The Glands Regulating Personality - Louis Berman, M.D.
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Now the component currents are of different sizes and positions and
variable degrees of warmth. That is another way of saying that whether
or not a current is to become the center of the stream, or to approach
it, or whether it is to be hot, cold, or tepid, depends upon the
degree of activity of the various parts of the vegetative apparatus.
A convenient name for this is _tonus_. Tonus can be experimentally
watched and measured. Thus hunger, the most primitive of the
wish-feelings, has been found to be simultaneous with certain
characteristic contractions of the stomach. Stop those contractions,
and you stop the hunger. The contractions begin slowly and weakly,
and no awareness of them occurs in the mind. As they grow stronger,
consciousness becomes a sensation rather like an itch somewhere in
the upper abdomen, and accompanied sometimes by a sense of general
weakness. The vegetative activity going on as a current almost on the
outside of the stream of feeling has swelled and warmed, and so forced
itself, in a manner of speaking, into the center of the stream. Or if
you will, the rest of the stream has to arrange itself around it as
the center. A similar mechanism for the tonus of the other members
of the vegetative system, and how they determine consciousness and
behaviour is understandable. It has been shown that when the bladder
tone and the intestinal tone are of a definitely measurable size, one
has the desire to empty them. The same applies to the sex glands.
The pressure within a viscus is dependent upon the ratio between the
amount of contraction of the involuntary muscle in its walls, the
external pressure, and the quantity of its distending contents, the
internal pressure. The resultant quotient, the internal pressure
divided by the external pressure, measures the intravisceral pressure.
The primitive wish-feelings are the direct expressions of the various
intravisceral pressures, or tones. The primitive soul is an awareness
of the fused primitive wish-feelings of themselves as a whole, and of
the struggle between them for recognition, isolation, and, as we say,
satisfaction. This satisfaction consists in a degradation of the
highest intravisceral pressure to a point at which some other
intravisceral pressure becomes higher and therefore predominant.
PHYSICS OF THE WISH
Mind, consciousness, may then be portrayed as an ocean comprised of
mobile current layers, complexes built up around the awareness of
different intravisceral pressures. A shifting hierarchy of such
pressures form the points of focusing of consciousness that result in
conduct. Behaviour may be defined as the resultant of the organism's
pressure against the environment's counter pressure until there is
a sufficient reduction of the specifically exciting intravisceral
pressure. Just as water flows to its own level, so will conduct flow
to reduce intravisceral pressure to its own level. A physics of the
soul comes into prospect, in which a mathematical analysis will state
the process quantitatively in terms of some common unit of pressure.
Not only conduct, but also character, because it is past conduct
repeated, associated, and fixed, will be so statable. For
intravisceral tonus or pressure is not simply or only an acute or
passing affair. There is for it a persistent or average figure,
the so-called normal for it, below which or above which the acute
situation will bring it. _Character_ is a _matter then of standards
in the vegetative system_. Character, indeed, is an alloy of the
different standard intravisceral pressures of the organism, a fusion
created by the resistance or counter pressure of the obstacles in the
environment. Character, in short, is the grand intravisceral barometer
of a personality.
Thus the comfortable, healthy, happy, well-balanced, progressive,
constructive, virile personality is one in whom there is a
continuously harmonious reduction of the intravisceral pressures in
the environment called society. For in a gregarious creature, like
man, fellow beings are the most powerful determinants of negative and
positive vegetative pressures. Not so well rounded are other types
existing because of inferiorities or excesses of the standard visceral
tone. There is, for instance, the sexually cold type, comfortable by
creating for itself an anaphrodisiac environment composed of pressures
that can be fitted into its own. Or there may be an insufficiency of
standard pressure in the alimentary tract, and we have the ascetic,
mal-nourished, striving, uplifting type. Different types will be made
by the permutations and combinations of factors that determine the
intravisceral pressure and the environmental, i.e., social resistances
or counter pressures.
