whenever he 
 turned to his parents for sympathy or under- 
 standing were plainly evident in his manner of 
 speaking and thinking and in the symptoms of his 
 attacks. The usual prescription of nerve tonics, 
 rest and change made him much worse, as they 
 increased the emotional content which he was at 
 best unable to express. Plainly he had been a 
 victim of his environment. It was surprising that 
 he was not understood before the psychoanalytic 
 investigation was begun. 
 
 The task of resurrecting the feelings which have 
 been buried in the unconscious is no easy one but 
 it is one of the most gratifying. In spite of the 
 weeds and the rubbish which have accumulated 
 for years, blocking the progress of the libido, we 
 know in each case that the urge of life exists and 
 that it needs only to be freed from obstruction to 
 give it the productiveness which evolution de- 
 mands of it. 
 
 The chief problem in social living is the exter- 
 nalization of the libido in such a way that all the 
 individuals composing society may live their lives 
 to the utmost. The obstructions which individuals 
 and society place in the way are not all necessary. 
 If the unnecessary ones were entirely removed 
 from the lives of children the next generation 
 would be a superior type of humanity. 
 
 194 
 
CHAPTEE X 
 
 MUSCLE EROTISM 
 
 All animals, especially young ones, experience 
 peculiar sensations of a pleasurable nature when 
 using their muscles in a manner which we call 
 playing. The frisking of a kitten, the gambol of 
 young lambs, the racing of colts in the pasture, 
 the ceaseless movements of children, a gleam in 
 the eyes, certain involuntary movements impulsive 
 and quick, sudden springs, wild leaps, show the 
 irresistible and dynamic power of the driving 
 force within prompting movement and allowing 
 the energy escape and free play. After a period 
 of rest the animal starts up again, dashing off, 
 occasionally rushing in a blind fury of passion, 
 like a runaway horse, unable to stop in a mad 
 race with destruction which if it meets with no 
 obstruction runs on and on until exhausted. It 
 is said that a horse that has once run away can 
 never again be trusted; he has felt the wild ex- 
 hilaration in excess of motion. What is the satis- 
 faction felt by the horse that when once felt he 
 will seek again! What is the pleasure the kitten 
 feels in scampering around the floor, chasing 
 imaginary mice? College athletics afford a simi- 
 lar outlet of energy. It is not for the sake of exer- 
 
 195 
 
THE PEOBLEM OF THE NEEVOUS CHILD 
 
 cise to keep a healthful flow of blood over the 
 body, that a boy will undergo sacrifices in train- 
 ing, in dieting, in giving up drinking or smoking, 
 all the while looking forward to the game with 
 the keenest anticipation. Dancing is another in- 
 stance of the great joy in motion with the rhyth- 
 mic melody of the music adding to the emotional 
 and physical outlet. 
 
 It seems as though in nature's forces, in the 
 wind, electricity, radio-activity, there is always 
 motion. The energy of the universe is expressed 
 in motion, and from the sun, the source of energy, 
 comes the power which promotes growth and life 
 which is motion. We speak of time as motion 
 when we say: ^^Time moves on; time flies,'' and 
 our conception of life is a constant moving on. 
 Therefore, when we command the child to sit down 
 and be quiet, in reality we are telling the child to 
 kill a part of himself — we are telling time to stop, 
 to stand still. We cannot stop the hidden forces 
 of nature in motion described as energy, as when 
 the wind blows a tornado, or the electricity flashes 
 in the thunder cloud. We can only control them 
 and use them to our advantage, but as in the blast 
 of the tempest, the outburst of the volcano, the 
 convulsion of the earthquake, these mighty forces 
 bid us defiance, as though the tiny atoms of power 
 in man were of a thing apart from nature itself. 
 So, in the onrush of life in the adolescent years 
 we are powerless to prevent the tremendous 
 
 196 
 
MUSCLE EROTISM 
 
 strength of the instinct of reproduction. It must 
 be guided or led into other forms of energy, lifted 
 up out of the gross sexual into work or business 
 interests, science, art, literature or whatever 
 natural tastes and ability a person has. 
 
 SUBLIMATION 
 
 The expending of this energy in other forms 
 we call, technically speaking, a sublimation. It 
 must be expended, it must come out, it cannot be 
 repressed, stifled or shut in. It is impossible to 
 do so without creating perversions of character 
 and ruining health. The most remarkable thing is 
 that parents, teachers, people in general, cannot 
 understand this. A mother punishes her child by 
 making it sit quietly in a chair for half an hour, 
 an eternity to a child, and in about two minutes 
 the child says : * ^ Mother, I wish you would spank 
 me, then I could go and play." On former occa- 
 sions a spanking had been administered, and the 
 child sent out after sobs mistaken for repentance 
 — of which a child knows nothing. A few more 
 minutes and the child says : ^* Mother, please spank 
 me, then it will be over and I can go out.'' The 
 mother concludes spankings are failures and won- 
 ders what other forms of punishment would be 
 more effective. The sins of omission or commis- 
 sion have left no impression on the childish mind. 
 To the child it is only something which mothers 
 
 197 
 
THE PEOBLEM OF THE NEEVOUS CHILD 
 
 do, ^^but when I am big I will make her sorry," 
 runs through the promises of revenge which a 
 child often feels from the parent's unjust and 
 ignorant discipline. The child cannot help being 
 a child, he must be active, restless, always want- 
 ing to do something, but if left to himself from the 
 hour of his birth, that is, not rocked, trotted and 
 tended, he will grow up with more resources in 
 himself, his brain will be more active in finding 
 and searching out schemes for play and make- 
 believes of childhood. 
 
 The complaint is frequently made that we can- 
 not bring up our children as we were brought up. 
 No, of course not. In our childhood life we were 
 not surrounded with motor-cycles, automobiles, 
 moving-picture shows, plays suggestive of sexual 
 problems, crowded apartment house life. If you 
 tempt a baby with diamonds it will cry for them, 
 without any idea of their precious value. If your 
 boy is brought up amidst other boys who are in- 
 dulged with money, automobiles, tobacco, even 
 cocktails and late hours, of course he will cry for 
 them. The daughter who lives amidst rouge, arti- 
 ficially waved hair, exaggerated styles of dress, 
 exciting novels, will not find her joy and pleasure 
 in muscle-activity of housework, out-of-door 
 games, walking and an open-air life. Not all 
 muscular activities in youth are due to ^'the call 
 of the wild," nor are they always accompanied 
 by pleasurable sensations. It is when a child 
 
 198 
 
MUSCLE EROTISM 
 
 without any apparent reason, leaps, turns somer- 
 saults, goes through various gymnastics, runs 
 when he might just as well walk, that we find the 
 muscle erotic. He climbs anything he can find 
 to climb, begs for work when he really means some 
 kind of muscular activity. School is irksome be- 
 cause he must sit still, the athletics are the sole 
 attraction but he frequently fails in them because 
 he does not use his muscles to strengthen them but 
 to play with them. He enjoys boxing and wrest- 
 ling, not to conquer with skill but in an easy 
 struggle, sort of a make-believe wrestle. He is' 
 always ready to jump and run on any errand, but 
 seldom accomplishes it well. Horseback riding is 
 a favourite, for he gets muscular activity without 
 any effort on his part. Swimming he likes fairly 
 well, but when swimming he must keep moving, 
 and he likes to move by fits and starts with sudden 
 springs. He sleeps heavily and awakens with 
 difficulty. 
 
 The muscle-erotic individual does not possess 
 an intellectual or artistic temperament ; he is usu- 
 ally tall, more especially from the waist down. 
 He is fond of dancing; I have seen the face light 
 up then with a brilliant expression never seen at 
 any other time. I recall a six-year-old girl, a 
 muscle erotic. She never walked if she could 
 possibly run, and a smile came as she started to 
 run. It was remarked that she always looked so 
 pleased with herself as she ran. **What are you 
 
 199 
 
THE PROBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHHiD 
 
 thinking of!" she was asked when she was run- 
 ning; no answer, but a shy look and a drawing 
 away from the questioner as though unable to tell 
 her thoughts. A fourteen-year-old brother had 
 the same inclination to run and keep up the same 
 restless, muscular movements. The little girl was 
 very thin, she was given many tonics of iron and 
 other supposed strengthening properties; the 
 brother was also thin, he ran so much his health 
 suffered seriously. In vain the father coaxed, at- 
 tempted to bribe, and then to punish them both, 
 in order to make them walk, and be quiet. 
 
 I remember one summer when the family ar- 
 rived at their summer home where there was a 
 small lake half a mile around; the brother in- 
 stantly jumped from the carriage and disap- 
 peared. Later he was discovered running around 
 this lake, and panting, breathless, with heart 
 rapidly beating and ignoring the calls to stop un- 
 til he was forcibly caught. *^What are you doing 
 this fori" demanded the perplexed father. The 
 boy had no idea why, he was enjoying it hugely 
 and was as excited as a race horse. He was so 
 pale from excitement his father was alarmed and 
 put the boy to bed, while the boy struggled to get 
 away and declared if he were confined he would 
 have a fit. I have often recalled that case when 
 working years afterwards with epileptics, for they 
 cannot get out to the surface the inward excite- 
 ment they feel, and do have fits. 
 
 200 
 
MUSCLE EROTISM 
 
 A MUSCLE EROTIC 
 
 An exaggerated case was a fifteen-year-old boy 
 who had been giving his parents considerable trou- 
 ble as he approached adolescence. He lived in a 
 city with his father and mother and two yonnger 
 sisters whom he continually teased. The parents 
 found him unusually restless as a child. The 
 father, a business man with large interests, left 
 much of the training of his children to his wife, 
 who was a very capable and intelligent woman. 
 In taking the history of the case I learned that 
 the boy when born refused to nurse his mother. 
 No amount of patience or skill could make the 
 baby take the nipple in his mouth, but he nursed 
 readily from a bottle. From the parents' point 
 of view he never was a child they could feel com- 
 fortable with, as with his two sisters. They told 
 of obscene stories he had imparted to a little girl, 
 of perverted sexual wishes he had been overheard 
 to express, of stealing money and an Ingersoll 
 watch which he tried to sell. When thirteen he 
 was expelled from a boarding-school for smoking, 
 and was sent to school in his home city and lived 
 at home. He was a very disturbing member of 
 the family, teasing his sisters, annoying his 
 mother by careless and untidy ways, troubling his 
 father with demands for privileges which only an 
 older boy should enjoy. These were denied and 
 the boy was very unhappy and ran away to a 
 
 201 
 
THE PROBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHILD 
 
 neighbouring town, was lonely and telephoned 
 where he was, and was glad to return home. 
 
 The home conditions were made a little stricter 
 as the parents felt such a misdemeanour could 
 not pass unnoticed. The father administered 
 corporal punishment, asking the boy first if he 
 thought that would help him to be a better boy. 
 The boy seemed very penitent and said perhaps 
 it would. But in a few more months he again 
 ran away, and again the father brought him home 
 with more admonitions against wrong-doing. The 
 third time the boy ran away he went farther and 
 concealed his whereabouts from his family, but 
 wrote to a little girl he was fond of. She, with a 
 woman's intuition of the suffering his family must 
 be enduring without knowledge of their son, told 
 them. The father followed up the boy, and just 
 in time to rescue him from a position which would 
 have taken him to the war zone of Europe, sought 
 medical aid, and brought him for an analysis of 
 his mental condition which caused the running and 
 uncontrolled escape of the nervous energy. 
 
 After his confidence was partially gained, the 
 boy's point of view was gradually drawn out as 
 follows: He was not happy as a child, never al- 
 lowed to do anything. Was always being pun- 
 ished, sometimes licked, sometimes scolded. 
 When five years old was in New York for his 
 birthday, remembered the train ride, then to his 
 uncle's house on the Hudson River; was shown 
 
 202 
 
MUSCLE EROTISM 
 
 boats on the river. There was a birthday cake, he 
 wanted more cake, could not have it, he was stub- 
 born about it, crawled under the table and cried. 
 Remembered trip to a seaside place, caught min- 
 nows, saw a saw-mill and marvelled at the swift 
 rush of water, used to watch sail-boat races. Was 
 at Summer Camp for four years, first year did not 
 get on well, cried easily, was fat, but next year 
 was athletic and strong. At the Country Club, 
 summers, was not allowed to do as other boys did. 
 Glad he was freed from the boarding-school, it 
 was full of filthy talk and vile actions. Finished 
 with all such stuff, could behave himself better in 
 such respects, sure of that. 
 
 This description in his own language, tells how 
 things of his childhood seemed to the boy. When 
 he used the phrase ^^ marvelled at the swift rush 
 of water " a glimpse was afforded of the uncon- 
 scious. He was resistant, accusing parents and all 
 authority of not being fair to him. Whether these 
 ideas were just or were delusions of persecutions 
 I could not tell then, but I formed the impression 
 there was some truth in his assertions. Prom his 
 tone of voice, the far-away look, his eyes were still 
 seeing in memory the swift rushing water and still 
 feeling the wonder of the irresistible current driv- 
 ing the heavy machinery and the saw cutting its 
 way through the heart of the massive, stately 
 trees — in a word, he was beholding the wonders of 
 life. There was a great rush of life in him which 
 
 203 
 
THE PROBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHH^D 
 
 made it too hard to stand the restrictions and com- 
 plaints of home training. His great desire was to 
 break away from family ties — to fly out of the 
 home nest with his newly grown power. 
 
 He was sent to board in the summer home of a 
 family who understood something of the period of 
 *^ storm and stress " through which he was pass- 
 ing, and allowed all the liberty possible. After he 
 had arrived he immediately put on his khaki 
 clothes and announced himself as ready for 
 work. An acre of lawn had just been trimmed, so 
 she sent him to the garage to polish the auto- 
 mobile. In an hour there was an arrival an- 
 nounced — the boy and the auto which he had 
 rubbed and wanted to show. Then it was time to 
 clean and make himself presentable for dinner, 
 which he did. In the early evening on the porch 
 and on the lawn he kept up a series of gymnastics, 
 standing on the porch railing, leaning far out, 
 springing as though falling and catching a porch 
 post as though he had had a narrow escape. 
 Every one who saw him was startled but before 
 the evening was over they were accustomed to 
 his hairbreadth escapes. On the lawn he swung 
 from tree branches; climbing a tree, he would 
 somehow crash from the top through the branches 
 with yells, but would be seen safely dangling from 
 a lower branch with feet near the ground. A 
 period of unrest was followed by a quiet spell. 
 His pipe would be leisurely filled and lighted, and 
 
 204 
 
MUSCLE EROTISM 
 
 with book, magazine or newspaper lie would 
 sprawl on ground or hammock. There was a 
 young kitten which he was fond of, but handled 
 so roughly we bought him a bull-dog for a play- 
 mate. There was scampering and chasing over 
 the lawn with the dog, jumping, climbing over 
 roofs, with quiet spells following, but of short 
 duration. There was a constant demand for 
 money which he spent promptly, at various shows, 
 candy, swimming at the lake, trips in every direc- 
 tion. 
 
 He slept so heavily no glimpses of the uncon- 
 scious could be shown him as he remembered no 
 dreams. Telling him why he was so restless was 
 useless. He seemed very contented until he re- 
 turned from one of his afternoon trips off and was 
 told a member of his family had been there to see 
 him. A sullen look appeared on his face. ** Can't 
 they let me alone here?" was his reply. He was 
 unusually quiet that evening, petting his dog, 
 smoking his pipe, and going to bed early. He was 
 not called early the next morning and came down 
 about ten o 'clock. After eating breakfast he was 
 very restless, going in and out of the house. 
 Through the open windows came an odour of some- 
 thing burning ; seeing him just coming in the front 
 door his hostess questioned about the smell of 
 smoke. ** It's only my pipe. Miss K," he said, 
 and again went out the door, but returned in a 
 minute shouting the basement was on fire. His 
 
 205 
 
THE PEOBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHHiD 
 
 hostess called up the fire department before see- 
 ing the fire, then found it was under a side porch 
 standing about six feet from the ground and full 
 of a collection of empty boxes, boards, excelsior 
 and old newspapers ; it was surrounded by lattice 
 work; a glass door, fastened, led to the lawn, an- 
 other door supposed to be fastened opened into the 
 cellar which the boy called the basement, but the 
 latter door was not fastened. 
 
 The fire was extinguished before the fire engines 
 arrived, as the house stood on a hill, and the fire 
 engines had great difficulty in making the grade. 
 The boy, with a beaming face, rushed around in 
 wild excitement, smashed in the glass door, ran 
 with pails of water. He ran to the road to help 
 the fire engines by guiding them to the fire, giving 
 orders with excited activity. After the engines 
 had assembled and the yard was full of people the 
 question was raised as to the origin of the fire, 
 and the boy instantly said it was spontaneous 
 combustion as the place was full of old oily rags 
 and papers. Several onlookers among the crowd 
 accepted the theory of spontaneous combustion; 
 the Fire Chief heard the boy loudly announc- 
 ing his theory of spontaneous combustion, 
 rushed up to him and began asking: ^* Where 
 were you when the fire started? Who was with 
 you when the fire started? Who was with you 
 before the fire started^ The boy became very 
 pale, announced rapidly that he had just finished 
 
 206 
 
MUSCLE EROTISM 
 
 his breakfast and was starting out for a walk 
 with another boy when he saw the flames. The 
 Fire Chief evidently believed none of it and said: 
 * ' Young man, you want to be careful that I do not 
 have to come up this hill again or you will have 
 to go down with me.'' 
 
