222 MAN --AN ADAPTIVE MECHANISM 



Since whatever dispels worry and uncertainty helps 

 to stop the body-wide activation which leads to lesions 

 as truly physical as a fracture, we can understand the 

 therapeutic significance of the admonitions to "take a 

 vacation"; "go abroad"; "go fishing"; to do any- 

 thing that will give a change of scene and occupation. 

 On this basis we can understand the desperate tendency 

 of certain sorely driven organisms to seek forgetfulness 

 in alcohol or narcotic drugs ; of others, driven beyond 

 the point of endurance, to settle their problems finally 

 by suicide. 



Realizing that sedentary occupations, like suppressed 

 emotion, produce an accumulation of harmful products 

 in the blood stream, we can understand the good feeling 

 that follows a lively game, a long walk or exercise in 

 the open air after working hours, since by these means 

 is accomplished the elimination, by oxidation or other- 

 wise, of much of the superimposed burden. We can 

 understand the overwhelming desire in time of anger 

 or worry to "walk it off" or to "talk it out" with some- 

 body. We can understand the value to the physician 

 of psychic analysis, since it enables him to get at the 

 root of his patient's trouble and to elicit a full confes- 

 sion, which, in itself, brings a measure of relief. 



The fact that the lesions wrought by suppressed 

 integrations to activity are largely the same for other 

 animals as for man, explains why the fettered wild 

 animal "pines away" and dies in captivity, or grows 

 "ugly" and "vicious"; and why, when released to 

 liberty and its natural environment, it quickly shows a 

 return to health and good nature. Considering this 

 tendency of the kinetic or dynamic organism to be 



