172 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY 



The play of an instinct may therefore be analyzed into four 

 processes. They succeed one another as sensation — endocrine 

 stimulation — tension within the vegetative system — conduct to 

 relieve tension. The dash is the symbol of a cause and effect 

 relationship. 



This equation for an instinct, based upon an analysis of the 

 working of the sex instinct, is the model for the analysis of all 

 instincts, and therefore of all the compounded instincts th 

 human behaviour may be resolved into. Conduct, that fascinator 

 of the common gossip and the great novelist alike, normal and 

 abnormal, social and asocial, in all their complexities, even unto 

 the third and fourth generation, the Freudian complexes, is gov- 

 erned therefore by the same laws that determine the movements 

 of the stars and the eruptions of volcanoes. The most interest- 

 ing factor in the instinct equation is the endocrine, because that 

 is the one that is most purely chemical. 



Endocrine Charging of Wishes 



It is the distinction of modern psychology that it has estab- 

 lished the wish (craving, need, desire, libido) as the moving force 

 in any psychic process. The position of the wish in psychology 

 as the force within and behind the instinct may be compared 

 to that of energy in physics, when it was elevated to a a 

 position in the explanation of physical processes in the nine- 



h century. The concept of the charged wish has illumi: 

 all the hidden recesses and rendered audible all the subdued mur- 

 murings of the mind. The truly novel in the content of tin 

 is the recognition of the fact that the wish is charged. Now it 

 could never h d in a vacuum. That meant) that a wish 



could never be born in the brain alone. For the brain h 

 power to charge itself with energy— it can only store and t: 



potential energy thai must be transformed into 

 kinetic, it must have a source. That source is bl 



system. Wit] ive syftem, the 



viscera in the abdomen and chest, blood and its v< 

 nes, muscles and nerves, the brain would remain bu 

 ! storage plant of memories, associations of 

 experiences. It WOOld need no chanirc and initiate no I 

 But when the wi n upon the scene, it is as if a 



storage battery has been refreshed with new current, 

 hill ions of electrons there is a stir and am- 