 At the dinner table the boy again declared his 
 explanation of the fire starting by spontaneous 
 combustion, but he happened to be in the presence 
 of some learned people who thoroughly under- 
 stood the principle of spontaneous combustion, 
 and they explained to the boy what nonsense he 
 was talking, and how difficult it was to produce 
 spontaneous combustion, as the professors had 
 tried to do so in the chemical laboratory but had 
 never succeeded. After dinner another boy said 
 what fun they had had, *^ quite some excitement 
 and how quick the crowd gathered, where did they 
 all come from?" And the boy's reply, ^'You bet, 
 it was great, but the people here make me sick, 
 think they know it all. Why, of course, the fire 
 was caused by spontaneous combustion, the place 
 was just full of oily rags and you know how easy 
 they burn, you cannot go anywhere near them 
 with fire or a lighted match, and the sun was shin- 
 ing in there hot." 
 
 * ' No, ' ' said the second boy. * ' I know there were 
 no oily rags in there, as last week it was very cold, 
 and I was in there trying to get some stuff to start 
 a fire in the fireplace. There was some excelsior 
 
 207 
 
THE PROBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHILD 
 
 and old papers, but no oily ones. I hate to touch 
 oily things. You can't fool me.'' 
 
 The family concluded to take a long auto ride ; 
 it was Sunday afternoon, the boy refused to go, 
 said he was tired, wanted to sleep, had hurt him- 
 self fighting the fire. He looked pale, sat in deep 
 thought with a peculiar look of disgust on his 
 face, as though nauseated, complained of feeling 
 dull from eating too much. The family started 
 off for their ride, the boy put his dog in the car, 
 and waved good-bye. The housekeeper saw him 
 working on a lock that was out of order on the 
 bathroom door, and supposed he went to his room. 
 When the family returned the boy was missing. 
 As night came on and the boy did not return, it 
 was evident he had taken a fourth adventure in 
 running away. It was two days before he tele- 
 graphed from a distant city saying he would ex- 
 plain all. We knew the boy had no money and we 
 wondered how he had managed the financial part 
 of his adventure, and learned later that he had 
 searched for a cheque-book he had seen his hostess 
 using, found it, filled out a cheque for a sum of 
 odd dollars and cents; and with the assurance of 
 youth started empty-handed on his travels. He 
 had asked an old man to cash the cheque on some 
 pretext which was believed, and took a train for a 
 far-distant city. A realization of the seriousness 
 of his crime came to him as he had to sit quietly 
 during the long train ride. The child part of him 
 
 208 
 
MUSCLE EROTISM 
 
 was afraid, he felt a strong desire to see his home, 
 his father (who was the most remarkable man in 
 the son's eyes), his little sisters and his mother 
 who he had formerly felt was the canse of his 
 troubles at home and had caused his earlier run- 
 aways. 
 
 When the parents saw their son and heard his 
 confession, their suffering was truly pitiful, but 
 the torture which parents endure with their way- 
 ward children cannot be described. They arose 
 to the occasion with more insight than we usually 
 find in such cases. They asked the boy what he 
 was going to do next; he answered, ''Go back 
 and face the music,'' and felt that he would be 
 received and forgiven with a lecture as his parents 
 had done with his previous escapades. But with 
 the knowledge of the unconscious complexes, we 
 knew that it was but a question of time before his 
 energy would accumulate and owing to his com- 
 plexes it could not be used in legitimate channels, 
 but that he would feel compelled to do some dan- 
 gerous, perhaps criminal, act for relief. His 
 muscle-play was only a substitute during the gath- 
 ering storm, or, to use a simple comparison, his 
 muscle-play only furnished as much satisfaction 
 to his energy as a piece of candy satisfies our 
 hunger in comparison to a real meal of meat and 
 vegetables. Therefore, when he so willingly 
 started back to his wronged hostess, we knew that 
 it was useless for her to forgive and give him 
 
 209 
 
THE PROBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CBILD 
 
 another chance to do better in the old-fashioned 
 way. There would be a repetition. The boy was 
 running away from himself, from his childhood, 
 from the great love of his parents, for they were 
 adorable people in a happy home life, from the 
 temptations to remain a child with them and give 
 up to laziness and be a ''girl-boy." He did not 
 know these were the reasons of his attempts to run 
 away — that the great urge of life frightened him. 
 When at home he ran away; when away he ran 
 home. These reasons existed in the unconscious. 
 We could see his symptomatic acts, but there 
 had been no convincing dreams to help him to get 
 the necessary emotional acts, for the intellectual 
 knowledge is not sufficient, it must be felt on the 
 principle that a singed cat dreads the fire. He 
 had previously been told that a mind that allows 
 itself such weak indulgences would never gain 
 strength and would have a jelly-fish character, 
 just soft and yielding ; he had scoffed at the idea, 
 such preaching he pretended did not interest him, 
 as he could do anything, was quite omnipotent in 
 his own estimation. I knew that underneath the 
 incorrigible exterior was a very soft baby heart, 
 but he had it too well covered by his muscle 
 eroticism to permit work upon it. Something had 
 to be done to make an impression more lasting 
 and convincing than mere words. He would have 
 to see the results of minds untilled, choked up 
 with words instead of thoughts, minds that were 
 
 210 
 
MUSCLE EROTISM 
 
 not producing but shirking. His New England 
 home people would not understand that prompt 
 measures must be taken, but the responsibility 
 must be met. The boy arrived and approached 
 with his usual jaunty air, evidently he was ready 
 to frisk and play after his train ride. He was 
 taken to an office, the laws of his country were 
 read to him, the logic of law explained to him 
 and the legal penalty of his misdemeanour. He 
 listened but was not much affected; he was then 
 taken to a hospital, shown the nervous wrecks 
 of humanity; he looked on them with supreme 
 contempt. He was not showing negativism, his 
 libido was not separated or split, it was all in 
 himself, and called for measures to act as a purga- 
 tive for his emotions. He was left in the hospital 
 all night, his clothes locked up and for the first 
 time in his life he was obliged to face a reality 
 and could not run away from it. 
 
 The next morning there was the welcome sight 
 of tears ; the emotions were working, not the lack 
 of emotional reaction, the apathy which we had 
 feared. He declared he could eat nothing and 
 begged to go away. It was just noon. With- 
 drawing to an adjoining room I saw a generous 
 tray of food — soup, meat, vegetables and dessert 
 — carried to him. He ate with good appetite — 
 the emotions were not disturbed too much. In the 
 afternoon visit no questions were asked. We 
 waited for him to volunteer information beyond 
 
 211 
 
THE PROBLEM OF THE NEBVOUS CHHiD 
 
 asking to return to Ms former hostess. She had 
 refused to see him again, so he could not go there. 
 He asked: '^If my father returns her the money I 
 took why can't I go back there T' His parents 
 always forgave him. Why should not every one! 
 The second day he was running around the corri- 
 dor amusing the patients with his gymnastics, and 
 again asking for work, was told to polish the floors. 
 The third day he was taken from the hospital 
 and put in charge of a private male nurse, a young 
 man who accompanied the boy on trips around 
 the city, living in rooms and eating out in res- 
 taurants with the intention of providing an envi- 
 ronment sufficiently interesting to call out the 
 libido from himself. The sightseeing succeeded in 
 arousing his energy, but resulted in a greater de- 
 sire for freedom. The unconscious pictures were 
 very hard to get from him. A fragment showed 
 him as riding wooden horses at a merry-go-round 
 — no life — no life in the life he was living — not real 
 — going around in a circle, was the way life seemed 
 to him. He complained that he could never do 
 what other boys did (owning an automobile, keep- 
 ing late hours) and that his parents always treated 
 him like a two-year-old. But, really, the father 
 had made the mistake of making a companion of 
 the boy in talking and explaining business affairs, 
 politics and subjects for adult life. The boy ad- 
 mired the father's keen business ability, but of 
 course his mind was not capable of work equal to 
 
 212 
 
MUSCLE EROTISM 
 
 Ms father's so that the father's conversation be- 
 came very irksome to him. 
 
 Another glimpse into the unconscious was: 
 ^^Went to school in N. Y., strict school, they beat 
 me, a book was given us to study, ^ Bugs of Central 
 America.' I didn't open the book. Every after- 
 noon after school I went home and slept on the 
 sidewalk." He symbolized his analysis as the 
 *'Bugs." Bugs were a nuisance, he said, and he 
 paid no attention to his analysis (didn't open the 
 book). Life was hard (sidewalk). No one no- 
 ticed him, public passed him by. 
 
 I sent him, with his nurse, to the theatres to 
 watch his reactions to plays that I had seen; one 
 called ^' Tiger Eose," a play with a murder. He 
 saw the play, and sure enough, the murder was 
 the part which interested him. He was getting 
 very tired of his man-nurse, and the unconscious 
 thoughts seized upon the plot of the play to ex- 
 press the boy's wishes to get rid of the nurse, said 
 he felt as though he was always being followed — 
 had no freedom. His obtaining money dishon- 
 estly was the sense of guilt which gave him the 
 feeling of always being followed. I did not want 
 him to have a sense of guilt, but rather to realize 
 his mistake. If that and the feeling of being 
 followed continued there would be another kind 
 of trouble started. He knew we could neither 
 trust him nor could he trust himself. He made 
 no effort to earn confidence, but made up his mind 
 
 213 
 
THE PROBLEM OF THE NEEVOUS CHILD 
 
 he had to endure the being watched. Each day he 
 was more listless and uninterested. During the 
 hours of analysis certain subjects brought the re- 
 action of painful emotions, seen in the eyes. He 
 had not attempted another flight, but the idea was 
 at work in his mind as shown in the following 
 page which he wrote. *^Was in swimming, swam 
 out pretty far. Suddenly a shark grabbed my leg 
 and pulled me out to sea. Was unconscious for a 
 while, and woke up in the shark's cave in the mid- 
 dle of the ocean somewhere. I talked with him 
 a long time jollying him along. He said I was 
 a pretty good fellow and too skinny to eat so he 
 would let me go. I asked him how I was to get 
 away, and he said I would have to swim for it. 
 So I was just about to dive into the water from a 
 rock when I was awakened. ' ' 
 
 Although he called this a dream it was merely 
 thoughts he had written down to answer my de- 
 mand. ^'To swim for it,'' was the same as to 
 run away in his mind. There was no danger of 
 his attempting that, his life was not a pleasant 
 one for him just then. He would undoubtedly find 
 a way of escaping it, but not by running, the 
 alternative would be illness which he might feign 
 or which he might actually accomplish. He had at 
 times complained of hay fever, which brought in- 
 flamed eyes and running nose with frequent sneez- 
 ing and the symptoms were beginning again. Un- 
 known to the boy, I had made arrangements for 
 
 214 
 
MUSCLE EROTISM 
 
 him to go the next day with his nurse to a country 
 place with a good trout stream. When the next 
 visit was due he did not come, and the nurse 
 telephoned that *'the boy's stomach is upset.'' I 
 went to him, found him in bed, refusing food, 
 only an orange for breakfast. He appeared very 
 dull and sleepy, temperature of 101 °. There were 
 some rales in the right lung. The nurse was out, 
 boy was alone. 
 
 ^^Wake up," I said, *^I had expected to send 
 you away today." 
 
 He opened his eyes. ^^Well, the sooner, the bet- 
 ter; where am I going?" 
 
 I explained. 
 
 He lost interest. ^*To the country! Nothing 
 to do there, who wants to fish? I don't." His 
 eyes closed again, the nurse returned. I went into 
 the adjoining room to watch. The nurse stood by 
 the bedside. ^'I thought you would be up and 
 dressed; how can we make the 2:15 train out of 
 town?" No answer from the boy, and when the 
 nurse moved him, no response. ^^Well, you have 
 suddenly turned into a boy of wood. What is it 
 you do not like?" No answer from the boy, but 
 he heard the footsteps of the retreating nurse, 
 opened his eyes and made all manner of faces at 
 him — ^putting out his tongue, thumb to his nose. 
 
 That muscle movement afforded some satisfac- 
 tion ; that was the moment to get an answer. * ^ Get 
 up now and dress, I am going to take you to a 
 
 215 
 
THE PEOBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHHiD 
 
 very nice place where you will be taken care of, 
 lots of good things to eat, and yon will soon feel 
 fine." The answer came promptly, *'What good 
 will it do f ^ ^ Well, I am going to try you and see 
 what good it will do. ' ' He was up in a minute, and 
 in an hour was comfortably lying in a dainty white 
 bed in a pretty private room of a hospital, a sweet- 
 faced nurse smiling at him. * ^ Gee, I wish mother 
 could see me now, she never believes me when I 
 tell her I am sick." Wise mother, she knew him. 
 He was not sick now, although his temperature 
 had risen to 103. The next morning it was normal 
 and remained so, but he was being treated for 
 pneumonia, the rales continued. He smiled at me. 
 '^I have a nice nurse," he said. Just then a fire 
 engine went clanging down the street, he sprang 
 up and watched it. The next day he asked for 
 fruit, and magazines, watched the fire engines, 
 employed his muscles in throwing newspapers, 
 and everything throwable, in the corner. Looked 
 very happy and contented, no temperature, but 
 rales continued for two weeks. The doctor 
 jokingly said, ''See if you can dry up those rales 
 as quickly as you dropped his temperature." I 
 answered, ''I will," and then said to the boy, 
 *' Just as soon as you are well I am going to take 
 you to Atlantic City." He beamed. ''I have 
 never been there and always wanted to go. Now 
 I have something to get well for. ' ' The next day 
 the doctor telephoned — "I do not know how that 
 
 216 
 
MUSCLE EROTISM 
 
 boy has managed it, but the rales have all cleared 
 up, there is no sound of them. You could take 
 him away tomorrow if you want to.'' He was 
 pretty weak from the confinement, and as soon as 
 the auto started he began sneezing, blowing his 
 nose, with very red eyes. It was a day's ride, and 
 an hour before the end of it his ^^hay fever" 
 stopped. The next morning he told me a genuine 
 dream : 
 
 ''/ was fishing with father. We came to a 
 mountain, went down the mountain in an auto- 
 mobile with a lake full of muskrats. They came 
 towards me, I tried to get away from them, they 
 chased after me, I hit them with my hands. I felt 
 one of the horrible things against my face — ugh, 
 it was so cold and wet/' 
 
 In ^^ fishing with father" the boy identified him- 
 self with his father, and when he comes to diffi- 
 culties (mountain) he is not able to overcome 
 them. Father has much money to spend and the 
 boy's craving for money shows how weak he is. 
 He gets in trouble (the lake) and is pursued by 
 low-bred wishes (muskrats). They pursue him 
 and he feels the horror against his hand — in self- 
 abuse — and against his face — his cheek and dis- 
 honesty. The muskrats symbolize the low form of 
 life he descended to in trying to get away and go- 
 ing so fast. The muskrats were very helpful to 
 him, when temptations came we reminded him of 
 the muskrats chasing him. He agreed that he did 
 
 217 
 
THE PROBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHH^D 
 
 feel that he was being chased by something and 
 felt that he would like to get as far away as pos- 
 sible. The low-bred thoughts in the form of musk- 
 rats made a deeper impression than any previous 
 pictures from his unconscious. He gradually saw 
 that to get away from them he would have to do 
 some higher thinking, and concluded to go to 
 school and behave himself as other boys, so that 
 he could fill a superior position when he began 
 to work. He often begged to be allowed to begin 
 working for his living — the romantic dream of 
 youth, and the boy began to see that the way to get 
 away from childhood was not by running but by 
 letting time leave it behind. He was not anxious 
 to go to school but saw it as a necessity. 
 
 We selected a large school with plenty of space 
 to roam in and he began quite full of enthusiasm. 
 Daily letters showed he was struggling with home- 
 sickness, and the difficulty he was having in ad- 
 justing himself to the rules and regulations of 
 school discipline. His letters were full of wants, 
 mostly for money, and praises of the school. 
 Some letters were written in a very regular hand, 
 others very scrawling and unformed, showing ex- 
 actly how his moods changed, from wild and rest- 
 less to more comfortable. He rode every day for 
 two hours, which was a great help, he groomed 
 his horse and was in constant motion, but wrestled 
 so much with his room-mate that he had to room 
 alone. There were no dreams. He began to feel 
 
 218 
 
MUSCLE EROTISM 
 
 tired of his school, complained that he was out of 
 everything as he was not heavy enough for ath- 
 letics. Just then the wave of influenza passed 
 over the country. A few boys in the school of 
 nearly five hundred had it. The school was closed, 
 most of the boys went home, the boy's father con- 
 cluded to leave him at school and wrote him rather 
 a severe letter for not controlling his restlessness. 
 He wrote me and said, ^^Had a letter from Dad 
 which nearly knocked me out.*' The next morn- 
 ing a telegram from the school announced: ^'J. 
 has a mild case of Influenza." A visit to the 
 school showed a temperature of 103. The various 
 members of his family were advised to send tele- 
 grams and letters of sympathy to him. I wanted 
 to watch the effect on him. His temperature fell 
 to 101 and then to normal two days from the 
 receipt of the telegrams. After the holidays, 
 which were spent with his family, he lost the 
 hardy colour in his face. Whether it was the 
 Southern climate of his home, or being too close 
 to mother, which aroused his unconscious baby 
 desire, I was not sure. A rosy-faced boy had said 
 good-bye, and a pale-faced boy returned. Riding 
 was not allowed by the school authorities in Janu- 
 ary and February, as they feared his horse might 
 slip and fall on the ice. The boy wrote that many 
 boys were leaving and he wanted to go too, that 
 the school was too large, he was not popular with 
 the boys, no one noticed him. His type of muscle 
 
 219 
 
THE PROBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHH^D 
 
 craving was not shared by the other boys, they did 
 not want to be forever wrestling, twisting and 
 climbing. He began to criticize the school, but 
 most of the boys were loyal to it. 
 
