THE BACKGROUNDS OF PERSONALITY 197 



secretions (Freud, Jung, Adler, Sherrington, Watson, Von 

 Bechterew, Kempf, Crile, Cannon, Cushing, Fraenkel are the 

 great names of the movement) . Most of the details, and all of 

 the quantitative applications of the law still remain to be worked 

 out. But a statement like the following of Cushing, the eminent 

 surgeon-student of the endocrines, that "it is quite probable that 

 the psychopathology of everyday life hinges largely upon the 

 effect of ductless gland discharges upon the nervous system," 

 shows which way the wind is blowing. 



In the face of these conceptions the position of the psychanalyst 

 as a practical therapeutist becomes clearer, and the causes of 

 his failure when he fails. In the first place, he deals with psychic 

 results as processes, and ignores the physiology of their pro- 

 duction. Since a true cure of the neurosis, what he is after, is 

 impossible without a removal of the cause, a disturbance in the 

 vegetative apparatus, he cannot succeed where an automatic 

 adjustment among the viscera does not follow his probings and 

 ferretings of the unconscious. In the second place, he disregards 

 the existence of a soil for the planting of the malign complexes 

 in the individual in whom they grow and flourish. That soil is 

 composed in part of the endocrine relations within the vegetative 

 apparatus. And as we can often attack that soil more effectively 

 and radically from the endocrine end than from the experience 

 end (e. g., repressed episodes) we may transform the soil and 

 make it barren rock for morbid complexes, at any rate. The 

 concept of the endocrine-vegetative apparatus as the determinant 

 of normal and abnormal behaviour, emotional reactions and dis- 

 turbances of power should in time cause even the most fanatic 

 of the psychanalysts to recognize the functional basis of the 

 mental acrostics they are so fond of dissecting. 



Natural Ability 



Another achievement of the psychanalysts is the recognition of 

 the influence of organic and functional inferiorities of the indi- 

 vidual upon the history of his personality. Gross organ inferiori- 

 ties are those which are definite handicaps in the struggle for 

 success in society, such as heart disease. Such handicaps, how- 

 ever, are limited to relatively few of a population. The raison 

 d'etre of the greater number of minor mental inefficiencies the 

 psychanalyst puts down to handicaps in the unconscious. Again 

 he mistakes figurative imagery for explanations. The concep- 



