To most men who are engaged in intellectual work, an autumn holiday has become a matter of necessity, and is not to be regarded as a mere luxury. During eleven months of the year many who are engaged in brain-work systematically overtax themselves, trusting to the month's holiday to bring them again into proper working order. Formerly this was not the case. Men seemed to be able to go on, not only month after month, but year after year, without any vacation at all. The circumstances under which they lived were different from those which exist now. The very means which facilitate our holidays-the network of railways which puts us into complete and easy communication with any part of the Continent of Europe, or the quick ocean-steamers which enable us to enjoy half of a six weeks' holiday on the other side of the Atlantic, as well as the telegraphic communications which will warn us in a moment, even at the most distant point of our travels, of any urgent necessity for an immediate return-all these are the very means which increase our labor during the greater part of the year. We live at high pressure; letters and telegrams keep us constantly on the qui vive; express trains hurry us miles away from home in the morning and back again in the evening, and the pressure of competition is so great that few men can afford either to take their work easily or to modify the constant strain of it by breaks of a day or two at a time...
"It is a widely entertained belief, especially among reformers, philanthropists and many educators, that the force of environment is very great. This view may be the result of vague personal impressions, natural hope, kindliness of heart or perhaps at times professional and selfish interests. But do the facts of science support the expectant hope? Something is needed beyond dogmatic statements and wordy essays..."
This book deals with the laws of environmental influence.
I shall begin with remarks on physical training, as it is first in natural order, the physical life beginning before the mental. In these days, when there is a great rage for education, a certain top-heaviness has been produced among children, and the good homely helpmate of the mind-the body-is decidedly neglected. It is looked upon as is the dull but sensible wife of some clever man, whose duty is to get through all the home drudgery. She must be invited out with him, but is ignored in society, and is only tolerated on account of her brilliant husband. Now, I consider the body to be just as important as the mind, and that it ought to be treated with just as much respect, especially in these days of intense competition, when, given an equality of brains and education, it is the strong body that tells in the long run, and gives staying power...
This book deals with the Psychology of Genius and the relation between Genius and Insanity. "The psychological analysis of famous poets will show that the intellectual function is no whit less important a factor of poetic genius than fancy itself, although the latter is the one immediately employed in the act of composition. We have seen that creative fancy works with the material which former impressions of sense have left behind as their remains or residua. The more comprehensive the knowledge of the poet, therefore, and the more he is in condition to assimilate and compact the impressions the world conveys to him, and the sounder and truer his judgments of persons and situations, and the more methodical his thought and the better his memory, by so much the more will his fancy display luxuriance, and so much more various will be his creations.
Punning is well worthy of the psychologist's attention. I seriously mean that the analysis of puns is a simple way of beginning the methodical analysis of the process of normal and abnormal mentation. This, I think, I can easily show. Vision is stereoscopic: in a sense it is slightly diplopic, for there are two dissimilar images, although there seems to be but one external object, as we call it. To borrow the ophthalmological term, we can say that mentation is "stereoscopic"; always subject-object, although we often speak of it as single ("states of consciousness," etc.). Just as there is visual diplopia, so there is "mental diplopia," or, as it is commonly called, "double consciousness." Now I come back to punning. We all have "mental diplopia" when hearing the answer to a riddle which depends on a pun - "When is a little girl not a little girl?" Answer: "When she is a little horse (hoarse)." The feeble amusement we have in the slightly morbid mental state thus induced is from the incongruous elements of a "mental diplopia." The word "hoarse" rouses in us the idea of a little girl who has taken cold, and the same-sounding word "horse" rouses in us the idea of a well-known quadruped at the same time. We have the sensation of complete resemblance with the sense of vast difference. Here is, I submit, a caricature of the normal process of all mentation. The process of all thought is "stereoscopic" or "diplopic," being the tracing of relations of likeness and unlikeness. To call punning a slightly morbid mental state may be taken as a small joke, but I do not think it very extravagant to describe it so; it certainly is not if it be a caricature of normal mentation. A miser has been defined as an amateur pauper; the habitual drunkard is certainly an amateur lunatic; and in the same style of speaking we may say that-well, we will say that punning is playing at being foolish; it is only morbid in that slender sense...