 I decided to remove him to a smaller school 
 where he would have more personal supervision 
 and the energy escaping through his muscle-play 
 would have to be put in his school work. He was 
 so much improved I knew the running away had 
 stopped, and while the confinement of the small 
 school would be hard for him at first, he needed it. 
 When I told him he could change schools he was 
 delighted, but after a week at the smaller school 
 he was again ill, and had to be sent to a hospital 
 for a certain form of indigestion. He begged to 
 be allowed to work, he could never go back to that 
 school. It took three weeks to get him into shape 
 to go back to school again. In this struggle the 
 following dream was of great assistance: "'/ was 
 floating through the air, every time I landed I came 
 down very easily and was not hurt amy, then I 
 would rise again and fly through space and doum 
 I would come to eartli hut ivas never Imrt/' His 
 unconscious told me that we had better make the 
 terra firma more attractive so he would stay on 
 it. The next vacation he spent with only one 
 parent who was instructed to let the boy go day 
 and night without any guidance, just to see what 
 he would do. I felt very positive that the boy 
 had had enough analysis to be very sane and mod- 
 
 220 
 
MUSCLE EROTISM 
 
 erate. He had talked so calmly and sensibly as 
 only a very well-balanced mind could do, I was 
 sure he could be trusted for ten days. 
 
 He returned from that vacation with a new 
 look on his face, a look of peace, all smiles. The 
 drawn features, drooping, sensitive mouth had 
 disappeared, he was still a lively, mischievous boy, 
 but only normally so. Track work used his mus- 
 cles, but his energy had found a new outlet. He 
 had discovered that girls are very pretty and re- 
 markable creatures and that dancing is a delight- 
 ful pastime. The life he was running to find, like 
 the bluebird, was right beside him. 
 
 The muscle erotic is a case where the mating or 
 reproductive function has not developed out of its 
 presexual stage, and where it is still contained 
 in the infantile form of motor impulses. It is not 
 a matter of wilful repression of developed sex- 
 uality in the muscles, but a stop in the develop- 
 ment of the vital energy on its way to the sexual 
 function. 
 
 221 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 THE TYEANT CHILD 
 
 If a wild, untrained animal were suddenly en- 
 dowed with an intellect, lie would possess reason- 
 ing power, and, as he is governed by fear, would 
 think something like this ; ' ^ If I make a great 
 noise, howl and roar, every one either will be 
 afraid of me and run away and I will get what 
 I want, or they will stay and get me what I want. ' ' 
 If time and opportunity have afforded this animal 
 an education, which, as the etymology of the word 
 implies, has drawn out and unfolded the powers 
 of the mind by imparting knowledge and by or- 
 derly arrangement of the ideas introduced, he will 
 then realize that, sometimes at least, even when 
 he howls and roars he does not get what he wants. 
 A superior force can frequently make it very 
 uncomfortable for him. 
 
 A child follows much the same line of reason- 
 ing, when his wants are not supplied, and at a 
 very early age his instinct untamed by an un- 
 folded intellect sends forth the cry for what he 
 wants. As he grows and his experience accumu- 
 lates, he learns that certain wants are forbidden 
 and will not be supplied. If he has an over- 
 indulgent friend or relative who relaxes disci- 
 
 222 
 
THE TYRANT CHILD 
 
 pline, if illness forces the parents to become in- 
 dulgent, or if lie sees another child having the 
 forbidden want supplied, then the little human 
 animal will use his reasoning power to create the 
 condition which will necessitate the supplying of 
 the forbidden want. He may either feign or pro- 
 long illness, coax the indulgent relative, or he 
 may learn from another child his method of at- 
 taining success. 
 
 This means of obtaining satisfaction of the de- 
 sire for power is not entirely confined to children. 
 The adult invalid is too often a child of larger 
 growth, the convenient headache, fatigue or vari- 
 ous aches and pains, though unconsciously used, 
 are often a defence against unpleasant demands. 
 Both tyrannical child and invalid adopt a certain 
 line of action, in order to become master of the sit- 
 uation. They frequently look upon themselves as 
 victims, because the tyranny which uses weak- 
 ness as a mecms never can find it satisfying as a 
 condition. Sometimes the child is fully aware 
 that the tyrannical act is used as a defence or 
 compensation. *^I will make her cry for it,'' I 
 heard a fifteen-year-old girl say, when her ap- 
 parently very firm and wise mother insisted upon 
 more modest dress and sensible heels. The girl 
 had found that, by showing resentment, by living 
 apart from the family circle during the day and 
 not speaking, she could make her mother suffer 
 and even cause her to shed tears. 
 
 223 
 
THE PEOBLEM OF THE NEEVOUS CHHjD 
 
 THE HAND OF THE TYEANT 
 
 Another case of tyranny in an eleven-year-old 
 girl managing her mother was a girl with an ap- 
 parently paralysed left hand, which she refused to 
 use. She was an only child, fat, over-grown and 
 indolent. Her father was a working-man. Her 
 mother had indulged the girl in every possible 
 way, until she was very weak in character. She 
 dressed and undressed her daughter, arranged 
 her hair and cooked all meals to suit her special 
 taste. At ten years of age the doctors had treated 
 her for a cold and advised the removal of adenoids 
 and tonsils. The operation was performed in a 
 hospital, and the girl spent the following night 
 there. It was the first time she had ever suffered 
 pain or met a situation where she was not 
 ** babied" by the indulgent mother. After the 
 operation the doctors and nurses did not notice 
 anything unusual about the patient, and the pa- 
 tient declared after the operation the nurse had 
 *^ walked" her to the bathroom. But when the 
 mother came in the afternoon to take the girl 
 home, it was found she did not move her left side. 
 Arm and leg seemed paralysed. The patient was 
 moved home after a few days, and the left foot 
 and leg soon regained normal activity. The arm 
 also was moved freely but not the hand. She 
 doubled up her left elbow, and kept the folded 
 
 224 
 
THE TYRANT CHILD 
 
 hand on her chest, the fingers tightly closed. As 
 she talked with me, she laid the closed left hand 
 in her lap, pulled open the fingers, caressing them, 
 and playing with them as if with a doll. I took 
 her mind off her hand and engaged her in con- 
 versation about a circus, describing the trained 
 animals. As she became interested, she opened 
 and moved her left hand. It looked relaxed and 
 natural. At other times it looked rigid and 
 strained. 
 
 At the fourth visit I gave her a box of building 
 blocks, formed so as to be dove-tailed together 
 and requiring two strong hands to unite them. I 
 first built a bridge with them. Then I suddenly 
 remembered an important letter I had to write, 
 and left her seated with the blocks on the floor 
 in the farther corner of the room. She worked 
 with one hand for a while, but, as she became 
 more interested, the left hand opened and worked 
 with the right. I called her attention to this fact 
 and spoke in flattering terms. *^Yes,'' she said, 
 * ' sometimes it opens, but I have to move it three 
 times, like this.'' She made a pawing motion. 
 I took the left hand in mine. Instantly it closed, 
 or she closed it, and could not be induced to open 
 it again. I could not possibly pry her fingers 
 open, without using such force as to break them. 
 They seemed made of iron. 
 
 , Opposition arouses opposition but does not re- 
 move its cause, so we must work to arouse the 
 
 225 
 
THE PROBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHHjD 
 
 desire in the patient. This girl was fond of 
 playing cook. She was told how to cook her 
 father's supper consisting of fried eggs and 
 mashed potatoes. She was very fond of her 
 father and very anxious to prepare his supper, 
 but she needed two hands to peel and mash the 
 potatoes and break the eggs for frying. The 
 mother was instructed to keep out of the kitchen, 
 but to peep in occasionally and see what was hap- 
 pening. The girl was using both hands in peeling 
 and mashing the potatoes and in cooking the eggs, 
 although the left one, from not being used as much 
 as the right one, was working awkwardly and 
 weakly. She became quite excited at this first 
 cooking adventure, and ordered her mother to set 
 the table, but cut the bread and put the finishing 
 touches on the meal herself. When she cooked 
 or did anything else for her father, she used her 
 two hands, but would never do so for her mother, 
 refusing to make her bed, dust the furniture or 
 dress herself. She thus showed a strong father 
 complex, a topic which is discussed in another 
 chapter. 
 
 Most interesting were the unconscious thoughts 
 brought out in the analysis. In her dreams she 
 was a princess and in her left hand she held a 
 beautiful golden sceptre such as she had seen in 
 a moving picture ; or she was a teacher in school, 
 holding a pointer in her left hand and telling the 
 class that when she moved the pointer, they were 
 
 226 
 
THE TYRANT CHILD 
 
 to change from one side of the room to the other, 
 all excepting the history class, which must sit still. 
 This was interpreted to mean that she did not 
 want the course of her own personal history to 
 change. Unconsciously she wanted to reserve her 
 left hand to command others and point out what 
 they were to do, but not to do anything with 
 herself. 
 
 After a few months of analysis a new environ- 
 ment was selected with a cousin living in the 
 country among the mountains, where there was 
 rough, uneven walking, and where mountain 
 climbing sometimes needed the use of two hands. 
 In the unconscious thoughts brought out in the 
 analysis, the girl had seen that she must conquer 
 her desire to be wilful and babyish, which she 
 evidently was in using her left hand to tyrannize 
 over her mother, and then her left hand would 
 want to work with her right. She went to the 
 mountains, unaccompanied on the train and full 
 of good resolutions to try her best to grow up and 
 be a fine young woman of whom her father would 
 be proud. She remained there five months, using 
 both her hands all the time (the left improving 
 in efficiency even to the extent of allowing her to 
 row a boat), but when she returned to her mother 
 and former playmates, the old temptations re- 
 appeared, partly, in her mother's treatment, 
 partly in the shut-in conditions surrounding a 
 child in her own home. A little more help from 
 
 227 
 
THE PECBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHILD 
 
 further analysis was needed to start this girl 
 again in different habits of thought, after which 
 she finally abandoned her wish to be continually 
 a child. 
 
 ILLNESS AS TYEANNY 
 
 The wish to tyrannize is often an unconscious 
 one. Nervous invalids usually think they would 
 give or do anything to be well, but they really 
 want health to come from the outside rather than 
 from within themselves. Frequently a certain 
 amount of self-sacrifice is needed to regain health, 
 as indeed health and happiness come through the 
 sacrifice which self-control requires. A recent 
 issue of a medical magazine contains an article 
 entitled ^'Self-Denial is Eare!" Who has not, 
 after an illness, felt a certain disappointment in 
 leaving the sick room, where one has received 
 visitors and had meals on a dainty tray, and in 
 joining the family group where one does not re- 
 ceive special attention? ''The average human be- 
 ing does not want to live hygienically ! ' ^ exclaims 
 the editor, and he backs up his assertion with the 
 following taken from a physician 's notes : ' ' Once 
 we published an account of a case of diabetes we 
 had treated with some success. A distinguished 
 army officer read it and as a consequence called 
 upon us. We began to explain the regimen neces- 
 sary, when he interrupted to say: 'I don't want 
 
 228 
 
THE TYRANT CHILD 
 
 any diet. I want you to give me a treatment that 
 will allow me to eat anything I want in any quan- 
 tity!' We resigned. 
 
 **Mr. Man doesn't want to stop drinking or 
 smoking or working or playing too much. What 
 he wants of us is the means to keep on as he has 
 been living. Madam does not relish our advice 
 to cut down her bridge, loosen her corsets and 
 quit gorging. She wants medicine to restore her 
 youth, take off her fat, and enable her to keep it 
 up until she has had enough. 
 
 **They all come to us, not for reform, but to be 
 enabled to go on sinning." 
 
 In such cases it is putting it crudely merely 
 to say that human nature is selfish, living only 
 for its own gratifications. That way of saying 
 it does not bring about the results of changing the 
 selfishness. It is an everyday experience that 
 our acts are not on a level with our reasoning. 
 Hence we are not fully adapted to the conditions 
 of life. We do not suspect that we have not re- 
 linquished certain childish reactions to life, that 
 we are carrying in the background certain in- 
 fantile illusions, of which we are conscious only 
 when we catch fleeting thoughts of unfulfilled 
 wishes; and we seek relief from our lack of 
 adaptation to our surroundings, by games and 
 self-indulgence, playing the tyrant with ourselves, 
 by living as far as possible without restrictions 
 or rules. 
 
 229 
 
THE PEOBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHH^D 
 
 EEGKESSION 
 
 In psychoanalytic treatment a patient learns to 
 observe the fleeting thoughts, whether in phanta- 
 sies of the day or in those of the night which we 
 call dreams. In these thoughts we get glimpses of 
 the unconscious which contains the cause of the 
 lack of adaptation. With the libido theory we can 
 easily explain the tyrannical character of the wish 
 of the patient with the paralysed hand. Just at 
 the age when the child had begun definitely to 
 decide on certain actions upon which to direct her 
 libido, her mother interfered. As a child at the 
 seashore in attempting to fill its pail with sand is 
 sometimes interfered with by mother or nurse, 
 who hovers over the child and cannot let it act 
 itself, so the mother of this patient foresaw each 
 childish purpose and in more senses than one, 
 always filled her sand pail for her, time and 
 again dri\dng back the increasing libido until it 
 flowed back into its infantile paths. This causes 
 what is known as a regression of the libido. 
 
 Of course the mother herself was still partly or 
 wholly living in her own childhood in making a 
 doll out of her child. By treating the girl as an 
 infant the mother prolonged her own sense of 
 power to the mental injury of the girl. We may 
 say that the wish to tyrannize arises from the 
 regression of the libido to infantile paths and that 
 because of such regression the mode of adapta- 
 
 230 
 
THE TYRANT CHILD 
 
 tion to life will be infantile. On this plan the 
 individual expects to find in the world of external 
 reality the same friendly reception from every 
 one as from its parents, and to obtain with no 
 trouble an easy success. When an obstacle is en- 
 countered such an individual shrinks back rather 
 than pushes ahead to overcome, and this attitude 
 is generally caused by the child within the indi- 
 vidual making up its mind to let the parent go on 
 and fill its sand pail. In this simile the sand pail 
 is the world work demanded of the child and now 
 the child virtually says to the world which it finds 
 in the place of its mother: ^^All right, you in- 
 sisted on filling my sand pail for me when I 
 wanted to do it myself. Now you want me to do 
 it, you can go on filling it yourself and you'll get 
 a disappointment equal to mine when you 
 wouldn't let me.'' It makes no difference with 
 such people that the world is not the mother, the 
 child behaves to both the same, unconsciously, be- 
 cause its disposition toward things not itself was 
 crystallized in early life. The process of gradual 
 spiritual weaning from the home, represented by 
 the mother, should be begun even before the first 
 sand pail and shovel, or the mother-infant atti- 
 tude will be maintained in spite of any conscious 
 desire that may later come to terminate it. No 
 matter how strong the conscious wish, the uncon- 
 scious is stronger simply because unknown. 
 If possible, the obstacles in the way of the child 
 231 
 
THE PROBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHH^D 
 
 are removed by Mni with childish methods. *'I 
 will kill you, ' ' says the small boy when you inter- 
 fere with his pleasure. The emperor Nero fur- 
 nishes a colossal example of this infantile method 
 of control of surroundings. His libido was 
 blocked and regressed, due to the managing and 
 dictatorial tendencies of his mother, until it 
 reached the primitive condition of a savage with 
 unlimited cruelty, in which he murdered his own 
 mother. Nero solved his problems in an infantile 
 manner. Not from his own efforts but from the 
 efforts of his ambitious mother came his wish to 
 be an emperor. Completely astray as to his moral 
 qualities he never realized his own weakness. 
 When he wanted to enjoy a bonfire he burned a 
 city. 
 
 INSUBORDINATION 
 
 Insubordination of children becomes permanent 
 by continuous restriction and obstinacy of par- 
 ents. The insubordinate child is inwardly ask- 
 ing for training and guidance. He is craving to 
 be understood. Punishments and corrections, in- 
 stead of helping him, have the effect of hemming 
 in his stream of life. With all the power he owns 
 he revolts against that treatment and, in effect, he 
 says, **Show me the way by encouragement, by 
 love and sympathy; let me know only when I do 
 right." That is what the farmer does when in 
 cultivating his plants he loosens the soil for the 
 
 232 
 
THE TYRANT CHILD 
 
 Kfe-giving air and rain to reach the vital parts of 
 their being — their roots. Like the roots of the 
 plants which grow only in the dark, our uncon- 
 scious needs a special treatment and it is only- 
 through analysis that the roots of the soul can be 
 examined and their special needs learned. 
 
 The incorrigible child is never understood, and, 
 as this lack of understanding produces a very 
 serious lack of adjustment between himself and 
 his surroundings, he gradually loses all confidence 
 in them. He first loses confidence in his father, 
 and thereafter will treat all men as if they merited 
 no more confidence than his father. This mal- 
 adjustment of the child to his surroundings is 
 actually the fault of the parents only, and is due 
 to the fact that he is rewarded for being incor- 
 rigible. For this he is given the only reward that 
 a child desires, which is the personal attention of 
 the other people. Only when he is naughty is his 
 personality considered. Only if he is sick does he 
 get attention. This is specially true of the young- 
 est child. By laziness also, and by opposition to 
 things that are asked of him he can obtain power 
 over people to the extent of forcing them to con- 
 sider and take an interest in him. 
 
 It is indispensable, although most uncommon, 
 for parents to know the child's reactions to his 
 surroundings, particularly to authority. In the 
 kind of investigations pursued in psychoanalysis 
 we discover more and more every day the danger 
 
 233 
 
THE PROBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CBJLD 
 
 of sending home a cliild we may have taken out of 
 Ms home and cured. We have succeeded in free- 
 ing his libido so that health returns through a 
 change of attitude toward life sufficiently to meet 
 its normal demands. If we send such a child 
 home, we send him into the same conditions which 
 caused his illness, conditions due only to the ac- 
 tions of the family. Of course the parents do not 
 realize, any more than the child, the necessity 
 which confronts adults of a complete change in 
 attitude toward the world, from the infant atti- 
 tude, to the adult attitude, without which he will 
 through physical growth cease to be a child but 
 through lack of spiritual growth he will never 
 completely become an adult. 
 
