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

Our viscera, our tissues, as they function, change by the using

up of energy and the breaking down of materials. That change

brings about sensory disturbances in our body which are not

unpleasant in moderation, which we call hunger, thirst and

fatigue. To relieve these three primitive states we seek food,

drink and rest; we DESIRE food, drink and rest. Desire then is

primitive, organic, arising mainly in the vegetative nervous

system, and it awakens mechanisms that bring us food, drink and

rest. A feeling which we call satisfaction results when the

changes in the viscera and tissues are readjusted or on the way

to readjustment. Here is the simplest paradigm for desire seeking

satisfaction, but it is on a plane rarely found in man, because

his life is too complicated for such formulae to work.

Food must be bought or produced, and this involves cooperation,

competition, self-denial, thrift, science, finance, invention. It

involves ethics, because though you are hungry you must not steal

food or give improper value for it. Moreover, though you are

hungry, you have developed tastes, manners, etc., and you cannot,

must not eat this or that (through religion); you mast eat with

certain implements), and would rather die than violate the

established standards in such matters.[1] Thus to the simple act

of eating, to the satisfaction of a primitive desire set up by a

primitive need, there are any number of obstacles set up by the

complexities of our social existence. The sanction of these

obstacles, their power to influence us, rests in other desires

and purposes arising out of other “needs” of our nature. What are

those needs? They are inherent in what has been called the social

instincts, in that side of our nature which makes us yearn for

approval and swings us into conformity with a group. The group

organizes the activities of its individuals just as an individual

organizes his activities. The evolutionists explain this group

feeling as part of the equipment necessary for survival. Perhaps

this is an adequate account of the situation, but the strength of

the social instincts almost lead one to a more mystical

explanation, a sort of acceptance of the group as the unit and

the individual as an incomplete fragment.

[1] The Sepoy Rebellion had its roots in a food taboo, and

Mussulman, Hebrew and Roman Catholic place a religious value on

diet. Most of the complexities of existence are of our own

creation.

What is true of hunger is true of thirst and fatigue. Desires in

these directions have to accommodate themselves, in greater or

lesser degrees, to the complexities in which our social nature

and customs have involved us. It is true that desires upon which

the actual survival of the individual depend will finally break

through taboo and restriction if completely balked. That is, very

few people will actually starve to death, die of thirst or keep

awake indefinitely, despite any convention or taboo. Nevertheless

there are people who will resist these fundamental desires, as in

the case of MacSwiney, the Irish republican, and as in the case

of martyrs recorded in the history of all peoples. It may be that

in some of these we are dealing with a powerful inhibition of

appetite of the kind seen in anhedonia.

The elaboration of the sex impulses and desires into the purposes

of marriage, the repression into lifelong continence and

chastity, forms one of the most marvelous of chapters in the

psychological history of man. The desire for sex relationship of

the crude kind is very variable both in force, time of appearance

and reaction to discipline and unquestionably arises from the

changes in the sex organs. Both to enhance and repress it are

aims of the culture and custom of each group, and the lower

groups have given actual sexual intercourse a mystical

supernatural value that has at times and in various places raised

it into the basis of cults and religions. Repressed, hampered,

canalized, forbidden, the sex impulses have profoundly modified

clothes, art, religion, morals and philosophy. The sex customs of

any nation demonstrate the extreme plasticity of human desires

and the various twists, turns and customs that tradition declares

holy. There have been whole groups of people that have deemed any

sexual pleasure unholy, and the great religions still deem it

necessary for their leaders to be continent. And the absurdities

of modesty, a modified sex impulse, have made it immoral for a

woman to show her leg above the calf while in her street

clothes,[1] though she may wear a bathing suit without reproach.

[1] This is, of course, not quite so true in 1921 as in 1910.

Whatever a desire is basically, it tends quickly to organize

itself in character. It gathers to itself emotions, sentiments,

intelligence; it plans and it wills, it battles against other

desires. I say IT, as if the desire were an entity, a

personality, but what I mean is that the somatic and cerebral

activities of a desire become so organized as to operate as a

unit. A permanent excitability of these nervous centers as a unit

is engendered, and these are easily aroused either by a stimulus

from the body or from without. Thus the sex impulse arises

directly from tensions within the sex organs but is built up and

elaborated by approval of and admiration for beauty, strength and

intelligence, by the desire for possession and mastery, by

competitive feeling, until it may become drawn out into the

elaborate purpose of marriage or the family.

