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

determined intelligent and shrewd. But let us suppose he has a

son who is as strongly egoistic, is as determined, but lacks

intelligence and shrewdness. Not becoming successful, this person

ascribes his failure to others and develops ideas of persecution.

Again, a true poet is a person of keen sensibilities, but he must

possess at the same time imaginative intelligence and the power

of words. Let these be joined in proper proportions, and his

verse becomes ours and we hail him as a poet. But let him lack

the power of words, and though he sweat with a desire to write he

is a failure or a hack poet, making up by industry what he lacks

in beauty. Suppose there is a man deeply passionate, thrilled by

the beauty of women and desiring them with a fierce ardor, and

yet he has strong inhibitions, great purposes which hold him

steady. Then throughout life he seems calm, chaste and

controlled, and no one knows of the turmoil and battle within

him. We may suppose that old age[1] or a sickness lowers his

inhibiting qualities, and a startling change in conduct results,

one that we can scarcely believe and which we are inclined to

call a complete transformation of personality. In reality, a

disharmony has occurred, some trend has been released, and

conduct, which is a resultant, changes its direction.

[1] Sexual misdemeanor is not uncommon in old men who have

hitherto been of hallowed reputation.

Inhibition control, may develop later than it should, as I have

already mentioned. At adolescence sex desire comes suddenly into

play, but usually in one way or another there are checks upon its

effects already established. But often there is not, and the boy

or girl plunges into a sex life that brings them into violent

conflict with themselves and society. Despite their efforts the

non-ethical conduct continues; despite their tears and vows to

reform they are swept by “temptation” into difficulty. Then

suddenly or gradually, perhaps long after every one despairs of

them, the inhibition appears, and they settle down to a

controlled life. What has happened? We cannot say in anatomical

terms, but from a psychological standpoint the function of

inhibition, delayed in its appearance, finally comes on the

scene. We see this delay in other phases of character; there is

often delay in sex feeling, in the interest in work, in love of

the beautiful, in control of anger, etc. Take the last mentioned:

an irascible child grows into an irascible adolescent and even

into a similar adult, flaring up under the least provocation, to

the dismay and disgust of others and himself. “He can’t control

himself,” so say others, and so thinks he. He vows reform, but

nothing seems to help. Then like a miracle comes the longed-for

inhibition; anger is still there when his will is crossed or his

opinion scouted, but a firm hand is on it, and he maintains a

calm he had despaired of reaching.

Man is a bundle of disharmonies, as the great Eli Metchnikoff

pointed out, physically, psychologically and sociologically. When

these disharmonies are within average limits we do not notice

them; when they are greater in degree they bring about conduct

that at once claims attention. Sometimes a disharmony is merely

an excess development of some ability, in which case, if the

ability is socially valuable, we have the talented person or the

genius. This is often the case with the artistic abilities and

also with the physical powers. If the disharmony involve an

instinct, an emotion or certain phases of the intelligence, we

are brought face to face with the abnormal.

There is, of course, disharmony through ordinary defect as in

feeblemindedness, as in absence of some essential emotion or

instinct. These are hopeless situations and belong in the grim

field of psychopathology. Often what seems to be a defect is a

“sleeping” quality, and one that will awaken under appropriate

circumstance. Conspicuously, maternal love is of this nature. One

sees a girl who has no interest in children, considers them bores

and nuisances, who marries with the hope she will be childless,

and with the first baby becomes a passionately devoted mother,

even fiercely maternal.

In the following pages I shall sketch some prominent character

types. This has been done by such masters as Aristotle, Spinoza,

Kant, La Bruyere, Stewart, Ribot, Mill, etc., but with a

different purpose and starting point than mine.

Every great novelist is a professor of character depiction.

Witness Scrooge, Pecksniff, Mark Tapley, Pickwick, Sam Weller and

his father, created by Dickens; the four musketeers, especially

D’Artagnon, of Dumas; Amelia and Rebecca Sharp, George, and the

Major of Thackeray; Jane Austen’s heroines and George Eliot’s men

and women; the narrators in the famous Canterbury Inn, the

soldiers of Kipling, the Shylocks, Macbeths, Rosalinds and

Falstaffs of the greatest dramatist; the thousand and one

fictitious and yet real figures of literature.

The temperament studies by the psychologists and philosophers

have been too broad and too classical to be of practical value.

Sanguine and choleric temperament, the bilious, the nervous and

the phlegmatic, the quick and the slow, all these are broad

divisions, and no man really exemplifies them. What I propose to

do is less ambitious, but perhaps more practical. I shall take a

few of the qualities with which the previous pages have concerned

themselves and show how they work out in individuals mainly

sketched from life.