 The young child does not yet suffer from his 
 inability to cross the bridge into manhood in the 
 same way and to the same degree that adults 
 suffer from their infantile reactions to life, when 
 they expect the same sympathetic understanding 
 from the world that they received from their 
 parents. On the contrary, the child is still in the 
 happy state where he can put all the blame on 
 adults and what seems to him their foolish ideas. 
 The incorrigible child plays a certain proud part 
 among his comrades and feels himself a hero, just 
 because of his improper attitude of laziness and 
 impudence in his own little world. Lazy children 
 want to be at the top without any effort of climb- 
 ing, and feel no need to abandon their own ways. 
 
 234 
 
THE TYRANT CHILD 
 
 The neurotic adult, however, does see the neces- 
 sity of abandoning or relinquishing his old pleas- 
 ures, but he is usually unable to do so without aid. 
 Rather than work, the young patient would keep 
 his habits and his dreams of being a hero, and he 
 feels that advice and correction are the hardships 
 of fate. 
 
 PABENTS AS SIGNBOAEDS 
 
 After the analysis the adolescent's unconscious 
 is laid bare before him. He sees what an unlovely 
 personality his is, what truly disgusting ideals are 
 making him feel like a hero. In the past the boy 
 has admired his father and wished to imitate him. 
 Outwardly he has tried to imitate him in detail, 
 or has envied him, when seeing what appears to 
 the child to be the freedom of action and abso- 
 lute right to the mother. The father takes her 
 away for trips and leaves the child at home. He 
 exacts proper conduct of the child which he does 
 not maintain himself, just as the signboard on the 
 road points the way for other people but does not 
 have to go itself. The realization of the great dif- 
 ference between himself and his father, not merely 
 in physical strength but in power of every kind 
 weighs heavily upon him. *^I am immersed in 
 deep darkness,'' says the child, *^my father is 
 standing way up like a bright light, so far above 
 me I see no way to reach him except through 
 mother." It frequently happens that the boy's 
 
 235 
 
THE PEOBLEM OF THE NEEVOUS CHILD 
 
 longing to appropriate Ms mother fills him with 
 jealousy of his father, or he condemns her for 
 coldness when she does not devote herself excln- 
 sively to him. He longs for a mother who will 
 lift him up and push him on to overcome the 
 obstacles. "When the boy finds that his fight for 
 the possession of the mother and his imitation of 
 the brilliant qualities of his father remain with- 
 out results, he seeks in his own phantasies the 
 feeling of power and a sense of his value. If he is 
 a lazy boy he can become a clown of the 
 school and thus can transform his weakness into 
 power. 
 
 STRENGTH OF WEAKNESS 
 
 Through analysis the boy recognizes the 
 reasons for wishing to transform his weakness 
 into power. He also recognizes that in work he 
 has a new source from which to derive satisfac- 
 tion. The analyst must temper the wind to the 
 shorn lamb, and learn how strong a pressure is 
 necessary to free the blocked libido and how much 
 of it the child can stand at once. The child who 
 uses his weakness as a source of power does so 
 by coaxing his parents. This indirect means of 
 overcoming parental opposition must be con- 
 quered by the analyst in arousing new motives, as 
 the parents who have allowed themselves to be 
 coaxed have shown that they are themselves un- 
 
 236 
 
THE TYRANT CHILD 
 
 able to create the proper incentive in their chil- 
 dren. A child must not be allowed to conquer by 
 his methods of weakness, a victory which all 
 parents know is unfortunate for both conqueror 
 and conquered. The victory of weakness in- 
 creases, paradoxically enough, the strength of the 
 weakness. It puts a premium on weakness itself, 
 for through weakness the individual exerts a 
 strong power over the persons of his environ- 
 ment. But we have not realized until today that 
 the child adopts that method only because the 
 natural way has been obstructed at some time dur- 
 ing its growth. Therefore, a new education must 
 take place so that the neurotic child can resume 
 the original line of development at the point 
 where it was arrested. Without this new style of 
 education he can never break his old habits. It is 
 exceedingly difficult for the child to begin this 
 reconstruction and for parents not to spoil the 
 whole fabric of the past. 
 
 Frequently a child is called incorrigible because 
 he refuses to meet demands which are really not 
 necessary, and refuses to avoid doing that which is 
 useless for parents to forbid merely to gratify 
 their sense of power. Frequently parents forbid 
 when there is no sense in forbidding. Natural 
 freedom of movement is inhibited by such a pro- 
 cedure, and rational action is obstructed by the 
 parents ' fanciful will. By such means dangerous, 
 destructive elements are introduced into the 
 
 237 
 
THE PEOBLEM OF THE NEBVOtTS CHH^D 
 
 child's psyche, against which the instinct for self- 
 defence has to revolt. We may call such a child 
 tyrannical, but who are the real tyrants'? Chil- 
 dren often know better than adults what they 
 need, while by an abrupt and injudicious inter- 
 ference, their course of education and develop- 
 ment, prescribed by their own nature, is dis- 
 turbed. That does not mean to say that one 
 should yield to them in every way ; it only means 
 that we should be cautious and parsimonious in 
 correcting them. There are times when we must 
 be unyielding. The child recognizes the undisci- 
 plined will of adults, not only in the unnecessary 
 prohibitions but also in the unjustified permis- 
 sions. As a matter of fact, adults, through ca- 
 priciousness and laziness, yield to their own un- 
 justified inclinations in that they prefer what is 
 pleasant, but sternly reprove their children for 
 doing the same thing. Human beings in their in- 
 tellectual development have, on the one hand, a 
 fear for the requirements of life; on the other, 
 they are forced to fight for their own preserva- 
 tion and that of the race. The child tries to main- 
 tain itself by its own methods which are very in- 
 appropriate, being a mixture of childish inexperi- 
 ence and of good and bad manners, copied from 
 adults. So in his neurotic formula of reaction the 
 child adopts a modus vivendi which is more or less 
 of a compromise between his love for parents, 
 brothers and sisters, and the aggressive and de- 
 
 238 
 
THE TYRANT CHILD 
 
 fensive fight carried through for his own exist- 
 ence. 
 
 FATHER AS MODEL. 
 
 As an illustration of the difficulties a child meets 
 with in the home surroundings, I will describe the 
 case of a fourteen-year-old boy having an attrac- 
 tive personality and the usual intellectual endow- 
 ment. He had grown up under circumstances 
 judged favourable by the world of current opin- 
 ion. His father was an energetic and intelligent 
 man with a successful business career, the mother 
 soft and amiable. Both have manifold interests 
 and are highly gifted. The great proficiency of 
 the father, as very frequently happens, was united 
 with a very high opinion of himself, occasionally 
 with a want of consideration, and at such times 
 he felt himself very superior, but the self-confi- 
 dence had not such a sound foundation as ap- 
 peared on the surface and covered a clever uncer- 
 tainty. The mother was absolutely submissive to 
 his intelligence and decision, but a certain sadness 
 in her eyes betrayed a wish to rebel if she only 
 dared to do so. 
 
 The son born of these parents grew up among 
 the older brothers and sisters, sometimes with 
 much petting. This the father saw, but consid- 
 ered it a weakening influence and used too strict 
 and harsh measures as an antidote. Very early 
 demands were made upon the child which could 
 
 239 
 
THE PEOBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CBILD 
 
 hardly be answered by any child of his age. Since 
 the boy, as every boy does, wanted to be similar 
 to the father, he tried as far as possible to meet 
 his expectations, but they were above the boy's 
 power. He tried to show ability by using the 
 same means he saw his father nse, being exceed- 
 ingly neat and well-groomed, wearing well-made 
 clothes and imitating his father's manners. The 
 attempts were naturally very poor, as he conld not 
 yet do the things which were possible for his 
 father. Continual failures discouraged the boy. 
 He worried about them. Instead of quietly di- 
 recting the boy's attention to his errors and edu- 
 cating him gradually to his own individuality, the 
 father, owing to his own despotic tendencies 
 caused by his superficial thinking, recognized the 
 boy's efforts as mere silliness and became angry, 
 blaming the son, but puffed himself up as being a 
 model and very superior, — ^whereupon the boy re- 
 doubled his efforts to be the same as the father. 
 He was told it was up to him to become this very 
 perfect boy his father wished. His mother ap- 
 parently agreed with his father so even with her 
 the boy had had no opportunity quietly to develop 
 his own personality and natural tendencies. 
 
 We are not surprised to see this boy failing 
 more and more in school, although he is diligent 
 and not without mental endowment. In the school 
 he reacts in the same way as at home. He works 
 not because it is his duty, because he wants to be 
 
 240 
 
THE TYRANT CHILD 
 
 instructed and because he is anxious to increase 
 Ms knowledge and thereby gain greater power 
 and more pleasure in life, but his entire aim is 
 to acquire qualities like his father's and to create 
 the impression that he is shrewd, energetic, intelli- 
 gent and efficient. He constantly feels that he will 
 not be able to succeed. Naturally, he uses his 
 powers at school as he does at home, and with the 
 same unsatisfactory results. The more he follows 
 this inefficient method the more he arouses dis- 
 satisfaction in others. Gradually he loses all 
 courage. Complaint after complaint comes from 
 school; he fails in his examinations, is not pro- 
 moted, and the familiar ^* school misery' ' is the 
 final result. 
 
 In cases such as this both teachers and parents 
 are confronted with a serious problem, which 
 would be solved if the parents and teachers were 
 interested enough to learn the child's formula of 
 reaction. In this case the reaction formula is 
 that he is using his abilities only for a game of 
 imitation. His natural gifts do not become ap- 
 parent, and so subject to intelligent cultivation, 
 because he has been scolded and punished. He 
 has never been educated in such a way as to *4ead 
 forth" the appropriate use of his own particular 
 qualities. For the requirements imposed upon 
 him individually he feels only fear, being in- 
 wardly convinced that he cannot meet them, which 
 indeed he really cannot, because they are misfit 
 
 241 
 
THE PEOBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHILD 
 
 requirements. They are as unreasonable as 
 would be the use of a race horse to pull a truck, 
 or a dray horse to run in a race. 
 
 As a concrete example of the impossible de- 
 mands made upon children we might take the pro- 
 pounding, quite common among parents, of ques- 
 tions or mathematical problems with a view to 
 *' testing" the child. These questions and prob- 
 lems are deterrent not alone because of their in- 
 herent difficulty. Sometimes they are essentially 
 quite simple but contain a verbal catch, designed 
 to trip up the child and lead him to make a mis- 
 take which it is quite likely his inexperience of 
 the world will prevent him from seeing. Some- 
 times they are asked with the conscious purpose 
 of making the child uncomfortable but in all these 
 instances these questions are impossible because 
 they are not real questions implying an ability on 
 the part of the child to answer them. Indeed the 
 child at once sees in most instances that they 
 imply an inability on his part to answer them, and 
 he instinctively feels that the adult asking them is 
 gaining some sort of satisfaction from his dis- 
 comfiture. If parents or teachers would but con- 
 sider how extraordinary, not to say uncanny, a 
 full adult response to some of these questions 
 would appear to them, they would at once see the 
 unreasonableness of such questions, and would 
 realize that the asking of them is a thoughtless 
 act on their part, for it is frequently a situation 
 
 242 
 
THE TYRANT CHILD 
 
 unnecessarily created by the adult to show his 
 superiority to the child. 
 
 FEELING OF INFEEIORITY 
 
 A psychoanalysis shows the cause of the boy's 
 reaction to this kind of demand, but it expects the 
 parents' co-operation in overcoming anxiety on 
 the part of the child. This is accomplished 
 largely by removing the obstructions which block 
 the life stream so that the feeling of inferiority 
 disappears, to be replaced by confidence. Then 
 only will the child's energy be utilized in his work, 
 in fulfilling his duty and in complying with life's 
 demands. Adults seek many ways of compensat- 
 ing for, or setting up a defence against, this feel- 
 ing of inferiority. They magnify whatever suc- 
 cess they may have had and refuse to accept criti- 
 cism for their deficiencies ; they become sensitive 
 and touchy. 
 
 Here lies one of the greatest difficulties of edu- 
 cation, whether domestic or academic. The nerv- 
 ous child is by disposition sensitive and touchy. 
 He has an especially keen discernment for all 
 sorts of things, a very fine discriminative sense. 
 Things seem different to him when they seem 
 the same to others not so sensitive. And he has 
 a very keen eye for the weak spots of his teachers 
 and parents. Such a child with so sensitive a 
 nature is like a very delicate scientific instrument 
 
 243 
 
THE PROBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHH^D 
 
 of precision, and is really designed for very high 
 uses. In every nervous child lies the germ of a 
 nature finer than that of the ordinary healthy 
 individual. He is looking always for other 
 humans finely enough constituted to give him di- 
 rections or example to follow, for men and women 
 to whom he may transfer entirely his ideal, 
 his unconscious aim. Children are very quick to 
 perceive whether the teachers and parents are 
 serving their own interests or the children's. 
 Since parents are not more perfect than other 
 human beings, they may, with the very best in- 
 tentions, be deceived about their innermost mo- 
 tives and not realize how much of their own 
 egotism is finding satisfaction in their relations 
 with their children. 
 
 It is very important for those who have the care 
 and training of nervous children or of adults to 
 have a thorough, analytic self-knowledge, because 
 without it, the children's complexes are brought 
 to life by the complexes of the adults having 
 charge of them. This constant resuscitation of 
 unhappy feelings renders almost impossible a 
 completely satisfactory work on the part of the 
 analyst. Therefore, any special training directed 
 by analysis must aim with the greatest patience to 
 represent the demands of life in a most attractive 
 form without annoyance or hatred. From the 
 psychoanalytic point of view, laziness, disobedi- 
 ence, silliness and other childish traits are not 
 
 244 
 
THE TYRANT CHILD 
 
 considered punishable faults. They are not the 
 actions of personal offence or revenge on the part 
 of a vulgar soul. The analyst asks why a human 
 being behaves in this or that unsuitable way, what 
 he expects to gain by it, what are the unconscious 
 wishes at the basis of the distorted form in which 
 conscious wishes are expressed, in other words, 
 what is the reaction formula which is hiding be- 
 hind the overt actions. The wild and erroneous 
 statements of children are to be understood then 
 as symptoms. The trials of many parents would 
 be greatly lessened if they could be made to un- 
 derstand this very important fact, and that every 
 capricious and silly act of a child may have as an 
 underlying cause a complex which psychoanalytic 
 investigation can remove. Every child has in him 
 a something which wants to grow. If it is not 
 allowed to grow at all, or if it is not developed in 
 a balanced way, it will break out in innumerable 
 other ways, the child's character will be de- 
 formed, and will be dwarfed in the very char- 
 acteristics where it ought to have its fullest 
 growth. 
 
 245 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 TEACHING OF EIGHT AND WRONG 
 
 "Understanding is a wellspring of life to him who hath it." 
 — Peoveebs. 
 
 This difficult question of guiding the childish mind 
 through the mazes of temptation will be less prob- 
 lematical if in teaching our children we are not too 
 much led by our own whims, prejudices or nerves, 
 if we do not think superficially only and so accept 
 the ideas of right and wrong as taught us by our 
 parents. We should, on the contrary, understand 
 the law of cause and effect, as revealed by the con- 
 stant urge from the conflict of the conscious and 
 unconscious. To the undeveloped mind ^*I want 
 if is a sufficient reason for getting it, without 
 any sense of justice or of law and order. 
 
 This difference between the child and the adult 
 mind is quite clear to the adult, but to children 
 whose universal infantile experience has been to 
 cry for a thing until they get it, or exhaust them- 
 selves with crying, the discrepancy between **I 
 want if and **I have if is so great that it is 
 unendurable, and all children who have a desire 
 for anything, are abnormal if they do not cry or 
 fight till they either do not want it or get it. 
 This fact enables us to divide children into two 
 
 246 
 
TEACHING OF RIGHT AND WRONG 
 
 classes: (1) those who struggle, with or without 
 crying, and, (2) those who do not struggle or cry. 
 Parents think the second class is the better and 
 indeed it is the easier to live with. But we find 
 that really it is the worse, because we have learned 
 that while the children of the first type are con- 
 cerned with their relations with the external 
 world, those of the second withdraw from the 
 world into themselves, and at a very early age, 
 a process which, if continued, is most detrimental. 
 
 So that when the practical question comes up 
 in a direct conflict between the will of the parent 
 and that of either the child or any other de- 
 pendent, there is great need for care in the adjust- 
 ment, or the child and parent will tend to become 
 separated, not as they should be, in good feeling, 
 but with bad feeling in their hearts. 
 
 Shall the man who has worked all day and 
 earned his wages give to the one who, although 
 endowed by nature with equal power, has spent 
 the day in idle phantasies? Or shall the ^^I want 
 it" of the mind that is not built out, not broad- 
 ened and not strengthened by education both from 
 books and experience, demand the same as he who 
 has put forth all his efforts in the struggle to 
 acquire an education for more power to express 
 his energy? Would that be just! **I want it be- 
 cause I want it'^ is the child's unreasoning de- 
 mand which must be met in early life with a sense 
 of justice on the part of both parent and child. 
 
 247 
 
THE PROBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHHiD 
 
 Wlien a host of admirers stand ready to supply 
 the slightest want until the child is overwhelmed, 
 what wonder that he throws everything aside in a 
 burst of impatience and finds interest in some 
 simple thing. I watched a nine months ' baby neg- 
 lect entirely the store toys and play a long time 
 with a china egg which he had found. 
 
