The psychology of relaxation

Front matter

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RELAXATION

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RELAXATION

BY

Preface

TO select for psychological treatment, and to bring together in one book such subjects as play, sport, laughter, profanity, alcohol, and war, may seem to some capricious — to others, possibly, even sensational. Let me assure the reader that nothing could be farther from my purpose than to make any such appeal to popular favor. I have attempted a prosaic, and, so far as lay in my power, a strictly scientific treatment of these subjects from the psychological and psychogenetic standpoint.

These subjects have been chosen, as I have explained in the introductory chapter, because they all illustrate one fundamental law, that of relief from the stress and tension which characterize our modem life. The connecting idea which links together these several themes is the catharsis idea, but the catharsis idea itself, as it appears in Aristotle and modem writers, I have found it necessary to subject to a new interpretation.

Of the seven chapters in this book, four have

VIU

PREFACE appeared in somewhat different form in various periodicals. The chapter on Play is an enlargement and revision of two articles, one on the "Psychology of Relaxation," which appeared in the Popular Science Monthly in June, 1914, and one on the "Psychology of Play," from the Pedagogical Seminary of October, 1914. The chapters on Profanity, Alcohol, and War are revisions of three articles, one on the "Psychology of Profanity," published in the Psychological Review of March, 1901; one entitled "In Quest of the Alcohol Motive," in the Popular Science Monthly of September, 191 3; and one on the "Psychology of War," in the Popular Science Monthly of August, 1915. My thanks are due to the editors of these periodicals for permission to use the articles here.

I wish especially to acknowledge my indebtedness to President G. Stanley Hall, as all writers must do who love to dwell upon the significance of racial history in the interpretation of the mental life of the child and the man.

Iowa City, January /, igi6.

Contents

I. Introduction I

II. The Psychology of Play 27

III. The Psychology of Laughter 97

Introduction

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RELAXATION

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

THE Gospel of Relaxation was the subject of a speech made by Mr. Herbert Spencer at a dinner given in his honor in New York City in 1882. Mr. Spencer called attention to the extreme form of "persistent activity" which characterizes the American people. The energy of the savage, he said, was spasmodic. He could not apply himself persistently to work. He lived in the present and did not worry about the future. Civilized man more and more pursues a future goal and applies himself to work until it becomes a passion.

In America, said Mr. Spencer, this strenuous and high-pressure life has become extreme, and a counterchange — a reaction— must be imminent. We take our multitudinous responsibilities too seriously. There are too many lines in our faces, our gray hairs appear too early, our nervous breakdowns are too frequent. Damaged constitutions and a damaged posterity are among the results. Emerson, with his saying that the first requisite of a gentleman is to be a perfect animal, is a safer guide for us than Carlyle with his gospel of work.

More recently, Professor James, Annie Payson Call, and other writers ^ have eloquently preacTied this same gospel of relaxation. We are told that we are too breathless; that we live under too much stress and tension; that we are too intense and carry too much expression in our faces; that we must relax, let go, breathe deeply, and unburden ourselves of many useless contractions.

There seems to be a good deal of truth in this. Some of us manage to escape neurasthenia, but few of us are free from fatigue, chronic or acute. We hear with amazement now and again some one say, "I was never tired in my life." Surely under normal conditions we ought not to be so tired as we are, nor tired so often.

* For references, see bibliography of " Play " at the end of chapter ii.

Impressed with the strenuous character of American life and the need of more rest and recreation, practical common sense, not waiting upon theory, has turned to discover means for relieving the excessive tension incident to our present habits of living. Some, as we have said, preach the gospel of relaxation, content to tell us that we are too intense. Others have established schools with practical and helpful rules and methods for relaxation and have brought comfort and relief to many. Again, a new and unique interest has suddenly arisen in play. Men and animals have always played; but now we have first become conscious of play and curious about it. We insist on play. If children do not play, we teach them to play. And we are anxious to know about the theory of play.

Finally, a score of movements, perhaps many score, have sprung into notice, whose purpose is to encourage or provide some form of relaxation. We recall the recreation movement; the physical-culture movement; the playground movement; the Boy Scouts; the Camp-Fire girls; the ever-increasing interest in athletics, not only in our colleges, but also in our high schools and grammar schools; the radical change in Young Men's Christian Associations from devotional to hygienic and athletic religion; the renaissance of the gymnasium and the Olympic games; the increased interest in outdoor life of all kinds; the renewed devotion to outdoor sports, like tennis, golf, baseball, and football; the rapid extension of the play motive into abnost every branch of education; the new vacation schools and school excursions; finally the supervised playgrounds, supervised folk-dancing, supervised swimming, wading, tramping, gardening, singing, and story-telling. Even with very young children the Montessori system seeks to relieve the tension of the old task methods by making the child's activities natural and interesting as well as useful.

