Our Fear Complexes 
By 
Edward Huntington Williams 
% * » 
and 
Ernest Bryant Hoag 
Authors of 
Crime, Abnormal Minds and the Law 
INDIANAPOLIS 
THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY 
PUBLISHERS Copyright, 1923 
By The Bobbs-Merrill Company 
Printed in the United States of America 
PRE68 OP 
BRAUNWORTH * CO. 
BOOK MANUFACTURERS 
BROOKLYN, N. Y. To 
DR. HENRY GREEN BRAINERD 
Skilful, courageous and tireless 
worker in the cause of humanity PREFACE 
There is to-day no dearth of books on 
mental health subjects, and it might seem to 
some quite unnecessary to add another to 
the long list already available. But in going 
over this list now to be found on the shelves 
of book stores and libraries, one is struck 
with the fact that most of these books have 
been written by people with little scientific 
training but possessed of much rather un- 
directed emotional temperament. 
In the main these writers advance the 
theories of some peculiar “cult”—some new 
form of religion, or superstition, or some old 
philosophy in new garb. On the other hand, 
there are not a few books which, while 
highly scientific, are difficult to understand 
by any except the trained reader. Of all the 
many books on mental health topics there 
are few indeed that are at once scientifically 
sound and easily understood by the average 
reader. PREFACE 
One can not speak too highly of such 
splendid works as Clouston’s Hygiene of the 
Mindy Paul DuBois’ The Education of Self, 
and Doctor White’s Principles of Mental 
Hygiene, but these are presented from a 
rather special point of view. 
The authors of this book have endeavored 
to present their ideas on fear in relation to 
nervous disorders and character peculiari- 
ties, in a manner free from prejudice, 
superstition, religious bias and scientific 
dogma, and in a style not too difficult for 
any intelligent reader. They have tried to 
recall the special problems of nervous pa- 
tients as these have come to their offices for 
help, and to anticipate the troubles of others 
who, by care and proper direction, may be 
saved from unnecessary unhappiness. They 
have tried to write in a spirit of optimism 
and, they hope, with some sense of humor, 
for they feel that nervous people as a rule 
take themselves and the business of living 
far too seriously. Nevertheless their aim is 
deeply and fundamentally a serious one. 
Doctor Paul DuBois, the great physician- PREFACE 
philosopher, has wisely said, “It is in their 
education that patients ought to seek their 
cure, and people in good health should find 
their safeguard against nervousness. One 
ought to begin by little things, in the excel- 
lent habit of neglecting one’s trifling ail- 
ments, and of going bravely forward with- 
out being too much concerned for one’s 
comforts.” 
Edward Huntington Williams. 
Ernest Bryant Hoag. 
Los Angeles, March, 1923. INTRODUCTION 
Every one has fears. They haunt us 
from the earliest days of childhood to the 
last days of old age. They spoil much of 
the happiness and usefulness of our lives. 
Not only so, but they spoil the happiness of 
others nearest and dearest to us, because 
they make us gloomy, irritable, nervous, 
peculiar, difficult, unreliable, or absolutely 
sick. 
Fears are the ghosts of ignorance and 
superstition. They are the black beasts of 
fantasy which paralyze our waking hours 
and fill our dreams with morbid dreads. We 
will not meet them in the open, but seek to 
confine them in the closets of our very souls. 
A “repression” is only a ghost of an 
unreality, or a monster unmet and uncon- 
quered. 
We repeat the words, but we do not be- 
lieve them when we say, “Though I walk 
through the valley of the shadow of death, I 
will fear no evil.” Fear haunts the religious INTRODUCTION 
quite as much as the irreligious; the intelli- 
gent as much as the unintelligent; it is in- 
deed mostly a matter of the emotions and 
has comparatively little to do with beliefs or 
intelligence. But emotions can be under- 
stood and trained, and we should be the 
masters, not the slaves of our emotions. 
Most fears originate in childhood, and 
come to light in adult life as various forms 
of character peculiarities and nervous dis- 
orders. Doctor Leonard G. Guthrie, the 
wise English observer of children, says, 
“Fear, whether of the supernatural, or of 
physical ill-usage, or of ridicule, may have 
disastrous effects on mind and health. Much 
of the self-consciousness, introspection, 
hypochondria, neurasthenia, and hysteria, 
which is noticeable in adults, may be traced 
to the effects of fear in early life.” 
Harriet Martineau, in her essay on Fear, 
says: “I was as timid a child as ever was 
born; yet nobody knew or could know the 
extent of this timidity; for although open 
about everything else, I was as secret as the 
grave about this.” “Children,” as Doctor INTRODUCTION 
Guthrie says, “share with savage aborigines 
the dread of the great unknown; they seize 
with avidity on suggestions that mysterious 
unseen influences affect them, and will in- 
vest all that is taught them on such subjects 
with a fearful embroidery of their own. 
The possible results therefore of certain 
forms of religious and moral teachings upon 
nervous, imaginative and superstitious chil- 
dred need careful consideration.” 
The host of nervous, unhappy, timid 
wrecks of humanity which crowd the offices 
of the nervous specialists, fill our sanitari- 
ums or become the votaries of almost any 
new religious or health cult, all give clear 
evidence of an unfortunate childhood, un- 
trained and misunderstood, or of a lack of 
wisdom and discipline in adult life. Their 
lives are filled with disappointments and in- 
efficiency. 
Without these nervous, fear-ridden people 
a new Freudian psychology could scarcely 
have developed, or at least have been so 
largely accepted, and our parlor psycho- 
analysts of dreams would have had to devote INTRODUCTION 
their energies to a less mystical form of en- 
deavor. Yet, for the most part, these are 
people of intelligence and imagination. 
They are the very people who, because of 
their highly organized natures, can, when 
properly aided and directed, become the 
world’s leaders. Indeed, they frequently 
are leaders despite their heavy burdens. 
This little volume is addressed to the in- 
telligent reader who, while he may indeed be 
an innocent but unfortunate and unhappy 
victim of a “fear-neurosis,” or of some other 
form of functional nervous disorder, is yet 
willing to seek relief in the sound field of 
science rather than in the realms of mys- 
tery, fads, superstition or plain charlatan- 
ism. CONTENTS 
PART ONE 
CHAPTER PAGE 
I Every-day Fears 19 
Our Secret Fears—Superstitious Fears— 
Fears of the Elements—Fear and Embar- 
rassment—Fear and Disease—Worry and 
Morbid Fears—Some Special Fears—Fear 
of High Places—Fear of Insomnia—Our 
Little Fears and Worries—Normal Fears. 
II Every-day Fears—Continued 50 
Fears of Ignorance — Sex Fears — Sex 
Fears and Abnormal Conduct—Sex in Lit- 
erature—Hawthorne’s Classic Picture of 
Fear and Sex Repression. 
III Every-day Fears—Continued 64 
Ambition, the Fear Maker. 
IV Every-day Fears—Concluded 78 
The Selfishness of Fear—It All Centers in 
Self — Courage — Courage of Fear — The 
Courage of Possession—The Remedy. 
PART TWO 
V Dreams, Fears and the Modern Dream 
Doctor . 101 
Freudianism and Dreams—No Mystery in 
Dreams—Freudianism Overdone—Physical 
Basis of Fantastic Dream—Wishes and Re- 
pression—An Old Idea in a New Form— 
The Modern Dream Doctor—The Effects 
of Wishes and Repressions—Shell-Shock 
and Defense Reactions — Sublimation — 
Summary and Application. CONTENTS—Continued 
CHAPTER PAGB 
VI From Freud to Coufi 137 
Mental Suggestion—Miraculous Cures— 
Old Faiths and the New—Old Truths Re- 
stated—The Basis of Cou6 Methods—Cou§- 
ism and Hypnotism—The Scientific Ex- 
planation of Suggestion—Functional and 
Organic Diseases—Summary and Applica- 
tion. 
VII Special Fears Having a Sexual Basis . . 164 
Sex Secrecy — Sex Precocity — Sex and 
Nervousness — Sex Repressions — Sex 
Doubts—The Cure for Sex Fears—The 
“Change of Life”—Morbid Worries and 
Sex Life—The Mental Element in All 
Healing. 
VIII The Fears of Children 189 
The Black Beast of Fear—Fear and Intel- 
ligence—Variety of Fears—The Fears of 
Doctor Holmes and Charles Lamb—Fears 
of a Religious Nature—Outlets for Fears 
—Sex Fears of Children—The Remedy for 
Sex Fears in Children—Religion and Fear 
—Night Terrors—Fear and Punishment— 
The First Years of Children’s Lives. 
IX The Glands of Courage, Fear, Health and 
Personality 212 
Medical Mysteries and Their Solutions— 
Early Study of the Ductless Glands— 
Glands and the Emotions—The Emotions 
and Consciousness—Our Primitive Nervous 
System—The Glands of Fear and Rage— 
Dangerous Emotions—Origin of the Emo- 
tions — Controlling Our Emotions — The 
Remedy. 
X The Glands of Courage, Fear, Health and CONTENTS—Concluded 
CHAPTER PAGH 
Personality—Continued 232 
Myxedema — A Modem Miracle — The 
Glands and Behavior—Our Chemical Mes- 
sengers—Glands and Growth—The Thy- 
mus Gland—The Thymus and Criminality 
—Over-Stimulation of the Ductless Glands 
—The Human Motor—Mind and Body— 
Modern Therapeutics — Constipation and 
Its Mental Control—Some Psychic Causes 
of Constipation—Physical Basis of Sugges- 
tion. 
XI The Habit of Fear 259 
Good Habit Formation—Mental Pathways 
of the Brain—Our Automatic Habits— 
Directing Our Emotions—The Habit of 
Humor. 
XII Cultivating Our National Courage . . 268 
What “Birth Control” Really Means—Hol- 
land as Exemplar. 
XIII The Story Retold 300 
The Education of Self—Our Primitive 
Emotions—Morbid Self-Interest a Form of 
Selfishness—The Hopeful Habit. OUR FEAR COMPLEXES 
Chapter I 
EVERY-DAY FEARS 
OUR SECRET FEARS 
Every one is afraid of something. Every 
one cherishes some more or less dominant 
and usually secret fear. It may involve 
matters pertaining to sickness, death, sex, 
love, the hereafter, ambition, business—any 
one of the innumerable fundamentals of this 
thing we call “life.” Fear may be so domi- 
nant that it changes the individual’s entire 
character, or so successfully suppressed that 
its effects are negligible. But, in any event, 
the intangible thing, “fear,” influences 
man’s physical and mental condition more 
profoundly than any of his many other emo- 
tions. And since life itself, as represented 
19 20 
OUR FEAR COMPLEXES 
by behavior and character, is preponder- 
antly a mosaic of emotions in which the in- 
dividual units are to a large extent fears, it 
is evident that there must be an infinite 
variety of these mental evils. 
Yet, the word fear is a relative one, and 
in individual cases often contradictory. 
What is torture for one person may be a 
positive pleasure for another. For example, 
there are many perfectly normal and cour- 
ageous persons who are absolutely terror- 
ized by electric storms; there are others, no 
more courageous and no less normal, who 
find ecstatic pleasure in the flash, crash, 
roar and power of nature. But this is really 
no test of the quality known under the gen- 
eral term, courage. For it appears to be 
one of the peculiarities of human nature 
that every one has his own particular and 
peculiar collection of fears quite unlike 
those of any other person. And in this col- 
lection are sure to be found certain fears 
that will appeal to most of us as absurd, 
inadequate and quite beyond our compre- 
hension. Yet, if our own individual list of EVERY-DAY FEARS 
21 
obsessions were presented to this other per- 
son, he would surely find quite as many ab- 
surd and unreasonable fears, from his point 
of view, as we found from ours. 
It is true, of course, that in the main the 
lists would agree fairly well. But the great 
difference would come in what would ordi- 
narily be considered the lesser and seeming- 
ly trivial fearlets. Even these, be it under- 
stood, are not trivial to the individual, how- 
ever they may seem to his neighbor. 
Thus, in the matter of fears produced by 
physical conditions, mere location is a sin- 
gularly important factor. A slight pain in 
the arm, or leg, for example, causes no men- 
tal anguish. We say, “It is probably rheu- 
matic, or just a plain, inconsequential ache.” 
But a corresponding amount of pain in the 
right side of the abdomen may immediately 
arouse a suspicion that the appendix is mis- 
behaving, with the resulting fearsome vi- 
sion of a hospital and the operating room, to 
say the least. With pain in the left side, we 
may fear heart disease, and pain in the back 
portends “kidney trouble.” And any physi- 22 
OUR FEAR COMPLEXES 
cian can tell you that very few persons reach 
mature life without suspecting at one time 
or another that they have heart or kidney 
disease, despite the fact that most of serious 
heart troubles are painless, and that the ma- 
jority of back pains have nothing whatever 
to do with the kidneys. Or, as illustrating 
mental anguish determined by location, a 
discolored mole or birthmark on the maid- 
en’s shoulder would have little or no effect 
upon her, while the same disfigurement on 
her face might result in complete character 
changes. It could scarcely fail to produce 
some pronounced morbid trend of thought in 
any one of a sensitive nature, no matter how 
deftly camouflaged. 
The harsh but accurate name for this 
trend of thought is fear, call it by whatever 
more pleasing and less offensive term we 
please. It is fear in the form of an obtru- 
sive, constant apprehension haunting the 
girl’s mind; a dread that her appearance 
will not be pleasing; a fear that her disfig- 
urement may give an unfavorable impres- 
sion to observers to whom she wishes to ap- EVERY-DAY FEARS 
23 
pear well. And such dreads tend to estab- 
lish “conflicts” and “repressions,” and to 
bring about unfortunate character changes. 
It has been said that all doubting is, after 
all, one or another of the phobias, or fears; 
a fact which we must all recognize when we 
stop to think about our own experiences. 
Most morbid fears originate early in 
childhood, many of them at the unstable 
time of puberty. In the normal individual 
these are largely overcome, or, as we say, 
suppressed, by the process of reasoning in 
the years that follow. Yet, they are rarely 
completely eliminated; the scars of the old 
apprehensions remain more or less obtru- 
sive, despite the scornful dictates of the 
higher intellect. This is because such fears 
have an emotional content. Morbid fears 
that have become ingrained by morbid cul- 
tivation are always difficult to overcome by 
reason. As a matter of fact, our lives are 
governed far more by emotion than by rea- 
son, much as we dislike to admit it. 24 
OUR FEAR COMPLEXES 
SUPERSTITIOUS FEARS 
The persistence of popular superstitions 
illustrates this emotional domination in our 
lives. There is, of course, no sense in the 
idea that the thirteenth is an unlucky day, 
or that thirteen is an unlucky number, or 
that it makes any difference over which 
shoulder one sees the new moon, or that any 
harm can really come to the one who walks 
through a funeral procession or passes un- 
der a ladder. Yet most people have some 
slight qualms about such entirely foolish 
matters, as appears from the fact that ho- 
tels and steamships omit the number thir- 
teen on their rooms, and that few people 
really like to sit down with thirteen at the 
table. In our daily lives we recognize that 
these things are pure superstitions, but, 
nevertheless, they persist. Yet there are 
many trivial fears in which reason is less 
easily applied. There are, indeed, many 
over which some individuals have little or 
no control; and one of the most amazing 
things is the observation of how very trivial 
these fears may be and how unexpectedly 
they are met in individual instances, EVERY-DAY FEARS 
25 
FEARS OF THE ELEMENTS 
One of the most skilful and courageous 
members of a champion baseball club a few 
years ago had an uncontrollable fear of 
thunder-storms. A sudden thunder shower 
occurring during an important game in 
New York City so terrorized this player 
that he rushed from the field and sought 
shelter in a far corner of the grand-stand. 
Yet, he could not explain why he was afraid 
or just what he was afraid of. Certainly 
it was not merely a fear of death or injury, 
for in his work as a ball player he was in 
constant danger of great bodily injury, or 
even death, as he played the most hazardous 
position on the team. Between seasons, in 
his home town, he acted as an officer of the 
law and had repeatedly proved his courage 
in facing death; so that there was no ques- 
tion about this man’s courage in the ordi- 
nary sense of the word. He was, indeed, an 
unusually brave man, save for that one 
blind, primitive, childish fear of thunder- 
storms. 26 
OUR FEAR COMPLEXES 
FEAR AND EMBARRASSMENT 
Another case that came under our per- 
sonal observation was that of a tremendous- 
ly muscular and powerful man who, in the 
face of ordinary peril, had repeatedly shown 
the most exceptional type of courage. In- 
deed, a keenly observant physician who had 
known this man for years often asserted 
that, “He is the one person I have ever seen 
in whom I believe the sense of fear is actu- 
ally absent. He is so absolutely fearless 
that he seems to be utterly lacking in the 
fear instinct.” 
And yet this “fearless” man had his vul- 
nerable point. His particular fear so pos- 
sessed him that he had to abandon an 
attempt to get a college education after he 
had reached maturity, because when called 
upon to recite in the classroom he was so 
frightened and confused that he could not 
utter a single word, or think of a word to 
utter, despite the fact that in his room a few 
moments before he had been able to answer 
glibly every question asked him in the class- 
room. EVERY-DAY FEARS 
27 
This was only an exaggerated form of 
“embarrassment,” “diffidence,” you will 
say. And so it was, if you choose to use 
those terms. But, in the last analysis, those 
words are simply sugar-coated expressions 
of the plain word, fear. The classroom em- 
barrassment of this man was just as truly 
a type of fear, and real fear, as would have 
been the emotions of one of his classmates 
had he been called on to take his place and 
face the anger of some furious maniac, 
armed and with homicidal intent,—a thing 
that this diffident student was called on fre- 
quently to meet in his occupation outside the 
university as a hospital attendant. Yet this 
embarrassed, timid, classroom poltroon 
would meet that condition with the cool type 
of courage which caused the observant phy- 
sician to assert that the man seemed abso- 
lutely devoid of fear. 
FEAR AND DISEASE 
During the great influenza epidemic 
there were many cases of shaken courage, 
as there always are in the face of any novel 28 
OUR FEAR COMPLEXES 
and, therefore, unknown danger. There 
were persons who showed a morbid fear of 
this disease who had little fear of death and 
very little fear, indeed, of any ordinary dis- 
ease or epidemic. One particularly striking 
case was that of a returned soldier whose 
courage in facing death in the form of bul- 
lets, shells and poison gas is a matter of 
official government record and commenda- 
tion. Yet this fear of the “flu” was a ver- 
itable obsession. He literally ran away 
from the house where a member of his fam- 
ily, and dearly loved member too, lay sick 
with this disease, and was on the verge of 
nervous collapse when the epidemic finally 
subsided. Fear of tuberculosis is so com- 
mon that it has been given a special name; 
fear of cancer paralyzes the lives of a great 
number of people; and so does the fear of 
pneumonia, apoplexy, kidney disease, insan- 
ity and a host of other ailments. 
In some persons fear of disease is so 
great and constant that they develop what is 
known as hypochondria, or a true disease 
phobia, which unfits them for all useful EVERY-DAY FEARS 
29 
living, and renders them absolutely miser- 
able. The line between this condition and 
one of actual insanity is often a very nar- 
row one; and it is for this reason that early 
and prompt control is necessary, for most 
cases are curable and nearly all are control- 
lable, if not entirely curable. 
WORRY AND MORBID FEARS 
It is only a short step from obvious 
sources of fear to the more intangible, al- 
though perhaps equally real, sources of mor- 
bid worry; and worry itself is, of course, 
merely an expression of fear. Worry begets 
worry. And no habit is easier to form or 
harder to break than the worry habit. 
Each and every intelligent individual has 
his own particular fund of such secret wor- 
ries—his own personal closet skeleton, 
which now and again escapes its bonds. 
Perhaps it is the specter of failure in busi- 
ness, unfulfilled ambition, possible poverty, 
or morbid sexual doubts. Sometimes it is 
an abnormal train of thought established in 
childhood, or produced then or later by some 30 
OUR FEAR COMPLEXES 
physical maladjustment. But whatever its 
character or whence its source it is present 
in all of us to some extent, and in many of 
us to a very great extent. And the higher 
we go in the scale of intellectual endowment 
and nervous development the more certain 
are we to find the existence of such morbid 
worries. Indeed, it is this type of fear, or 
secret worry, that distinguishes intelligent 
man from the less intelligent, and from the 
beast; and it is intelligence which, when 
properly directed, should cure our habit of 
worry. 
SOME SPECIAL FEARS 
There is hardly anything about which a 
fear may not be developed. There are those 
who have fears of open spaces and are quite 
unable to cross a vacant lot, or even a street, 
without a tremendous and exhausting ef- 
fort. Others fear closed spaces and are 
thrown into a panic in a crowd, or in a small 
room or a closet. Still others fear certain 
harmless animals such as cats, rats, chick- 
ens, dogs, horses; or they fear the dark, and 
certain noises, such as the wind. Then there EVERY-DAY FEARS 
31 
is the fear of swallowing certain foods, or 
even of nearly all foods; fear of dirt, fear of 
water, fear of poverty, fear of old age, fear 
of loss of position, fear of certain people, 
fear of saying or doing improper things, 
fear of sin, fear of future punishment, fear 
of bodily functions, fear of attracting at- 
tention, fear of lying, fear of marriage, fear 
of child-birth, fear of nearly all new under- 
takings and situations, and a great host of 
fears associated with doubts and indeci- 
sions. In fact, there is probably nothing 
that some one has not had a fear about. Yet, 
most people afflicted with such fears are not 
insane, although some, of course, may be; 
and the fear is then only one of the symp- 
toms of their insanity. 
FEAR OF HIGH PLACES 
As an example of fear of high places, a 
veteran federal officer, bearing the scars of 
bandits’ bullets which are surely mute 
badges of courage, had driven his car up 
into a mountain resort for his vacation. The 
last three miles of the mountain road ap- 32 
OUR FEAR COMPLEXES 
proaching the camp were cut out from the 
side of the embankment so that in many 
places there was an almost sheer drop of 
several hundred feet at one side. Yet the 
road was an excellent one, wide enough for 
two cars to pass at many points, and with 
turnouts arranged at convenient places. It 
was a stage and tourists’ road where scores 
of cars passed and repassed every day,—in 
short, a good mountain road. 
Now, this officer was accustomed to moun- 
tain driving and was an expert at the wheel. 
But it so happened that on the journey to- 
ward the camp the steep drop from the road 
was on his left, with the embankment on the 
right, so that in making the turns to pass 
other cars, his car was always in the inside 
toward the embankment. On the journey 
out, however, this condition would be re- 
versed so that in making the turnouts when 
meeting other cars he would be on the out- 
side at the verge of the precipitous road. 
Yet all this was of such little consequence, 
and there was so little actual danger, that 
the government which controlled the road EVERY-DAY FEARS 
33 
had never thought it necessary to make it a 
“one way” road. Nevertheless, the thought 
of having to make the return drive along 
this road to reach home so preyed on the offi- 
cer’s mind for the two weeks that it literally 
spoiled his vacation. He was really obsessed 
by two fears—the fear of the actual drive, 
and the still greater fear of ridicule from 
his associates should they discover that he 
was afraid—a fear of confessing a fear, if 
you please. 
In the end he did drive his car out with- 
out difficulty, even though it happened that 
he encountered the very thing he had most 
dreaded—a car coming from the opposite 
direction which he was obliged to pass at one 
of the most difficult places in the entire road. 
But having accomplished this without mis- 
hap, all his apprehensions left him; even the 
very worst thing that could happen on the 
road—the thing he had been dreading so— 
was of comparatively trivial importance 
after all! And if he had been able to visual- 
ize this in advance he would have saved him- 
self the two weeks of mental misery. 34 
OUR FEAR COMPLEXES 
In another case which came to our atten- 
tion a man had succeeded in climbing the 
rather steep trail to Mount Wilson; but 
when he thought of the return he became 
paralyzed with fear. So great was this fear 
that in spite of all his efforts to overcome it, 
it at last became necessary not only to blind- 
fold him, but actually place him under an 
anesthetic and carry him down the moun- 
tain in an army stretcher. Yet this trail 
was used daily by many people, was not dan- 
gerous, or in any manner unusual, nor was 
this man in most respects more timid, pecu- 
liar, or less successful than his neighbors. 
Such cases need sympathetic understand- 
ing, but also scientific treatment, for the de- 
fect is a real one requiring for its removal 
something more than argument. It is in 
just such instances that uncovering the 
origin of the fear complex and treating it 
with suggestion, whether under the name of 
Coue, or plain common sense, results in 
cures. 
These two experiences should, of course, 
suggest their own remedies. In actuality EVERY-DAY FEARS 
35 
very few of our apprehensions of approach- 
ing dangers are ever realized. Imagination 
always exaggerates what reason should cor- 
rect. Thus, a little common-sense reason- 
ing about the situation would have cleared 
up matters for the apprehensive officer. He 
should have taken himself in hand some- 
what as follows: “Here is a road that has 
been in use for years and there has never 
been a bad accident. Thousands of people 
have driven over it without mishap, most of 
them far less skilful drivers than I. Where- 
fore, there can not be any very great danger 
either in coming in or going out.” And he 
might have added, had he been of a some- 
what more philosophical turn of mind: 
“And if it comes to the worst and I do drop 
over the cliff, it is almost certain and sud- 
den death. And death is inevitable in the 
end, anyhow. So why should I spoil my holi- 
day with fruitless worries?” 
Now, it is almost certain that in ordinary 
circumstances the officer would have rea- 
soned in some such manner. But it so hap- 
pened that this new hazard came upon him 36 
OUR FEAR COMPLEXES 
at a time when he was tired and nervously 
overwrought,—when his “fighting glands” 
were less active than usual, and the centers 
of apprehension abnormally assertive. 
Complete rest would have quickly estab- 
lished normality. But worry is a sure pre- 
ventive of this; and the “glands of worry” 
seem to be accelerated in their action by 
use. The more one worries, the more one 
tends to worry. 
The really interesting thing about these 
cases of intense fears over trivial matters 
in normally courageous persons is the fact 
itself—the fact that even the most courage- 
ous individuals may have intense fears 
about things that other people practically 
disregard. And the encouraging thing is 
that most of these fears may be overcome by 
the simple process of common-sense reason- 
ing after their origins have once been un- 
covered and explained. 
FEAR OF INSOMNIA 
Sleeplessness is one of the greatest curses 
of hosts of people. Yet sleeplessness is in EVERY-DAY FEARS 
37 
the main a perfectly curable, or at least con- 
trollable disorder. For at the bottom of this 
trouble there usually lies fear—fear that 
one can not sleep; and fears, we have 
learned, are ghosts—not realities. We fear 
that we can’t sleep; we fear the results of 
loss of sleep, but, as a matter of fact, sleep 
is not nearly so important a matter as we 
imagine it is. What is important is rest, 
and we do not have to be wholly unconscious 
in order to rest. 
As Doctor Boris Sidis has said, “The first 
thing for you to realize, if you are more or 
less wakeful, is that it is nothing you have 
cause to worry about. Moreover, this real- 
ization that sleep is not all-important will 
be a great factor in helping you to sleep. 
Nine-tenths of your difficulty in going to 
sleep is due to your fear that you won’t go 
to sleep. And nine-tenths of the bad effects 
of a sleepless night are not the result of your 
loss of sleep, but of your worry over it.” 
Nothing is gained by tossing about in 
sleepless turmoil. We stay awake mostly 
because there are problems which we will 38 
OUR FEAR COMPLEXES 
not squarely meet, but instead we weakly 
attack them from points which are ineffect- 
ive and which we know to be so, or because 
at times we try to solve problems which, for 
the time being at least, can not be solved. In 
a way we are victims of self-pity, and we 
weakly worry over matters which we should 
either promptly settle, or deliberately post- 
pone and be done with them until they can 
be settled. 
In unconquered fears and worries we al- 
ways defeat our own ends. For the fears 
which keep us awake breed other fears until 
night is peopled with the hideous specters of 
the dark, which haunt and torture our souls 
and bodies, and leave us at daybreak broken 
in spirit and weak in body and unable to 
solve the old problems or meet the new ones 
which are sure to come. When we can not 
sleep, or think we can not, we can at least 
rest. Rest comes with relaxation of the 
muscles, closing the eyes, thus shutting out 
a great number of visual stimuli to the 
brain, and in refusing to fix our attention 
on anything in particular. Fixation of at- EVERY-DAY FEARS 
39 
tention keeps us awake. This is only an- 
other way of saying that we keep certain 
things in the center of consciousness. On 
the other hand, the refusal to think, and the 
ability to let our thoughts drift, will in itself 
put us into a state of rest which sooner or 
later will result in sleep. 
This is not nearly so difficult a matter as 
it is usually supposed to be. This self- 
hypnosis is just what the professional hyp- 
notist does for us through suggestion, and 
the result should be the same when once we 
intelligently learn to apply the method. We 
remain awake both because we fear we can’t 
sleep and because our minds are filled with 
the thoughts and worries of the day. The 
nerve cells in our brains are much like little 
storage batteries. Constant use of these 
cells exhausts their power and they, like 
electric batteries, require recharging. This 
recharging comes about through rest and 
food. But particularly it comes about 
through change of mental activity. Differ- 
ent groups of brain cells are to some extent 
used in different mental processes. “Mental 40 
OUR FEAR COMPLEXES 
fatigue comes through a continuous use of 
the same group of cells without giving them 
a chance to renew their source of energy.” 
Mental refreshment comes through rest, 
and rest is nearly as much a matter of 
change as it is of unconsciousness, or what 
we imagine is unconsciousness, for the mind 
is never entirely unconscious and so it never 
entirely ceases its work. The probability is 
that even in deep sleep we dream, and 
dreams are nothing more than our day 
thoughts carried over in a confused state in 
our sleep. It is only when we become con- 
scious of our dreams, however, that they tire 
us, or conversely, it is only when our sleep 
is light that we dream and remember our 
dreams and awake unrefreshed. Mental 
inactivity and physical relaxation is, then, 
what is required to restore our exhausted 
brain cells. 
When we lie awake worrying, or when 
we dream in fitful slumber, no real rest is 
experienced, and we wake tired, depressed 
and inefficient. Nothing works so well in 
bringing about rest and sleep as positive in- EVERY-DAY FEARS 
41 
difference to insomnia. “To wish to reach 
an end with all one’s might is to weary one’s 
self by not having yet attained it; it creates 
a new preoccupation which prevents sleep.” 
In attempting to resist insomnia we take 
ourselves much too seriously, and thus de- 
feat our desires. When all is said and done, 
sleep comes to the calm peaceful mind, and 
it is seldom that a mind can experience calm 
and peace at night which, during the day, is 
filled with trouble and anxiety. But, you 
say, how is one to escape the troubles of the 
day in a world of trouble? The answer is, 
of course, not an easy one, and for some it 
is perhaps impossible. Certainly it is never 
found by those who are incapable of learn- 
ing, or unwilling to practise, the sort of 
mental discipline that is necessary to over- 
come insomnia when it is due to a bad men- 
tal habit, not to actual disease. 
Needless to say, it is far easier for the 
sound sleeper to preach philosophy to his 
sleepless neighbor, than to practise his own 
teachings. Moreover, there are occasions 
when intense and continuous worry pro- 42 
OUR FEAR COMPLEXES 
duces an insomnia, even in a person who 
is usually a good sleeper, that is in effect a 
diseased state which requires medical atten- 
tion, and which can not be overcome by ef- 
fort of will. Intense grief, or great and sud- 
den disaster, often produce this condition. 
In such cases it is usually far better to re- 
sort to some hypnotic or sedative for a night 
or two, than to attempt to “fight it out.” 
The “fighting out” process is likely to be far 
more harmful in its exhaustive effects, both 
mental and physical, than a dose or two of 
one of the newer and less harmful hypnotics, 
such as dial-ciba, medinal, allonal, luminal, 
or sedobral. 
These had best be given under the direc- 
tion of a physician, of course; and in no case 
should a person make a practice of taking 
any one of them for more than a night or 
two. They should be considered as emer- 
gency measures to meet unusual and tran- 
sient conditions. The person afflicted with 
true insomnia, or the habitual light and 
restless sleeper, should not take hypnotics 
unless so ordered by a competent physician. EVERY-DAY FEARS 
43 
For the habitual poor sleeper—the per- 
son who wakes at night and finds it difficult 
to get to sleep again—the following sugges- 
tion by Doctor Henry Smith Williams in his 
Science of Happiness is helpful, as many pa- 
tients can testify: 
“Challenge systematically any line of 
thought that appears, and banish it from 
consciousness,” he instructs. “The thing is 
not difficult for a disciplined mind. You 
have simply to vow mentally as you find 
yourself thinking on any subject, T will not 
think about that/ and as it were you shut 
off the current in that direction. Of course 
through association your mind is instantly 
supplied with some other line of thought; 
but this also you challenge in the same way 
as soon as it appears, and so on as long as 
you are conscious. You thus prevent any 
single line of thought from becoming para- 
mount in consciousness, and one line after 
another being subordinated, the tendency is 
to a lower and lower level of mental activ- 
ity, till presently consciousness is lost. It is 
possible for some persons to put themselves 44 
OUR FEAR COMPLEXES 
to sleep voluntarily in this way at any time 
when they choose even during the day and 
in the midst of most active thinking. The 
boon which such an accomplishment fur- 
nishes the tired brain on occasion, makes the 
acquisition of this power well worth the ef- 
fort.” 
We must not be too ready to condemn the 
ancient “sheep-counting” method of our 
grandmothers for inducing slumber. It has 
lulled many wakeful brains in the past, and 
may be made to do so in the future. It has 
the great advantage of inducing bodily quiet 
and repose during the counting process, 
which in itself is sleep inducive. 
