The Glands Regulating Personality - Louis Berman, M.D.
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The determination of endocrine type and tendencies, the prediction of
the future personality, during childhood is one of the developments
confidently to be looked for, as our knowledge of the internal
secretions will grow. The possibilities of control loom as one of the
most magnificent promises of science. Yet the high expectations for
tomorrow should not depress our respect for the achievements of today.
In the case of the pituitary, for instance, a hint as to the method
of approach is furnished by the tabulation of the traits of pituitary
dominance and pituitary inferiority in children.
Pituitary sufficient and dominant:
Large, spare, bony frame
Eyes wide apart
Broad face
Teeth, broad, large, unspaced
Square, protruding chin and jaws
Large feet and hands
Early hair growth on body
Thick skin, large sex organs
Aggressive, precocious, calculating, self-contained
Pituitary inferior:
Small, sometimes delicate skeleton
Rather adipose, weak muscles
Upper jaw prognathous
Dry, flabby skin
Small hands and feet
Abnormal desire for sweets
Subnormal temperature, blood pressure and pulse
Poor control of lower vegetative functions
Mentally sluggish, dull, apathetic, backward
Loses self-control quickly, cries easily, discouraged promptly,
psychic stamina insufficient
The pituitary personality in childhood produced by limitation of the
size of the gland, because its bony box is completely or partially
closed, presents typical hall-marks. He supplies the second and third
offenders in the juvenile courts, the delinquents and pathological
liars of childhood, the incorrigibles, the precocious hoboes, mental
and moral deficients and defectives, the prey of the sentimental
complexes of elderly virgins and helpful futility all around. Not
utilitarianism or futilitarianism is needed, but pituitarianism.
The feeding of pituitary gland in large enough quantities to these
unfortunates may do more than ten charity organizations, with the most
patrician board of directors complete.
THE THYROID PERSONALITIES
The accessibility of the thyroid gland in the neck, the ease of
surgical approach, the definite effects following its removal, and
then the miraculous marvels of the feeding of thyroid have rendered it
the centre of attack by the largest army of endocrine investigators.
As a result we know more about the thyroid in childhood, adolescence,
adult life and old age than about the other glands.
In childhood, the subthyroid or thyroid deficient, the cretinoid type,
the type resembling the cretin, is fairly common. The peasant's face,
with the broad nose and the tough skin, coarse straight hair, the
undergrowth, physical and mental, a persistent babyishness and a
retardation of self-control development, make up the picture. He needs
an excess of sleep, sleeps heavily, needs sleep during the day,
when awakened in the morning still feels tired, and rather dull and
restless, dresses slowly, has to be coaxed or forced to dress, gets to
school late nearly every morning, does badly at the school, reaction
time, learning time and remembering time being prolonged as compared
with the average, and is lazy at home lessons. He perspires little,
even after exertion, yet fatigues easily, is subject to frequent
colds, adenoids, tonsillitis, and acquires every disease of childhood
that happens along.
Adolescence, the coming of menstruation, the first blooming of youth
is delayed in the subthyroid. The secondary sex traits as they develop
tend to be incomplete and to mimic those of the opposite sex. Yet in
adolescence too there may be a sudden change and reversal of the whole
process, a jump from the subthyroid to the hyperthyroid state. So a
girl who has been dull and lackadaisical, with no complexion and every
prospect of evolution into a wall flower, may be transformed into a
bright-eyed woman, generally nervous and restless, high colored, and
possessed of a craving for continual activity and excitement. Skin,
hair and teeth become of the thyroid dominant type. The heart
palpitates under the slightest stimulus, she perspires almost
annoyingly, heat and emotion are prostrating. If such a
transfiguration does not occur, the effect of the reconstructions
of puberty is to create a person with about the following
characteristics.
1. Height below the average
2. Tendency to obesity (toward middle age)
3. Complexion sallow
4. Hair dry--hair line high
5. Eyebrows scanty, either as a whole or in outer half
6. Eyeballs deep-set, lack lustre, in narrowed slits
7. Teeth irregular, become carious early
8. Extremities cold and bluish
9. Circulation poor. Subject to chilblains
Intellectually, these people vary enormously, depending upon which of
the other glands will enlarge to compensate for the deficiency of the
thyroid. If the growth of the skull has left a roomy sella turcica
for the pituitary to grow in, the intellect may be normal or even
superior, though energy is below par. If this is not possible and
the adrenals have to predominate, a lower, more animal and less
self-controlled type of mentality is produced.
