YOUR MINUAND 
Wu| 
MENTAL HEALTH 
I BY | 
CEORCE K.PRATT.M.U Announcement 
NATIONAL HEALTH SERIES 
In order to provide the general public with authoritative 
books on health at low cost, the National Health Council has 
arranged with the Funk & Wagnails Company for the publi- 
cation of The National Health Series. This series contains 
twenty books on all phases of human health, written by the 
leading authorities in the United States. 
Man and the Microbe; How 
Communicable Diseases are Con- 
trolled. By C.-E. A. Winslow, 
Dr. P. H.; Professor of Public 
Health, Yale School of Medicine. 
A description of germs and 
germ diseases and how they are 
spread, together with practical 
methods of disease prevention by 
means of sanitation. 
The Baby's Health. By Richard 
A. Bolt, M.D., Gr. P. H.; Di- 
rector, Medical Service. Ameri- 
can Child Health Association. 
How to care for the baby so 
that it will be healthy, will de- 
velop properly, and be strong and 
free from disease. 
Personal Hygiene; The Bules 
for Right Living. By Allan J. 
McLaughlin, M.D.; Surgeon 
United States Public Health 
Service. 
Practical suggestions as to how 
to apply personal hygiene to pro- 
mote health and get the most out 
of life. 
Community Health; How to 
Obtain and Preserve It. By D. 
B. Armstrong, M.D.; Sc.D.; Ex- 
ecutive Officer of the National 
Health Council. 
An outline of what the com- 
munity should do for the health 
of its citizens and what each 
person should do to make his 
community a healthy place. 
Canoer; Nature, Diagnosis, and 
Cure. By Francis Carter Wood, 
M.D.; Director, Institute for 
Cancer Research, Columbia Uni- 
versity. 
The best statement about can- 
cer ever written for the laity. 
It tells what it is and how to 
know it and have it cured. 
The Human MaehSse; How the 
Body Functions. By W. H. 
Howell, Ph.D., M.D., LL.D., 
Sc.D.; Associate Director, School 
of Hygiene and Public Health, 
Johns Hopkins University. 
A non-technical, literary de- 
scription of the anatomy and 
physiology and the human body, 
the most wonderful machine of 
all. 
The Young Child's Health. By 
Henry L. K. Shaw, M.D.; Clin- 
ical Professor, Diseases of Chil- 
dren, Albany Medical College. 
How to care for the health of 
the runabout child from two to 
six years of age. 
The Child In School; Care of 
Its Health. By Thomas D. Wood, 
M.D.; Professor of Physical Edu- 
cation, Teachers College, Colum- 
bia University. 
Promotion of health habits In 
children of school age and ex- 
actly how to go about it 
Tubereulosis; Nature. Treat- 
ment, and Prevention, by Llnsly 
B. Williams, M.D.; Managing 
Director, National Tuberculosis 
Association. 
Covers the whole field of tuber- 
culosis, the cause, spread, treat- 
ment, prevention and duties of 
citizens, patients, and the com- 
munity. 
The Quest for Health; Where 
It is and Who can Help Secure 
It By James A. Tobey, M.S.; 
Administrative Secretary, Nation- 
al Health Council 
A statement of what health Is. 
how it may be obtained, and a 
description of the actual help 
which the government. States, 
municipalities, physicians, and 
voluntary health agencies can 
give to individuals. National health Series 
Love and Marriage; Normal 
Sex Relations; By T. W. Gallo- 
way, Ph.D., Litt.D.; Associate 
Director of Educational Measures. 
American Social Hygiene Asso- 
ciation. 
The various elements, biologi- 
cal, social, and sexual, which 
make up a successful and happy 
married life. 
Food for Health's Sake; What 
to Eat By Lucy H. Gillett, 
M.A., Superintendent of Nutri- 
tion, Association for Improving 
the Condition of the Poor, New 
York. 
An outline of what and how to 
eat for maximum efficiency and 
health building. 
Health of the Worker; How to 
Safeguard It. By Lee K. Frankel 
Ph.D.; Chairman, National Health 
Council. 
Hygiene and sanitation in 
factory and shop and how in- 
dustrial workers can protect and 
promote their health. 
Exercises for Health. By Lenna 
L. Meanes, M.D., Medical Direc- 
tor, Women's Foundation for 
Health. 
Illustrative material giving to 
individuals the type of exercise 
best suited to each one's per- 
sonal needs. 
Venereal Diseases; Their Med- 
ical, Nursing, and Community 
Aspects. By W. F. Snow, M.D., 
General Director, American So- 
cial Hygiene Association. 
A non-technical discussion of 
cause, spread, treatment, cure, 
and prevention of each of these 
diseases and related social hy- 
giene Questions. 
(Continued) 
Your Mind and You: Mental 
Health. By Frankwood E. Wil- 
liams. M.D., Medical Director, 
National Committee for Mental 
Hygiene, and George K. Pratt, M.D. 
Describes how your mind can 
be a friend or enemy and how 
it can be enlisted as your ally. 
Taking Care of Your Heart. 
By T. Stuart Hart, M.D., Presi- 
dent, Association for the Preven- 
tion and Relief of Heart Disease, 
New York. 
How to avoid and prevent heart 
troubles, which form the lead- 
ing cause of death in this 
country. 
The Expectant Mother; Care of 
Her Health. By R. L. DeNor- 
mandie, M.D.; Specialist, Bos- 
ton, Mass. 
The health care needed during 
pregnancy in order that both 
mother and baby may be healthy 
and well. 
Home Care of the Sick; By 
Clara D. Noyes, R. N.; Director 
of Nursing, American Bed Cross. 
What to do in the home when 
illness is present. Practical sug- 
gestions for the care of the sick. 
Adolescence; Educational and 
Hygienic Problems. By Maurice 
A. Bigelow, Ph.D.; Professor of 
Biology and Direetor School of 
Practical Arts, Teachers College, 
Columbia University. 
The scientific and sociological 
aspects of adolescence to explain 
the proper transition from child- 
hood to adult life. 
THE NATIONAL HEALTH SERIES 
20 Volumes I8mo. Flexible Fabrikoid. Average number ef pages, 70. 
Price per set, $6.00 net; per volume, 30c. net. 
FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY, Publishers 
NEW YORK and LONDON NATIONAL HEALTH COUNCIL 
Direct Members 
American Child Health Association, 
370 Seventh Avenue, New York City. 
American Public Health Association, 
370 Seventh Avenue, New York City. 
American Red Cross, 
17th Street between D and E, Washington, D. C. 
American Social Hygiene Association, 
370 Seventh Avenue, New York City. 
American Society for the Control of Cancer, 
370 Seventh Avenue, New York City. 
Conference of State and Provincial Health Authorities of 
North America, 
Care of State Department of Health, Lansing, Mich. 
National Committee for Mental Hygiene, 
370 Seventh Avenue, New York City. 
National Committee for the Prevention of Blindness, 
130 East 22d Street, New York City. 
National Organization for Public Health Nursing, 
370 Seventh Avenue, New York City. 
National Tuberculosis Association, 
370 Seventh Avenue, New York City. 
Conference Members 
United States Public Health Service, 
Washington, D. C. 
United States Children's Bureau, 
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Women's Foundation for Health, 
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OFFICERS 
Lee K. Frankel, Chairman. 
William F. Snow, M.D., Vice-Chairman. 
James L. Fieser, Recording Secretary. 
Linsly R. Williams, M.D., Treasurer. 
STAFF 
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James A. Tobey, Administrative Secretary. 
Thomas C. Edwards, Business Manager. 
Elizabeth G. Fox, Washington Representative. 
Offices of the National Health Council 
Administrative:-370 Seventh Avenue, New York City. 
Washington:-17th and D Streets, N. W., Washington, D. C. YOUR MIND AND YOU 
MENTAL HEALTH 
BY 
GEORGE K. PRATT, M. D. 
Medical Director, Massachusetts Society for 
Mental Hygiene, Boston 
THE NATIONAL HEALTH SERIES 
EDITED BY 
THE NATIONAL HEALTH COUNCIL 
FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY 
NEW YORK AND LONDON 
1924 Copyright, 1924, by 
FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY 
Printed in the United States of America 
Published, August, 1924 
Copyright Under the Articles of the Copyright Convention 
of the Pan-American Republics and the 
United States, August 11, 1910. INTRODUCTION 
Happiness is thought by some persons to depend 
entirely upon sound physical health. Others believe 
that the road to happiness lies merely in the develop- 
ment of the intellect. Certainly, no one will deny 
that good health and adequate intelligence are 
eminently desirable attributes, but to attain true hap- 
piness and the joy of living, there must be added 
to them another essential. That is mental health. 
"A sound mind in a sound body" is a good slogan, 
but, unfortunately, a sound body does not always 
assure a sound mind, nor does an unsound body 
always mean an unsound mind. Mental hygiene is 
a movement which is concerned with the efficiency, 
the happiness, and the ability to get the best out of 
life, of every one of us, just as it is also concerned, 
as a movement, with the problem of the care and 
treatment of the great body of helpless sufferers ill 
of obvious mental disease, and with the social and 
economic problems which develop about them. 
This book of Dr. Pratt's is the one in the National 
Health Series which specializes on mental health. 
The author is well qualified to write on the subject, 
for he has had many years of experience with this 
type of practise. The Massachusetts Society for 
Mental Hygiene, of which he has been medical direc- 
tor for several years, is one of the most progressive 
and effective in its results of any mental hygiene 
association in the country. Dr. Pratt has been suc- 
cessful in presenting in a popular manner the scien- 
tific aspects of this important subject. 
Frankwood E. Williams, M. D. 
Medical Director, 
National Committee for Mental Hygiene 
New York, July, 1924, CONTENTS 
CHAPTER PAGE 
I-Historical 1 
Old and new concepts of mental maladies- 
"Asylum" versus "Social" psychiatry. 
II-Mental Hygiene 7 
What mental health is-Its importance to 
every one-Need for public and medical 
interest. 
III- Serious Types of Mental Disease 
-So-called "Insanity" 13 
Organic types-Functional types-Causes- 
Treatment-Prevention. 
IV- What Makes the Wheels Go 
'Round? 19 
Mental mechanisms-Compensation-Defense 
mechanisms-Mental conflicts. 
V-Intelligence and Emotions ... 23 
Development of the intellect-New conceptions 
regarding feeble-minded-Salvaging the feeble- 
minded-The feeble-minded in industry-De- 
velopment of the emotions-Measuring intelli- 
gence-Measuring emotions. 
VI-Mental Upsets Caused by Wrongly 
Used Emotions 32 
Flights from reality-Children who do not face 
reality squarely-Suggestions controlling the 
emotions. CONTENTS 
CHAPTER PAGE 
VII-Nervousness 43 
Definition and explanation-Types, symptoms, 
causes, and prevention-Recognition during 
childhood important-Cure of nervousness- 
False councillors-Misconceptions of psycho- 
analysis-Dangers from self-help. 
VIII-Crime, Delinquency, and Depen- 
dency 58 
Old and new concepts-Many chronic offenders 
abnorm al-Juvenile delinquency-Dependency 
and Poverty. 
Conclusion 68 
Reading References. YOUR MIND AND YOU 
CHAPTER I 
HISTORICAL 
IN MODERN warfare a muzzle-loading blunder- 
buss is obsolete as a weapon of attack. It was 
useful in its day, and at one time it represented the 
height of military science. To-day it is a museum- 
piece only. 
Much the same transition and advance has been 
experienced in medical science, except that until the 
very recent era of modern preventive medicine and 
public health activity, medical science has always 
taken the defensive and has been content to remain 
dormant until the enemy attacked. To-day, however, 
medical science has at last become the aggressor, and 
has penetrated deeply into the disease enemy's terrain. 
No longer is mankind content feebly to defend 
himself against the disease enemy with makeshift 
weapons and with moss-covered theories and prac- 
tises. To-day mankind "foresees the enemy from 
afar" and takes the aggressive. Immunization 
against smallpox, typhoid fever, diphtheria, and other 
plagues is now universally practised, as contrasted 
to our former custom of waiting to cure after the 
patient came down with the disease. Public-health 
programs of vast and far-reaching types against dirt- 
borne diseases are the rule rather than the exception; 
while resort to the X-ray, the radium tube, and 
the microscope represent additional types of modern 
weapons too common to call forth comment. 
In this general medical advance, psychiatry, as a 
1 2 
branch of medical science dealing with nervous and 
mental disorders, lagged behind until the time of the 
World War. Then it took sudden stock of its 
dilatoriness, and since that time it has so admirably 
acquitted itself that it is now well toward the front 
rank of the preventive-medicine warriors. Indeed 
so rapidly has psychiatry acquired knowledge and 
prestige that, in 1923, Dr. Haven Emerson, a well- 
known authority, stated: "We have arrived at a point 
in the organization of our national effort for health 
where advances in the fields already preempted and 
liberally supported by public opinion and resources 
must wait for their entire success upon a fair begin- 
ning and progress in the most delicate and difficult 
and yet the most promising undertaking of all-the 
prevention of nervous disorders and mental defects." 
Along with, or really preceding, all this new and 
valuable psychiatric knowledge, went a throwing 
overboard of many of our old conceptions regarding 
mental disease and insanity. 
YOUR MIND AND YOU 
A brief and, of course, sketchy review of how 
Mankind regarded departures from normal mental 
health from the days of Aesculapius to date reveals 
many interesting concepts. One concept, however, 
has persisted through all the centuries until very 
recently. Indeed, to our disgrace it is still extant in 
certain regions of America and in numerous localities 
in Europe. This was the interpretation of mental 
disease-insanity, "lunacy," hysteria, and so forth- 
that regarded the patient as being possessed by evil 
spirits or devils. Treatment usually consisted of 
some form of scourging out those evil spirits by 
flogging, burning, or otherwise torturing the poor 
wretch whose body was supposed to be the demon's 
habitat. Confinement in foul dungeons, chained to 
Old and New Concepts of Mental Maladies HISTORICAL 
3 
the walls, was another measure often resorted to, 
the victim being treated like a wild animal and 
subjected to unprintable abuse. Remnants of this 
treatment measure exist in modified form in some 
of our States to-day, but will not continue for long; 
for as public enlightenment of mental diseases in- 
creases, public indignation of such measures forces 
rapid and humane changes. 