Persons engaged in mental work which 
does not stop at the end of the ordinary 
working day with the usual evening idleness 
or lethargy, frequently find that the mental 
activity, with its flood of ideas, continues 
when they cease work and attempt to sleep. 
In such persons the sudden change from 
active thinking to the exact antithesis, sleep, 
is too great to be accomplished suddenly, 
without some kind of “tapering off” process. EVERY-DAY FEARS 
45 
Many things suggest themselves for this 
purpose, but the basis of all is really a 
change of vocation—a “stepping down” 
process, diverting the mind into less active 
channels, and thus gradually diminishing 
the tension. Many games accomplish this 
result. 
A very effective remedy is to read some 
light interesting fiction an hour before bed- 
time. Reading in itself is such a reflex act 
that it requires very little mental effort; 
while the interest of the text, such as that of 
a story, relaxes the mind without taxing it, 
and prepares it for sleep. One of the great 
historians of the last century, whose mind 
was wonderfully active and exceptionally 
retentive, rested his brain by devouring all 
manner of “yellow backed” novels during 
his resting periods of the day or evening. 
In this manner he was always able to get a 
good night’s sleep. 
Such methods are psychic rather than 
physical; yet the effect is a mechanical one, 
a change in the circulation in the brain. The 
same thing may be produced in a more di- 46 
OUR FEAR COMPLEXES 
rect manner through the agency of a pro- 
longed tepid bath. This bath should be 
taken just before getting into bed. And the 
person taking it should lie in the tub with 
the body completely submerged in water at 
body temperature, with a cool wet towel 
placed on the head. The bath should not be 
less than fifteen minutes; after which the 
bather dries himself quickly and gets into 
bed at once. There is no danger of over- 
doing this kind of bath, and half an hour is 
sometimes effective when half that period 
has proved insufficient. 
OUR LITTLE FEARS AND WORRIES 
Experience teaches us that, very largely, 
it is the little fears and worries that inter- 
fere with happiness rather than the great 
disappointments—the little irritations and 
pin-pricks that are our very own and can 
not be shared by others. All manner of 
these are forever obtruding themselves, 
each so annoying to the individual and so 
unimportant in the estimation of his neigh- 
bor. EVERY-DAY FEARS 
47 
These little troubles are so numerous that 
in the long run they probably do more harm 
than the great troubles of life. Each per- 
son has his own particular set of troubles 
which, to him, appear of vital importance 
but which, to others, are absurd enough. 
Such foolish things are found in the petty 
jealousies, envies, imaginary social slights, 
many small household worries and other do- 
mestic trivialities which are, after all, usu- 
ally only forms of fears. The nagging 
woman really fears that she will lose control 
of her husband, children, or servants; the 
bull-dozing man is at heart a coward full of 
fears of inadequacy. 
At the bottom of many of the worst of 
little domestic infelicities are often to be 
found fears which are expressed in what we 
call “defense reactions.” Fears of inferior- 
ity in one form or another, and fears related 
to deceit, are often thus manifested by 
fault-finding, ill-nature, over-emotionalism 
of various kinds, or by headaches, indiges- 
tion, exhaustion, and other physical ills, or 
by other forms of vicarious acts or condi- 48 
OUR FEAR COMPLEXES 
tions through which one may find an arti- 
ficial outlet for pent-up fears and worries. 
Such outlets, strange to say, are not always 
conscious ones to the individual who ex- 
periences them. 
NORMAL FEARS 
One should not confuse superstitious or 
morbid fears with what may be termed nat- 
ural and normal fears. Thus, the fear of 
accidental injury, or death, from one of a 
thousand different sources is natural and 
normal in so far as it serves as protection 
and to elicit caution and insure self-pres- 
ervation. A person steps aside from the 
path of a swiftly moving automobile and 
escapes death by the margin of an inch with- 
out giving the matter a second thought. At 
most there is only a momentary startling 
which is entirely transient in the normal 
individual. He does not dwell long on the 
narrowness of his escape, nor brood over 
the possibility that to-morrow a passing 
motor-car will run him down. It is one of 
the natural daily hazards of existence. EVERY-DAY FEARS 
49 
This is true also about a host of other 
ever-menacing dangers. We know that im- 
pending death or disaster lurks everywhere 
and always about us—storms, earthquakes, 
fires, automobile accidents, shipwrecks, dis- 
ease, stalk our paths incessantly. But the 
normal individual takes these things as a 
matter of course and does not dwell mor- 
bidly upon them—does not worry over, or 
“take them to bed with him.” When he 
does so, he is transforming natural fears 
or caution into morbid ones; his normal cau- 
tion or indifference to unavoidable dangers 
from without has become a morbid fear of 
things from within himself. His attitude is 
no longer normal. It is not the actual dan- 
ger of the thing itself that haunts him, but 
the morbid fear of that danger created with- 
in himself. Chapter II 
EVERY-DAY FEARS—Continued 
FEARS OF IGNORANCE 
So FAR we have mainly considered phys- 
ical fears. There are others that are just 
as important in the intellectual field. One 
of the most universal of these is a certain 
degree of timidity that uneducated people 
feel in the presence of the educated. Per- 
sons who have never attended college, for 
example, frequently feel a certain inade- 
quacy—an indefinable sense of inferiority, 
if you will,—in the presence of college-bred 
persons. It is often entirely unwarranted 
when challenged by reason, for colleges and 
universities do not confer brains, or ability, 
and not necessarily an education, even. It 
is occasionally possible, indeed, for an actu- 
ally stupid individual to obtain what is 
called a college “education.” At least he 
50 EVERY-DAY FEARS 
51 
may pass the required time in attendance 
and obtain the parchment that proclaims his 
education. This is no credit to our educa- 
tional system, but it happens to be an occa- 
sional fact. 
Now, education, even in its most refined 
form as exhibited in the field of letters, need 
not necessarily imply attendance at college. 
Howells, the dean of American letters, was 
not college bred. And at the other extreme 
are the numerous examples of college-bred 
ignoramuses. Yet, as was just said, there 
always lingers in the consciousness of the 
non-college bred man, no matter how bril- 
liant his attainments in intellectual fields, 
the feeling that there is something lacking 
in him which the college man has. He rea- 
sons it out and suppresses it in the main; 
but it remains as a subconscious or, in other 
words, not completely suppressed, emotion 
that is closely akin to a certain type of fear. 
And this applies to all things in which the 
fundamental training element is lacking. 
This is true of persons who have acquired 
culture, but are not to the manner born; 52 
OUR FEAR COMPLEXES 
which is but a roundabout way of saying 
that in such instances there is an innate 
realization of the lack of power of posses- 
sion. It crops out, although camouflaged, in 
a thousand ways. “I can buy and sell him 
twice over” expresses it in a “defense 
measure.” Or, again, as one keen but illit- 
erate publisher often said: “I don’t need an 
education; I can buy all the educated brains 
I want without even denting my income.” 
There is only one remedy, since few per- 
sons indeed are in position to turn back the 
pages of time and acquire the lacking fun- 
damental knowledge by attending college, 
or taking up the foundation work of any 
kind. This remedy is to admit to one’s self 
frankly that a certain element is lacking 
and perhaps can not be acquired. Even 
our ancestry often leaves much to be de- 
sired ; and, after all, is it so essentially im- 
portant that one have a registered lineage 
or a degree? Did not Howells attain the 
heights in the literary field without a college 
education, and Mark Twain? And what are 
we to say of Lincoln? EVERY-DAY FEARS 
53 
Of course, all that we have said of higher 
education applies with nearly equal force to 
less high forms. Formal education of even 
an elementary nature is denied many, in- 
deed the majority. Our brains are a gift, 
not an acquisition. Lack of training is not 
necessarily a serious handicap to a success- 
ful life, while all the training in the world 
will not greatly improve a weak endow- 
ment. 
SEX FEARS 
As would be expected, the two dominant 
factors in life are the chief sources of fear, 
that is, the preservation of life itself and 
the perpetuation of life, the self-protective 
and the sex instincts. And of these two 
sources of fears the sex fears and worries 
are scarcely less numerous or less dominant 
than those pertaining to life itself. Indeed, 
many of these are inseparably associated 
with life and the preservation of health. 
Even the less important phases or circum- 
stances of sex often have a peculiarly domi- 
nant and depressing effect on the personal- 
ity. Probably this is due in a large measure 54 
OUR FEAR COMPLEXES 
at least to the fact that cultured civilization 
throws a shroud of secrecy about a subject 
in which there must be, of course, a decent 
amount of reserve. 
If society permitted the open frankness 
about sex matters that it does about such 
other natural functions as digestion or elim- 
ination, the amount of fear and worry in 
the world would undoubtedly be tremen- 
dously reduced. For frank familiarity 
breeds confidence as well as contempt. 
Among primitive races where such nat- 
ural frankness exists there are no “sex 
problems,” as we term certain conflicts of 
emotions to-day. But, as we progress up 
the scale of civilization we find frankness 
about sex matters rapidly declining; and ex- 
actly proportionately we find sex problems 
increasing and dominating our lives. Thus 
the price of prudery in civilized communi- 
ties is sex doubts, fears, nervous disorders, 
secret humiliations, and suffering scarcely 
equaled by any other single factor in our 
lives. Even crimes, as we shall see, are 
possible results of certain sex repressions. EVERY-DAY FEARS 
55 
Sex reserve is, of course, desirable and 
unavoidable. It is the price of refinement. 
And in the last analysis the term refinement 
is to a large extent simply a terse expression 
of man’s various artifices for concealing or 
disguising the dominant matters of sex. 
But reserve need not mean prudery, ignor- 
ance, morbid curiosity or nervous conflicts 
and repressions. 
One of the curious twists of the human 
intellect is that in our estimates of others 
we naturally dissociate sex matters just in 
proportion to our estimate of the individ- 
ual’s refinement and culture. It is a natural 
mental attitude in observing persons of re- 
finement wholly to dissociate our thoughts 
of such a person with anything pertaining 
to the sexual life. In the language of the 
street, one thinks of such superior persons 
as “being above such common things.” And 
yet, reason and experience teach us that the 
reverse of this may be true; that many 
great personalities have correspondingly in- 
tense sexual personalities. Indeed, the sex- 
uality of the genius is sometimes seemingly 56 
OUR FEAR COMPLEXES 
a part of his greatness, as has often been 
exemplified in art, literature and science. 
It really represents vigor, and it is simply 
a finishing touch of advanced civilization 
that the cultured person instinctively sup- 
presses every outward suggestion of this 
dominant natural instinct. 
SEX FEARS AND ABNORMAL CONDUCT 
This outward suppression is, of course, a 
part of normal deportment; but any at- 
tempt at inward suppression is a very dif- 
ferent matter and, if successful, likely to 
lead to dire consequences to the individual. 
Nature resents any attempt on the part of 
mere human beings to pervert or overcome 
her handiwork. And just in proportion as 
this handiwork is essential in the scheme of 
creation will the manifestations of nature’s 
displeasure be pronounced. 
Take the classic example of the ecclesias- 
tical celebate—the esthetic, sensitive and 
intelligent type of person, frequently with 
highly developed sexual instincts, the nat- 
ural gratification of which is prevented by EVERY-DAY FEARS 
57 
the manner of his life. The result is almost 
certain sooner or later to be an individual 
with some pronounced physical or mental 
abnormality, or at least a character pe- 
culiarity. Perhaps it will be only a mild 
disturbance of the nervous system with 
resulting temperamental peculiarities. But 
more likely it will be a profound disturbance 
in that dictatorial monitor of physical and 
psychic life, the endocrine or ductless sys- 
tem of glands, with seriously disturbing 
consequences to mind and body. The well- 
known peculiarities of the typical old maid 
and the finicky old bachelor exemplify in 
their least harmful form the results of this 
repressed sexual instinct. 
SEX IN LITERATURE 
Jelliffe has pointed out that the great nov- 
elists frequently “put into intelligent terms” 
descriptions of the effects of these sex re- 
pressions that are far more impressive than, 
and just as accurate as, the dry truths of 
science. Hawthorne, perhaps the greatest 
American novelist, in his masterpiece, The 58 
OUR FEAR COMPLEXES 
Scarlet Letter, pictures perfectly the results 
of sexual repression in the esthetic colonial 
minister, Mr. Dimmesdale. He does not 
name the condition as such, to be sure; but 
his masterful description of the symptoms 
is so characteristic, that the diagnosis is 
self-evident to any one who has given atten- 
tion to such things. 
HAWTHORNE’S CLASSIC PICTURE OF FEAR 
AND SEX REPRESSION 
The incident in The Scarlet Letter which 
reveals the results of this repression on the 
mind of the minister is the description of 
the actions and mental vagaries of Mr. 
Dimmesdale immediately following his de- 
termination to throw off the unnatural life 
of celibacy, flee his present surroundings, 
and marry the woman whom, as a girl, he 
had wronged. For years she had borne the 
infamy of her, and his, misconduct without 
suspicion ever pointing toward the revered 
and supposedly almost celestial-minded 
minister. The effect of the minister’s de- 
termination had taken the form of what is 
known as an imperative conception, or ob- EVERY-DAY FEARS 
59 
session,—a definite mental aberration, 
which in this instance we may justly attrib- 
ute to the man’s life-long repression of a 
natural instinct and the fear associated 
with it. 
“At every step he was incited to do some 
strange, wild, wicked thing or other,” runs 
Hawthorne’s description, “with a sense that 
it would be at once involuntary and inten- 
tional, in spite of himself, yet growing out 
of a profounder self than that which op- 
posed the impulse. For instance, he met one 
of the deacons. The good old man addressed 
him with the paternal affection and patri- 
archal privilege which his venerable age, his 
upright and holy character, and his station 
in the church entitled him to use; and, con- 
joined with this, the deep, almost worshiped 
respect which the minister’s professional 
and private claims alike demanded. Never 
was there a more beautiful example of how 
the majesty of age and wisdom may com- 
port with the obeisance and respect enjoined 
upon it, as from a lower social rank, and in- 
ferior order of endowment, toward a higher. 
“Now, during a conversation of some 60 
OUR FEAR COMPLEXES 
two or three moments between the Reverend 
Mr. Dimmesdale and this excellent and 
hoary-bearded deacon, it was only by the 
most careful self-control that the former 
could refrain from uttering certain blas- 
phemous suggestions that rose into his 
mind, respecting the communion supper. 
He absolutely trembled and turned pale as 
ashes, lest his tongue should wag itself in 
utterance of these horrible matters, and 
plead his own consent for so doing, without 
having fairly given it. And, even with this 
terror in his heart, he could hardly avoid 
laughing, to imagine how the sanctified old 
patriarchal deacon would have been petri- 
fied by his minister’s impiety. 
“Again, another incident of the same na- 
ture. Hurrying along the street, the Rev- 
erend Mr. Dimmesdale encountered the old- 
est female member of his church, a most 
pious and exemplary old dame, poor, wid- 
owed, lonely, and with a heart as full of 
reminiscences about her dead husband and 
children, and her dead friends of long ago, 
as a burial ground is full of storied grave- EVERY-DAY FEARS 
61 
stones. Yet all this, which would else have 
been such heavy sorrow, was made almost a 
solemn joy to her devout old soul, by relig- 
ious consolations of the truth of the Scrip- 
tures, wherewith she had fed herself 
continually for more than thirty years. 
And since Mr. Dimmesdale had taken 
charge, the good grandma’s chief earthly 
comfort—which, unless it had been likewise 
heavenly comfort, could have been none at 
all—was to meet her pastor, whether casu- 
ally, or of set purpose, and be refreshed with 
a word of warm, fragrant, heaven-breath- 
ing Gospel truth, from his beloved lips, into 
her dulled, but rapturously attentive ear. 
“But, on this occasion, up to the moment 
of putting his lips to the old woman’s ear, 
Mr. Dimmesdale, as the great enemy of 
souls would have it, could recall no text of 
Scripture, nor aught else, except in brief, 
pithy, and, as it appeared to him, unanswer- 
able argument against the immortality of 
the human soul. The instillment thereof 
into her mind would probably have caused 
this aged sister to drop down dead, at once, 62 
OUR FEAR COMPLEXES 
as by the effect of an intensely poisonous 
infusion. What he really did whisper, the 
minister could never afterwards recollect. 
There was, perhaps, a fortunate disorder of 
his utterance, which failed to impart any 
distinct idea to the good widow’s compre- 
hension, or which Providence interpreted 
after a method of its own. Assuredly, as 
the minister looked back, he beheld an ex- 
pression of divine gratitude and ecstasy 
that seemed like the shine of the celestial 
city on her face, so wrinkled and ashy pale.” 
Of course, it can not be said with scien- 
tific accuracy that in this instance the dis- 
traught minister’s abnormal mental state 
was the result of his celibacy alone; indeed, 
no one will contend that such was the case. 
There are many other conditions that enter 
into the life of the celibate as well as other 
persons which affect the mental health. At 
best we can only judge his case by deduction 
from comparison with similar cases. But 
there is such abundant evidence of this char- 
acter that we can assert with every assur- 
ance of verity that the good minister’s EVERY-DAY FEARS 
63 
condition was the result of his life of repres- 
sion, and years of deception preying upon a 
sensitive nature. It was an expression of 
nature’s resentment against a departure 
from some of her most cherished tenets. 
There is no intention, of course, of con- 
veying the impression that sexual irregular- 
ities or repressions are the only source of 
morbid fears and worries, although no one 
will deny the importance of these. Indeed, 
at the present time the stress and tension of 
living is such that conflicts and repressions 
originating in financial difficulties seem 
quite as productive of mental distress, 
nervous disorders and character changes as 
any other single life experience. But, what- 
ever the dominating factor may be it can 
not be dissociated from the other complexi- 
ties of life—the worries about health, dis- 
appointed ambitions, love — and must 
simply be relegated to its proper place in the 
great mosaic of life itself. But in this 
mosaic, as in every other, there are groups 
of blocks that dominate the foreground, 
while others simply fill in the background. Chapter III 
EVERY-DAY FEARS—Continued 
AMBITION, THE FEAR MAKER 
One of the interesting observations of an 
intelligent foreigner visiting our country 
for the first time was that we seem to be 
such a serious, sober-minded race of people 
in contrast with his own countrymen’s 
light-heartedness. Such an observation 
shocks our sensibilities, and at first we are 
not inclined to agree with the observant for- 
eigner. America, the one land of possibil- 
ity, ambition, equality—and therefore, hap- 
piness ! 
But on reflection we are less inclined to 
challenge this observation. We are a seri- 
ous-minded nation, given to fears of a 
certain type, and worry; and there is at 
least one definite reason for our being so. 
America is the land of ambition. It is the 
64 EVERY-DAY FEARS 
65 
land of opportunity where ambition may be 
gratified more readily than in any other 
country. Moreover, opportunity is open to 
every intelligent individual here as it is in 
no other land. And consequently, more peo- 
ple are ambitious to attain high levels here 
than in any other country. As a result, we 
have a nation of ambitious persons, most of 
whom are, of course, doomed to disappoint- 
ment. Wherefore it follows that there are 
more persons with unfulfilled ambitions 
and, therefore, with disappointments, than 
anywhere else in the world. 
Ambition makes for unhappiness. Noth- 
ing is more conducive to disappointment 
and the resultant fears and worries than 
ambition. It is the very germ of unhappi- 
ness. For, once it has entered the individ- 
ual’s system, it is usually progressive and 
unceasing. Success in one thing does not 
satisfy but merely stimulates ambition for 
success in greater things. And failure, of 
course, is the very foundation stone of 
unhappiness. 
Success is a relative term, and ambition 66 
OUR FEAR COMPLEXES 
is a relative emotion; but in the matter of 
producing happiness or unhappiness, fears 
and worries, there is very little difference 
in the degree of relativity. Our cook, who 
aspires to have a finer pair of ear-rings than 
our neighbor’s cook, is just as unhappy over 
her inability to do so as is my lady of the 
avenue who is disappointed in not having as 
fine a limousine as her social rival. The 
ambitious teacher who aspires to earn a sal- 
ary of five thousand dollars a year, and 
fails, is just as unhappy individually as the 
financier who fails to acquire the extra 
multi-millions he covets. And this applies 
to individuals up and down the scale of so- 
cial status. 
Here in America almost every individual 
has some very definite aspirations and am- 
bitions. As a result, Americans probably 
have more disappointments and fears and 
worries than any other civilized race of 
people. 
It is proverbial in Europe that the ambi- 
tions of the generality of people are few and 
of a much lower level than in America. The EVERY-DAY FEARS 
67 
European boy, born of the peasant class, ex- 
pects to remain in that class. The son of 
the British farmer aspires to become a 
farmer; the son of a butler hopes to emulate 
his father; the merchant’s son plans to be- 
come a merchant; and so on throughout the 
social scale. And when these ambitions are 
gratified, as in all probability they will be, 
there is more chance for contentment and 
less probability of fears and worries and 
disappointment than in a country where op- 
portunities and ambitions are without limit 
or class. 
It is a European jest that every Ameri- 
can boy expects to become wealthy and that 
most of them aspire to be president. Which 
is but another way of saying that the 
American boy is ambitious to reach the top 
of the ladder, regardless of whether his 
father was a barber, a butcher, a farmer, a 
college president or a millionaire statesman. 
But, unfortunately, even in America only a 
very small percentage of persons ever attain 
fame or fortune, and few, indeed, reach the 
presidency. Wherefore the ultimate disap- 68 
OUR FEAR COMPLEXES 
pointment of most of our aspiring young 
men. For, although it is true that wealth 
does not always bring happiness, it is per- 
fectly certain that lack of wealth does most 
assuredly bring unhappiness to the ambi- 
tious. 
But even the fully requited ambitions, or 
that which appears so to the ordinary ob- 
server, need not result in happiness. In 
point of fact, ambition is never completely 
requited. Indeed, the person who reaches 
the goal of his ambition and, happy and con- 
tented, sits down and tries to go no farther 
and wishes to go no farther, may be strongly 
suspected of being in a stage of incipient de- 
mentia. And while it seems to be true that 
about the only completely happy people in 
the world are the ones who are considerably 
demented—the typical alms-house mendi- 
cant, without a care or worry in the world, 
—or the typical moron,—this is not the type 
of happiness to which most persons aspire. 
At the other extreme we have the example 
of persons of great ambition and extraordi- 
nary accomplishment. Thus the peerless EVERY-DAY FEARS 
69 
Pasteur, one of the very great among the 
world’s very greatest, whose accomplish- 
ments for the good of the world in his own 
generation and future generations have 
hardly been equaled by any other individual, 
and whose work was recognized and re- 
warded without stint—this wonderful man 
of endless accomplishments, toward the 
close of his life is said to have sighed with 
regret that he had not kept in the field of 
chemistry rather than in micro-biology, 
since he felt that he might have accom- 
plished so very much more in that field. In 
other words, he was not satisfied with his 
achievements. Which merely illustrates 
that accomplishment, no matter how great, 
seems never to produce complete content- 
ment. To some extent the same was true 
of the “Master of us all” in biological sci- 
ence, Charles Darwin. 
Some seeker of happiness refers scorn- 
fully to “the curse of ambition,” and with 
some truth. For, generally speaking, am- 
bition is a gift, not merely an acquirement. 
Usually it begins early in life; and although 70 
OUR FEAR COMPLEXES 
it may flag, it never ceases entirely. Even 
at its lowest waning it always retains a suf- 
ficient spark to ignite the lingering charge 
of discontent and unhappiness from time to 
time. 
But we need not reach the pessimistic 
conclusion that ambition is a necessary evil. 
It is only improperly directed ambition 
which produces the fears, worries and dis- 
appointments. It can not be claimed that 
we in America, the land of ambitious en- 
deavor, are properly directed in our ambi- 
tions. Indeed, much of what passes here for 
ambition is nothing more than emulation, 
a struggle to equal the accomplishments of 
others with no real knowledge of how to en- 
joy the fruits of success. And for this un- 
happy state of affairs we have a right to 
hold education largely to blame. Most of 
us have never learned how to live. Indeed, 
the most important thing in education is 
just that, how to live. And it is the one 
thing which is not taught. 
Doctor Paul DuBois expresses this idea in 
his book, The Education of Self, in these EVERY-DAY FEARS 
71 
terms: “In the Carnavalet Museum in Paris 
there is an autograph of Alexandre Dumas 
the younger, which is worth a whole treatise 
on Philosophy. It says: ‘How is it that, 
while children are so intelligent, men are so 
stupidV And the witty writer adds: ‘It 
must be because of education/ 
“It is indeed,” says DuBois, “to various 
educational influences, in the widest sense 
of the word, to the effect of environment, 
that we must attribute the gradual deform- 
ation which we so often suffer. Like sheep 
of Panurge we copy our neighbors, when it 
is useless or even bad to do so, we respect 
traditions in all domains, without submit-1 
ting them for an instant to the criticism of 
reason. 
“The sole motive for all the actions of 
man is the desire for happiness. This mo- 
tive is greater than self-preservation. To 
be physically, intellectually, or morally well 
conditioned is the sole aim of every human 
creature, and whatever may be the mental- 
ity, conduct, opinions or aspirations of the 
individual, at the bottom of his soul there 72 
OUR FEAR COMPLEXES 
is always to be found this primordial desire 
for happiness.” 
Ambition is only another expression for 
the pursuit of happiness. But this pursuit 
proves more often than not a mere chasing 
of rainbows, with only rain at the end of 
the chase. DuBois says very wisely: 
“The fact is that man does not see suffi- 
ciently clearly before him the road that 
leads to happiness. He seeks for it almost 
solely in the prompt and complete satisfac- 
tion of his numerous desires, in material 
and intellectual pleasures, in ease, in com- 
fort and in wealth; and these two concep- 
tions of pleasure and happiness have been 
so much identified that fortune’s favorites 
are commonly called The happy people of 
this world.’ Go into the homes where luxury 
reigns, or even culture of mind, and every- 
thing seems made to add charm to existence, 
and you will often find unhappiness, more 
so, perhaps, than in the cottages of the poor. 
As the good Abbe Gaime said to J. J. Rous- 
seau when a young man: Tf each man could 
read the hearts of all others, there would be EVERY-DAY FEARS 
73 
more people who would prefer to come down 
than rise in the world/ ” 
From the standpoint of ultimately happy 
results, therefore, ambition is often a handi- 
cap to the individual, a maker of unhappi- 
ness. Yet, as we have said, it is an integral 
part of our mental make-up—a thing that 
is born in us that can not be suppressed. In- 
deed, the attempt at suppression itself is a 
most fertile source of unhappiness. 
What, then, are we going to do with this 
inherent and obtrusive mental quality? 
Must we go through life goaded to unhappi- 
ness by this mysterious mental dictator? 
Not at all, if we will acquire as full an un- 
derstanding of our individual mental quali- 
ties as we do of our physical endowments. 
For example, every man during the process 
of physical development from childhood to 
adult life, comes to know and understand 
his physical endowments as compared with 
his associates. He knows, through the tests 
of contact and contest, that he is stronger 
than some of his companions and weaker 
than others; that he is quicker than some 74 
OUR FEAR COMPLEXES 
and slower than others; that he excels or 
fails in mechanics, athletics, games requir- 
ing skill, endurance or peculiar adaptabil- 
ity. 
In short, he learns to measure his physical 
qualities accurately: his own estimate of 
his physical ability is practically the same 
as this estimate of his acquaintances. He 
knows his limitations, admits them, and does 
not attempt physical impossibilities. If he 
is small in stature, he accepts this philosoph- 
ically, and does not emulate the physical 
giants. In a word, he “sees himself as oth- 
ers see him,” physically speaking. 
But such is not the case as regards mental 
endowments. At least, this is true in the 
case of a great majority of individuals. 
They do not measure their mental capacities 
with the same calculating impartiality as 
they do their physical qualities. It is less 
easy to do so, and the every-day affairs of 
life do not tend to demonstrate to us our 
endowments or shortcomings in mental 
qualities as they do in the case of the phys- 
ical ones. EVERY-DAY FEARS 
75 
And yet there are ways of determining 
the comparative mental endowment of the 
individual, tests that are almost as accurate 
in estimating the mental capacity as the 
physical. Moreover, in actual practise, one 
does not need to enlist the services of a 
trained psychologist to determine for him- 
self just about the mental level at which he 
belongs—just what his limitations are, 
what the limitations of his ambitions 
should be. 
In his inner consciousness he has learned 
this in the classroom and on the playground 
in his boyhood. And if he is honest with 
himself, he knows that he is not qualified to 
realize certain ambitions no matter how 
hard he strives. He knows, for example, 
that if he is not instinctively musical or 
artistic, he can never become more than a 
mediocre performer in the field of music or 
art. Wherefore, if he is ambitious along 
these lines, his common sense and reason 
should restrain him from attempting them, 
just as a physical weakness should deter him 
from attempting championship contests in 76 
OUR FEAR COMPLEXES 
athletics. And this sort of test should be ap- 
plied all along the line of mental qualifica- 
tions. 
It is just this sort of thing that practical 
psychology attempts to do—to prevent 
square pegs trying to fit themselves into 
round holes, and vice versa; to aid individ- 
uals in pursuing ambitions that will prob- 
ably be realized, and thus steering them 
clear of the paths that will surely be strewn 
with fears and doubts and disappointments. 
The individual of average intelligence has 
this self-knowledge already stored in his in- 
ner consciousness, correctly tagged and la- 
beled. And if he is honest with himself, he 
will read those labels as readily as the paid 
scientist, and probably a great deal more ac- 
curately. If he misreads them, it is because 
he allows his wishes and ambitions to over- 
ride his judgment and knowledge. 
We are eager for the psychologist and the 
fortune-teller to say things that we hope 
will prove true, but which for the most part 
we are perfectly certain will not. 
Concisely stated, then, one should adapt EVERY-DAY FEARS 
77 
his ambitions to his ability. He should make 
a self-analysis that is as nearly impartial as 
is humanly possible. In this way he will 
eliminate certain impossible things from his 
field of ambition, leaving an array of oth- 
ers from which to make his choice. And 
finally, having reached a definite decision 
about the particular ambition he is to pur- 
sue, he should bend all his energies to real- 
izing its consummation, at the same time 
putting out of his thoughts as much as pos- 
sible all obtrusive ambitions that he knows 
can never be realized. Chapter IV 
EVERY-DAY FEARS—Concluded 
THE SELFISHNESS OF FEAR 
“With civilized human beings, self-pres- 
ervation means much more than it does with 
the lower animals,” says Doctor Boris Sidis, 
the great psychopathologist. “Like them, it 
is true, we do not want to die; and this fear 
of death controls a great many of our acts. 
We will not eat certain things, because they 
do not ‘agree’ with us. In other words, we 
fear them, lest they undermine our health. 
For the same reason we worry over loss of 
sleep, over the amount of work we do, over 
the air we breathe, the clothing we wear, 
the changes in weather, and so on. 
“Even if we do not actually worry over 
these things we take precautions just the 
same. And the motive for these precautions 
is the wish to live—and its reverse, the fear 
of death.” 
78 EVERY-DAY FEARS 
79 
The fear instinct has almost a boundless 
field. “Children are afraid of ridicule. 
Boys and girls are afraid of failure in 
school. Men are afraid of not succeeding in 
their work. Young people—and older peo- 
ple, too—are afraid of being unpopular. We 
are afraid of doing something that some- 
body will think ‘queer/ We are afraid of 
being thought dull. We are afraid of talk- 
ing too much, or of talking too little. We 
are afraid we may wear the wrong kind of 
necktie, or part our hair in the wrong place. 
“You will admit that some of these fears 
are felt by all of us, at one time or another. 
A good many people’s lives are regulated 
almost entirely by the fear of what others 
will think of them. This is fundamentally 
due to the impulse of self-preservation. 
IT ALL CENTERS IN SELF 
“There is another phase I want to speak 
of: We human beings not only want to live 
here on earth and to compete successfully 
with our fellow-beings but we want to con- 
tinue to live after death. That desire is at 80 
OUR FEAR COMPLEXES 
the basis of all religions. And this gives 
rise to another crop of fears; the fear of 
sin, of some moral transgression. 
“You sometimes hear it said of a person 
that ‘he fears neither God nor man/ That 
is easy to say, but I doubt if it is true. In 
subtle ways most of us fear both God and 
man, although we may not realize that we 
do. Our fear instinct prompts us to ‘play 
safe/ ” 
This fear instinct, when normally ap- 
plied, is most useful—the basis of self-pres- 
ervation and race perpetuation. Only in its 
misapplication is it harmful. And by the 
term misapplication we mean being afraid 
of things that we should not be afraid of. 
Wherefore it follows that it is vitally im- 
portant to know what to be afraid of, and 
what not. Which is simply another way of 
saying that ignorance in one form or an- 
other is the basis of many of our fears. 
It is a truism that ignorance and super- 
stition go together; and of course fear is the 
basis of almost all forms of superstition. 
The fearful, nervous person—the ‘border- EVERY-DAY FEARS 
81 
line’ or psychopathic case—is almost invari- 
ably selfish, self-centered. He is what phy- 
sicians call egocentric. He is obsessed by a 
desire for health, or, better perhaps, the 
fear of disease or illness. “Like us all! 
Only more so,” as Doctor Sidis puts it. And 
it appears, then, that the difference between 
these abnormal persons and more normal 
ones is fundamental in the extent to which 
fear of self dominates the mind. 
And here is a thing that every one should 
bear in mind: One kind of morbid fear 
tends to generate another. That is, the in- 
stinct of fear has a tendency to diffusion. 
