The Glands Regulating Personality: A Study of the Glands of Internal Secretion in Relation to the Types of Human NatureBerman, Louis
History
The Glands Regulating Personality: A Study of the Glands of Internal Secretion in Relation to the Types of Human Nature
Berman, Louis
Endocrinology; Personality
In different locales of the vegetative apparatus, as indeed of
the body in general, the directorate seems to be handed over to a
committee of control, generally made up of two members working
in opposing directions. Such a division of power in the general
directorate is analogous to the small holding corporations which
divide functions in, for example, the United States Steel Corporation.
The relative ratios of tonus in these smaller internal secretion
balances are of the utmost significance as causes of differences
in the vegetative apparatus, which are the basis of differences in
structure, power, and character between individuals.
THE GENERAL LAWS OF THE DIRECTORATE
Our knowledge of the glands of internal secretions as an interlocking
directorate presiding over all the functions of the organism is still
exceedingly meagre. As yet, we seem to be knocking at the portals
of the chemistry of the imponderable. There are holes in the bronze
doors, and we glimpse the unfathomable distances of unexplored
regions. But we do see something, and we do glimpse a beginning.
Already the outlines of a differential anatomy, and a different
physiology and a differential psychology, which will explain to us
the unique in the constitution, the temperament and character of
an individual, emerge. It is worth while, before proceeding to the
details, so valuable to a society which would become rational, to
summarize the general principles emerging, expressing the directing
powers of the ductless glands over the individual. _They may be
regarded as the present postulates of a new science of the whys and
wherefores separating and setting apart, as so recognizably distinct,
those peregrinating chemical mixtures: men and women_.
1. The life of every individual, in every stage, is dominated largely
by his glands of internal secretion. That is, they, as a complex
internal messenger and director system, control organ and function,
conduct and character. The orderliness of human life, in the
sequential march of its episodes, crises, successes and failures,
depends, to a large extent, upon their interactions with each other
and with the environment.
2. One or several of the glands possesses a controlling or superior
influence above that of the others in the physiology of the individual
and so becomes the central gland of his life, its dominant, indeed, so
far as it casts a deciding vote or veto, in its everyday existence and
incidents as well as in its high points, the climaxes and emergencies.
3. These glandular preponderances are at the basis of personality,
creating genius and dullard, weakling and giant, Cavalier and Puritan.
All human traits may be analyzed in terms of them because they are
expressions of them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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