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
From the endocrine standpoint, the reason for this becomes clear. The
biometric method concerned itself with externals, with, as it were,
symptoms. Since these external signs are but manifestations of the
inner chemical reactions, of which the internal secretions are the
determining reagents, or factors, with permutations and combinations
possible in all directions, the diversity and variability of each
individual and his traits stands explained and understandable. The
normal, as the perfect or nearly perfect balance of forces in the
organism, at any given moment, emerges as a more definite and real
concept than that which would abstract it from a curve of variations.
Moreover, since the directive forces within the organism are
pre-eminently the internal secretions, the normal becomes definable as
their harmonious balancing or equilibrium, a state which tends not to
undo (as the abnormal does) but to prolong itself.
The potential combinations and compensations, antagonisms and
counteractions, attainable within the endocrine glands as an
interlocking directorate, point the cause for the elusive quality of
the normal. Tall men and short men, blonde women and dumpy women,
lanky hatchet-faced people, stout moon-faced people, Falstaff and
Queen Elizabeth, George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, Disraeli and
Walt Whitman, Caesar and Alexander, as well as Mr. Smith and Miss
Jones come within the range of the normal. There are all kinds and
conditions and sorts of men and women, and all kinds and sorts and
conditions of the normal, because an incalculable number of harmonious
relations and interactions between the endocrines are possible, and
do actually occur. The standard of the normal must obviously not be
a single standard, but a series of standards, depending upon which
glands predominate, and how the others adapt themselves to its
predominance. Adrenal-centered types, thyroid-centered types,
pituitary-centered types, thymus-centered types, as well as hyphenated
compounds of these, such as the pituitary-adrenal types, exist as
normals. They can be conceived of as normal types because they exist
as normal types.
THE SKELETAL TYPES
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