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
Menstruation, pregnancy, lactation, all draw upon the stores of lime,
sometimes depleting them to the point of softening of the bones and
wrecking the whole skeleton. The endocrines control the transport,
and course, combinations and permutations in the history of lime's
progress among the cells, and are in turn themselves affected by it.
Man is relatively free of these liabilities, and so remains man by
his freedom from the recurrent crises involving the lime salt reserve
which constitute the essence of the life story of woman.
THE SEX INDEX
It follows from these considerations that when it becomes necessary
to size the sex composition of a man or woman, a measurement becomes
establishable which may be spoken of as the sex index. To be able to
say of Mr. Llewylln Jones that he is sixty per cent masculine and
forty per cent feminine, or of Mrs. Worthington that she is seventy
per cent feminine and thirty per cent masculine would be of the utmost
value under all kinds of circumstances. Unfortunately, lacking as we
do the exact figures of an advanced blood chemistry (yet in its most
infantile infancy) a direct indexing of the sort is impossible. But it
is certainly conceivable, along the lines of measurement suggested
by the Binet tests and others, that a scale of evaluation of the
secondary sex traits may be elaborated, which would turn out as
valuable in understanding the frictions of the individual, and more
concretely, that aspect of it to which pathologists of the mind are
tracing so much needless misery and suffering: maladjusted sexuality,
expressed and suppressed. Nothing will contribute more to harmonious
adjustment for these sufferers than recognition of the fact that we
are all, more or less, partial hermaphrodites.
THE FUNCTIONAL HERMAPHRODITE
The complete or total hermaphrodite we define as the individual who
possesses the reproductive organs of the male and the female, both
testes and ovaries. So rare is such a combination in man that for a
long time its occurrence was doubted, descriptions of it regarded as
myth. However, undoubted cases are on record, examined by the most
careful of observers, of ovo-testis or mixed reproductive organs.
Strangely enough, the history of these cases, shows that at one time
the masculine set, and at another the feminine set, will hold sway
over the sex traits and functions. Blending does not happen.
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