INTERNAL SECRETIONS DETERMINANTS OF VEGETATIVE PRESSURES
Now of all the different factors which determine the tones, that is to
say, the internal pressures, of the various parts of the vegetative
apparatus (including all structures not controlled by the will in
the term), the internal secretions or hormones are by far the most
important. This significance is conferred upon them because it is
by their activities primarily that these pressures are produced,
regulated, lowered and heightened; in short, controlled. We have seen
how the thyroid and adrenal hold the reins of the drive or check
systems in the vegetative apparatus. Together with the other ductless
glands, they decide the advance or halt, forward or retreat, tension
or relaxation, charge and discharge, of the visceral--involuntary
muscle--blood vessel combination which is at the core of life. Here
again they emerge as the directorate.
Carlson, the Chicago physiologist, who probably knows more about being
hungry than any other man on the planet, once demonstrated that the
injection of an ounce or two of the blood, which means the internal
secretion mixture, of a starving animal, into one not starving
increased the signs of hunger and the accompanying hunger contractions
of the stomach. There can be no doubt that hunger is the expression of
a certain specific concentration of internal secretion or secretions
in the blood. When the quantity, in the cycles of metabolism, becomes
sufficiently great, it stimulates the stomach to contract in a way
which augments the pressure within it to a point at which the feeling
of hungriness, and the wish to satisfy it, or to get rid of it,
becomes imperative, and the dominant of consciousness.
Without doubt the sexual cravings are likewise so determined. Sex
libido is an expression of a certain concentration, a definite amount
peculiar to the individual, of the substance manufactured by the
interstitial cells, circulating in the blood. It arouses its effects
probably by (1) increasing the amount of reproductive material in
the sex glands in a direct chemically stimulating effect upon the
germinative cells, and so raising the internal pressure within them,
(2) stimulating the involuntary muscles within the walls and the
canals of the sex glands, and so, by augmenting the tenseness of the
muscles, elevating the total intravisceral pressure, (3) by a direct
chemical and indirect nervous effect upon the brain, the muscles, the
heart, as well as the other glands of internal secretion stimulating
the organism as a whole. Though the isolation in pure form of the
substance or substances involved has never been scientifically
achieved, their inference is entirely justified. It is indeed the only
comprehensible mechanism conceivable that will fit all the known facts
about the matter. And even though the assertions of Brown-Sequard were
only the exaggerations of a semi-charlatan, it is certain that some
day in the near future the particular substance, that he claimed he
had discovered, will be handed about in bottles for the inspection of
the curious.
Besides thyroxin, adrenalin, and the libido-producing secretion of the
interstitial cells, the substance produced by the paired glandlets,
situated behind the thyroid, the parathyroids, have a profound
influence upon the vegetative apparatus and the vegetative nervous
system. These direct the lime exchanges within the cells of the
organisms, including the nerve cells. It has been shown that lime is,
relatively, a sedative to cells. It raises the threshold or strength
of stimulus necessary to evoke a reaction. Removing the parathyroids
means removing the lime barrier, for with their deficiency there is a
change in, and then an escape, from the blood, of the lime, by way
of the kidneys. The result is sometimes an enormous increase in the
excitability of all the cells, and especially of the vegetative
apparatus. What that means for the individual whose comfort depends
upon a stability of the intravisceral tones and pressures may be
readily imagined.
The pancreas likewise acts as a sedative to the vegetative apparatus.
In particular, this applies to the sugar mechanism in the liver under
the discipline of the check and drive organization. The adrenal and
the pancreas are the direct antagonists in the struggle for control of
sugar. Removal of the adrenals will cause a decrease in the amount
of sugar in the blood, while removal of the pancreas will produce an
increase. Excess of sugar in the blood may thus be concomitant with
changes of character considered incorrigible.
In different locales of the vegetative apparatus, as indeed of
the body in general, the directorate seems to be handed over to a
committee of control, generally made up of two members working
in opposing directions. Such a division of power in the general
directorate is analogous to the small holding corporations which
divide functions in, for example, the United States Steel Corporation.
The relative ratios of tonus in these smaller internal secretion
balances are of the utmost significance as causes of differences
in the vegetative apparatus, which are the basis of differences in
structure, power, and character between individuals.