 A young child has a keen sense of justice and 
 lively responsiveness. A smile on your face 
 brings a smile on his ; and calling forth a smile on 
 his face before giving toys is a wise precaution 
 against his crying for what he wants. He will 
 soon learn to make sounds to attract your atten- 
 tion and smile in expectation. * ^ You will give that 
 child everything she wants, she will be spoiled,'' 
 said a dyspeptic relative. ^'If I were so stupid as 
 to wait until my baby cried for what she wants 
 before giving it to her, or to give her something 
 to silence her because she was crying she would 
 indeed be spoiled," answered the calm young 
 mother. It is only just to the child to ask for his 
 smile; it is all he has to give for the pleasure and 
 care from you, but it means so much in later years, 
 for the happy smile is the first freeing of the crea- 
 tive emotions from the child-soul and should be 
 followed by an impulse of energy. Careful ob- 
 servation of the child shows that a sudden move- 
 ment or spring usually follows a baby's smile, 
 demonstrating the release of energy that follows 
 the happy emotion (which is literally the moving, 
 
 248 
 
TEACHING OF EIGHT AND WRONG 
 
 out of life). Try the experiment of attracting the 
 child to smiles and watch the sudden movement 
 following the smile. If the *^I want if of the 
 child must be denied, do not leave a vacuum where 
 the wish was, but give your sympathy or some 
 other substitute so that by distraction the child *s 
 mind may be led away from the wish. It should 
 not be repressed (wanted just the same but denied 
 by force or superior power of authority) but 
 should be replaced by other interests. Above all 
 things, do not be too lazy to think whether or not 
 the reason for denial is necessary, for then the 
 child is very quick to see through your mistake 
 and a seed is sown for future trouble in the form 
 of nervous disorders, negative opinions and ac- 
 tions, and dyspeptic relatives for the next genera- 
 tion. And do not say *^no,'' and afterwards 
 '^yes.'' 
 
 With what stolid indifference we pass by the 
 teaching of the Christian dogma in the Old and 
 New Testaments. For countless generations the 
 lawmakers and teachers gave most earnest 
 thought, prayed and yearned, over the right guid- 
 ing of the human race. Laws were fashioned 
 which they beheved would light the steps of their 
 children and children's children to endless gener- 
 ations, yet we scarcely read them over. Creeds 
 of the past thousands of years have been care- 
 fully preserved, for to some men they brought 
 peace, self-mastery and power, which promoted 
 
 249 
 
THE PEOBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CBILD 
 
 life. Should we not go a little more slowly and 
 examine them before we so freely express our 
 notions of right and wrong? This is the begin- 
 ning of wisdom for the child, with respect for 
 authority and obedience to law. Respect for law 
 and obedience to authority show a mind strength- 
 ened and well-balanced by a favourable environ- 
 ment (not weakened and suffering from oppres- 
 sion and fear of might) and are the foundation 
 stones of our homes, of society, of our country and 
 of peace. It is only through law and order that 
 we can enjoy peace. Resistance to authority 
 shows a mind weakened by the crushing weight 
 of unwise authority and leads to lawlessness and 
 a lawless life. A lawless country is doomed. 
 
 Like his body, a child's life is at first very weak 
 and can express only a few movements either of 
 muscles or of emotional feeling; but as the mind 
 grows the body grows. Intelligence is followed 
 by the independent action of the body. The his- 
 tory of the child and human life is the history of 
 the race. As the race learned that what was 
 wrong was any form of destruction which would 
 ultimately destroy life, so the child must be 
 taught to respect life. In ancient times it was be- 
 lieved that in order to preserve life, life must be 
 given, that the old life must die for the new one 
 to live, as we are told in the Bible ^^he that loseth 
 his life shall find it," and we have accepted that 
 meaning to be a death unto sin and birth into 
 
 250 
 
TEACHING OF RIGHT AND WRONG 
 
 righteousness, as a symbolic act in the rite of 
 baptism. ^'Except ye be born again ye cannot 
 enter the Kingdom of Heaven.'' In this sense the 
 former self must be sacrificed to the new. In the 
 teaching of the Ten Commandments on two tables 
 of stone the race was clearly told the rules for 
 right and wrong doing. The first five command- 
 ments on the table of stone tell us what we must 
 do, they are devoted to the worship of the creative 
 spirit of life, which we call God, to respect and 
 reverence for laws preserving life. In the last 
 five any kind of destruction is forbidden. 
 
 VI. ^^Thou Shalt not kill" forbids direct de- 
 struction of life and human life is not specified. 
 
 VII. ^'Thou shalt not steal" forbids destruc- 
 tion in the command for protection of property. 
 
 VIII. *^Thou shalt not commit adultery" for- 
 bids destruction of love without which there can- 
 not be life. 
 
 IX. Forbids destruction of honour, and 
 
 X. Forbids covetousness which brings greed, 
 envy and the group of destructive emotions. 
 
 The subsequent chapters in Exodus tell of the 
 stern necessity of justice, **an eye for an eye," 
 and the absolute demand for reparation. **If a 
 man steals an ox and kills or sells it he shall 
 restore five oxen." 
 
 After the race had developed from the Mosaic 
 law through many hundred years, further in- 
 struction was given in the wisdom of King Solo- 
 
 251 
 
THE PKOBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHH^D 
 
 mon. He gave the same admonitions to respect 
 authority, warning against temptations, telling 
 always of the great need of wisdom, teaching the 
 moral virtues and their contrary vices, and the 
 value of self-control. * ^ He that is slow to anger is 
 better than the mighty, and he that ruleth his 
 spirit than he that taketh a city/' These laws 
 expressed in the Old Testament are the founda- 
 tions of civilization. How wonderful that in the 
 few lines of the last ^ve commandments is con- 
 densed the entire question of sin, which is de- 
 struction in any form. 
 
 It has been argued that in spite of the original 
 strong commands not to kill nor to destroy, since 
 Biblical times there has always been war with its 
 enormous destruction. If we look a little further, 
 we see that war has never undermined the founda- 
 tions of civilization, for peace and improvement 
 of the race have always followed. War is com- 
 parable to a faulty superstructure on a firm and 
 solid foundation, upon which the race, as soon as 
 the lust and excitement have calmed down, again 
 starts to rebuild. Then, further, should we not 
 examine findings which in the medical world are 
 also teaching and proving the necessity for truth? 
 Science and religion have been thought to dis- 
 , agree and to have a different work to perform. 
 But when we search for the etymology and origi- 
 nal significance they seem to have a similar mean- 
 ing. The teachings of laws to promote a just and 
 
 252 
 
TEACHING OF EIGHT AND WRONG 
 
 peaceful life are found in other religions than the 
 Christian. 
 
 A child absorbs much of his knowledge of right 
 and wrong from his daily surroundings by copy- 
 ing the sayings and conduct of his elders. For 
 instance, at a Sunday table several children were 
 lunching together. They began an argument 
 about some conduct in their school, blaming one of 
 the absent schoolmates for starting some mischief. 
 The argument became heated, when a little five- 
 year-old girl who had been listening very quietly, 
 said **Sh! sh! sh! my mother says you must al- 
 ways talk about nice things at the table.'' The 
 mother did not remember giving such instruction 
 in the little girPs presence, but the *^ little 
 pitcher*' was always filling up with her mother's 
 wisdom and found this an appropriate occasion 
 to pour out some of mother's teachings. 
 
 When investigating an untruthful child in an 
 analysis, I found the mother, a woman of fine 
 social standing, to be in her social life an invet- 
 erate teller of white lies. Not for the world would 
 she have hurt any one's feelings, so she smiled at 
 her hostesses or guests with sweet sayings, but 
 in the family circle spoke of her annoyance. She 
 had gushingly invited her niece and little grand- 
 niece to come and stay through the period of in- 
 fantile paralysis, told her niece how delighted she 
 would be to have her and little grandniece, how 
 she loved babies, and how dear baby Susan was. 
 
 253 
 
THE PEOBLEM OF THE NEEV0U8 CHH^D 
 
 But after the arrival of niece and grandniece, the 
 hostess began confidentially to remark to her 
 sister bridge players that baby Susan's toys were 
 so disturbing, and baby Susan was never still, 
 she was such a chatterbox. Madame 's morning 
 nap was always broken by the early rising of baby 
 Susan. And, strange to say, this silly, selfish 
 woman was sympathized with, and the niece and 
 little grandniece were considered as very thought- 
 less and inconsiderate. The untruthful child has 
 to learn of her mother's untruthfulness, but this 
 knowledge can be adjusted by explanation of 
 mamma's being too impulsive for her own good, 
 and undertaking more than she can accomplish. 
 
 Untruthfulness is most frequently caused by 
 fear and timidity, and by repression. If the child 
 told the truth, he would be punished and threat- 
 ened by the parent. This would inhibit and block 
 the outflow of life in the child, a most dangerous 
 thing because it frequently causes serious forms 
 of nervous troubles, epilepsy, tics and functional 
 disturbances. People who demand the truth from 
 a child or inferior in a threatening voice deserve 
 more contempt and punishment than the untruth- 
 ful one. Truth can be elicited from a guilty child 
 by sympathy more easily and exactly than it can 
 be extracted by fear. No one is born truthful 
 or honest. Parents and teachers often make it 
 extremely difficult for a child to tell the truth, and 
 when we have departed from our ignorant 
 
 254 
 
TEACHING OF EIGHT AND WRONG 
 
 methods of punishment (with their cruel and bar- 
 barous ways of demanding the truth) there will be 
 more truth and virtue in mankind. 
 
 A child's quick ear heard her mother tell her 
 father a new hat had cost ten dollars and then tell 
 a visitor that it had cost twenty dollars. The child 
 said nothing, but the knowledge that her mother 
 was a liar haunted her for years. And later she 
 became very untruthful. She married, and after 
 the birth of her first child, she was ill with a form 
 of nervous trouble diagnosed as Dementia Prae- 
 cox. In her analysis the question was always pre- 
 senting itself in the unconscious. Why was her 
 mother untruthful! Was every one untruthful? 
 Was her father to blame? In her sleep she saw 
 some one (herself) carrying on her head a figure 
 of a woman (her mother and herself), a composite 
 personality, wound up and swathed like a mummy, 
 as she had seen Italian women carrying burdens 
 on their heads, and so we discovered the cause of 
 the dementia. The burden that was too heavy for 
 her brain to carry was her mother's timidity and 
 weakness or childishness of character, which had 
 made her afraid to tell her neighbour the hat had 
 cost only ten dollars, in the wish to appear as 
 wealthy and powerful as the neighbour. 
 
 THE WISH IN LYING AND STEALING 
 
 An untruthful person has always something in 
 the unconscious which he unconsciously wishes to 
 
 255 
 
THE PROBLEM OP THE KERVOUS CHHiD 
 
 hidfe. Such a person lacks a large enough outlet 
 for Ms energy, the emotions are blocked by some 
 restrictions and there occurs what we call a re- 
 pression. As the cause of a repression is hidden 
 from the consciousness, it follows that punish- 
 ments, reformatories, religious advice, frequently 
 increase the untruthfulness. It has been consid- 
 ered as a bad habit, as an indication of weakness 
 of character, but it is not yet generally known 
 that the remedy consists in a proper method of 
 education through an analytic procedure and 
 broadening of the person's life through larger in- 
 terests. Likewise in kleptomania there are emo- 
 tional complications. Always there is an unful- 
 filled wish in the unconscious, and frequently of 
 such a character that the wish fulfillment is im- 
 possible. ^^The mechanism of kleptomania is as 
 follows : 
 
 1. Relatively normal development with inclina- 
 tion to temporary regressions of libido to self-love 
 or self-pity. 
 
 2. Patient reaches a stage in life where a par- 
 ticular effort would be needed in order to be 
 adapted to the requirements of his existence. 
 
 3. He shrinks back from this necessity, because 
 it seems to him to be too expensive, or to require 
 a sacrifice of the infantile wish to have everything 
 given to him by the all-providing mother prin- 
 ciple. 
 
 4. He forgets (represses) the thought of this 
 
 256 
 
TEACHING OF EIGHT AND WRONG 
 
 necessity of effort and turns his attentions, uncon- 
 sciously to 
 
 5. Unconscious infantile and archaic wishes, 
 which, fed by the libido that is not urged toward 
 the difficult accomplishment, arise in place of the 
 fulfilling of the task. 
 
 6. He tries to repress those wishes, but they 
 break through and force him to 
 
 7. Steal. This only shows that the poor fellow 
 must steal because he has such a psychological 
 past. 
 
 8. He need not steal if he would return to his 
 serious task'' ^ and could find satisfaction in doing 
 it. The spirit of rivalry and competition pro- 
 motes growth. 
 
 It has already been explained that telling a per- 
 son of a moral defect never cures him, it is only by 
 having the mirror held before him in a psycho- 
 analysis of the unconscious so that he sees there 
 deformed, unethical wishes, or perhaps wishes 
 which have been repressed and which should come 
 to light for greater growth of character. 
 
 A group of individuals who lack continuity of 
 purpose and show no capacity for continuous ex- 
 penditure of effort in any one direction generally 
 exhibit anomalies of character such as shiftless- 
 ness and even alcoholism. Their life ^4s one long 
 contradiction between the apparent wealth of 
 means and poverty of results." Also there are 
 
 1 Quoted froro letter of Dr. Jung to author. 
 
 257 
 
THE PKOBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHH^D 
 
 many weak characters who are led into criminal 
 acts and who seem to lack the ordinary moral in- 
 hibitions. Perhaps they have been ethically de- 
 fective from birth. Perhaps the moral conscious- 
 ness is lacking because of poisonous moral atmos- 
 phere or of a starved body and soul in childhood. 
 This group of psychopathic individuals is an 
 enormous social problem, and the solution of these 
 most difficult enigmas will come only when the im- 
 portance of the nervous make-up of the individual 
 is more appreciated. 
 
 Another difficulty which parents meet is in 
 teaching children the value of money, and its right 
 and wrong uses. In every life there is a craving 
 and longing for something, an unsatisfied feeling 
 which we try to appease in various ways, in food, 
 in reading, in restless wandering, in patronizing 
 soda fountains, in ice cream sundaes, in alcohol, in 
 clothes, in short almost anything money will buy. 
 It is this thing called life we are searching for, 
 and working for the power to express ourselves 
 causes many a person to become a spendthrift. 
 Money is the easiest thing to spend ; it promises 
 quicker results, but as we are frequently spend- 
 thrifts of our energy in using it for unproductive 
 efforts, these acts are comparable to a child's mas- 
 turbation. It is verily a form of self-abuse, as for 
 instance when we are **Jack of all trades but 
 master of none.'' We play at learning in study- 
 ing various subjects for a short time, or attempt 
 
 258 
 
TEACHING OF EIGHT AND WRONG 
 
 several kinds of work and are not a success in 
 any. It is akin to the child's play, but not to the 
 work of the master. 
 
 The parents surrounded by luxury will find it 
 quite impossible to teach their children economy. 
 The parents may talk economy, and even practice 
 economy in some self-denial, but the child is much 
 too clever to be fooled by the parent's ^* bluff." 
 In too many cases the parents need to learn the 
 truth about themselves. The father who criti- 
 cizes his son for unnecessary expenses and yet al- 
 lows himself luxurious hotels in travelling, lux- 
 urious home surroundings and expensive clothes 
 for his family, feels that he has a right to his own 
 money and that similar extravagance would be 
 unwise for his children; and he is quite right in 
 thinking so. In allowing himself habits of waste 
 and idleness he extends them to his children, but 
 as his children learn more by imitation than pre- 
 cept they will not understand the parental reason- 
 ing. 
 
 The mother who dearly loves to go to ^*a nice 
 quiet place" for a week's rest, holds out the same 
 prospect to her children and expects them to feel 
 the same delight. Poor, foolish little mother with 
 her lack of reasoning power! Her children need 
 activity and she needs rest, yet she sees no dif- 
 ference between her needs and her children's and 
 is disappointed with their unsympathetic re- 
 marks. Likewise, the parents, more especially the 
 
 259 
 
THE PROBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHH^D 
 
 mother, who has bought the children's clothes 
 since their infancy, never try at the same time to 
 teach their children values of material, but over- 
 rule the child's wish in selection until such a time 
 ^comes in the adolescent years that nature is push- 
 ing the child away from its childhood, when there 
 is often rebellion on the child's part. There is no 
 more pitiful sight than to see the children's ef- 
 forts in these adolescent years to free themselves 
 from their childhood in attempts at self-assertion, 
 independent opinions, desire for freedom and 
 space to roam, while the parents hold fast to their 
 children with no idea of helping them but only to 
 restrict, threaten, punish and make things diffi- 
 cult and impossible until the child is driven to des- 
 peration and ends with criminal acts, or sinks 
 back to the child condition the parent likes so 
 much and therefore becomes ** nervous," or, as 
 in some cases, he has even been judged defective. 
 Underneath all the outward manifestations of 
 effort to satisfy the hunger is the underlying 
 craving for power. Mankind have not learned yet 
 that they can attain it only by struggle and sus- 
 tained effort. To teach our children, by example, 
 habits of thrift and industry is more important 
 than the college education. Always to hold out 
 the helping hand in speaking words of encourage- 
 ment for work well done will lead the young life 
 on and up more than the rebukes and criticism 
 so frequent in the home environment. 
 