What is the ego that desires and plans? I do not know, but if it

is in any part a metaphysical entity of permanent nature in so

far it does not become the subject matter of this book. For as a

metaphysical entity it is uncontrollable, and the object of

science is to discover and utilize the controllable elements of

the world. I may point out that even those philosophers and

theologians to whom the ego is an entity of supernatural origin

deny their own standpoint every time they seek to convince,

persuade or force the ego of some one to a new belief or new line

of action; deny it every time they say, “I am tired and I shall

rest; then I shall think better and can plan better.” Such a

philosopher says in essence, “I have an entity within me totally

and incommensurably different from my body,” and then he goes on

to prove that this entity operates better when the body is rested

and fed than otherwise!

For us the ego is a built-up structure and has its evolution from

the diffuse state of early infancy to the intense, well-defined

state of maturity; it is elaborated by a process that is in part

due to the environment, in part to the inherent structure of man.

We may postulate a continuous excitement of nerve centers as its

basis, and this excitement cognizes other excitement in some

mysterious manner, but no more mysterious than life, instinct or

intelligence are. These excitements struggle for the possession

of an outlet in action, and this is what we call competing

desires, struggle against temptation, etc.

Sometimes one desire is identified with the ego as part of

itself, sometimes the desire is contrasted with the ego and we

say, “I struggled with the desire but it overcame me.” Common

language plainly shows the plurality of the personality, even

though the man on the street thinks of himself as a united “I,”

even an invisible “I.”

One of the fundamental desires, nay the fundamental desire, is

the expansion of the self, i. e., increased self-esteem. When the

infant sprawls in his basket after his arrival in this world, it

is doubtful if he has a “me” which he separates from the

“non-me.” Yet that same infant, a few years later, and through

the rest of his life, believes that in his personality resides

something immortal, and has as his prime pleasure the feeling of

worth and growth of that personality, and as his worst hurt the

feeling of decay and inferiority of that personality.

Let us watch that infant as it sprawls in its little bed, the

darling of a pair of worshiping parents. In that relationship the

child is no solitary individual; society is there already,

watching him, nourishing and teaching him. Already he is in the,

hands of his group who, though seeking his happiness, are

nevertheless determined that he shall obtain it their way. And

from then to the end of his life that group will in large measure

offer him the criteria of values, and his self-esteem will, in

the majority of cases, rest upon his idea of their esteem of him.

In the brooding mother, in the tender father lie dormant all the

judgments of the time on the conduct and guiding motives of the

little one.

The baby throws his arms about, kicks his legs, rolls his eyes.

In these movements arising from internal activities which, we can

only state, relate to vascular distribution, neuronic relations,

visceral and endocrinic activities, is the germ of the impulse to

activity which it is the function of society and the individual

himself to shape into organized useful work. Thus is manifested a

native, inherent, potentiality, which we may call the energy of

the baby, the energy of man, a something which the environment

shapes, but which is created in the laboratory of the individual.

The father and mother are delighted with the fine vigorous

movements of the child, and there is in that delight the approval

that society always gives or tends to give to manifestations of

power. We tend involuntarily to admire strength, even though

misdirected. The strong man always has followers though he be a

villain, and in fact the history of man is to a large extent

based on the fact that the strong man evokes enthusiasm and

obedience.

This impulse to activity is an unrest, and its satisfaction lies

in movement; in other words there is a pleasure or a relief in

mere activity. The need of discharging energy, the desire to do

so, the pleasure and satisfaction in so doing constitute a

cornerstone of the foundation of life and character. This desire

for activity, as we shall call it henceforth, is behind work and

play; it fluctuates with health and disease, with youth and old

age; it becomes harnessed to purpose, it is called into being by

motives or inhibited by conflict and indecision and its

organization is the task of society. Men differ in regard to the

desire for activity, with a range from the inert whose energy is

low to the dynamic types that are ever busy and ever seeking more

to do.

The child’s first movements are aimless, but soon the impressions

it receives by striking hands and feet against soft and hard

things bring about a dim knowledge of the boundaries of itself,

and the kinesthetic impulses from joints and muscles help this

knowledge. The outside world commences to separate itself from

the “me,” though both are vague and shadowy. Soon it learns that

one part of the outside world is able to satisfy its hunger, to

supply a need, and it commences to recognize the existence of

benevolent outside agencies; and it also learns little by little

that its instinctive cries bring these agencies to it. I do not

mean that the baby has any internal language corresponding to the

idea of outside agency, benevolence, etc., but it gets to know

that its cries are potent, that a breast brings relief and

satisfaction. At first it cries, the breast comes, there is

relief and satisfaction, and it makes no connection or no

connection is made between these events of outer and inner

origin. But the connection is finally made,—desire becomes

definitely articulate in the cry of