Some individuals fail to mature into independence and self-assurance. An 

 adult who has no suitable ways of getting what he wants among others some- 

 times continues to use baby tricks. There are men and women, for example, 

 who break into fits of anger or tantrums, who pound the table and shout, or 

 go into hysterics. They have learned no other ways of meeting problems, or 

 of adjusting themselves to other persons. 



In modern times we have learned that we can control events increasingly 

 as we come to know more about the nature of the world around us. We can 

 prevent certain diseases altogether. We can reduce many kinds of accidents 

 substantially. We can lengthen life. But our controls over pestilence and 

 plague and food -shortage and physical pain come only from the pooling of 

 experience and knowledge and our practical programs. 



In the same way we can reduce our individual anxieties and uncertainties 

 only by pooling our risks and our resources. We are unable to predict when or 

 where death or misfortune will strike. But we can estimate rather closely 

 how many deaths or accidents there will be in a given population for a year 

 or more in advance, or how many days of sickness there will be, or what the 

 chances are that a hailstorm will destroy a crop. Through our insurance sys- 

 tems, whether commercial, co-operative, or public, we divide the burden of 

 disaster. Insurance cannot prevent calamity or death. It can only give the 

 individual that comfortable feeling that he has the backing of the entire 

 group: whatever happens, the immediate needs will receive consideration. 

 The individual feels that he shares, that the odds are not against him. 



Inner Conflicts Did you ever see a child hold up the traffic at a party 

 because all the cookies or candies on a plate were equally attractive, so that he 

 could not decide which one to take? Each of us frequently meets a situation 

 in which action is blocked because we wish to turn to the right and to the 

 left at the same time. In extreme cases, a person with such divided purposes 

 becomes unable to carry on the ordinary affairs of life. The condition appears 

 to be not so much inherited or constitutional as acquired; or perhaps it is a 

 relic of a childish state that one has not outgrown. At any rate, similar states 

 have been cultivated in animals experimentally. 



The classic experiments were made in Pavlov's laboratory (see page 267). 

 A dog was "conditioned" to come toward a certain spot in the laboratory 

 when a circular disk was illuminated, by the consistent offering of food. He 

 was also conditioned to move in the opposite direction whenever an elliptical 

 disk was lit up, by the consistent application of an electric shock. After the 

 dog had thoroughly mastered these signals, the experimenter changed the 

 shape of the ellipse slightly every few days, making it a little shorter and a 

 little wider. The dog continued to go through his performances several times 

 a day, never making a mistake. One day, however, when he came into the 

 laboratory, he suddenly went mad: he jumped about, but made no headway 



670 