 260 
 
TEACHING OF RIGHT AND WRONG 
 
 GBOWTH OP INDIVIDUALITY 
 
 Teaching of right and wrong can never be im- 
 parted in the form of lessons. The real teaching 
 comes from the subtle suggestions of truth 
 through the natural processes — directly through 
 persons and things — of the environment. It is 
 the truth of our complete being, of our personal 
 relationship with the true centre of gravity of our 
 life which our children absorb from us. This con- 
 duct of right living is attained in childhood by a 
 daily life in a place where the truth of the spirit- 
 ual world is felt as an unseen influence, and is not 
 obscured by a crowd of necessities assuming arti- 
 ficial importance. More truth is gained by the 
 child surrounded by uncomplaining adversity 
 and hardship than by the one surrounded by lux- 
 ury. By *' uncomplaining adversity" I mean the 
 person who does not blame his adversities and 
 hardships to his surroundings but works to con- 
 quer and overcome them. The more spiritual 
 truth we gain the more we have to give. But 
 when a man adopts it as his profession to teach 
 truth to others he should remember that a path 
 is not made by the caprice of one individual. 
 Instead of calling to the crowd to leave their path 
 to follow his he had better first follow the path 
 with them and live their life to learn their experi- 
 ences, that he may teach from practice rather than 
 theory. 
 
 261 
 
THE PEOBLEM OF THE NEEV0U8 CHILD 
 
 The parent who would give the end-results of 
 his life to his children, hoping they will profit by 
 his experience and begin their lives where his 
 stops, is about as unreasonable as would be an 
 athlete who expected his children to be born with 
 their father's muscular development. Each child 
 must start the lesson of life at the beginning. 
 The scientist's or the millionaire's son has to be 
 born as helpless and ignorant as the poorest 
 child and each one must begin the struggle for 
 the existence of his distinct individuality as 
 against the individuality of his environment. It 
 is a dual relationship of the child, with himself 
 and the universe. The vital interest of the child is 
 constantly enlarging in scope and intensity and 
 the consciousness is spreading over a larger area. 
 This expansion of the individuality has to be con- 
 stantly maintained through the complex relation- 
 ship of a life emerging from a prenatal existence 
 into a world of separate being. The more perfect 
 the harmony of this world through sympathy of 
 unity and separateness, the more perfect becomes 
 the growth of individuality. It is an evil hour 
 when this inter-relationship is checked or inter- 
 fered with. Therefore, life on its negative side 
 has to maintain a separateness from all else, 
 while, on the positive side, it maintains unity with 
 the universe of life. In this unity lies the fulfil- 
 ment of existence. 
 
 The mind as well as the body has its negative 
 262 
 
TEACHING OF EIGHT AND WRONG 
 
 and positive aspects of separateness and unity. 
 The dualism of consciousness in a child, as in an 
 animal, consists of what is and what is desired, 
 whereas in the adult, it changes to a conflict be- 
 tween what is and is desired and what is and what 
 should be desired. What is desired dwells in the 
 heart of the natural life which we share with ani- 
 mals and of which we are unconscious, but that 
 which should be desired belongs to the life which 
 is beyond and must be won. 
 
 The only discipline worth having is a natural 
 one got by interest and habit. We require order 
 and attention from children, and demand that 
 higher discipline which is habitual and has become 
 so by the operations of interest. Sincere en- 
 deavour and honesty of purpose can be relied 
 upon only under conditions that favour their con- 
 continuation. Force or compulsion of any kind, 
 however necessary it may be, blunts honesty, dulls 
 the zeal of the most whole-hearted efforts, and, 
 if it comes with too much strength, will spoil all. 
 The child works for the love of doing, his hearty 
 interest is a powerful force which will eventually 
 carry a heavy load to its destination. The sum 
 total of existence is to do everything with 
 one's whole heart; the child will do so if we 
 do not interfere by our criticisms and our 
 mistaken ideas of help. Beware of attempting 
 to make water run up a hill, instead of flowing 
 around it. 
 
 263 
 
THE PROBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHILD 
 
 LIVE AND IjET LIVE 
 
 When the child's growing mind does not work 
 in an orderly manner and scorns systematic prog- 
 ress, but leaps back and forth over the field of 
 study and discipline, now soaring like a skylark 
 full of enthusiasm, now down in the blackness of 
 despair, feeling hopeless and helpless — it is ob- 
 vious to me where the trouble lies. Consciously 
 or unconsciously, the parent or teacher has 
 worked on his own lines, not in and for the chil- 
 dren. There may have been a beautiful system 
 with a course of bringing up, schemed, guided and 
 ordered by admirable theories, but failing to in- 
 terest the child. Let us remember that without 
 interest there is no learning but only a mechani- 
 cal poll-parrot method of memorizing with no as- 
 similation of the truth or meaning in the words. 
 If the same thought, memorized in certain words, 
 is presented in other words, the child will not 
 understand, nor can the poll-parrot-learned sen- 
 tences be told in other words. A pupil giving the 
 definition of ^* physics'' used the words she had 
 learned in her school book and could not accept 
 any other, although she understood none of what 
 she had learned. Truth can be made attractive, 
 whether presented in textbooks or lessons from 
 experience. But when lessons are made a mere 
 drudgery, with all the child's wishes thinned out, 
 there is no value to life for the child. The child 
 
 264 
 
TEACHING OF EIGHT AND WRONG 
 
 must live fully, we all must live fully, by doing 
 those things thoroughly we have a natural desire 
 to do, upon the principle of **live and let live/' 
 Thus we do not hinder others who have the same 
 rights of existence as we have, nor impair any of 
 our own energies in any of the ways described. 
 Right and wrong in the adult life is the same as 
 in the child's. 
 
 The game must be played fair, the rules obeyed, 
 and what is more, the sense of fair play must be 
 felt as giving for value received. The gamble of 
 getting something for nothing is a dangerous 
 policy to pursue, leading to false opinions and 
 false values. The directions toward right are the 
 promptings of the human heart by which we live, 
 the surge of nature is subject to the control of 
 reason, but reason is not the compelling force. 
 Thoughts and deeds can be judged as right and 
 wrong only as they further or retard the one end 
 of life, which is more life. To live in accord with 
 our nature, giving scope and exercise to every 
 power and faculty, brings the positive feeling of 
 well-being, which comes only with the fitness of 
 every nerve and muscle, the negative of which is 
 the functional neurosis. There is a fullness of 
 life that can come only to the spirit of mankind in 
 the free play of all his natural desires, controlled 
 but not repressed. We should remember that 
 **vice is only virtue misdirected, power ill- 
 used." 
 
 265 
 
THE PEOBLEM OF THE NEEVOUS CHH^D 
 
 'EOTTEN'' dispositioit 
 
 We must keep alive this fullness of living, not 
 let it sink into indulgence, indolence or inaction. 
 If the energies are pent up which should be 
 brought out in daily play, they accumulate, and 
 as the energy, the libido, is the most vital and 
 powerful force upon which we depend for our 
 well-being, an accumulation often means there 
 must be some kind of explosion when it will come 
 out. The greater the accumulation the greater 
 must be our eifort to get rid of it or it will be- 
 come stifling, insufferable and poisonous to the 
 moral well-being. The assimilation of knowledge 
 and experiences in thought and reasoning brings 
 an emotional reaction and is analogous to the 
 process of metabolism by which our bodies live in 
 a continuous process of change and readjustment. 
 As the waste matters of the body are eliminated 
 in proportion as living tissue is created, so must 
 our mental and spiritual life go on by performing 
 equally its two-sided function of emotional as- 
 similation and elimination. Buried and repressed 
 emotions which are retained in the unconscious, 
 like food retained in the body unassimilated, de- 
 compose, decay. A buried emotion even rots. We 
 hear the phrase, *^a rotten disposition" without 
 realizing how literally true it is. Good impulses 
 cannot spring from a *' rotten '^ disposition; but it 
 is wrong to condemn such a person. As well 
 
 266 
 
TEACHING OF EIGHT AND WEONG 
 
 condemn a person with blood-poisoning when 
 aseptic surgery is needed, and the ^^ rotten' ' dis- 
 position needs aseptic mental surgery. 
 
 There is a belief prevalent among hard-headed 
 business men and capable, efficient women, that 
 because they are doing really good work in their 
 line and their own life is successful, they are quite 
 capable of managing their family affairs. They 
 are frequently the cause of this rotten disposition 
 in their children, being about as able to keep the 
 disposition of their children aseptic as they would 
 be to use the surgeon's aseptic dressings. We 
 know we cannot make a pear tree out of an apple 
 tree, but think we can make a lawyer out of a 
 commercial man, a doctor out of a man with lit- 
 erary ability. This belief extends from the head 
 of a family to the ruler of a nation, who, because 
 his government has reached a high state of effi- 
 ciency wishes to govern all the other nations in 
 his way. He who covers the most ground is not 
 the best traveller, but he who has the most delight 
 in his journey, has lived each hour to its fullest ; 
 for he will have added so much to his equipment 
 that he will have more to give for the betterment 
 of the race.. 
 
 On the other hand, he who has covered as much 
 ground as possible will have so exhausted him- 
 self that, far from being able to add to the better- 
 ment, he will need to ask aid to recuperate his 
 wasted energies. One who sows more than he 
 
 267 
 
THE PEOBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHK.D 
 
 can reap, and will not allow others to reap it, is 
 like the ruler who has delusions of his own power 
 and will not share and co-operate with others. 
 On such occasions new ideals must be set up by 
 those ruled, and hope takes another direction. 
 "When the ideal must change, both for children 
 and nations, creeds, doctrines and opinions are 
 remodelled. It is a spirit of revolution which de- 
 velops and represents a clearing away of old 
 dogmas of the perfection of rulers, a breaking 
 away from bondage of authority, an upsetting of 
 ihe tables from which the nourishment is gone. 
 It is a hard hour in the life of a ^hild when he 
 discovers his parents over-stepping the limits of 
 propriety as originally bounded. If the child can 
 make a restatement in his own mind of the direc- 
 tion and aim to follow, his adolescence and re- 
 adjustment will be accomplished. Sooner or later 
 the child must see the flaws in the parental make- 
 up, and the parent is wise who does not pretend 
 perfection, but, when necessary, forestalls that 
 knowledge by admitting his mistakes in judgment 
 and with the child searches for the right or wrong 
 method by discussions or experiments. Interest 
 must be the starting-point in all we do, or we shall 
 not do w^ll. The urge of necessity arouses inter- 
 est and ambition; the ambitious child will be an 
 apt pupil. 
 
 268 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 SELF AND CHARACTER 
 
 ''Self comes to itself only through society, and 
 as a member of society. The self apart from other 
 selves is nothing." 
 
 The person who is at all concerned with psy- 
 chology will find it especially interesting to study 
 in himself the growth of knowledge of his own 
 self, and his gradual formation of self-regarding 
 sentiments because this particular phase of mental 
 development has an obvious bearing, not only 
 upon his own practical problems but also upon 
 those who constitute his family and intimates. It 
 exemplifies in a very striking manner the depend- 
 ence of the individual upon the society of which 
 he is a member. 
 
 We are apt to think nothing is so directly the 
 private possession of each one of us as his own 
 self and the idea of himself, and yet in fact, if 
 we were isolated and impervious individuals we 
 would never be persons at all. As though to 
 guard against too much shutting up of one's self 
 away from mankind, a deep instinct, the herd in- 
 stinct, is implanted in us. The distinctions each 
 one of us draws between himself and other per- 
 sons and things are not by any means so clear or 
 
 269 
 
THE PEOBLEM OF THE NERVOUiS CBILD 
 
 consistent as we often suppose, and it is the busi- 
 ness of psychology to inquire whether our knowl- 
 edge is consistent and reasonable. Psychology 
 shows us that we distinguish ourselves from others 
 and that we regard ourselves as permanently on 
 this side of insanity, although we cannot say as 
 much for the other members of society. *'Am I 
 the man I think I am!^' would be a very valuable 
 question for each individual to ask himself. The 
 supposedly loveliest mother may be weakly in- 
 dulgent, the stern, fussy discipline of parent or 
 teacher may be hiding the weakness of a bully who 
 would run from a man of his size. 
 
 GROWTH OF SELF 
 
 Every seed, whether plant, animal or human 
 being, contains a form of life which cannot be 
 changed (temperament). We accept that fact in 
 growing our flowers and vegetables, putting cer- 
 tain ones in the shade, others in strong sunlight. 
 We know the luscious melons will only grow to fine 
 crispness in rich, heavy loam. We give our ani- 
 mals the food they need for their best develop- 
 ment, the horse has his hay and oats, the cow her 
 corn fodder and bran mash. We do not blame the 
 melons for not growing where the celery will, nor 
 kick the horse because he needs oats when the 
 cow does not, but we blame our children when they 
 do not thrive on the treatment we mete out to 
 
 270 
 
SELF AND CHARACTER 
 
 them. If we had to pay a large price, many thou- 
 sand dollars, before we were allowed to have a 
 child, would we feel we possessed a greater treas- 
 ure in each child! The mother gives in sacrifice 
 and suffering and risks her life for each child, 
 the father gives nothing. If he is the fine strong 
 character of the ideal man he will give of sym- 
 pathy and deepest love when he sees his wife in 
 the throes of childbirth, the child will be a divine 
 proof of her love for him and make their union 
 sacred. 
 
 But too often mankind accepts children in a 
 spirit of accumulation, and is proud to show its 
 reproductive power. Fine children bespeak a 
 clean life and fine parents. When the child is 
 accepted merely as an addition to his father ^s pos- 
 sessions, or as a care and problem to a tired 
 mother, the child will necessarily become a prob- 
 lem, instead of a fine, healthy human animal, and 
 may become a nervous child. ^ ' What is th^ matter 
 with the Jones family? Some of them are always 
 sick, they are really tiresome, ' ' we frequently hear 
 said. The Jones family are to be pitied, they may 
 be very conscientious and doing their best. But 
 while the children are being ^' loved to death" by 
 one part of the family, and the other part is 
 preaching — ''Spare the rod and spoil the child," 
 they are being pulled two ways and cannot become 
 firmly planted for good growth. 
 
 We do not generally suppose that even the more 
 271 
 
THE PROBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHILB 
 
 intelligent animals, such as the dog, reflect on 
 themselves and their character. We probably ad- 
 mit, however, that in perception they seem to 
 distinguish their bodies from all other things and 
 in some rudimentary way to recognize them as 
 their own. But it is quite conceivable that some 
 conscious beings do not make even this elemen- 
 tary distinction, and that their bodies always re- 
 main as strange to them as its tail seems to be to 
 the kitten who chases it, or its toes to the baby 
 who tries to cut his teeth on them. We adults 
 ordinarily think of ourselves as slightly em- 
 bodied. 
 
 We may at times distinguish between soul and 
 body and regard the former as particularly our 
 own, but, when for example, we say we are going 
 to read, or play a game of golf, or we have a head- 
 ache, the body seems a very prominent part of 
 ourselves. We could not play golf without a body. 
 Could we read without a body? Shut your eyes 
 and read from memory a sign painted on a fence. 
 The eyes have been educated by the brain to read, 
 but without a brain the eyes could not have learned 
 to read. In a word, we think of ourselves as being 
 a body, we see it, while the awareness of our per- 
 sonal identity depends not only upon the sensory 
 experiences which we are constantly receiving 
 from various parts of our body, but also upon the 
 emotional experiences which we have received. 
 Then the child learning how to run, to throw a 
 
 272 
 
SELF AND CHARACTER 
 
 ball, to dance to music, learns not merely how to 
 do things, hut what it feels like to do them. Edu- 
 cation consists not merely in doing, but in feeling. 
 The rosebud must feel the warm sun's rays before 
 expanding into the blossom and so the budding out 
 or building out of the self and character is aided 
 by the intelligent sympathy and complete under- 
 standing of parents and teachers. Thus the 
 process of learning to understand oneself and of 
 learning to understand others are really one. It 
 is useless for physician, teacher or parent to at- 
 tempt working with the emotions of others with- 
 out first understanding his own by a thorough 
 psychoanalysis. That should be required of every 
 life, especially in those attempting human guid- 
 ance. We cannot come to understand the be- 
 haviour and emotions and motives of others ex- 
 cept by interpreting them in the light of our 
 own. *^The proper study of mankind is man.'* 
 (Pope.) 
 
 We see the children's conception of themselves 
 reflect the attitude of others toward them, nor is 
 this much less true of adults. Few of us can with- 
 stand flattery if long continued. We may resist at 
 first, but soon we fancy ourselves to be all that 
 we hear. In schools and at home this is important, 
 especially among adolescents, who are generally 
 very sensitive to the opinion of their seniors and 
 equals. It is remarkable how often a boy on leav- 
 ing school and entering a new circle of acquaint- 
 
 273 
 
THE PROBLEM OF THE NERVOUlS CHH^D 
 
 ance will belie a firmly established school reputa- 
 tion, particularly if it was bad. He told a few 
 lies when be first went to school, or perhaps 
 offended against a schoolboy's code of morals, 
 and from that time he was counted a liar or a 
 sneak and knew that every one counted him as one, 
 so he comes to think of himself as worthless and 
 continues to act as worthless. The same thing 
 happens when a delicate or nervous child is sent 
 away from home. He will grow and thrive until 
 he meets the same home influence. When he meets 
 the original obstruction, which previously blocked 
 his flow of health, he becomes ill or nervous again. 
 But when he comes out into the world, and hon- 
 esty and honour are expected of him, his conduct 
 improves with the conception of his own char- 
 acter, which he gets by comparison with what he 
 learns of others. The schoolmaster's problem is 
 difficult, no doubt, in dealing with such a boy. 
 Punishments and pious talks are often equally 
 useless ; the punishment will be no encouragement, 
 and as the child cannot act with the purpose of an 
 adult he acts largely on impulse. If the punish- 
 ment is too heavy to suit the mental power of the 
 child it merely has a stunting effect. A pious talk 
 is usually above the child's reach. The master 
 should at least remember this, that whenever he 
 shows a boy he has lost all confidence in him, 
 he can never do to that boy anything but 
 harm. 
 