So that we find the person who has an ab- 
normal fear of one sort of illness presently 
develops fear of another, and still another. 
Frequently these fears hark back to child- 
hood experiences, which do not reach their 
full fruitions until maturity, usually after 
the real perils have disappeared. 
A case recorded by Doctor Sidis illus- 
trates this. The case is that of Mrs. S , 
a woman forty-nine years old. “As a child, 
she lived in great poverty and neglect; suf- 82 
OUR FEAR COMPLEXES 
fered accidents and frights; many sick- 
nesses, so that her body was greatly ema- 
ciated. Became a clerk in a store. Was 
very careful in her appearance because she 
wanted to make a good marriage and have 
a comfortable life. Finally, she did marry a 
well-to-do merchant for whom she had 
clerked. Immediately began to spend money 
at a rate that made her husband gasp. 
Settled down to a life of idleness and of at- 
tention to her health. 
“Began to find all kinds of things the mat- 
ter with her organs. Nothing was right. 
The fear instinct became more and more 
general; and now her original childhood 
fear of poverty became dominant. She was 
afraid to spend money, especially any sum 
over five dollars. If she had to buy new 
clothes, or new furniture, she was in a 
panic. 
“Then the fear spread to other things. 
She could not bear to loan even the most 
trivial article. She would not lend books. 
She hated to make presents. All the time 
she was possessed with fears about her EVERY-DAY FEARS 
83 
health. She tyrannized over her husband— 
at the same time claiming that she loved 
him. At the least crossing of her will she 
made a scene. Yet she went around reciting 
poetry about ideals, health, and happiness. 
“She persuaded herself that she was high- 
ly educated, that she was the best business 
woman, the best critic of poetry, art, and so 
forth. If any famous person were men- 
tioned she claimed to have known him. 
“Back of it all was her early fear of not 
making a good appearance, of not impress- 
ing people in a higher social position. This, 
added to her childhood fear of poverty and 
sickness, had been allowed to dominate her 
life. After her marriage she gave herself 
up to idleness and selfishness. In that state, 
her old fears found her an easy prey.” 
And here are some other illuminating 
comments made by Doctor Sidis in his dis- 
sertation on fears. “The psychopathic is 
often afraid of work, particularly mental 
work, for fear it will hurt him. But I never 
have known a case where work made any- 
body psychopathic. I have never known 84 
OUR FEAR COMPLEXES 
sickness to make a person psychopathic. It 
is always the fear of work, or of disease, or 
of one thing or another. 
“The psychopathic always tells you he 
was a ‘sensitive child/ Probably he was; 
millions of children are sensitive. But sen- 
sitiveness is a beautiful and useful quality 
if properly developed. If you use it in the 
service of others it makes you sympathetic, 
quick to understand people, generous to 
their faults, appreciative of their virtues. 
That kind of a person inevitably wins 
friends, succeeds in business, and has a hap- 
py home life—if he gets half a chance. But 
the person who allows his sensitiveness to be 
simply fear for himself, becomes timid, 
morbid, unpopular, unsuccessful, un- 
happy.” 
But, you will say, this is not my case at 
all—I am really a sick person, really much 
more sensitive than any one else ever was! 
—and so on and on. It is the old, old story. 
And it isn’t a true story, either. It is just 
a part of our human natures to think that 
we are different from any one else—that EVERY-DAY FEARS 
85 
our troubles and our ailments are different 
from any other person’s—that we are, 
therefore, misunderstood. Nonsense—the 
apotheosis of conceit! The misunderstand- 
ing is with ourselves, not about ourselves. 
No person is so utterly different from any 
other that he is a puzzle to wise physicians, 
or psychologists. Particularly is this true 
of these very cases that we have under con- 
sideration here. 
And, says Doctor Sidis, quoting an Ori- 
ental sage: “ ‘More people die of ambition 
than of disease.’ Ambition is a result of the 
impulse of self-preservation, the desire to 
survive in the competitive struggle. It is all 
right, if we do not let it become an obsession. 
Its reverse is the fear of failure. All of us 
would be better off if we would do our work 
for the satisfaction of doing it as well as pos- 
sible, instead of with the fear of not getting 
some personal advantage.” 
COURAGE 
No one doubts that courage is a quality 
that may be cultivated. And, conversely, OUR FEAR COMPLEXES 
86 
fears and worries may just as surely be ex- 
aggerated by nurturing. And it may be 
said in a general way that prolonged medi- 
tation upon either one of these subjects 
tends to enhance them. That is, if one has 
a hazardous task to perform, he may in- 
crease his courage for undertaking it by 
thinking and dwelling upon it. The danger 
loses something of its menace by association 
—an indifference bred by familiarity. And 
almost every one knows from experience 
that if one is fearful or worried about some- 
thing, the fear and worry increase by brood- 
ing over it. A minor worry of the morning 
will assume a major importance by evening 
and be actually frightful by midnight. 
Which suggests that the sensible person will 
dwell on courageous things, and put trou- 
bles out of his thoughts as much as possible. 
COURAGE OF FEAR 
There is such a thing as the courage of 
fear, contradictory as this may seem. It 
sometimes happens that mental fears long 
enough continued react in just the opposite EVERY-DAY FEARS 
87 
manner from the one naturally expected. 
For example, a young actress was con- 
stantly intimidated by an older one on the 
same stage who was intensely jealous of her 
young rival’s success. In order to accom- 
plish her professional failure the older 
actress used every possible fear-inspiring 
method to break the courage and spirit of 
the younger one. When this malicious pur- 
pose was nearly accomplished, the young 
actress suddenly turned about with a resent- 
ment and determined sort of courage which 
completely abolished her fear of failure and 
almost at once established the splendid cour- 
age which quickly resulted in placing her 
among the very foremost of her profession. 
In private life one often observes this 
same sort of thing. A child constantly im- 
posed on by an unjust, complaining parent 
will often, if he has any spirit, at last turn 
and assert himself. Such a resentment may 
show itself in running away from home, or 
in a general insubordination, which unfor- 
tunately is often misunderstood by his 
elders and punished until at last his spirit 88 
OUR FEAR COMPLEXES 
is broken and the influence of the par- 
ent is permanently lost. Yet sometimes the 
courage of fear comes to the rescue, and the 
child succeeds in living a perhaps stunted 
but, nevertheless, independent existence. 
Many an unwise, uncontrolled parent richly 
deserves the loss of affection and obedience 
which they imagine, with a strange sense of 
perverse reasoning, is naturally due them 
by the mere accidental and rather unimpor- 
tant fact that he or she happens to be a 
parent. Obligations of parents are far 
greater than those of children, a point 
which, strangely enough, seems to be rather 
seldom appreciated, even in this unpuri- 
tanical age. 
This same sort of “defense reaction” 
against fear is often seen in a husband or 
wife who is imposed on by an unfair, nag- 
ging, or positively cruel partner. A domi- 
neering husband may entirely crush the 
courage and spirit of a wife whose nature 
is far superior, but less aggressive, than 
that of her mate. Or such a wife may at 
last experience the courage of fear and es- EVERY-DAY FEARS 
89 
tablish her rights either as an equal partner, 
or as a once more free human being, with 
the privileges of ordinary self-expression 
again established. 
Nagging women have also much to ac- 
count for. Such women who, without 
exception, are always open to far more criti- 
cism than their domestic victims, often 
entirely ruin a naturally generous, kind and 
indulgent husband, changing his disposition 
into one of pettiness, grouchiness, positive 
ill-temper, or perhaps into one of a de- 
pressed, spiritless, submissive emptiness. 
He becomes, in fact, a sort of timorous hu- 
man hermit crab. But, on the other hand, 
if such a man possesses health, mental vigor 
and moral courage, he, too, may at last ac- 
quire the courage of fear and assert and 
maintain his normal domestic functions or, 
where that appears a futile attempt, seek a 
permanent change of domestic atmosphere. 
The nagging woman is abnormal. Such 
women, in the main, are victims of a bad 
heredity which has perhaps been nurtured 
in a worse environment. 90 
OUR FEAR COMPLEXES 
This courage of fear is worthy of serious 
attention, for without it many a human life 
is crushed and ruined. Conventional, plati- 
tudinous maxims about patience, charity, 
long suffering, and the like, do not apply 
here. What is required is the courage to 
face unpleasant realities, control them if 
possible, but if this fails, a refusal to bow 
down to a hopeless fate in the form of some 
unfortunate but unconquerable human 
tyrant, or some no less despotic inanimate 
form of oppression. 
THE COURAGE OF POSSESSION 
The “courage of possession,” as it has 
been called—the confidence that comes with 
the knowledge of power—is proverbial. Ev- 
erything else being equal, the person who 
possesses physical strength will have more 
courage than the weakling. This is an illus- 
tration of the courage of possession. And 
while it does not follow that all strong per- 
sons are courageous and all weak persons 
cowardly by any means, there is neverthe- 
less a general trend in that direction. EVERY-DAY FEARS 
91 
Moreover, physical unfitness in a person 
naturally strong tends to reduce his fight- 
ing courage. This effect is often seen in 
athletes who are not in condition. The un- 
trained athlete entering into a contest 
shows a lack of courage as well as a lack of 
physical ability, just as the same athlete 
when well trained will exhibit the highest 
type of dogged courage. It is really the 
moral support given by the knowledge of 
possession. 
An illustration of this courage of posses- 
sion is the story of a meagerly paid preacher 
in a rural community who regularly, on 
each Saturday evening, borrowed a ten- 
dollar bill from one of his well-to-do parish- 
ioners, which he just as regularly returned 
to his benefactor early Monday morning. 
After this had occurred several times the 
curiosity of the parishioner was excited. 
So, on the following Saturday evening he 
asked the worthy pastor why it was he bor- 
rowed the money each Saturday evening 
and invariably returned the same bill on 
Monday morning. OUR FEAR COMPLEXES 
92 
“It is a perfectly simple matter of psy- 
chology/? the minister explained. “It is 
very difficult to have courage when one’s 
pocket is empty—and preachers’ pockets are 
usually so. But when one has money in his 
pocket! Ah! Then he is indeed a fighting 
man! With money in my pocket I feel the 
courage to preach the Gospel as it should be 
preached—I can look every man in the eye, 
unafraid, and talk to him as a man. For I, 
too, am rich! My knowledge of the Gospel 
gives me a certain kind of courage; my 
physical fitness helps in a measure; but the 
wealth in my pocket is the philosophers’ 
stone which raises my courage to its highest 
fighting level.” 
Thus the minister, in this crude practical 
manner, voiced a fundamental truth that 
has been expressed throughout the ages in 
various ways. “Be prepared” is simply an- 
other way of saying that you will then have 
the courage of possession. Without it the 
“yellow streak” which is present in varying 
widths in all of us is more difficult to hold 
in control. EVERY-DAY FEARS 
93 
Napoleon said that in all his experience 
he had known but one man who had “two 
o’clock in the morning courage.” That is, 
the man who, roused from sleep at two 
o’clock in the morning when the vital forces 
are very low and when all aggressive in- 
stincts are relaxed, will have the same type 
of cold-blooded nerve as he would at any 
other period of the day. The man referred 
to was Marshal Ney. And Napoleon him- 
self had this type of courage so inherent 
that, even when taken unawares—before 
pride, or reason, or knowledge of possession, 
could assert themselves—it would exhibit 
itself instantly, and without hesitation. The 
senseless stampede of the mob exemplifies 
the antithesis of this. 
No one doubts that any champion athlete 
must possess a high degree of courage. The 
title itself vouches for this. Yet there are 
varying degrees of this quality even among 
champions, and in some conspicuous in- 
stances the “knowledge of possession” has 
been a most dominant factor. There have 
been instances in championship contests OUR FEAR COMPLEXES 
94 
when the title holder has been called upon 
to defend his laurels at a time when he was 
unprepared and out of condition. And it 
has happened more than once in these cir- 
cumstances that a hitherto apparently fear- 
less athlete has shown a pitiful lack of that 
quality of ultimate courage which won him 
the title. Such a man has not the “two 
o’clock in the morning courage” of Napo- 
leon. But this is no reflection on the athlete, 
but rather a compliment to his intelligence. 
For it appears that such athletes are usually 
men of rather superior intellect, not merely 
men of brute force, who realize the possible 
consequences of their lack of possession of 
their usual fighting form. 
There is, of course, a moral courage of 
possession, no less than a physical one. And 
this type of courage is enhanced by a knowl- 
edge of ourselves and a mastery of our na- 
tures. 
“I will fear no evil” has come to have a 
significance greater than of old. For evils 
are legion; and to rise above them requires 
not only faith but knowledge. The courage EVERY-DAY FEARS 
95 
of possession is here the courage of knowl- 
edge in its highest sense, a knowledge which 
not only furnishes “the religion of a sensible 
man,” but the courage to accept the life of 
every day with all its problems, disappoint- 
ments and disillusionments and yet be a 
man. 
THE REMEDY 
Now what is the remedy for these many 
every-day fears and worries? There is a 
remedy and a simple one, but it is not easily 
applied. The outstanding reason for its 
difficulty of application is because it is a 
self-applied remedy. It is one in which the 
individual must reason with himself as 
though he were reasoning about another 
person—a most difficult thing to do. He 
must treat his fears and worries imperson- 
ally, take them up and examine them as 
though they were those of another person, 
and try to be guided by the same sort of 
advice that he would give another person. 
Needless to say, the average person will 
not be able to do this successfully without 
assistance. First of all, he can not deter- 96 
OUR FEAR COMPLEXES 
mine accurately whether or not his fears, 
particularly as regards health, are well 
founded. He must have an adviser, and 
helper, and in choosing this helper he must 
exercise the very acme of good judgment. 
Let him make the mistake of falling into 
the hands of a charlatan, or of a person as 
ignorant as himself, and the results are sure 
to be disastrous. It would be a case of the 
blind leading the blind into almost certain 
calamity. 
And here is where the wise old family 
physician, the sympathetic specialist, the 
broad-minded and experienced preacher of 
the Gospel, or the common-sense friend and 
neighbor, may prove the greatest benefac- 
tor. And, curiously enough, the mere tell- 
ing of one’s troubles to one’s trusted friend 
or adviser is always helpful. There seems 
to be an outlet to pent-up emotions, an 
actual release of nerve tension, in this sort 
of confession. If the confidant is a well- 
chosen physician, who can help to explain 
away any physical doubts or fears, uncover 
the source of mental conflict and relieve his EVERY-DAY FEARS 
97 
patient of heavy nervous burdens, then the 
read to speedy recovery has, indeed, been 
thrown wide open. 
Bear in mind always that very few reali- 
ties are as bad as anticipation paints them; 
that most of our physical and mental ail- 
ments are really exaggerated fear-products 
which recede with knowledge and self- 
discipline. A firm belief in the power to 
control these apprehensions is always re- 
warded with a constantly increased power. 
In short, the intelligent determination to 
conquer fear and worry always places us 
well on the road to accomplish this conquest. PART TWO Chapter V 
DREAMS, FEARS AND THE MODERN 
DREAM DOCTOR 
Long before the dawn of history, and 
ever since that time, the subject of dreams 
has interested all humanity. To the average 
person there is a superstitious fascination 
about them. And even the most clear- 
headed and logical thinker finds something 
awesome in this strange mental activity of 
his sleep. 
The fact that in our dreams we delve 
back and unearth the forgotten incidents in 
our past lives, often reviving these incidents 
with the most vivid accuracy, offers proof 
that there are certain portions of our minds 
where forgotten, or almost forgotten, mem- 
ories are in a sense kept in storage. All 
they need to be brought back to memory is 
the proper association of ideas. 
But, of course, dreams are not the only 
101 102 
OUR FEAR COMPLEXES 
means by which the existence of this “un- 
conscious” mind is shown. Frequently it 
happens that some incident in our lives dur- 
ing our most active waking moments revives 
memories that have been dormant for years. 
And “dormant” is, by the way, a much bet- 
ter expression than “unconscious” memo- 
ries. For example, the visit of any person 
to his childhood home that he has not seen 
for years will revive, by association, many 
memories that perhaps never would other- 
wise have been resuscitated, except possibly 
in dreams. Yet, even in dreams, most of 
these would have been lost, suggesting the 
almost inconceivable number of dormant 
memories that crowd our minds, awaiting 
only the right stimulus or suggestion to be 
revived. The number of childhood incidents 
that appear in dreams at one time or an- 
other is indeed amazing. 
There is nothing new or original in this 
association of dreams with what we some- 
times call the subconscious or less conscious 
mind. The people of ancient times, and 
those in the Middle Ages, as well as all peo- DREAMS AND THE DREAM DOCTOR 
103 
pie in modern civilization, have tried to ex- 
plain this curious phenomenon according to 
their individual superstitious, scientific, or 
plain common-sense trend of mind. But 
recently the subject has been brought con- 
spicuously into the limelight in the theories 
of Sigmund Freud. Or, perhaps more ac- 
curately, the limelight has seemed peculiar- 
ly brilliant from the fact that “Freudian- 
ism” had the good fortune to become a 
“fad,” which assured it of at least more 
than a passing moment of the public atten- 
tion. 
Needless to say, it is not possible in this 
book, or in a book several times its size for 
that matter, to picture in detail the ins and 
outs of Freudianism. But its main tenets, 
or essentials, may be expressed in the state- 
ment that “there is a great part of the mind 
of which we are unconscious, and which, 
nevertheless, has an enormous influence 
upon our thoughts, feelings and actions, and 
which is especially active as a cause of 
dreams.” And it should be added that in 
Freud’s opinion a very large proportion of 104 
OUR FEAR COMPLEXES 
these thoughts have fundamentally to do 
with the sexual life in one way or another. 
It is Freud’s contention, also, that dreams 
usually indicate a wish fulfillment. That is, 
if we wish for a thing very much, even if it 
is a thing which conscience, or the conven- 
tions, or the laws forbid, we are likely to ex- 
press that wish in our dreams. And, here 
again, there can be no quarrel with the 
dream interpreter, as almost any person of 
ordinary intelligence can testify from his 
own experiences. As a child you have 
wished to run away from home and be an 
Indian, or a brakeman, or an actress, or a 
great singer, and have dreamed about that; 
you have day-dreamed about this wish or 
that wish, some with the consent of your 
conscience, some against it, and have had 
the same wistful dreams in your sleeping 
hours. Dreams do, no doubt, often repre- 
sent an unsatisfied day wish. So there need 
be no great disagreement on this particular 
point with Freud, any more than with the 
host of philosophers who have made the 
same observations throughout the ages. DREAMS AND THE DREAM DOCTOR 
105 
FREUDIANISM AND DREAMS 
The real quarrel comes when we reach 
the Freudian assertion that most of our 
dreams represent a sexual wish, and the 
fact that in order to make this theory hold 
water he interprets all manner of symbols 
as meaning the things he wishes them to 
mean. The flaw in this argument is obvious. 
Different interpreters will give different 
meanings to certain symbols; and each in- 
terpreter is secure in his decision, since in 
most instances there is no way of either 
proving or disproving his conclusions. 
When we think of the countless things 
that pass through our minds in the course 
of a single day,—reflect that during every 
second, or fraction of second, of our waking 
hours the brain cells are bombarded with 
stimuli, many of which do not reach the cen- 
ter of consciousness, it is easy to conceive 
that this subconscious activity does not 
cease with sleep. 
When this process is active enough it be- 
comes a dream reality. Moreover, our night 
dreams, like our day-dreams, will often 106 
OUR FEAR COMPLEXES 
dwell upon those things in which we are 
most interested. And since we are governed 
so largely by fears of one kind or another it 
follows that our dreams, like our thoughts, 
will often be filled with fears, interspersed 
with wishes, hopes, pleasures, and all man- 
ner of realities. 
“Perhaps the most striking characteris- 
tic of our dreams,” says Professor Wood- 
worth, “is their seeming reality while they 
last. They seem real in spite of their in- 
congruity, because of the absence of critical 
ability during sleep. In waking life, when 
the sight of one object reminds me of an- 
other and calls up an image of that other, I 
know that the image is an image, and I 
know that I have thought of two different 
things. When I sleep, the recall by associa- 
tion occurs, but the image is forthwith ac- 
cepted as real, and thus things from differ- 
ent sources get together in the same dream 
scene. . . .” 
“We are not mentally active enough in 
sleep to hold our images apart. Associative 
recall, with blending of the recalled ma- DREAMS AND THE DREAM DOCTOR 
107 
terial, and with entire absence of criticism, 
describes the process of dreaming.” 
The dream is only a response to some sort 
of a stimulus. This stimulus may be a 
sound, or a pain, or a taste, or a touch, or “a 
train of thoughts and images.” 
NO MYSTERY IN DREAMS 
Of course, when one stops to think about 
it, there is not one jot more of mystery about 
our sleeping thoughts than about our wak- 
ing ones. Sometimes we dream of highly 
important things, and again of trivialities 
—just as our thoughts go caroming from 
one subject to another as we walk along the 
street, scarcely realizing that we are really 
thinking at all. That dreams should be 
mostly absurd and incongruous, we should 
expect, because, as just said, the critical fac- 
ulty of the mind is nearly, or quite, absent, 
according as we are in a light or deep sleep. 
There is, of course, no mystery about 
dreams. But people of all ages, including 
our own, often insist on a mysterious inter- 
pretation of them. 108 
OUR FEAR COMPLEXES 
Another Freudian conception is that we 
tend to repress and forget disagreeable 
things, and remember only the pleasant 
ones—not only tend to repress and forget, 
but do very often actually forget them. And 
so, according to this theory, a most distress- 
ing and unpleasant event may be completely 
eliminated from consciousness, but buried 
in our minds as an “irritating splinter,” 
possibly influencing our entire scheme of de- 
portment, and yet in a manner absolutely 
unknown to us. To complete the cycle of 
this theory, it is held by the ultra-extreme 
psycho-analysts that when the dream inter- 
preter digs out this offending splinter by 
explaining the situation to the person in 
whose mind he has found it, the mere ex- 
plaining cures the patient of the ills which 
were caused by the mental splinter, just as 
the removal of a more tangible splinter in 
the flesh will result in a physical cure. 
FREUDIANISM OVERDONE 
It is a pretty theory. But it is really only 
a roundabout way of saying that although DREAMS AND THE DREAM DOCTOR 
109 
we bury our fears or desires, our subcon- 
scious mind does not forget them. When the 
dream interpreter digs them out and exhib- 
its them he stimulates our courage to meet 
and resist them. They are told then, any- 
how, and told fears and wishes are always 
more easily resisted than secret ones. But 
let us consider some of the salient points a 
little more fully. Let us judge this by our 
own individual experiences, which, after 
all, are the only safe bases by which an in- 
telligent individual may judge such things. 
You will recall at once, as you read these 
lines, that the things most vividly burned 
into your memory are the unpleasant ones. 
The more bitterly unpleasant they were, the 
more deeply are they burned in—precisely 
opposite to the condition assumed in our 
Freudian dream theory. 
To be sure, there are many things that 
we remember with a thrill; but there are 
many, many more that we recall with a 
pang. There are two conditions, however, 
in which a most impressive thing, such as a 
disaster or a disagreeable experience, may 110 
OUR FEAR COMPLEXES 
be forgotten. One of these is during early 
childhood, before the age of conscious mem- 
ory is much developed; and the other is 
when one is in an abnormal state of mind, 
as in insanity. And in this connection we 
should bear in mind that a very high pro- 
portion of the Freudian cases are in some 
manner abnormal. Also, that when these 
theories are applied to the average nervous- 
ly well-balanced person, they frequently fail 
to function. Hence the dissension between 
the Freudian and anti-Freudian votaries. 
Any normal and reasonably intelligent 
adult person is capable of judging these 
things from his own experiences. These 
endless experiences teach him that anything 
which is of sufficiently disagreeable impor- 
tance to influence his entire life and deport- 
ment can not be buried and forgotten. 
Would that it were so! There are many 
soul-rending experiences that we would give 
our very lives to forget. 
Freud greatly overdoes the “unconscious” 
idea. We think Woodworth is right in say- 
ing that suppressed wishes and fears are DREAMS AND THE DREAM DOCTOR 
111 
usually not so unconscious as he describes 
them; that they are unavowed, unnamed, 
unanalyzed, but conscious for all that. “It 
is not so much the unconscious wish that 
finds outlet in dreams and day-dreams, as 
the unsatisfied wish, which may be perfectly 
conscious.” 
In attempting, as Freud does, to interpret 
dreams from the almost exclusively sexual 
basis, his conception of the motives of hu- 
man life seem strangely incomplete. But, 
in appearing to dissent from much of the 
Freudian theory, we would not wish to be 
understood as denying the tendency to re- 
press instead of meeting important life ex- 
periences on the part of many, if not most 
of us. We do not object to the theory that 
dreams do often give a cue to unmet prob- 
lems, nor deny that in many persons unmet 
and, therefore, unsolved conflicts which de- 
velop in life do tend to come to light in new 
and often unrecognized forms. Memory 
and attention often need some aid through 
some special association of ideas. And 
courage is needed to face half-forgotten or OUR FEAR COMPLEXES 
112 
unacknowledged things so as to deal with 
them once and for all time. Timid, inde- 
cisive action and the mental camouflaging 
of disagreeable and painful experiences do, 
no doubt, in many cases find an outlet in 
such seemingly unrelated things as hysteria, 
exhaustion, ill-temper, nervous habits, pe- 
culiarities of memory, slips of speech, or 
even in criminal acts such as kleptomania 
and pyromania. 
Our only contention is that no very un- 
usual, weird, mystical or complicated meth- 
ods are required for uncovering our less 
conscious or more often deliberately sub- 
merged mental lives. Consciousness implies 
attention. Those things which the Freudian 
says are in the subconscious or unconscious 
mind are, in reality, merely those things to 
which we do not give attention. They may 
be in our marginal consciousness and need 
the proper association of ideas to bring them 
to the center of attention again. 
That everybody needs to learn how to 
meet life exactly as he finds it is no new 
thought. This is only another way of say- DREAMS AND THE DREAM DOCTOR 
113 
ing what John Burroughs expresses in his 
little book, Accepting the Universe, a book 
which should be on the reading table of ev- 
ery thinking person. This kind of knowl- 
edge is embodied in the principles of all 
modern child training, in the newer and 
happier interpretations of religion, and is 
at the very root of modern scientific mental 
therapeutics. Fears are only the ghosts of 
unmet or misunderstood life experiences, 
and much of what is rather indefinitely 
called conflict, repression and complex, is 
nothing more than these misunderstood, un- 
met experiences of life. 
Much of the content of our religious and 
social training is of a highly artificial na- 
ture and tends to establish all sorts of un- 
necessary mental conflicts. Fortunately, 
life to-day presents many compensations. 
Never before, so far as we know, have its 
realities been so fully discussed and per- 
fectly understood. And all this leads to 
more successfully meeting these realities 
bravely and intelligently, rather than to 
dreaming over illusions, struggling for un- 114 
OUR FEAR COMPLEXES 
realizable ideals, practising various forms 
of self-condemnation, and to the burying of 
ghosts in our mental graveyards. 
Life, to-day, is in many ways more whole- 
some, if less ideal, than that of yesterday. 
It is certainly possible to face it more intelli- 
gently. 
PHYSICAL BASIS OF FANTASTIC DREAM 
Frequently there is a physical basis for 
fantastic dreams, as every one can testify 
who has eaten indiscreetly or inopportunely. 
Yet such dreams are not constant either in 
their cause or effect, and should be regarded 
as incidentals in the intellectual life, just as 
the indiscretion in eating is an incident in 
the physical lfe. But, of course, if such in- 
discretions are practised often enough so 
that they become something more than mere 
incidents, and as a result there are constant- 
ly recurring bad dreams, the cause is appar- 
ent and the remedy obvious. And, just as 
such dreams may be the result of bad phys- 
ical hygiene, so also they may be the result 
of bad mental hygiene. DREAMS AND THE DREAM DOCTOR 
115 
The person who has had bad day-dreams, 
that is, the one who dwells upon morbid 
things, or harmful things, or fear inspiring 
things to an unusual extent, is almost cer- 
tain to have unpleasant night dreams. Here 
again the remedy suggests itself. A more 
optimistic view of things during our waking 
hours will result in a happier type of 
dreams, which simply emphasizes the point 
that, after all, night dreams are usually lit- 
tle more significant than day-dreams when 
subjected to common-sense analysis. 
In this connection we must not overlook 
the possibility that morbid tendencies of 
thought may be due directly to some phys- 
ical maladjustment. Pessimism is usually 
pathological; optimism is normal. And so, 
when pessimism and morbidness assert 
themselves constantly, it is a sure indication 
that something is wrong physically. Quite 
likely it is some obscure disturbance of the 
endocrines,—the ductless glands, which 
play such an important role in our lives, and 
of which a great deal more will be said in 
another place. You should be very sure that OUR FEAR COMPLEXES 
116 
there is not some physical basis for your 
dreams before placing the blame on your 
mental mechanism. Perhaps the trouble is 
in your abdomen, not in your cranium. 
Undoubtedly dreams frequently do bring 
out things that have been repressed or al- 
most completely forgotten. But this merely 
emphasizes the fact that life is filled with a 
series of repressions or lightly registered 
impressions. Only the relatively important 
events stimulate our full consciousness and 
attention. 
One should not get the idea, however, that 
repressed things are necessarily harmful. 
Indeed, if, as is supposed, these lost experi- 
ences produce a turning away from what is 
painful, then mostly they are helpful. The 
repression or “forgetting” of a fear becomes 
harmful, however, when it represents an un- 
willingness or inability to meet a situation 
which should be met and settled. Such re- 
pressions may be particularly harmful to 
certain types of persons, but almost invari- 
ably such persons are of the neurotic type, 
with a naturally morbid or apprehensive DREAMS AND THE DREAM DOCTOR 
117 
trend of mind. And in such cases, as in 
many others, great relief is found in relat- 
ing these repressions to some person, wheth- 
er such repressions have been manifested as 
dreams by night or worries by day. Indeed, 
as was pointed out, this is one of the cura- 
tive elements in the Freudian treatment. 
Thus, in Freud’s opinion, the relieving of 
the emotional experience is a means of 
working off excessive emotions—“a kind of 
catharsis of the emotions,” as McDougall 
expresses it. 
This conception requires no deep knowl- 
edge of science or psychology, except the 
every-day kind of observation. It is a coim 
mon subject of jest in the vernacular of the 
street that “telling your troubles” to some- 
body relieves your mind—lessens your 
fears, if you please. Indeed, this kind of 
gossip constitutes a high percentage of all 
conversations the world over. Thus, in a 
way, the Freudian psychologist has simply 
glorified and somewhat mysticized a bit of 
popular knowledge. Professor Dunlap of 
Johns Hopkins University says that Freud- 118 
OUR FEAR COMPLEXES 
ianism is indeed only a new and somewhat 
thinly disguised form of mysticism. 
This mental catharsis has been jestingly 
expressed in a thousand different ways. “I 
have troubles of my own, don’t mention 
yours;” or, “Tell it to a policeman;” or, 
again, the familiar piece of advice to, “Tell 
it and get it out of your system.” And, to 
illustrate how useful this telling is, you need 
simply recall experiences of your own at one 
time or another in which you felt that you 
“just simply must tell it” to some one—and 
have experienced a great relief when you 
have done so. That is, you have relieved the 
tension of repression. 
This sort of thing is fundamentally a part 
of our every-day knowledge. It is pro- 
verbial that even the criminal, to relieve his 
mental tension, often relates the story of his 
crime, even when he knows that such an ad- 
mission may hang him. It is the price of 
relief from a type of mental fear that is 
unendurable. DREAMS AND THE DREAM DOCTOR 
119 
WISHES AND REPRESSION 
In a way, many of our wishes are tem- 
pered with corresponding vague repressions. 
The great mass of these are scarcely realized 
—the content of the half-conscious mind. 
Yet they occur and recur constantly. 
For example, a limousine passes us and 
our semi-conscious mind registers the wish 
that we possessed it; and instantly the “cen- 
sor” of circumstances represses the wish. 
We read a charming bit of writing and in- 
stinctively wish that we had written it. We 
feel jealous of another’s success. The man 
of wonderful physique or intellectual accom- 
plishment excites our envy; and so on and 
on throughout the day. Yet, these desires 
and repressions follow one another with 
such rapidity and are thus so inconsequen- 
tial that we hardly realize their existence. 
But if they are sufficiently important to ex- 
cite real fear, envy, or jealousy, they will 
then have reached a stage of dangerous tan- 
gibility. For, of course, both envy and jeal- 
ousy are only an excess of badly controlled 
but perfectly natural emotions. 120 
OUR FEAR COMPLEXES 
Many of these wishes do come out in 
dreams, and we do sometimes realize a sense 
of satisfaction in dream wish-fulfillments. 
Often the wish gratified in the dream is one 
that has been left unsatisfied in the day- 
time. 
But, from the content of many dreams, it 
would appear that fear is quite as important 
an element as a wish. Indeed, the fear may 
be the father of the wish; and if we accept 
Freud’s name of “Censor” for the faculty 
which controls our repressions, and accept 
also his belief that this Censor is a sleepy- 
head who quits the job and dozes whenever 
we do, we shall readily understand why our 
fears and desires seem so pronounced in our 
dreams. It is simply another way of say- 
ing that in our sleep we give imagination a 
free rein so that it rushes about without 
much direction; whereas, in our waking 
moments there is judgment, or common 
sense, or an intelligent “Censor,” if you 
choose that term, which permits us to direct 
and control, and keep within bounds these 
undesirable flights of the imagination. And, DREAMS AND THE DREAM DOCTOR 
121 
since our lives are so largely bound up with 
hopes, we find that we are far more apt to 
build ideals and air castles by day and far 
more likely to tear them down in our 
dreams. That is, our fears and sordid 
wishes come out of their dungeons by night 
because our Freudian watch-dog Censor is, 
like ourselves, asleep and off his guard at 
that time. 
