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

not depends upon its cause and the methods it employs. Righteous

anger, whether against one’s own wrongs or the wrongs of others,

is the hall-mark of the brave and noble spirit; mean, egoistic

anger is a great world danger, born of prejudice and egoism. A

violent-tempered child may be such because he is outraged by

wrong; if so, teach him control but do not tell him in modern

wishy-washy fashion that “one must never get angry.” Control it,

intellectualize it, do not permit it to destroy effectiveness, as

it is prone to do; but it cannot be eliminated without

endangering personality.

Fear and anger have this in common: whenever the controlling

energy of the mind goes, as in illness, fatigue or early mental

disease, they become more prominent and uncontrolled. This cannot

be overemphasized. When a man (or woman) finds himself

continually getting apprehensive and irritable, then it is the

time to ask, “What’s the matter with me,” and to get expert

opinion on the subject.

These two emotions are in more need of rationalizing and

intelligent control than the other emotions, for they are more

explosive. Certainly of anger it is truly said that “He who is

master of himself is greater than he who taketh a city.” The

angry man is disliked, he arouses unpleasant feelings, he is

unpopular and a nuisance and a danger in the view of his fellows.

The underlying idea underneath courtesy and social regulations is

to avoid anger and humiliation. Controversial subjects are

avoided, and one must not brag or display concern because these

things cause anger and disgust. Politeness and tact are essential

to turn away wrath, to avoid that ego injury that brings anger.

We contrast with the brusque type, careless of whether he arouses

anger, the tactful, which conciliates by avoiding prejudice, and

which hates force and anger as unpleasant. Against the quick to

anger there is the slow type, whose anger may be enduring. We may

contrast egoistic anger with the altruistic and oppose the anger

which is effective with the anger that disturbs reason and

judgment; intellectual anger against brute anger. Rarely do men

show anger to their superiors; extreme provocation and

desperation are necessary. Men flare up easily against equals but

more easily and with mingled contempt against the inferior.

Anger, though behind the fighting spirit, need not bluster or

storm; usually that is a “worked up” condition intended in a

naive way to frighten and intimidate, or through disgust, to win

a point. Anger is not necessarily courage, which replaces it the

higher up one goes in culture.

8. Disgust, also a primary emotion, is one of the basic reactions

of life and civilization. Literally “disagreeable taste,” its

facial expression, with mouth open and lower lip drawn down,[1]

is that preliminary to vomiting. We eject or retract when

disgusted; we are not afraid nor are we angry. We say “he—or

she, or it—makes me sick,” and this is the stock phrase of

disgust. Inelegant as it is, it exactly expresses the situation.

Disgust easily mingles with fear and anger; it is often dispelled

by curiosity and interest, as in the morbid, as in medical

science, and it of ten displaces less intense curiosity and

interest.

[1] See Darwin’s “The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals,”

—a great book by a great man.

After anything has been accepted as standard in cleanliness, a

deviation in a “lower” direction causes disgust. Those who are

accustomed to clean tablecloths, clean linen are disgusted by

dirty tablecloths, dirty linen. The excreta of the body have been

so effectively tabooed, in the interest perhaps of sanitation,

that their sight or smell is disgusting, and they are used as

symbols of disgust in everyday language. Indeed, the so-called

animal functions have to be decorated and ceremonialized to avoid

disgust. We turn with ridicule and repugnance from him who eats

without “manners” and one of the functions of manners is to avoid

arousing disgust.

Disgust kills desire and passion, and from that fact we may trace

a large part of moral progress. Satiety brings a slight disgust;

thus after a heavy meal there may be contentment but the sight of

food is not at all appealing and often enough rather repelling.

In the sex field, a deep repulsion is often felt when lust alone

has brought the man and woman together or when the situation is

illegal or unhallowed. With satisfaction of desire, the

inhibiting forces come to their own, and the violence of

repentance and disgust may be extreme. Stanley Hall, Havelock

Ellis and other writers lay stress on this; and, indeed, one of

the bases of asceticism is this disgust. Further, when we have no

desires or passion, the sight of others hugging and kissing, or

acting “intimate” in any way, is usually disgusting, an offense

against “good taste” based on the “bad taste” it arouses in the

observer. In memory we are often disgusted at what we did in the

heat of desire, but usually memory itself does not prevent us

from repeating the act; desire itself must slacken. Thus the old

are often intensely disgusted at the conduct of the young, and it

is never wise for a young couple to live with older people. For

in the early days of married life the intensity of the intimate

feelings needs seclusion in order to avoid disgusting others. It

is no accident that Dame Grundy is depicted as an elderly person

with a “sour look”; her prudishness has an origin in disgust at

that which she has outlived. Sometimes the old are wise—not

often enough—and then their humor, love and sympathy keeps them

from disgust.