In direct contrast to the subthyroid types is he who originally was
hyperthyroid. During childhood he is quite healthy, thin, but striking
robust, active, energetic, generally fair-complexioned with nose
straight and high bridged, eyes rather "poppy," teeth excellent,
regular, firm, white with a pearly translucent enamel. These children
are always on the go, never get tired, require little sleep. Seldom
will one of the classical children's diseases strike them, measles
perhaps, but no other. Adolescence for them, however, is more apt to
be stormy and episodic, adjustment to the new world of people and
things is much more difficult, wanderlust is acute. All an expression
of cells keyed up, charged with energy that must flow somewhere or
explode.
The ruddy live-wire, recognized everywhere as bubbling with vitality,
the life of any group, the magnetic personality may, however, be
shocked by some seismic event like the death of a father or mother,
or the ruin of some cherished ambition. A break in the balance of the
other glands follows quickly and disablement and invalidism, which may
cure itself after some years, remain stationary, or descend to the
worst forms of thyroid deficiency.
During maturity, the type are characterized usually by a lean body,
or tendency rapidly to become thin under stress. They have clean cut
features and thick hair, often wavy or curly, thick long eyebrows,
large, frank, brilliant, keen eyes, regular and well developed teeth
and mouth. Sexually they are well differentiated and susceptible.
Noticeable emotivity, a rapidity of perception and volition,
impulsiveness, and a tendency to explosive crises of expression are
the distinctive psychic traits. A restless, inexhaustible energy makes
them perpetual doers and workers, who get up early in the morning,
flit about all day, retire late, and frequently suffer from insomnia,
planning in bed what they are to do next day.
Certain types of thyroid excess associated with the thymus dominant
next to be described are peculiarly susceptible to emotional
instability. They are subject to brain storms, outbreaks of furious
rage, sometimes associated with a state of semi-consciousness. To
emphasize the analogy to epilepsy, their attacks have been called
psycholepsy. Among the Italians especially they were watched and
reported during the War, when the explosive fits were seen to take the
form of irresponsible acts of insubordination or violence.
THE THYMO-CENTRIC PERSONALITIES
During the first period of childhood, up to five, six or seven, or
more accurately, up to the point at which the permanent teeth begin
to appear, every child may be said to be a thymus-dominated organism,
because the thymus, holding the other endocrines in check, controls
its life. That is why up to the third and fourth years at any rate,
most children seem alike. Closer observation, however, reveals points
of differentiation and signs of the coming potencies of the other
hormones. During the second period, up to puberty, these marks of the
deeper underlying forces of the personality make themselves more
and more felt. The thymus, like a brake that is becoming worn out,
continues to function in a progressively weaker fashion. Until with
the arrival of the gonadal (ovaries' or testes') internal secretion,
its influence is wiped out.
There is a definite degree of thymus activity during everyone's
childhood, unless by its premature involution, precocity displaces
juvenility. Yet even during childhood, there are certain individuals
with excessive thymus action, foreshadowing a continued thymus
predominance throughout life. The "angel child" is the type: regularly
proportioned and perfectly made, like a fine piece of sculpture, with
delicately chiselled features, transparent skin changing color
easily, long silky hair, with an exceptional grace of movement and an
alertness of mind. They seem the embodiment of beauty, but somehow
unfit for the coarse conflicts of life. In English literature several
characters are recognizable as portraits of the type, notably Paul
Dombey, whose nurse recognized that he was not for this world. They
may look the picture of health, but they are more liable than any
other children to be eliminated by tuberculosis, meningitis or even
one of the common diseases of childhood.
It is after puberty, when the thymus should shrink and pass out of
the endocrine concert as a power, that the more complex reactions of
personality emerge when the thymus persists and refuses to or cannot
retire. The persistent thymus always then throws its shadow over the
entire personality. To what extent that shadow spreads depends upon
the strength of the other glands of internal secretion, their ability
to compensate or to stay inhibited. Whether or not the pituitary will
be able to enlarge in its bony cradle seems to be the most important
factor determining these variations. If there is space for it to grow,
at any rate normally, the individual may pass for normal, although
he will have difficulties throughout life he may never understand,
particularly in sexual directions. If the pituitary is limited.
partially or completely, the thymus predominance is more prominent
and fixed, and the abnormalities become obvious, both of person and
conduct.