 274 
 
SELF AND CHARACTER 
 
 NEGATIVISM 
 
 In previous pages we noted the tendency of the 
 child to imitation, which enables it to live through 
 the experiences of others, as his first means of 
 fitting himself into his social surroundings. We 
 now have to note another tendency, namely, 
 opposition, as it is often called — technically, 
 negativism. In the small baby's anger there is 
 implied a kind of opposition to the world, but the 
 tendency to opposition most frequently shows that 
 the individual has been prevented from fitting him- 
 self into his social surroundings and in opposing 
 them is following the instinct of self-assertion. 
 These tendencies of the child are termed obstinacy 
 and showing-off, but in asserting what is at first 
 a very rudimentary self, the child enriches its 
 knowledge of itself and others. This self-assertive 
 tendency is shown by a child, even a very young 
 child, when he feels himself misunderstood, among 
 people either younger, weaker or less capable. In 
 the presence of superiority, this tendency to self- 
 assertion expresses itself in bashfulness or feel- 
 ings of inferiority. Never make your child or any 
 person feel inferior, endeavour always to lift up 
 by the desire to learn. You are as weak as the 
 child if you show your superiority. 
 
 In actual life the tendency to opposition may 
 take an anti-social direction. We see it in the 
 man who seeks his advantage at the expense of 
 
 275 
 
THE PROBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHILD 
 
 others, and who in his unconscious thought is still 
 trying to accumulate, to feed the unsatisfied wants 
 of childhood. He thinks only of himself, we call 
 him selfish, but he is searching for power and is 
 able to express it only in dollars and cents. We 
 see the anti-social tendency in castles in the air, 
 which he has not found in reality. The eccentric 
 appears unusual, he does not follow the herd, he 
 has been trampled on and is bleating for mother 
 to sympathize with him. Opposition frequently 
 hides ignorance, for if he did not oppose he feels 
 he might betray his failures, so he figuratively 
 builds a wall of what successes he has had and 
 hides behind it, shouting out his opinions on sub- 
 jects, the meaning of which is hidden from himself. 
 The world calls such a person conceited. If man- 
 kind simply accepted all opinions and imitated one 
 another's habits, no progress would be possible. 
 Initiative, inventiveness, obstinacy, opposition, 
 are all efforts for self-assertion and are necessary 
 to the most unselfish men if they are to do any- 
 thing great, as necessary to the man who fights for 
 justice and honesty as to the man who fights for 
 his private gain, which is for honesty for him- 
 self. 
 
 Both self-satisfaction and lack of self-confidence 
 in either child or man are a hindrance to progress, 
 not in the process of learning, but in the growth of 
 character. When the tendencies to self-assertion 
 and its opposite are properly balanced, their com- 
 
 276 
 
SELF AND CHARACTER 
 
 bination is a constant incentive to progress. In 
 psychoanalysis a person is enabled to see how far 
 he falls short of the required balance, he learns the 
 cause of the ineffective struggle to attain the de- 
 sired result. As long as he measures himself up 
 with what he is and what he ought to be, he will 
 push on until a higher stage is reached; when he 
 becomes self-respecting in the full sense he no 
 longer wonders what others will think of him, but 
 what he will think of himself if he behaves in a 
 certain way. 
 
 The child or individual who lacks confidence 
 fails to improve just because he thinks himself 
 incapable of improving, and the difficulty in such 
 a case is that more individual treatment is needed 
 than can be given a child in class work, or the indi- 
 vidual who is treated by textbook knowledge. 
 Step by step must such a case be helped, showing 
 that the patient is able to do what seemed impos- 
 sible, until he feels more belief in himself. Much 
 caution, learned from experience, is necessary in 
 leading such a case to self-confidence, or it may 
 produce a kind of hidden priggish conceit in him, 
 leaving him outwardly as ineffective as ever. 
 Dream analysis is the only method of accurately 
 watching the progress of the individual in his 
 restoration to confidence. The reasons for such a 
 condition of lacking confidence in one 's ability are 
 many, sometimes from unbalanced discipline at 
 home, often from bullying in school. 
 
 277 
 
THE PROBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHH^D 
 
 OVEB-CONFroENCE 
 
 Exaggerated self-confidence is even more deadly 
 to a well-rounded life, for he who is already per- 
 fect in his own estimation has not incentive for 
 improvement. And as the world does not find 
 him perfect, but is rather bored by his conceited 
 self-satisfaction, he feels he is not appreciated or 
 understood. Mild delusions of grandeur and per- 
 secution are found and the patient retires into 
 himself with an outward form of work which 
 means nothing to the world, but affords the great- 
 est satisfaction to the patient. The work chosen 
 by a person suifering from exaggerated self-satis- 
 faction or conceit is a symbol of the cause of the 
 conceit. It frequently takes the form of religion, 
 among scientific minds it takes the form of re- 
 search work, not the legitimate research of the 
 true scientist who is searching for vital truth that 
 helps mankind, but the search for an answer to the 
 question why satisfaction is lacking in the pa- 
 tient's life. Mathematicians suffering nervous 
 breakdowns discover in a psychoanalysis that 
 they have been figuring on the solution of 
 their unknown personal problems. In one in- 
 stance, a professor of mathematics, unmarried, 
 could not listen to music without suffering from 
 great excitement and pain in the head. Fear that 
 he would hear music haunted and gradually over- 
 came him, he lost all reasoning power, and re- 
 
 278 
 
SELF AND CHARACTER 
 
 signed his position. He had read of the theories 
 of psychoanalysis and sought relief in its methods. 
 Then it was discovered that he had been unsuc- 
 cessful in all love affairs. His attentions were at 
 first returned by the girl, then she became more 
 distant on each occasion until a definite refusal 
 was given. Into the last love affair he had put 
 all his love, hopes and ambitions, but after a few 
 months came evasive answers. The wedding day 
 was not yet possible, his fiancee said, and then she 
 left him for an extended tour with an uncertain 
 whereabouts, and an address through her bankers. 
 Letters soon became rare and ceased, she giving 
 only the unsatisfactory reason that they were not 
 suited to each other. He searched his memory for 
 the cause of his love failures. He led an exem- 
 plary life, was finely educated, well-bred, artistic, 
 with a sure appreciation of beauty. 
 
 As he thought always of why he was refused, 
 he began to make charts of everything to illus- 
 trate his explanations and covered pages with 
 figures, outside of his class room. In a railway 
 train he was always figuring on some problem, 
 he would take infinite pains in drawing charts, 
 going into minute detail which interested no one 
 and was of no use. In his dreams he was con- 
 stantly being threatened with a danger, and often 
 he was following some one or going along with a 
 number of people and imitating them. This fur- 
 nished the explanation of his love affairs ending 
 
 279 
 
THE PROBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHILD 
 
 so unhappily for him. Always in life, he was fol- 
 lowing, but was never the leader. He lacked in- 
 itiative, he approached people more as a woman 
 or a child, expecting encouragement, favours and 
 sympathetic advice, than as a man to make place 
 for himself and his work. He could not under- 
 stand that he was a failure in the eyes of his 
 sweethearts. They saw his inability to advance, 
 but he was perfectly satisfied with himself. Early 
 scholastic honours had won too much praise from 
 his family and friends so that he became very 
 conceited, and refined home surroundings had 
 softened and weakened his power of resistance. 
 He had never sown any wild oats. The ** treat 
 'em rough '' method was what he needed to 
 strengthen his energy, to arouse a passion of 
 conquest. But so deeply rooted were his false 
 idea-weeds of character, that he travelled for three 
 years from one analyst to another, calling the un- 
 conscious material of his dreams * ^ stuff, ' ' until he 
 found one strong enough to break down his re- 
 sistance, when he saw himself quite plainly as a 
 jackass in the following dream: 
 
 ^^A queer-loohing animal was coming toward 
 me, it looked like a hull-dog with marks of a fleur- 
 de-lis on its forehead, it grew very large and he- 
 came a hig hird like an eagle. The animal seemed 
 to want me to pet it. I was afraid of it and put on 
 a heavy pair of gloves hefore touching it, hut I 
 did not touch it, and for a while I stood looking 
 
 280 
 
SELF AND CHARACTER 
 
 at it. Then its wings spread and it flew away; 
 looked like cm eagle. It did not like me and was 
 im a hurry to get away. I then went up some 
 stadrs to a donkey pen, enclosed with bars, the 
 floor was filthy. I see^med to he m the pen, or 
 near it, eating somethimg like snow or like snow 
 ice cream, which when children, we made of snow, 
 mMk amd sugar.'' 
 
 Analysis of the dream showed the patient saw 
 the animal part of his nature coming toward him, 
 in the form of sexual desires and was afraid of 
 it in his love affairs. His first love affair had been 
 with an English girl (bull-dog) ; the second with 
 a French girl (fleur-de-lis) ; and the third with an 
 American girl (eagle). She had left him without 
 giving a reason, had become interested in scientific 
 work and succeeded in engineering and surveying 
 with large financial returns. While she was meas- 
 uring large areas, he was working on tiny dia- 
 grams. His ambitions only led to the company of 
 jackasses like himself, while she soared above him, 
 and he made a childish mess of his life (snow 
 cream) instead of doing real things, making real 
 food. In the dream the floor of the jackass pen 
 was filthy, the patient having discovered that un- 
 married life did not lead to clean ways of thinking 
 and living. 
 
 The analysis of this patient further showed that 
 an ambitious mother in his early years had closely 
 watched him, selecting his friends and studies, 
 
 281 
 
THE PEOBLEM OP THE NERVOUS CmLD 
 
 and had attempted to start him in a commercial 
 life, bnt tie clung to mathematics and was accepted 
 as a teacher in a college. In his dreams he was 
 first figuring how to get away from his mother, 
 and later how to keep his sweetheart. His mother 
 always tried to make him perfect. ISTo one else 
 cared what he was, and this he could not under- 
 stand. 
 
 AN UNNUKTUKED SOUL 
 
 An epileptic, a man, an only child, forty years 
 old, parents not living, came for an analysis, 
 hoping to be freed from his attacks. He had 
 never had a love affair, his mother had done all 
 his thinking for him, and, as she was very deli- 
 cate, had always surrounded him with don'ts, fear- 
 ing that he, too, would be delicate. His father 
 was equally careful in protecting the patient; no 
 rough-and-tumble play of childhood was ever al- 
 lowed and the parents succeeded in producing a 
 very delicate lady-like man. He had studied for 
 the ministry but had never taken orders. The only 
 healthy years of his life were at college — then he 
 had no attacks. But strange to say the parents 
 learned nothing from this fact. The seizures be- 
 gan when very young, occurring at irregular in- 
 tervals, a month or six weeks apart. His mother 
 had taught music before her marriage, so regard- 
 less of what natural ability the patient had, his 
 major subject at college was music and he 
 
 282 
 
SELF AND CHARACTER 
 
 graduated with a B.S. in music. His playing was 
 atrocious, very mechanical, naturally no emotional 
 feeling in it as his emotions were all blocked up 
 and buried beneath a debris of outside opinions 
 forced upon him. The first dream he brought 
 showed clearly the cause and he saw it, saying he 
 was sure he had been too closely sheltered, too 
 much in the shade. He had always been afraid of 
 every move, fearing it would bring on an attack, 
 never could decide what to do. The dreams which 
 preceded an attack always showed him as attempt- 
 ing to change something, but unable to do so at 
 first, and then later the unconscious thought 
 showed plainly that a girl was needed to make his 
 life whole and strong. He declared he knew that 
 was true as his college chum was an epileptic and 
 since marriage had been well. I do not know that 
 marriage usually helps epilepsy, as the epileptic 
 is not free enough from his unconscious complexes 
 to marry. And only after several weeks ' analysis 
 did the patient bring in the following dreams : 
 
 In the first dream the patient ^^was the only 
 man at a reception, every one was talking noisily. 
 Tea was served, hut I was sta/ndimg on the bottom 
 of a trench and was the only one there. The ladies 
 stood on high benches so that they were above, 
 while I could only just see over. I remarlced that 
 it seemed queer that they were so much above me. 
 Then the scene changed to an amphitheatre, with 
 a large audience, I was seated m the middle 
 
 283 
 
THE PROBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHHiD 
 
 nboiit half way up. I had a strange desire to' 
 change my Imen shirt and tried to remove the one 
 I had on, hut it was difficult to do. I was strug- 
 gling to get it free from my arms and over my 
 heady when a man in front turned around and 
 offered to assist me. Then a man seated by my 
 side said to the man in fronts 'He does not need 
 any help, he is all right now, it is only epilepsy.' '^ 
 
 The analysis showed that the patient was below 
 the level of existence and was so buried in the 
 mother (the trench, where one hides from danger 
 as his mother had always made him hide away) 
 that he could not get a proper view of life. He 
 had lifted women to such an exalted position (his 
 study for the ministry and adoration of the Virgin 
 Mary) that he saw it was unnatural, but could not 
 understand that it was because his life was also 
 unnatural. In the second part of the dream the 
 patient shows how his unnatural life has weakened 
 his power. He has "a strong desire to change my 
 Ivnen shirt.'' The linen shirt brought associa- 
 tions of homespun linen, old-fashioned people and 
 ideas, from which the patient tries to free him- 
 self but is unable to do so without help. 
 
 In another dream: ''It seemed I and others 
 were under the control of an absolute dictator or 
 disciplinarian called Orlando Smith and whenever 
 I might seem to forget his power and hegim, to 
 think myself independent I would suddenly he 
 made aware of his authority over me. As a motor- 
 
 284 
 
SELF AND CHARACTER 
 
 man on an electric car sometimes works the brake 
 m a choppy way when progress has to he slow be- 
 cause of a truck on the track, such was the way in 
 my dream, feeling free and going on until I would 
 suddenly become aware of the tyrant ruling me 
 and I would stop with a start/ ^ 
 
 Analysis : His epilepsy is the tyrant whom the 
 censor of the dream allows to come into conscious 
 thought as ^^ Orlando Smith.'' The patient knew 
 of no one with such a name. * ^ Orlando ' ' suggested 
 a place in Florida named Orlando where he had 
 met fifteen years ago a girl who had interested him, 
 then came associations of Shakespeare 's character 
 Orlando whom the patient thought had laid love 
 poems in the woods and was lovesick for Rosalind. 
 *^ Smith" was the name of an unmarried friend 
 of the patient who also suffered from similar at- 
 tacks. Thus we see the unconscious comparison 
 of a lovesick person and an epileptic, and the pa- 
 tient cannot free himself from the instinct of mat- 
 ing, which we know is the strongest in life. 
 
 Another dream of a pet dog which was so re- 
 markably well trained it would do anything it was 
 told, which brought associations to the patient of 
 a pet Pomeranian he had had. The Pomeranian 
 was so hard to control, that the patient loaned him 
 to some one else, but the dog was so snappy he 
 was given back. In the unconscious the patient 
 uses the dog as a libido symbol of himself, and 
 we see that the patient 's libido comes back to him 
 
 285 
 
THE PROBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CmLD 
 
 in epileptic attacks. A woman's ^^don'ts" have 
 made Mm fearful and driven back the libido into 
 the patient, producing an attack. 
 
 The last and most important dream was of a 
 moving picture the patient had seen called *^The 
 Angel of Peace, ' ' in which the angel was a pretty- 
 girl. Children came from her skirts, bringing 
 food, and in the dream they offered food to the 
 patient. The angel of peace and the children 
 needed no analysis, but showed the patient's needs 
 and solution of his problem. His soul was starved, 
 his body even looked starved, so thin and pinched 
 was his appearance, no filling out of character had 
 been possible. 
 
 A FRAGMENTARY SOUL 
 
 The conceited person's sentiments for himself 
 may take the form of pride or that of vanity, the 
 one based more on his own conception of his char- 
 acter and position, the other on what he takes 
 to be others' conception of him. Pride is evi- 
 dently nearer to self-respect and sometimes we 
 use the word almost as a term of approbation; 
 but in its strict sense pride represents selfishness 
 and excludes humility, while the self-respecting 
 man feels humble and reverent before the proper 
 objects but detests a false moral humility as 
 ** toadying, favouring or cringing" before su- 
 periors. Both pride and vanity may be wounded, 
 the former by one's own failure, the latter by the 
 
 286 
 
SELF AND CHARACTER 
 
 contempt of others; but pride is the less easily 
 hurt, for it is apt to attribute its failure wholly to 
 the injustice of others. Both sentiments rest upon 
 narrowness of outlook and constitute infantile re- 
 actions. Sometimes when the attempt to destroy 
 false pride and vanity by explainings is ineffec- 
 tual, it may be diminished (in boys and girls more 
 often than adults) by encouraging those who ex- 
 hibit these attributes to take an interest in matters 
 where they are so obviously incompetent that they 
 cannot deceive even themselves. When these re- 
 actions fail, where the motive of self is so exag- 
 gerated that a person lives in a world of **me '' 
 and ^^mine" and has no share in the broad human 
 interests which lift him out of himself, his life 
 remains a fragment and the virtues have no soil to 
 grow in, the creative emotions are buried in him- 
 self. Man cannot create with himself alone; an- 
 other human is necessary. *^ Complete develop- 
 ment of character can be attained only by devoting 
 ourselves to some large end in co-operation with 
 others." When we find it, by nature's methods of 
 reproduction of the species in a well-mated exist- 
 ence, we are most fortunate, as it is the most satis- 
 factory. Life is ever crying out for more life. 
 When we find it in the pursuit of science, in 
 poetry or religion, we call it a * ^ sublimation, " 
 as it is a lifting up of the emotional content out 
 of the gross sexual into the intellectual control of 
 the instincts. 
 
 287 
 
THE PROBLEM OF THE NEEVOUiS CHHiD 
 
 WHAT IS THE SELF? 
 
