PERSONALITY.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 181, 1 August 1936, Page 13 (Supplement)

PERSONALITY.

GLANDULAR INFLUENCE.

does not create human TYPES. PROFESSOR'S RESEARCHES.

(By THOMAS R. HENRY.)

WASHING TON.

Human personality—whatever it mav l,e that makes one person act differently from another in similar circuihstances—is inoro than a combination of chemical secretions.

A ficnous blow to glandular-person-ality theories, which have had wide popularity m recent years, i s seen in the results_ of studies just reported from St. Elizabeth's Hospital hare on the actual weights of the glands found 3 in cases of mental disease.

Theso results are reported in the "Annals of Internal Medicine." by Dr Walter Freeman, director of the Blackbum Laboratory, and professor of reurology at George Washington University.

The theory has been that minute amounts of extremely powerful chemical substances, tlio eo-called hormones excreted from such glands as the thyroid and pituitary, determined the personality of the individual. Persons liavo been classified according to "<*landular type." Thus Abraham Lincoln has been described as a typical pituitary individual, and Woodrow Wilson as a typical thyroid individual.

The studies at St. Elizabeth's to fallow clearly that the personality pattern is far more fundamental. The glandular secretions may exaggerate it, but they do not create it.

Four Broad Types. First, Dr. Freeman made a classification of personalities according to four broad reaction types, as follows:

The cycloid-extra verted, industrious, subject to_ fluctuations in mood, active and athletic.

The paranoid—reserved, suspicious, antagonistic, embittered and calculating! The schizoid — introverted, retiring self-depreciatory, studious, meticulous and low in physical vitality. The epileptoid — moody, pendantie, devout and subject to paroxysmal headaches, rages, etc.

Probably the majority of men and women do not fall precisely into any of these types,' but combine characteristics of all four. But many individuals have certain traits so clearly dominant in their behaviour that they can be classified.

In a few the dominant type of reaction gets out of control atlogether. There is a great exaggeration of the characteristic behaviour which, in controlled form, is common to thousands of normal persons. Take, for example, the cycloid. A great majority, is is likely, have their emotional Tips and downsdays when everything goes well and the world seems rosy, followed by days when everything goes wrong and the world seems drab and hopeless. A few steps beyond this is the manic-depressive psychosis—essentially an extreme exaggeration of the up-and-down feeling. Periods of elation are filled with incessant, wild, uncontrolled activity, and periods of depression by constant weeping. But manic-depressive insanity is quite clearly the characteristic reaction pattern of the cycloid personality with all restraints removed.

The pararibid personality also is quite common. Probably many individuals can recognise certain of its traits in themselves—especially -when they wonder, without much tangible reason, whether somebody may not be deceiving them or talking about them behind their backs. But. when the reaction pattern gets out of bounds it constitutes the type of insanity known as paranoia— probably the most dangerous and hopeless of all.

Now, if one could get at the cause of the common up-and-down feeling it would perhaps be fair to asmime, as a working hypothesis, that an exaggeration of that cause was responsible for the exaggeration of the reaction pattern shown in the manic-depressive psychosis. The same "would hold true of the other reaction pattern and the specific forms of insanity which appear to rise from them.

Also the reverse would be true. The cause resulting in the extremely exaggerated behaviour should be easier to determine than'the cause of the reaction -pattern kept within socially acceptable bounds. And, hence, it would be possible to arrive at the reasons for different personalities.

Performed Many Autopsies. Dr. Freeman performed autopsies over a period of ten years on patients dying at St. Elizabeth's who could be classified clearly as belonging to one type or another. In each case the thyroid, parathyroid, pineal, adrenal, thymus and pituitary glands were weighed with great care. The assumption— which admittedly may not be entirely valid—was that the larger the organ the more of its substance would be poured into the blooa stream, and hence the greater would be its characteristic effect. As a result, Dr. Freeman concluded that the relation between glandular siez and characteristic reaction pattern was very slight indeed, if not nonexfstant. Not that the glands have no effect on personality. • Certain of the hormones, such as thyroxin and some of the pituitary secretions, supply the energy drive for the expression of the dominant trends of the personality. For example, the cycloid with a deficient pituitary secretion might be less manifestly a cycloid because he would have less energy for any sort of reaction. His behaviour, nevertheless, would be cycloid and not schizoid. The fundamental pattern would not be changed —only the energy of its expression. Moreover, excess or deficiency in certain glandular secretions tends to make one more irritable and less able to control the emotions. Such, for example, is the effect of too much thyroxin, too much insulin, or too little of the secretion of the parathyroids. But the irritability follows the lines of the fundamental personality pattern. The excess or deficiency does not result in a pattern of behaviour. Leading to Dr. Freeman's conclusion: "An far as determining whether an individual shall be a proud, sensitive, paranoid or a timid, shut-in, dreamy schizoid; a boisterous, jolly, hail-fellow-well-met cycloid or a moody, pedantic, egocentric epileptic —the endocrine glands would seem to have little to say in the matter." —(N.A.N.A.)