HOW THE GLANDS INFLUENCE THE MIND 179 



Two most important instincts, therefore, which in the com- 

 plexity" of their sublimations have created most of the institu- 

 tions of society, the maternal and the intellectual, are connected 

 directly with a proper function of the pituitary endocrines. So 

 it happens that disturbances of these instincts, reaching far into 

 the normal and intellectual spheres of the mind, are definitely 

 connected with disturbances of the pituitary. As we shall note 

 in reviewing the essentials of the pituitary-centered or pituito- 

 centric personality, the personality governed by the fluctuations 

 of activity within the pituitary, people with injured, diseased or 

 mechanically limited pituitaries (because of the smallness of the 

 bony case enclosing them) exhibit defects and perversions of 

 conduct and intelligence directly attributable to affections of the 

 very instincts and functions the pituitary governs. Children with 

 small, mechanically cramped pituitaries lie and steal, are bed- 

 wetters, have poor control over themselves, and a low learning 

 capacity. 



The Thyroid and Instinct 



The chemical mechanism of the instincts described: sex libido, 

 passion and jealousy in relation to the ovaries and testes,_fear 

 and anger in relation to the adrenals, sympathy and curiosity in 

 relation to the pituitaries, suggests that a similar explanation 

 will hold for the dynamics of the other instincts. In the closest 

 relation to the thyroid appear the instincts first isolated, so to 

 speak, by McDougall as the instincts of self-display and self- 

 effacement, accompanied by emotions of pride and shame respec- 

 tively. In certain states of excessive thyroid activity there is an 

 extra stimulation of the instinctive display of the person which 

 may go on to boasting, mania and exhibitionism. On the other 

 hand, in states of thyroid insufficiency, depression is produced, 

 which may go on to melancholia, a desire to be alone, to hide, 

 to sit apart and even a tendency to accuse the self of various 

 uncommitted crimes and sins. In the form of cyclic insanity 

 known as the manic-depressive psychosis, mania alternates with 

 depression, as if the personality were dominated wholly in turn 

 by one or the other of these two instincts of the ego. There is 

 a good deal of evidence that behind them is a corresponding 

 fluctuation in the amount the thyroid secretes into the blood. 

 Among the thyroid-centered attitudes toward the self gyrate 

 more than in any other type. Egomania and megalomania occur 

 most often in thyroid unstable individuals. 