It will seem that perhaps a disproportionate number are

pathological, but I wish to insist that there is no sharp line

between the “normal” and “pathological” in character. In fact,

normality is an abstract conception, an ideal never reached or

seen, and each of us only approaches that ideal in greater or

lesser degree. Moreover, certain deviations from the normal are

useful, as the assemblage of qualities that make the genius or

the reformer of certain types. Others are not useful, or at least

not useful in the environment and age in which the deviated

person finds himself. Undoubtedly the abnormal have helped found

religions, for one who “hears” God and “sees” him as do many of

the insane, if intelligent and eloquent at the same time, easily

convinces others; but if such a person occurs in a group with

well-established belief and resistant to the new, the insane

hospital soon lodges the new apostle.

I shall not attempt to consider all the varied shades of harmony

and disharmony, the extraordinary variety of types. There are as

many varieties of persons as there are people, and the

mathematical possibilities exceed computation. Those depicted are

some of the outstanding types, in whom qualities and combinations

of qualities can easily be seen at work.

CHAPTER XVII. SOME CHARACTER TYPES

There is one kind of energy discharger that we may call the

hyperkinetic, controlled practical type. This group is

characterized by great and constant activity, well controlled by

purpose, with eagerness and enthusiasm manifested in each act but

not excessively.

1. A. is one of these people. In school he specialized in

athletics and was a fine all-round player in almost every sport.

When he left high school to go to work he at once entered

business. His employers soon found him to be a tireless worker,

steady and purposeful in everything. In addition to carrying on

his duties by day, A. studied nights, carefully choosing his

subjects so that they related directly to his business. Despite

the fact that his work was hard and his studies exacting, A. had

energy enough left to join social organizations and to take a

leading part in their affairs. He became quickly known as one of

those busy people who always are ready to take on more work.

Naturally this led to his becoming a leader, first in his social

relations and second in his business. Always practical in his

judgments and actions, A. fell in love with the daughter of a

rich family and married her, with the full approval of her

relatives, who were keen enough to see that his energy, power and

control were destined for success.

The leading traits that A. manifests hinge around his high energy

and control. He is honest and conventional, devoted to the ideals

of his group and admires learning, but he is not in any sense a

scholar. He is a poor speaker, in the ordinary sense of that

term, but curiously effective, nevertheless, because his earnest

energy and sturdy common sense win approval as “not a theorist.”

But mainly he wins because he is tireless in energy and

enthusiasm and yet has yoked these qualities to ordinary

purposes. The average man he meets understands him thoroughly,

sympathizes with him completely and accepts him as a leader after

his own heart.

So A. has become rich and respected. As times goes on, as he is

brought more and more into contact with large affairs outside of

business; as a trustee of hospitals and a director of charitable

organizations, he broadens out but not into an “unsafe” attitude.

He pities the unfortunate but is not truly sympathetic, in that

it rarely occurs to him that success and failure are relative,

that an accident might have shipwrecked his fortunes and that his

good qualities are as innate as his complexion. For this man

prides himself on his strong will and courage, whereas he merely

has within him a fine engine in whose construction he had no

part.

2. The hyperkinetic, controlled, impractical person. B. is, in

the fundamentals of energy and control, singularly like A., but

because of the nature of his interests and purposes their lives

have completely diverged so that no one would ordinarily

recognize the kinship in type. B. is and always has been a

worker, enthusiastic and enduring, and he has stuck to his last

with a fidelity that is remarkable. He is very likable in the

ordinary sense,—pleasant to look at, cheerful, ready to joke,

laugh or to help the other fellow. Nevertheless, he has only a

few friends and is a distinctly disappointed man at heart,

because his interests are in the ordinary sense, impractical.

B. early became interested in physiology. From the very start he

found in the workings of the human body a fascination that

concentrated his efforts. Poor, he worked hard enough to obtain

scholarships and fellowships in one university after another

until finally he became a Ph. D. Here was a great error from the

practical standpoint; for had he become an M. D., he would have

had a profession that offered an independent financial future.

But, in his zeal, he did not wish to take on the extended program

of the physician, and he saw clearly that he might become a

better scientist as a Ph. D. He became a teacher in one school

after another, did a good deal of research work, but has not been

fortunate enough to make any epoch-making discoveries. He is one

of those splendid, painstaking, energetic men found in every

university who turn out good pieces of work of which only a few

know anything, and from which in the course of time some genius

or lucky scientist culls a few facts upon which to build up a

great theory or a new doctrine. He married one of his own

students, a fine woman but unluckily not very strong, and so

there fell on him many a domestic duty that a thousand extra

dollars a year would have turned over to a maid.

Thus B. is an obscure but respected member of the faculty of a

small university. He teaches well, though he dislikes it, and he

is happy at the times when he works hard at some physiological

problem. He loves his family and has vowed that his son will be a

business man.