AN OLD IDEA IN A NEW FORM 
Now, this is all a very attractive theory, 
and, of course, there is a germ of truth in 
the idea. But it is really of no consequence 
whether you regard the repressive faculty 
simply as a faculty or as a blue-coated, 
policeman-like personality called “Censor.” 
We know, and people have known for ages, 
that the mind is a jumble of conflicts—of 
fears and desires—and that one of the 
products of all this is the fantastic dream. 
The idea that we are constantly “putting 
evil thoughts behind us” is an ancient one, 
and Freud’s picturesque name “Censor” 
simply crystallizes into a terse term this old 122 
OUR FEAR COMPLEXES 
idea. It has at various times been more 
loosely referred to as a mental “balance 
wheel” or “governor,” although these terms 
have not quite the same definite shade of 
meaning. Nevertheless, there is no very 
great difference in the general conception of 
this mental quality. 
However, regardless of the name, there is 
no question that mental deportment is gov- 
erned by some sort of moral monitor in nor- 
mal individuals while awake. Also, that 
during sleep, and in abnormal persons while 
awake, this monitor relaxes vigilance and 
permits the imagination to run riot—and, 
sometimes, amuck. We see this in the bab- 
blings of the patient going under the influ- 
ence of ether, when he says silly, vulgar or 
meaningless things. Or, still more, in the 
astounding condition of actual insanity, in 
which naturally refined, cultured women 
and men lapse into unspeakable vulgarity. 
Some psychologists maintain that much 
of insanity is caused by repressions and that 
under proper mental treatment by psycho- 
analytic methods, cures are possible. One DREAMS AND THE DREAM DOCTOR 
123 
of the chief faults of this theory, however, 
is the belief that we are dealing with a sin- 
gle factor when, as a matter of fact, any 
form of mental unbalance probably com- 
prises within itself a great many factors, 
some, and probably most of which, are pure- 
ly physical. 
Individuals requiring psycho-analytic 
methods of treatment must ordinarily learn 
to understand that they should live within 
their own particular limitations, physical 
and mental, and learn to meet their mental 
problems sensibly. And it is in this new 
view of physical and mental hygiene that 
much of the new hope of the present lies, 
whether it is a matter of mere “nerves” or 
of actual insanity. 
THE MODERN DREAM DOCTOR 
We know that recent events frequently 
excite our dreams about those events, and 
these are often interspersed with occur- 
rences which happened in our early lives. 
But frequently the explanation of these 
dreams by the dream-interpreter fills us 124 
OUR FEAR COMPLEXES 
with admiration, without entirely convinc- 
ing us of the correctness of his conclusions. 
For instance, here is an example cited by 
Professor Valentine in his little book on 
Dreams of the Unconscious: 
“A patient of Dr. Ernest Jones, a man of 
thirty-seven, dreamed that he was being at- 
tacked by a man who was armed with a 
number of sharp weapons; the assailant 
wore a dark mustache. The dreamer 
struggled and succeeded in inflicting a skin 
wound on his opponents left hand. The 
name Charles seemed to be related to the 
man, though not so definitely as if it were 
his name. The man then changed into a 
fierce dog, which the dreamer succeeded in 
vanquishing by forcibly tearing his jaws 
apart so as to split his head in two. 
“The patient was astonished at his dream, 
being himself a most peaceable man. He 
was asked to say what was suggested by the 
name Charles. The word recalled several 
men of that name: first, a Doctor Charles 
Stuart, who was a dentist, and had a week 
before extracted a tooth from the mouth of DREAMS AND THE DREAM DOCTOR 
125 
the patient’s wife, in his presence. The 
dentist, however, wore a beard, and the in- 
cident of tooth-extraction hardly seemed to 
account for the intense fear, the revengeful 
biting of the hand, and the tearing of the 
jaws of the dog. 
“Doctor Jones, therefore, asked for other 
associations. The name now recalled the 
Stuart kings, and then the former family 
doctor named Stuart Rankings, who had 
died when the patient was only nine years 
old. Finally, there came to mind ‘a very 
painful scene, previously forgotten, in 
which the doctor had roughly extracted two 
teeth from the terror-stricken patient, after 
forcibly gagging his mouth open; before he 
could accomplish this, the doctor had had 
his left hand badly bitten. The date of this 
occurrence could, from extrinsic evidence, 
be referred to the patient’s fifth year.’ Fur- 
ther analysis made it clear that the dream 
thoughts were all connected with this, to the 
child, terrifying experience, and the dream 
itself was accompanied by intense fear. 
'The assailant in the dream,’ concludes Doc- 126 
OUR FEAR COMPLEXES 
tor Jones, ‘was no other than the doctor 
whose treatment of the patient was, nearly 
thirty years after his death, thus fearfully 
avenged in the dream. The play on his 
name, Stuart Rankings (‘Rank-kings’) 
which enabled him to become identified first 
with the Stuart King Charles, is quite char- 
acteristic of the play upon words so frequent 
in dreams. 
“The symbolizing of the doctor by the dog 
is explained by the fact that he was a noted 
dog fancier, and had given the patient a fine 
collie; also, he had led a very irregular life, 
and the patient recalled that he had often 
heard his father refer to him as a ‘gay 
dog.’ ” 
We have given this dream-interpretation 
in detail as an example of what a man of 
science and imagination can find in a dream' 
when he really sets his mind to it. A gypsy 
could do no more! 
THE EFFECTS OF WISHES AND REPRESSIONS 
Since our whole lives are made up of 
wishes and repressions, conscious, half-con- DREAMS AND THE DREAM DOCTOR 
127 
scious, and possibly unconscious, it seems 
evident that any very serious effect must be 
of an unusual character. Or, perhaps we 
should be getting nearer the truth, if we 
say that any person who is seriously affected 
by such a repression is usually of unstable 
mental make-up. In practise this last as- 
sumption is borne out by the fact that per- 
sons showing the evil effects of repressions 
are almost without exception of the emo- 
tionally unstable type. 
We should never forget that practically 
every individual is subjected to all manner 
of mental strains and turbulations. And 
the fact that one person breaks under the 
strain while another does not, is not evi- 
dence that one has been more sorely afflicted 
than the other, but simply that there was a 
difference in the inherent stability of the in- 
dividuals. In terrible disasters, such as the 
sinking of a ship at sea, a great number of 
individuals are subjected to the same cause 
of mental strain. But only a very small per- 
centage succumb, as was well demonstrated 
during the war. The same is true of the 128 
OUR FEAR COMPLEXES 
stress of warfare in general, and there is a 
pretty generally accepted belief that most 
of those who show mental effects from such 
stress are the emotionally unstable ones. 
Moreover, the basis of this emotional upset 
is fear. 
Now, there is very good reason for believ- 
ing that many of these unstable persons are 
relieved, and possibly have serious mental 
catastrophes averted, by giving vent to their 
repressed fears. If, as is evident, a certain 
relief is felt even by the most stable person 
by “telling it” to some person—really hav- 
ing some one share the burden, as it were— 
then surely there need be no question that in 
less stable persons grave dangers may be 
averted by a similar process. Indeed, it was 
this position of “trouble sharer” that made 
the old-time family physician the helpful 
personage he was. And possibly this same 
quality may revive this fine old type of lov- 
able doctor when the next swing of fashion’s 
pendulum brings the family physician again 
into his own. DREAMS AND THE DREAM DOCTOR 
129 
SHELL-SHOCK AND DEFENSE REACTIONS 
“Shell-shock” during the late war was 
frequently nothing more than a more or less 
unconscious attempt creditably to escape 
from an unendurable situation. Fear dom- 
inated the situation. Pride and social cus- 
tom prevented the individual from acknowl- 
edging his fear, so his only relief could be 
found in escape through shell-shock. In this 
way the victim of fear “saved his face.” A 
complete explanation of the situation to the 
patient, including the fact that every one is 
afraid, and the repression of this instinct is 
unnecessary; but that on the other hand a 
free discussion of it is desirable, often re- 
sulted in a cure and a protection against 
future attacks. 
Such cases in some respects represent an 
“inferiority complex,” which may some- 
times be relieved by a confession. It must 
be admitted, however, that most shell- 
shocked soldiers, as well as people who suf- 
fer from other forms of mental shock, are 
not so easily cured nor so easily protected. 
In many instances they are naturally un- 130 
OUR FEAR COMPLEXES 
stable. So that the direct fear element acts 
upon an already badly organized nervous 
mechanism, which required much re-educa- 
tion for any permanent cure. 
There is no reason to believe that psycho- 
analysis, dream interpretation, suggestion, 
or any other mental method taken alone 
often permanently cures any case of nerv- 
ous trouble. The patient must ordinarily 
learn to re-educate his whole manner of 
mental life and practise in a wholesome 
manner such newly acquired methods all 
the rest of his days. The much heralded but 
really very old methods of Coue act well for 
a time in these functional nervous disorders. 
But like other half-truths, suggestion alone 
is not effective or permanent in its effects 
on many cases. 
SUBLIMATION 
There is another method of relieving the 
tension of harmful repressions that is par- 
ticularly emphasized by Freud in what he 
terms “sublimation.” Sublimation, in the 
Freudian sense, is the provision for the out- DREAMS AND THE DREAM DOCTOR 
131 
let of an impulse, whereby a substitute out- 
let takes the place of the original one. The 
sex impulse is specially susceptible to this 
sort of thing, according to Freud. Thus, 
when the suddenly widowed woman devotes 
herself to intense celestial worship to the 
exclusion of her natural sex instincts, she is 
thought to have “sublimated” the normal in- 
stinct or impulse. 
On the other hand, “the elderly lady with- 
out children, who finds some satisfaction for 
her disappointed maternal instinct in car- 
ing for her pet dogs, would afford an exam- 
ple of sublimation, but for the fact that the 
impulse is used at a lower rather than a 
higher level; hence we would speak here 
only of ‘displacement of the impulse and 
feeling.” From all of which it appears that 
the difference is determined largely by the 
level at which the original instinct is placed. 
But, in any event, it has never been clear- 
ly established that a normal sex impulse can 
be successfully sublimated, or displaced 
through any form of substitution; whereas, 
on the other hand, it is pretty generally con- 132 
OUR FEAR COMPLEXES 
ceded that persons who have apparently suc- 
ceeded in doing this are often dangerously 
near the border-line of instability. There 
is a limit to how much nature will permit 
tampering with her long-cherished mech- 
anisms. The old maid with her cats, the 
fanatic with his crescent or his crucifix and 
the half-developed girl with her devout hero 
worship, are all undoubtedly “sublimating” 
some instinctive desires. But certainly 
most of them are treading a narrow path 
along the chasm of mental unsoundness. 
It is the vague recognition of this that has 
led to the popular belief that marriage is the 
proper remedy for the peculiar type of love- 
lorn girl. Yet, practise proves this to be 
usually a fallacy. Apparently there is some- 
thing more fundamentally wrong with such 
persons, and more comprehensive than the 
ordinary conception of sex repression. In- 
deed, neurologists know that the obvious 
source of the attempted sublimation or sub- 
stitution in such cases is only one of many 
units of a great mental complexity which is 
built around a general mental instability. DREAMS AND THE DREAM DOCTOR 
133 
SUMMARY AND APPLICATION 
The Freudian theory of repressions of 
experiences which are disagreeable or actu- 
ally intolerable is no new one. Its method 
of statement, however, is new. Much of 
this theory belongs in the realm of mysti- 
cism instead of scientific psychology. Prop- 
erly interpreted, this theory is useful in at- 
tracting our attention to the fact that life 
experiences which are misinterpreted or im- 
properly met or unsolved, and which we 
tend to force into the so-called subconscious 
mind, have many kinds of harmful results. 
Just how repressed experiences cause 
nervous or behavior peculiarities we do not 
know. It is clear, however, that much of 
our lives is profoundly influenced by those 
ideas which are not present in clear con- 
sciousness but, as the Freudians would say, 
reside in our subconscious minds. Various 
methods have been employed to bring up to 
clear consciousness the various repressions 
in order that they be met and disposed of. 
All of these methods depend in the long run 
on association of ideas. That forgotten ex- 134 
OUR FEAR COMPLEXES 
periences may make themselves known in 
dreams or in hypnotic states or during the 
conditions produced by certain psycho- 
analysts in one way or another is undoubt- 
edly a fact. But no very complicated or 
mystical methods are necessary for this pur- 
pose. What one really attempts to do is to 
place the mind in a receptive state in which 
it is undisturbed by outside influences. In 
such a state, by the use of proper sugges- 
tions, a particular association of ideas may 
often bring to clear consciousness the “for- 
gotten’’ but harmful repression. It can then 
be met, explained and solved. 
Childhood is the period when experiences 
are least understood and when complexes 
and repressions are most likely to occur. 
For this reason wholesome training is most 
useful. The child needs to learn how to ad- 
just himself to real life, instead of living in 
a realm of fantasy. This is the period when 
'fears are most often encountered and re- 
pressed as misunderstood experiences. That 
many of such fears should be of a sexual 
nature is, of course, most natural, unless 
they are explained according to the child’s DREAMS AND THE DREAM DOCTOR 
135 
age, experience and intelligence. As Doctor 
White has said: “An instinct so complex as 
the sexual instinct can not come forth in- 
stantly and full blown at the period of pu- 
berty. ... It must have developed from 
small beginnings.” But the sexuality of the 
child has always been avoided, or referred 
to as “quite an impossible and unthinkable 
assumption.” The child must be so taught, 
therefore, that he will develop with free- 
dom from sexual fears and repressions 
which so often spoil the happiness of child- 
hood and cause much of the misery of early 
adult life. In the education of children 
there are two aspects, the repressive and de- 
veloping ; but unfortunately it is the repres- 
sive side which has been stressed most. And, 
while repressions of some natural instincts 
are, of course, necessary, it often happens 
that many repressions are due to fear, ig- 
norance or shame, and result in many forms 
of unhappy character faults. 
A proper understanding of our instincts 
and of the usual life-experiences as they 
come to us at different periods, our wishes, 
ambitions, passions, and the like, will large- 136 
OUR FEAR COMPLEXES 
ly prevent abnormal repressions and aid us 
in successfully adjusting ourselves to a life 
of realities instead of one of morbid fantasy. 
The well balanced, well informed person 
need never resort to mystery, magic, super- 
stition or common charlatanism for aid in 
solving his serious emotional problems, or in 
curing his unhappy nervous disorders. 
There are other less fortunate persons, how- 
ever, who do not know that many of their 
symptoms are simply an expression of their 
fears, or who will not admit it. By the 
psychoanalytic method they are made aware 
of their difficulty, or are forced to admit it. 
In effect it says: “Your yellow streak is get- 
ting the best of you. Brace up, man, and 
get hold of yourself. You are no more 
scared than the rest of us, only you have let 
yourself show it more.” 
And this kind of talk stimulates the indi- 
vidual so that his courage does rise to the 
occasion. More than likely it stimulates his 
“glands of courage’’ to produce this effect, 
a condition that will be discussed more fully 
in the chapter dealing with these important 
organs. Chapter VI 
FROM FREUD TO COUE 
Since the beginning of time the most 
miraculous cures recorded are those brought 
about by mental suggestion. The method is 
old, even though the name is of compara- 
tively recent origin. But regardless of 
method—whether the cure was wrought by 
a Greek oracle, or a Roman shrine, in re- 
sponse to the magic touch of a mediaeval 
king, the command of a Mesmer, the “free 
association” of a Freud, the mysticism of an 
Eddy, or the “autosuggestion” of a Coue— 
whatever the intermediary vehicle em- 
ployed, the mental mechanism of the cure 
has been practically identical in all cases. 
MENTAL SUGGESTION 
Every age, and each generation, has had 
its particular variety of thought suggester; 
and every age has given its own explanation 
of just what this miracle working thought- 
J37 OUR FEAR COMPLEXES 
138 
process is. But the essence of this thought 
in whatever age has been this: that the mind 
exercises a power and control over the or- 
gans of the body to such a degree that even 
apparently serious ailments may be cured 
merely by the process of properly directed 
thinking. 
No reasonable person can doubt that 
there is a great element of truth in this idea. 
All of us in our own lives have had practical 
illustrations of this remarkable power of 
the mind over the bodily functions. Thus, 
it is an ancient observation that the state of 
mind influences digestion. The classic ex- 
ample of the old medical writers was this: 
A person in the midst of an enjoyable meal, 
with keen appetite and relish, receives dis- 
tressingly bad news. Instantly all appetite 
leaves him, and the processes of digestion 
are checked for the time being almost as 
completely as by death itself. The intangi- 
ble mental effect is transformed into a per- 
fectly tangible physiological process where- 
by the mechanical processes of digestion are 
stopped. Certainly, there could be no clear- FROM FREUD TO COUE 
139 
er demonstration of the power of the con- 
scious mind over normally unconscious proc- 
esses. 
Another example of the mental control of 
bodily functions is that of the organs of gen- 
eration. Nothing more clearly establishes 
the influence of the subconscious and con- 
scious mind over physical functions and or- 
gans. And if these two important functions 
with their controlling organs are influenced 
directly, in health and in disease by the ac- 
tion of the mind, why not others? Certainly 
it is reasonable to suppose that all of the 
other organs are under similar control. 
Moreover, this fact seems to have been 
known to groups of persons in every part of 
the world since the dawn of civilization. 
There has been little difference of opinion 
as to its existence from the time of the Pha- 
raohs, down to the present, as evidenced by 
the recent popular stampede to witness such 
cures as those of the “Miracle Man” of 
Hollywood. Whatever divergence of opin- 
ion has arisen centers about two essential 
points: The question as to just what dis- 140 
OUR FEAR COMPLEXES 
eases are curable; and the question as to the 
best method of applying the mental process 
of healing—psychotherapy, as it is known 
in modern medicine. 
MIRACULOUS CURES 
As was said a moment ago, every one 
knows that seemingly miraculous cures are 
sometimes effected through the process of 
mental suggestion, combined with autosug- 
gestion, or autoassimilation, as Emile Coue 
prefers to term it. Yet it is only recently 
that this old, old form of therapy could be 
plausibly explained by science. Many ex- 
planations have been offered, of course, and 
many doctors have used mental therapy, 
sometimes unconsciously, with excellent re- 
sults. Yet until recently the wisest physi- 
cian could not explain precisely why he got 
those results, although to-day he believes he 
has found the secret in the ductless glands. 
He can, however, explain why even a very 
persistent use of the Coue “rosary” fails to 
do for malaria what quinine will do. For 
malaria is caused by the activities of a little FROM FREUD TO COUE 
141 
animal in the blood which does not cease 
work at the dictates of autosuggestion, but 
does cease in the presence of quinine. 
After all, it is the result, not the scientific 
explanation, that interests the ailing per- 
son. But the one very vital thing that inter- 
ests us here is that a new “faith healer,” 
Emile Coue, has emerged from war-torn 
France, and that his virile methods and 
treatment are gradually tearing down the 
shrines of his predecessors. Yet his methods 
are not so fundamentally different from 
those of the other cults; and the class of 
cases he cures are absolutely identical— 
identical, indeed, with those that were cured 
by the Prophets of old, by the Indian medi- 
cine man, by Mesmer in the time of our 
grandfathers, and by the Dowies, Emanuel 
healers, and “miracle men” of all time. 
OLD FAITHS AND THE NEW 
In one respect Coue’s conceptions seem to 
differ from those of some of the earlier 
faiths, and this may account for the gradual 
passing of the old and taking on of the new 142 
OUR FEAR COMPLEXES 
in popular estimation. He recognizes that 
certain things are impossible, that certain 
diseases are incurable; whereas with some 
of the older cults nothing was impossible, 
no disease incurable. Yet this was sure to 
react against them. It was inevitable. For 
in time it became apparent that certain 
types of diseases always ended fatally re- 
gardless of mental treatment. And thus it 
was evident that the claims of these healers 
were exaggerated. Explain it as you please 
by the hackneyed “error” of the anointed, 
or the “lack of faith” in the less exalted ver- 
nacular, the fact remained that certain dis- 
ease conditions were not cured by mere 
thought, and suggestion—conditions that 
could be healed by the scalpel or some other 
tangible agent. 
Such things could not fail to attract the 
attention of many intelligent votaries of the 
faith. Nor could they fail to jar their con- 
fidence. And meanwhile the newcomer, 
Coue, was preparing his candid statement 
with its open admissions that faith alone 
was not a universal panacea. Certainly the 
time was auspicious. FROM FREUD TO COUE 
143 
In contrast to the founder of the Mother 
Church, who was given to indefiniteness and 
incomprehensible mysticism, Coue speaks 
not only frankly, but in language and dic- 
tion that can not be misunderstood, and 
with explanations that appeal to the com- 
mon sense. For example, he deals with such 
things as the “will” and “imagination,” 
“conscious” and “unconscious”—common 
terms readily understood. 
It is imagination, he says, that absolutely 
dominates our conscious and unconscious 
selves. The strongest will is dominated by 
the imagination, and he gives a forceful 
illustration as follows: 
Lay an ordinary plank on the ground, and 
any one can walk its length without hesita- 
tion and without falling. But lift this same 
plank to the height of a cathedral spire, and 
“who then will be capable of advancing even 
a few feet along this narrow path?” he asks. 
Despite every effort of your will, strong 
though you may think it, the imagination 
warns you that if you make the attempt you 
will inevitably fall. In effect, you must 144 
OUR FEAR COMPLEXES 
subjugate your imagination to increase the 
efficiency of your will. And he assures 
those “who believe that we are free to act 
as we like,” that we are in reality, “nothing 
but wretched puppets of which our imagi- 
nation holds all the strings. We only cease 
to be puppets when we have learned to guide 
our imaginations.” 
In short, his treatment of disease consists 
solely in the auto-education of our imagina- 
tion. The imagination, he thinks, dwells 
largely in the realm of the subconscious, al- 
though the conscious is not entirely slighted. 
And this imagination in our unconscious 
minds may be successfully trained through 
the medium of suggestion, which comes 
from others, and from auto-suggestion 
(self-suggestion) or better, perhaps, auto- 
assimilation. The suggestion comes from 
another, and the assimilation is within our 
own minds. 
The function of the conscious is to train 
the unconscious. And since the unconscious 
controls so many of our actions, particularly 
diseases, the desired results will not be ac- FROM FREUD TO COUE 
145 
complished until the unconscious has ac- 
cepted any given suggestion and trans- 
formed it into an auto-suggestion, which 
dominates the will. Thus, when one says 
to himself, repeating over and over, “I can 
do this” or “I will do that”—if he repeats 
this and reiterates it over and over long 
enough, he finally establishes a state of mind 
which does certainly help him in the final 
accomplishment. On the contrary, says 
Coue, if you imagine that you can not do 
the simplest thing in the world it is often 
impossible for you to do it. And this applies 
particularly to types of functional illness so 
largely controlled by the unconscious mind. 
Here again, of course, is a thought as old 
as the pyramids. It is simply restated by 
Coue. 
OLD TRUTHS RESTATED 
It is a curious thing that periodically 
some person must rediscover what every 
preceding generation has known, and re- 
state as a novelty, a truism as old as civiliza- 
tion itself. We refer to this, which every 146 
OUR FEAR COMPLEXES 
wise physician in the world has known for 
ages: "If certain people are ill mentally and 
physically, it is that they imagine them- 
selves to be ill mentally or physically.” We 
quote Coue, because this old, old thought 
seems to have come to him as a novelty. And 
he continues: "If certain others are para- 
lytic without having any lesion (that is, 
tangible condition) to account for it, it is 
that they imagine themselves to be para- 
lyzed, and it is among such patients that the 
most extraordinary cures are produced.” 
Yet this hackneyed truism of the medical 
world seems to have come to this earnest 
French chemist as a revelation. Obviously 
he is not a physician with the wisdom that 
comes with medical practise. For it has 
been known to doctors since time imme- 
morial that "miraculous cures” by mental 
processes alone occur invariably in cases in 
which the diseases are functional—that is, 
products of the imagination, rather than ac- 
tual physical ailments. The tale of the 
"paralyzed” young lady, bedridden, who is 
cured by having her bed catch fire and being FROM FREUD TO COUE 
147 
compelled to leap or burn, is a medical 
classic. 
Yet one must not misunderstand this 
term, “functional,1” or imaginary. The man 
who really thinks he is paralyzed is just as 
surely so to all intents and purposes as 
though he were actually paralyzed. And 
without imagination his case is almost as 
incurable as the most serious organic kind. 
And when he is cured by fear, or miracu- 
lously by faith in any form, whether it is 
accomplished through Christian Science, 
Dowieism, the Emanuel Movement, or 
through his faith in Coue, it is because his 
imagination has been stirred as it was not 
stirred before. 
It is Coue’s belief that success depends 
upon training the imagination rather than 
in trying to re-educate the will. And from 
his experience he reaches the following con- 
clusion which he sums up as laws: 
1. When the will and the imagination 
are antagonistic, it is always the imagina- 
tion which wins, without any exception. 
2. In the conflict between the will and the 148 
OUR FEAR COMPLEXES 
imagination, the force of the imagination 
is in direct ratio to the square of the will. 
3. When the will and the imagination 
are in agreement, one does not add to the 
other, but one is multiplied by the other. 
4. The imagination can be directed. 
“After what has just been said it would 
seem that nobody ought to be ill. That is 
quite true. Every illness, whatever it may 
be, can yield to autosuggestion, daring and 
unlikely as my statement may seem; I do 
not say does always yield, but can yield, 
which is a different thing.” 
In Coue’s own estimation, however, there 
are two classes of persons who are not 
amenable to autosuggestion: First, the men- 
tally incompetent who are not capable of 
understanding what you say to them; and, 
second, those who are unwilling to under- 
stand. He does not say, but implies, there is 
a third class of patients that can not be 
cured by his method. These are the ones 
afflicted with organic diseases, such as can- 
cer, malaria, syphilis, and many others—in- 
curable, at least, by mental healing alone. FROM FREUD TO COUE 
149 
The distress of these conditions may be 
ameliorated very greatly, perhaps, by the 
Coue method; but cure requires something 
more substantially material. It is in such 
cases that real miracles follow the scientific 
application of surgery and therapeutics. 
Whether or not the patient has faith and 
will “cooperate,” regardless of whether he 
be an imbecile or a philosopher, applied sci- 
ence works the miraculous. 
This is where the physician, the man of 
science, comes into his own. Removing a 
gangrenous appendix and thereby saving a 
human life does not require imagination on 
the patient’s part, but simply scientific skill 
on the part of the surgeon. 
But surgery is only one branch of medical 
science. The magical results in the treat- 
ment of a disfunctioning thyroid that makes 
the patient an imbecile, is the marvelous 
work of the scientific physician—miracu- 
lous even in the eyes of the confirmed men- 
tal healer. Neither the Prophets nor the 
Kings, or a Mesmer, or a Mother Eddy, or 
a Coue could heal such conditions. These 150 
OUR FEAR COMPLEXES 
are cases confessedly beyond the reach of 
Coue methods. 
THE BASIS OF COUE METHODS 
What is the veiled mystery of this latest 
successful method of curing certain dis- 
eases? How can this magic be explained? 
The answer is simple and explicit. Mesmer, 
who first exalted it to a high plane—that 
is, raised it from the field of superstition— 
supplied it with the name “mesmerism” by 
which it was popularly known for many 
years. Later, “hypnotism” supplanted the 
older term; and still later it was determined 
definitely that both these terms are simply 
definitions of a condition produced by sug- 
gestion and autosuggestion. 
It is true that Coue has emphasized the 
autosuggestion feature rather more than 
his predecessors, but his methods differ in 
no essential particular from theirs. Brooks, 
a Coue disciple, illustrates this in his de- 
scription of a Coue seance: 
“Coue now passed on to the formulation 
of specific suggestions. The patients closed FROM FREUD TO COUE 
151 
their eyes, and he proceeded in a low, mo- 
notonous voice to evoke before their minds 
the state of health, mental and physical, 
they were seeking. As they listened to him 
their alertness ebbed away, they were lulled 
into a drowsy state, peopled only by the 
vivid images he called before the eyes of the 
mind. The faint rustle of the trees, the 
songs of the birds, the low voices of those 
waiting in the garden, merged into a pleas- 
ant background, on which his words stood 
out powerfully.” 
A charming and absolutely accurate de- 
scription of an hypnotic seance—one that 
has been duplicated times without end the 
world over. 
This is implied in Coue’s own descrip- 
tions, and his instructions for carrying out 
his treatments. Indeed, one gets the same 
atmosphere as from the writings of Mes- 
mer. And it is only when one comes to the 
explanations of the phenomena given by the 
two authors that one finds any very great 
difference. Mesmer believed that his pow- 
ers were due to “thought-transference 152 
OUR FEAR COMPLEXES 
Coue accepts the modern explanation of 
“suggestion.” 
Yet the methods of Coue—the ones he 
prefers, although he freely admits that 
there are others—are practically the meth- 
ods of all hypnotists the world over. In his 
own words: “You must not, however, run 
away with the idea that autosuggestion can 
only be brought about in the way I have 
described. It is possible to make sugges- 
tions to people without their knowing and 
without any preparation. For instance, if 
a doctor who by his title alone has a sug- 
gestive influence on his patient, tells him he 
can do nothing for him, and that his illness 
is incurable, he provokes in the mind of the 
latter an autosuggestion which may have 
the most disastrous consequences; if, how- 
ever, he tells him that his illness is a serious 
one, it is true, but that with care, time, and 
patience, he can be cured, he sometimes, and 
even often, obtains results which will sur- 
prise him.” 
And now mark this further statement by 
M. Coue, which shows how well he under- FROM FREUD TO COUE 
153 
stands human nature and the autosugges- 
tive features that spell success in the prac- 
tise of medicine. He says: “In my opinion, 
if the doctor only prescribes a regimen with- 
out any medicine, his patient will be dissat- 
isfied; he will say that he took the trouble 
to consult him for nothing, and often goes 
to another doctor. It seems to me that the 
doctor should always prescribe medicines to 
his patient, and, as much as possible, medi- 
cines made up by himself rather than the 
standard remedies so much advertised 
which owe their only value to the advertise- 
ment/J Which is simply another way of 
saying the thing that has been said a million 
times seriously and in jest, that “bread 
pills’’ will cure many patients. Or, trans- 
lated into the idea of Coue, it is the bread 
pills that aid the autosuggestion which cures 
the patient. 
COUEISM AND HYPNOTISM 
Should any one doubt that Coueism is 
simply another form of hypnotism, or semi- 
hypnotism, he has but to recall the public 154 
OUR FEAR COMPLEXES 
demonstrations of hypnotists which almost 
every reader has witnessed. First of all 
Coue puts his patients through a prelim- 
inary course of treatment to make them 
more receptive to suggestion—just as the 
hynotist prepares his subjects by a few sim- 
ple experiments. “Be careful always to 
keep your eyes fixed on the root of the sub- 
ject’s nose,” instructs M. Coue, “and do not 
allow him to turn his eyes from yours for a 
single moment. . . . Always use a tone of 
command which suffers no disobedience. I 
do not mean that it is necessary to raise your 
voice; on the contrary it is preferable to em- 
ploy the ordinary pitch, but stress every 
word in a dry and imperative tone.” This 
is the instruction of Mesmer, the method of 
every successful hynotist. And Coue con- 
tinues, “When these experiments have been 
successful, all the others succeed which 
equally well can be easily obtained by carry- 
ing out to the letter the instructions given 
above.” And he makes the trite observation 
that some subjects are very sensitive and 
easily placed under control, while others re- FROM FREUD TO COUE 
155 
quire more treatment to get into their full 
confidence. 
In one of his experiments he says to the 
patient: “Shut your eyes. Now you can 
not open them.” And of course the patient 
can not open them, for he is hypnotised. 
Every one who has witnessed public demon- 
strations of hypnotism will remember that 
this is one of the classic methods of begin- 
ning a hypnotic seance. The patient is first 
told that he can or can not do this or that 
thing and when he has “assimilated” the 
suggestion so that he must obey it, then he 
is ready for further suggestions, and ulti- 
mately for complete control in the hands of 
the hypnotist. 
“And now,” proceeds M. Coue, “when the 
subject has passed through the preceding 
experiment it is understood then that he is 
ripe for curative suggestion. He is like a 
cultivated field in which the seed can germi- 
nate and develop, whereas before it was but 
barren earth in which it would have per- 
ished.” 
Furthermore, at the end of a seance, M. 156 
OUR FEAR COMPLEXES 
Coue brings his subjects out of the hypnotic 
state in precisely the same manner as many 
other hypnotists. “When you have come to 
the end of the series of suggestions,” he 
says, “you address the subject in these 
terms: ‘In short, I mean that from every 
point of view, physical as well as mental, 
you are going to enjoy excellent health, bet- 
ter health than you have been able to enjoy 
up to the present. Now I am going to count 
three, and when I say “three” you will open 
your eyes and come out of the passive state 
in which you are now.’ ” 
Now, this exposition of Coueism is not for 
purposes of ridicule or condemnation. Quite 
the contrary. For in suggestion and auto- 
suggestion, whether we call it mesmerism, 
hypnotism, or what not, we possess a pow- 
erful weapon for the treatment of func- 
tional diseases. Hundreds of physicians use 
it to-day. And, as suggested earlier in this 
chapter, recent discoveries have made pos- 
sible an explanation on scientific grounds 
never available heretofore. Briefly stated, 
this explanation is as follows: FROM FREUD TO COIlfc 
157 
THE SCIENTIFIC EXPLANATION OF 
SUGGESTION 
There is within our bodies a set of organs 
which probably influence and control every 
mechanism, physical and mental, of that or- 
ganism. For many years they were called 
4‘ductless glands,” and recently they have 
been called endocrine glands. In another 
chapter we shall have very much more to 
say about these important structures. But 
it will suffice for our purpose of the moment 
simply to say that many of these glands are 
greatly influenced by our emotions, and, 
conversely, many of our emotions as well 
as the vital bodily functions are controlled 
by the action of these glands. In emotional 
states, whether produced by suggestion, or 
autosuggestion, the action of these glands is 
inhibited or stimulated as the case may be. 