The anatomic architecture of the latter thymo-centric personality is
fairly typical. The reversion in type of the reproductive organs, the
slender waist, the gracefully formed body, the rounded limbs, the long
chest and the feminine pelvis strike one at the first glance. The
texture of the skin is smooth as a baby's, and sometimes velvety to
the touch. Its color may be an opaque white, or faintly creamy, or
there may be an effect of a filmy sheen over a florid complexion.
Little or no hair on the face contributes to the general feminine
aspect in the more extreme types. They are often double jointed
somewhere, flat footed, knock-kneed.
In women, the external manifestations of a thymo-centric personality
may be limited to thinness and delicacy of the skin, narrow waist,
rather poorly developed breasts, arched thighs and scanty hair,
with scanty and delayed menstruation. Or there may be obesity, with
juvenility, if there is a repression of the pituitary secretion for
one reason or other.
In their reactions to the problems, physical and psychic, of everyday
life, the thymo-centrics are distinctly at a disadvantage. In the
first place, muscular strain, stress or shock is dangerous to them
because they have a small heart, and remarkably fragile blood vessels,
which renders their circulation incapable of responding to an
emergency, or at least definitely handicapped. In infancy, they may
die suddenly because of this, either for no ascertainable cause at
all, or because of some slight excitement like that attending some
slight operation, a fall, or a mild illness. During the run-about
epoch they are unable to cope with the necessities of an active
child's existence in playing with other children. Puberty and
adolescence are specially perilous to them for they may endeavour to
compensate for an inner feeling of physical inferiority by going
in strenuously for athletics and sports, and so risking a sudden
hemorrhage in the brain, producible by the tearing of a blood vessel,
as if constructed of defective rubber. Reports published in the
newspapers from time to time of children or young men instantly
killed by a tap on the jaw in a boxing contest, or some other trivial
injuries are doubtless samples of such reactions in thymo-centric
people.
As an illustration of the conduct aberrations of the thymo-centric
personality during adult life, the following extracts from a newspaper
report of a suicide are worth quoting.
"An autopsy made yesterday by Dr. Benjamin Schwartz, first assistant
to Dr. Charles Norris, Chief Medical Examiner, removed any mystery
that surrounded the death on Saturday night by pistol bullets of Dr.
Jose A. Arenas and the wounding of 'Miss Ruth Jackson' and Ignatio
Marti.
"Dr. Schwartz said that his post-mortem examination had convinced him
beyond doubt that the dead physician-dentist had killed himself after
he had tried to take the life of the young woman with whom he had
lived and of the youth who was his successful rival.
"'Besides that,' Dr. Schwartz said, 'my report to the police will
include a statement from the young woman to me that she always had
understood that Dr. Arenas had killed some one in Havana, Cuba, before
he came to New York.
"The autopsy left no doubt that Dr. Arenas was a case of status
lymphaticus (thymus-centered personality). I made a most complete
report because of the scientific value of the autopsy.
"'This confirmed my first deductions after seeing the body on Saturday
night in the doctor's furnished room with alcove bedroom adjoining.
You will remember that as soon as I had seen him I revealed that he
was wearing corsets.
"'These cases of status lymphaticus are intensely interesting. In them
the blood vessels are very small, and the lymphatic clement is greatly
in excess. They die suddenly, from ruptures of blood vessels. Many
of them are degenerate. Most of them are criminals. All of them are
liable to commit crimes of passion. Among them are found a large
percentage of drug addicts.
"'Miss Jackson, in the hospital, confirmed my scientific theory that
the dead man was not normal. She was perfectly frank in her statement.
She said she had left her husband, Elmer Schultz, an automobile
salesman in Toledo, several months ago and had come to New York. She
said she had lived with the doctor for some time.
"'About ten days ago she left him to live with Marti, a healthy,
normal lad. Before she went from the doctor's room she destroyed those
colored collars that were found beside the body. She cut them with
scissors. But that was after, so she states, the doctor had destroyed
stockings of hers by cutting them.
