The Foundations of Personality by Abraham Myerson (color ebook reader .TXT) 📕

ones; I mean the formation of Habits. An old man who shrinks into

himself falls into ways that become as positive and as much

beyond the reach of outside influences as if they were governed

by clock work.”

We have not considered the pathological habits, such as

alcoholism, excessive smoking and eating, perverse sex habits.

The latter, the perverse sex habits, will be studied when

discussing the sex feelings and purposes in their entirety.

Alcoholism is not yet a dead issue in this country though those

who are sincere in wishing their fellows well hope it soon will

be. It stands, however, as a sort of paradigm of bad habit-forming and presents a problem in treatment that is typical of

such habits.

Not all persons have a liability to the alcoholic habit. For most

people lack of real desire or pleasure prevented alcoholism. The

majority of those who drank little or not at all were not in the

least tempted by the drug. “Will power” rarely had anything to do

with their abstinence and the complacency with which they held

themselves up as an example to the drunken had all the flavor of

Phariseeism. To some the taste is not pleasing, to others the

immediate effects are so terrifying as automatically to shut off

excess. Many people become dizzy or nauseated almost at once and

even lose the power of locomotion or speech.

In many countries and during many centuries most of those who

became alcoholic were such largely through the social setting

given to alcohol. Because of the psychological effects of this

drug in removing restraint, inhibition and formality, in its

various forms it became the symbol of good-fellowship; and

because it has an apparent stimulation and heat-producing effect

there grew up the notion that it aided hard labor and helped

resist hardship. As the symbol of good-fellowship it grew into a

tradition of the most binding kind, so that no good time, no

coming together was complete without it, and its power is

celebrated in picturesque songs and picturesque sayings the world

over. Hospitality, tolerance, good humor, kindliness and the

pleasant breaking down of the barriers between man and man, and

also between man and woman, all these lured generation after

generation into the alcoholic habit.

There are relatively normal types of the heavy drinker,—the

socially minded and the hard manual worker. But there is a large

group of those who find in alcohol a relief from the burden of

their moods, who find in its real effect, the release from

inhibitions, a reason for drinking beyond the reach of reason. Do

you feel that the endless monotony of your existence can no

longer be borne,—drink deep and you color your life to suit

yourself. Do disappointment and despair gnaw at your love of life

so that nothing seems worth while,—some bottled “essence of

sunshine” will give new, fresh value to existence. Are you a

victim of strange, uncaused fluctuations of mood so that

periodically you descend to a bottomless pit of melancholy,

—well, then, why suffer, when over the bar a man will furnish

you a release from agony? And so men of certain types of

temperament, or with unhappy experiences, form the alcoholic

habit because it gives them surcease from pain; it deals out to

them, temporarily, a new world with happier mood, lessened

tension and greater success.

Seeking relief[1] from distressing thoughts or moods is perhaps

one of the main causes of the narcotic habit. The feeling of

inferiority, one of the most painful of mental conditions, is

responsible for the use not only of alcohol but also of other

drugs, such as cocaine, heroin, morphine, etc. One of the most

typical cases of this I have known is of a young man of

twenty-five, a tall fellow with a very unattractive face who had

this feeling of inferiority almost to the point of agony,

especially in the presence of young women, but also in any

situation where he would be noticed. He was fast becoming a

hermit when he discovered that a few drinks completely removed

this feeling. From that time on he became a steady drinker, with

now and then a short period when he would try to stop drinking,

only to resume when he found himself obsessed again by the

dreaded inferiority complex.

[1] This is the main theme of De Quincey’s “Confessions of an

Opium Eater.”

Similarly a shameful position, such as that of the prostitute or

the chronic criminal, is “relieved” by alcohol and drugs, so that

the majority of these types of unfortunates are either drunkards

or “dopes.” Too often have reformers reversed the relationship,

believing that alcohol caused prostitution and crime. Of course

that relationship exists, but more often, in my experience, the

alcohol is used to keep up the “ego” feeling, without which few

can bear life.

Curiously enough, one of the sex perversions, masturbation, has

in a few cases a similar genesis. I have known patients who, when

under the influence of depression, or humiliated in some way or

other, found a compensating pleasure in the act. Here we come to

a cardinal truth in the understanding of ourselves and our

fellows and one we shall pursue in detail later,—that face to

face with mental pain, men seek relief or pleasure or both by

alcohol, drugs, sensual pleasures of all kinds, and that the

secret explanation of all such habits is that they offer

compensation for some pain and are turned to at such times. What

one man seeks in work, another man seeks in religion, another

finds in self-flagellation, and still others seek in alcohol,

morphine, sexual excesses, etc.