Now, the effect of hypnotism, or at least 
of suggestion and autosuggestion, is rela- 
tive. Some persons apparently are not in- 
fluenced at all by the attempt at hypnosis; 
another person may be only slightly af- 
fected, while a third person may be brought 158 
OUR FEAR COMPLEXES 
completely “under the will” of the hypno- 
tist. And so with autosuggestion. There 
are persons who by performing certain acts 
and thinking certain thoughts make them- 
selves feel somewhat better; others who can 
produce a feeling of great comfort; still oth- 
ers who can be brought into a self-hypnotic 
state in which they are apparently utterly 
oblivious to pain, while in most people wor- 
ry, anger, fear and other intense emotions 
may produce the most serious effects on 
physical health and mental life. Possibly 
the difference lies in the susceptibility of 
certain endocrine glands to suggestive in- 
fluences. 
We see cases of insanity, in which the 
conscious mind seems almost completely dis- 
sociated from the body. In this condition 
the patient may mutilate himself in a most 
shocking manner without apparently expe- 
riencing any sensations of pain. Probably 
it was a somewhat similar mental state 
which enabled certain martyrs of old to be 
consumed in the flames without suffering. 
Thus, what is usually credited to the will, FROM FREUD TO COUE 
159 
or a spirit of stoicism, may very reasonably 
have been, and probably was, the result of 
mental exaltation — autosuggestion — that 
raised them beyond the level of mere bodily 
suffering. 
These are exaggerated instances, of 
course, and at present, we know of no con- 
dition short of actual insanity, or perhaps 
hysteria, in which the mind can so control 
the feelings that there is no appreciation of 
inflicted bodily tortures. But, as was said a 
moment ago, there are apparently all man- 
ner of gradations between these extreme 
cases and the one in which the person is 
scarcely influenced at all by mental sugges- 
tion. And a reasonable explanation is that 
the mental influence determines the action 
of the endocrine glands—“the glands gov- 
erning personality”—which are at least 
sensitive to a certain degree in every indi- 
vidual, and in a very marked degree in indi- 
viduals of sensitive and receptive natures. 
And a frequent repetition of a helpful sug- 
gestion may act as a stimulant to certain of 
these glands, thus bringing about an actual 160 
OUR FEAR COMPLEXES 
physical change, on the contrary. Other 
suggestions of a morbid nature may produce 
every degree of ill-health, even death itself. 
FUNCTIONAL AND ORGANIC DISEASES 
Short of actual organic conditions, there- 
fore, the autosuggestions of Coue ought to 
prove useful in the case of almost any in- 
dividual. Particularly will this be so in 
those sensitive, and usually very intelligent 
but delicately organized persons, who feel 
pain more keenly than the dull, thick- 
skinned type who are not especially sensi- 
tive to environment. In such individuals, 
and in this field, the efforts of Coue should 
work infinite good. 
However, there is danger in this, as in all 
similar processes of mental healing. This 
danger lies in the fact that the ordinary in- 
dividual can not distinguish between or- 
ganic or actual, and functional or imaginary 
diseases. The harm will come when an 
individual mistakes an actual organic condi- 
tion for a merely functional one. For 
example, should he find himself or a member FROM FREUD TO COUE 
161 
of his family ailing., and it should develop 
later that the ailment was such a disease as 
diphtheria, curable almost infallibly with 
early treatment, the time lost in beginning 
specific treatment may mean the sacrifice of 
self, or a loved one. So with cancerous 
growths, where early diagnosis is so essen- 
tial to ultimate recovery. And these are not 
exaggerated instances but are every-day oc- 
currences that shock the medical world and 
the Health Departments of cities into an- 
tagonism toward this form of therapy. 
Yet there is a perfectly easy method of 
avoiding this mistake. Let the patient first 
find out for a certainty through the medium 
of a trusted physician just what his ailment 
is. If it is functional, then no harm can 
come from, and possibly great good will re- 
sult in the self-education of autosuggestion. 
We might just as correctly have said, the 
self-education of courage. For in the last 
analysis, functional diseases are fear dis- 
eases. And when we educate our courage 
we simply decrease our fears. And whether 
we use the older methods of Mother Eddy or 162 
OUR FEAR COMPLEXES 
the newer ones of Coue or the psychotherapy 
of the modern scientific* physician, we are 
adopting methods likely to produce gratify- 
ing results. 
SUMMARY AND APPLICATION 
Autosuggestion and other forms of sug- 
gestion have been in use ever since the be- 
ginnings of the human mind. The results 
obtained, however, have been accounted for 
in many different ways. Sorcerers, magi- 
cians, medicine men, the kahunas of the 
South Sea people, hypnotists, mesmerists, 
Christian Scientists, miracle men, Coues 
and scientific physicians have all accom- 
plished cures by much the same means. The 
explanations of these cures have, however, 
been very different. Most of such explana- 
tions have had their origins in mysticism, 
superstition or common ignorance. Science 
finds no fault with the cures, but only with 
their origins. But to-day, as never before, 
science is able to offer a satisfactory ex- 
planation of what, until now, has always 
been difficult to understand. Science ex- FROM FREUD TO COUE 
163 
plains what faith simply accepted, whether 
as miracles, or as barbaric superstitious be- 
liefs. 
If, as scientific physicians are now com- 
ing to believe, the power of suggestion has a 
perfectly tangible, physical basis, then we 
may well hope for results which even the 
most emotionally suggestible could never 
before have hoped for. Perhaps at last fear- 
possessed humanity, which has always piti- 
fully struggled as best it could against its 
unseen enemy, will find in sound scientific 
practise that which it has always sought in 
mystery, superstition and ignorance. Chapter VII 
SPECIAL FEARS HAVING A SEXUAL 
BASIS 
“Happiness for the average individual,” 
says a modern philosopher, “consists of a 
double success—success in his vocation 
(chosen or forced upon him) and success in 
his sex life.” Yet, curiously enough, the two 
vital elements are not necessarily interde- 
pendent. It is possible for the individual to 
be successful in one and a failure in the 
other, although it is doubtful if the result 
would ever be happiness, even in a broad 
interpretation of the term, except in pecu- 
liar or defective individuals. 
Thus the moron—the person whose intel- 
lect never develops above the age of a nor- 
mal boy of twelve years—is notoriously 
“successful” in his sex life, that is, if success 
may be measured by tangible results. And 
he is always just as uniformly unsuccessful 
164 FEARS HAVING A SEXUAL BASIS 
165 
in his vocation. Yet the moron is almost 
invariably a happy individual—the moron 
class, with its big families of dirty children, 
are the proverbially happy people of the 
world. Which suggests that happiness, of 
the vegetative type at least, is much more 
dependent on a successful sex life than on 
success in business. 
In any event it is impossible to divorce 
this important life-function from almost 
any phase of our existence. Indeed, there 
are certain schools of observers, notably the 
followers of Freud, who attribute practi- 
cally all our mental ills and worries to one 
or another form of sexual complex. We 
need not dwell on the merits or demerits of 
these theories here. Suffice it for our pur- 
pose of the moment simply to consider two 
types of fears: first, the fears that are di- 
rectly concerned with sex matters them- 
selves; and, second, the fears, and worries, 
and anxieties that are the result in part, at 
least, of some obscure or misunderstood sex 
difficulty. 
Curiously enough the consideration of 166 
OUR FEAR COMPLEXES 
this subject is hampered by the lack of 
standard as to normality or abnormality 
about sexual life—an indefiniteness as to 
just what the terms normal and abnormal 
really mean. Medical writers use the terms 
glibly enough, but in point of fact there is 
no fixed standard whereby these things may 
be judged. What is normal for one indi- 
vidual may be entirely abnormal for an- 
other. Indeed, individuals seem to be a law 
unto themselves in such matters. And, as 
might be expected, each person bases his 
opinion largely upon his own experience. 
Thus, the person who is robust, vigorous 
and actively endowed may hold very differ- 
ent sex views from the weak, esthetic or 
undeveloped individual. Or, paradoxically, 
their views may coincide almost precisely, 
since this is a function that can not be meas- 
ured in the terms of physical strength or 
stature. Indeed, it is perhaps the only 
physiological function about which we have 
no reasonably exact standard for measuring 
normality, and to which no fixed general 
rules seem applicable in individual cases. FEARS HAVING A SEXUAL BASIS 
167 
SEX SECRECY 
This lack of standards is explained by our 
modern rules governing proper behavior 
which forbid any frank and open discussion 
of this subject, even in scientific circles. As 
a result, a haze of mysterious secrecy clouds 
the whole subject. And thus the individual 
is forced to form opinions based on his own 
experiences or the clandestine gossip of per- 
sons as ignorant as himself. 
Consider for example, the wide difference 
of opinion that must exist between two indi- 
viduals, one of whom experienced intense 
sexual emotions from early childhood, the 
other not until adult manhood. Which is 
normal? Or are both normal, or both ab- 
normal? 
Almost any one will answer at once that 
one is precocious, the other retarded. Yet 
both these conditions, particularly this 
seeming precocity, occur in thousands of 
normal and healthy individuals. 
In some children there is no conscious- 
ness of sexuality until puberty or a consid- 
erable time thereafter, particularly in girls. 168 
OUR FEAR COMPLEXES 
But, on the other hand, there are children, 
girls not infrequently, who develop con- 
scious sexual instincts even at the fifth and 
sixth year of life—almost as far back as 
recollection itself goes. And between these 
widely divergent time periods there are all 
manner of variations. Yet, it seems cer- 
tain, that most boys experience definite sex- 
ual feelings several years before puberty, 
while girls do not until after puberty, and 
then only in a comparatively mild degree 
until after marriage. 
SEX PRECOCITY 
It is true that precocity in sex matters 
often results in trouble later in life. But 
this trouble is usually in the form of mental 
conflicts, almost invariably due to lack of 
understanding produced by ignorance or the 
pernicious literature that is circulated for 
the express purpose of exciting such con- 
flicts. For in sexual matters the mind con- 
trols the body as in no other known func- 
tion; and if this function could be treated 
with the same matter-of-fact frankness as FEARS HAVING A SEXUAL BASIS 
169 
such subjects as digestion or teething, there 
would be practically no sex difficulties ex- 
cept those resulting from actual infections. 
It is very unusual for any physical diffi- 
culties to result from youthful precocities. 
And in properly instructed young persons 
it is quite unlikely that there will ever be 
any untoward mental effects. But owing 
to the air of mystery which modern civiliza- 
tion throws about the subject, there is very 
little open frankness and many harmful 
misconceptions. Gossip and superstition 
have created mysterious penalties for 
youthful irregularities of thought or action 
in sexual matters. And these, largely be- 
cause of the mysterious secrecy, are burned 
into our conscious and subconscious minds 
to crop out as trouble-makers later on. 
One of the greatest handicaps to common- 
sense thinking in matters that concern our- 
selves is the belief that “we are different” 
from other persons in very many ways. 
Such an opinion is an inherent expression of 
the ego, and if held within normal limits is 
the basis of personality. But also it often 170 
OUR FEAR COMPLEXES 
incites morbid worries that lead to persis- 
tent fears which could be easily corrected if 
the individual could make himself under- 
stand that he is essentially like several mil- 
lion other people—to know that the rules 
which apply to them, likewise apply to him. 
It is a state of mind constantly encoun- 
tered by the physician, and a most difficult 
one to combat. Thus, when the physician 
attempts to reassure the apprehensive pa- 
tient by telling him that “no one ever died” 
from the condition from which he suffers, 
he frequently finds an ingrained belief that 
this case is an exception. “But isn’t it pos- 
sible, Doctor?” asks the dubious patient. 
Certainly it is; almost anything is possible. 
But it is highly improbable—so improbable 
that the argument would be accepted with- 
out question by persons in normal health. 
The apprehensive patient does not accept 
it so readily. Or, his acceptance is only 
temporary, as the old doubt is forever ob- 
truding itself, and can only be held in abey- 
ance by repeated assurance of the physician 
in whom the patient has confidence. FEARS HAVING A SEXUAL BASIS 
171 
SEX AND NERVOUSNESS 
Frequently this type of recurrent appre- 
hension has its focus in some phase of sex- 
ual life, although the symptoms may not 
suggest this at all. For example, a man 
came to our office one day, depressed and 
apprehensive because he feared that some- 
thing was radically wrong with his heart. 
He was an exceptionally intelligent man, of 
the studious type, but muscular and active, 
a bachelor in good circumstances and living 
alone. A few questions developed the fact 
that the apprehension about his heart had 
been suggested by statements he had read 
that crowned teeth were frequently the 
cause of heart disease, hardened arteries, 
and other dire eventualities. And he had 
several crowned and defective teeth that 
needed attention. 
He was well aware of this, and knew also 
that the teeth could be extracted painlessly 
and practically without danger. Yet he had 
brooded over the possibilities of hemor- 
rhage, death from an anesthetic, a broken 
jaw, septic infection after the teeth were 172 
OUR FEAR COMPLEXES 
extracted—all the possibilities that may 
happen in very exceptional cases—until he 
had become abjectly terrorized, on the verge 
of nervous collapse. Apprehension had 
magnified the little mole-hill possibilities 
into overwhelming mountain peaks of fear. 
Bear in mind that this man was not lack- 
ing in courage about most things. It was a 
case where an obsession focussed upon one 
certain thing had undermined that particu- 
lar department of courage. So much so, 
indeed, that it was only by collusion between 
the dentist and some of the patient’s friends 
that the teeth were finally extracted—pain- 
lessly, of course. 
This successful operation ironed out the 
great mountain ranges of fear, and for a 
time the patient improved wonderfully. 
But the relief was only temporary. The 
teeth were no longer the focus point of 
worry, but the source of apprehension still 
existed. And presently the old dread of 
heart disease reappeared; then it was the 
kidneys; later the stomach with the fear of 
gastric cancer; and at all times a general FEARS HAVING A SEXUAL BASIS 
173 
depression and nervousness. Reassurance 
by various physicians helped matters tem- 
porarily; but almost immediately some new 
disorder would obtrude itself, so that the 
man was never really well at any time, and 
always in a state of ill-defined apprehen- 
sion. 
This patient was a confirmed old bachelor 
without a sign or direct symptom of what 
was really lacking in his life. But just at 
this time Fate took a hand in things and 
sent him the woman, who was willing to run 
the risk of having a confirmed invalid upon 
her hands for life. 
And then the miracle! Within a month 
after this precipitate marriage, which 
proved to be a most happy one, the erstwhile 
invalid was a well man, and very happy. 
All his aches and pains and fears and 
nervousness had disappeared. 
SEX REPRESSIONS 
The explanation appears simple. As a 
bachelor this man was leading an unnatural 
and repressed sexual life, and it is probable 174 
OUR FEAR COMPLEXES 
that there was not a natural and normal dis- 
tribution of certain internal secretions. The 
result was a disturbance of balance in these 
secretions and the development of various 
symptoms of fears and nervousness. 
Of course, the mental element in this case 
is important, for the man was very happy 
in his new life; and happiness seems to be a 
cause, as well as a result, of well-balanced 
internal secretions. But that is merely stat- 
ing a truism that the mental state always 
affects the bodily conditions directly. The 
significant thing is that normal married life 
cured the patient of symptoms that seemed 
to bear no relation to that life whatever. 
Cases of this type are by no means un- 
usual, but occur much more frequently in 
women than in men, probably because wom- 
en are far more likely to practise repres- 
sion of this natural instinct. It is often an 
affliction of early widowhood as a result of 
the interrupted routine of married life, with 
symptoms widely different in character. 
Many women overcome these symptoms al- 
most completely by transmuting this type of FEARS HAVING A SEXUAL BASIS 
175 
ungratified energy into other forms of ac- 
tivities. Active church or club work, wel- 
fare and similar charity activities, or golf 
and other athletic games, sometimes 
“sublimate” this accumulative energy and 
relieve the situation to such an extent that 
there are very few untoward symptoms. 
But often even the most strenuous activi- 
ties fail to accomplish this, and in a final 
analysis can not do so completely, because 
the basis of sex function is chemical activity 
taking place in the body. This activity pro- 
duces an active substance in the body cells 
which is not completely used, or dissipated, 
by any methods other than those intended 
by nature. It is one of nature’s secrets that 
the laboratory can not fathom. Nature 
takes no cognizance of man-made conven- 
tions in carrying out her great scheme of 
creation and perpetuation. At best we can 
merely avert evil consequences by substitut- 
ing mental and physical activities directed 
along lines that are most congenial to the 
individual taste. 
Unfortunately, there are many cases in 176 
OUR FEAR COMPLEXES 
which circumstances make this impossible. 
Persons who earn their livings through sed- 
entary occupations — seamstresses, clerks, 
and persons following indoor occupations in 
general—are peculiarly unfortunate in this 
regard, since frequently there is little 
chance for physical exercise, and often noth- 
ing in their work to keep the mind intently 
occupied. Under such circumstances the 
sexual instinct is far more likely to be ob- 
trusive than in cases where the mind is 
diverted, and the body actively employed. 
The best remedy in such cases is to focus 
the mind upon some interesting subject en- 
tirely foreign to the obtrusive one. Get a 
hobby. And, if possible, one that stimulates 
muscular as well as mental activity. In ad- 
dition, one should take daily systematic 
exercise to improve muscular tone and thus 
dissipate some of the waste products that 
accumulate and “stagnate” in the inactive 
body tissues. 
In one case that came under our observa- 
tion, a young woman engaged in work which 
left her distressingly free from mental occu- FEARS HAVING A SEXUAL BASIS 
177 
pation, took up the study of a foreign lan- 
guage as a diversion. At first the task was 
difficult, but presently the learning and re- 
membering of new names became such a 
“hobby” that she acquired a good working 
knowledge of several languages. Her re- 
ward was twofold: her mind was directed 
away from harmful channels, and her lin- 
guistic ability secured her an advanced posi- 
tion. 
SEX DOUBTS 
A very common source of worry, particu- 
larly in young men, is the fear of sexual 
inadequacy. This fear has been a source of 
revenue to quacks for generations, and be- 
came particularly rampant a decade ago 
before our government put an end to the 
more flagrant type of advertisement that 
was so lucrative. “These advertisements 
play upon the ignorance and credulity of the 
young men who may have committed some 
youthful and harmless indiscretion, by de- 
scribing chimerical dangers, and professing 
to cure diseased conditions that do not ex- 
ist,” says one writer. 178 
OUR FEAR COMPLEXES 
“Few persons, except physicians, realize 
the amount of positive harm and protracted 
unhappiness produced by this pernicious 
literature. The lives and usefulness of 
thousands of young men have been perma- 
nently blighted by these advertisements. 
“The deplorable thing about the whole 
obnoxious subject is, that the claims and in- 
sinuations of these criminal charlatans 
which so many boys read and believe, are 
unmitigated lies. They play upon the boy’s 
credulity by leading him to believe that a 
very common boyhood indiscretion—-one 
that is so common that it may be considered 
almost a normal trait of youth—has 
blighted his life, or will do so unless he 
patronizes the perpetrators of the advertise- 
ment. Yet physicians know that little harm 
comes from such indiscretion, which, in any 
event, is usually self-corrective.” 
A little common-sense reasoning based on 
the very fundamentals of nature will reas- 
sure one about the probability of this feared 
or suspected inadequacy. Next to the pres- 
ervation of life itself, nature cherishes the FEARS HAVING A SEXUAL BASIS 
179 
perpetuation of the species, and the bodily- 
functions that act to this end. Indeed, in 
the great scheme of nature it is really more 
important that the individual shall be able 
to reproduce his kind, since the offspring of 
a single individual may be many, than that 
he preserve his own individual life. This is 
shown in some of the lower order of crea- 
tures, which die once the act of reproduction 
is accomplished. 
Thus, in the case of these animals, at 
least, it would seem that the vital purpose 
for which they are created is Lo propagate 
their kind. This is not true to the same 
degree as regards man, of course, but the 
general principle applies to the extent that 
nature emphasizes the importance of the 
sexual function, and maintains its virility, 
even in individuals in whom many of the 
other vital functions are almost suppressed 
or badly crippled. We find the sexual func- 
tion retained and often exaggerated, in 
mental defectives, imbeciles, cripples, and 
even in individuals afflicted with wasting 
diseases when most of the other bodily 180 
OUR FEAR COMPLEXES 
functions are at the lowest ebb. Thus does 
nature provide for the perpetuation of her 
created creatures. 
THE CURE FOR SEX FEARS 
The fear of, or belief in, sexual inade- 
quacy in any reasonably healthy individual 
is purely a matter of faulty imagination in 
almost all instances. Actual inadequacy is 
very rare, indeed, but the fear of such in- 
adequacy is common, particularly in the 
upper walks of life—it appears to be one of 
the penalties of intellectual development 
and culture. It declines and disappears as 
we descend the social and intellectual scale. 
We do not find it in the slums; the hovel is 
not its habitat. Wherefore, the fearful in- 
adequate may find consolation in the 
thought that, at any rate, he is one raised 
above the common intellectual plane. 
But, reason it out as we will, even this is 
not sufficient compensation. And fortu- 
nately it need not be so. For the same fac- 
ulty, imagination, that creates the victim’s 
fears, may be used to cure him. If he will FEARS HAVING A SEXUAL BASIS 
181 
reason with himself along the lines sug- 
gested here—that he is inadequate merely 
because he thinks so—that nature does not 
create inadequates—he will find that it is, 
indeed, his imagination and not his physical 
condition that is at fault. 
In another chapter a full description will 
be given of the wonderful system of physical 
structures, called endocrine glands, that 
play such a vital part in the growth, general 
health, sex instincts, hopes and fears and 
worries—all the vital functions of life. Re- 
cently these glands have been found to have 
a double function that was not even sus- 
pected until a few years ago. For example, 
the glands of reproduction act in controlling 
certain functions of the body quite apart 
from the sexual function, or only very in- 
directly connected with that. As a result, 
we find that any derangement of these 
glands sometimes produces symptoms that 
are apparently not at all of a sexual nature 
and that would not in any way suggest 
sexual-gland derangement. Indeed, the 
usual, well known function of these glands 182 
OUR FEAR COMPLEXES 
may not be affected at all. And they would 
not be suspected as the source of trouble 
were it not for our knowledge of the double 
function played by these organs. 
THE “CHANGE OF LIFE’' 
Perhaps the most common type of fears 
and ailments attributable to this source, and 
those that are most frequently interpreted 
correctly are those that come at the meno- 
pause period in women—that peculiar 
method which nature takes of providing 
against motherhood that may be too old for 
the adequate care of the developing off- 
spring. Every one knows that a peculiar 
train of symptoms frequently develop at this 
time. And there is, of course, a definite 
cessation of function. But frequently there 
are other symptoms in which the source is 
less obvious, and quite different disarrange- 
ments in the secretions to the ovaries which 
upset the balance of the entire nervous sys- 
tem and manifest themselves in peculiar 
ways. Fear and apprehensions are some of 
these symptoms. And we have evidence FEARS HAVING A SEXUAL BASIS 
183 
that these conditions are often actually due 
to some maladjustment in the secretions of 
the reproductive organs, because certain 
remedies which tend to reestablish the nor- 
mal functioning of these organs also dispel 
the fearsome symptoms. 
A case has recently come under our ob- 
servation that typifies this condition. It is 
a peculiarly interesting and instructive case 
because it shows how easily the actual 
source of the trouble might escape detection 
since so many of these symptoms seem so 
utterly remote from the source of the diffi- 
culty. Yet they disappeared at once when 
the proper treatment was directed to that 
source. 
MORBID WORRIES AND SEX LIFE 
The patient in question is a woman in the 
early fifties, highly intelligent, active, 
healthy and robust, who, judged by the ces- 
sation of function, had passed the critical 
period of adult female life five years before. 
But since that period she has, on various 
occasions, developed morbid fears and ap- 184 
OUR FEAR COMPLEXES 
prehensions about her health, usually focus- 
sing upon some organ of the body which she 
suspects of derangement, but which clears 
up when treatment is directed to the actual 
source of her difficulty entirely remote from 
what appears to be the source. 
Her first obsession was directed to the 
heart, the perennial fear that something 
had gone wrong with that exceptionally sta- 
ble organ, because of palpitations and 
poundings that were most disquieting. 
Next, the kidneys came under suspicion, 
thus following a sequence that seems to be 
the course of least resistance of human ap- 
prehensions. 
Then the pathway deviated. A close in- 
spection in the looking-glass, which ordi- 
narily should have been most gratifying, 
revealed the fact that her neck was not quite 
symmetrical. That the muscles on the right 
side at the base of the neck seemed a trifle 
larger than those of the left. The more this 
was scrutinized the more pronounced this 
asymmetry became, and the more apprehen- 
sive it appeared. Probably it was a goiter, FEARS HAVING A SEXUAL BASIS 
185 
or perhaps a tumor; or possibly it was the 
beginning of a cancer. And presently, as a 
result of repeated examinations, and manip- 
ulations, the suspicious enlargement devel- 
oped a tenderness to touch that increased 
the already well-seated apprehension. And 
so the usual telephone call and appointment 
with the physician. 
By the time this woman could get in touch 
with the doctor she was in an overwrought 
nervous condition, almost on the verge of 
collapse, and self-convinced that there was 
some serious organic difficulty menacing 
her life. The physician quickly discovered 
that there was really nothing the matter 
with the neck, simply a slight difference in 
the size of the muscles, which is not at all 
unusual. As far as this palpable difficulty 
was concerned, then, there was nothing the 
matter with this patient. 
Perhaps a less experienced doctor would 
have made the mistake of thinking that 
there was really nothing wrong except an 
overly active imagination, as her intimate 
friends assured her that this thing was “all 186 
OUR FEAR COMPLEXES 
in her mind.” Surely the most aggravating 
symptoms were “in her mind,” it is true. 
But fortunately her physician knew that 
this type of apprehension in previously 
healthy and normal individuals is seldom 
merely imagination. There is a physical 
basis, if one can but find it. And so, after a 
few simple tests, he prescribed a remedy, 
not apparently directed at the original 
source of the trouble at all—that is, not di- 
rected to the supposed swelling of the neck, 
or the overwrought nervous system—but 
one intended to reestablish the equilibrium 
of the ovarian secretion. 
The result was magical, miraculous. In 
a few days the usual mental equilibrium was 
established, the apprehensions disappeared, 
and the slight irregularity in the neck was 
recognized by the patient as being what it 
actually was—simply a natural inequality. 
THE MENTAL ELEMENT IN ALL HEALING 
But what a different sequence of events 
—what a possible tragedy might have re- 
sulted—had the physician not recognized FEARS HAVING A SEXUAL BASIS 
187 
that an actual ailment existed, not merely 
an active imagination, as the patients 
friends insisted. True, an overly apprehen- 
sive imagination may not always be the 
result of disarranged secretions, and, more- 
over, a lulled imagination may help in the 
reestablishment of disarranged secretions. 
The mental element in the healing process 
must not be disregarded. But in this case, 
in most similar cases, where an actual 
physical abnormality causes a fear and ap- 
prehension, the cure is much more quickly 
and surely accomplished by treatment di- 
rected to the actual source of the difficulty. 
This case simply illustrates one of the 
various types of fear that is common to the 
menopause period and is due directly to 
the changes taking place at that time. 
Judged by the symptoms alone there seemed 
to be no possible connection between them 
and the sexual organs. Yet, this relation- 
ship was proved beyond question. And it 
has been proved in innumerable other cases 
in which the symptoms seemed quite as 
remote from the actual source. Thus OUR FEAR COMPLEXES 
188 
modern “miracles” are, after all, no less 
wonderful than those of old, but far more 
easily explained! Some of these explana- 
tions, with their practical application in 
controlling and overcoming some of our 
fears, will be given in the chapter dealing 
with this wonderful system of endocrine 
glands. Chapter VIII 
THE FEARS OF CHILDREN 
Some one has said that in former gen- 
erations fear was considered essential to 
morality, and if a child naturally showed no 
signs of awe and fear in the presence of his 
betters, he was thrashed into a becoming 
state of reverence. This will-breaking proc- 
ess was one of the strongest characteristics 
of the age of Puritanism. 
Timid children were, with as little com- 
mon sense, subjected to various “harden- 
ing’^’ methods by which it was proposed to 
develop in such unfortunates the laudable 
qualities of courage and valor. Even so 
sound a philosopher as Plato advocated ex- 
posing children to the horrors of witchcraft, 
in order to develop their courage and test 
the strength of it. It is only rather recently 
that the fears of children have received any 
serious sympathetic study from any one. 
189 190 
OUR FEAR COMPLEXES 
To-day we all know, or ought to know, 
that morbid fear in children is often, and 
perhaps nearly always, a symptom of a 
deep-lying and serious condition which itself 
produces the fear. 
THE BLACK BEAST OF FEAR 
When we stop to consider the preventable 
horrors through which thousands of timid 
nervous children pass, it seems nothing 
short of criminal neglect not to save other 
children from such unnecessary experi- 
ences. Not only is childhood often robbed 
of much of its sweetness and beauty by the 
presence of this black beast of fear, but 
many of the unfortunate peculiarities of 
adult life are caused by this same fearful 
monster. 
Unnatural reserve, embarrassment, self- 
consciousness, nervousness, morbid self- 
analysis, and even such serious disorders as 
hysteria and neurasthenia in adults some- 
times have their sources in the undiscovered 
and, therefore, neglected fears of childhood. 
Such fears get down into what, for con- THE FEARS OF CHILDREN 
191 
venience, may be called the subconscious 
mind, and may continue to act long after 
the individual has ceased to be aware of 
them. These fears produce a good deal the 
same sort of result in the mind that an irri- 
tating foreign substance does in the body. 
At any rate, such fears may be regarded as 
a mental foreign body, something which has 
no place in the normal mind. 
“Fear in a child may be the end and not 
the beginning of wisdom.” 
Many a child’s life has been handicapped 
or even ruined by uncorrected fears. The 
children who suffer most are nearly always 
children with vivid imaginations, and as 
imagination is one of the strongest links in 
the chain of general intelligence, it may be 
said that morbid fear is most often found in 
children of high intelligence. 
FEAR AND INTELLIGENCE 
The child of feeble mind never suffers 
from subtle fears of the imagination, pre- 
cisely for the reason that the feeble-minded 
possess very little imaginative power. 192 
OUR FEAR COMPLEXES 
There are, indeed, some compensations in 
being a person of feeble intellect, for only 
people of good intelligence experience the 
greatest degrees of suffering in this world, 
whether this be of a physical or mental na- 
ture, a point which is not usually grasped 
by the average person. 
To a somewhat less degree this absence of 
imagination is also found in the dull, but not 
feeble-minded, child, and even the calm, 
phlegmatic “common-sense” class of chil- 
dren are usually so fortunate as to escape 
morbid fears altogether, yet it must be ad- 
mitted that such young unemotional persons 
usually have strict limitations and rarely 
“set the world on fire,,, or develop into any- 
thing more than most mediocre sort of 
adults. 
But this old world of ours has, with all its 
harshness and cruelty, a sort of thoughtful 
paternalistic way of dealing out compensa- 
tions, and so it happens that nervous, timid, 
unhappy, imaginative children are fre- 
quently the sort from which very superior 
adults are made, if only they do not perish 
in the making. THE FEARS OF CHILDREN 
193 
An eminent English doctor writes that 
the earliest indications of fear should be 
recognized and met with sympathy, encour- 
agement, explanation, and removal of its 
causes if possible—never with badinage or 
indifference. Of all emotions, he says, it is 
the one most calculated to produce lasting 
effects on a neurotic child, and the children 
who are most subject to morbid fears are 
always more or less neurotic. 
These morbid fears include all sorts of 
things which th i child is quite unable to ex- 
plain. Often through shame he hides his 
fears until they become almost obsessions or 
fixed ideas. Many of the “queer” habits of 
children may be explained by these sup- 
pressed fears. Sometimes the child is made 
by them to appear stubborn, or he may de- 
velop untruthfulness, timidity, embarrass- 
ment, or a variety of other peculiarities so 
often misinterpreted, and for which he is 
often unjustly punished. 
VARIETY OF FEARS 
Such fears include, among many others, 
fear of the dark to an extreme degree; fear 194 
OUR FEAR COMPLEXES 
of sounds such as of bells, the wind, 
whistles; fear of space, of death, of sickness, 
of crowds, of future punishment; fear of 
stories of a grotesque or otherwise fanciful 
nature; fear of certain animals, of certain 
real people, or of witches. Some children 
develop fears of shadows, of the forest, of 
water, of lightning, or even of the most com- 
mon and ordinary kinds of objects. 
Children with morbid fear's are not easy 
to understand, and one of the reasons why 
such children are hard to deal with lies in 
the fact that they are nearly always se- 
cretive about their troubles. Few adults 
possess the necessary insight to child life to 
aid the little sufferer in unburdening his 
mind,—so clouded and troubled with dark 
thoughts and unhappy dreams. 