"'She told me in the hospital today, and with every appearance of
truth, that she had met Arenas in the subway at the station on
Seventy-second Street and Broadway on Friday night and that she had
asked him when she could come and get her clothes. He said, according
to her story:
"'Come to the house tomorrow afternoon--but come with Marti.'
"'She said that she and Marti went there according to this invitation:
that first the doctor showed her the cut collars and told her that she
would get her clothes back in perfect condition, and that the next
thing she knew she had been shot. She couldn't remember much after
that.
"'I believe that both she and Marti have told a perfectly
straightforward story and the autopsy is proof of it.
"'There were six bullets in the doctor's pistol to be accounted for.
One, in an undischarged cartridge, still was in the weapon. That
leaves five. One struck "Miss Jackson" in the right chest squarely in
front, and penetrated the flesh about one inch. If there had been any
power at all behind the missile it would have gone right through,
pierced a lung, caused a hemorrhage, and the chances are that "Miss
Jackson" would have died. That leaves four bullets.
"'One more struck Marti in the left upper chest. It passed through the
pocket there, and the skirt, grazed the skin, and then bounced over to
the right hand side in front. It was a most amazing case of a bounding
bullet. I was particularly careful about examining its course because
at first I was suspicious of the stories that were told by Marti and
"Miss Jackson." Now I know they are true.
"'But anyone might have been puzzled by the queer antics of the
missiles from the pistol of South American manufacture that the doctor
used. If it had had any penetrating power--or rather if the bullets
that it sent out, had any real kick behind them--the chances are that
both "Miss Jackson" and Marti would be dead now.
"'Two bullets, it will be remembered, entered the doctor's left chest,
quite close together. Well, one nicked the heart and lodged between
the lung and the heart. It didn't cause any more damage than a
mosquito bite.
"'The second bullet went through the soft flesh of the chest, but it
struck a rib and bounded back out again. That bullet was picked up
beside the body.
"'After these vain attempts to send a bullet through his body to a
fatal spot, the doctor apparently shifted the weapon to his right
temple and pulled the trigger for the fifth time. Then the fifth
bullet, driven likewise by a very weak charge of powder, pierced the
skull at a point where it was thin and tore into his brain. Its lack
of power, however, is shown by the fact that I found it this morning
in the brain tissue.
"'In all my experience I have never seen anything so queer. It sounds
almost like a dream--a man trying to kill with a pistol that shoots
bullets that either stop after striking soft flesh or bound out of the
body into which they are fired. But it is true; I have had all of the
bullets in my hand.
"'They are all accounted for. They are all of the same sort. There
is no reason to doubt that they are all from the same weapon, an
instrument without manufacturer's name, and of a design that the
police say is unfamiliar to them.
"'The dead doctor was a distinct type, and his tragic end was one that
should not surprise anyone who has any knowledge of such cases. The
courtroom was thronged with friends of the dead physician-dentist, who
not only is reported to be of a wealthy family of Bogota, Colombia,
but generally is credited with many charitable works in the uptown
Spanish colony here.'"
The distinct type to which the first assistant to the chief medical
examiner of the city referred is the thymo-centric personality
(status lymphaticus is another technical name for it), we have been
considering. The persistence of the thymus after adolescence makes for
an arrest of masculinization or feminization, the end-point arrived
at by the processes of puberty. That is, a partial castration takes
place. Now, as the experiments of Steinach upon the transplantation of
ovaries into males deprived of their testes and of testes into females
deprived of their ovaries have demonstrated, the removal of the
interstitial cells of one sex assists enormously in arousing the
opposite sex traits that have been latent, homosexuality. In a
thymo-centric, tendencies to homosexuality and masochism appear.
And so all the remarkable after-effects of those processes that the
Freudians have so lovingly traced: the father complex in men, the
inferiority complex, and the feminoid complex in general.
