THE BACKGROUNDS OF PERSONALITY 189 



docrine secretion. Wittingly or unwittingly we interpret the little 

 signs as messages from the deepest self, which they truly are. 



Nervous Breakdowns and Shell Shock 



In civil life, the complex of symptoms Beard jumbled together 

 as neurasthenia, when associated with a loss of self-control, so 

 that the sufferer is incapacitated for the duties of everyday life, 

 has become the popular "nervous breakdown.' A sanitarium ap- 

 pears to be one of the necessary components of the condition. 

 It is the last act, the climax of "nerves." 



During the War of 1914-1918, thousands of cases of functional 

 disorders of the nervous came to be grouped under "Shell Shock." 

 The psychic phenomena in the wake of concussion of the brain 

 due to explosives suggested the term, and its application to 

 affections of self-control, or dissociations of the personality, with 

 paralysis, blindness, speechlessness, loss of hearing and so on. 

 The War neurosis (including those arising in home service) is 

 still a topical subject because thousands of mentally disabled 

 soldiers are alive. 



In view of what has been said concerning the endocrine 

 mechanism of the instincts and the vegetative apparatus, it could 

 be predicted that a number of these nerve casualties of peace 

 and war would be caused by an upset of the equilibrium between 

 the glands of internal secretion. A study of war neuroses by the 

 great Italian student of the endocrines, Pende, confirms this 

 assumption. As emphasized, the internal secretions are like tun- 

 ing keys, and tighten or loosen the strings of the organism- 

 instrument, the nerves. War for the soldier, or the civilian com- 

 batant as well, sets the strings vibrating, and with them the glands 

 controlled by them. Excessive stimulation or depression of an 

 endocrine will disturb the whole chain of hormones, and the vege- 

 tative system, and their echoes in the psyche. The nervous 

 disorders of war that have been lumped as shell shock or war 

 shock may be looked upon as uncompensated jarrings of the 

 endocrine vegetative mechanism, as dislocations of parts and 

 processes that are reflected outwardly as ailment or disease. 



An Endocrine Neurosis 



An exquisite example of an endocrine neurosis, that is a dis- 

 order of nerves and brain dependent upon an upset of the 