As late as 1800 this method of caring for the 
mentally sick was almost universal. The old Bed- 
lam hospital in London served as an excellent ex- 
ample of this kind. This institution was run as a 
menagerie, and a fee charged for admission. Dun- 
geons, chains, ducking-stools, circular swings, and 
other types of restraint were freely used as well as 
drastic purging and blood-letting to let escape "evil 
biles" and spirits and thereby quiet the individual. 
In France, in 1792, Dr. Philippe Pinel was made 
Superintendent of the Salpetriere, an asylum for 
insane women .in Paris. For years he had pleaded 
for permission remove his wretched charges from 
the dungeons and chains that confined them; but the 
authorities refused, for fear of what "outrages" the 
"lunatics" might commit. He finally had his own 
way, granted with much official misgiving, and there 
is in all history no more touching event than that 
which occurred when Pinel ordered the chains struck 
from these women and their removal to decent quar- 
ters. In a marvelously interesting book by Letch- 
worth, called "The Insane in Foreign Countries," 
printed in 1889, is found Pariset's description of 
the women inmates of the Salpetriere: "Sometimes 
enchained naked in almost subterranean cells, worse 
than dungeons, they had their feet gnawed by rats, 
or frozen by the winter's cold. Thus injured on all 
sides, their embittered hearts breathed out vengeance 
and, intoxicated with frenzy, like bacchantes, they 4 
burned to tear in pieces their attendants or to destroy 
themselves before them." 
What a contrast to our modern hospitals for the 
insane. To-day in many States there are rigidly 
enforced laws forbidding physical restraint of 
patients except to clean, sunny, and well-ventilated 
rooms, and even this is for only the most violent type. 
We have learned that the vast majority of the 
mentally sick needing hospital care can be dealt with 
kindly, humanely, and intelligently with a minimum 
of restraint. For those few patients who may, 
during temporary episodes, become so active as to 
weaken themselves and subject themselves to injury, 
a few hospitals continue to use the camisole or 
"strait-jacket," but the great majority of institutions 
have discarded entirely such devices and rely on the 
more medically sound and humane "continuous bath." 
Here the patient is carefully rubbed all over with 
vaseline (to prevent softening of the skin by action 
of the water) and placed in a large tub covered 
by a sheet through an opening in which projects the 
patient's head. Continually running through this 
tub is a gentle flow of fresh water kept at a fraction 
under body-heat by a mixing valve. The over-active 
patient is left in this tub from three to ten hours, 
but is constantly attended by a nurse. Invariably 
it soothes and quiets and serves far better as a seda- 
tive than strait-jacket or powerful hypnotic drugs. 
For cases of lesser excitement, the patient is often 
wrapped in wet sheets wrung out in warm water. 
All in all, the modern American institution for the 
care and treatment of the insane is a hospital for the 
mentally sick, just as much as the general hospital 
in any community is an institution for the physically 
sick. The term asylum is as obsolete as the word 
lunatic; and the hospital idea is quite warranted, 
because our hospitals for the insane are to-day no 
YOUR MIND AND YOU HISTORICAL 
5 
longer mere custodial institutions, but are curative in 
purpose and fact. Each year sees an increasing per- 
centage of mentally sick persons returned to their 
homes from such hospitals, well, contented, and able 
to resume once more the interrupted thread of their 
lives. 
Another new conception of mental disease is quite 
apparent of late, especially within the medical pro- 
fession. Like the layman, physicians for a long time 
regarded mental disease as an affection of the brain, 
and doctors with special training in this subject were 
called "brain specialists." Now medical science has 
learned that as an isolated organ of the body, the 
brain alone is seldom the seat of mental disorder. 
So many other portions and functions of the body 
are now known to be involved in mental disease that 
we have been compelled to discard the old conception 
of mind and body as two separate units. Mind 
influences body, and unquestionably body influences 
mind. So physicians have come gradually to think 
of mental disease as affecting the whole human or- 
ganism, not just the brain alone. 
We now have a new division of the study and 
treatment of nervous and mental diseases, called 
"social psychiatry." Social psychiatry differs in two 
important respects from "asylum" or what is some- 
times called "Kraeplinian psychiatry": (i) It teaches 
the recognition at the earliest stage of the incipient, 
warning symptoms of nervous and mental disaster. 
This, of course, means during childhood; because it 
is in this plastic, flexible period that the necessary 
wholesome habits of mental health can be best 
instilled and faulty ones, pointing to impending 
disaster in later life, corrected. Therefore, the rec- 
ognition and understanding that disagreeable and 
"Asylum" Versus "Social" Psychiatry 6 
YOUR MIND AND YOU 
unhealthy habits and tendencies during childhood, 
and the development in excess of queer, warped or 
twisted personalities during this same period con- 
stitute early danger signals, is an important part of 
the new psychiatry. Basic adult personality is 
usually formed and fairly well fixed by the eighth 
year of life. 
(2) Social psychiatry teaches us to regard man 
as a single unit or entity, and not consisting of a 
multitude of isolated anatomical fragments. For 
example, even to-day in many localities the modern 
school child is passed through an almost daily gamut 
of physical inspections. Scrupulous attention is 
given to portions of his anatomy: to his tonsils and 
adenoids, to his eyes, his teeth, to the condition of 
his skin, his weight, and his height, but until quite 
recently scant attention has been given to the whole 
child, the complete unit, his personality and character 
and what makes him what he is. 
Social psychiatry does this very thing. It insists 
that we look at the patient as a human being and 
from the whole point of view, with a knowledge of 
how he fits into his niche in life, not merely as an 
impersonal machine suffering from heart-disease or 
stomach-trouble or eye-strain. CHAPTER II 
MENTAL HYGIENE 
THAT the mental health of a community is as 
important as its physical welfare is an obvious 
but generally disregarded fact; obvious, because with- 
out mental health the most vigorous can not maintain 
satisfactory social or economic adjustment; generally 
disregarded, because that residuum of medieval 
superstition, stigma, clings tenaciously to our mentally 
sick, and we are prone to disregard that which is 
either unpleasant or little understood. 
What Mental Health Is 
Unfortunately, to a vast body of the general public 
the term "mental disorder" means but one kind- 
so-called insanity. The mental-hygiene movement is 
everywhere embarrassed by a popular fallacy that 
this latest of the country's great public-health organ- 
izations seeks only to prevent or lessen caseo of actual 
insanity. As a matter of fact, while "mental dis- 
order" does include the so-called insanities, its med- 
ical interpretation embraces other conditions equally 
important, and far more numerous. That is chiefly 
why "insanity" is being rapidly discarded by physi- 
cians as the descriptive term of a disease entity whose 
boundary lines are changing from year to year 
through accretion of new knowledge. To-day this 
expression has been relegated largely to the law, 
where its chief use is that of an index to responsi- 
bility for human misconduct. 
In addition to insanity, "mental disorder" includes 
a variety of border-line states of which constitutional 
psychopathic inferiority is one. It also includes the 
7 8 
various grades of feeble-mindedness, as well as an 
overwhelming number of conditions that misunder- 
standing and tradition insist on labeling from socio- 
logic or legal points of view, i.e., certain cases of 
delinquency, prostitution, vagrancy, dependency, and 
so on. The keynote of the modern school of psychi- 
atry, which affirms that certain juvenile delinquents 
who habitually lie, steal, run away, or become im- 
moral, may need, not punishment perhaps, but to be 
understood, strikes a responsive chord in an en- 
lightened public. But in the face of proven facts 
and established truths that same public holds with 
a determined tenacity to an economic policy of 
medieval origin, which permits many relief and 
charitable agencies to go on rearing their entire 
structures on a fallacious and scientifically abandoned 
theory that poverty breeds insanity and feeble- 
mindedness. 
Lastly, under "mental disorder" comes a group of 
conditions known technically as the psychoneuroses, 
many of which will be more familiarly recognized 
under the guise of "nervousness" or "nervous break- 
down," but whose owners will refute with hot in- 
dignation any implication of a "mental" element in 
them. To the psychiatrist, however, plain, every-day 
"nervousness" is as much a mental disorder as in- 
sanity, altho causative factors and prognosis are 
seldom similar. 
Among this psychoneurotic or nervous division are 
found those individuals who contribute so largely 
to the discomfort, distress, and unhappiness of many 
homes and communities. They are the persons with 
no discoverable physical disease, who seek to trans- 
late their mental or nervous difficulties and conflicts 
into terms of physical invalidism-a major division 
of those much-maligned individuals who chronically 
"enjoy ill health." The fact that the complaints of 
YOUR MIND AND YOU such people are usually expressed in terms of the 
physical must not be misleading, altho that is precisely 
their purpose. The underlying cause is invariably 
hidden, but often will be found to have its roots 
imbedded in a life situation which the patient can 
not handle without symptoms and to which he can 
not adjust himself, while its continuance, if un- 
modified, becomes intolerable or impossible. Recog- 
nition or admission of the true situation, even to 
himself, is not compatible with his self-esteem, and 
unintentionally, unconsciously, subconsciously if you 
like, a protective coloring is assumed in the form of 
pseudo-physical complaints. 
MENTAL HYGIENE 
9 
Its Importance to Every One 
Such, then, is the variegated material with which 
mental hygiene deals. Obviously, in a field so broad 
few can escape daily contact with one or another of 
these conditions. This is especially true of social 
workers, teachers, nurses, physicians, and probation 
officers, whose work lies to such great degree among 
life's mental cripples and ineffectives. The late Dr. 
E. E. Southard, former Director of the Boston 
Psychopathic Hospital, is quoted as saying that "one 
out of two cases of social trouble is a psychiatric 
one." Many of us do not think this an excessive 
estimate. But the tragedy of this situation is en- 
hanced when we realize how few of the professional 
groups just mentioned recognize what Mary Jarrett 
calls "the psychiatric thread running through all 
social case work," and who are misled by the red 
herring of distorted symptoms which mental disease 
throws across the trail. 
Need for Public and Medical Interest 
The knowledge that a certain amount of mental 
disorder, tho not all of it by any means, is pre- 10 
YOUR MIND AND YOU 
ventable is the heavy artillery of mental hygiene's 
armament; while dissemination of this fact, accom- 
panied by popular educational campaigns in the ways 
and means of such prevention, is its method of carry- 
ing on the attack. Broadly speaking, but two con- 
ditions are necessary to prevent a considerable 
amount of mental disorder: 
1. That early warning symptoms of approaching 
mental disease, no matter what the variety, be early 
recognized; 
2. That once recognized (and a willingness instilled 
to acknowledge them as incipient mental disorder) 
prompt and efficient treatment be given. 
The first condition implies on the part of a large 
number of the public some knowledge of what these 
symptoms are. The second presupposes the exist- 
ence of adequate clinics and treatment centers for 
early cases. Until information about the nature and 
prevention of mental disorder is made freely available 
to the public; until the fog of stigma, superstition, 
and ignorance that surrounds the mentally sick is 
dispelled; and until mental disorder is accepted as 
a disease and not a disgrace, the first of these con- 
ditions can not become effective. Likewise, until 
sufficient clinics are established to treat the early, 
beginning case, the problem will continue to grow. 
Thus is adduced one of the weightiest reasons for 
the establishment of psychopathic hospitals and out- 
patient clinics, for, as now constituted, most State 
hospitals for the insane offer treatment to advanced 
cases only. They deal proverbially with end results. 
Disagreement occasionally arises as to what is 
meant by the detection of "early" symptoms. Ob- 
viously in some cases this would be a matter for fine 
diagnosis. Generally speaking, however, mental dis- 
orders may be said to be first recognizable in child- 
hood. This is why the whole mental-hygiene move- MENTAL HYGIENE 
11 
ment is rapidly getting back to its starting point- 
early childhood-and is dedicating a large portion 
of its program to this period. Just as workers in 
other fields of public health have found it necessary 
to commence with the child, so have mental hygienists 
discovered that during this flexible and formative 
age sound habits of mental health can best be instilled 
and faulty ones corrected. 
Mental hygienists are stressing one great point, 
namely, that in most cases of nervousness, in many 
cases of delinquency, in some cases of insanity, and 
in almost all cases of child behavior or conduct 
disorder, the trail leads inevitably and directly back 
to the home and the parents. And this fact operates 
in just the same fashion and with almost as much 
vigor and frequency among families of the well-to-do 
as it does in the tenements. 
Education is the keystone in the structure reared 
by the mental-hygiene movement in its fight to 
prevent mental disorder. Its methods are legion. 
They include surveys, lectures, publicity methods, 
conferences, and, recently, on the realization that 
public knowledge of such matters can not rise higher 
than its source, special efforts have been made to 
insert courses in mental health into the curricula of 
medical schools, schools of public health, nurses' 
training schools, normal schools, schools for social 
work, and other educational institutions. 
Such a program can not be carried out successfully 
by the medical profession alone. Just as the tuber- 
culosis movement required the active cooperation of 
a large majority of the public for success, so does 
the mental-hygiene movement require widespread in- 
terest and help on the part of the community at large 
to achieve its goal. The fight against Man's Last 
Specter (mental disease) is every one's. The burden 12 
YOUR MIND AND YOU 
of mental disease falls on every last person in the 
community. There is no home unmenaced. 
Here is a cause that can not be set apart. It is 
not special, separate, unrelated. It impinges upon 
every one of our public undertakings. It moves all 
our problems of public care back to the neighborhood 
of their source. You can not be a citizen, you can 
not live in any community, you can not share in the 
burdens of public cost, however indirectly, and not 
wish for the success of the attack on mental disease, 
the safeguarding of mental health. CHAPTER III 
SERIOUS CASES OF MENTAL DISEASE- 
SO-CALLED "INSANITY" 
MANY persons carelessly think of "mental 
disease'' or "mental disorder" as meaning the 
same thing as insanity. To be sure, insanity is a 
mental disease, but a mental disease need not neces- 
sarily mean insanity. Indeed, if one takes into con- 
sideration all the other symptom groups included in 
the term "mental disease," he will find that insanity 
alone plays a relatively small part. 