THE GENERAL LAWS OF THE DIRECTORATE
Our knowledge of the glands of internal secretions as an interlocking
directorate presiding over all the functions of the organism is still
exceedingly meagre. As yet, we seem to be knocking at the portals
of the chemistry of the imponderable. There are holes in the bronze
doors, and we glimpse the unfathomable distances of unexplored
regions. But we do see something, and we do glimpse a beginning.
Already the outlines of a differential anatomy, and a different
physiology and a differential psychology, which will explain to us
the unique in the constitution, the temperament and character of
an individual, emerge. It is worth while, before proceeding to the
details, so valuable to a society which would become rational, to
summarize the general principles emerging, expressing the directing
powers of the ductless glands over the individual. _They may be
regarded as the present postulates of a new science of the whys and
wherefores separating and setting apart, as so recognizably distinct,
those peregrinating chemical mixtures: men and women_.
1. The life of every individual, in every stage, is dominated largely
by his glands of internal secretion. That is, they, as a complex
internal messenger and director system, control organ and function,
conduct and character. The orderliness of human life, in the
sequential march of its episodes, crises, successes and failures,
depends, to a large extent, upon their interactions with each other
and with the environment.
2. One or several of the glands possesses a controlling or superior
influence above that of the others in the physiology of the individual
and so becomes the central gland of his life, its dominant, indeed, so
far as it casts a deciding vote or veto, in its everyday existence and
incidents as well as in its high points, the climaxes and emergencies.
3. These glandular preponderances are at the basis of personality,
creating genius and dullard, weakling and giant, Cavalier and Puritan.
All human traits may be analyzed in terms of them because they are
expressions of them.
4. Specific types of personality may be directly associated with
particular glandular prominences, so that we have the thyroid-centered
types, the pituitary-centered types, the adrenal-centered types, etc.
These are the classic Three, the prototypes in their purity most
easily described and recognized.
5. Combinations of these, as well as of other glands--with joint
predominance--occur and indeed form the majority of populations. The
phenomena of varieties in species are thus explained.
6. Internal secretion traits are inherited, and variations in heredity
are essentially the structural representation of the resultant of a
parallelogram of forces exerted by each of the parental prepotent
glands. If they are of the same type, they may reinforce each other:
if not, inhibitions and compensations will come into play. Mendelian
laws may apply.
7. The process of evolution, as the play of natural selection upon
these variations, becomes comprehensible from a new standpoint.
8. Certain diseases, and disease tendencies, both acute and
constitutional, as well as traits of temperament and character, and
predetermined reactions to certain recurring situations in life,
are rooted in the glandular soils that compose the stuff of the
individual.
9. The subconscious, of which the vegetative apparatus is the physical
basis, leads back to the internal secretions for the profoundest
springs of its secrets. We shall see how and why.
10. Given the internal secretory composition, so to speak, of an
individual--his endocrine formula--and so his intravisceral pressures,
one may predict, within limits, his physical and psychic make-up,
the general lines of his life, diseases, tastes, idiosyncrasies and
habits.
11. Within limits, if the previous history of an individual is known,
his physical appearance may be approximately described, and his future
outlined.
12. Conversely, given the physical and psychic composition of an
individual, and his past history, one may deduce the internal
secretion type to which he belongs.
Examples:
A. One Thyroid-centered Type has
Bright eyes
Good clean teeth
Symmetrical features
Moist flushed skin
Temperamental attitude toward life
Tendency to heart, intestinal and nervous disease
B. One Pituitary-centered Type
Abnormally large or small size
Musical--acute sense of rhythm
Asymmetrical features
Tendency to cyclic or periodic diseases
C. One Adrenal-centered Type
Hairy
Dark
Masculinity marked
Tendency to diphtheria and hernia
These are some of the master types. They have their variants depending
upon the influences of the other glands, especially the interstitial
cells of the sex glands.