With the increasing excitement and tension of our times there is

a constant search for relief, and here is the origin of much of

the smoking. Most men find in the deliberate puff, in the slow

inhalation and in the prolonged exhalation with the formation of

the white cloud of smoke, a shifting of consciousness from the

major businesses of their mind, from a constant tension to a

minor business not requiring concentration and thereby breaking

up in a pleasurable, rhythmic fashion the sense of effort. When

one is alone the fatigue and even the pain of one’s thinking is

relieved by shifting the attention to the smoking. Keeping one’s

attention at a high and constant pitch is apt to produce a

restless fatigue and this is often offset to the smoker by his

habit. Excessive smoking may cause “nervousness” but as a matter

of fact it is more often a means by which the excessively nervous

try to relieve themselves. Of course it is not good therapeutics

under such conditions, but I believe that in moderation smoking

does no harm and is an innocent pleasure.

Some of the pathological motor habits, such as the tics, often

have a curious background. The most common tics are snuffing,

blinking, shaking of the head, facial contortions of one kind or

another. These arise usually under exciting conditions or in the

excitable, sometimes in the acutely self-conscious. Frequently

they represent a motor outlet for this excitement; they are the

motor analogues of crying, shouting, laughing, etc. (Indeed, a

common habit is the one so frequently heard,—a little laugh when

there is no feeling of merriment and no occasion for it.) Motor

activity discharges tension and is pleasurable and these tics

furnish a momentary pleasure; they relieve a feeling that some of

the victims compare to an itch and the habit thus is based on a

seeking of relief, even though that relief is obtained in a way

that distresses the more settled purposes of the individual.

In the establishment of good habits, those desirable from the

point of view of the important issues of life, training is of

course essential. But in the training of children, certain things

must be kept in mind: the usefulness, the practical value must be

presented to the child’s mind in a way he can understand, or else

various ways of energizing him to help in the formation of the

habit must be used—praise and blame, reward and punishment.

Further, these habits are not to be held holy; cleanliness and

method are desirable acquisitions but not so desirable as a

feeling of freedom to play and experiment with life and things.

If the child is constantly worried lest he get too dirty, or

fears to play in his room because he may disorder it, he is

forming the good habits of cleanliness and method but also the

worse one of worry.

In the breaking of a bad habit, its root in desire and difficulty

must be discovered. Often enough a man does not face the source

of his trouble, preferring not to. I am not at all sure that it

is best in all cases for a man to know his own weakness; in fact,

I feel convinced to the contrary in some cases. But in the

majority of difficulties, self-revelation is salutary and makes

an intelligent coping with the situation possible. Here is the

value of the good friend, the respected pastor, the wise doctor.

The human being will always need a confessor and a confidante,

and he who is struggling with a habit is in utmost need of such

help.

Shall the struggler with a bad habit break it with its thralldom?

Shall he say to his chains, “From this time, nevermore!” To some

men it is given to win the victory this way, to rise to the

heights of a stubborn resolution and to be free. But not to many

is this possible. To others there is a long history of repeated

effort and repeated failures and then—one day there comes a

feeling of power, perhaps through a great love, a great cause, a

sermon heard, a chance sentence, or a bitter experience, and

then, like a religious conversion, the tracks of the old habit

are obliterated, never to be used again.

I have in mind two men, both heavy drinkers but differing in

everything else. One was a philosopher who saw the world in that

dreadful, clear white light of which Jack London[1] spoke, that

light which leaves no cozy, pleasant obscurities, in which Truth,

the naked, is horrible to look at, when life seems too unreal,

when purposes seem most futile. At such times he would get drunk

and be happy for the time being, and afterwards find himself

bitterly repentant, though even that was a pleasure compared to

the hollow world in which his sober self dwelt. Then one day,

when all his friends had given him up as hopeless, as destined

for disaster, he read a book. “The Varieties of Religious

Experience,” by William James, came to him as a clear light comes

to a man lost in the darkness; he saw himself as a “sick soul,”

obsessed with the idea that he saw life relentlessly and clearly.

There came to him the conviction that he had been arrogant, a

conceited ass, bent on ruin, “a sickly soul,” he said. Out of

that realization grew resolutions that needed no vowing or

pledging, for as simply as a man turns from one road to another

he turned from his habit into healthy-minded work.

[1] Jack London’s “John Barleycorn.”

The other was an essentially healthy-minded man but he loved

joviality, freedom and good fellowship. Without ever knowing how

he came to it, he found himself a confirmed drinker, holding an

inferior place, passed by men of lesser caliber. He struggled

fitfully but always slipped when the next “good fellow” slapped

him on the back and invited him to have a drink. One day he

stepped out of a barroom with a group of his cronies, and though

he walked straight there was a reckless, happy feeling in him

that pushed him