To say that John Jones is insane means simply 
that he is suffering from an attack of mental dis- 
order whose symptoms are more social than personal. 
Many a person, from a medical point of view, is daily 
walking the streets quite insane, but because his 
particular variety of insanity is characterized by 
symptoms important to or concerning only himself, 
he is unmolested. Let these symptoms, however, 
acquire social significance, such as making a physical 
attack on some one or outraging the sensibilities of 
the community by an immoral or indecent act, and 
he is likely to be bundled off to the hospital forth- 
with. So it often comes down to a matter of degree 
whether we think of an individual as insane or not. 
However, psychiatry, which is that branch of medical 
science concerned with the diagnosis and treatment of 
mental and nervous disorders, has been able to place 
certain manifestations of mental disease into a group 
classified as the "psychoses," or cases of serious, 
mental disease called insanity. 
13 14 
Generally speaking these psychoses are separable 
into two more or less distinct groups: 
A. Organic (or physical) cases, 
B. Functional (or non-organic) cases. 
YOUR MIND AND YOU 
In Group A there can be found in the brain and 
other parts of the central nervous system evidences 
of an actual physical or structural injury. Thus, in 
General Paresis (or softening of the brain) due to 
syphilis, it is possible to discern with the microscope 
and often with the naked eye areas in which the 
consistency of the brain tissue has been altered and 
partially liquified. With this organic defect go 
various mental changes which are more or less char- 
acteristic of the disease in question. The mental 
symptoms accompanying brain tumor, or the changes 
in personality associated with hardening of the 
arteries of the brain (cerebral arteriosclerosis), are 
other examples of organic defect. 
Organic Insanity 
Group B, or the functional cases, are rather more 
elusive. To date no satisfactory evidence has been 
discovered to link up the mental symptoms of this 
group with any organic or structural defect. In 
these cases the trouble seems to lie, not in the engine 
itself, so to speak, but in the way it is used and 
functions. Thus, in a certain type of insanity called 
Dementia Praecox, which attacks young people be- 
tween the ages of twelve and twenty-five years, it 
is at present impossible to demonstrate any changes 
in the brain or spinal-cord structures. This is also 
true of another type of insanity called "manic- 
depressive," which is characterized in classical cases 
by an alternation between extreme elation and 
depression. 
Functional Insanity SERIOUS CASES OF MENTAL DISEASE 
15 
There are many kinds of psychoses or insanities. 
So many, in fact, that medical science has devised 
a classification so complex that no attempt will be 
made to reproduce it here. 
Causes of Insanity 
To discuss this question takes one deep into the 
field of speculation. The causes of some types of 
insanity are definitely known, such as general paresis, 
where an uncured syphilis is the causative factor, or 
alcoholic insanity, where chronic and excessive in- 
dulgence in alcohol is to blame. For perhaps a 
majority of the cases of insanity, however, no specific 
and definite cause can be ascertained. Formerly we 
were accustomed to place the blame entirely on 
heredity, but to-day our ideas on this subject are 
undergoing a change. 
It is indisputable that some varieties of insanity 
can be explained on no other basis but that of trans- 
mission through a defective lineage. On the other 
hand, there has been discovered ample evidence that 
certain other types, while not directly inherited them- 
selves, possess a tendency which is inherited. Doc- 
tors tell us that tuberculosis as a specific disease is 
not inherited, but that a child may be born of tuber- 
culous parents and become endowed with a tendency 
to the disease. This means the child's threshold of 
resistance to infection from tuberculosis is lowered, 
and he may then become infected more easily than 
other children born without this tendency. 
So it is with mental diseases. A child may be 
born of parents, one or both of whom may have sev- 
eral cases of insanity in the family, and may inherit 
the tendency to later breakdown. If his path in life 
is a simple one, if few demands are made on the 
child for mental adjustment to his environment, then 
the tendency may never become lighted up. Let him be subjected from babyhood, however, to strong 
emotional experiences; let his environment call upon 
him for a degree of mental adjustment which he is 
not capable of meeting, and the ensuing mental 
conflict acts as the match which lights up this latent 
tendency, and a full-fledged mental disorder of some 
kind often results. This is why mental hygienists 
emphasize so strongly the necessity for understand- 
ing the child early in life, that these latent tenden- 
cies may be early recognized and steps taken to pre- 
vent the smoldering spark from being fanned into 
a conflagration through unwise habits of child train- 
ing. 
16 
YOUR MIND AND YOU 
Treatment of Insanity 
To treat a well-developed case of insanity so as 
to bring about a medical cure is often unsatisfactory, 
altho much can often be done to accomplish a "social" 
cure which permits the patient to return to the com- 
munity only partially handicapped. It is far easier 
to prevent such cases in their early stages than it 
is to cure them later. 
In the main, treatment of them is treatment of the 
condition producing them. General paresis is treated 
(but usually with little effect, if commenced late) 
by treating the syphilis that caused it. Insanity 
caused by brain tumor is treated by surgical opera- 
tion and removal of the tumor. Treatment of func- 
tional cases is not as definite as in the foregoing 
examples. Here treatment consists of the building 
up of the general physical health, of offering nour- 
ishing food and comfortable quarters, but perhaps, 
most of all, of offering the patient a kindly asylum 
and refuge from the irritations and impatience and 
misunderstandings of family life and a non-under- 
standing environment. This last is highly important, 
as can be shown by the frequent fact that many insane patients who are turbulent, destructive, and 
irritable when cared for at home, settle down quickly 
under an intelligent and kindly institutional regime 
and become quiet, well-behaved, and industrious. 
As a rule the outstanding symptom of one who is 
mentally sick is an inability to conform to established 
customs and social dictates. It is not that he is 
unwilling to conform, but that he can not which 
makes him socially unacceptable. This is not always 
understood by the family, who urge the patient to 
live up to a standard of conduct which makes too 
great demands on him. The home atmosphere, there- 
fore, chafes and irritates, and his illness is aggra- 
vated. Because of all this lack of understanding by 
the family of what the patient can and can not live 
up to, many a sufferer from a relatively mild type 
of mental disorder has been literally driven into a 
more serious condition. Such persons, despite their 
lessened insight, welcome with open arms the State 
hospital as affording them an escape from an in- 
tolerable home environment and the misguided solic- 
itude of an irritating family. 
SERIOUS CASES OF MENTAL DISEASE 
17 
To prevent a case of insanity is not the relatively 
simple matter which it is to prevent smallpox or 
typhoid fever. One can not be vaccinated against 
insanity, altho there are other things that in general 
can often be done which will help. First of all it 
must be understood that the foundations for insanity 
are laid years and years before the case becomes 
usually recognizable by the layman. The so-called 
incubation period of smallpox or typhoid fever or 
any of the other infectious diseases is usually from 
ten to twenty-one days. The incubation period, how- 
ever, of so-called insanity almost inevitably dates 
back to the early childhood of the patient where the 
Prevention of Insanity 18 
YOUR MIND AND YOU 
foundation for the difficulty was laid. Thus it is 
that a preventive program for mental diseases can do 
little good if invoked during middle life. Prevention 
must begin during chilhood; as one noted authority 
has facetiously but truly remarked, "the prevention 
of mental disease must begin with the grandparents." 
A knowledge and the intelligent use of wholesome 
principles in mental-health training during childhood 
will do much to reduce the large numbe of cases 
of insanity. The solution of the problem, therefore, 
will probably not be realized for one or two genera- 
tions. However, if the problem is to be solved at all, 
a start must be made; and there is sufficient medical 
knowledge available and waiting at present to make 
the beginning, if one only has the willingness, of a 
valuable preventive program. 
A subject for popular discussion at present is 
whether or not insanity is on the increase. Some 
persons feel that the rush and hurry of modern life 
tend to more frequent breakdowns on the part of 
individuals making up the large body of the general 
public. Other authorities, and these seem to be the 
majority, feel that the actual number of cases of 
mental breakdown are not increasing, but as our 
medical knowledge of such cases increases and as our 
scientific methods of detection grow more refined, 
we are able to discover such conditions among persons 
that have heretofore gone unsuspected. Thus it is 
that almost every State in the Union is confronted 
with the task of providing additional accommodations 
for the mentally sick in institutions. This is espe- 
cially true of States where mental-hygiene educa- 
tional programs have gone hand-in-hand with 
clinical or treatment programs, which have uncov- 
ered many cases of this kind and referred them 
to State hospitals for care and treatment. CHAPTER IV 
WHAT MAKES THE WHEELS GO 'ROUND 
OUR mental lives, our personality, our character 
and conduct are guided by certain well-known 
principles called mental mechanisms. Space permits 
us to mention but a few of these. First of all 
there is a type of mental mechanism called "Compensa- 
tion." It arises out of a mental conflict or a clash 
between an ambition or a wish which is inharmonious 
with the facts of real life. It is what we resort to 
when we are thwarted in our hopes and desires. 
Or it may be that activity we assume when we wish 
to atone for some guilty thought or act. We use it 
frequently, tho seldom do we realize it, and in most 
cases it is a comforting and even a health-preserving 
device. Sometimes, however, we have been so 
severely thwarted, so painfully checkmated that a 
few of us over-compensate-and in such cases the 
effects of over-compensation on the social fabric are 
apt to be harmful and destructive. 
An example of simple, constructive, and perfectly 
natural compensation is seen in the childless but 
passionately child-loving woman who devotes a 
majority of her time to orphan asylums and child- 
caring social agencies, or in the man who plunges 
head-overheels into the intricacies of radio as a 
hobby for the purpose of gaining satisfaction and 
pleasure which a life of domestic friction and discord 
denies him. 
Mental Mechanisms-Compensation 
19 20 
YOUR MIND AND YOU 
On the other hand, the man who over-compensates 
is frequently in trouble. For instance, an individual 
menaced by the specter of inferiority may swing the 
pendulum of compensation too far in the opposite 
direction. Then, in his frantic struggles to prevent 
the world from suspecting his timidity, his shyness, 
his natural pacifism, he buckles around him a pro- 
tecting armor of bravado, of bluster and arrogance 
by which he hopes to scare off any one who might 
remotely discover his weakness. Accordingly, his 
associates come to know him for traits of conten- 
tiousness and belligerency. He is a flashy dresser, 
loud-mouthed, and attempts to win arguments, not 
by a display of logic, but by brute force and sheer 
lung-power which bowl over the opponent. Those 
who recognize these traits for the artificial mask that 
they are, say he is over-compensating for what he 
believes to be an inherent inferiority, and that his 
exaggerated personality represents a defense mech- 
anism. 
Defense Mechanisms 
Psychologists recognize the reverse of this to be 
also true and not infrequent. In general, the har- 
boring of an emotion of excessive intensity is 
usually followed by an external and exaggerated 
tendency toward a reaction of an opposite kind. The 
melodramas of days gone by frequently portrayed 
the cruel grasping villain as a pious deacon in the 
church. In more recent times our understanding of 
this mechanism of compensation has furnished the 
key to understanding the conduct of many peculiar 
types of men and women. Personality studies have 
been made of certain fanatical "pacifists" and con- 
scientious objectors during the War and afterwards. 
Mental Conflicts WHAT MAKES THE WHEELS GO 
21 
In some of them it was conclusively demonstrated 
that their zeal for non-resistance represented an 
over-compensation (or a defense mechanism) to an 
unrecognized but nevertheless fiercely raging inner 
revolt against law, authority, or even morality. Such 
mental conflicts, says Myerson, rage in every human 
breast whether we are aware of them or not: 
"Every human being is a pot boiling with desires, 
passions, lusts, wishes, purposes, ideas, and emotions, 
some of which he clearly recognizes and clearly 
admits, and some of which he does not clearly recog- 
nize and which he would deny. These desires, pas- 
sions, purposes, etc., are not in harmony one with 
another: they are often irreconcilable, and one has 
to be smothered for the sake of the other. Thus a 
sex feeling that is not legitimate, an illicit forbidden 
love has to be conquered for the sake of the purpose 
to be religious or good, or the desire to be respected. 
So one may struggle against a hatred for a person 
whom one should love-a husband, a wife, an invalid 
parent, or child whose care is a burden-and one 
refuses to recognize that there is such a struggle. 
So one may seek to suppress jealously, envy of the 
nearest and dearest; soul-stirring, forbidden passions; 
secret revolt against morality and law which may 
(and often does) rage in the most puritanical breast. 
"In the theory of the subconscious these undesired 
thoughts, feelings, passions, wishes, are repressed and 
pushed into the innermost recesses of the being, out 
of the light of the conscious personality, but, never- 
theless, acting on the personality, distorting it, 
wearying it." 
In general, then, we may say that as a mental 
mechanism motivating conduct and molding personal- 
ity, compensation ranks high in importance. It is 
usually a useful and harmless procedure, but carried 
to excess is capable of a destructive effect on Society. 22 
YOUR MIND AND YOU 
Generally speaking, it is used as an alternative activ- 
ity for something we have not been able to attain, 
and because it is man's lot to seek satisfaction 
wherever he can find it, a compensatory activity is 
usually the next best thing ,to the unobtainable 
original. CHAPTER V 
A GREAT deal of misunderstanding and miscon- 
ception seems to surround these two utterly 
different subjects-intelligence and emotions-and 
often enough the two terms are used interchangeably. 
Generally speaking, the mental lives of all of us can 
be roughly divided into two groups of activities, with 
a number of subdivisions attached to each group. 
Group I consists of our intellectual activities. Group 
II consists of our emotional activities. Intelligence 
is altogether different from emotion. The ability to 
figure out how much is two and two or to remember 
the name of the President of the United States in 
1890 is an example of intellectual activity. Intel- 
ligence varies in different persons and is capable of 
either growth or stunting. Emotions, on the other 
hand, are instincts having little to do with intellect 
and are seldom influenced by it. Crying over the 
news of the death of one's mother or jumping when 
a door slams are illustrations of emotional activity. 
INTELLIGENCE AND EMOTIONS 
The Development of the Intellect 
At birth every one possess an inherent ability to 
develop native intelligence, except in the case of 
those children whose brains during intrauterine life 
or within a few months after birth are physically 
either underdeveloped or faultily developed by reason 
of injury, infectious diseases, or poor heredity. 
