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
Mind, reacting upon its creator, has, in a sense, come to dominate
them, because it has become the meeting ground of all the
energy-influences seething and bubbling in the organism, and
so developed into the organ of handling them as a whole, their
Integrating-Executive. But just the same and all the time, the
underlying consciousness of the viscera and their accessories stand as
the powers behind the throne, but as what we have now learned to speak
of, in relation to the Mind, as the Unconscious.
PSYCHOPATHOLOGY OF EVERYDAY LIFE
To sum up these relations of the viscera, the endocrines, the
unconscious and the mind, it may be stated as a far-reaching
generality for the understanding of human life: that character and
conduct are expressions of the streams of energy arising in the
vegetative apparatus, primarily endocrine determined at birth, and
secondarily experience determined after the organism has learned to
react as a whole, as consciousness. The result of such a reaction as a
whole tends to balance the disturbance of energy, so as to maintain
or restore the equilibrium, or sense of harmony and comfort, when
consciousness again disappears. This law is an attempt at synthesis of
the labors of the psychanalysts, the behaviourists, and the students
of the internal secretions (Freud, Jung, Adler, Sherrington, Watson,
Von Bechterew, Kempf, Crile, Cannon, Cushing, Fraenkel are the
great names of the movement). Most of the details, and all of the
quantitative applications of the law still remain to be worked
out. But a statement like the following of Cushing, the eminent
surgeon-student of the endocrines, that "it is quite probable that the
psychopathology of everyday life hinges largely upon the effect of
ductless gland discharges upon the nervous system," shows which way
the wind is blowing.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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