More than twenty-five hundred regularly supervised playgrounds and recreation centers are now maintained in about six hundred and fifty cities in this country. A brand new profession has appeared, that of play leader, employing nearly seven thousand professional workers.

The legislatures of some States have passed laws requiring every city of a certain size to vote on the proposition of maintaining playgrounds. New York City expended more than ^15,000,000 on playgrounds previous to 1908. The city paid ^1,811,000 for one playground having about three acres. Chicago spent $11,000,000 on playgrounds and field houses in two years. Formerly the boy could play on the street, in the back alley, in the back yard. Now, the alley and back yard have disappeared, the street is crowded with automobiles, and the few remaining open spaces are given over to the lawn-mower and keep-offthe-grass signs, while more and more the school has encroached on the boy's precious period of growth, filling at least nine of the twelve months of the year and adding the evils of evening study and the dread of examinations.

For reasons which will be shown presently, boys must play. Take away the opportunity for legitimate play, and the play instinct, the instinct of rivalry, of adventure, of initiation, will manifest Itself in anti-social ways. Hence the juvenile court and the reform school, "Better, playgrounds without schools," says one writer, "than schools without playgrounds."

Up to the present time this is about as far as we have gone into the subject of relaxation. Its psychology has not really been studied at all. We have simply been impressed by the tense and strenuous character of our manner of life and have connected this with the increase of nervous disorders and nervous breakdowns and perhaps with the increase of insanity, and have felt the need, accordingly, of more recreation and play, and more harmony and poise in our way of living, and have taken, therefore, a few practical steps in this direction.

But suddenly within the most recent days things have happened which have caused some of us to begin to think more deeply on the whole subject of work and play, and have suggested that it is not a local American problem at all, but a world problem of the present age, and that perhaps great social questions may be involved. The outbreak of recreation crazes in America was the first of these events, but it was the calamity of the European war which most distinctly called our attention to the need of a more careful study of the psychological conditions of our modern life.

Just as we thought the world to be getting very serious, and settling down to work and to problems of social and individual welfare and to political and moral reform, it has suddenly gone amusement-mad in America and reverted with unparalleled ferocity to primeval bloodshed in Europe. These amusement crazes have taken many forms, but the most virulent form was seen in the dancing mania, which has passed through various stages in North and South America and has been so widespread and so compelling that it has reminded us of the epidemics of the Middle Ages. At its height, according to the newspaper reports, a tribe of Indians in Nevada built a great dancehall in the midst of their village, and imported a teacher of the tango.

Then came the moving-picture craze, which has seized the world like an obsession. No one can suppose that this colossal social phenomenon is to be explained by the mere fact of the discovery of the cinematograph, and that the people were merely waiting upon the invention in order to flock to the spectacles. The invention was an incident. The real significant fact was the psychological situation.

Consider the following editorial from a recent number of the "Nation": —

The historian will come to grief if he attempts to describe the cause of frivolity in the New York of 191 5 A.D. as historians have depicted the frivolity of Rome under the early emperors, and to compare bread and the circus with lobster a la Nezvhurgh and the cabaret. Going back to Rome, and assuming the grand manner, he will speak of a city that drew to itself the booty of the civilized world, of a population enervated by the largess of politicians doling out the plunder of three continents, of a citizenship lulled into civic indifference by gifts and amusements — in other words, an imperial city gone rotten with prosperity. If the parallel holds for New York, the historian would have to describe a city that went mad over cabarets because it had more money than it could spend wisely, because it had no serious interest in the problems of the civic and social life, because its serenity was undisturbed by wars or the fear of wars, because there was no unemployment problem, no city-budget problem, no workmen's compensation problem, no widows' pension problem, no Mexican problem, no German problem. Else how account for a city gone mad over the fox trot and the white lights.'' Life was much simpler in imperial Rome than it is in New York to-day, though even under the early Caesars the picture was not so uniform