When this happens they are called feeble-minded, 
and are later divided into one of three groups: 
(a) the moron, possessing a maximum mental ag** 
23 24 
YOUR MIND AND YOU 
and intelligence equal to that of a normal child of 12 
years; (b) the imbecile, or next lowest grade, whose 
maximum mental development is 8 years; (c) lowest 
of all, the idiot, who is utterly helpless and incapable 
of aiding himself, even in some cases incapable of 
feeding or giving himself the most elementary care 
and attention. This latter type always, and many 
of the second or imbecile type often, require life- 
long institutional care. 
Feeble-mindedness is, therefore, a defect of in- 
tellect. It means the same as "mental defective" 
and should not be used to describe any other condi- 
tion. Feeble-mindedness does not refer to nervous 
breakdowns or other kinds of mental disease except 
where there is a defect of intelligence in addition. 
New Conceptions Regarding the Feeble-Minded 
It is only recently, that is to say within the past 
ten or fifteen years, that we have come to know 
very much about the group of the feeble-minded. 
Prior to that time we almost always thought of them 
as few in number, troublesome, a menace to society, 
and needing life-long institutional care. Gradually 
our conception of feeble-mindedness has changed. 
We have come to learn that, instead of being few in 
number, there are a vast number of them in every 
community. In certain States, where careful surveys 
have been made, as in Massachusetts, it has been 
definitely ascertained that from one and one-half to 
two and one-half per cent, of the school population 
of each community falls into the feeble-minded class. 
These, of course, comprise only the upper and higher 
types of the feeble-minded, for the idiot and the low- 
grade imbecile never reach the schools. To estimate 
the total number of feeble-minded in any State is 
a tremendously difficult task and is made more difficult 
by the popular feeling of stigma surrounding this group. However, in Massachusetts, for example, 
Dr. Walter E. Fernaid, a world-renowned authority 
on this subject, estimates after careful computation 
that there are at least 60,000 feeble-minded persons 
in this State. Of this number only 3,000 are under 
institutional care, which means that some 57,000 
feeble-minded men, women, and children are in the 
community, most of whom are getting along very 
well as peaceful, industrious, and respectable citizens. 
It is only the exceptional feeble-minded boy or girl 
who gets into legal difficulties, actually less than ten 
per cent, of the total number. It is, therefore, unjust 
that the whole group should be stigmatized by the 
activities of a small division. 
Contrary to popular opinion in some quarters, there 
is usually nothing about the physical appearance of 
the feeble-minded individual to differentiate him from 
any other person in the community. Of course, in 
some cases there are what are called physical stig- 
mata, such as malformed flapping ears, malformation 
of the face and mouth, and so forth. Nevertheless, 
it is risky business to attempt to detect feeble-minded- 
ness from physical appearance alone. 
INTELLIGENCE AND EMOTIONS 
25 
Salvaging the Feeble-Minded 
No longer are mental defectives thought of in the 
same hopeless terms that they once were. It is now 
recognized that much can be done to convert them 
into loyal, industrious citizens capable of entire or 
at least partial self-support, altho nothing can 
ever be done to increase their stunted intellect. 
Their condition is due to a defect or an absence of 
certain required brain tissues, and brain tissues can 
not be regenerated. The general procedure for such 
a salvaging plan as worked out in a number of States, 
consists in recognizing the mental condition of the 
individual during his early school career, or even 26 
YOUR MIND AND YOU 
before he gets to school. Many are given instruction 
in special classes in the public school while others 
are sent to an institution for a period of some three 
to five years, where they are given training in 
accordance with their capacity. This is done by first 
giving them all the book learning they may be capable 
of. When this point is reached [as it is, usually, 
very early], the training thereafter consists largely 
of teaching a simple trade and in using the hands 
properly. It is remarkable how well most of these 
children respond. Not only are they given industrial 
training, but they receive a high grade of moral 
training as well, which is to prove a bulwark to 
them when they are later returned to the community. 
The average feeble-minded boy or girl, if nothing 
else, is a creature of habit and is highly suggestible. 
If recognized and properly used, such attributes 
prove valuable mechanisms for instilling wholesome 
habits and good suggestions. During their institu- 
tional career, they are taught punctuality, a regard 
for others, and their morale is raised. A character- 
istic of most feeble-minded persons is a high degree 
of loyalty, and this last usually becomes a valuable 
lever in molding their future lives. Altho their in- 
tellects have not developed in proportion to their 
bodies, such children possess, nevertheless, feelings 
which are capable of being hurt and they are keenly 
sensitive to their own deficiencies. A failure on the 
part of family or friends to recognize this fact often 
results in some form of delinquency, which is really 
nothing more than a blind sort of protest on the part 
of these individuals against being placed in an en- 
vironment and a situation which demands more of 
them than they are capable of giving. Thus a boy 
of 12 with a 6-year-old mind may be doing poorly 
in the fifth grade in school and may become delin- 
quent as a result of the ensuing friction. Much of INTELLIGENCE AND EMOTIONS 
27 
this trouble can be smoothed out when it is explained 
to the family and teacher that, altho 12 years of age 
physically, his mental age is such that he can not 
be expected to do more than second or third grade 
work. Place him in the second or third grade and 
he usually gets along very well. 
The Feeble-Minded and Industry 
Since the advent of automatic machinery, requiring 
a minimum amount of intelligence, the industrial 
world has opened up many new opportunities for 
useful work by mental defectives. This has been 
true of certain types of jobs in automobile factories 
and textile concerns, where it has been found that 
for monotonous, repetitive machine operations that 
would drive a more highly strung man of normal or 
superior intellect distracted, these low-grade intel- 
lectual types with their unimaginative, content-with- 
the-present attitude make excellent workmen. As 
in any other phase of life, it is the feeble-minded 
employee in industry who is misplaced who causes 
trouble. Give him or her a job suitable to the 
stunted intellect, and they are reasonably certain to 
prove loyal and industrious workers. 
A method has been devised by psychologists which 
will measure innate intelligence with astonishing 
degree of accuracy. This method is called a psycho- 
metric or intelligence test, and the result is usually 
expressed in a term known as an "I. Q." 
"I.Q." stand for the two words, Intelligence Quo- 
tient, or the percentage of mental age to the actual 
age. Mental age is determined by tests which the 
average child of different ages can pass. If John is 
eight years old physically and has a mental age of 
eight years, his I.Q. is 100; if his mental age is four, 
Measuring Intelligence 28 
YOUR MIND AND YOU 
his I.Q. is 50; if his mental age is ten, his I.Q. is 125. 
Mental age is the measure of the actual amount of 
mental proficiency. I.Q. is the relative brightness 
or dullness. A Judge possessed of sporting procliv- 
ities once remarked, on hearing a psychologist's 
explanation of the matter, "Oh, yes,-you mean Jim's 
I.Q. is his mental batting average." For those of 
sixteen years or over, the mental age is divided by 
sixteen, which was once supposed to be the average 
adult mental level before army figures showed it to 
be around fourteen years. 
Of what value is an I.Q.? It is useful in classify- 
ing age-groups of children in schools and institutions. 
It gives a superficial idea of the child's general 
brightness or dullness, and enables one, by reference 
to the test results, to distinguish feeble-minded, nor- 
mal, and superior children. 
But its misuses are as important as its uses. An 
I.Q. does not tell the child's special abilities and 
disabilities, which must be known before intelligent 
training can be given him. And if injustice is to be 
avoided, the examiner must know how to evaluate the 
influence on the results of the test of handicaps, such 
as foreign language, shyness, special nervousness, 
physical ill health, lack of interest, and so forth. 
Intelligence tests (some call them improperly, 
"mental" tests) are very useful additions to our study 
of the mind. Unfortunately, however, a certain 
number of psychologists who have not had medical 
training and who are not physicians have, in their 
enthusiasm, promised more for the use of intelligence 
tests than can possibly ever be accomplished. After 
all, an intelligence test (and there are 60 or more 
modifications of the original now in use), can do no 
more than measure innate intelligence. In this field 
it is a highly useful adjunct to the equipment of the 
psychiatrist; but an intelligence test alone can tell INTELLIGENCE AND EMOTIONS 
nothing about the emotions, the personality, or the 
character make-up of the person tested. And psychi- 
atrists who are interested in the whole problem of 
the human mind know that personality and emotions 
play a far more important role in our mental lives 
than does mere intelligence. 
Many people believe implicity that their decisions 
and choices in life are reached after an exercise of 
cold, hard reasoning, which, they complacently flatter 
themselves, is an index to their intellectual ability. 
We are beginning to have a suspicion that perhaps 
this is not really so, and that in the last analysis our 
choices and decisions, be they simple or momentous, 
are chiefly made on an emotional basis. If this be 
true, and the writer is one who believes it is, then 
our intellects are chiefly called into use to defend and 
excuse our decision or choice after our emotional 
make-up has molded it. 
29 
As in the case of intelligence, every one possesses 
at birth certain rudimentary instincts which are 
later to grow into emotions. Depending a great deal 
on our early environment and our parental training, 
these emotions may grow normally, may thrive too 
lustily, or may become retarded. Just where in our 
bodies emotions come from is not known, altho we 
are sure that the origin and stimulation of emotions 
is not confined to any one area of the brain or organ 
of the body, as is intelligence. 
The stimulation and reaction of emotions is a 
highly complicated process about which scientists 
even yet know little. Emotions may be stimulated 
through the pathways of sight, of smell, of hearing, 
of touch, and of temperature. Involved in any 
emotional response are the activities of a number of 
ductless glands (glands of internal secretion) or 
Development of the Emotions 30 
YOUR MIND AND YOU 
endocrines, like the thyroid, the suprarenals, and 
others. These in turn cause changes to be brought 
about in the chemical composition of the blood, in 
the elasticity of blood vessels, and cause many other 
complex physiologic activities. In certain persons 
these emotions are of stronger intensity or are more 
easily aroused than in others. Indeed, no two human 
beings ever lived or ever will live who would react 
in precisely the same way and with precisely the 
same degree of intensity to the same emotional 
experience. 
Measuring Emotions 
Altho it is, as we have said, possible to measure 
intelligence, so far no one has devised a method 
whereby we can hold up to the emotional equipment 
of a person to be tested the measuring stick of an 
emotional normal or standard. All we can do is to 
fix a very broad average of social conduct, and if 
any one departs too far from what we feel to be the 
limits of this average, we are constrained to put 
him in jail or in a hospital for the insane or call 
him "peculiar." 
From an emotional point of view there is no sharp 
line of separation between the normal and the ab- 
normal. The latter is merely the manifestation of 
a variety of conduct out of harmony with this vague 
average which Society has rather shakily erected. 
Even this average varies in certain communities. 
Thus, a cowboy in a Western town during the days 
of the Forty-niners might ride through the streets 
whooping and shooting into the air with scarcely a 
ripple of comment. His conduct was quite in keep- 
ing with the average for that environment. Let him 
perform identically the same feat on Broadway and 
the doors of the hospital for the insane would quickly 
open for him. INTELLIGENCE AND EMOTIONS 
31 
When emotions are habitually thwarted or short- 
circuited or diverted into unusual channels then we 
say the person is socially maladjusted, and we regard 
him as mentally sick. Some one has said, quite truly, 
that the real test of sanity is one's ability to get 
along in the community with the minimum of fric- 
tion. Conversely, an accurate indication of mental 
pathology would be the habitual and excessive reverse 
of this. 
Emotions, then, play a deeply complex part in our 
every-day activities; a far more important part than 
our intellects. Emotions resided in Man long eons 
before his intelligence came into being, and the 
measurement of emotions is apparently an impossible 
task, at least with our knowledge and equipment 
to-day. CHAPTER VI 
MENTAL UPSETS CAUSED BY WRONGLY 
USED EMOTIONS 
ONCE we experience an emotion, something must 
be done with it. No emotion ever remains 
static and quiet, and it can not be annihilated. In 
general, what we do with an emotion is called a 
reaction. 
A mad dog loose on the street arouses in us the 
emotion of fear. Primitive man, when he grew 
afraid, ran away; so our first reaction to the fear 
aroused by the dog is to run away from the cause 
of the fear. 
Flights from Reality 
Thus it becomes human nature or instinct to run 
away from whatever threatens our lives, our physical 
comfort, or our peace of mind. The arrant physical 
coward runs away and takes to his heels when danger 
threatens. In war-time a few, fortunately a very, 
very few, soldiers run away from the firing line and 
desert. They have yielded to a primitive instinct 
so strongly ingrained in them that the thin veneer of 
custom and ethics and morality and patriotism, which 
civilization imposes, has proved insufficient to pre- 
vent this powerful emotion and its natural reaction 
from breaking through. In every-day civilian life 
men and women also run away from unpleasant or 
disagreeable tasks and surroundings. When people 
get into what they believe is a thoroughly impossible 
or intolerable life situation, their first reaction is the 
natural and primitive one of flight, of removing 
32 MENTAL UPSETS 
33 
themselves from the source of irritation or danger. 
Thus, persons who have not acquired an averagely 
thick coating of social conformity and responsibility 
react in a very direct and elemental way; they place 
as great a distance between them and the cause of 
the intolerable situation as they possibly can. The 
weak and unstable husband who finds the burden of 
supporting a family unpleasant and an attack on his 
peace of mind, reacts to this emotion by flight, and 
he deserts. 
The majority of persons, however, who react to an 
unpleasant or impossible situation by some form of 
flight, utilize methods which are not so direct and 
naive as this. This latter group tries to escape the 
threatened difficulty by running away mentally rather 
than physically, and the results of their efforts are of 
deep concern to psychiatrists. 
