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

Absolute Good, or absolute right and wrong, with which a man must

align himself. I believe it is the strength of the ego feeling

which gives to some the vigor and unyieldingness of their

conscience. “I am right,” says such a person, “and the rest of

the world is wrong. God is with me, my conscience and future

times will agree,” thus appealing to the distant tribunal as

James pointed out. All the insane hospitals have their sufferers

for conscience’s sake, paranoid personalities whose egos have

expanded to infallibility and whose consciences are

correspondingly developed.

Conscience thus represents the power of the permanent purposes

and ideals of the individuals, and it wars on the less permanent

desires and impulses, because there is in memory the uneasiness

and anxiety that resulted from indulgence and the pain of the

feeling of inferiority that results when one is hiding a secret

weakness or undergoing reproof or punishment. This group of

permanent purposes, ideals and aspirations corresponds closely to

the censor of the Freudian concept and here is an example where a

new name successfully disguises an age-old thought.

In other words, conscience is social in its origin, developing

differently in different people according to their teaching,

intelligence, will, ego-feeling, instincts, etc. From the

standpoint of character analysis there are many types of people

in regard to conscience development.

In respect to the reactions to praise and blame the following

types are conspicuous:

1. A “weak” group in whom these act as apparently the sole

motives.

2. A group energized by love of praise.

3. A group energized mainly by fear of blame.

4. A type that scorns anything but material reward.

5. Another, that “takes advantage” of reward; likes praise but is

merely made conceited by it, hates blame but is merely made angry

by it, fears punishment and finds its main goad to good conduct

in this fear.

6. Then there are those in whom all these motives operate in

greater or lesser degree,—the so-called normal person. In

reality he has his special inclinations and dreads.

7. The majority of people are influenced mainly by the group with

which they have cast their positions, the blame of others being

relatively unimportant or arousing anger. For there is this great

difference between our reactions to praise and blame: that while

the praise of almost any one and for almost any quality is

welcome, the blame of only a few is taken “well,” and for the

rest there is anger, contempt or defiance. The influence of blame

varies with the respect, love and especially acknowledged

superiority of the blamer. The “boss” has a right to blame and so

has father or mother while we are children, but we resent

bitterly the blame of a fellow employee; “he has no right to

blame,” and we rebel against the blame of our parents when we

grow up. In fact, the war of the old and new generations starts

with the criticism of the elder folk and the resentment of the

younger folk.

It will be seen that reaction to praise and blame, etc., will

depend upon the irritability of ego feeling, the love of

superiority and the dislike for inferiority. This basic situation

we must defer discussing, but what is of importance is that the

primitive disciplinary weapons we have discussed never lose their

cardinal value and remain throughout life and in all societies

the prime modes of thought and conduct.

In similar fashion the conscience types might be depicted. From

the over-conscientious who rigidly hold themselves to an ideal,

who watch every departure from perfection with agony and

self-reproach, and who may either reach the highest level or

“break down” and become inefficient to the almost conscienceless

group, doing only what seems more profitable, are many

intermediate types merging one with the other.

There are people whose conscience is localized, as the

self-sacrificing father who is a pirate in business, or as the

policeman who holds rigidly to conscience in courage and loyalty

to his fellows, but who finds no internal reproach when he takes

a bribe or perjures himself about a criminal. What we call a code

is really a localized conscience, and there are many men whose

consciences do not permit seduction of the virgin but who are

quite easy in mind about an intrigue with a married woman. So,

too, you may be as wily as you please in business but find

cheating at cards base and unthinkable. Conscience in the

abstract may be a divine entity, but in the realities of everyday

life it is a medley of motives, purposes and teachings, varying

from the grotesque and mischief-working to the sublime and

splendid.

CHAPTER III. MEMORY AND HABIT

There are two qualities of nervous tissues (possibly of all

living tissue) that are basic in all nervous and mental

processes. They are dependent upon the modificability of nerve

cells and fibers by stimuli, e. g., a light flashing through the

pupil and passing along the optical tracts to the occipital

cortex produces changes which constitute the basis of visual

memory. Experience modifies nervous tissue in definite manner,

and SOMETHING remembers. Who remembers? Who is conscious? Believe

what you please about that, call it ego, soul, call it

consciousness dipped out of a cosmic consciousness; and I have no

quarrel with you.