We grown-ups are singularly stupid in 
dealing with the simple mind of a child. 
We seem to have entirely forgotten our own 
early experiences and to have left the child- 
world so far behind us that we see it only 
in the deep shadow with all details com- 
pletely obscured. Most people past twenty- THE FEARS OF CHILDREN 
195 
five appear to have forgotten the essential 
feelings of their child lives about as com- 
pletely as the frog forgets his tadpole ex- 
periences. 
What we really need is a sort of mental 
surgical operation to open up the visions of 
our past lives and get us a little into touch 
with the unspoiled world of childhood. Such 
an operation is, fortunately, quite painless, 
and the best surgeon is the psychologist. So 
none needs fear to go upon the mental oper- 
ating table, no matter what his creed or 
particular pet superstition happens to be. 
Even “absent treatment” is often quite suc- 
cessful in this line of practise, as it is alleged 
to be in at least one other; and with this fact 
in view we propose to administer absent 
treatment to some of the readers of this 
chapter who may need it. 
This operation will, perhaps, be done best 
through calling up to mind some of the early 
experiences which many of us have had, but 
which have been buried in the mental debris 
of later life. 196 
OUR FEAR COMPLEXES 
THE FEARS OF DOCTOR HOLMES AND 
CHARLES LAMB 
Some illustrations will probably do more 
to bring back these past memories than any- 
thing else; for while individuals so greatly 
change from childhood to old age that they 
seem to live several quite different lives and 
to be several quite different people, child- 
hood and its experiences always remains the 
same from generation to generation. Oliver 
Wendell Holmes, who, by the way, like 
Charles Dickens, never lost his sympathetic 
understanding of child life, somewhere tells 
us that at a very early age he acquired a 
terror of a glover’s sign in the form of a 
great wooden hand. For years this fear 
haunted him night and day, and greatly les- 
sened the happiness to which every child is 
entitled as an inalienable birthright. 
Charles Lamb tells in one of his essays of 
his unhappy fears. He says: “I was dread- 
fully alive to nervous terrors. The night- 
time and solitude and the dark were my 
hell. I never laid my head on my pillow, I 
suppose, from the fourth to the seventh year THE FEARS OF CHILDREN 
197 
of my life so far as my memory serves, with- 
out an assurance, which realized its own 
prophecy, of seeing some frightful specter.” 
Lamb explains this fear through the deep 
impressions made on his imaginative mind 
by a certain hideously illustrated Bible his- 
tory in which Samuel is raised by the Witch 
of Endor. 
FEARS OF A RELIGIOUS NATURE 
Among the many and varied fears which 
one of the writers experienced as a child, 
some of the worst were derived from a simi- 
lar “Children’s Illustrated Bible” which his 
good father with mistaken religious zeal 
placed in his hands, and in which, with a 
singular lack of knowledge of children and 
their capacity for religious instruction, the 
illustrator pictures Daniel being devoured 
(as he thought) by fierce, hideous lions, in 
a dank and dismal cell; and the awful bears 
which wandered about seeking to appease 
their beary appetites on little unregenerate 
children who mocked their elders; and more 
particularly a fearful picture of Shadrach, 
Meshach and Abednego about to be cast into 198 
OUR FEAR COMPLEXES 
a fiery furnace, which much resembled a 
miniature Vesuvius, while the less terrible 
but nevertheless alarming picture of Lot’s 
wife turned into a pillar of salt filled the 
childish mind with visions of a similar 
calamity to himself should he sometime look 
back at something (he knew not what) at 
which he ought not to look (he knew not 
why). 
But not even the horrid illustrations of 
certain old children’s Bibles could quite 
equal the stupid and even wicked pictures 
found in many children’s fairy tales and 
other stories even to-day. 
To this day one of the writers particu- 
larly remembers an awful witch who 
haunted his dreams for months, and rarely 
left his waking hours in peace after night- 
fall. So great was the influence of this 
witch in his daily life that he finally devel- 
oped a spirit of ill-temper and refractori- 
ness so unlike his natural disposition that 
for a time he was the despair of his indul- 
gent but mistaken parents. THE FEARS OF CHILDREN 
199 
OUTLETS FOR FEARS 
It is in fact a rather common thing for 
children who secretly harbor morbid fears 
to find at last a sort of compensatory outlet 
in apparently unrelated acts. We need not 
wonder at this when we stop to consider that 
this is exactly what most adults do under 
somewhat similar mental strains. The psy- 
chologist explains this as a more or less 
suppressed, irritating and harmful subcon- 
scious thought that is seeking an outlet 
which the possessor often finds in nervous 
disorders, character peculiarities or even in 
definitely abnormal conduct. 
Much of the correction of nervous dis- 
orders depends on the discovery, through 
scientific means, of repressed and harmful 
ideas which, when brought to the surface 
of consciousness and clearly recognized, 
usually fade away and die a natural death. 
We now know, as we have elsewhere said, 
that not a few serious nervous and conduct 
disorders of adult life have their origin in 
some of these unfortunate experiences of 
childhood, either fears or some other dis- 200 
OUR FEAR COMPLEXES 
agreeable form of repressed memory. But 
it is far easier to prevent morbid ideas from 
becoming fixed in our subconscious minds 
than it is to root them out, once they have 
become fixed. There is, therefore, a great 
field of preventive mental hygiene which, as 
yet, is almost untouched by science or com- 
mon experience. 
SEX FEARS OF CHILDREN 
Among the unfortunate experiences of 
children sex fears hold a very important 
place among those who have been unin- 
formed or improperly trained, and they 
often produce the most direful morbid re- 
sults. It is a most difficult matter to under- 
stand why so many parents fail to inform 
their children of what to expect as they ap- 
proach the new experiences of puberty and 
adolescence. Many children of a nervous 
make-up, and more especially the more in- 
telligent children, suffer torments because 
of these new and little understood sex ex- 
periences, and yet they are ashamed or quite 
unable to explain their situation to adult THE FEARS OF CHILDREN 
201 
relatives or friends, or even sometimes to 
appreciate in the least what their trouble 
really is. 
One of our patients gave a history of such 
sex fears during his adolescent period which 
undoubtedly had great bearing on his sub- 
sequent adult nervous troubles. As a boy 
he progressed normally enough through the 
first six grades of the public school. Then 
at about the age of twelve, the beginning of 
puberty, he began to develop various signs 
of nervous exhaustion. Among his other 
troubles school difficulties began, and he lost 
a grade through failure of promotion, much 
to his distress and humiliation. Auditory 
disturbances first afflicted him, voices and 
other sounds seemed often to be hollow, 
muffled, monotonous and far away. This 
condition often continued for days at a time 
and was present more or less for several 
years with only short intermissions. Later 
other nervous symptoms appeared, none of 
which could be in the least understood. The 
boy feared the loss of his mind and by the 
time he was fifteen he was so fixed in this 202 
OUR FEAR COMPLEXES 
belief that he became the victim of a true 
obsession. Self-confidence began to wane, 
and he took little interest in active sports; 
his health commenced to fail, he was ane- 
mic, thin and always tired. He became 
weak, apprehensive, full of indefinite pains, 
unhappy and truly miserable. Yet, despite 
all these afflictions so heavily laid upon his 
youthful shoulders, he managed to present 
a fair front to his boy associates, family and 
teachers. He did not avoid company or seek 
solitude, but took his part in so far as he 
could in the life about him. He was re- 
garded as delicate and sensitive, but not as 
morose or melancholy, or as the victim of 
any very unusual troubles. He belonged to 
the general class of neurasthenic children 
called the “restrained emotional type.” 
Such children are introspective, imaginative 
and prone to self-analysis. Their emotions 
are very strongly felt but the powers of out- 
ward control are equally strong. They har- 
bor fears of various kinds. This disposi- 
tion, with its characteristic suppression of 
outward display of emotions, is as exhaust- THE FEARS OF CHILDREN 
203 
ing as the other and opposite emotional type 
in which emotional excess is unrestrained 
and obvious. 
THE REMEDY FOR SEX FEARS IN CHILDREN 
Now, this case is described in some little 
detail because the origin of the trouble was 
mainly based on fear, and the fear origi- 
nated in little understood and, therefore, 
misinterpreted sex experiences. While 
there was nothing abnormal in this boy’s ex- 
periences, he thought there was, which, for 
all practical results, was just as bad, or even 
worse. It was only through an accidental 
but fortunate explanation of the sex life of 
the developing boy that he at last came to 
understand his situation and ceased to 
worry about it. With fear and worry gone, 
his recovery was prompt and nearly com- 
plete, although several years of such mental 
punishment left some scars which were not 
entirely healed until adult life and a better 
understanding of his true nature. 
Nervous children need the utmost care 
both at home and at school. Failure must OUR FEAR COMPLEXES 
204 
not be permitted and particularly the habit 
of failure, or the whole character and dis- 
position is likely to suffer permanent injury. 
Some one must get their confidence and en- 
courage the unburdening of the little mind 
so clouded with new and strange thoughts 
and sensations which the child so little com- 
prehends and so greatly fears. Months or 
years of untold unnecessary suffering may 
in this way be prevented, and timid, suffer- 
ing, unhappy children led into the normal, 
happy, wholesome lives, which are the birth- 
right of every child. 
Quite similar to the morbid fears we have 
so far discussed, is unnatural remorse for 
youthful misdemeanors, real or imaginary, 
which is often observed in nervous children 
and even in some adults. “An extreme 
anxiety to be strictly truthful” is often not 
so much an evidence of moral rectitude as 
of morbid nervous instability, and an in- 
tense religious emotion in a child is in itself 
a symptom of a nervous disorder, not an 
evidence of desirable piety. Such worry and 
apprehension acts in a vicious circle, and the THE FEARS OF CHILDREN 
205 
highly organized unstable nervous system of 
the child becomes still more unstable and 
ever increasingly liable to new forms of 
nervous disorder. 
Children of this type easily exaggerate 
the importance of the teachings of their par- 
ents or teachers in regard to truth and 
some other moral questions, and not infre- 
quently they become possessed of a verita- 
ble doubt mania, so fearful are they of 
transgression. This again is a rather com- 
mon characteristic of some nervous adults, 
and no doubt often dates back to unwise 
training in childhood. Such people are like- 
ly to doubt anything or everything; and 
consequently can rarely reach a definite de- 
cision about even the most commonplace 
things of every-day life. Not a few of the 
so-called psycho-neurotics among adults 
who are possessed of all sorts of fears have 
had faulty training in childhood to thank 
for their unhappy lives. 
RELIGION AND FEAR 
In respect to childish misinterpretation 
of religious teachings a well-known English 206 
OUR FEAR COMPLEXES 
writer thought himself in his childhood for- 
ever lost because he once said “Damn it.” A 
young boyhood acquaintance of ours wor- 
ried long and much because he called his 
brother “a fool,” and was at once reminded 
by a pious but unwise relative that “He who 
calls his brother a fool is in danger of Hell 
fire.” It is possible that the results of cer- 
tain forms of religious and moral teaching 
upon nervous and imaginative children may 
be exactly the opposite of that which is de- 
sired and confidently expected. Children 
are literal and possess very little capacity 
for understanding figures of speech. 
The extreme night terrors from which a 
good many nervous children suffer have 
never until recently been well understood. 
All sorts of causes for them have been given, 
but it now appears that most, if not all of 
them, are produced by fears, unhappy 
thoughts, or other experiences of the day 
which are carried over in the undirected 
mind in sleep. Such night terrors are 
harmful, physically and mentally. Studies 
have rather recently been made of the emo- THE FEARS OF CHILDREN 
207 
tions, including fear, which plainly prove 
that the secretions of certain glands of the 
body, like the thyroid and adrenals, are 
greatly affected by emotional experiences, 
and that if such emotions are too prolonged, 
much damage to health may result, and in 
some extreme cases even death may occur. 
This was observed in many instances among 
soldiers in the last great war. 
NIGHT TERRORS 
Night terrors must never be made light 
of, but their cause must be sought in some 
day experience of the child, and kindly ex- 
plained but firmly corrected. The confi- 
dence of nervous children, above all others, 
must be won, and they must be encouraged 
to tell anything, no matter how silly or even 
“wicked,” as they may suppose, to one of 
their parents. Such confidences are sacred 
and must, of course, never be ridiculed or in 
any way violated. If confession and ex- 
planation is helpful, as we know it is, to the 
adult, how much more so it must be to the 
fear-consumed child whose knowledge of 208 
OUR FEAR COMPLEXES 
life is less than that of the most supersti- 
tious savage. 
Many problems of discipline originate in 
repressed, hidden fears. Often a child will 
resort to deceit rather than acknowledge his 
fear. Sometimes obstinacy is merely a blind 
which covers a hidden fear. An unjust or 
misunderstood form of discipline will often 
bring about the same results. Many over- 
strict parents unknowingly make liars of 
their children through unjust or misapplied 
punishments, or through forms of religious 
and moral training unsuited to the child’s 
comprehension, and such experiences are 
never entirely corrected in later life. 
The fear of the dark is almost universal 
and perhaps harks back to the age of primi- 
tive man when his worst dangers did actu- 
ally exist after dark, when wild animals and 
human enemies lurked about seeking his life 
or property. 
Emotional children nearly all fear the 
dark, and the average fairy tale contributes 
to this fear. Even so fine a story-teller as 
Hans Christian Andersen often recounts THE FEARS OF CHILDREN 
209 
the most terrible stories of goblins, witches, 
ghosts and other uncanny creatures of the 
night. Terrifying stories are not good for 
any child and are most harmful to emotional 
imaginative children. Much might also be 
said of the harmful influence of many of 
the movie dramas. A child who fears the 
dark must be gently led, not driven, out of 
such fear. He must be shown that after all 
there is really no difference between night 
and day, except that it is dark at night. 
During the process of such education the 
child is entitled to a light in his room, but in 
all cases such light may be gradually dis- 
pensed with. 
FEAR AND PUNISHMENT 
Fear of threats is perhaps the most ter- 
rible punishment a sensitive child can be 
subjected to, and the parent or nurse who 
make use of such cowardly methods de- 
serve to be literally scared to death them- 
selves. Fear, as Professor Lewis Terman 
says, is the evil genius of most nervous peo- 
ple, and the school should assist parents to 210 
OUR FEAR COMPLEXES 
discover and to remove the overgrowths of 
fear which attach themselves like parasites 
to the lives of so many children. 
Unfortunately, the school does nothing of 
the sort, but on the contrary usually adds to 
the burdens of the emotional child through 
the unwise methods of fear-inspiring les- 
sons and examinations, stilted acts of dis- 
cipline, and general lack of naturalness on 
the part of teachers. It is really no wonder 
that the average child thoroughly dislikes 
his school and gains little by what we call 
an “education,” but what, in fact, is fre- 
quently little more than rather bad training 
in conventional forms. 
THE FIRST YEARS OF CHILDREN’S LIVES 
Doctor G. Stanley Hall, one of the early 
students of child life in America, points out 
that not only almost all common nervous 
and mental diseases, but the very constitu- 
tion of the child have their foundation in the 
first few years of life. Doctor Hall remarks 
that although the events during these tender 
years will, for the most part, be lost to mem- THE FEARS OF CHILDREN 
211 
ory, they dominate all the future life of the 
child and determine his character, disposi- 
tion, and even his ability for success or pos- 
sibilities for failure. As parents and teach- 
ers we ought to learn these vital truths and 
so train and safeguard the sensitive child 
that he may be spared not only most of the 
sorrows of childhood, but also most of the 
nervous maladies of adult life. 
‘‘Medicine, psychology, and pedagogy are 
all concerned in solving the problem pre- 
sented by the nervous child.” Chapter IX 
THE GLANDS OF COURAGE, FEAR, 
HEALTH AND PERSONALITY 
MEDICAL MYSTERIES AND THEIR SOLUTIONS 
For centuries man has puzzled his brain 
over certain unsolved riddles of life. Why 
is this person timid and that one bold? How 
can we account for those opposite freaks of 
nature, the eight-foot giant and the three- 
foot pygmy? The anatomical organs in all 
these individuals appear to be almost iden- 
tical, and yet the individuals are so very 
different physically and mentally. And why 
do people differ so much in their emotions, 
their nervous control, and what we call 
temperament and personality? What is the 
explanation? 
From time to time throughout the cen- 
turies the question has been asked, but never 
answered quite correctly. When it was dis- 
covered that thoughts and memory, or what 
212 THE GLANDS 
213 
we call consciousness, are dependent on the 
minute cells in the brain (the neurons), it 
seemed a natural conclusion that great 
thinkers would have bulky brains, and im- 
beciles would have brains of proportionately 
small size. And, generally speaking, this 
conclusion was correct. But now and again 
we find a philosopher with a relatively di- 
minutive head and brain and an imbecile 
with a skull and brain of large size. So the 
explanation of differences of intelligence at 
least based on mere brain bulk had to be 
discarded. 
But presently these matters began to 
clear up in a measure through the study of 
disease. Certain pathological conditions 
seemed to be definitely associated with dif- 
ferences in mental and physical make-up. 
Such facts as these were observed for cen- 
turies about certain organs, like the brain, 
stomach and heart and lungs, for example. 
There were many other organs, however, 
whose functions were much more obscure 
and, therefore, more difficult to understand. 
Indeed, there were several organs, and 214 
OUR FEAR COMPLEXES 
groups of organs, in the body which were 
regarded as having no function whatever, 
and were looked upon as material that had 
been “left over” by nature, and of no par- 
ticular consequence in the animal economy. 
To be sure, the great father of medicine, 
Hippocrates, and the great Roman physi- 
cian, Galen, had taught that every organ in 
the body has a definite use, could we but 
fathom it. But for centuries the apparent 
uselessness of a certain set of organs of the 
body seemed to refute this assertion. These 
organs we now call ductless, or endocrine, 
glands; and their influence on health and 
personality has come to be understood as 
probably exceeding that of any other single 
set of structure in our bodies. 
EARLY STUDY OF THE DUCTLESS GLANDS 
In the closing years of the eighteenth cen- 
tury, in 1786 to be exact, an English physi- 
cian, Caleb Hillier Parry, observing that 
certain cases in which there was nervous- 
ness, irritability, tremors, rapid heart ac- 
tion and bulging of the eyes, and various THE GLANDS 
215 
physical and mental instabilities, there was 
also an enlargement of the thyroid gland, 
suggesting that a disturbance of this gland 
was responsible for all these alarming symp- 
toms. Then, more than half a century later, 
another English physician, Addison, proved 
that a certain disease in which there was 
great weakness, a peculiar bronzing of the 
skin, and ultimately fatal results, was ac- 
companied by a diseased condition of two 
little organs (called at that time the supra- 
renal capsules, and more recently the adren- 
als) , which are placed just above the kid- 
neys. Finally, half a century later, Sir 
William Gull made the crowning discovery 
that the cause of a most peculiar and dis- 
tressing disease known as myxedema is a 
thyroid gland disturbance. Furthermore, 
he offered absolute proof that his theory was 
correct. As a result, a great impetus was 
given the study of these hitherto mysterious 
glandular structures of the body, an impe- 
tus that has gained momentum with the 
years. At present the study of the ductless 
glands and the methods of correcting their 216 
OUR FEAR COMPLEXES 
disorders has become one of the most impor- 
tant and fascinating of all studies in medi- 
cine. It is indeed an almost romantic field 
in medical science, yet an intensely practical 
one. 
Nor is this but a passing medical fad. It 
is now one of the definitely established facts 
in medicine that this system of organs, for- 
merly known as ductless glands, and more 
recently called the endocrine glands, play 
an enormously important role both in health 
and disease. Some of their functions are 
now known definitely, and some of the ef- 
fects of the disease of these glands are so 
pronounced, and the cures so effectively 
spectacular, that there is little room left for 
doubt about them. Indeed, a general under- 
standing of the “endocrines” is now just as 
much a part of a well-rounded education as 
a general knowledge of hygiene, physiology 
or chemistry. 
GLANDS AND THE EMOTIONS 
But while the early studies of the ductless 
glands concerned themselves mostly with THE GLANDS 
217 
physical manifestations, later studies un- 
covered even more amazing effects in regard 
to the emotions, and especially to those of 
fear, rage and worry. 
During the late war deaths from pro- 
longed fear or from sudden intense fright 
were fairly common experiences. Even in 
ordinary life we sometimes hear of such 
deaths from strong emotions of fear. That 
fear and other very intense emotions may 
have the most exhausting and depressing re- 
sults is, of course, a matter of common 
knowledge and experience with all of us. 
“In times of terror or of intense anger, for 
example/’ says Professor Cannon of Har- 
vard Medical School, “there is a surging up 
within us of forces of which in days of calm 
and comfortable living we have been quite 
unaware. So powerful may these forces be 
that their dominance, even though tempo- 
rary, may be terrifying. They may lead us 
to acts which we remember with a thrill of 
satisfaction or, on the contrary, with pain 
and chagrin. Any one who has been in the 
grip of great emotional excitement can ns 
OUR FEAR COMPLEXES 
readily understand deeds of desperate vio- 
lence, whether good or bad, which may be 
the natural consequence of such an experi- 
ence.” 
The origin of these intense and once mys- 
terious emotions which may so utterly 
dominate our entire characters and person- 
alities has always interested thoughtful 
people; but the explanation has only been 
known within very recent years. During 
the last decade particularly, the origin and 
nature of the emotions have received the 
most careful and exact study, a study which 
has been rewarded with one of the most 
amazingly interesting discoveries ever made 
in scientific medicine. 
As we have said elsewhere, the emotions 
govern our lives far more than does reason, 
but it is quite another matter to become the 
absolute victims of our emotions, and this 
is, unfortunately, what uncontrolled emo- 
tion often results in. How is it that emo- 
tions may be so intense that they sometimes 
utterly overwhelm us, temporarily changing 
our characters to such a degree that we are THE GLANDS 
219 
afterward often amazed at our thoughts or 
deeds, and that they may render us almost, 
or quite, helpless victims to ourselves? Or, 
how is it that strangely powerful feelings 
may come over us which make possible the 
greatest acts of bravery, and place at our 
disposal unknown and seemingly impossible 
powers for physical endurance? 
THE EMOTIONS AND CONSCIOUSNESS 
It is a well-known fact that the strongest 
and most elemental of our emotions need 
have little or anything to do with the higher 
centers of consciousness. Man, in common 
with the lower animals, governs much of his 
life through automatic responses, the ar- 
rangements for which are already present 
in the brain at birth. Such arrangements 
provide for what are known as “pattern- 
responses.” “Usually,” as Cannon says, “it 
is assumed that these fixed and predeter- 
mined activities are like those which we 
gradually develop in time as a result of 
habit; they are distinct, however, in that 
they are regarded as racial, not individual 220 
OUR FEAR COMPLEXES 
habits, and are transmitted from parents to 
offspring, ingrained in the nervous organ- 
ization.,, 
With this explanation it is easy to under- 
stand why, when elemental emotions such as 
fear or rage overtake us, they seem mysteri- 
ous and we do feel as if we were actually 
“possessed.” We are indeed possessed, if 
by that we mean that our consciousness and 
reason have not had much to do with the 
matter; and it is for this reason that we 
afterward often feel that we were for the 
time being some one else, not the least like 
our usual sensible selves. 
OUR PRIMITIVE NERVOUS SYSTEM 
Intimately associated with the age-old 
part of the brain which has to do with auto- 
matic responses, is the sympathetic nervous 
system which carries messages to heart, 
blood-vessels, ductless glands and other in- 
ternal organs of the body such as the liver, 
stomach and intestines. These parts of our 
bodies are not under voluntary control. We 
can not regulate our heart beats, or control THE GLANDS 
221 
digestion, or direct the work of our other 
internal organs. This is done for us by the 
automatic or sympathetic nervous system. 
But let emotion, such as anger or fear, take 
control of us and at once, through the action 
of this age-old racial nervous system of ours, 
digestion may absolutely cease, the digestive 
glands stop secreting, the stomach and intes- 
tines no longer push the food along, and the 
blood supply to these organs is largely cut 
off. But while some of the internal organs 
thus become inactive, the brain, heart and 
voluntary muscles are suffused with blood; 
blood-pressure rises; the liver liberates 
sugar into the blood; breathing is deeper; 
the heart beats faster and the excretion of 
waste products through the skin and kid- 
neys becomes more active. 
THE GLANDS OF FEAR AND RAGE 
What does all this strange upsetting of 
normal balance in the body mean? It means 
just this—that powerful, and until recently 
unknown, chemical materials have been sud- 
denly thrown into the circulation, and that 222 
OUR FEAR COMPLEXES 
this material has been secreted by those 
ductless glands known as the thyroid and 
adrenals. These substances have just the 
effects described, they contract blood-ves- 
sels, hurry the action of the heart, allow the 
blood-vessels of the heart, brain and volun- 
tary muscles to remain open. Incidentally, 
the liver now pours out sugar into the blood 
for immediate consumption for energy pro- 
duction in the muscles; the breathing deep- 
ens; the lungs receive larger amounts of 
oxygen through their dilated tubules for the 
purpose of burning the food-fuel in the 
muscles, and the kidneys and skin hurry 
away the waste products of all this in- 
creased work in the human machine. All 
this has been accomplished by the “glands 
of fear and rage” which control our emo- 
tions, to the end that the human animal may 
protect himself in combat or by flight. 
Now all this is well enough for animals, 
or for primitive man, but of what possible 
use can it be to man of to-day—to the hu- 
man being of refinement, culture, education 
and religious aspirations? The answer is THE GLANDS 
223 
that in many if not most of our emotional 
situations, such responses are not useful, 
and are, indeed, often positively harmful. 
Fear of an examination upon a student may 
have all of the physical effects just de- 
scribed, without any possibility of “working 
off steam” through the muscles. Anger of 
any sort always works us a positive physical 
injury. Great worries, or small worries 
long continued, raise blood-pressure, stop 
digestion, throw sugar into the blood or 
urine, produce headache, cause exhaustion, 
and a host of other troubles. Instead of the 
“mobilization of the forces,” as Cannon 
says, being useful for physical activity— 
fight or flight, for example—these forces 
now waste themselves in useless internal ex- 
plosions, as we might say. 
This happens to some degree not only in 
fear and rage and worry, but in certain dis- 
eases such as goiter (exophthalmic), in 
which there is an excess of secretion of the 
thyroid gland in the blood, with consequent 
high blood-pressure, rapid heart, perspira- 
tion and overacting kidneys among many 224 
OUR FEAR COMPLEXES 
other symptoms. In other words, some of 
our ductless glands which were once merely 
reserve organs of defense now often become 
organs of useless or harmful emotions, or 
when diseased, organs of physical destruc- 
tion. 
Fear and anger have had their uses all 
through the ages, while man has been slowly 
evolving, and these uses have been chiefly 
those of physical protection. The struggle 
for existence has always been intense and, 
as Darwin long ago showed, only the fittest 
survive. The race was for the swift, and 
brawn, not brain, settled the matter of per- 
sonal survival. The ability to fight or to flee 
depended on a human machine which could 
quickly marshal its sources of energy—the 
ability for “mobilizing its forces.” 
Now, in order to bring this about, the 
primitive emotions had to produce an in- 
stant response. Fear or rage resulted in an 
outpouring into the blood of secretions from 
certain of the ductless glands, and this in 
turn, as we have already seen, prepared the 
human engine for battle or for flight. In THE GLANDS 
225 
other words, the engine was “fired up,” and 
everything else was subordinated to muscu- 
lar exertion. 
DANGEROUS EMOTIONS 
But to-day we do not so much survive by 
brawn as by brain, at least so far as indi- 
viduals are concerned, if not in respect to 
nations. And so it happens that the emo- 
tions of fear and rage are of little or no 
value to us, and certainly not in the sense 
that they once were. Consequently when 
we are likely to be overwhelmed by these 
primitive emotions our purpose should be to 
sidetrack them—to shunt them off in other 
directions, or, if possible, to eliminate them 
entirely. Fear, except as caution, which is 
really not fear at all, and rage, anger and 
worry, are always and invariably an un- 
mixed evil. The effects of these strong an- 
cestral emotions are still physical; and since 
We can not fight with hoof or claw, or kill, or 
injure, or run away, we suffer in every part 
of our physical, mental and spiritual con- 
stitutions. 226 
OUR FEAR COMPLEXES 
ORIGIN OF THE EMOTIONS 
Doctor Crile expresses this admirably in 
his book on The Origin and Nature of the 
Emotions. “We fear not in our hearts alone, 
not in our brains alone, not in our viscera 
alone—fear influences every organ and tis- 
sue. Each organ or tissue is stimulated or 
inhibited according to its use or hindrance 
in the physical struggle for existence. By 
thus concentrating all or most of the nerve 
force on the nerve-muscular mechanism for 
defense, a greater physical power is devel- 
oped. Hence it is that under the stimulus of 
fear animals are able to perform preternat- 
ural feats of strength. For the same reason, 
the exhaustion following fear will be in- 
creased as the powerful stimulus of fear 
drains the cup of nervous energy, even 
though no visible action may result. . . . 
“Perhaps the most striking difference be- 
tween man and animals lies in the greater 
control which man has gained over his prim- 
itive instinctive reactions. As compared 
with the entire duration of organic evolu- 
tion, man came down from his arboreal THE GLANDS 
227 
abode and assumed his new role of increased 
domination over the physical world but a 
moment ago. And now, though sitting at 
his desk in command of the complicated ma- 
chinery of civilization, when he fears a busi- 
ness catastrophe his fear is manifested in 
the terms of his ancestral physical battle, in 
the struggle for existence. He can not fear 
intellectually, he can not fear dispassionate- 
ly, he fears with all his organs, and the same 
organs are stimulated and inhibited as if, 
instead of its being a battle of credit, or posi- 
tion, or of honor, it were a physical battle 
with teeth and claws. . . . 
“Nature has but one means of response to 
fear, and whatever its cause the phenomena 
are always the same—always physical.,, 
CONTROLLING OUR EMOTIONS 
What, then, are we to do about it? Can- 
non offers a most practical suggestion. 
Since “the mobilization of the bodily forces 
for struggle will occur under great excite- 
ment, although no muscular effort is under- 
taken/y and since this will occur to the stu- 228 
OUR FEAR COMPLEXES 
dent, the stock-broker, the soldier under re- 
straint, to the frightened woman, to the un- 
justly treated man, or the worried patient, 
something must be done, or health or even 
life itself will be threatened. 
“First,” says Doctor Cannon, “since the 
bodily changes induced by strong feeling are 
preparatory for action, it is in accord with 
ages of past experience to let them be ex- 
pressed in action. A fit of rage can be 
turned to good account by the performance 
of hard labor that needs to be done. There- 
by, the emotional preparations have their 
outlet, the task is accomplished and the body 
has the benefit of the muscular exercise! 
“Again, if irritating conditions develop 
which can not be dealt with in a practical 
manner by doing something, the wise man is 
he who accepts them philosophically and, so 
far as possible, turns his attention to other 
affairs. Thus the futile emotional disturb- 
ance may be aborted. There is no advan- 
tage to be gained by letting the body make 
ready for a supreme effort, when there is no 
effort whatever to be made. This is, to be THE GLANDS 
229 
sure, often a counsel of unattainable perfec- 
tion, but there is no doubt that by taking one 
attitude, emotional factors can be empha- 
sized and elaborated to alarming propor- 
tions, and by taking another attitude, they 
can often be diverted and minimized to in- 
significance.” 
THE REMEDY 
The remedy for fears or worries of this 
nature suggests itself: do not allow yourself 
to have them. But to do this implies an 
ideally constructed individual, whose physi- 
cal condition is perfect, and whose emotions 
are all under absolute control of the will. 
And, needless to say, no such person exists, 
as we have been pointing out all through the 
preceding pages. The nearest approach to 
this ideal individual is the one in approxi- 
mately perfect physical health, and with his 
nervous system well under control. 
Now, these new studies of the endocrine 
glands suggest that many cases of appar- 
ently causeless fear and worry in physically 
perfect individuals, are not merely the re- 230 
OUR FEAR COMPLEXES 
suit of a badly controlled imagination, but 
indicate some slight imperfection in the 
workings of the seemingly perfect physical 
mechanism. There is something wrong in 
the “endocrine balance” which expresses 
itself in fear and worry. The ill-defined ap- 
prehension, fear and depression that some 
persons experience without any obvious 
cause, are almost invariably the result of 
slight endocrine disturbance. 
Here again the remedy suggests itself, or, 
at least, the method of determining what the 
remedy shall be. The key to the situation is 
a determination of exactly what organ, or 
combination of organs in the endocrine sys- 
tem, is out of gear. And, having determined 
this, proceed with measures to correct these 
conditions. This will require skilled medical 
assistance, just as the finer adjustments of 
your auto or your watch require the services 
of a skilled mechanic. But once the cause 
of the difficulty is found and corrected it is 
usually possible to forestall further troubles 
of a similar nature by intelligent self- 
observation. Prevention is usually easy 
when causes are known. THE GLANDS 
231 
The ductless glands, then, not only con- 
trol our output of physical energy both in 
times of stress and probably under ordinary 
circumstances, but influence our emotions. 
Indeed, the normal functioning of these 
glands probably determines to a very large 
degree our physical vigor, temperament and 
character. 