For example, in mid-Victorian days it was con- 
sidered one of the indispensable social graces to be 
able to faint or swoon away on being confronted 
with an unpleasant sight or situation. Fainting in 
such cases represented a mental flight from reality, 
and neurotic and poorly balanced persons still find 
it a useful mechanism on occasions. Withdrawals 
into a little make-believe world of one's own making 
and peopled with figures and situations of one's own 
fabrication represent another means of escaping cold 
reality. This process is called day-dreaming, and 
every one, but especially children, indulge in it to 
a greater or less degree. Used occasionally it is 
a harmless measure; indeed few of us could get 
along without recourse occasionally to such a make- 
believe realm. Carried to excess, however, and made 
use of constantly, day-dreaming with its withdrawal 
from the real world into a fanciful one is a highly 
dangerous mechanism. It tends to give the excessive 
day-dreamer a false and distorted view-point of 34 
YOUR MIND AND YOU 
every-day matters, and makes him shy, seclusive, and 
retiring to a socially unacceptable degree. 
Dementia praecox, a form of so-called insanity 
attacking adolescents between the ages of twelve 
to twenty-five years and considered incurable, is 
frequently predicted by an abnormal turning inward 
of the youth's thoughts and activities, and by an 
excessive forsaking of the real world (to which he 
has not been able to adjust himself by reason of his 
inherent personality defect) in favor of his realm 
of air-castles and fancies. 
Children Who Do Not Face Reality Squarely 
Psychiatrists recognize many other forms of dodg- 
ing reality, altho they realize that no matter what 
the form and the symptoms, the process is always 
acquired during childhood. Children, consciously 
and deliberately, and probably naturally, seek to 
evade the disagreeable in life by all sorts of sub- 
terfuges. It is only when these tricks have persisted 
into adult years and become a fixed habit that their 
mechanisms are pushed down out of consciousness 
and their possessor becomes aware only of the results. 
Thus parents should be on the alert to detect 
reality-avoiding habits in their incipiency and to 
nip them in the bud. They spring into being so 
insidiously and they flourish so lustily that it is 
only by the exercise of eternal vigilance that mental 
health can be preserved. 
This is illustrated by a very real incident which 
occurred to an eight-year old schoolgirl.1 
On a particular morning, half way to school, a 
certain little girl grew sick at her stomach and 
1 Author's note: This extract, as well as the following one on 
the control of emotions is reprinted in part by courtesy of The 
Modern Priscilla, in which magazine has appeared a series of 
articles on the mental-health training of children written by the 
author of this volume. 35 
vomited. There was no make-believe about it. She 
had eaten some tainted food the night before that 
upset her. Now it so happened that had she con- 
tinued on her way to school she would have been 
confronted with an examination in arithmetic for 
which she had not studied and which she surely would 
flunk. To give her due credit, however, no thought 
of this contingency entered her mind when the nausea 
came on, and she returned home, genuinely and phys- 
ically sick. 
Her mother, an excitable and apprehensive type, 
called the doctor, and after a few hours the little 
patient was made quite comfortable. As physical 
distress subsided, her situation grew increasingly 
pleasant. The anxiety and solicitude of the family 
were welcome and comforting. All in all, the ex- 
perience was decidedly worth while, and the realiza- 
tion that, if only for a day or two, she had been the 
heroine around which the little domestic drama 
revolved was not soon to be forgotten. 
Now it came to pass that some three months later 
she was again on her way to school when this hor- 
rible thought came to her: "Why, I've got another 
examination in arithmetic this morning and I haven't 
studied for it a bit. If I go on to school I'll have 
to take the examination and I'll never pass. If I go 
home, I haven't any good excuse and Mother will 
make me return. What shall I do?" 
And then to solve this childish conflict there came 
to her out of a clear sky the comforting memory of 
her attack of real physical illness three months 
previously. 
"Why, sure enough," she said to herself-because 
when these reality-dodging mechanisms first begin 
they are conscious and intentional; it is only after 
they become habitual that we push them down out 
of awareness. "Why, sure enough-if I were to 
MENTAL UPSETS 36 
return home sick at my stomach again, Mother would 
accept my illness as a reasonable excuse for avoiding 
school; I couldn't be expected to take an arithmetic 
examination if I were sick, and I'd get out of the 
whole difficulty in an easy way." 
And she did. 
Now, all this happened quite a good many years 
ago, and that little girl is now a woman grown. A 
little while ago a friend died. The woman knew she 
ought to call on the bereaved family. But-her 
"nerves" couldn't stand shock and emotion. Day 
after day she hedged-played up headaches and 
"nerves"-and never went. She had trained herself 
in dodging issues. Her friends called her a pro- 
Ci<xstinator. She called herself a nervous invalid. 
Her doctor, who could never find any physical basis 
for her complaints, called her a neurasthenic-and 
something else. 
The ability, or the willingness, to face reality 
squarely without compromise is of supreme impor- 
tance in maintaining mental health. Children nat- 
urally seek excuses for evading disagreeable tasks. 
But when children carry over this mechanism into 
adult life and habitually and chronically avoid respon- 
sibility by denying its existence or by running away 
from it, then only too often do they find themselves 
enmeshed in a habit which leads to enrolment in 
the ranks of that ever-growing army of nervous 
invalids said to chronically "enjoy ill health." 
One may, perhaps, run away from responsibility 
or from the vicissitudes of real life a few times 
without getting into trouble. Indeed, we all do it 
on occasions. But most of us, when the real pinch 
comes, are sufficiently courageous to look our diffi- 
culty squarely in the eye and then proceed to vanquish 
it as best we may. Others of us, chiefly because 
our parents failed to understand the dangers of 
YOUR MIND AND YOU permitting us to acquire this unwholesome habit, 
invariably try to run away from responsibility. 
These persons-and their number is legion-attempt 
to side-step reality by taking recourse in vague, illy 
defined physical complants-headaches, eye-strain, 
backaches, excessive but mysterious fatigue, and a 
dozen other bodily symptoms for which the most 
searching medical examination reveals no physical 
cause. And when we do this a sufficient number of 
times, when our first thought on being confronted 
by an unpleasant task is to flee from it, we soon 
find ourselves in the same naive class with the myth- 
ical bird who buried his head in the sand and believed 
that he had escaped his enemies. 
Parents can do much, if they will, to prevent such 
habits from winding their tentacles around the lives 
of their children. The recognition that even very 
young children acquire an almost uncanny shrewd- 
ness in avoiding the disagreeable in life will help. 
Thus two-year-old Johnny or Susie may have al- 
ready learned that a stomachache turneth away wrath, 
or that staging a temper tantrum with shrieking 
voice, stamping feet, and clenched fists will quickly 
reduce Mother to frightened submission when it 
comes to getting candy, late hours, or other desired 
bits of forbidden pleasures. Breath-holding spells 
likewise rank high among juvenile weapons used to 
crumble an adamantine maternal front through arous- 
ing fear (tho never warranted) of suffocation. 
Vomiting, convulsive attacks, finicky, capricious ap- 
petites, and a thousand and one other ingenious 
devices are used by many children as a means to avoid 
doing something unpleasant or to secure something 
forbidden. Of course, we should never decide off- 
hand that such physical manifestations are caused 
solely by mental mechanisms until the family doctor 
has ruled out all possibility of a physical cause. 
MENTAL UPSETS 
37 38 
YOUR MIND AND YOU 
The child who is permitted to become a ruthless 
domestic tyrant, whose every whim is gratified, and 
who discovers early in life that by summoning such 
a device as has been discussed he possesses a weapon 
feared by the rest of the family, is not being taught 
to face reality. He is almost certainly going to 
become the man who is poorly equipped to meet 
real life. And when the time comes, as it does 
come to all of us just as surely as death and taxes, 
when he is at last confronted with a life situation 
that he can not run away from and which requires 
an honest, aggressive attack to overcome, then he 
is headed straight for some form of "nervous break- 
down," in which he seeks refuge and excuse for 
failure. 
Teach your boys and girls for their own sakes to 
be brave; to face life, even in minor difficulties, as 
life really is and not as they would like to have it; 
teach them to present an active, forward attitude 
when the unpleasant threatens; to attack vigorously 
these troubles, rather than to submit passively or 
to run away; and finally, teach yourself to recognize 
the dangers involved in the acquirement of these in- 
sidious habits that cripple and maim and stunt the 
mental health of our future citizens. 
If a majority of parents will do this to-day, the 
number of "nervous breakdowns' and kindred evi- 
dences of inadequacy will, in the next generation, 
become far less. 
Suggestion for Controlling the Emotions 
How can we learn to guide and control our emo- 
tions ? 
This question is of especial importance to parents, 
for, like all other lessons in our mental lives, this 
one must be taught during childhood. 
"Go see what Baby is doing and tell him to stop," MENTAL UPSETS 
39 
commanded a nervous, distracted mother to an older 
child. 
How familiar this admonition sounds to many 
youngsters. And how quick they are to imitate 
parental attitudes and mannerisms. The mother who 
invariably screams at sight of a mouse later wonders 
why little Tommy or Betty is so nervous, and the 
parent who grows pale and threatens to faint because 
of a cut finger is often indignant if one of the chil- 
dren "makes a baby of himself" over some other 
trivial injury. 
Like so many other processes in childhood, emo- 
tions are largely the product of imitation and environ- 
ment and are not fixed or predetermined on a fatal- 
istic basis, as some people would have us believe. 
Emotions in us all, but especially in children, vary 
in kind and particularly in intensity. And behind 
every single activity in which we indulge, emotions 
and instincts are almost always the real driving 
forces, and not intelligence. It's an old saying but 
a true one that one's emotions either rule him or 
he rules them, and thousands of men and women go 
through life mentally handicapped because they were 
never taught emotional control during childhood. 
In teaching children to control their emotions the 
first rule (it might well be the last one, too) is to 
set them an example of calmness yourself. If you 
wanted a child to learn to speak good English you 
would place him under the care of some one whose 
grammar was correct rather than under the guidance 
of a gesticulating foreigner whose broken English 
was both dubious and scanty. So, in inculcating 
a proper emotional control, the teacher must not be 
given to irrational excitement and bursts of hysterical 
irritability herself. Every one knows how quickly 
certain emotions and attitudes transfer themselves 
to others. Emotional excitement is contagious like smallpox, 
and history is replete with instances where whole 
mobs have become infected by a frenzy of emotion- 
alism aroused by one person. Revival meetings of 
the sensational type are excellent illustrations of 
this. So are lynchings and Bolshevik mass meetings 
and stampedes in theaters when fire is suspected. On 
the other hand, there are recorded many instances 
where incipient panic and mob spirit is controlled by 
the example of one dominating person keeping cool 
and showing by his lack of excitement how foolish 
the fuss all is. So if our children are to be taught 
emotional control, we ourselves must set them an 
example in calmness and restraint. The perpetually 
scolding, nagging, excitable mother can scarcely ex- 
pect her offspring to do other than imitate her. 
Commanding children to be calm and quiet is not 
enough. We must show them how to act. 
On the other hand one can urge an unnatural, 
even a phlegmatic stolidity. The best course to 
follow is a middle one. Every child needs some 
natural outlet for his emotions, and if we fail to 
provide a desirable way he may himself devise an 
undesirable one. By this is not meant the adoption 
of a policy of absolute determinism, letting Tommy 
or Betty unrestrainedly do what they want. Some 
discipline is quite necessary, but it should be an 
intelligent, helpful one. Too much suppression or 
squelching of emotional activity is as bad as too little. 
Another rule for teaching emotional control is to 
avoid placing the child in a situation where he will 
be under severe emotional stress. Taking him to 
funerals, visiting hospitals, talking in his presence of 
murders or burglars or reading morbid and gruesome 
stories to him fatigues his emotional system just as 
an excessive amount of exercise tires him physically. 
More than one adult nervous breakdown had its 
40 
YOUR MIND AND YOU seeds of genesis sown by a parent who continually 
exposed him during childhood to serious emotional 
shocks. 
It is also well to remember that children, exactly 
like their elders, have their threshold of resistance 
to emotional irritability lowered by physical fatigue. 
The child who is all tired out, either by too much 
play or by staying up too late, is apt to be cross 
and irritable. Under such circumstances it is nothing 
less than stupid cruelty to punish. Instead the child 
should be told his querulousness must be due to being 
over-tired and he must go to bed to become rested. 
One of the most trying situations in childhood, 
"when a feller needs a friend," is to be an "only" 
child. The cards are stacked against such a young- 
ster from the start, and it is the unusual "only" 
child who escapes becoming pampered. He has little 
opportunity to develop a normal emotional control, 
because the family universe fairly revolves around 
him, and by a sort of parental conspiracy he is 
allowed to become a domestic tyrant. As a rule 
it is a good thing to send an only child to school 
at an early age and to provide him with an environ- 
ment well-stocked with assorted playmates not too 
refined. He, most of all, needs the companionship 
of other children and to be required to meet the real 
tests of life. 
Another danger menacing an only child is the 
development of an unusually strong attachment to 
one or both parents. Thus he fails to learn a sturdy 
independence and leans too much on others. As a 
result he may become quite crippled in adult life 
so far as making his own way in the world is con- 
cerned, and if his parents die, then he finds himself 
a sort of adult orphan, rudderless, bewildered, and 
quite unfitted for self-support. This type of person 
is found in considerable numbers among men and 
MENTAL UPSETS 
41 42 
YOUR MIND AND YOU 
women who never marry. They have never been 
able to throw off their yoke of absolute parental 
dependence. 
Children who show an inclination to excessive 
dependence on either parent should be kept busy, 
given special responsibility, and urged to make their 
own decisions, standing or falling by the result. 
Coddling and encouraging a "run to Mother" attitude 
should be sternly suppressed. 
Finally, in teaching children to control their emo- 
tions, regard them as equals. Remember they have 
their little hopes and fears and doubts and ambitions 
just as you do, and to them these are equally im- 
portant. Don't expect too much from them. A child 
normally is an active little animal, full of curiosity 
of what Kipling calls the "satiable" kind which should 
be encouraged and respected. In his early years he 
is guided more by primitive instinct than by intellect, 
and every day he is having to adapt himself to a 
strange world made chiefly for adults and containing 
scores of taboos and barriers and forbidden things 
that quite appal him. As his emotions become 
crystallized and more complex he is going to need 
pretty badly an example to follow, a model after 
which he can construct his own ideal of conduct. 