ANTE-NATAL DEVELOPMENT
In their ensemble, the glands of internal secretion wield a
determining influence upon the development of the individual from
his very inception. If his various powers may be conceived of as an
orchestra, they may be said to conduct it from the very beginning of
its movements, and to cease only with its termination. From the moment
when the spermatozoon penetrates and fecundates the ovum, the fate
of the future being is settled by their disposition. The seal of his
destiny is soaked with their substance.
POST-NATAL DEVELOPMENT
Every particle of protoplasm, every granule of the impregnated ovum
carries the representatives of the parental ductless glands. As a
consequence, they transmit chemically, with no figure of speech
involved, the peculiar familial, racial and national characters from
progenitors to offspring. They confer upon the child a number of the
properties commonly recognized as inherited. All those features which
distinguish Caucasian from Mongolian, Scandinavian from Italian,
Italian from Jew are determined by them.
In short, at every step of his life, in every relation and
association, in every expression of the inner forces that control his
being, the normal individual is influenced by his internal secretions.
Let us now see how.
CHAPTER V
HOW THE GLANDS INFLUENCE THE NORMAL BODY
The origin of the remarkable differences between individuals that
distinguish species, varieties and families, has long been one of the
chief puzzles of biology. It may indeed be called the leading puzzle,
which led Darwin on to the collection of the data that culminated in
the "Origin of Species." The why of the Unique is the fundamental
problem of those who would understand life.
An explanation is an attempt at a consistent and persistent, sometimes
an obstinate clarity of mind. A vast number of observations gathered
by laboratory experimentalists as well as by those naturalists of the
abnormal, physicians in active practice, prove that the construction
of the individual both during development before maturity, and
maintenance during maturity, his constitution, in short, is directed
by the endocrine glands. It is possible now to present an explanation
of the individuality of the individual.
To assert that variation is responsible for the individual, that it
is the mechanism which isolates him as a being like none other of his
fellows, not even his parents, brothers, and sisters, is merely to beg
the question. What is variation? The internal secretion theory of the
process offers, for the first time, an explanation that is coherent
and comprehensive, based upon concrete and detailed observations.
It provides an adequate interpretation of the numberless hereditary
gradations and transitions, blendings and mixtures. It suggests a
control of heredity in the future.
THE PURE TYPES
In the pure types, only one gland, either by being present in great
excess above the average, or by being pretty well below the average,
comes to exercise the dominating influence upon the traits of the
organism. As the strongest link in the chain, or as the weakest, it
rules. The others must accommodate themselves to it. Among them as
commanders of growth, development and normal function, it holds the
balance of power. In every emergency it stands out by its strength or
by its weakness. It thus creates its own type of man or woman, with
attributes and characteristics peculiar to itself. These pure types,
as we have seen, are mainly the thyroid, the pituitary, and the
adrenal-centered.
Each with the signs peculiar to it can be identified among the faces
that pass one in the street. And they differ so markedly among
themselves that they provide a new and accurate means of classifying
varieties among the races of the species: man. The thyroid type
differs as much from the adrenal type as does a greyhound from a
bull-dog. The greyhound has a certain size, form, character and
capacity. The bull-dog has similar qualities which are yet quite
different. Each is built for a particular career. Among human beings,
the pure thyroid type is easily distinguished from the pure adrenal
type, and both of these from the pure pituitary type. Each is stamped
with a significant figure, height, skin, hair, temperament, ambition,
social reactions and predisposition to certain diseases.
THE MIXED TYPES
Among the mixed types, the lines of distinction are less clear, and so
they are more difficult to classify. The mixed types may be said to
be hyphenated. In them, two or even three of the internal secretory
glands conflict for predominance. The combined action makes for a
resultant modification in the primary glandular markings and effects.
A hyphenated classification thus becomes inevitable. Especially is
this so if the two glands are mutually antagonistic and inhibitory.
A compromise effect is then necessitated. Or an individual may be
dominated by one gland at one period of his life and by another at a
later period. One of the glands, the thyroid, for example, will show,
by the traces it has left upon the earliest developing features, that
it was in control at the very earliest dates of his history, while
other signs will disclose the more recent influence of the adrenal
or of the pituitary. The combination becomes classifiable as the
thyroid-pituitary type, or as the thyroid-adrenal type.
