EPILEPSY, HYSTERIA, AND NEURASTHENIA
THEIR CAUSES, SYMPTOMS, & TREATMENT
WEBMASTER'S NOTE: This work is presented for historical interest and subject background only. Many of the conclusions, attitudes, and treatments discussed here are those of an "expert" of another era, many of which have been overturned by science or are not acceptable in today's world.
[pg 123]
CHAPTER XXV
CHARACTER
"All men are not equal, either at birth or by training. Nature gives each of us the neural clay, with its properties of pliability and of receiving impressions; nurture moulds and fashions it, until a character is formed, a mingling of innate disposition and acquired powers. But clay will be clay to the end; you cannot expect it to be marble."—Thomson & Geddes."Heaven lay not my transgression to my charge."—King John.
It is essential that attendants, relatives, and friends carefully study the character of neuropaths, and recognize clearly how abnormal it is, for untold misery is caused by judging neuropaths by normal standards.
Patients are often harshly treated because others regard the victim of defective inhibition as having gone deliberately to work, through wicked perversity and pure wilfulness, to make himself a nuisance, to persist in being a nuisance, and to refuse to be other than a nuisance, rather than exercise what more fortunate men are pleased to term self-control.
Character is usually appraised as "good" or "evil" by the nature of a man's actions, the assumption being made that he can control his impulses if he be so minded.
This is not so. "Good" and "evil" are only relative terms. What one man thinks "evil", a second holds "good", while a third is not influenced.
[pg 124]Now the performance of the act judged is directed by the performer's brain, the constitution of which was pre-determined by the germ-plasm from which he arose, so that the basis of character is inherited.
The moral sense is the last evolved and least stable attribute of the last evolved and least stable of our organs, the brain; and brains are born, not made to order. To blame a man for having weak control—a sick will—is as unreasonable as to blame him for a cleft palate or a squint. The "good" people who jog so quietly through life little reck how much they owe their ancestors, from whom they received stability.
These tendencies represent the total material for building character. Training and environment can only nourish good tendencies and give bad ones no encouragement to grow gigantic.
If training and environment alone formed character, then children reared together would be of similar disposition; by no means the case. Similarly, if external influences altered inborn tendencies, then, not only would the evil man be totally reformed by strong inducements to virtue, but strong inducements to vice would lead totally astray the good man, for "good" is no stronger than "evil", both being attributes of mind.
In mind as in body, from the moment he is conceived to the moment his dust rests in the tomb, man is directed by immutable laws, though he is not simply a machine directed by impulses over which he has no control. There is real meaning in "strong will" and "weak will" will being a tendency to deliberate before and be steadfast in action, a tendency which varies immensely in different people. The fallacy of "free will" lies in assuming that every one has this tendency equally developed, making character a mere matter of saying "Yes!" and "No!" without reference to the individual's mental make-up.
Deliberate, persistent wickedness implies a strong [pg 125] will, just what neuropaths lack. A man of weak will can never be a very good nor yet a very bad man. He will be very good at times, very bad at times, and neutral at times, but neither for long; before sudden impulses, whether good or bad, neuropaths are largely powerless.
The many perversities of a neuropath are not deliberately put forth of his "free will" to annoy both himself and others, for the neuropath inherits his weak-control no less than his large hands.
Friends must remember they are dealing with a person whose nature it is to "go off half-cock", and who cannot be normal "if he likes". The neuropath, young or old, says what he "thinks" without thinking, that is he says what he feels, and acts hastily without weighing consequences.
Cassius: Have you not love enough to bear with me,
When that rash humour which my mother gave me
Makes me forgetful?
Brutus: Yes, Cassius; and, from henceforth
When you are over-earnest with your Brutus,
He'll think your mother chides, and leave you so.
One cannot detail the effects of neuropathy on character, when its victims include madmen, sexual perverts, idiots, criminals, imbeciles, prostitutes, humble but honest citizens, common nuisances, invalids of many kinds, misanthropists, designers, enthusiasts, composers, communists, reformers, authors, artists, agitators, statesmen, poets, prophets, priests and kings.
Very mild epilepsy—from one fit a year to one in several years—instead of hindering, seems rather to help mentality, and many geniuses have been epileptic. These talented victims, are less rare than the public [pg 126] suppose, owing to the jealous care with which symptoms of this disease are guarded. Socrates, Julius Cæsar, Mahomet, Joan of Arc, Peter the Great, Napoleon, Byron, Swinburne, and Dostoieffsky are but a few among many great names in the world of art, religion and statecraft. Epileptic princes, kings and kinglets who have achieved unenviable notoriety might be named by scores, Wilhelm II being the most notable of modern times.
This brilliant mentality is always accompanied by instability, and usually by marked disability in other ways. The success of these men often depends on an ability to view things from a new, quaint or queer standpoint, which appeals to their more normal fellows.
In matters that require great fertility, a quick grasp, ready wit, and brilliant but not sustained mental effort, numerous neuropaths excel. In things calling for calm, well-balanced judgment, or stern effort to conquer unforseen difficulties, they fail utterly.
Subtle in debate, they are but stumbling-blocks in council; brilliant in conception, they fail in execution; fanciful designers, they are not "builders of bridges". They are boastful, sparkling, inventive, witty, garrulous, vain and supersensitive, outraging their friends by the extravagance of their schemes; embarrassing their enemies by the subtlety of their intrigues.