In this chapter we have referred more 
particularly to the thyroid and adrenal 
glands, as these have been more thoroughly 
studied than the others. But there is a con- 
stantly accumulating knowledge also of the 
others, including the gonads, or sexual 
glands, the pituitary and pineal in the brain, 
the thymus and the parathyroids in the 
neck. Chapter X 
THE GLANDS OF COURAGE, FEAR, 
HEALTH AND PERSONALITY 
—Continued 
MYXEDEMA 
Perhaps the most striking example of 
what a disease of one of these glands will 
do, and what physicians are accomplishing 
in correcting this disease, is found in the 
disease of myxedema, already referred to, 
and as described by Sir William Gull in 
1873. In this condition the thyroid gland 
(in the front of the neck) ceases to do its 
work properly. As one result, we have the 
symptoms that are described by the late Sir 
William Osier as being a “marked increase 
in the general bulk of the body, a firm, in- 
elastic swelling of the skin, which does not 
pit on pressure, dryness and roughness, 
which tend, with the swelling, to obliterate 
232 THE GLANDS 
233 
in the face the lines of expression; imper- 
fect nutrition of the hair. . . . The physi- 
ognomy is altered in a remarkable way ; the 
features are coarse and broad, the lips thick, 
the nostrils broad and thick, and the mouth 
is enlarged. . . . There is a striking slow- 
ness of thought and movement. In some in- 
stances there are delusions and hallucina- 
tions, leading finally to a condition of de- 
mentia.” 
From all of which it is apparent that this 
is a most serious condition—a condition for 
which there was formerly no relief, surgical, 
medical or psychological. But with the dis- 
covery that the disease is due to the fact that 
the thyroid gland is not supplying the blood 
with its necessary secretion, came the nat- 
ural suggestion of supplying this secretion 
artificially. 
A MODERN MIRACLE 
The result is one of the most striking of 
modern medical miracles—a thing which, 
alone, should make every intelligent person 
a devout worshiper at the shrine of science. 234 
OUR FEAR COMPLEXES 
For when thyroid secretion from a sheep is 
administered, usually in the form of tablets, 
“the results, as a rule, are most astounding 
—unparalleled by anything in the whole 
range of curative measures. Within six 
weeks a poor, feeble-minded, toad-like cari- 
cature of humanity may sometimes be re- 
stored to mental and bodily health.” 
One observer has made the picturesque 
observation that the thvroid in the animal 
machine corresponds very closely to that of 
the accelerator of an automobile; that it is 
the great controller of the speed of living. 
And in proof of this we find that an overly 
active thyroid does quicken the vital proc- 
esses of life, whereas a retarded one cor- 
respondingly slackens them. Yet the com- 
parison of this body mechanism to any 
man-made mechanical device is entirely 
inadequate; for “controlling the speed of 
living” is only one of several functions per- 
formed by this remarkable gland. 
One would suppose that such a discovery 
as this miraculous cure for myxedema 
would have been proclaimed from the house- THE GLANDS 
235 
tops around the earth; for it was no “flash 
in the pan” discovery. It worked,—and it 
worked almost invariably. As a result, 
many asylum inmates—fat, logy, thick- 
lipped, slow-moving dements—presently 
emerged from their prisons with faculties 
practically restored. 
But no trumpeting herald proclaimed the 
miracle of their coming, as heralds have 
often proclaimed the charlatans and fakirs 
of all generations! Yet the world of science 
knew and appreciated—knew that new vis- 
tas had opened in the field of the treatment 
of disease. It had learned already that the 
under-activity of this little gland in the neck 
produced the dire consequences already re- 
ferred to. It was soon shown that its over- 
activity produced almost equally great 
calamities as, for example, in one form of 
goiter. Wherefore, it was a logical conclu- 
sion that in perfect health gland secretion 
must be delivered in perfectly definite quan- 
tities, and that when there is a slight dis- 
turbance in this secretion, one way or the 
other, there must be symptoms produced in 236 
OUR FEAR COMPLEXES 
a less degree, possibly as obscure symptoms 
or even disorders hitherto not understood. 
THE GLANDS AND BEHAVIOR 
“Twenty years ago the very term ‘endo- 
crine system’ was unknown and the science 
of the ductless glands had no standing,” said 
Professor Max G. Schlapp recently. “To- 
day our knowledge of the endocrines and 
their influence on every function of the 
nervous system in man promises to revolu- 
tionize our whole understanding of human 
behavior. We know that many men may 
commit crimes because their thyroid glands 
or other glands are out of order. We under- 
stand now that many unfortunate human 
beings are unable to control themselves un- 
der temptation or in the face of other arous- 
ing stimuli because there is some derange- 
ment in the glands.” 
There are certain other organs, such as 
the spleen, the kidneys and the liver, and the 
prostate that may perform endocrine func- 
tions quite apart from the well-known 
functions attributed to them. The effect of THE GLANDS 
237 
derangement of any of these organs upon 
many phases of physical and mental life is 
of the greatest possible importance in the 
physical and mental life of man. 
“More and more,” says Professor Llew- 
ellyn F. Barker, “we are forced to realize 
that the general form and external appear- 
ance of the human body depends, to a large 
extent, upon the functioning, during the 
early developmental period, of the endocrine 
glands. Our stature, the kinds of faces we 
have, the length of our arms and legs, the 
shape of the pelvis, the color and consistency 
of the integument, the quantity and regional 
location of our subcutaneous fat, the 
amount and distribution of hair on our bod- 
ies, the sound of the voice and the size of the 
larynx, the emotions to which our exterior 
gives regression, all are, to a certain extent, 
conditioned by the productivity of our 
glands of internal secretion.” 
OUR CHEMICAL MESSENGERS 
In considering the action of these ductless 
glands it should be remembered that the 238 
OUR FEAR COMPLEXES 
only communication between the cells of the 
body was formerly thought to be that of the 
nervous system, which is, in effect, a tele- 
graphic arrangement of nerve filaments 
reaching everywhere all about the body. 
The action of the endocrine glands indicates 
that there is not only this telegraphic system 
but also what has been called a “postal sys- 
tem” between cells, in which the messages 
in the form of chemical substances secreted 
by the glands are transmitted by the blood. 
Some observer calls them “chemical messen- 
gers” because they carry messages from one 
group of cells to another through the public 
highways of the blood; but at present they 
bear the official name of hormones, and this 
word is now one to conjure with. 
Another member of this group of wonder- 
ful body function controllers is the pitui- 
tary, a little organ about the size of a pea 
lying in the skull at the base of the brain 
just behind the root of the nose. Yet this 
little gland, despite its minuteness, is really 
two glands in one, each part having a very 
different function from the other, and each THE GLANDS 
239 
vitally important to the welfare of the body. 
This gland is present in one form or another 
in all of the lower animals, from worms and 
mollusks upward; and its importance to 
man is shown by the fact nature has ar- 
ranged a specially well protected cavity in 
the skull, the sella turcica,, or Turkish sad- 
dle, for enclosing it. 
GLANDS AND GROWTH 
It seems to be established beyond reason- 
able doubt that the growth of the skeleton 
of the body is controlled largely by the for- 
ward portion of this little pituitary gland. 
When this portion is over-active in child- 
hood we have the abnormal type of growth 
called gigantism. The eight-foot giants of 
the circus are the products of the abnormal- 
ity of this portion of the gland in their 
skulls. On the other hand, if this gland is 
not sufficiently active there is likely to be a 
failure in the bony development of the body. 
And when the functions of this gland are 
disturbed in one way or another, various pe- 
culiar symptoms develop, such as a singular 240 
OUR FEAR COMPLEXES 
drowsiness, dryness of the skin, loss of hair, 
dulled intellect, an abnormal craving for 
sweets, and sometimes pronounced forms of 
epilepsy. 
The functions of the back part of this lit- 
tle gland seem to be quite different from 
those of the other portion, although it is im- 
possible to separate the two entirely. And 
of course, there are probably many other 
functions that are not even suspected at 
present. It has been pretty definitely estab- 
lished, however, that the secretions from the 
posterior or back portions control the tone 
of certain muscular tissues, such as those in 
the blood-vessels and the intestines, bladder 
and the uterus. Apparently this is proved 
by the fact that when pituitrin, a substance 
obtained from this part of the gland, is in- 
jected into the blood, it raises the blood pres- 
sure and causes continued contraction of the 
muscular structure under its control. This 
pituitrin is one of the most useful sub- 
stances in the practise of modern scientific 
medicine. 
This, in brief, summarizes some of the THE GLANDS 
241 
functions known to be controlled or influ- 
enced by the pituitary gland. It is unneces- 
sary to go into more detail—to show how 
this organ not only influences growth and 
certain bodily functions, but may determine 
character changes and mental attitudes. No 
one knows as yet the limit of its scope of 
activity. But the point of interest here is 
that our physical condition and mental atti- 
tude, our hopes, fears and intellectual ac- 
complishments are influenced directly and 
indirectly by this minute lump of tissue hid- 
den in a little recess at the base of our skulls. 
The study of the endocrines has been a 
veritable field of out and out discovery, of 
readjustment of ideas, and of “resuscita- 
tion” of neglected organs in some instances. 
Organs which had hitherto been looked on 
as functionless leave-overs from nature’s 
workshop in the process of creation, useless 
as the cloth clippings from a tailor shop, 
were found to be of utmost and vital impor- 
tance to life. The remnants and clippings 
proved to be the most valuable part of the 
garment, as it were. 242 
OUR FEAR COMPLEXES 
THE THYMUS GLAND 
Another one of these neglected organs, 
one which nature herself uses for a time and 
then discards, is the thymus gland, the or- 
gan which “dominates childhood.” It is a 
gland situated in the chest astride the wind- 
pipe, extending downward and overlapping 
the great vessels of the heart. Formerly it 
was believed to be concerned in the develop- 
ment of the child before birth, and to be rap- 
idly absorbed and disappear within two or 
three years after birth. 
“We know better now,” says Doctor Leon- 
ard Williams of London. “To-day we recog- 
nize in the thymus an intrathoracic gland, 
variable in size, which, so far from disap- 
pearing in the course of the first two years 
of life, continues to grow up to, and in some 
cases even beyond, the age of puberty.” But 
we are by no means sure of the functions 
that this gland performs. Leonard Wil- 
liams believes that “it has a close relation- 
ship with the genital organs in the male, but 
not in the female.” Also, that when this 
gland enlarges abnormally in childhood, or THE GLANDS 
243 
persists on into adult life, there are very im- 
portant physical changes produced. 
“The child with an enlarged thymus is 
typically the child whom our grandfathers 
called the scrofulous child, the angelic child 
of the elder Gross, of whom Symmers has 
thus recently written: ‘The angelic child 
may be described as delicately moulded but 
beautifully proportioned, blue-eyed or 
brown with long lashes, finely chiselled fea- 
tures, transparent cheeks and rapid muta- 
tions in coloring, smooth skin and silk-like 
hair, shapely limbs and quick graceful 
movements—a thing of beauty, but lacking 
in the full promise of life. Such children 
are not even reasonably assured of matur- 
ity, but are liable to be eliminated by sudden 
death, by tuberculosis, cerebrospinal menin- 
gitis or other infection.,, 
It does not follow that all children in 
which the thymus persists are delicate and 
beautiful; on the contrary, some of them are 
“ugly, sluggish and rickety, but even in 
them the skin and its appendages are often 
fine and delicate.” And as to the mental 244 
OUR FEAR COMPLEXES 
qualities, and moral character, it appears 
that many of them become criminals. In- 
deed, the accumulating evidence seems to 
show that a persistent thymus is found in a 
very high percentage of criminals. 
THE THYMUS AND CRIMINALITY 
Thus, in a series of autopsies on criminals 
made at the West Virginia University Med- 
ical School at Morgantown recently, and re- 
ported by Doctor S. J. Morris, twenty-two 
cases of persistent thymus were found in 
one hundred and ninety-two examinations. 
“Twenty were from the bodies of criminals 
sent in by the State penitentiary, seventeen 
being murderers of the first degree.” Which 
leads Doctor Morris to reach the following 
conclusions on the effect of deranged endo- 
crine glands on human conduct: 
“The conduct of a person seems to be the 
result of all his impulses and inhibitions, the 
impulses causing him to act and the inhibi- 
tions causing him to stop and consider his 
actions. We, therefore, have two kinds of 
action: one in which the impulses predomi- THE GLANDS 
245 
nate, which is an impulsive action, and an- 
other in which the inhibitions predominate, 
which results in premeditated action. 
“It has been shown that an abnormal se- 
cretion of the thymus gland interferes with 
the relationship between the impulses and 
the inhibitions so that a person responds to 
emotions that he would not respond to nor- 
mally. 
“It has also been shown that out of twenty 
criminals dissected, all had persistent thy- 
mus glands. 
“From this I feel that I am justified in 
drawing the conclusion that the persistent 
thymus is in some way accountable for the 
mental state that caused these men to be 
criminals.” 
In other words, what appears to be pure 
criminal viciousness in certain cases may 
really be, to some extent, the result of de- 
ranged endocrines, which may sometimes be 
corrected by proper treatment, particularly 
in young persons. Some such cases, with 
successful corrections and resulting good be- 
havior, have come under our observation. 246 
OUR FEAR COMPLEXES 
Much in respect to the ductless glands is 
still unproved, but there is reason to believe 
some things which can not at present be sci- 
entifically demonstrated. It would appear 
for example that animals with a wide cortex 
or outer portion in the adrenal gland are 
courageous, while those with a narrow cor- 
tex are timid, although no definite substance 
has as yet been isolated from this portion of 
the gland. Without going into too much de- 
tail it may be said that conditions of both 
physical and mental growth and tempera- 
mental peculiarities appear to be controlled 
to a considerable degree by the various se- 
cretions of the ductless glands. Size of the 
body, distribution of hair, texture of skin, 
character of the brain, the sexual constitu- 
tion, emotional make-up, masculine or femi- 
nine characteristics, energy, blood-pressure, 
nervous stability, moods, courage or fear, 
degree of physical maturity, all these and 
other qualities of the individual would ap- 
pear to be greatly influenced by the condi- 
tion of the ductless glands. 
It seems highly probable that the type of THE GLANDS 
247 
personality possessed by any one is deter- 
mined by these strange organs. And, as 
evidence that such is the case it is now 
pretty definitely determined that failure of 
function in the sex glands, the testes in man 
and ovaries in woman, greatly influences 
health, vigor and temperament. The at- 
tempts at transplantation and other 
methods of artificially supplying the needed 
internal secretion from these glands are cer- 
tainly along scientifically correct therapeu- 
tic lines, even though they are at present 
exaggerated and unreliable. Certainly 
physical vigor, mental energy and the pres- 
ervation of youthful qualities are to a large 
extend dependent upon the proper function- 
ing of these glands. 
OVER-STIMULATION OF THE DUCTLESS GLANDS 
Finally, we must call attention to the 
damaging effects upon mental and physical 
health which always follow over-stimulation 
of the ductless glands, particularly the thy- 
roid and adrenals, which accompany emo- 
tional strains. Anger, fear, worry, or any 248 
OUR FEAR COMPLEXES 
other intense emotion, especially when long 
continued, produce the most disastrous ef- 
fects on the cells of the brain and on those of 
certain other organs of the body. Only 
temporary exhaustion and disability may 
result, or the effects may be permanent, or 
even death itself is possible. Experimental 
evidence of these facts is given by Crile, 
Cannon and other investigators with ani- 
mals, and the same sort of evidence was ob- 
tained during the war with soldiers. 
“All the lesser emotions, worry, jealousy, 
envy, grief, disappointment, expectation, all 
these influence the body in this manner, the 
consequences depending upon the intensity 
of the emotion and its protraction. Chronic 
emotional stimulation, therefore, may fa- 
tigue or exhaust the brain.” Such emotions 
may, indeed, produce such serious diseases 
as diabetes, heart disease, insanity, or such 
minor disorders as indigestion, headache, 
nervous exhaustion and sleeplessness. 
“The effect of the emotions upon the body 
mechanism may be compared to that pro- 
duced upon the mechanism of an automobile THE GLANDS 
249 
if its engines are kept running at full speed 
while the machinery is stationary. The 
whole machine will be shaken and weak- 
ened, the batteries and weakest parts being 
the first to become impaired and destroyed, 
the length of usefulness of the automobile 
being correspondingly limited.” 
“But,” you may well ask, “if my motor 
insists upon running too fast because my 
timing system or accelerator is out of kilter; 
or, similarly, if I am too fearful, high 
strung, and quick-tempered because my en- 
docrine timing gears or accelerator are not 
properly adjusted, how can any such in- 
tangible thing as ‘self-control’ or ‘right- 
thinking’ correct this very definite abnor- 
mality?” It is a pertinent question. 
THE HUMAN MOTOR 
There is this difference between the ad- 
justments of the human motor and that of a 
mechanical one: the mind does influence the 
running of this motor, even though we can 
not as yet explain exactly how it does so. 
The condition of the mind accelerates or re- 250 
OUR FEAR COMPLEXES 
tards digestion, for example, as we see in 
cases of grief and exaltation. Yet digestion 
and assimilation are in part endocrine proc- 
esses. And undoubtedly a well regulated 
mental attitude tends to keep the endocrine 
function in a normal balance. 
Even when this balance is disturbed and 
is affecting the mental attitude, as when an 
active thyroid causes apprehensions and 
fears, the condition may be helped, even 
though not actually cured, by exerting the 
will power to hold these fears and apprehen- 
sions in check. This is why the faith of the 
patient in the medicine he is taking helps the 
remedy to work. Likewise, why your 
trusted physician gets better results than 
one in whom you have less faith even though 
the prescriptions given are precisely the 
same. 
MIND AND BODY 
As an example of the sensitiveness of the 
adjustment between the mind and certain 
bodily functions, it is a common observation 
that persons starting upon a journey often 
have the bodily functions disturbed for a THE GLANDS 
251 
few days, as shown by constipation. All 
manner of explanations have been sug- 
gested to account for this very common phe- 
nomenon—change of water or food, change 
of air, the motion of the vehicle, and so on. 
Yet none of these things seems to fit all 
cases. 
The more reasonable explanation, and 
probably the correct one, is that this consti- 
pation is the result of the action of the mind 
upon the organs of digestion. In undertak- 
ing a journey of any consequence there is al- 
ways a certain amount of apprehension, 
even though this may be so slight that it is 
scarcely recognized. It is sufficient, how- 
ever, to affect the delicately adjusted nerv- 
ous control of the glandular digestive 
system to the extent of causing slight con- 
stipation. Great fears and frights, as every 
one knows, often produce precisely the oppo- 
site condition. And fear is often an 
important element in sea-sickness. 
MODERN THERAPEUTICS 
It is probable that in all these conditions 
the whole system of glands is affected, not 252 
OUR FEAR COMPLEXES 
merely one particular organ. But we do not 
know this and must act accordingly when 
seeking a remedy. The ideal remedy would 
be the one that supplied the system with the 
secretion or hormone that is lacking and in 
the exact amount of this deficit, as is done in 
cases where there is a deficient thyroid se- 
cretion. But as yet this is impossible; and 
in the main we must rely on “empirical” 
remedies—remedies that have proved their 
worth through repeated trials. 
CONSTIPATION AND ITS MENTAL CONTROL 
Nothing illustrates this better than the 
scores of effective but empirical methods of 
combatting constipation. The active agent 
of these methods, when medicinal, is one or 
another of such drugs as cascara, senna, 
rhubarb, aloes, magnesia, podophyllin, phe- 
nolphthalein—a veritable host, and all tried 
and found useful in certain cases by the test 
of time. Yet no one knows exactly the 
mechanism by which any one of these acts. 
The really important thing is that we 
know they do act And the fact that we THE GLANDS 
253 
know how to get results without being able 
to explain why we get them, is simply one 
illustration out of many of how our prac- 
tical knowledge is sometimes in advance of 
our ability to explain such knowledge on sci- 
entific grounds. Eventually we hope to be 
able to understand the why of these things; 
but, meanwhile, we should not overlook the 
practical value of understanding the how. 
Moreover, the problem of determining 
just what remedy should be applied in most 
cases is complicated by the fact that no two 
cases are precisely alike, and that remedies 
act differently on different individuals. 
Nothing illustrates this better than the 
treatment of this almost universal condi- 
tion, constipation. There are many people 
who find that the eating of fruit, or certain 
kinds of food, or smoking a cigar, even, act 
effectively. Others accomplish the same end 
by the use of systematic exercises. But still 
others, a vast army in the aggregate, find 
that none of these things is always effective, 
and are obliged to take one or another of the 
laxative mixtures, sometimes very regular- 254 
OUR FEAR COMPLEXES 
ly. And yet, each of these individuals may 
be, and continue to keep in practically per- 
fect physical health. 
SOME PSYCHIC CAUSES OF CONSTIPATION 
This condition of an almost universal 
tendency to constipation among civilized 
people to-day may be explained, in a general 
way, by our present-day methods of life— 
the kind of food we eat and our methods of 
preparing it, the way we clothe our bodies 
and heat our houses, and the general tend- 
ency to less and less physical activity. These 
changes have taken place so rapidly in re- 
cent years that our systems have not been 
able to keep pace with them. Our glandular 
systems have not adapted themselves to 
these new outside conditions. Hence, we 
must aid these organs with artificial means. 
This is of peculiar interest to us here be- 
cause constipation results in headaches and 
various physical discomforts, and in depres- 
sions and all manner of mental upsets and 
obliquities. Probably the ultimate basis of 
these effects is the cause of the constipation; THE GLANDS 
255 
but frequently for practical purposes the 
constipation is the culprit; and when this is 
corrected the other symptoms disappear. 
Wherefore it is evident that every person, 
particularly those of nervous temperaments 
with a tendency to doubts or phobias, should 
correct any tendency to constipation. If ex- 
ercise and certain foods will do it, well and 
good. If these are not effective, then it is 
far better to take some mild laxative, and if 
necessary take it as regularly as one takes 
his meals, than it is to delay doing so and 
thus suffer unnecessary discomforts, which 
in the end can not be relieved in any other 
way. 
As was said a moment ago, a good remedy 
for one person may not prove so for another. 
And of course only the most general rules 
may be suggested. But for practical pur- 
poses it appears that persons who are light 
eaters are often benefited by using one or 
another of the agar preparations taken with 
their food. And in such cases, mineral oil 
sometimes works like magic. This should 
not be confused with castor oil, which is a 256 
OUR FEAR COMPLEXES 
most valuable remedy in certain cases, but 
not for the correction of this chronic condi- 
tion. 
Similarly, a word of warning should be 
given about the possible dangers of the 
habitual use of such mechanical aids as 
forced enemas. As an occasional, and pos- 
sibly quite frequent, emergency measure 
these are invaluable. But there is some dan- 
ger that, if repeated too frequently and too 
forcibly, there may be a permanent disten- 
tion of the intestine. It is far better to use 
one or another of the various vegetable laxa- 
tives; the one of personal choice should be 
that which is most effective and comfortable. 
PHYSICAL BASIS OF SUGGESTION 
Another class of cases in which the endo- 
crine glands are undoubtedly responsible 
are those that are benefited by one or an- 
other of the numerous “tonic mixtures.” In 
most of these cases it is usually impossible 
to put our finger upon the exact organ that 
may be at fault, and, as a result, we are not 
able to pick out any specific glandular prep- THE GLANDS 
257 
aration that will correct the condition. But 
we have learned by practical demonstration 
that when certain “bitter tonics” are taken, 
there is a whipping up of the bodily func- 
tions and the patient is better. Probably 
this tonic mixture stimulates the flagging 
endocrine glands, or gland, although we do 
not understand just how. But the impor- 
tant practical point is that tonics do produce 
beneficial results. And we should not dis- 
regard such practical aids even though we 
can not explain their action on scientific 
grounds. 
On the other hand, it seems pretty clearly 
established that such conditions of “nerve 
exhaustion” as neurasthenia, so essentially 
an American product, and characterized by 
morbid doubts and fears, are due to a dis- 
turbance of the endocrine system. The 
symptoms themselves suggest this; and the 
correctness of this assumption is borne out 
by the fact that in many cases the condition 
is corrected and the patient cured by the ad- 
ministration of properly selected glandular 
preparations. 258 
OUR FEAR COMPLEXES 
This is one of the triumphs of applied en- 
docrine therapy. And, although it is not so 
certain or so miraculous seeming as the re- 
sults of thyroid treatment in myxedema, it 
is an earnest of the wonderful things that 
will be accomplished in the not very distant 
future as we become more and more famil- 
iar with the action of these essential glands. Chapter XI 
THE HABIT OF FEAR 
Fears, like many other things, may be- 
come habits with us. We fall into the habit 
of reacting in certain fixed ways, and these 
forms of reaction are nowhere more com- 
monly found than in our fears. Like other 
bad habits, fears are hard to break, and the 
more nervously constituted a person is, the 
more difficult he finds it to break his habits. 
The victims of drugs, alcohol, excessive use 
of tobacco, tea or coffee are examples of 
nervously unstable people who have become 
the slaves of habit. It is for this reason 
that laws alone never cure some of the evils 
at which they are aimed. Just so long as 
this defect in human nature goes unrecog- 
nized, just so long shall we be disappointed 
in some of our cherished methods of reform. 
“Habit is, in a sense, opposed to thought; 
and a person who is too much given over to 
259 260 
OUR FEAR COMPLEXES 
habit fails to use his intelligence.” While 
habits are at first conscious, their pathways 
in the brain are at last so often traveled over 
that the messages pass through with little or 
no consciousness. In this manner both good 
and bad habits are established until they 
become, in many cases, almost, if not quite, 
automatic. Most bad habits are of the im- 
pulsive kind, but deliberate voluntary hab- 
its may be made useful to us in building up 
normal reactions in life and in resisting 
morbid abnormal reactions. 
GOOD HABIT FORMATION 
Good habit formation is a matter of 
“making our nervous systems our allies in- 
stead of our enemies.” 
“The business of childhood and youth,” 
says Doctor Goddard, “should be the forma- 
tion of useful habits. Compared with this 
the mere acquisition of knowledge is a waste 
of time.” All habits, whether good or bad, 
as we have said, tend to become more or less 
automatic, or to take place with little con- 
sciousness, so that our efforts should be con- THE HABIT OF FEAR 
261 
sciously and deliberately to form desirable 
ones, and inhibit bad ones until at last we 
need give little attention to the whole mat- 
ter. 
MENTAL PATHWAYS OF THE BRAIN 
All this leads us to ask, “What are the 
patterns and pathways in the brain which 
underlie habit formation and, indeed, un- 
derlie all our instincts, emotions, and our 
very intelligence ?” When certain stimuli 
travel, let us say, from the eye or ear or the 
skin to the brain, these take certain paths. 
The sensation (or stimulus) finally reaches 
a certain group of cells in the brain which 
we call neurons. Certain groups of these 
brain-cells and their little cobweb-like con- 
necting fibers are spoken of as “neuron pat- 
terns.” Our instincts depend on such pat- 
terns which are already fixed for us at birth, 
patterns which are, therefore, inherited. 
These inherited patterns, fortunately, make 
most of our physical functions automatic, 
but, unfortunately, they sometimes handi- 
cap us by taking a hand in our emotions 262 
OUR FEAR COMPLEXES 
which we need to control by suppression or 
substitution. Fear, for example, is such an 
emotion. But, in addition to these inherited 
patterns, we constantly acquire later in life 
new patterns or, at least, new ways of re- 
action which develop with age and stimula- 
tion or, in other words, through use. It is 
these acquired patterns which have most to 
do with our habits, good and bad, and in- 
deed, with most of our successes or failures 
in life. 
Now, when a certain pathway is once fol- 
lowed in the brain, it becomes increasingly 
easy for the same stimulus to follow along 
this pathway again, until it becomes prac- 
tically the only way it can go. A fear based 
upon an experience which starts up certain 
reactions in our brains thus tends to become 
fixed because certain stimulations follow 
along certain paths with the greatest pos- 
sible ease—not only so, but through what 
we call “association of ideas,” such reac- 
tions occur with all sorts of suggestions, 
often not originally related to the fear at all, 
and unrecognized as such. Thus, the person THE HABIT OF FEAR 
263 
possessed with fear soon becomes a sort of 
automatic mechanism constantly reacting to 
morbid suggestions, instead of an intelli- 
gent human being with all his essential di- 
recting forces well under control. 
OUR AUTOMATIC HABITS 
Fear in primitive man was chiefly useful 
for the protection of his life. Certain auto- 
matic reactions always occurred to aid him 
in times of danger. His thyroid gland se- 
cretions opened up the draft under his vital 
fires; his adrenal gland secretions supplied 
power to his heart and speeded up the blood 
supply through his muscles; certain liver 
secretions furnished energy to his muscles 
for quick work; and so his whole body as a 
living machine was quickly tuned up and 
prepared for flight or fight. But to-day how 
differently fear may affect man! “Our au- 
tomatically executed reactions are not suffi- 
cient to enable man to win out in the strug- 
gle for existence.” Man must to-day use 
also his wit and his ingenuity and make all 
sorts of new adjustments to the new re- 264 
OUR FEAR COMPLEXES 
quirements of modern complex life. All the 
reactions of primitive man to fear may oc- 
cur to-day in modern man, but under 
conditions in which they are entirely inap- 
propriate, and these may lead to the least 
possible desirable result. Doctor Stewart 
Paton illustrates this point with the public 
speaker who becomes suddenly “stage- 
struck.” 
The frightened speaker or singer, or the 
embarrassed student, to whom we referred 
in an earlier chapter as struck dumb, or the 
shell-shocked soldier at the front, becomes 
the victim of his originally useful primitive 
instincts; he wishes to escape from his un- 
endurable situation, and all his primitive 
physical and mental reactions prepare him 
for such an end. But new conditions in life 
make this escape impossible. He must, 
therefore, find an intelligent moral equiva- 
lent for his fear. 
“The connecting links in the chain be- 
tween our wishes and acts are formed by 
habits . . . and this is just as true of our 
mental and moral, as it is for our physical THE HABIT OF FEAR 
265 
acts.” All this simply means that desirable 
habits should be substituted for primitive, 
uncontrolled wishes, emotions and instincts. 
Such simple forms of automatic reaction to 
emotional life were all good enough for ani- 
mals and primitive man, but in civilized be- 
ings there had to be developed a new sort of 
brain which could become the center of or- 
ganized control of body and mind. Man 
uses this new brain, as Doctor Paton says, 
very conservatively, not wasting its energy, 
but also so effectively that he does and 
thinks the right thing at the right time. 
DIRECTING OUR EMOTIONS 
Our brains, then, should largely direct 
our emotions, and fears of all kinds are emo- 
tions. We have several times said that the 
intelligent are more frequently influenced 
by fear than the unintelligent, precisely be- 
cause the intelligent have much more imagi- 
nation, and can therefore concoct many 
more fears. On the other hand the intelli- 
gent, when properly trained, and especially 
if this training comes early in life, can be 266 
OUR FEAR COMPLEXES 
successfully taught to learn the basis of 
fear, and in many instances its unreality, 
and therefore how to conquer and direct 
such harmful emotions, and how to disre- 
gard the old ghosts of unreality. We all 
need to learn the power of reasonable sug- 
gestion, but not the ignorant unthinking 
forms of suggestion about which we hear so 
much nowadays, suggestion in the form of 
old cults dressed up in spectacular new 
garbs, which juggle with meaningless 
names and formulas, or indulge in super- 
stitious rituals. 
Fear has, indeed, a physical basis that is 
often overlooked by various forms of mental 
healers, a basis designed primarily for the 
protection of the individual in fight or flight. 
Since we can neither fight nor fly, we should 
try to substitute the moral equivalents of 
fear—to substitute reason for unthinking 
emotional reaction. 
THE HABIT OF HUMOR 
The cultivation of a sense of humor is 
most helpful for this purpose. Thus, the THE HABIT OF FEAR 
267 
somewhat whimsical but absolutely true 
philosophy which is summarized in the sim- 
ple question, “After all, what does it mat- 
ter?” may be useful. For our fears and 
doubts are really not so important as they 
seem to ourselves; and even if fully realized, 
their effect on the great scheme of the uni- 
verse is infinitesimal. Fears and worries of 
to-day are forgotten to-morrow, and are 
supplanted by new fears the following day, 
unless we have learned to throttle them or 
to laugh them into oblivion. Chapter XII 
CULTIVATING OUR NATIONAL 
COURAGE 
Thus far we have been concerned very 
largely with individual fears. In a broad 
sense we have been stressing the matter of 
environment and subordinating the question 
of heredity. This must be so of necessity 
when individuals are considered; for, of 
course, there is no way of changing the 
heredity of a being already created. Our 
efforts must necessarily be confined to over- 
coming traits and tendencies that are pres- 
ent in the individual rather than attempting 
to avert the possibilities of bad inheritance. 
But when race, or national, problems are 
considered the field shifts immediately to 
heredity. Environment then becomes the 
fixed and unchanging element. We can not 
change the geographical position or atmos- 
pheric and climatic conditions of our coun- 
268 CULTIVATING NATIONAL COURAGE 
269 
try. Neither can we change the general 
intelligence and character of its inhabitants 
very greatly simply by attempting to change 
individuals and individual environment. 
That is simply a palliative measure aimed 
to mitigate the effect of the trouble, without 
attacking its source. 
If we are to change the race or the nation 
either for better or for worse, it must be 
largely through the agency of heredity. We 
are, indeed, making such changes and very 
rapidly, at the present time—changes that 
are of haphazard character and apparently 
in the wrong direction. Wherefore, it be- 
hooves each one of us to interest himself in 
the practical possibilities of the established 
laws of heredity. 