INTRODUCTION ii

as the average historian has painted it. At least we know to-day that the fact of 400,000 unemployed in New York City does not militate against the prosperity of the "movies," which are the circenses of the masses; and the fact of Wall Street's unemployed has not interfered with the prosperity of the cabarets. Quite the contrary. There is good reason for believing that not all the young men at the afternoon teas are professional idlers and parasites, but that a good many business men and brokers have taken to dancing in the afternoon because there was nothing to do downtown. Perhaps the grasshopper in La Fontaine's fable, who sang all summer, did so because business was rotten, and when the ant told him to go and dance in winter, he was only advising him to do the best possible thing under the circumstances.^

To be sure it is no longer possible to dispose of such things as these by referring them to "frivolity" or to "luxury," but neither is it possible to say that they are due to idleness. For instance, a correspondent in a small mining-camp near the Mexican border writes that the Mexican laborers, who comprise sixsevenths of the population, are strictly amusement-mad, spending their last pennies at the * Nation, June 3, 1915, p. 613.

"movies" or the merry-go-round or for intoxicants. May it not be that these amusement crazes are a form of reaction against a manner of Hfe that is too serious and tense. May they not be indications of a lack of physiological adjustment. We are making great efforts in these days to secure better social adjustment through the study of social and economic conditions ; but is it not possible that the trouble is not in the lack of social adjustment, but in the lack of physiological adjustment in the individual, so that what we have to strive for is not so much improved social conditions, as improved health and improved physical constitutions, to be gained by a different manner of life, a different kind of education, and a different proportion of work and play.

Then there is another cloud which has recently appeared on the social horizon leading us to think that the problem of work and play needs further study. We refer to the remarkable increase in the number of deaths from diseases of degeneration. A few years ago, rejoicing over the discoveries of Pasteur and his followers, we had great hope of increasing the span of human life by the conquest of the devastating parasitic diseases. These diseases have, indeed, to some extent been conquered. We have now less dread of typhoid, tuberculosis, pneumonia, and diseases of this class due to microscopic enemies, but the expected increase in racial stability has not come. Some, therefore, are beginning to ask whether the better way to lengthen human life is to remove the enemies which threaten it, or to increase our power of resistance to these enemies.

According to Mr. E. E. Rittenhouse, president of the Life Extension Institute, there is a marked decline in the power of American workers to withstand the strain of modern life. They wear out sooner than they did a few years ago. The chances of death after reaching the prime of life have increased because of the extraordinary increase in the death-rate from the breakingdown of the heart, arteries, kidneys, and of the nervous and digestive systems. Mr. Rittenhouse's conclusions as to the serious inroads of these diseases in modern life are based not on mortality records of the idle rich and such classes, but upon actual physical examination of a large number of male workers, including officials, clerks, and employees of banks and commercial houses, averaging about thirty years of age. The results show that these diseases of degeneration, so-called diseases of old age, are " reaching down into middle life and below, and increasing there, and apparently at all ages." These diseases, not being so quickly fatal as the parasitic diseases, produce decreased efficiency and increased misery, oftentimes through many working years. ^

The lesson which investigations such as this teach is that the problem of public health and longevity is not altogether a problem of hygiene in the narrower sense in which this word is commonly used. It is rather the deeper question of vitality, of biological adjustment, of racial stability; and it involves questions of heredity, of mental and physical balance, of manner of life, of physical education, of work and play.

Sociologists are becoming acutely conscious of the fact that our cultured classes are not self-perpetuating. The increasing number of childless marriages and small families in these classes indicates that a

1 E. E. Rittenhouse, Protecting the Human Machine. Life Extension Institute, New York.

process of displacement is taking place in favor of peoples of hardier stock and simpler habits, depriving us at once of the advantages of physical heredity and making progress depend very largely upon social heredity alone. A given stock of people may cultivate its brains to the highest point of intellectual and moral efficiency, but, if it neglect the corresponding development of somatic vitality, if it neglect strength and vigor of muscles, heart, lungs, stomach, and reproductive system, it is doomed to extinction and cannot pass on to posterity the intellectual and moral power which it has itself inherited.

Finally, the increased desire for narcotics in the form of drugs, tobacco, and alcohol, prevalent in all civilized countries, is a further indication of some serious lack of balance between body and brain.

There is a lack of adjustment somewhere, and the problem of the day is to find out where it is and how it may be remedied. It is not our purpose in this book to study this great problem, but rather a single phase of it, namely, the relation of work and play and the results both to the individual and to society of excessive work and insufficient relaxation.