They wing on exuberant imagination from height to height, but the small boulders of difficulty trip them up, for they are hopelessly unpractical; they have neither strength of purpose nor fortitude, and their best-laid schemes are always frustrated at the critical moment, by either the incurable blight of vacillation, or by the determination to amplify their scheme ere it has proved successful, sacrificing probable results for visionary improvements.
Great and cunning strategists while fortune smiles, [pg 127] they are impotent to direct a retreat, but flee before the fury they ought to face. They rarely have personal courage, but are timid, conciliatory and vacillating just when bravery, sternness, and determination are needed; furious, obstinate and reckless, when gentleness, diplomacy and wisdom would carry their point.
They are ready to forgive when there is magnanimity, vainglory and probably folly in forgiveness, but will not overlook the most trivial affront when there is every reason for so doing. They have brain, but not ballast, and their whole life is usually a lopsided effort to "play to the gallery".
In poetry and literature, fancy has free play, and they often succeed, sometimes rising to sublime heights; usually in the depiction of the whimsical, the wonderful, the sardonic, the bizarre, the monstrous, or the frankly impossible. They are not architects as much as jugglers of words, and descriptive writing from an acute angle of vision is their forte. They sometimes succeed as artists or composers, for in these spheres they need not elaborate their ideas in such clean-cut detail, but many who might succeed in these branches have not sufficient strength of purpose to do the preliminary "spadework".
They have too many talents, too many differing inclinations, too much impetuosity, too much vanity, too little concentration and will-power, and they fail in ordinary walks of life from the lack of resolution to lay the foundations necessary to successful mediocrity.
No greater obstacle to progress exists than the reputation for talent which this class acquire on a flimsy basis of superficial brilliance in conversation or a penchant for witty repartee. They are self-opinionated and egoistical, with a conceit and assurance out of all proportion to their abilities. Their mental perspective is distorted and they are conspicuous for their obstinacy. In conversation they are prolix and [pg 128] pretentious, and they often contract religious mania, in which their actions by no means accord with their protestations, for they have very elementary notions of right and wrong, or no notions at all.
Often they are precocious, but untruthful, cruel, and vicious; the despair of relatives, friends, and teachers. They combine unusual frankness with an audacity and impulsiveness that is very misleading, for below this show of fire and power there is no stability.
Their character is a tangle of mercurial moods, the neuropath being passionate but loving, sullen one moment, overflowing with sentimental affection the next, vicious a little while later, quick to unreasoning anger, and as quick to repent or forgive, obstinate but easily led, versatile but inconstant, noble and mean by turns, full of contradictions and contrasts, at best a brilliant failure, vain, deaf to advice or reproof, having in his ailing frame the virtues and vices of a dozen normal men.
Mercier aptly describes him:
"There is a large class of persons who are often of acute and nimble intelligence, in general ability equal to or above the average, of an active, bustling disposition, but who are utterly devoid of industry. For by industry we mean steady persistence in a continuous employment in spite of monotony and distastefulness; an employment that is followed at the cost of present gratification for the sake of future benefit. Of such self-sacrifice these persons are incapable. They are always busy, but their activity is recreative, in the sense that it is congenial to them, and from it they derive immediate gratification. As soon as they tire of what they are doing, as soon as their occupation ceases to be in itself attractive it is relinquished for something else, [pg 129] which in its turn is abandoned as soon as it becomes tedious."Such people form a well-characterized class: they are clever; they readily acquire accomplishments which do not need great application; and agreeably to the recreative character of their occupations, their natures are well developed on the artistic side. They draw, paint, sing, play, write verses and make various pretty things with easy dexterity. Their lack of industry prevents them ever mastering the technique of any art; they have artistic tastes, but are always amateurs."With the vice of busy idleness they display other vices. The same inability to forgo immediate enjoyment, at whatever cost, shows itself in other acts. They are nearly always spendthrifts, usually drunkards, often sexually dissolute. Next to their lack of industry, their most conspicuous quality is their incurable mendacity. Their readiness, their resources, their promptitude, the elaborate circumstantiality of their lies are astonishing. The copiousness and efficiency of their excuses for failing to do what they have undertaken would convince anyone who had no experience of their capabilities in this way."Withal, they are excellent company, pleasant companions, good-natured, easy-going, and urbane. Their self-conceit is inordinate, and remains undiminished in spite of repeated failures in the most important affairs of life. They see themselves fall immeasurably behind those who are admittedly their inferiors in cleverness, yet they are not only cheery and content, but their confidence in their own powers and general superiority to other people remains undiminished."The lack of self-restraint is plainly an inborn character, for it may show itself in but one member of the family brought up in exactly the same circumstances as other members who do not show any such peculiarity. The victim is born with [pg 130] one important mental faculty defective, precisely as another may be born with hare-lip."In neuropaths the mental mechanism of projection, which we all show, is often marked.
Any personal shortcoming, being repugnant to us causes self-reproach, which we avoid by "projecting" the fault (unconsciously) on some one else.
Readers should get "The Idiot" by Fedor Dostoieffsky, an epileptic genius who saw that for those like him, happiness could be got through peace of mind alone, and not in the cut-throat struggle for worldly success. He projected his more stable self into Prince Muishkin, the idiot, and every one of the six hundred odd pages of this amazing description of a neuropathic nation is stamped with the hall-mark of genius.
