Making the Most of It

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLIII, Issue 20669, 6 March 1937, Page 12 (Supplement)

Making the Most of It

HUMAN HANDICAPS SPUR TO BIGGER THINGS

Physcially handicapped? Then read this, go out and conquer the world:

Deaf persons make great writers, owing to their powers of concentration. Myopes have a secret attraction for women because, near-sighted, they listen to them more closely, flatter them thereby. Hyperopes have latent philosophical talents since, longsighted, they get the “long view” of life, miss much ugly detail. Insomniacs, unable to sleep, have time for hobbies and self-thought which can make them famous. Vocal defectives can develop great personality and power because, hesitant to express themselves hurriedly, they think twice, give life more consideration. Psychologists who have dabbled in this rich field of amateur therapy find that the best braihs and best abilities do not spring, as others declare, from apple cheeks and steel-tempered spines, but from physical, mental or nervous disorders. Inspired by Handicaps On the eve of his second Inauguration as President, Franklin D. Roosevelt was held up by psychologists of this school as the No 1 contemporary example of the operation of this theory. Stricken with infantile paralysis in 1921, the President fought his way to the White House a decade later in a show of personal power, Iron will and determination that astounded the nation.

Dr Donald A. Laird, famed head of Colgate University's Psychological Laboratory, Hamilton, New York, firmly believes that Mr Roosevelt would never have reached the Presidency had he not been stricken. In support of this he contrasts, with great research, the easy-going, comparatively unambitious political figure of the President as a robust athlete and sportsman with that of the dynamic, fighting invalid, rushing pell-mell from Albany to Washington. Curious to apply this conclusion experimentally, the young, bearded Colgate expert sent out questionnaires to high-ranking Phi Beta Kappa students all over the country. Examination of intelligence and character records so obtained showed, he said, that students who attained this scholarly estate had not merely the highest intelligence, but intelligence combined with physical, mental or nervous defects, or handicaps. Among these latter were: epileptic seizures in one case, spinal curvatures, lameness, weak, ailing bodies, Ugly and pockmarked faces, various mental quirks and complexes.

Doctor, Laird explained this driving will to power by an axiom of the great Francis Bacon: “Whosoever hath anything fixed in person that doth induce contempt, hath a perpetual spur in himself to rescue and deliver himself frpm scorn." An enfeebled weakling. Bacon’s suffering drove him in the seventeenth century to be one of England’s five greatest philosophers. Classic Examples Too, he recalled Lord Byron's clubfoot which, ever a souce of shame and

bitterness, made him fight continually to prove himself in love and literature, made him. moreover, a swimmer expert enough to negotiate the Hellespont; Immanuel Kant’s gout and sunken chest, which drove him into the isolation whence came one of the most eminent philosophical documents of all times; Friedrich Nietzsche’s painracked body which caused him to pen his Superman credo; Beethoven’s restless dissatisfaction from his pockmarked. snub-nosed face, asthma and deafness which nurtured some of the most divine music ever written. For that matter, as the Colgate investigator notes, Caesar, Socrates, Moliere, Richelieu. Mozart and Schiller were epileptics. Less serious cases, where physical defectives wake up to find that Mother Nature has turned handicaps into assets, Dr O. M. Butterfield, noted New York psychologist, explains by the theory of overcompensation. This operates by compensating one organ or body member for the loss bf the other. Below CapacityOn the ground that man is naturally lazy anyway, Doctor Butterfield holds that not one person in a hundred lives up to his full possibilities. A classic figure who did is Ernest Elmo Calkins. Growing deaf, he explored the opportunities to amuse himself, produced his famed booklet, “Care and Feeding of Hobby Horses,” which amused thousands of others, too.

Unless he had remained days on end indoors, in bed sick with asthma. Marcel Proust undoubtedly would not have had time and patience to give the analytical touch which helped to make his “In Search of Days Gone By” so monumental. The late Clarence Day suffered so badly from arthritis that to amuse himself indoors he wrote his beloved “Life With Father.”

Teddy Roosevelt was so blind as a boy that, unable to take part in sports, he took up nature study, became one of the greatest naturalists of his day; Charles Steinmetz, born a cripple in Germany, likewise unable to play normally, gave himself up to scientific study, made himself an electrical wizard. Toyohika Kagawa, called the world’s greatest Christian, leader of Japan’s Christians, has had the plague and smallpox twice, typhus every year for fourteen years, and trachoma over a long period. But by no means all handicapped persons are able to overcome their deficiencies, according to Dr M. N. Chappell, eminent Columbia University psychologist. When they do overcome their natural feeling of inferiority as a result of their short-coming, s however. he says, they are likely to go much farther than normal persons. Dr Chappell cited the difference, in this connection, between a blind and a deaf man. The blind man rarely is a personality problem. His defect is so obvious that there is no inner conflict. But the deaf man’s affliction is hidden. He tries to cover it up. This makes him so terribly unhappy that frequently he becomes deafer. It is often possible, says Dr Chappell, to improve the condition' of a partly deaf person by adjusting the personal inner conflict. Stars Favourable Defectives who try to help themselves during 1937 will find the stars much in their favour, according to Belle Bart, famous astrologer. Handicapped persons may enter new fields in which they have never realised their possibilities, go to great heights, in her opinion. However, she reminds them that there is “no Utopia for weaklings.” suggests they organise themselves into a great co-operative body. If its motives are selfish, it will fail, she warns.

How and to what extent a sufferer of a physical defect can help himself was demonstrated a month ago. John Davis, a New York attorney, was told by surgeons tha this larynx must be removed because of cancer to save his life. His sounding-board taken out, Attorney Davis learned to inhale deeply, tamed his breathing, was able to speak, though huskily, from his diaphragm in a month. He found a fellow sufferor in Nicholas Ehrlich, and together they organised the Lost Chord League, which now instructs others similarly afflicted.