Among all colors, the most poignantly emotional tone undoubtedly belongs to red... In all parts of the world red is symbolical of joyous emotion. Often, either alone or in association with yellow, occasionally with green, it is the fortunate or sacred color. In lauds so far apart as France and Madagascar scarlet garments were at one time the exclusive privilege of the royal family. A great many different colors are symbolical of mourning in various parts of the world; white, gray, yellow, brown, blue, violet, black can be so used, but, so far as I am aware, red never. Everywhere we find, again, that red pigments and dyes, and especially red ochre, are apparently the first to be used at the beginning of civilization, and that they usually continue to be preferred even after other colors are introduced. There is indeed one quarter of the globe where the allied color of yellow, which often elsewhere is the favorite after red, may be said to come first. In a region of which the Malay peninsula is the center and which includes a large part of China. Burmah and the lower coast of India, yellow is the sacred and preferred color, but this is the only large district which presents us with any exception to the general rule, among either higher or lower races, and since yellow falls into the same group as red, and belongs to a neighboring part of the spectrum, even this phenomenon can scarcely be said to clash seriously with the general uniformity...
"The feelings and aims with which Newton and Goethe respectively approached Nature were radically different, but they had an equal warrant in the constitution of man. As regards our tastes and tendencies, our pleasures and pains, physical and mental, our action and passion, our sorrows, sympathies, and joys, we are the heirs of all the ages that preceded us; and, of the human nature thus handed down, poetry is an element just as much as science. The emotions of man are older than his understanding, and the poet who brightens, purifies, and exalts these emotions, may claim a position in the world at least as high and as well-assured as that of the man of science. They minister to different but to equally permanent needs of human nature; and the incompleteness of which I complain consists in the endeavor on the part of either to exclude the other. There is no fear that the man of science can ever destroy the glory of the lilies of the field; there is no hope that the poet can ever successfully contend against our right to examine, in accordance with scientific method, the agent to which the lily owes its glory. There is no necessary encroachment of the one field upon the other. Nature embraces them both, and man, when he is complete, will exhibit as large a toleration."
The causation of all psychopathic diseases can be referred to one fundamental instinct, the instinct of fear with its concomitant manifestation, the feeling of anxiety. Fear is one of the most primitive instincts of animal life. What we find on examination of the psychogenesis of psychopathic cases, and especially of psychoneurotic cases, is the presence of the fear instinct which may become associated with some important interest of life. This interest may be physical in regard to the bodily functions, or the interest may be sexual, social, it may be one of ambition in life, or it may be of a general character referring to the loss of personality or even to the loss of mind...
Man possesses language, and makes large use of it, while, on the other hand, not even the most intelligent animals have the power of designating objects, or of translating sensations into articulate speech. In this respect the distinction between man and beast is very marked. It has at all times been cited as an evidence of man's exceptional place in Nature. The physiologist, however, discovers an articulate voice in many animals. Some mammals give utterance to vowels and consonants, but the result is only one syllable repeated without variation. Birds, better gifted than the mammals, can sing, and also possess a brief vocabulary: the goldfinch pronounces several words, which it repeats again and again in moments of pleasure. It has a word to express its ill-humor, as also a word for calling attention. In all this we see faint traces of language, notable witnesses of the unity of a phenomenon the gradations of which are wanting ...
Sound has three dimensions: pitch, loudness and timbre.
Pitch depends upon the frequency of vibrations. The more rapid the vibrations, the higher the pitch.
Loudness is determined by the amplitude of the vibrations. As their length or "excursion" increases, so does the sound gain in loudness. Conversely, the diminution in the size of vibrations causes corresponding decrease of loudness.
Differences in the shapes of vibrations cause differences in quality or timbre.
After voice has originated within the restricted limits of the larynx, its power, its carrying quality is much augmented by the sympathetic vibrations within the resonance cavities above the larynx. These include the pharynx, nasal passages, mouth, bone cavities of the face-in fact pretty much every hollow space in the head, every space that will resound in response to vibration and assist in multiplying it. Moreover, the cavities of resonance by their differences in shape in different individuals determine the timbre or quality of individual voices. The chest, although situated below the larynx, is a resonance cavity of voice. In fact, in a certain register its vibration is felt so distinctly that we speak of these notes as being sung in the "chest register," which, so far as it implies that the tones are produced in the chest, is a misnomer. The same is true of "head register," in which vibration is felt in the head where, however, it is needless to say, the "head tones" do not originate.
This book deals with the cause and cure of the nervous ills. As I carry on my work on nervous ills I become more and more convinced that a knowledge of Social Psychology is essential to a clear comprehension of nervous ills. The number of cases given in the volume will, I am sure, be of great help to the reader. For the concrete cases, carefully studied by me, bring out distinctly the mechanism, the factors, and the main principles of nervous ills... In nervous ills we find the same fundamental factors: the fear instinct and the Self-preservation which is the central aim of all life-activities.
