Some Character Types : Part 11

The Foundations of Personality
by Abraham Myerson, M.D.

(Page 28 of 32)

Then I lied just to have people like me and pity me, even though I called myself a fool while doing it. Often, often I tried to reform and for a week or two would be real good. Then perhaps I'd see some money, and I'd try to think of something else. But that money would come to my mind, and I'd get hot and dizzy thinking about it. Perhaps I'd say, 'I'll just look at it,' and finally I'd go and take it - and feel so relieved and spend it. After I left the hospital it seemed to me that I could never smile again. I cried all night long; I wanted to die. I could see one girl who thought I was so good and nice, and her face as she looked at me when I left! Her eyes were wide open, and her mouth was so stern, and she looked as if she wanted to speak but she turned around and walked away. One day I woke up after a restless night at home, and it seemed to me that I had strength, that something had turned around in my nature, and since that day I have never even wanted to steal. I haven't had to try to be good; it came as natural as eating and sleeping."

The sexually under-inhibited are those whose sex control is deficient. This may be either from over-passionate nature, bad example, deficient mentality, vanity and desire for good times, as in certain girls, etc. To discuss these types would be to write another book, and so I forbear. But this I wish to emphasize: that neither age, sex protestation of indifference and control, occupation or social status, alters the fact that the history of the sex feelings, impulses and struggles is essential to a knowledge of character. Without detailing sex types, these are some that are important.

1. The uninhibited impulsive, passionate (the bulk of the prostitutes).

2. The controlled, passionate. Very common.

3. The frigid. Not so rare as believed.

4. The extremely passionate (nymphomania, satyriasis). Rare. Always in trouble.

5. The sensualist, a deliberate seeker of sex pleasure, often indulging in perversion. Common type.

6. The perverted types, - autoerotic (masturbator), homosexual, masochists, sadists, fetishist, etc. More common than the ordinary person dreams.

7. The periodic, to whom sex life is incidental to certain periods and situations. Common among women, less common among men.

8. The sublimators, whose sexual activity has somehow been harnessed to other great activities. Fairly frequent among these who either through choice or necessity are to remain continent.

9. The anhedonic or exhausted. Found in the sensualists and often reacted to by the formation of religious and ethical codes, which eliminate sex, - Tolstoy, the hermits, certain Russian sects, etc.

There is under-inhibition of a good kind. There are generous-hearted people always ready to give of themselves to anything or anybody that needs help. Often "fooled" by the unworthy, they resolve to be calm, judicial and selfish, and then, - their generous social natures over-ride caution, and again they plunge into kindness and philanthropy.

F. L. is one of these. As child, boy and young man he was free-hearted to an extraordinary degree. Ragamuffin, stray dog or cat, tramp, down and outer of every kind or description, these enlisted his sympathy and help despite the expostulation and remonstrance of a series of conventional good people, his mother and father, his best friends and his outraged wife. The latter never knew, she used to say, what he would bring home for dinner. "He always forgot to bring home the steak, but he never forgot to lug along some derelict." More than once he was robbed, often he was imposed upon. Once he met an interesting vagabond who spoke several languages, quoted the Bible with ease and accuracy, and so fired the heart of our simple man that he bought him clothes and brought him home to stay. His wife threw up her hands in despair. "But, my dear," said F. L., "he's a scholar who has fallen on evil days." "Ah," she answered, "I fear it will be an evil day for us when you took him home." She had a good chance to say, "I told you so," when the rogue eloped with the best of their silver.

Not only is F. L. impulsive and uninhibited in his generosity, but his "pitch in and help" quality is about as well manifested in other matters. If he sees a man or boy struggling with a load, he immediately forgets that he is over fifty and well dressed and steps right in to help. He saw an ash and garbage man - this is his wife's star story - struggling to lift a much befouled can into his wagon. F. L. left his wife and some friends without a word and with a cheery word threw the can into the wagon. Unfortunately some of the contents splashed, and F. L. suffered both in dignity and appearance as a consequence. He had to go home by back alleys and had to endure the mirth of his friends for a long time. But it did not change his reactions in the least, although he was really vexed with himself and endeavored to be conventional and self-controlled for a while. The point is that F. L. attempts inhibition of generous impulses and fails as ignominiously as a drunkard struggling with the desire to drink.

Of course he is of the salt of the earth. Upon such uninhibited fellowship feeling as his rests the ethical progress of the world. A dozen inventors contribute less to their fellow men than does he. For their contributions may be used to destroy or enslave their fellows, and it is a commonplace that science has outstripped morals. But his contributions spread kindly feeling and the notion of the brotherhood of man.

The over-inhibited, those whose every impulse and desire is subjected to a scrutiny and a blocking, often come to the attention of the neuropsychiatrist. But there are many "normal" people who fall into this group, and whose conduct throughout life is marked by a scrupulosity that is painful to behold. The over-inhibition may take specific directions, as in the thrifty who check their desires in the wish to save money, or the industrious who hold up their pleasures and recreations in the fear that they are wasting time. A sub-group of the over-inhibited I call the over-conscientious, and it is one of these whose history is epitomized here.

K. has always had "ingrowing scruples," as his exasperated mother once said. As a small child he never obeyed the impulse to take a piece of cake without looking around to see if his mother and father approved. He would not play unreservedly, in the whole-hearted impulsive way of children, but always held back in his enjoyment as if he feared that perhaps he was not doing just right. When he started to go to school his fear of doing the wrong thing made him appear rather slow, though in reality he was bright. The other children called him a "sissy," mistaking his conscientiousness for cowardice. This grieved him very much, and his father undertook to educate him in "rough" ways, in fighting and wrestling. He succeeded in this to the extent that K. learned to fight when he believed that he was being wronged, but he never seemed to learn the aggressiveness necessary to get even a fair share of his rights. His mother, a similar type, rather encouraged him in this virtue, much to the disgust of the father.