Take heed, then, if you are his parent and have his 
welfare genuinely at heart, to show him as good 
an example of emotional control as you do a moral 
one. CHAPTER VII 
NERVOUSNESS 
What Is Nervousness? 
NERVOUSNESS is the great scrap-basket of the 
doctor. It has such a multitude of meanings 
and interpretations that a word or two is necessary 
to clarify partly what we mean by the word "nervous- 
ness." 
First of all "nervousness," "nerves," "nervous 
breakdowns," etc., have nothing whatever to do with 
the nerves of the body. These latter are anatomical 
entities of a purely organic nature. They are the 
pathways for motion and sensation just as wires 
are pathways for electrical energy. "Nervousness" 
is a condition affecting not only our physical organs 
but our thoughts and our conduct as well. 
Secondly, "nervousness" is not a disease at all. 
It is a disorder of function and does not affect the 
brain. Where "nervousness" exists there is no defect 
or break in any part of the human engine. Rather is 
there present a mismanagement of the engine. It is 
like a balky auto, made so, not by something wrong 
with the motor but by the erratic, faulty way in 
which the driver controls it. 
Thirdly, "nervousness" comes about usually be- 
cause the individual, from a personality point of view, 
is maladjusted or out of harmony with a part of his 
environment. 
To be sure, "nervousness" may be, and frequently 
is, aggravated by some physical derangement, but 
seldom, if ever, is it caused primarily by such. The 
medical name for nervousness is "psychoneurosis" 
43 44 
YOUR MIND AND YOU 
and in general this vast symptom group is split up 
into three major divisions: (i) Neurasthenia, (2) 
psychasthenia, and (3) hysteria. 
The symptoms of nervousness are literally without 
end, and they simulate every disease to which human 
flesh is heir. One symptom, common to all, however, 
is early fatigue, both mental and physical. Another 
is irritability and oversensitiveness. "Nervous" per- 
sons are always blazing forth into anger over trivial 
matters of no importance, or they burst into easy 
tears on the slightest provocation. In other words, 
their maladjustment (or "nervousness") produces a 
lowering of their threshold of resistance to petty 
irritations and annoyances. Furthermore, being 
oversensitive, they habitually misinterpret and mis- 
construe the speech and actions of others and are 
inclined to complain perpetually of lack of sympathy, 
attention, or affection. 
In addition to such purely mental symptoms as 
these, the neurasthenic is the possessor of a host of 
physical complaints for which the most thorough and 
competent physical examination reveals no physical 
cause. This is quite understandable, however, when 
we learn that the cause of such physical symptoms, 
be they headache, eye-strain, backache, or any one 
of a thousand others, is not a physical cause but a 
mental one. The trouble is that the individual 
usually has a perfectly normal body which has been 
grossly mismanaged. The controlling apparatus has 
gotten out of kilter, and the driver, not the engine, 
is at fault. 
In psychasthenia, the second type of psychoneurosis 
or "nervousness," the symptoms are more mental 
than physical. The patient finds himself beset with 
a variety of queer obsessions and compulsions. Per- 
haps he must count the telegraph poles along the 
road. Possibly he has a compulsion that makes him NERVOUSNESS 
45 
regularly get up three times each night to make 
sure he has locked the windows; again, it may be 
necessary for him perpetually to wash his hands an 
excessive number of times. Often in psychasthenia 
the patient is a victim of doubt and hesitancy. To 
put on the right shoe first or the left one is a decision 
often taking much time to reach. Then fears are 
also predominant. Some patients of this kind have 
an unreasonable (so it seems to the family) but 
nevertheless acute and dreadful fear of being in 
crowds or closed places. Thus, they literally can 
not ride on subway trains, or go to football games 
or to the theater. There are also fears of open 
spaces, fears of dirt, fears of all sorts of things 
that the healthy person never dreams of, and whose 
power to render wretched, if not to disable the victim, 
he can not possibly comprehend. 
The precise cause of psychasthenia is in doubt, 
altho generally it, too, has its roots embedded in 
a faulty and unhealthy life situation rather than in 
any particular physical disability. Specifically, the 
cause of this type of "nervousness" seems to some 
medical experts fairly well on the way towards solu- 
tion by means of understanding the complexities of 
psychoanalysis or the discoveries of Freud. 
Hysteria, the third of the psychoneuroses, finds 
expression more in queer and bizarre physical 
activities than in mental ones. First of all, the 
hysterical person is always emotionally unstable, and 
altho, perhaps, an adult in years, still clings with 
a desperate tenacity to many of his infantile habits 
of thinking and acting. Essentially, one of hysteric 
temperament is still a child, emotionally speaking, 
and has retained all of the child's simple and direct 
desire for attention and sympathy. While the desire 
to attract attention, to occupy the limelight, and to 
assert to the world in some way the fact of our 46 
existence is a fundamental instinct in us all, by the 
time we have reached maturity most of us have 
masked this desire, which others call egotism, and 
have cloaked such attention-focusing activities in 
plausible and less naive ways. Not so, however, 
with one of hysteric temperament. He or she ex- 
presses undiluted this desire, and because they are 
not legitimately entitled to an excess of notoriety 
or attention, seek to secure it in as spectacular a 
manner as possible. Usually the hysteric is a drab, 
colorless, weak-willed personality, fluctuating in pur- 
pose, and shallow and artificial in emotional tone. 
Thus, with them, more than with a normal individual, 
does necessity arise for somehow protesting against 
being passed over by the world, a form of neglect 
none of us will passively submit to. 
So the hysteric is ever on the alert to call attention 
to himself or to gain unwarranted sympathy by any 
means, the more spectacular and dramatic the better. 
This is done through fantastic and queer "fits" or 
convulsions; through strange paralyses of an arm 
or a leg; through blindness or deafness or loss of 
speech, and through mysterious spells of catalepsy 
or sleep-walking or somnambulism. But like the 
neurasthenic with his multitude of physical com- 
plaints, none of these bizarre paralyses or fits or 
blindness are caused by any injury to the physical 
part of the body. It is difficult for family and friends 
to understand this, and, despite honest medical ex- 
planations, many persons still believe implicitly in 
physical situations as the causative factors. Of 
course, no doctor treating a case of this kind ever 
makes a diagnosis of hysterical paralysis or blind- 
ness without first making very thorough physical 
examination. 
Thus the patient with any form of hysterical dis- 
ability is what we call an unintentioned malingerer. 
YOUR MIND AND YOU NERVOUSNESS 
47 
Their symptoms are real, but the cause is physically 
fictitious. It must not be thought that they malinger 
in this way purposely or consciously, however. Many 
of them are constitutional inferiors, frequently with 
a low cultural background and honestly unaware of 
the real motivating force behind their crude symp- 
toms. These seem to spring for the most part from 
the fore-conscious, or that realm lying between 
awareness and the unconscious. Thus, while cap- 
able of some control over their grotesque activities, 
they should not be held entirely responsible nor too 
severely blamed. 
This abnormal passion for notoriety and sympathy 
which produces the symptoms is also gratified by the 
curative process. Such persons will go through un- 
believable and almost unendurable pain and discom- 
fort to further their ends, and the mechanism of cure 
is sure to be as spectacular as the symptoms. Thus, 
one can scarcely pick up a daily paper without read- 
ing of some marvelous "cure" of a cripple, or a 
blind person, or a paralytic. Strangely enough, such 
"cures," which are immediate and complete, in 
startling contrast to the gradual and partial ones in 
genuine cases, are very often attained in the presence 
of an audience and in a highly charged emotional 
atmosphere. The "miracle cures" at certain famous 
shrines or at revival meetings, the cures which 
marvelously come about under the influence of a 
patent medicine advertisement with the promise of 
one's picture in the papers, the deafness which was 
instantly remedied "when something snapped" in the 
patient's head, the paralysis of a leg which yielded 
miraculously to the positive personality of the med- 
ically-ignorant chiropractor: many of these-far 
more than any one but a physician suspects-were 
nothing more than elaborately staged little dramas 
to attract fleeting attention and sympathy to an 48 
unstable, infantile, and shallow personality. Asso- 
ciated with such manifestations also go a rather more 
than average amount of superstition, credulity, and 
crude ignorance, altho innate intelligence is usually 
normal in amount. 
In removing symptoms of this kind the first im- 
perative requisite is to isolate the patient, even from 
his family if possible, because it is probable that his 
family is just the group he is trying most to impress. 
Lack of an audience is an absolute preventive to an 
hysterical attack of any kind, for it is no fun to make 
oneself acutely uncomfortable if there is no one near 
to impress. Next let the patient be made aware 
that his childlike device is thoroughly understood by 
others and will be discounted in advance of the 
attack. Thirdly, attempt the far more difficult task 
(it will prove impossible in many cases) of getting 
the patient to develop whatever special abilities he 
possesses so that he can gain rightful attention 
through a legitimate display of genuine talent, and 
not be compelled to resort to fictitious ones. 
YOUR MIND AND YOU 
Preventing Nervousness 
As in any other branch of preventive medicine, 
mental hygiene insists that the prevention of ner- 
vousness begin during infancy. The problem, then, 
is largely one of educating parents. Since nervous- 
ness is not inherited as such, since children copy the 
mannerisms of those about them, and since by tradi- 
tion nervous, excitable parents expect, and so make, 
nervous children, it is obvious that the lesson of 
mental health, like charity, must begin at home. 
Specifically, parents can do much to prevent ner- 
vousness in their children by learning and applying 
a few of the common-sense principles of mental hy- 
giene. Some of these are mentioned in Chapter VI. 
Consult the psychiatrist freely. He is your ad- NERVOUSNESS 
49 
visor on this prophylactic problem and should be 
thought of first, rather than last, when danger 
threatens. To-day a majority of the intelligent 
public have learned to visit regularly the dentist 
twice a year for the purpose of keeping their teeth 
healthy. They do not wait until cavities form or 
pyorrhea develops, but through a simple program 
of prevention avoid these end results. 
The same attitude, fortunately, is beginning to be 
true with regard to nervous and mental maladjust- 
ments. People are beginning to think of the psychi- 
atrist as a physician more interested in preventing 
than in curing. And as the cruel and unjust stigma 
surrounding maladies of the mind is increasingly 
dispelled, more and more of our thinking citizens are 
utilizing the services of this specialist to help them 
retain what most of them already possess-good 
mental health. 
For adults, a rigid and literal adherence to the 
"facing reality" policy will go far in preventing 
nervousness. Likewise since much nervousness is 
but the outward expression of a mental conflict, the 
wholesome solving of such conflicts is necessary. 
To solve any mental conflict in a healthy way usually 
requires the crystallization of a philosophy of life 
which permits one to settle the conflict either by 
frank attainment of the forbidden or inharmonious 
desire, or by its complete renunciation. Compro- 
mise between these two is often fatal, and because 
the compromise is usually a makeshift one, we soon 
find residual fragments of the conflict cropping up 
to vex and distress us. 
Cure is a far more difficult task than prevention. 
In a well-developed adult case we find ourselves 
compelled to deal with a firmly fixed habit of ner- 
The Cure of Nervousness 50 
vousness, and adult habits are notoriously difficult, 
if not impossible, to overcome. In the chronic ner- 
vous invalid the symptoms and complaints have for 
years served the patient well and faithfully as a 
shield against the harshness of real life. In fact that 
is why they were originally acquired. Thus, the 
man or woman with a "weak" stomach, or with 
"nervous indigestion" (altho medically, "there ain't 
no such animal") complains of pain and inability to 
digest food, whereas the real reason for the dis- 
comfort is a life-long unwillingness to digest dis- 
agreeable situations and experiences. 
These persons drift from doctor to doctor and 
from hospital to clinic in a ceaseless search for 
health. They are the sole support of the patent 
medicine quacks and other fakirs. They become 
zealous adherents of bizarre cults founded by, of, 
and for such neurotic groups, only to drift away 
again shortly in some other aimless direction. 
Any genuine attempt, however, really to remove 
the symptoms which have been their mental crutch, 
meets with a sturdy and determined, if concealed, 
resistance. This the patients will indignantly deny, 
most of them sincerely, and in almost all cases the 
family will join in the chorus of denial. They deny 
sincerely that they are resisting help, because, as 
we have explained before, the real mechanisms caus- 
ing the symptoms were long ago pushed down out of 
consciousness and the patient now honestly, if a bit 
credulously, believes himself to be a sufferer from 
whatever physical disorder the physical symptoms 
suggest. 
The family usually join in such denials, because 
chronic nervous invalids never exist in families 
where flights from reality are discouraged and where 
unwarranted pampering and coddling are frowned 
upon. Thus we find in actual practise that many 
YOUR MIND AND YOU NERVOUSNESS 
51 
nervous invalids are encouraged, under the guise 
of affection and solicitude, by one or more members 
of the family, to persist in their complaints and to 
continue to look for special favors, special foods, 
special attentions as rightful prerogatives of their 
illness. 
The cure, then, of such patients is actually found 
to include attention to a portion of the family as 
well. Frequently the psychiatrist finds that no head- 
way is possible until he can remove the patient from 
the harmful home environment which continually 
serves to aggravate (and not infrequently to cause) 
the neurotic condition. Over-solicitous, over-worry- 
ing, ever-apprehensive relatives, especially mothers, 
are the greatest obstacles to cure that one encounters. 
In fact, the mother of this type who has all during 
the childhood and adolescence of the patient worried, 
fussed, and fretted against the vaguest of threatened 
dangers, who has beset the tiny paths of her children 
with shadowy monsters that somehow never seem to 
materialize, is the type of parent who not only aggra- 
vates and encourages her adult child in his neurotic 
symptoms, but who, by habitual resort to excessive 
protective devices, has failed to provide him with 
the necessary stamina and independence to confront 
real issues, and thus actually causes his invalidism 
as well as aids it. These are the mothers who 
shelter, who shield and protect their children from 
every useful contact with the world, and whose 
horrified scolding is the only reward for childish 
healthy investigation and normal curiosity. Such 
mothers are always doing for the child what the 
child should learn to do for itself, thus stifling 
independent activity and sturdy initiative. Because 
these children accordingly are not permitted to come 
into contact with the facts of real life, years later 
when their more healthy-minded companions have 52 
YOUR MIND AND YOU 
already made a place in the world and have worked 
out their own adjustment, they find themselves hope- 
lessly fettered with the silken bonds of mother- 
dependency, unable to think or act for themselves, and 
occupying a place well to the fore of that neurotic 
legion made up of life's inefficients. 