The future of our nation will depend upon 
the intelligence and fighting courage of our 
descendants. Make no mistake about this: 
it is the fighting races that are the progres- 
sive ones. No race ever reached the top of 
the ladder in science, or art, or literature, or 
warfare, without literally fighting its way 
to that position. 27Q 
OUR FEAR COMPLEXES 
Of course, when we cultivate the courage 
of the individual, and groups of individuals, 
we are, in effect, cultivating the courage of 
the nation. But, after all, the cultivation 
of courage in individuals is temporary and 
ephemeral. A far more effective method, 
and the only one that will eventually prove 
of any very great permanency, is through 
the agency of applied eugenics based on the 
science of heredity. 
Until very recently the actual facts of 
heredity as applied to mankind have been 
largely a jumble of unsystematized observa- 
tions, all of them pointing to the truth with- 
out actually proving it. But now, thanks to 
the investigations leading up to the great 
war, and during that period, we are able to 
present some indisputable facts that leave 
no room for argument. 
“Each individual is a composite picture 
of all his ancestors,” says a recent writer. 
“No one has ever seriously doubted the com- 
ponent elements of the picture; the only 
difference in opinion has been concerning 
the perspective, and the arrangement of the CULTIVATING NATIONAL COURAGE 
271 
figures. Some have been inclined to give 
undue prominence to remote ancestors in 
the composition, while others have practi- 
cally ignored them, placing the figures of 
recent ancestors conspicuously in the fore- 
ground. Still others have brought environ- 
mental conditions to the front, thus conceal- 
ing the remote ancestors completely and 
crowding back the more recent. In short 
there have been no fixed rules for composing 
the picture, at least until the closing years 
of the nineteenth century. 
“To be sure Sir Francis Galton had for- 
mulated his laws of heredity some little time 
before this. And Galton’s empirical rules 
have proved to be fairly accurate. But it 
remained for an Austrian monk, Gregor 
Mendel, to fathom the riddle of heredity, 
and formulate accurate laws whose truth 
could be demonstrated by practical applica- 
tion. 
“Mendel's experiments were not made 
with human beings, not even with the lower 
animals, but were largely concerned with 
the little plant familiarly known as the gar- 272 
OUR FEAR COMPLEXES 
den pea. What possible relation, you may 
well ask, have the laws governing the hered- 
ity of a little plant to those of the supreme 
animal, Man? or, for that matter, to the 
lowest member of the animal kingdom? 
The answer is simple and precise: they have 
everything to do with it. The same funda- 
mental laws of heredity that govern the gar- 
den pea apply to all other plants, and all 
members of the animal kingdom, including 
man himself. 
“Some of the miraculous transformations 
that have been wrought in plants, particu- 
larly the production of disease-resisting 
species, suggest the probability that similar 
effects will be produced eventually in human 
beings, since the Mendelian laws govern the 
heredity and methods of propagation in 
both. An interesting instance of the appli- 
cation of these laws is the production of a 
rust-resisting strain of wheat created by 
Professor Biffin, which seems destined to re- 
store the almost obsolete wheat-raising 
industry of Great Britain. 
“A few years ago the ravages of the rust- CULTIVATING NATIONAL COURAGE 
273 
fungus had practically destroyed wheat- 
growing as an industry in the British Isles. 
Microscopic studies of this fungus revealed 
the fact that in order to complete the cycle 
of its existence it must live for a time in 
barberry bushes; and these bushes are used 
extensively in Great Britain for hedges. By 
destroying the barberry bushes the rust- 
fungus would be exterminated. But such a 
radical cure seemed almost as bad as the 
malady itself. 
“Professor Biffin found a substitute for 
this wholesale destruction of the hedges. By 
breeding experiments, based on Mendelian 
laws of heredity, he produced a strain of 
wheat which resembled ordinary English 
wheat in its quality as a foodstuff, but dif- 
fered in the important particular that it re- 
sisted the attacks of the rust-fungus. Thus 
the scholarly old Austrian monk, pottering 
with the pea-vines of his little garden half 
a century before, made it possible for the 
modern English agriculturist to raise his 
wheat and keep his hedges. 
“This is but one example in a thousand OUR FEAR COMPLEXES 
274 
that might be cited as showing the practical 
value of knowing the laws of heredity. The 
California wizard, Mr. Luther Burbank, 
has created hundreds of new varieties, and 
modified thousands, by his wonderful appli- 
cation of these laws. 
“But obviously the application of Mendel- 
ian laws for the creation of new species of 
plants, which have neither muscular nor 
nervous systems, is a much simpler process 
than its application to the complex organ- 
isms of animals. Yet even in the animal 
kingdom these difficulties are not insuper- 
able ; and although the laws of heredity are 
more difficult in the higher organisms, 
enough has been accomplished already to 
show that these laws apply with the same 
fixity here as in the less complex ones. 
“Thus it is possible to produce predeter- 
mined changes in color and anatomical 
peculiarities with almost mathematical ac- 
curacy in the offspring of certain domestic 
animals and birds. Furthermore, the men- 
tal characteristics of such offspring may be 
changed along definite lines under the magic 
touch of the Mendelian experimenter. CULTIVATING NATIONAL COURAGE 
275 
“It is one thing, of course, to predeter- 
mine that a certain egg in a nest will pro- 
duce a thin, active, laying hen, its nestmate 
a fat, stupid sterile fowl for market pur- 
poses, and quite another to produce at will 
a criminal or a philosopher. But if we could 
control the ancestry of the criminal or the 
philosopher, as we can those of the fowl; 
and control, also, the additional item of en- 
vironment, which enters so largely into the 
problem of eugenics, we should undoubtedly 
be able to produce results quite as definite in 
human beings as in the lower animals. 
“In a way our civilization is doing this 
very thing at the present time, and has been 
doing it for ages—doing it badly when it 
produced a criminal, and doing it well when 
a philosopher was created. But, in either 
case, the individual was simply a happy or 
unfortunate result of haphazard natural se- 
lection. Had these selections been governed 
by the standards of modern eugenics during 
all past ages we should to-day have more 
philosophers and fewer criminals and de- 
generates. 276 
OUR FEAR COMPLEXES 
“One of the greatest difficulties in making 
comparisons between the effects of heredity 
in man and the lower animals or plants, is 
the great difference in the time-element of 
generations involved. The cycle of develop- 
ment in the lower order of animals may be 
completed in months, or even weeks, 
whereas in man the cycle is reckoned in 
years. For this reason the student of human 
heredity must make his deductions from, 
and base his applications largely upon, past 
records. But even with this handicap he 
has been able to produce some very definite 
working data—enough, at least, to demon- 
strate the soundness of his theories. 
“The evidences of heredity on normal 
anatomical structures are too patent to ad- 
mit of argument. The commonplace exam- 
ple of a child’s resemblance to its parent is 
sufficiently demonstrative. But we are more 
particularly concerned with the influence of 
heredity on mental traits, especially those 
that have a pronounced effect on mental un- 
soundness. And curiously enough, it is 
through our studies of the hereditary ele- CULTIVATING NATIONAL COURAGE 
277 
ment in mental and physical abnormalities 
that we are able to reach definite conclusions 
governing the development of normal minds 
and bodies. 
“We have learned, for example, that 
near-sightedness (myopia) is frequently an 
inherited defect. And this knowledge is 
most useful in studying the children of a 
myopic parent. We have learned, also, that 
the peculiar defect known as color-blindness 
is inherited from the male, but transmitted 
through the females of the strain. Thus a 
color-blind father rarely has color-blind 
children. But some of his nephews may be 
color-blind; and if his daughters bear him 
male grandchildren, we can predict with 
relative certainty that some of them will 
inherit the defect. 
“It has been definitely determined that 
the color in the eye is transmitted with the 
same exactness, and according to the same 
fixed laws that govern the transmission of 
color to the flowers of the pea, or the coat of 
the guinea pig. Thus, if both parents have 
blue eyes, every one of their children will be 278 
OUR FEAR COMPLEXES 
blue-eyed—a useful piece of knowledge in 
certain legal complications. And whatever 
the color, if the ancestry of the parents is 
known, we can predict with great precision 
what the color of the children’s eyes will be. 
“It is evident, therefore, that certain ab- 
normalities of the eyes, as well as normal 
peculiarities, are governed by the laws of 
heredity about which we have some very 
precise knowledge. And we are certain 
that the other anatomical structures are 
subject to these same laws, even though we 
are unable to demonstrate the fact with the 
precision as in the organs of sight. More- 
over, since mental traits are simply mani- 
festations of definite physical conditions, it 
follows that these traits must be determined 
primarily by the same laws of heredity as 
those governing physical conditions. In 
short that the Mendelian laws apply to 
plants, animals, human anatomy, and men- 
tal characteristics.” 
It will be observed in this quotation that 
most of the observations, although tending 
strongly to support the idea that man is CULTIVATING NATIONAL COURAGE 
279 
subject to the laws of heredity the same as 
the lower animals and the plants, did not 
actually prove this point. To be sure, most 
scientific observers needed no further proof 
to be convinced. But fortunately for our 
purpose, this proof has been recently forth- 
coming—proof that is so convincing that it 
can not fail to be impressive to any person 
of normal mentality. 
At the annual meeting of the Medical So- 
ciety of the State of California, in 1923, Dr. 
Henry G. Brainerd, President of that or- 
ganization, presented an array of facts in 
his Presidential Address that are most 
amazing and startling. Whatever our pre- 
conceived ideas on the subject may have 
been, there seems to be no way of evading 
or contradicting the facts presented by Doc- 
tor Brainerd which show that at present 
our nation is deteriorating in moral courage 
and mental fiber, and that the cause of this 
decadence is bad heredity. 
Doctor Brainerd did not confine himself 
merely to indicating our defects. He did 
indicate them, and pointed out their causes, 280 
OUR FEAR COMPLEXES 
but he also offered a remedy, and a com- 
paratively simple one. He did this in his 
remarkable document which we present 
here without modification except an occa- 
sional change in a technical term which 
might otherwise be puzzling to the average 
reader. And please bear this fact in mind: 
This paper was presented to one of the most 
learned bodies of representative scientists 
in the United States, was accepted by that 
body almost without a dissenting voice, and 
is here reproduced with Doctor Brainerd’s 
generous permission. 
“A study of the draft statistics of the late 
war,” said Doctor Brainerd, “shows that 
there were examined by the various draft 
boards 5,758,000 men between the ages of 
twenty-one and thirty inclusive. And there 
were found unfit for service 1,289,000 men, 
or twenty-two per cent. The same defects 
which were found in these men would prob- 
ably be found in a like number of women of 
the same age, so that it is safe to say that 
one out of five of the population of that age 
is physically or mentally unfit; and were CULTIVATING NATIONAL COURAGE 
281 
they under the control of a successful stock 
breeder would not be allowed to propagate. 
This information came to me as a shock, and 
led me to investigate the character of these 
defects; physical defects, undersize, over- 
weight, imperfect vision and hearing, flat 
feet, etc., making them unfit for army serv- 
ice are much less serious as far as breeding 
is concerned than the mental defects which 
are so sure to descend to the offspring. 
“An investigation of the mental defect- 
ives in this 1,289,000, shows a total of a 
little over 82,000. And Doctor Pierce Bailey 
reports that there were sent to the hospitals 
in France 1,475 feeble-minded to add to the 
82,000. Numerous cases of epilepsy were 
passed by draft boards, but were later dis- 
covered while in the service; and these are 
not included in the above figures. 
“Very little laboratory work was done in 
the draft examination so that thousands of 
syphilitics must have escaped detection in 
the draft boards. I find no record of the 
tabetics (locomotor ataxia), and it is not 
stated that they are included in other classi- 282 
OUR FEAR COMPLEXES 
fixations. Such being the case, there should 
be added thousands to the above list. Fur- 
thermore the number of paretics is much 
greater after thirty than before, which 
would increase the number of unfit in the 
population of child-bearing age. 
“It is probable that there are less syphi- 
litics in the female population between 
twenty and forty-five than in the male; but 
the many fathers beyond forty-five who are 
syphilitic would counter-balance this differ- 
ence. So that the ratio of 82,000 of these 
mental defectives to the number of 5,758,- 
000 examined is too low a ratio to apply to 
the number of men and women between the 
ages of twenty and forty-five, which by the 
United States census of 1920 was 22,401,- 
000 men, and 21,895,000 women. Yet, tak- 
ing this low number of mental defectives, 
82,000 found among the men between 
twenty-one and thirty, as a ratio for deter- 
mining the number in the whole population, 
we find a total of 656,000 men and women 
between the ages of twenty and forty-five 
as utterly unfit to become parents! And CULTIVATING NATIONAL COURAGE 
283 
this is probably many thousands short of the 
actual number to be found in the population. 
While syphilis, of course, is not necessarily 
a defective mental condition, the offspring 
of syphilitics are so largely defective men- 
tally that I have included them among the 
mentally unfit. 
“The reports of hospitals for the insane 
show that tubercular patients are very 
likely to have mentally defective offspring; 
so we must consider the probable defective 
offspring of the tubercular in addition to 
the 656,000 abnormal mental cases. There 
were 80,601 tuberculars found in the draft 
examination, which will practically double 
the number of unfit for parentage, making 
the enormous number of 1,312,000, whose 
offspring will furnish the great majority of 
our tuberculars, feeble-minded, insane, pau- 
pers, prostitutes and criminals. 
“It adds to the seriousness of the situa- 
tion that the mentally abnormal are much 
more prolific than their mentally superior 
neighbors, as they have neither the knowl- 
edge, nor self-restraint, to exercise birth- 284 
OUR FEAR COMPLEXES 
control. And it is learned from this 
investigation of the draft records that the 
proportion of these unfit is much greater 
among the foreign born than among the 
native born. 
“Mendel’s Law of Inheritance, as ex- 
tended by Doctor A. Rosanoff to apply to 
psychopaths, demonstrates that: 
“1. Both parents psychopathic (of un- 
stable mentality or actually insane), all of 
the offspring will be psychopathic. 
“2. One parent normal with psychopathic 
taint from grandparent, and the other par- 
ent psychopathic, half the offspring will be 
psychopathic and the other half normal, but 
liable to have psychopathic offspring. 
“3. One parent normal with normal an- 
cestry, and the other parent psychopathic, 
all of the offspring will be normal, but liable 
to have psychopathic offspring. 
“4. Both parents normal but each having 
psychopathic taint from grandparent, one- 
fourth psychopathic, the others normal but 
liable to have psychopathic offspring. 
“5. Both parents normal but one with CULTIVATING NATIONAL COURAGE 
285 
psychopathic taint from grandparent, all 
the offspring will be normal, but half of 
these may have psychopathic offspring. 
“6. Both 'parents normal with pure an- 
cestry, all offspring normal, and not liable to 
have psychopathic offspring. 
“The examination of the official reports 
of sixteen reformatories scattered through 
as many states where investigation of the 
mental status has been made, show that 
sixty-five per cent, of these inmates are fee- 
ble-minded. 
“Reports of the prisons in seven states 
where like investigations have been made 
show fifty-four per cent, are mentally de- 
fective. Examination of jail inmates in 
many places throughout the land has shown 
that the mentally defective form more than 
fifty per cent, of the total population, as 
stated by the National Committee for Men- 
tal Hygiene. 
“The Psychopathic Laboratory of the 
Municipal Court in Chicago in the examina- 
tion of 4,460 prostitutes found eighty per 
cent, of them mentally defective. A Massa- 286 
OUR FEAR COMPLEXES 
chusetts committee investigating White 
Slave Traffic found in three hundred pros- 
titutes examined that eighty-seven per cent, 
of them were mentally below the age of 
eleven years. In the Albany Courts it was 
found that fifty-six per cent, of the prosti- 
tutes were mentally defective. The Na- 
tional Committee for Mental Hygiene after 
examination of many poor-houses, county 
farms, and like institutions for the care of 
paupers, reports that more than thirty per 
cent, of all the inmates are mentally defi- 
cient. 
“H. M. Pollock, member of the New York 
State Hospital Commission, states that, ‘one 
in twenty-five of the population at some 
period of life becomes insane.’ The United 
States Census shows that from 1890 to 1920 
the number of insane had increased from 
118 per 100,000 of population to 220, and 
that their care and economic loss yearly 
amounts to more than $200,000,000, and 
that mental deficiency, epilepsy, pauperism 
and crime cause still greater annual loss to 
this country. CULTIVATING NATIONAL COURAGE 
287 
“In a number of families that have been 
investigated in recent years, one—the Jukes 
sisters—it was found in 1891, among 700 
of their descendants whose histories were 
investigated, there had been 140 criminals 
in jails and prisons, 280 paupers and all 
the others undesirable citizens; and that the 
family had cost the State of New York 
$1,308,000 up to 1891. 
“John Ishmael and his half-breed wife 
came to Indiana about 1840. He is sup- 
posed to be a descendant from some of the 
criminals deported to America from Eng- 
land prior to 1770. Gradually others of the 
same type, and from the same source, came 
to Indiana and largely intermarried among 
their kind. The outstanding characteristics 
of the whole tribe, which is known as Ish- 
maelites, were feeble-mindedness, licentious- 
ness, thieving, begging and a wandering 
life. Two years ago their numbers were es- 
timated to exceed 10,000 scattered through 
the Middle West; few of them self-support- 
ing, none of them desirable citizens, most of 
them securing a living by stealing, begging, 288 
OUR FEAR COMPLEXES 
prostitution and living in jails, poor-houses 
and prisons and by public charity. In short, 
living in any way except by work. 
“Investigation of the ‘Nam’ family was 
found in eight generations of descendants to 
number now over eight hundred and fifty, 
and they are characterized by crime, drunk- 
enness, prostitution, pauperism and mental 
deficiency. They have cost the State of New 
York over $1,400,000. 
“In contrast to these defective families, 
which have brought disgrace to our land, 
was the attempt to improve the human race 
by selective generation, which was made by 
The Oneida Community, a religious sect 
founded on the idea of attaining perfection. 
In this experiment the young people at- 
tempted to bring about human regeneration 
by scientific generation. And to that end, 
before marriage, the couples were examined 
by a committee, two of which were doctors, 
to determine their mental and physical and 
spiritual fitness to bring forth offspring. 
“Ninety-eight children were born under 
this plan during the years between 1869 and CULTIVATING NATIONAL COURAGE 
289 
1879. None of these was born deaf, dumb, 
deformed or idiotic. There was, however, 
one who received a depressed fracture of the 
skull at seven years of age, who was re- 
tarded in his after mental development, but 
since maturity has been self-supporting by 
working on a farm or in a store; and one by 
birth-injury has had some muscular inco- 
ordination, but is mentally normal, and is 
an efficient foreman. Up to September, 
1921, fifty-two years since the beginning of 
this experiment, but six deaths had occurred 
among these children—one from brain tu- 
mor, one from scarlet fever, one from 
aneurism and three from accident—only 
thirteen per cent, of the average death rate 
in the United States during those years. 
“The parents (eighty in number) of these 
children showed marked longevity. Eight 
died between twenty-nine and fifty-five, 
forty-four died between fifty-five and 
eighty-nine, and twenty-eight over seventy 
were still living in 1921, demonstrating the 
care which the committee exercised in their 
selection. 290 
OUR FEAR COMPLEXES 
“In this Oneida experiment there have 
been no criminals, no prostitutes, no pau- 
pers, no drunkards, no insane and only one 
retarded mentally by reason of injury to the 
head, all of these good citizens helping to 
sustain the State instead of impoverish- 
ing it. 
“These statistics can be extended indefi- 
nitely to show that the insane, paupers, 
prostitutes, drunkards and criminals come 
largely from the ranks of the mentally ab- 
normal. And unfortunately these mentally 
abnormal persons are increasing at twice 
the rate of the general population.” 
WHAT “BIRTH CONTROL” REALLY MEANS 
“Just as the Panama Canal Zone was rid 
of the pestilence of fever by eradicating at 
its source the breeding of a special kind of 
mosquito, so must the mentally abnormal be 
prevented from breeding their kind—by 
birth control.” 
Now, what do we mean by “birth con- 
trol”? The popular conception of the term 
is that it is synonymous with birth suppres- CULTIVATING NATIONAL COURAGE 
291 
sion. Nothing could be further from the 
truth. Birth control among human be- 
ings does not mean the suppression of 
the birth rate, any more than it does 
as applied to the domestic animals. In- 
deed, it implies a precisely opposite effect— 
just as it does in successful stock breeding, 
for example. 
There would be, of course, a suppression 
of the procreation of the mentally unfit. 
But this, of itself, would act directly in in- 
creasing the birth rate of the desirable type 
of human beings, since the cost of support- 
ing and controlling the mentally unfit at 
present makes the rearing of normal chil- 
dren almost a prohibited luxury. Remove 
the army of “undesirable citizens” and do 
away with the army of officers necessary to 
support and keep this defective army in 
reasonable control, and the average citizen 
would find it possible to rear the family of 
children which, for the most part, he ear- 
nestly desires. 
That is what “birth control” means as we 
use the term here. And please keep this 292 
OUR FEAR COMPLEXES 
securely in mind. For the usual misinter- 
pretation of this term is now a flaunted red 
flag in the hands of certain misinformed, or 
misguided, cranks and enthusiasts. Read 
and ponder well the astonishing facts just 
quoted from Doctor Brainerd’s address, and 
the deductions that he makes in the follow- 
ing pages. 
"It is up to the medical profession to urge 
that the medical schools teach the law of 
Mendel and imbue their students with the 
idea that the prevention of mental abnor- 
malities should fill a large place in the ef- 
forts of preventive medicine. It is up to our 
profession to educate the public that the 
mentally abnormal breed their kind, and to 
arouse their interest in securing proper 
marriage laws, to secure larger provision 
for hospitals and schools and colonies for 
this class of people. This would diminish 
crime, imbecility, insanity and pauperism, 
and make it less necessary to spend so much 
as at present on our hospitals for insane, 
poor-houses, reformatories, and prisons. 
It is up to the profession to urge the repeal 
of the laws against birth control. CULTIVATING NATIONAL COURAGE 
293 
“‘Every child has a right to be well born. 
And parents who are not able to bring into 
the world healthy offspring, or are not able 
to take care of them after they have come, 
should not bring children into the world. 
Physically and mentally fit people owe it to 
themselves, and to the state, to raise as large 
a family as their means permit. 
“Professor Irving Fisher, in The Scien- 
tific Monthly of September, 1921, says, ‘If 
birth control exercised by individual par- 
ents could itself be controlled by a eugenic 
committee it could undoubtedly become the 
surest and most supremely important 
means of improving the human race. We 
could breed out the unfit and breed in the 
fit: We could in a few generations conquer 
degeneracy, dependency and delinquency 
and develop a race far surpassing not only 
our own, but the Ancient Greeks.’ 
“Doctor Stopes of London says in a pub- 
lic address, ‘Constructive birth control is the 
key to all racial progress, the only safeguard 
to International Peace.’ 
“Doctor S. Adolphus Knopf, who has 
made a very comprehensive study of tuber- 294 
OUR FEAR COMPLEXES 
culosis, says, ‘Had the United States at- 
tacked the tuberculosis problem from the 
eugenic side as well as the environmental I 
believe the result in the reduction of our 
tuberculosis death rate would have been so 
startling as to arouse the hope of the abso- 
lute eradication of the disease/ 
“What the world needs now is not a 
greater, but a better, population, which can 
only be attainable by the birth control.” 
HOLLAND AS EXEMPLAR 
“In fifty years Holland, by birth control, 
has increased the average height of its men 
of draft age four inches. It has lowered its 
death rate from tuberculosis in eleven years 
from one hundred and eighty-four per 100,- 
000 to one hundred and forty-four, and has 
lowered the general death rate more than 
any other country. 
“Doctor Haven Emerson, formerly 
Health Commissioner of New York City, 
said, ‘Any physician who does not give ad- 
vice to his patient which will, if followed, 
effectually save her from any surgical risk CULTIVATING NATIONAL COURAGE 
295 
is not living up to his responsibilities, and 
whenever the patient’s health might be jeop- 
ardized by the unavoidable risks and strains 
of pregnancy such patients may, according 
to my understanding of the law, be informed 
as to how to avoid conception/ 
“Most of the urban schools of our country 
have some medical supervision, and the 
schools are the places where the psychopaths 
and feeble-minded can be early detected. 
Their school record should be kept so if they 
show delinquency and come before the juve- 
nile court, or other courts, their history may 
be known and proper disposal of their cases 
may be made. To do this there should be a 
court psychiatrist to determine whether the 
delinquent is mentally abnormal or not, and 
if abnormal, and may be restored to nor- 
malcy by proper treatment, he should be 
sent to a hospital. If found to be feeble- 
minded he should be sent to a vocational 
school where training and discipline may 
enable him to become self-supporting, and 
returned to his home and kept under the 
supervision of a parole officer. 296 
OUR FEAR COMPLEXES 
“Should he continue to show criminal ten- 
dencies he should be placed in a colony 
where he may be wholly, or partly, self-sup- 
porting, and yet enjoy in a large measure 
the comforts and pleasures of life, instead 
of, as by our present method, spending much 
of his time in jails and prisons, and between 
terms breeding his kind. 
“In a Boston Municipal Court one hun- 
dred boys were investigated and it was 
found that in the five years preceding they 
had been arrested 1,285 times, had been put 
on probation 432 times, but less than one out 
of four successfully stayed out his probation. 
“Nine of the United States—Michigan, 
New York, North Dakota, Oregon, Pennsyl- 
vania, Washington, Wisconsin, Vermont 
and Virginia—have laws against issuing 
marriage licenses to physically unfit, but 
these laws are rendered ineffective by fail- 
ure to make the examination for the health 
certificate sufficiently careful and complete. 
Such certificates should be given by a com- 
petent board after thorough mental and 
physical examination, this board preferably CULTIVATING NATIONAL COURAGE 
297 
under the control of the State Board of 
Health, and the services should be paid for 
by the state. 
“An effort is now being made to introduce 
into all the states uniform marriage laws to 
prevent the marriage of the unfit. It is a 
long step in the right direction. 
“The question of sterilization of the unfit 
is a very important one. All eugenists agree 
that the begetting of offspring by the men- 
tally unfit should be prevented, but some 
urge segregation instead of sterilization. 
At the present time in the United States 
only one-tenth of the mentally defective are 
being segregated in hospitals, schools and 
colonies, and it would seem that both segre- 
gation and sterilization should be brought 
to bear on the problem. I believe that every 
male who becomes a charge on the state by 
reason of insanity, feeble-mindedness or 
crime should be sterilized before being dis- 
charged from the state care. Sterilization 
of the male is a very simple operation, with 
practically no danger, and does not prevent 
copulation, but does prevent procreation. 298 
OUR FEAR COMPLEXES 
“While the sterilization of the female is a 
little more difficult operation than in the 
male, when done under modern surgical pro- 
cedure the risk of serious complication is 
negligible, and I believe it should be done on 
every mentally defective female who is un- 
der the state care, and who has not yet 
reached the menopause, before she is per- 
mitted to leave the state institution. 
“To summarize, it seems to me the mem- 
bers of the medical profession must give 
their best efforts to this great undertaking 
along the lines of preventive medicine, and 
that they should urge our National Govern- 
ment to scan more closely the immigrants, 
and rigorously reject those mentally unfit. 
Also, to secure uniform marriage law re- 
quiring a clean bill of health requisite to 
procuring a marriage license, should urge 
the repeal of the present laws against birth 
control and to give scientific information to 
their patients in regard to the same, should 
urge, also, the enactment of laws requiring 
sterilization or segregation of the unfit who 
are in the custody of the state, and provide CULTIVATING NATIONAL COURAGE 
299 
hospitals and vocational schools and colonies 
sufficient to care properly for the unfit re- 
quiring such care, and thus diminish the 
expenditures for asylums, jails and prisons. 
In support of the propaganda of birth con- 
trol our profession should help to educate 
the general public as to the inexorable char- 
acter of MendePs law, ‘that like breeds like.’ 
“By a combination of all these efforts I 
believe it is possible to bring about such 
change in coming generations as will pre- 
vent our beloved country from perishing in 
a mire of insanity, degeneracy, poverty, im- 
morality and crime.” Chapter XIII 
THE STORY RETOLD 
In what has gone before we have tried to 
give the reader some notion of the origin, 
control and cure of fears. We have said 
that most of the common nervous disorders, 
which so greatly handicap countless num- 
bers of people as they pass along through 
life, have fears as the basis of the trouble. 
We have also endeavored to show that 
many peculiarities of temperament, and 
even character defects, may have their 
origins in unmet, and sometimes unrecog- 
nized fears. 
Our purpose has been to bring clearly into 
mind the nature of most of such fears, and 
to suggest the best means for mastering 
them. More than all else we have wished to 
make it clear that there are no easy “cure- 
alls” for fear disorders. Cure, we have said, 
is finally found only in the reeducation of 
self. 
300 THE STORY RETOLD 
301 
THE EDUCATION OF SELF 
But this reeducation of self is just what 
most people dislike and usually avoid. They 
always prefer some easy method which they 
seek outside of themselves. It is for this 
reason that many have always sought aid in 
superstitions and the supernatural. Primi- 
tive people always did this, for they were 
never without their baseless fears, and we 
of to-day, who ought to know better, are 
scarcely less unreasonable. 
Primitive people had recourse to witch 
doctors, sorcerers, dream-interpreters, 
heathen gods, oracles, and many other su- 
perstitious practises. In many ways we of 
to-day are nearly as superstitious as the 
barbarians of yesterday. And all this shows 
itself in a childish credulity toward every 
new mental healing cult which promises to 
rid us of our fears. 
OUR PRIMITIVE EMOTIONS 
We are still largely dominated by primi- 
tive emotions, by fear and selfishness, and 
reason enters very little into a great many 302 
OUR FEAR COMPLEXES 
of our daily reactions to this life or the next 
one. 
Superstitions rather than common reali- 
ties still appeal to great numbers of people 
in one form or another. We have not en- 
tirely outgrown our cherished beliefs in 
mysticism. But it is only the commonplace 
of which we have any real knowledge, and 
of which we can make any real use. Sci- 
ence is, in fact, nothing more than the 
orderly arrangement of common knowledge, 
but science gets a very poor hearing with 
vast numbers of both intelligent and unin- 
telligent people. 
Nervous disorders and fears of the sort 
we have discussed, have perfectly definite 
origins, and the mastery of them is not to 
be secured in ignorant beliefs or hopeless 
apathy, but only in sensible knowledge, vig- 
orously applied. 
There is no mystery about them and they 
can not be permanently cured by any mys- 
terious practises. 
Any strong emotional influence may 
bring temporary relief to some people, and THE STORY RETOLD 
303 
it makes little difference whether this influ- 
ence comes through purely superstitious be- 
liefs, hypnotism, autosuggestion, or any 
other kind of emotional experience. But for 
most people such “cures” are of very short 
duration, and another disorder soon takes 
the place of the one “cured.” The real cure 
is found only in the clear understanding of 
one’s own nature, and in a patient attempt 
to appreciate those things which play upon 
it for good or evil. Many nervous troubles 
have their origin, as we have already said, 
in childhood—in misunderstood or misin- 
terpreted experiences. Consequently one 
may pass into adult life with childish reac- 
tions to many things; with childish traits of 
character, and with certain morbid trends 
which tend to become fixed in disorders or 
peculiarities of personality. 
Fears have such a great variety of origin 
that it is sometimes most difficult to discover 
their beginnings. But in the main, what- 
ever the origin, the control or cure must be 
found in a new attitude toward life; in the 
building up of a simple but courageous and OUR FEAR COMPLEXES 
304 
sensible philosophy toward life as we find it, 
not as we would wish to have it. Most of 
all, we must develop an interest in things 
worth while, for this will go a long way to- 
ward neutralizing that form of morbidness 
which tends toward unnecessary fears. 
MORBID SELF-INTEREST A FORM OF 
SELFISHNESS 
The victim of fear is to a large degree a 
victim of morbid self-interest. He is always 
a selfish person whether he knows it or not. 
Let him therefore transfer his interests to 
other people and to other things; let him 
resolve to acquire, if he does not already 
possess it, a reasonable sense of humor; to 
develop some absorbing fad even if this be 
only an end in itself without any particular 
value or use outside of itself. Play, we 
know or ought to know, is just as important 
in our lives as work, and true play should 
be found in some form or “fad.” In the 
main we believe that fears have not nearly 
so intricate an origin as many would have 
us believe; that, except in the young and THE STORY RETOLD 
305 
inexperienced, most of such difficulties may- 
be largely self-corrected after a little com- 
mon-sense advice. Coueism is little more 
than an artificial method for diverting our 
thoughts from a morbid to a normal, whole- 
some channel. It is a very old truth thinly 
disguised and much exaggerated. 
Fear begets fear; worry begets worry; 
doubt begets doubt; bad habit formation, 
and character formation, tends to become 
permanently fixed for perfectly definite 
physical reasons, as we have pointed out in 
the chapter on “Habits and Fear.” 
THE HOPEFUL HABIT 
By all means let us acquire hopeful, 
healthful and intelligent mental attitudes; 
let us suggest health and not disease; cour- 
age and not fear; hope and not despair; op- 
timism, not pessimism; faith, not distrust; 
for no one can deny the direct influence of 
mental states upon physical health. For 
fears of whatever nature let us substitute a 
wholesome confidence founded upon a rea- 
sonable understanding of ourselves and the 806 
OUR FEAR COMPLEXES 
world we live in. Let us not close our eyes 
to the realities of life, place our faith in the 
mysticisms of primitive people, or worship 
at the shrine of ignorance. It is in our own 
education and reeducation that we must 
seek our cures and it is the “condemnation 
of ignorance that truth is so easy of access.” 
THE END