The Nature of Nervousness : Part 5

The Nervous Housewife
by Abraham Myerson, M.D.

(Page 6 of 17)

In a famous paragraph James essentially states that instead of crying because we are sorry, it is fully as likely that we are sorry because we cry. So with every emotion; we are afraid because we run away, and happy because we dance and shout. In other words he reversed the order of things as the everyday person would see it; makes primary and of fundamental importance the physical response rather than the feeling itself.

This has been widely disagreed with, and is not at all an acceptable theory in its entirety. Yet modern physiology has shown that emotion is largely a physical matter, largely a thing of blood vessels, heartbeat, lungs, glands, and digestive organs. This physical foundation of emotion is a very important matter in our study of the housewife as of every other living person. For it is especially in the emotional disturbance that the origin of much of nervousness is to be found, and that on what may be called the physical basis of emotion.

What can emotion produce that is pathological, detrimental to well-being? We may start with the grossest, simplest manifestations. It may entirely upset digestion, as in the vomiting of disgust and excitement. Or, in lesser measure, it may completely destroy the appetite, as occurs when a disturbing emotion arises at mealtime. This is probably brought about by the checking of the gastric secretions. (Cannon's work; Pavlow's work.)

It may check the secretion of milk in the nursing mother, or it may change the quality of the milk so that it almost poisons the infant. It may cause the bladder and bowels to be evacuated, or it may prevent their evacuation.

It may so change the supply of blood in the body as to leave the head without sufficient quantity and thus bring about a fainting spell; i.e. may absolutely deprive the victim of consciousness. In lesser degree it causes the blush, a visible manifestation of emotion often very distressing.

It may completely abolish sex power in the male, or it may bring about sex manifestations which the victim would almost rather die than show.

It may completely deënergize so that neither interest, enthusiasm, or power remains. This is a familiar effect of sorrow but occurs in lesser degree with the form of fear called worry.

The fact is that emotion is an intense bodily response to a situation which when perceived is the state of feeling. This intense bodily response, involving the very minutest tissues of the body, may increase the available energy, may help the bodily functioning, may stimulate the "psychical" processes, but also it may deënergize to an extraordinary degree, it may interfere with every function, including thought and action. It may surely produce acute illness, and it may, though rarely, produce death.

Moreover, it is extraordinarily contagious. Every one knows how a hearty laugh spreads, and how quick the response to a smile. Indeed, emotion has probably for one of its main functions the producing of an effect on some one else, and all the world uses emotion for this purpose. Anger is used to produce fear, sorrow to evoke sympathy, fear is to bring about relenting, a smile and laughter, friendliness, except where one smiles or laughs at some one, and then its design is to bring sorrow, anger, or pain. The leader maintains a hopeful, joyous demeanor so that his followers may also be joyous or hopeful and thus be energized to their best. Morale is the state of emotion of a group; it is raised when joyous, energizing emotions are set working in the group and is lowered when pessimistic deënergizing emotions become dominant. A city or a nation becomes energized with good news and success and deënergized when the battle seems lost.

The spread of emotion from person to person by sympathetic feeling or the reverse (as when we get depressed because our enemy is happy) is a social fact of incalculable importance. The problem of the nervous housewife is a problem of society because she gives her mood over to her family or else intensely dissatisfies its members so that the home ties are greatly weakened.

This spread of emotion was happily portrayed by a motion picture I recently saw. Old Grouchy Moneybags, wealthy beyond measure and afflicted with gout, is seated at his breakfast table. In the next room, seen with the all-seeing eye of the movie, the butler makes love to the very willing maid. In the kitchen the fat cook is feeding the ever hungry butcher's boy with gingerbread and cake, and on the back steps the household cat is purring gently in contentment. Happiness is the predominant note.

Then Old Moneybags savagely rings the bell. Enters the butler, obsequious and solicitous. "The coffee is bad, the toast is vile, everything is wrong. You are a deleted deleted deleted deleted

rascal." Exit the butler, outwardly humble, inwardly a raging flood of anger, and he meets the maid, who archly invites his attentions. She gets them, only they are in the form of an angry shove and an oath. White with indignation, she stamps her foot and runs into the kitchen, bursting into tears. The cook, solicitous, receives a slap in the face, and as the maid bounces out, the cook, seeking a victim, grabs away the gingerbread from the butcher's boy. And that still hungry juvenile slams the door as he leaves and kicks the slumbering cat off the back doorstep.

Unfortunately the film did not show what the outraged cat did. Possibly it started a devastation that reached back into Moneybags' career; at any rate the unusual little picture (which later went on to the usual happy ending) showed how emotion spreads through the world, just as disease does. The infection that starts in the hovel finally strikes down the rich man's child, enthroned in the palace. The mood engendered by the humiliation of poverty or cruelty or any injustice finally shakes a king off his throne.

So when we trace the deënergizing emotions of the housewife, we are tracing factors that affect her husband, his work, and Society at large; we trace the things that mold her children, and thus we follow her mood, her emotion, into the future, into history.

Boston
Little, Brown, And Company
1920