188 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY 



normal or abnormal, supposedly explained. Words like sublima- 

 tion or t: figures of speech and nothing else. 

 Secondly, they ignore totally the powers of the vegetative appa- 

 ., muscles and secreting glands together, as 

 originators and determiners of the wish and its adventures. 



How utterly different, from the point of view of the physi- 

 ologist, the two explanations are as pictures, can be seen from a 

 single example. The idea of repression, to the Freudian, means 

 the pushing down into the subconscious of some experience. 

 Pushing down is a process controlled by the laws of physics: it 

 involves the concepts of matter and force. Hence, the expression, 

 as a description of a psychic episode, is a metaphor pure and 

 simple. From the standpoint of the process of repression as pic- 

 tured by the student of the vegetative apparatus, the term 

 signifies a real bottling up of energy. For the repression means 

 actual compression of muscle, the muscle contained in the viscera. 

 And the repression means a real interference with the release of 

 energy, which remains bound up, tugging for room for expression 

 as much as a spring tightly coiled in a box. In the production 

 of that tension an endocrine has often been decisive. The en- 

 docrine nature of the individual may decide whether a subcon- 

 scious, i. e., visceral or vegetative tension, is to come into being, 

 live or die, in the face of a given situation. If thereby, a perma- 

 nent disturbance of the equilibrium between the componci 

 brought about, a neurosis, expression of an unsatisfied vegetative 

 tension, follows. 



It has been hailed as a brand new discovery by those follow- 

 ing the latest in psychology that the subconscious and the un- 

 conscious constitute a more essential component of the personality 

 than the conscious. As a matter of fact, common pn 

 recognized the fact, if not the mechanism and its ugnifii 

 ages. It is not what people say or do — it is how they say it: 

 is how the true reactions of personality are rccogniz* 

 vcly even by animals. Tone and gesture (when not acted 

 or posed) are accepted as symbols and wympi 



nmost sancta sanctorum t hat words and wi r give 



rise and block. Tone and gesture as r. 



tions of the IniMT-Me, the True-Me or I n* I will, arc 



so potent because ressions of the 



:rl of a lip, the flicker of an « I he (witch 



of a f ! Biped in the increased 



. nnined by increased outflow oi 



