THE BLUES

Greymouth Evening Star, 30 July 1929, Page 6

THE BLUES

AN EMOTIONAL CYCLE.

The “blues” which have been the inspiration for many weary songs and have helped to amass song-writers’ fortunes, the “ups and downs” and “down in the dumps” which all of us have felt many times when the world seems dreary and wrong, have at last been ‘“seen” by the “psychological eye.” <

Likewise, the other extreme, our happiness, periods of high elation when all the world is sunshine, when we feel that we could conquer it with but one well-put, confident grasp, has been perceived by the surveying eye of a psychiatrist. We generally lay our particular state to something that has happened (writes Geo. Beck, junr., in the San Francisco “Chronicle”). Ever since such and such a thing happened yesterday, everything has gone wrong, we say, or ever since such and such a thing happened a couple of days ago, f have been sitting on top of the world. Rex. B. Hersey, research associate of the University of Pennsylvania, has a different and definite theory regarding our moods, or .emotional changes. And this theory must arrest attention in view of the fact that it comes from a unique, thorough, comprehensive survey and study of seventeen “average’’ men, which continued night and day, practically, for a period of a year. Like the swinging of a pendulum, the rise and fall of the tide or the sun rising in the morning, soaring across the heavens and setting at night, in just such procedure and with such regularity are our moods visited upon us, according to Professor Hersey. And he sets forth the hypothesis that we do not merely have daily ups and downs of mood. There occur also periodic changes in our average emotional states, springing possibly from corresponding changes in our total organic capacity for integration and response —cycles which extend over longer periods of time than merely from day to day. Opr moods do not just come and go without a time-table, says Professor Hersey. Our emotions, he sets forth, like the sun when it rises, are calm and cool, at a distance frorii our consciousness; then they blaze forth close to us, just as the sun beams on high, giving us intense energy; then they subside again, like the setting sun at the close of day, leaving us restful, indifferent, lazy. This figuration is tire day of our emotions, a cycle which may stretch over a period of three weeks in some individuals, or to a period of nine weeks in others. Furthermore, he says, nothing that might happen to us will offset this cycle from its regular course. The most it varies is a weeek. At least he found this .to be the case in his study of the 17 men. Setting forth the proposition that we do judge the world by the particular mood we are in, that our emotions are irrelative to external causes and that we react simply according to our emotional state, with of course, of severe shocks, Professor Hersey tells of his study. “The Pennsylvania Railroad invited me to make a study of the industrial behaviour, the extra-plant relationships, the inner thoughts, feelings and emotions of as many of their men as could be thoroughly studied, with a view to determining the relation of those factors to the happiness and efficiency of the men at work. The study, it was cigreed, to serve a scientific purpose, should extend over a long period, a year, if the men would co-op-erate that long. After thirteen weeks,” Professor Hersley continued, it seemed best to give the men a little rest. If you go to a man early in the morning and ask him about everything that has transpired since you last saw him and then come around again about 11 o’clock to find if there is any change in his emotional state, and agair about two o’clock, and later fust before it is time to go home, that sort of questioning has to be handled care fully if the proper relationship be tween you is to be preserved. In oth * er words, I did not want to become a nuisance. I wanted to observe 'them as much as possible and let them tell their story rather than always b° asking questions. “The first question might be: Did those men tell the truth ? I know they did. You cannot live with a peison day in and day out and have him talk confidentially to you without his laying bare his true feeling and situation, particularly if one has any skiL in drawing him out.” As the study continued and weeks passed, Professor Hersey made a graphic chart of each man’s individual emotions. Lines representing the men’s emotional trends throughout the weeks were drawn on the chart and as regularly, periodically, as the rising and falling of the tide of the men’s moods were seen to rise and fall. “A study of the chart, man by man, showed that these periodic changes nearly always ran within one week of the worker’s own average. In other words, if my cycle is five weeks, I may have a six weeks’ cycle or a four weeks’ cycle. If it is a seven weeks’ cycle, it may be at one time a six weeks’ cycle or an eight weeks’ cycle. But almost never, in spite of all buffets of misfortune, troubles at home, in spite of unusual success or or great pleasure does ‘this periodicity depart more than one week, either way, from its normal one.

“That fact astounded me. I could not realise that here in this complex civil iation of ours, composed as it is of complex human beings, there could be a sort of law and order moving as smoothly and certainly through all our tangled emotional lives. • “I have studied myself and kept a chart of my own emotional trends, and my cycle is as regular as a pendulum. “Why does this cycle occur? I am frank to admit that as yet I have not been able to detect thoroughly what is the cause. There seems to be some relationship existing between energyspending and energy-building mechanisms, involving metabolic activity, ductless-gland functioning and the autonomic nervous equilibrium.

“What should we do about it? On the one hand, we may feel that we should do everything to eliminate the cycle. I api afraid that such an ambition cannot be realised until the cause of the periodical changes is discovered at least. We must accept the fact of periodic changes as a fundamental law of our nature. If we do, we should then study ourselves and also those with whom we are in constant contact. We should endeavour to foretell our own general changes and arrange both work and play to our best advantage. “Finally, the realisation, inherent

in the cycle, that both blue and exultant moods often lie within us and are merely a passing phase of life, unjustified by external relationships, may remove the sting of our deepest depression and the arrogance of our most insolent elation.” .