 It has been pointed ont in the beginning of this 
 chapter that the idea each one of us has of him- 
 self is not really so clear as we often suppose it to 
 be. When a person says '^It is as certain as that 
 I am standing here" when he wishes strongly to 
 affirm his belief, and he is asked what he means by 
 this **I'' of which he speaks so positively, he will 
 not find it so easy to answer. When asked as to 
 some whys and wherefores of his conduct, he will 
 find some difficulties, for he has acted on what he 
 thinks is an impulse, the origin of which he does 
 not know, and he will soon discover that the 
 boundaries of what he considers his self vary 
 greatly from time to time. They vary according 
 to whether his actions proceed from conscious or 
 unconscious wishes, a statement which will be bet- 
 ter understood by the world as time goes on. The 
 world is beginning, dimly, to perceive that war 
 comes from an accumulation of emotional energy 
 in the unconscious which bursts forth into greed, 
 envy and hatred, and that pent up emotions poison 
 the moral life as food retained poisons the chemi- 
 cal life, of nations as well as individuals. The 
 safety of life depends upon a greater understand- 
 ing of these fundamental laws. When the ruler 
 of a nation as well as the ruler of a family realizes 
 that the formation of character rests upon indi- 
 vidual strength rather than upon fear of au- 
 
 288 • 
 
SELF AND CHARACTER 
 
 thority; that firmness and reliability of character 
 must be the result of a greater breadth of thought 
 and sympathy on the part of the ruling authority, 
 and arousing the interest and activity, sharing 
 with them instead of making the weaker feel the 
 power of the greater, a great step forward will be 
 made in civilization. 
 
 In the analysis of self we may begin in a nega- 
 tive way of thinking what we are not. Further 
 analysis of the unconscious frequently shows that 
 what we think we are not is just exactly what we 
 are. Our self-sufficiency is the reverse of our true 
 self. **In its widest sense,'* says Professor 
 James, ''a man's self is the sum total of what he 
 can call his, not only his body and his psychic 
 power, but his clothes and his house, his wife and 
 his children, his ancestors and friends, his reputa- 
 tion and works, his land and horses, and his yachts 
 and bank account. All these things give him the 
 same emotions. If they wax and prosper he feels 
 triumphant ; if they dwindle and die away, he feels 
 downcast." (Principles of Psychology.) And 
 yet at times we revolt against the body as not our- 
 selves, as when we say ' ' the spirit is willing but 
 the flesh is weak, " or * ' I am not frightened though 
 my body is trembling." The self of fevered de- 
 lirium and of dreams is not the ordinary self. If 
 sudden excitement or passion carries us away, and 
 we act in a manner inconsistent with our usual 
 character as we conceive it, we are apt to repudi- 
 
 289 
 
THE PROBLEM OF THE NERV0U8 CHttD 
 
 ate our behaviour and say, ''I was not myself 
 when I felt, thought or did that. ' ^ We are learn- 
 ing that those thoughts, feelings or actions pro- 
 ceed from our unconscious which is in such in- 
 stances stronger than our conscious, and there will 
 be a consequent lack of self-control with weak 
 character formation. 
 
 MAKING OF CHARACTER 
 
 Training of character is a double problem. The 
 child who is selfish at home, who has not been 
 taught self-control and has not felt the discipline 
 of self-denial, will be selfish at school and after 
 school life. The enlargement of the circumstances 
 gives the selfish person more opportunity to get 
 what he wants, but the self that he gratifies will be 
 small and empty. The unselfish, benevolent, 
 public-spirited and patriotic frequently injure 
 themselves in doing good to others, exhausted in 
 excessive giving and crippling their energy, re- 
 ceiving no return for their energy expended. The 
 recipient too often belongs to the great mass of 
 inefficients who drain both national and individual 
 resources, not self-supporting by their own efforts, 
 but seeking to live by the efforts of others. Self- 
 ish and unselfish alike must seek their own wel- 
 fare, but the selfish seek it in opposition to the 
 society, of which in spite of themselves, they can- 
 not remain members, and are consumed with 
 
 290 
 
SELF AND CHARACTER 
 
 envy and jealousy of those unselfish ones, who, by 
 their own efforts identify their own good with a 
 good that goes beyond themselves. 
 
 Training of character in children is also a dou- 
 ble problem. Good habits and interests must be 
 formed, and those that are dangerous must be 
 understood and excluded. Something may be 
 accomplished if it is remembered that forcible 
 repression is an undesirable method unless a bet- 
 ter is fostered in its place. It is this repression 
 and prohibition which cause emotional accumula- 
 tion, and then we blame such persons and declare 
 they have a ^' rotten disposition '' and nations 
 under such repressions go to war. ^^ Rotten'' is a 
 very descriptive word, for, as we have said, emo- 
 tions when repressed decay and become septic. 
 When the life energy has been denied a free out- 
 let and nervous troubles result, little can be ac- 
 complished in the formation of character by 
 formal moral instruction, and lessons in civics, 
 patriotism and the like are too likely to breed 
 prigs. Character is formed by action, and not by 
 isolated lessons. The subject of prohibition is a 
 grave one. A constitutional amendment prohibit- 
 ing alcoholic drink is expected to improve the 
 character of the nation. It probably will, although 
 the weak natures which seek relief from their 
 cravings and longings in alcohol may seek relief 
 in more dangerous methods of criminal acts of 
 violence. Alcohol acts quickly and, as we often 
 
 291 
 
THE PROBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHH^D 
 
 see in psychoanalytic work, affords instant relief 
 from a frenzy of repressed emotions with forget- 
 fulness and sleep. As a patient remarked, *'I was 
 drunk last night and feel played out this morn- 
 ing, but if I had not gotten drunk I should have 
 raped some woman or smashed a jewelry store 
 window, I had to do something." This patient 
 has now recovered from the feeling ^ ' I had to do 
 something," and is doing something, real work, as 
 the overseer of a certain part in a factory. When 
 he looked into his unconscious and saw the low- 
 down creature he was, he turned away in horror 
 and disgust. 
 
 PEACE 
 
 A league of nations is now formed to arrange a 
 lasting peace. We trust the eminent people sitting 
 around the peace table will realize the necessity 
 of starting up industries and occupations to keep 
 the people busy, with trade throughout the world. 
 Compulsory education, compulsory work and 
 arousing men's ambitions mil do more to keep 
 peace than the trade restrictions to create rivalry 
 and envy. Competition is healthful and arouses 
 desire for self -improvement. To lift up and im- 
 prove the enormous mass of inefficient population 
 is slow, and must be largely accomplished through 
 the children. We know the children of alcoholic 
 parents are apt to show what poor seed was 
 planted, and we hope to improve the future gen- 
 
 292 
 
SELF AND CHARACTER 
 
 erations with better seed and better soil. But 
 weeds thrive even better in good soil, and I pre- 
 dict that the lower class will become dangerous 
 when they no longer find comfort in a pail of beer. 
 Labour troubles are not entirely the result of 
 ignorance of the employed, but more often of the 
 employer, because the employed is to the employer 
 as is the child to the parent. We expect too much 
 of both child and the employed, much more than 
 we do of ourselves. An entire nation so strictly 
 guarded, education made difficult and the self of 
 the individual so ignored as in Russia must neces- 
 sarily lack knowledge of experience and self- 
 reliance; they can only suffer cruelly as our chil- 
 dren would if suddenly left alone without love and 
 guidance. An army of civilization is needed to 
 supply Russia with food and comforts for the 
 people to show them a life that is not of misery 
 and suffering, and then the natural instincts will 
 again come to life. Greed and accumulation are 
 not natural instincts, but are the products of civili- 
 zation. We may take care of a surplus as the dog 
 buries his bone, but he does not spend his entire 
 time in hunting bones to bury, nor should man- 
 kind. 
 
 Far more instructive than lessons in morals are 
 actual examples, — for the young are ready to wor- 
 ship heroes and take great pains to copy them, — 
 the appeal to imagination which is made by the 
 stories of brave deeds and noble characters, and 
 
 293 
 
THE PROBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHHjD 
 
 still more by honourable traditions of the family 
 or school. To be worthy of onr ancestors helps 
 many weak, uncertain lives to persevere, but the 
 most influential of all means is sympathetic per- 
 sonal encouragement of common interests and of 
 the natural tendencies toward difficult occupations, 
 which in numberless ways take children out of 
 themselves. If children are to become self- 
 respecting, responsible persons, they must with 
 tact and patience be incited to take upon them- 
 selves gradually widening responsibility. 
 
 BREADTH OF CHARACTER 
 
 Nevertheless, training must not be such that 
 when later the child becomes his own master, his 
 character ceases to grow toward good. The 
 primitive savages exercise all the virtues toward 
 their own tribe but when they meet a stranger 
 regard it in no way wrong to rob, torture or kill 
 him. We see it in the gipsies who have a fine code 
 of morals among themselves. Indeed, we have 
 seen it in the great world conflict where nations 
 lost sight of any duty to their neighbour, or else 
 they have an unreasonably narrow conception of 
 the neighbour to whom they owe the right of exist- 
 ence. People had been trained in the customs of 
 their own country, but there they stuck, never 
 using their intelligence so as to widen their notions 
 of right and wrong. Greater breadth of view, 
 
 294 
 
SELF AND CHARACTER 
 
 breadth of sympathy, breadth of interest cannot 
 be given without reasonableness, thought and 
 understanding of the primitive urge of nature 
 always existing in the unconscious of the indi- 
 vidual. 
 
 I do not wish to give the idea that the uncon- 
 scious is always a source of danger; it is so only 
 when the individual is not able to take the energy 
 from the unconscious and use it in the construc- 
 tion of his life, for life has always a tomorrow 
 with new possibilities to work for. The uncon- 
 scious is made up of material repressed from the 
 conscious, stifled and shut up by the forces of cir- 
 cumstances and, as we have said, like an untrained 
 horse is shut up out of sight and hearing, but is 
 just as wild and uncontrolled. But if that horse is 
 trained to drive and obey he is like the urge of life 
 in us when it is controlled, a very great power 
 which we can use. When a child has a wish which 
 cannot be granted, the wish does not vanish but is 
 shut out of sight like the horse, whereas, if we 
 could help the child to see why he cannot have 
 his wish granted, he would be able to control his 
 wish until he could understand the reason. The 
 controlled energy of life will be our servant like 
 the electric current when it follows along a con- 
 ductor, but the wild electrical discharge destroys 
 and kills. To teach self-control to our children 
 is a great trial to our patience, but it will be more 
 conducive to everlasting peace than all the 
 
 295 
 
THE PROBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHHjD 
 
 Leagues of Nations, Peace Tables and laws of the 
 land. The true peace comes from within, and 
 depends more upon the character of the individual 
 and the individual 's governing himself than upon 
 the laws enforced from without. 
 
 296 
 
INDEX 
 
 Active, child must be, 66 
 Admiration, 11 
 Alcohol, 124, 153, 257, 291 
 Anger, 160 
 Anxiety, 161 
 Aphasia, 116 
 
 Appearance, personal, 117 
 Association, free, 24, 58 
 Attention, 106 
 Autoerotism, 168, 258 
 
 Blocked libido, 29, 190 
 Boy, impossible, 98 
 Boys' club, 102 
 Burbank, Luther, 109 
 Buried emotions, 160, 266 
 Burns, Robert, 159 
 
 Calf love, 72 
 Cannon, 160 
 Castration, 166 
 Censor, 47 
 Character, 269, 294 
 
 negative, 3 
 Child activity, 66 
 
 country, 21 
 
 shut up, 187 
 
 training, 181, 294 
 Childish problems, unsolved, 78 
 Children, capable, 108 
 
 defence against, 122 
 
 of the rich, 90 
 Child's vrords, 4 
 City life, unwholesome, 22, 132 
 Cognition, 95 
 Complex, 136 
 
 housewife's, cause of, 131, 
 136 
 
 parent, 130 
 
 thirteen, 150 
 Composite nature of symbol, 44 
 
 297 
 
 Conation, 94 
 Conceit, 277, 286 
 Concentration, 76 
 Confirmation, 139 
 Conflict, 48, 50 
 
 Consciousness, dualism of, 263 
 Creative emotions, 188 
 Curiosity, 178 
 
 Day dreaming, 51 
 
 Defence against children, 122 
 
 inferiority feeling, 243 
 
 reactions, 113 
 
 unpleasant demands, 223 
 
 work, 126 
 Dementia praecox^ 124, 157, 
 
 255 
 Descendants of the repressed, 
 
 24 
 Desexualization, 166 
 Disposition, 92 
 
 "rotten", 49, 266 
 Dream, 44, 54 
 
 analysis, 277 
 
 symbolism, 56 
 
 Education, 243 
 
 Emotions, 160, 162, 273, 283, 
 
 288, 291 
 
 buried, 160, 266 
 
 childish, 192 
 
 creative, 188 
 
 starved, 190 
 Epilepsy, 254, 282 
 Erotism, muscle, 195 
 Exhibitionism, 128 
 
 Failures, 136 
 
 Family atmosphere, 14, 114 
 
 nervous, 123 
 
 skeleton, 69 
 
INDEX 
 
 Father, as model, 239 
 
 complex, 226 
 
 image, 140 
 Fear, 160 
 Feeling, 95 
 
 Fixation of libido, 81, 177 
 Free association, 24, 58 
 Freud, S., 110, note 
 
 Guiding the libido, 67 
 
 Heart disease, 154 
 
 Heraclitus, 34 
 
 Husband, despotic, wanted, 173 
 
 Ideal, the feminine, 143 
 Identification, 45 
 Idolized daughter, 118 
 
 son, 121 
 Illness a regression, 88 
 
 defence, 223 
 
 as tyranny, 228 
 Imagining vs. thinking, 158 
 Imitation, 7 
 
 game, 241 
 Impossible boy, an, 98 
 Incendiarism, 206 
 Incest phantasy, 138, 139 
 Incorrigible child, 233 
 
 girl, 171 
 Individuality, growth of, 261 
 Infants, aged, 18 
 Inferiority, feeling of, 243, 275 
 Influences, early, 19, 111 
 Insubordination, 232 
 Intelligence tests, 16 
 Interpretation, 58 
 
 James, William, 162, 289 
 
 Jealousy, 236 
 
 Jung, C. G., vii, 64, 256 
 
 Kleptomania, 256 
 
 Latent vs. manifest, 60 
 Libido, 26, 38, 64, 266 
 
 blocked, 29, 190 
 
 fixation of, 81 
 
 guiding, 67 
 
 liberation of, 184 
 
 regression of, 230 
 
 splitting of, 82 
 
 sublimation of, 65, 197 
 Longfellow, 40 
 Love affairs, 72 
 
 calf, 72 
 
 early, 75 
 
 mother, 135 
 
 springtime of, 164 
 " Loved to death," 271 
 Lowell, J. R., 27 
 Lying, 255 
 
 Manifest vs. latent, 60 
 Masturbation, 168, 258 
 Mental surgery, 267 
 Meredith, George, 20, 39 
 Metabolism, 266 
 Montessori, Mme., 107 
 Mother image, 141 
 
 love, 135 
 Mothers wooing sons, 149 
 Muscle erotism, 195 
 
 Narcissism, 147 
 Negativism, 116, 174, 275 
 Nero, 232 
 "Nerves," 130, 147 
 
 Oppenheim, James, 115 
 Outlet for energy, 82 
 Ovariotomy, 166 
 Over-confidence, 278 
 
 Pain, pleasure in, 186 
 Parent complex, 130 
 Parents as signboards, 235 
 Parent's will, 247 
 Peace, 292 
 
 Personal appearance, 117 
 Perversity, 160, 161 
 Petit-mal, 169 
 Phantasy, 51 
 
 the incest, 138, 139 
 Play, work and, 75 
 Pope, 273 
 
 298 
 
INDEX 
 
 Power, craving for, 260 
 Prenatal conditions, 9 
 Primitive thought, 42 
 Prohibition, 291 
 Psychic muscle, 63, 182 
 Psychoanalysis, 12, 55, 61, 83, 
 
 230, 233, 257, 273, 277 
 Psychoanalytic method, 23 
 Psychology, 25, 269 
 Punishment, 274 
 
 Reaction, defence, 113 
 
 formula, 241, 245 
 Regression, 86, 230 
 
 illness a, 88 
 Repressed, descendants of the, 
 
 24 
 Repression, 31, 37, 254, 256, 
 
 291 
 Reproduction, 163 
 Ribot, Th., 163 
 Right and wrong, 246 
 " Rotten disposition," 49, 266 
 
 " School misery," 241 
 Self and character, 646 
 Self-confidence, 276 
 
 growth of, 270 
 Sex education, 167, 170 
 
 fear of, 177 
 Silence, defensive, 116 
 Skeleton, family, 69 
 Smile as reward, 248 
 Speech, defensive, 116 
 Splitting of libido, 82 
 Stealing, 255 
 Strength of weakness, 236 
 Sublimation, 65, 197 
 
 Symbol, composite nature of, 
 
 44 
 Symbolic thought, 41 
 Symbolism preserves sleep, 59 
 
 Talking, excessive, 128 
 Terman, L. M., 17 
 Tests, intelligence, 16 
 Thinking, unconscious, 35 
 
 vs. imagining, 158 
 Thirteen complex, 150 
 Thought, primitive, 42 
 
 symbolic, 41 
 
 unassimilated, 70 
 
 unconscious, 226 
 Thoughts go, where, 34 
 Thymus trouble, 118 
 Ticklishness, 124 
 Toleration, 264 
 Training, child, 181, 294 
 Tyrant child, the, 222 
 
 Unconscious, 37, 295 
 
 needs, 233 
 
 problems, 63 
 
 thinking, 35 
 
 thoughts, 226 
 Unsolved childish problems, 78 
 Untruthfulness, 97, 254 
 
 Wish, 181 
 
 in stealing and lying, 255 
 Words, a child's, 4 
 Work and play, 75 
 
 defence against, 126 
 
 Zurich school, the, 64 
 
 299 
 
3A77