That the external features as well as the chronic diseases of human
beings are controlled by some common factor has long been suspected.
Inquiries into morbid phenomena with a hereditary trend yielded
information that has paved the way for the internal secretion theory.
It has long been known that certain diseases effect only certain
individuals of a definite constitution. Apoplexy, diabetes,
arteriosclerosis, Bright's disease, are met with almost exclusively in
what the older clinicians talked about as the apopleptic type. On the
other hand, they said, anemias, tuberculosis, hemophilias, scrofulas
occurred more among the lymphatic type. But they had no idea whatever
of the true functional basis of the two different types. The truth
as we of today view it is that these two types represent different
textures of human beings, fabricated of different internal secretions.
They are really two different breeds of the species Homo Sapiens. The
materials being different, the color and feel of them is different,
and the resistance to wear and tear is different.
ENDOCRINE ANALYSIS
The modes of classification glimpsed at are certainly exceedingly
broad and sweeping. It is well enough to establish types and classes.
But beneath them are sheltered the infinite possibilities of
permutations and combinations, which explain the countless variety
and complexity of form and function. Every individual born among the
vertebrates, for example, must have a certain definite amount and
percentage of pituitary gland, anterior and posterior, pineal,
thyroid, parathyroid, thymus, adrenal, pancreas, interstitial and
so on. Now if, to state it in terms of percentages, for the sake of
argument, the pituitary is 25, the pineal 10, the thyroid 36, the
parathyroids 15, the thymus 29, the adrenals 60, the pancreas 49, the
interstitials 72 (the gland when acting maximally to be graded as
100), we see at once how different such an individual must be from one
who has, say, pituitary 84, pineal 39, thyroid 26, parathyroid 42,
adrenals 96, pancreas 22 and interstitials 89. One obtains at once
from the contrasts of such figures some idea of the possibilities. As
each point plus or minus must count to produce some difference in the
individual, the results are manifest. Varying within the numerical
limits imposed by genus, species, variety and family (which limits
are probably responsible for the persistence of the particular genus,
species, variety, or family) the individual becomes an individual
because of the relative values of the percentages in his blood and
tissues of these different internal secretions. We thus begin to gain
an insight into the patterns according to which men, women and animals
are woven.
We are, as yet, far from an exact endocrine analysis of the
individual. But we know that the endocrines rule over growth and
nutrition, a vast dominion which incorporates every organ and every
tissue. By enhancing or retarding the nutritional changes, the growth
of the organ or tissue is favored or restricted. The size and shape of
an individual, as a whole, as well as of the specialized cell masses
composing him, as hands and feet, the nose and ears, and so on, are
therefore controlled by them. Whether an organism is to be tall or
short, lean or corpulent, graceful or awkward, is decided by their
interactions. These, like human covenants, vary with the different
reactions of the parties to the contract. And so a great deal depends
upon whether they work harmoniously or discordantly, and upon which
does the most work and which the least.
Undersecretion and Oversecretion
It is when a gland, either in the course of development, or because of
the influence of starvation, shock, injury, poisoning or infection,
begins to undersecrete or oversecrete that its effects upon growth and
nutrition become grossly manifest. A veritable transfiguration of the
individual may occur, the black magic of which may perplex him for
a lifetime. A man, made eunuchoid by an accident or by mumps, will
observe in himself astonishing changes in his constitutional make-up,
mentality and sexuality. He would be more astounded to learn that
beneath the appearances, the changes, so alarming him, there are
profound alterations in the rate at which he is taking in oxygen,
burning up sugar, accumulating carbon dioxide and excreting waste
byproducts through the kidneys, which are responsible for them.
The differences between the normal and abnormal are only a matter of
degree. And so, to be sure, are differences between types. But it is
hard to realize that the striking distinctions between the thyroid
type and the pituitary, comparable, as said, to the differences
between a greyhound and a bull-dog, are dependent solely upon
quantitative variations in the general and local speeds of metabolism,
among the cells.
DIVISION OF LABOR