Mothers of this particular type are a serious 
menace to the future mental health of their children. 
From this type springs a, fortunately, small but 
wholly vicious group, who for want of a more 
scientific name merits the designation of "vampire" 
mothers. 
They are the women, usually with a thwarted life 
of their own behind them, who live over again their 
own baffled youth in the lives of their children. 
Like the vampire, they literally devour the lives of 
their sons and daughters (usually the latter, for sons 
are expected to break early the home bondage) and 
in the name of "mother-love," which to them is a 
synonym for colossal selfishness, suck the very soul 
from their offspring. In appearance such mothers 
give little hint of their cannibalistic traits. They 
are usually gentle-looking, frail old ladies, quite 
respectable, and attended by a faded daughter of 
elderly years whose devotion and solicitude prove 
a beautiful and touching spectacle to those who like 
to watch martyrs. This daughter, of course, has 
never married, and has resolutely put romance behind 
her, because she couldn't leave mother: the very 
thought of separation, mother tremulously declares, 
would surely break her heart. Such a mother-con- 
ception as this will prove disagreeable to many; 
indeed most men won't believe it and few women will 
admit it. Nevertheless every psychiatrist sees fre- 
quent examples of it and is later called upon to 
treat these daughters for a multitude of neurotic complaints arising solely out of a life of repression 
and thwarted natural desires. 
Cure, then, of any form of nervousness, comes 
down first to discovering the underlying cause of 
the trouble. And because the particular underlying 
cause in any one case is wholly different from the 
underlying cause in any other case, no blanket set 
of specific rules can be offered in the way of treat- 
ment. For the most part, cure of this condition de- 
mands the services of one with medical training who, 
in addition, is specially skilled in the treatment of 
nervous and mental disorders. The patient and his 
family are too near the scene of the difficulty to get 
an undistorted perspective; they "can't see the forest 
because of the trees," and the calm unprejudiced 
psychiatrist is needed to furnish new vision. 
In general, the psychiatrist finds it necessary 
to probe into the life, the very soul of the patient, 
and discover, as Myerson says, the "mental causes, 
the dissatisfactions, the revolts, the disgusts, the 
forbidden desires, and the dissociations and con- 
flicts that are back of the superficial symptoms. His 
task in these cases is also to discover the physical 
factors which may have partially caused or aggra- 
vated the condition: bad habits of eating, of sleeping, 
bad habits of work and play, bad organic habits, such 
as care of the bowels. He must take whatever steps 
seem necessary to correct symptoms (not causes) 
like loss of appetite and disturbed sleep, and he must 
prescribe medicines, fresh air, massage, and exercise, 
according to the physical condition. 
"Lastly, he must do more than these things. The 
psychiatrist must teach control of emotions, and 
inculcate new purposes and new ambitions or restore 
old ones, if these have disappeared. His is a task 
formerly relegated to priest or pastor, to teacher and 
philosopher. He must be all of these things when 
NERVOUSNESS 
53 54 
he attempts to cure the neurotic, and from his ability 
to probe successfully into the dark and fiercely 
guarded corners of the human mind, from his 
capacity to understand human nature, will come the 
ability to deal successfully with these patients." 
YOUR MIND AND YOU 
False Counselors 
No discussion of the treatment of nervous dis- 
orders would be complete without posting a danger 
signal or two regarding self-help and the services 
of incompetent advisors. 
Because neurotic disturbances seem rather more 
vague and intangible than physical ones, certain 
untrained persons feel that they offer a promising 
field for exploitation. Since the War, especially 
with its aftermath of superstition and credulity, many 
attempts have been made to capitalize public interest 
in such matters through all sorts of bizarre devices. 
These have ranged from cults and individuals who 
would deny the existence of nervous disorders (as 
well as physical ones), down to a miscellaneous 
aggregation of healers-New Thought exponents, 
physical culture zealots, character-developing insti- 
tutes, and applied psychologists. 
No matter how fantastic or queer may be the 
theories advanced by these persons, they share one 
quality in common: an abysmal ignorance of even 
the simplest medical facts involved. Almost without 
exception their exponents are without medical train- 
ing or background, and often do irreparable damage 
in undertaking the treatment of cases in which there 
is a physical condition involved, and which grows 
on undetected. 
Misconceptions of Psychoanalysis 
Perhaps the public is exposed to no more dangerous 
form of charlatanism than the present vogue of the 55 
self-styled and incompetent psychoanalyst. There is 
a genuine psychoanalysis which has proved of real 
and great help to the psychiatrist in certain cases 
and which represents a valuable addition to his 
weapons of attack on the mental-disease enemy. 
But as with most other helpful scientific discoveries 
a host of ignorant and untrained imitators have 
seized the opportunity to arrogate to their own com- 
mercial uses the legitimate public interest in this 
subject. 
One of the fairest and most comprehensive sum- 
mings-up of what legitimate psychoanalysis really is 
has been made by Dr. Martin W. Peck of Boston, 
who states: 
"The term psychoanalysis has two distinct mean- 
ings. First, it is used to denote a special school of 
psychology; and second, it is applied to a form of 
psychic treatment for some nervous disorders. 
"As a school of psychology its theories differ 
radically from previous ones. It holds that most of 
mental activity is unconscious. It contends that psy- 
chological phenomena, among which are many 
nervous symptoms, are not accidental but the result 
of a definite chain of psychological causes, often 
extending far back into childhood. Many of the links 
of this causal chain are in the unconscious, and the 
individual is aware only of the effects. In order 
to understand these effects the buried links of the 
chain must be brought to light. The technique of 
psychoanalytical treatment has been developed for 
such purpose. It opens the door for a new knowledge 
of the unconscious mind. 
"The psychoanalytical [or Freudian] school em- 
phasizes the importance of the love life of the in- 
dividual from earliest childhood to old age. It sees 
in this sphere the main sources of satisfaction and 
happiness as well as the greatest possibilities for dis- 
NERVOUSNESS 56 
content, failure, and nervous illness. The elements 
concerned in the love life are infinitely complex. 
They include at one extreme the primitive animal in- 
stincts, at the other the highest cultural developments. 
A degree of harmony, developed from all this diverse 
material, is necessary for mental health. When such 
harmony is absent, self-knowledge is a first step 
toward establishing it. The aim of psychoanalytical 
treatment in nervous disorders is to increase self- 
knowledge. In so doing is made possible conscious 
control of some of the conflicting factors and unsolved 
problems which were causing the symptoms, and of 
which the sufferer was previously unaware." 
YOUR MIND AND YOU 
Dangers from Self-Help 
Self-help, as well as the assistance of incompetent 
advisors, is often fraught with dangers when it 
comes to correcting nervous or mental disorders. 
As we have explained previously, the real and under- 
lying cause of the difficulty is usually buried so deep 
in the patient's subconscious mind that he is honestly 
unaware of the genuine cause, and accordingly sees 
only the outward symptoms. Thus, without the help 
of trained advice at least to discover for him the real 
cause, he can not legitimately hope to conquer the 
trouble. Treating symptoms at best is but a palliative 
measure, while at worst it allows the causative mental 
conflict to rage unchecked. Modern medical treat- 
ment of any branch insists that treatment commence 
at the source of the difficulty, and that symptoms 
alone are to be considered merely as guide posts or 
danger signals pointing to the heart of the trouble 
somewhere else. Psychiatry is no exception to this 
rule, and because a neurotic patient may constantly 
complain of "indigestion," headache, eye-strain, or 
any other physical symptom it is not at all a reason 
for paying attention solely to stomach, eyes, or heart. NERVOUSNESS 
57 
There is another angle to the dangers of self-help, 
or in fact help of any kind except the competent 
medical variety. "Indigestion," headache, eye-strain, 
and other physical complaints frequently occur in 
persons who are not at all neurotic, and represent 
nature's danger signals for a very real physical 
derangement, having no connection with mental 
causes whatever. So then, if the patient in such 
cases happens to be superficially and casually familiar 
with the nature and cause of nervousness, he may 
decide by himself and unaided, that his trouble arises 
from a mental source and is amenable to psycho- 
therapy of a self-administered variety. Valuable 
time is thus lost in beginning medical treatment of 
the undetected physical condition, and not infre- 
quently by the time the patient has ceased experi- 
menting with himself he has reached a stage when 
medical cure is difficult if not impossible. 
Self-help is a delusion and a snare. Consult a 
competent psychiatrist who will first of all see that 
you have a thorough physical examination, and who 
will next work with you to discover the real cause of 
your symptoms. Once he points this out to you (and 
remember, seldom if ever can you discover this cause 
unaided), he will suggest ways in which you yourself 
can remedy the situation. Self-help from this point 
on is quite all right and indeed necessary, but to 
resort to it before you really know with what you 
are dealing is a highly dangerous and unsatisfactory 
procedure. CHAPTER VIII 
CRIME, DELINQUENCY, AND DEPENDENCY 
CRIME, delinquency, and dependency, the great 
triad of antisocial evils, have only in recent years 
begun to be connected in the minds of the public 
with the subject of psychiatry. Crime and delin- 
quency have from time immemorial been thought of 
wholly as moral issues, and the idea that an anti- 
social act might be motivated from any other source 
than a "bad" one was heretical. 
As our scientific knowledge of the human mind 
with all its quirks and twists and bents grew apace, 
we began to recognize that, in some cases at least, 
what we formerly thought were moral problems were 
in reality pathologic mental ones. It took many 
centuries for medical science to acquire this knowl- 
edge, and at the present time we are but at the 
beginning of a new era in our conceptions of delin- 
quency and crime. 
Old and New Concepts 
In this particular field medical science has far 
outstripped other professions. The Church and the 
custodians of our moral health are still prone to 
regard habitual departures from rectitude as purely 
moral deviations to be ascribed to the forces of evil. 
The Law in its conception of the criminal is par- 
ticularly backward. Especially antiquated and harm- 
ful in medico-legal affairs is the jury system. The 
illogical practise of solving purely medical questions 
by the decision of a jury of laymen can not possibly 
be successfully defended. This was excellently 
58 DELIQUENCY AND DEPENDENCY 
59 
illustrated quite recently in Philadelphia where a 
complex question dealing with the mental condition 
of a notorious psychopath was given to a bewildered 
lay jury who did not and could not know in the 
least what it was all about. The same absurdity 
recently arose in Chicago in connection with the trial 
of two young self-confessed murderers. 
Despite all obstacles, however, much has of late 
been learned about the delinquent. As in other fields 
of medicine where we formerly were content merely 
to ask '"What is he?"-the psychiatrist with a special 
bent for unraveling the tangled skein of delinquency 
now asks 'Why is the criminal?" and his questioning 
has resulted in discarding a number of fallacious 
theories. For example, at one time many people 
thought of crime as a disease and, hence, of all 
criminals as necessarily diseased persons. Many 
people, but especially lawyers, still think of respon- 
sibility for misconduct as hinging on a sharply 
demarcated line between what they call sanity and 
insanity. And not a few credulous citizens continue 
to regard the habitual offender in the light wholly 
of a moral deviate. 
Many Chronic Offenders Abnormal 
Psychiatry has taught us how false some of these 
conceptions are. While we know to-day that many 
criminals are distinctly not mentally diseased persons, 
we also know that more than half of all repeaters 
or chronic offenders are. We know that there is a 
definite relationship in more than 50 per cent, of 
cases of recidivism (repeating) between the anti- 
social act and feeble-mindedness or other mental 
disease of the repeater. This has been frequently 
shown by competent surveys in several States, Mas' 
sachusetts and New York in particular. In New 
York State, for example, it was shown that of all 60 
YOUR MIND AND YOU 
the prisoners in thirty-four county jails in that 
State (some 1,288 of them) 74 per cent, were 
mentally abnormal, while only 26 per cent, were 
mentally sound. This examination was made by 
fifteen trained psychiatrists working independently 
under the direction of the National Committee for 
Mental Hygiene. In Massachusetts, similar figures 
were found among the repeaters or those serving 
their second or more sentence. More than half of 
all the prisoners in Massachusetts county jails and 
houses of correction in 1922 had served an average 
of 5.2 former sentences. 
Aside from the stupid economic wastage shown by 
these figures, the mental-health aspect is appalling. 
Time and again psychiatric (mental) surveys of 
jail inmates have revealed a percentage steadily 
above half of the prisoners suffering from one form 
or another of mental impairment. Sometimes it is 
frank insanity, often it is feeble-mindedness, and not 
infrequently it is that twilight or border-line condi- 
tion called constitutional psychopathic inferiority-a 
formidable sounding term, denoting all too often not 
legal insanity, but life-long and incurable mental 
disorder from the physician's point of view. 
Whatever the variety, the inescapable fact remains 
that from 50 to 68 per cent, of the prisoners in our 
county jails and houses of correction are in some 
degree mentally afflicted, and that in many instances 
the antisocial conduct which brought them to legal 
grief was but an expression of their mental dis- 
ability. 
The remedy does not lie, as some of our maudlin 
sentimentalists would have us believe, in turning 
loose this diseased group on the community. Nor 
will solution be found in a continuance of present 
methods; viz., administering regularly 30 to 60-day 
sentences from three to seven times each year. DELIQUENCY AND DEPENDENCY 
61 
Rather does hope seem brightest in adopting some 
measures that will insure early discovery of these 
persons, preferably before trial, but surely after con- 
viction, and their subsequent classification and treat- 
ment according to the needs of each. Here again 
is an opportunity for much misunderstanding. Men- 
tal examination and classification of these prisoners 
does not mean that they escape institutional control. 
Instead, under such a system, the frankly insane 
would be removed to an institution for the criminal 
insane; the feeble-minded would be transferred to 
an appropriate place where the degree of their defect 
could be ascertained and treatment prescribed that 
might be helpful in restoring the prisoner, still under 
institutional guidance if necessary, to some degree 
of economic and social efficiency. The defective 
delinquent colony would receive certain other types; 
and some benefit, at least, would accrue to all con- 
cerned. 