Love counteracts disgust. The young girl who turns in loathing

from uncleanliness finds it easy and a pleasure to care for her

soiled baby. In fact, tender feeling of any kind overcomes—or

tends to overcome—disgust; and pity, the tenderest of all

feelings and without passion, impels us to march into the very

jaws of disgust. The angry may have no pity,—but they are not

less unkind in commission than the disgusted are unkind in

omission. Thus a too refined breeding leads people away from

effective pity and that sturdiness of conduct which is real

philanthropy. Indeed, too much of refinement increases the number

of disgusting things in the world; he who must have this or that

luxury is not so much pleased with it as disgusted without it.

Raising standards in things material cannot increase the

happiness or contentment of the world, for it merely makes men

impatient and disgusted at lesser standards. We cannot hope to

increase happiness through the material improvements of

civilization.

Self-disgust and shame are not identical but are so kindred that

shame may well be studied here. Shame is lowered self-valuation,

brought on by social or self-disapproval. Usually it is acute

and, like fear, it tends to make the individual hide or fly. It

is based on insight, and there are thus some who are never

ashamed, simply because they do not understand disapproval. Shame

is essentially a feeling of inferiority, and when we say to a

man, “Shame on you,” we say, “You have done wrong, humble

yourself, be little!” When we say, “I am ashamed of you,” we say,

“I had pride in you; I enlarged myself through you, and now you

make me little.” When the community cries shame, it uses a force

that redresses wrong by the need of the one addressed to

vindicate himself. When a man feels shame he feels small,

inferior in his own eyes and in the eyes of others. He feels

impelled, if he is generous, to make amends or to do penance, and

thus he recovers his self-esteem. Unfortunately, shame arises

more frequently and often more violently from a violation of

custom and manner than from a violation of ethics or morals. Thus

we are more ashamed of the so-called “bad break” than of our

failures to be kind. Sometimes our fellow feeling is so strong

that we avoid seeing any one who is humiliated or embarrassed,

because sympathy spreads his feeling to us. Gentle people are

those who dislike to shame any one else, and often one of this

type will endure being wronged rather than reprimand or cause

humiliation and shame. Let something be said to shame any member

of a company and a feeling of shame spreads through the group,

except in the case of those who are very hostile.

Disgust, too, is extremely contagious, especially its

manifestations. One of the most crude of all manifestations, to

spit upon some one, is a symbol taken from disgust, though it has

come to mean contempt, which is a mixture of hatred and disgust.

To raise the tastes and not raise the acquisitions is a sure way

to bring about chronic disgust, which is really an angry

dissatisfaction mixed with disgust. This type of reaction is very

common as a factor in neurasthenia. In fact, my motto is “search

for the disgust” in all cases of neurasthenia and “search for it

in the intimate often secret desires and relationships. Seek for

it in the husband-wife relationship, especially from the

standpoint of the wife.” Women, we say, are more refined in their

feelings than men, which is another way of saying they are more

easily disgusted and therefore more easily injured. For disgust

is an injury, when chronic or too easily elicited, and is then a

sign and symbol of weakness.

Thus disgust is a great reenforcer of social taboo and custom, as

well as morality. Just as it fails to keep us from eating the

wrong kind of foods, so it may fail to keep us from the wrong

conduct. Like every emotion it is only in part adapted to our

lives, and in those people where it becomes a prominent emotion

it is a great mischief worker, subordinating life to finickiness

and hindering the growth of generous feeling.

9. We come to two opposite emotions, very readily considered

together. One of the linkings of opposites is in the connection

of Joy and Sorrow. Whether these are primary emotions or

outgrowths of Pleasure and Pain I leave to others. For Shand the

fact that Joy tends to prolong a situation in which it occurs

raises it into an active emotion.

Joy is perhaps the most energizing of the emotions for it tends

to express itself in shouts, smiles and laughter, dancing and

leaping. Sorrow ordinarily is quite the reverse and expresses

itself by immobility, bowed head and hands that shut out from the

view the sights of the world. There is, however, a quiet joy

called relief, which is like sailing into a smooth, safe harbor

after a tempestuous voyage; and there is an agitated grief, with

lamentation, the wringing of hands and self-punishment of a

frantic kind. Joy and triumph are closely associated, sorrow and

defeat likewise. There are some whose rivalry-competitive

feelings are so widespread that they cannot rejoice even at the

triumph of a friend, and a little of that nature is in even the

noblest of us. There are others who find sorrow in defeat of an

enemy, so widespread is their sympathy. This is the generous

victor. For the most of us youth is the most joyous period

because youth finds in its pleasures a novelty and freshness that

tend to disappear with experience. For the same reason the sorrow

of youth, though evanescent, is unreasoning and intense.

Joy and sorrow are reactions and they are noble or the reverse,

according to the nature of the person. Joy may be noble,

sensuous, trivial or mean; many a “jolly” person is such because

he has no real sympathy. At the present time not one of us could

rejoice over anything could we SEE and sympathize deeply with the

misery of Europe and China,