146 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY 



automatic visceral reactions, these curiosities evoke the repressive 

 imperatives of the associates, the mother and father es- 

 pecially. These repressive influences may be and often are the 

 effects of ignorance, prudishness, vulgarity, or homosexu- 

 ality, or the sex perversions that are known as sadism and 

 masochism. But by the necessities of the case, the sex wishes 

 become overlayed by reflexes associated with the mother and 

 father and close associates as love. This might be termed the 

 oligocene. As the circle of acquaintance widens, other loved 

 objects usher in the miocene phases of the development. With 

 these become interspersed various hates and detestations, deliber- 

 ately cultivated and accepted by the consciousness. So we have 

 a cross-slice of the personality in the first five or six years of 

 childhood. 



But now, with the onset of the second dentition, a subtle 

 change begins in the endocrine equations of the body. The 

 second dentition itself is an expression of a certain internal secre- 

 tion wave passing through the cells; an increase of action of some 

 hormones, a decrease of others. And a consciousness of physical 

 sexuality appears, while the outlines of character, hitherto mere 

 tracings, become firmer, heavier, quasi-indelible lines. That 

 there is some activity on the part of the internal secretions of 

 the sex glands, the ovaries and testes, can be demonstrated by 

 accurately charting the behaviour of a boy or girl after this 

 time. It will be found that there is a cyclic variation of health 

 and conduct, more or less marked of course in each case. A cold 

 may appear periodically at the end of each month, an increase of 

 irritability and waywardness may be observed, or, on the con- 

 trary, a decrease of the regular restless playfulness. The ghost 

 of sex begins to haunt the sceneQ 



Now all kinds of possibilities of conflict emerge. The child is 

 still a bisexual, growing into a mixed sex type, depending upon 

 the nature and amount of its internal secretions. The influencing 

 adult of the family, the most important of the external factors 

 encouraging or depressing the tendencies of the child, possesses 

 a fairly fixed ideal of monosexuality which he or she, generally 

 quite unconsciously, seeks to impose upon it. A doting feminine 

 mother will make her son as much as possible like her husband: if 

 she dislikes her husband, as much as possible like her father or 

 grandfather. A masculinized mother will tend to make a sex ob- 

 ject out of the son, however, which means his feminization. But, 

 on the internal secretion side, the boy may be definitely masculine. 