Juvenile Delinquency 
Delinquency, a term usually associated with chil- 
dren who commit antisocial acts, offers a most pro- 
mising field for study from the preventive point of 
view. The juvenile delinquent, if permitted to con- 
tinue his conduct unchecked, often becomes the adult 
criminal. As in the formation of cases of adult 
nervousness where simple personality defects and 
unwholesome habits during childhood serve as warn- 
ing danger signals, so does delinquency act as a 
red lantern pointing to pitfalls later if nothing is 
done about it. 
Thanks to our new conceptions of the juvenile 
offender, we are seeing and treating him in a more 
practical light. Mental hygiene has evolved the key 
to the situation in the following words: "Children 
who habitually lie or steal or run away or become YOUR MIND AND YOU 
62 
immoral may need, not so much punishment to restore 
them to paths of rectitude, as to be understood." 
To understand sums up our whole attitude towards 
these children. Somewhere there is a reason if 
only we can uncover it; and once disclosed, the 
reason furnishes us a lever with which we can 
uproot the difficulty in a majority of cases. 
Ten or twenty years ago the only explanation for 
such conduct in young people was found in the word 
"bad." In a vague sort of way we felt such anti- 
social traits were manifestations of deviltry or sheer 
cussedness. And if the culprit kept to his wicked 
ways we bundled him or her off to the reform school 
where we had a hazy idea that some sort of official 
magic would be invoked to restore them to respect- 
ability. 
Recent investigations, however, tend to prove that 
like childhood nervousness and temper tantrums, 
juvenile delinquency is more often acquired than 
inherited. If one excepts the feeble-minded child, 
who is delinquent because his stunted intellect will 
not permit him to profit by experience, most other 
cases of antisocial behavior seem to occur in intel- 
lectually normal or even superior children. 
After all, taking what one wants or what strikes 
one as desirable is a perfectly natural acquisitiveness 
in young children. It represents a surviving frag- 
ment of a powerful and primitive instinct, and its 
suppression-never its complete annihilation-is due 
to a thin veneer of ethics and custom imposed by 
Society in self-defense. Biologically, these suppres- 
sing qualities developed millions of years later than 
did the simple, natural instinct to take, which char- 
acterized primitive man. 
It is not so very strange, then, if certain children 
fail to acquire in tender years a sufficiently thick DELIQUENCY AND DEPENDENCY 
63 
veneer of custom to prevent the breaking through 
of this primitive habit. 
In otherwise normal children, petty pilfering, lying, 
truancy, and other undesirable habits often are used 
as a sort of compensation for failure to gain in life 
what they want. For example, a girl of eight began 
to take pennies from her mother's purse and to lie 
when accused. She admitted that she had no special 
need for the money, but did it to regain for herself 
some of the parental attention and solicitude trans- 
ferred to a new baby brother. Failing to secure this 
notice legitimately, she determined somehow to focus 
attention on herself even if she had to become "bad" 
to do it. 
A rather colorless, neutral little chap of eleven 
made scarcely a ripple among his schoolmates. Back- 
ward, shy, and puny in strength, the other boys paid 
no attention whatever to him. At home, the family, 
being absorbed in the social career of big sister 
Grace, barely remembered his existence. 
Determined at all costs to bask in some of the 
hero-worship accorded the leader of the crowd, 
Tommy quickly learned he was unable to accomplish 
this through physical prowess alone. Thwarted thus, 
he turned his attention inward. The newspapers 
just then were full of the exploits of a young auto 
bandit who long had eluded capture. Finally caught, 
he boasted of his spectacular career, and among 
juvenile circles of the city was held in great awe 
and admiration. This furnished Tommy a clue, and 
when, a few days later, he abstracted a roll of bills 
totaling $33.00 from his father's trousers, he invited 
the whole neighborhood to a treat on him. He had 
taken few pains to cover his tracks and was promptly 
discovered. Tearful, but only half repentant, he 
admitted to the doctor at the clinic where his scan- 
dalized parents took him to determine if "his brain 64 
YOUR MIND AND YOU 
was wrong," that the disgrace was worth it. For the 
first time in his drab little life the rest of the crowd 
looked up to him and he eclipsed, for the moment, 
the importance even of the leader. 
Some children become delinquent because their 
environment has grown intolerable to them, and 
escape, mental or physical, is necessary. This is 
often found as a reason for heretofore unexplained 
cases of truancy or running away from home. 
A boy of twelve, Bill by name, was underweight 
and frail. He became a chronic truant both from 
school and home. Haled at last before a juvenile 
court, the probation officer told the Judge that Bill 
had a "good" home and no excuse for running away. 
Bill did have a "good" home so far as cleanliness 
went, a comfortable bed, and three square meals a 
day. But its "goodness" stopped there. Bill's 
father was a chronic alcoholic, and his mother a 
confirmed nervous invalid. A brother, two years 
younger, was obviously the apple of his mother's 
eye. Strong, pugnacious, quarrelsome, he lorded it 
over Bill, even tho the latter was somewhat older. 
Efforts on Bill's part to retaliate by hitting back 
met with disaster, for his younger brother was 
physically the more powerful. Furthermore his 
mother invariably took the latter's part and denounced 
Bill for attempting to strike his "little" brother. 
On two such occasions she invoked the father's aid, 
and on her accusation he beat Bill rather severely. 
But Bill from the stupid, legal point of view had 
a "good" home, and no one could conceive why he 
wanted to run away from it. So the Judge sent 
him to a reform school, telling Bill "may be that 
will teach you to appreciate a good home," 
Delinquency among children isn't all due to bad 
heredity. And if we want to stem some of the 
rising stream of criminal careers, we must stop merely labeling such offenders as "bad." Instead we 
must begin to ask ourselves why they are bad and 
to make some attempt at understanding them, rather 
than to go on stupidly punishing. 
DELIQUENCY AND DEPENDENCY 
65 
In these two social evils the modern psychiatric 
approach again finds itself handicapped by archaic 
and repudiated theories which nevertheless cling with 
desperate tenacity to many persons and especially to 
certain types of social-service and welfare agencies. 
We were all taught in our school days that 
"Poverty is the Mother of insanity and feeble- 
mindedness," and on such a fallacious foundation 
many ecclesiastical-welfare and social-service struc- 
tures were reared. To-day we have learned that the 
reverse is true. By reason of their defective or 
crippled intellects and emotions, the mentally in- 
competent have not been able successfully to com- 
pete in the industrial world with their more healthy- 
minded companions, and a reduced income is hence 
inevitable. Standards of so-called normal living, 
both as to orderliness and cleanliness, are likewise 
often too high for the mentally stunted to attain, 
and as a rule he sinks to a level compatible with his 
intellectual equipment. Surveys of almshouses, 
county poorhouses, and similar institutions reveal 
a percentage steadily above 75 per cent, of inmates 
who are mentally inefficient and who represent the 
backwash and residue left by the stream of average 
citizens. 
Poverty and dependency, then, are more often 
results and symptoms than causes of insanity and 
feeble-mindedness. They also set up a vicious circle 
and are self-perpetuating. A feeble-minded man 
marries a woman of the same type and lives in dirt 
and squalor because neither have the necessary nor- 
Dependency and Poverty 66 
mal ability, willingness, or ambition to better their 
condition. Their children are usually feeble-minded 
and grow up in the same environment to commence 
the cycle all over again. Changing the environment, 
unless to one constantly supervised, does little to 
change the social aspects of the case, for the funda- 
mental cause (the mental defect) has not been in- 
fluenced. 
This matter of dependency is a vexatious one. 
Mankind has been attempting from time immemorial 
to solve it, but he has persisted in regarding it, as 
he has many other evils, from a moral and an 
economic point of view. Organized efforts of attack 
have sprung into being during the past decade, and 
Family Welfare Societies, Associations for Improv- 
ing the Conditions of the Poor, Charity Organiza- 
tions Societies, and kindred groups of large staffs and 
complex organization have united for a common 
onslaught against poverty and dependency. 
Such enthusiastic social-service activities are to be 
found nowhere in the world as highly developed as 
in America. They are making a sincere attempt to 
lessen these evils, and they are both worthy and 
useful-that is, in most fields. It can not be denied, 
however, that with a few brilliant exceptions, the 
majority of such social-service groups are dissipating 
their energies on symptoms instead of causes when 
it comes to attacking the dependency problem. 
Not even yet has the former Lady-Bountiful con- 
cept of charity, as handing out baskets of groceries 
to the poor, been wholly dispelled; a concept which 
ignores underlying causes and sees but surface symp- 
toms. Modern psychiatry, especially social psychi- 
atry, points out that dependency and poverty are 
symptoms of some other and deeper evil, and that 
ameliorating symptoms may be temporarily neces- 
YOUR MIND AND YOU sary but does nothing towards really solving the 
problem. 
And so the attention of a growing class of sociol- 
ogists and social workers of the more intelligent type 
is being focused on underlying causes for dependency 
and poverty, represented in a majority of cases by 
feeble-mindedness, defective personalities, and in- 
ability to become adjusted to the community. A 
new type of social worker is helping to expedite 
general acceptance of this concept. She is not 
the volunteer who afflicts and handicaps so many 
welfare agencies, the dabbler who feels a "call 
to service" and squeezes in between bridge parties 
and teas an hour or so of "visiting the poor." In- 
stead she is a professional, a college-trained woman 
with a year or more of highly specialized training 
superimposed, and called a psychiatric social worker. 
She is the psychiatrist's assistant in the same capacity, 
but even more so, that the trained nurse is the sur- 
geon's assistant. It is to her the psychiatrist turns 
when he wants intelligent follow-up work done in the 
patient's home or factory, and it is the psychiatric 
social worker who is carrying the torch of knowledge 
aloft to light the darkness in which the untrained 
worker is groping in search of a solution to her 
problems. 
A prediction well on the way towards actual fulfil- 
ment insists that the solution of the problems of 
dependency and poverty will lie, not alone in studies 
of environment, not in housing conditions, not in 
relief work, not in doles or in pensions, but in study- 
ing the personality of the dependent, learning why he 
is dependent, and taking measures to shut off at the 
source, not half way down, the growing stream of 
mental abnormality and inefficiency which causes the 
problem. 
This is the task of mental hygiene 
DELIQUENCY AND DEPENDENCY 
67 CONCLUSION 
In some ways the title of this little book, "Your 
Mind and You," is misleading. It implies that your 
mind is somehow a separable part of you, and that 
your physical and mental equipments are to be con- 
sidered individually. If so, this is unfortunate, for 
in the foregoing pages an attempt has been made to 
demonstrate that mind and body can not be separated 
and that your mind is you. You-the real you-not 
the external mask you put on to mislead people-are 
the product of your mind, while conversely, the ex- 
pression of the activities of your mind is you. This is 
a bit involved, to be sure, but it is a conception 
worthy of entertainment. 
The real hope of insuring some day a generation 
of sound and healthy-minded citizens depends on a 
majority of the public knowing something about the 
simpler mental mechanisms that control our conduct 
and thoughts, and about a few at least of the danger 
signals that warn of disaster ahead. In a modest 
and admittedly incomplete way this little book hopes 
to fulfil its purpose by becoming one stepping-stone 
on the journey to the goal. 
In the opinion of the writer and many others, much 
of the literature flooding the market on psychology, 
mental hygiene, and kindred subjects fails to offer a 
presentation that is both medically correct and written 
in understandable and simple language. 
For the beginner the following list has been pre- 
pared and endorsed by the Massachusetts Society for 
Mental Hygiene. 
Reference Reading List 
68 CONCLUSION 
SECTION I 
69 
Pamphlets obtainable at ten cents each from the Mas- 
sachusetts Society for Mental Hygiene, 5 Joy St., Boston, 
or from National Committee for Mental Hygiene, 370 
Seventh Ave., New York City. 
1. "A Mental Health Primer" (25 cents). 
2. "The Scope and Aim of Mental Hygiene," by Wm. 
H. Burnham, Ph.D. 
3. "Success and Failure as Conditions of Mental 
Health," by Wm. H. Burnham, Ph.D. 
4. "Individual Variations in Mental Equipment," by 
Augusta F. Bronner, Ph.D. 
5. "Mental Hygiene and the College Student," by 
Frankwood E. Williams, M.D. 
6. "The Essentials of an Education," by Stewart 
Paton, M.D. 
7. "Habit Clinics for Children of the Pre-School Age," 
by Douglas A. Thom, M.D. 
8. "The Child and the Home," by Marianna Tay- 
lor, M.D. 
9. "Mental Hygiene and Industry." 
10. "Some of the Psychological Mechanisms of 
Human Conduct," by Irving J. Sands, M.D., and 
Phyllis Blanchard, Ph.D. 
11. "Habit Clinic Series," leaflets on handling problem 
children. 
Books. These books should be obtainable at your book- 
seller. 
1. "The Psychology of Insanity," by Bernard Hart. 
Macmillan Co. 
2. "The New Psychology and the Teacher," by H. 
Creighton Miller. Thomas Seltzer & Co. 
3. "Mental Conflicts and Dishonesty," by William 
Healy, M.D. Little, Brown & Co. 
4. "The Kingdom of Evils," by E. E. Southard, M.D., 
and Mary C. Jarrett. Macmillan Co. 
5. "Instincts of the Herd," by Wtn. W. Trotter. Mac- 
millan Co. 
SECTION II 70 
YOUR MIND AND YOU 
6. "Personality and Social Adjustment," by Ernest W. 
Groves. Longmans, Greene & Co. 
7. "The Nervous Housewife," by Abraham Myerson, 
M.D. Little, Brown & Co. 
8. "Psychoanalysis," by Ernest Jones, M.D. Wm. 
Wood & Co. 
9. "Case Studies," Judge Baker Foundation, 40 Court 
St., Boston. By William Healy, M.D., and Augusta 
Bronner, Ph.D. 
10. "Social Psychology," by Floyd Allport. Houghton, 
Mifflin, Co. 
11. "Mental Adjustments," by Frederic Lyman Wells, 
Ph.D. D. Appleton Co,