The feminoid complex introduces again the character of the functional
hermaphrodite, the mixed male-female. The sex index will certainly
come in time as a measurement of sexuality. But until then some more
available classification of sex tendency is necessary. Including
sex intergrades, one may divide sex types into six classes:
male, _male_-female, male-_female_, female, _female_-male, and
female-_male_. The sex intergrades, the four hyphenated classes,
nearly all have some degree of persistent thymus. If its influence is
partial, the emphasis is before the hyphen, upon the ostensible. If
its influence is unchecked, the emphasis is after the hyphen upon the
apparently latent sex. The sex difficulties produced in these people
by the conflict between their conscious sex and their subconscious
sex, the sex duel in the same mind, Siamese twins pulling in
diametrically opposite directions, are comprehensible only from the
viewpoint of the internal secretions.
Homosexuality, in one form or another, frank or concealed, haunts
the thymo-centric and spoils his life. The persistent thymus, like a
vindictive Electra, stalks the footsteps of its victim, its possessor.
He wishes to live, according to society's remorselessly rigid
expectations, for virility and happiness. But his thymus condition
forces him also to live for femininity and misery. That homosexuality
is not purely a psychic matter, of complexes and introversion, as
the newest psychology would have us believe, has been proved by
observations of its development in animals with internal secretion
disturbances, acquired or experimental. Thus it has been recorded that
a male dog showed a large goitrous swelling of the thyroid in the
neck, with a rapid heart, staring eyes, the loss of flesh and fat and
the nervousness of a hyperthyroid condition. Therewith he became an
absolute homosexual. Observations on the primates along the same
lines have been made. In goitrous hyperthyroids thymus persistence is
common.
What complicates his sex difficulties, and makes social adjustment
almost impossible or completely impossible, is that his pituitary
frequently cannot react to assist him. Often, as emphasized, it
is bound in by bone on all sides and neither ante-pituitary nor
post-pituitary can adequately secrete for his needs. So social
instinct and the capacity for inhibition, the ability to control
himself conceptually and somatically, are poor. As a child it is
difficult to train him along the lines of the elementary habits and
customs. He is into late childhood a bed-wetter, and steals and lies
quasi-unconsciously.
His mother realizes soon that he cannot be made to acquire a sense of
responsibility either for himself or for others. She becomes afraid to
let him go into the street because of his inability to take care of
himself, to acquire the right attitude toward street cars, autos,
strangers, in short, danger. She dreads to take him to places because
no sooner would they be out of them, than she would discover that he
had taken something that did not belong to him, quite as a matter of
course. He will fabricate stories with no motive, fabricate them
out of whole cloth for the pure fun of it. In a word, moral
irresponsibility is the keynote of the volitional traits of the
thymo-centric personality from childhood up.
With so much against them, physical inferiorities, mental defects,
moral lacks of every sort, it is little wonder that the thymo-centrics
die young. Infections hit them badly. The cases of flu that went off
in twenty-four hours belonged to the type. Fulminant meningitis,
pneumonia, diphtheria, scarlet fever, the varieties that are supposed
to kill in twenty-four to forty-eight hours because of the terrible
virulence of the attacking microbe, are probably so malignant only
because the organism attacked is a thymus subject.
In the alcohol and drug habitue wards of hospitals as well as in
medicolegal cases of degenerates, gunmen and other criminals,
the characteristic conformation and diagnostic stigmata of the
thymo-centric are often encountered. Life treats them badly.
Misunderstood and misjudged, they are the hopeless misfits of society.
If the pituitary and the thyroid can enlarge to compensate for their
defects, they may become the queer brilliants, the eccentric geniuses
of the arts and sciences. Should they not, mental deficiency and
delinquency are their portion. Epilepsy, then, is sometimes their mode
of escape from the terrors of an utterly foreign world. Should they
survive all other hazards, suicide may still be their most frequent
fate. A study of 122 cases of suicide by one observer showed that the
status lymphaticus was practically constant and often pronounced.
Certain of them, after a stormy life in the twenties, become adapted
to their surroundings in the thirties because the pituitary gradually
emerges and becomes dominant in their personalities. They are then
recessive thymocentrics. An increase in size, a broadening, together
with a greater mental tranquillity and stability, accompany the
adaptation. Historically, the thymocentrics who combined brilliancy
and instability played a great part as some of the famous adventurers
and restless experimentalists.
THE SEX GLAND CENTERED OR GONADO-CENTRIC PERSONALITIES
(The Eunuchoid Personality)