Memory has its mechanics, in the association of ideas, which

preoccupied the early English psychologists and philosophers; it

is the basis of thought and also of action, and it is a prime

mystery. We know its pathology, we think that memories for speech

have loci in the brain, the so-called motor memories in Broca’s

area.[1] We know that a hemorrhage in these areas or in the

fibers passing from them, or a tumor pressing on them may destroy

or temporarily abolish these memories, so that a man may KNOW

what he wishes to say, understand speech and be unable to say it,

though he may write it (motor aphasia). In sensory aphasia the

defect is a loss of the capacity to understand spoken speech,

though the patient may be able to say what he himself wishes. (It

is fair to say that the definite location of these capacities in

definite areas has been challenged by Marie, Moutier and others,

but this denial does not deny the organic brain location of

speech memories; it merely affirms that they are scattered rather

than concentrated in one area.)

[1] Foot of the left or right third frontal convolutions,

auditory speech in the supramarginal, etc.

In its widest phases memory alters with the state of the brain.

In childhood impressibility is high, but until the age or four or

five the duration of impression is low, and likewise the power of

voluntary recall. In youth (eighteen-twenty) all these capacities

are perhaps at their highest. As time goes on impressibility

seems first of all to be lost, so that it becomes harder and

harder to learn new things, to remember new faces, new names.

The typical difficulty of middle age is to remember names,

because these have no real relationship or logical value and must

be arbitrarily remembered. The typical senile defect is the

dropping out of the recent memories, though the past may be

preserved in its entirety. With any disease of the brain,

temporary or permanent, amnesia or memory loss may and usually is

present (e. g., general paresis, tumor, cerebral

arteriosclerosis, etc.). As the result of Carbon monoxide

poisoning, as after accidental or attempted suicidal gas

inhalation, the memory, especially for the most recent events, is

impaired and the patient cannot remember the events as they

occur; he passes from moment to moment unconnected to the recent

past, though his remote past is clear. Since memory is the basis

of certainty, of the feeling of reality, these unfortunates are

afflicted with an uncertainty, a sense of unreality, that is

almost agonizing. As the effects of the poison wear off, which

even in favorable cases takes months, the impressibility returns

but never reaches normality again.

Unquestionably there is an inherent congenital difference in

memory capacity. There are people who are prodigies of memory as

there are those who are prodigies of physical strength,—and

without training. The IMPRESSIBILITY for memories can in no way

be increased except through the stimulation of interest and a

certain heightening of attention through emotion. For the man or

woman concerned with memory the first point of importance is to

find some value in the fact or thing to be learned. Before a

subject is broached to students the teacher should make clear its

practical and theoretic value to the students. Too often that is

the last thing done and it is only when the course is finished

that its practical meaning is stressed or even indicated. In

fact, throughout, teaching the value of the subject should

constantly be emphasized, if possible, by illustrations from

life. There are only a few who love knowledge for its own sake,

but there are many who become eager for learning when it is made

practical.

The number of associations given to a fact determines to a large

extent its permanence in memory and the power of recalling it. In

my own teaching I always instruct my students in the technique of

memorizing, as follows:

1. Listen attentively, making only as many notes as necessary to

recall the leading facts. The auditory memories are thus given

the first place.

2. Go home and read up the subject in your textbooks, again

making notes. Thus is added the visual associations.

3. Write out in brief form the substance of the lecture, deriving

your knowledge from both the lecture and the book. You thus add

another set of associations to your memories of the subject.

4. Teach the subject to or discuss it with a fellow student. By

this you vitalize the memories you have, you link them firmly

together, you lend to them the ardor of usefulness and of

victory. You are forced to realize where the gaps, the lacunae of

your knowledge come, and are made to fill them in.

Thus the best way to remember a fact is to find a use for it and

to link it to your interests and your purposes. Unrelated it has

no value; related it becomes in fact a part of you. After that

the mechanics of memory necessitate the making of as many

pathways to that fact as possible, and this means deliberately to

associate the fact by sound, by speech and by action. The

advertised schemes of memory training are simply association

schemes, old as the hills, and having value indeed, but too much

is claimed for them. A splendid memory is born, not made; but any

memory, except where disease has entered, can be improved by

training.

It is because lectures on the whole do not supply enough

associations or arouse enough interest that the lecture is the

poorest method of teaching or learning. Man’s mind sticks easily

to things, but with difficulty to words about things. To maintain

attention for an hour or so, while sitting, is a task, and there

develops a tendency either to a hypnoidal state in which the mind

follows uncritically, or to a restless uneasiness with wandering

mind and fatigue of body. A demonstration, on the other hand, a

laboratory experiment with short, personal instruction, a bodily

contact with the problem calls into play interest, enthusiasm,

curiosity, motor images, the use of the hands, and is THE method

of teaching.

There are at present excellent psychological methods of testing

out the memory capacity. Every one engaged in any responsible

work, or troubled about his memory, should be so tested. While

there are other qualities of mind of great