M. is one of these helpless ambivalent folk, always running to
others for advice and perplexed to a frenzy by the choices of
life. "What shall I do?" is his prime question, largely because
he fears to commit himself to any line of action. Once a man
chooses, he shuts a great many doors of opportunity and gambles
with Fate that he has chosen right. M. knows this and lacks self-
confidence, i.e., the belief that he will choose for the best or
be able to carry it through. He lacks the gambling spirit, the
willingness to put his destiny to fortune. Often M. deliberates
or rather oscillates for so long a time that the matter is taken
from his hands. Thus, when he fell in love, the fear of being
refused, of making a mistake, prevented him from action, and the
young woman accepted another, less ambivalent suitor.
M. is in business with his father and is entirely a subordinate,
because he cannot choose. He carries out orders well, is very
amiable and gentle, is liked and at the same time held in a mild
contempt. He has physical courage but has not the hardihood of
soul to take on responsibility for choosing. Sometimes he gets
good ideas, but never dares to put them into execution and shifts
that to others.
He hates himself for this weakness in an essential phase of
personality but is gradually accepting himself as an inferior
person, despite intelligence, training and social connection.
Yet his sister is exactly the opposite type. She makes decisions
with great promptness, never hesitates, is "cocksure" and
aggressive. If M. is ambivalent, his sister B. M. is univalent.
Choice is an easy matter to her, though she is not impulsive. She
rapidly deliberates. She never has made any serious errors in
judgment, but if she makes a mistake she shrugs her shoulders and
says, "It's all in the game." Thus she is a leader in her set,
for if some difficulty is encountered, her mind is quickly at
work and prompt with a solution. If she is not brilliant, and she
is not, she collects the plans of her associates and chooses and
modifies until she is ready with her own plan. Her father sighs
as he watches her and regrets that she is not a man. It does not
occur to him or any of his family, including herself, that she
might do a man's work in the business world.
In pathological cases the inability to choose becomes so marked
as to make it impossible for the patient to choose any line of
conduct. "To do or not to do" extends into every relationship and
every situation. The patient cannot choose as to his dress or his
meals; cannot decide whether to stay in or go out, finds it
difficult to choose to cross the street or to open a door; is
thrown into a pendulum of yea and nay about speaking, etc. This
psychasthenic state, the folie du doute of the French, is
accompanied by fear, restlessness and an oppressive feeling of
unreality. The records of every neurologist contain many such
cases, most of whom recover, but a few go on to severe incurable
mental disease.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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