It is very probable that our modern strenuous life is bringing too heavy a strain upon the brain, particularly those parts of the brain immediately connected with the mental powers which condition that peculiar kind of progress which the world is now making. The tendency of the times is toward a very swift industrial, commercial, professional, and intellectual activity. It is an age of great effort and endeavor, of stress and tension, of labor and strain, of scientific and inventive ability; an age of great efficiency and striving for efficiency; an age of variegation; a centrifugal age. It is not an age of peace, of calm, of poise, of relaxation, of repose, of measure, of harmony, of conservation. It is not a centripetal age. The spirit of the age is that of Francis Bacon. It is not the spirit of such greater minds as Buddha and Jesus and Sophocles and Plato and St. Francis.

What is likely to be the outcome of such tendencies as these? Our current sociology speaks almost exclusively of the proximate social results. What is perhaps more important is to speak of the immediate physiological and psychological results, because they throw light upon certain ultimate and still more important social consequences.

The immediate social results of an age of such great activity and great expenditure are clearly pointed out, for instance, by Professor Giddings in his "Democracy and Empire." These are, in brief, (i) an increase of wealth, culture, and refinement, followed by a marked increase of population; (2) a movement of the people toward the large cities; and (3) a displacement of the higher types of people by the lower, followed by an increase of crime, vagabondage, suicide, and feeble-mindedness.

These social results we may leave to the sociologist. But what is the effect of such an age of great activity and great expenditure upon the individual .^ This we believe to be just now the important question, and it is to the answer to this question that we hope the studies in this book may be a contribution.

The result, in a word, is a rapid and extreme fatigue of the higher brain and an unusual and imperative demand for rest and relaxation. Nature has provided various means for rest and relaxation, in sleep, play, sport, laughter, etc. But what will happen when the claims made upon the working brain are in excess of the powers of repair provided by these natural means of relaxation, or when these means themselves are neglected? There will be increasing irritability and probably reactions more or less violent and spasmodic, and if there are any artificial means of relieving the strain and temporarily restoring the balance, there will be recourse to such aids. The craving for narcotic drugs, tobacco, and alcohol, will be an example of the latter, and the recurrence of recreation crazes will be an illustration of the former. Finally, it is altogether possible that society as a whole may suffer from such excessive mental activity and such excessive tension, and that great social upheavals may follow, such, for instance, as war. Thus we may understand why the psychologist in treating the laws of relaxation may bring together in one volume subjects apparently so unlike as play, sport, laughter, profanity, alcohol, and war.

The principle involved in all the forms of relaxation here studied is relief from tension or release from some form of restraint. Although this tension and restraint on the part of the individual are necessary conditions of all social evolution, they have been greatly intensified by the manner of life which characterizes the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The repression of primitive impulses to the end of growing social needs is the fundamental law of human progress. Such continual repression necessitates constant effort, constant strain, and constant exercise of voluntary attention. It involves those higher brain centers whose development has conditioned human progress, and brings upon them a severe and constant strain, making rest and relaxation imperative.

When this everlasting urge of progress Is excessive, as it has been in recent times, we may say that there is in a way a constant subconscious rebellion against it and a constant disposition to escape from it, and the method of escape is always the temporary reversion to simpler and more primitive forms of behavior, — a return to nature, so to speak. Sudden momentary and unexpected release from this tension, with instinctive reinstatement of primitive forms of expression, is laughter. Daily or periodic systematic return to primitive forms of activity is sport or play. War is a violent social reversion to elemental and natural inter-tribal relations. Profanity is a resort to primitive forms of vocal expression to relieve a situation which threatens one's well-being. Alcohol is an artificial means of relieving mental tension by the narcotizing of the higher brain centers.

Thus the reader may understand why we have associated in a single volume these seemingly diverse kinds of human behavior — they are all forms of relaxation. That which is common to all these phenomena is the relief from the tension of our modern strenuous life by means of a return to nature, or a return to early and elemental forms of behavior which offer rest or release from the burdens of life. All therefore appear as forms of relaxation, some helpful and normal, others abnormal and brutalizing.

If we should succeed in tracing all of these modes of human behavior to their psychological sources, we may contribute something to the clearing-up of certain difficult social problems of the day. We may, for instance, be enabled to see very clearly that evil and destructive forms of relaxation cannot be banished except by substituting normal and healthful forms.

The growing world-wide craving for alcohol, tobacco, and other narcotic drugs and the fatal and inevitable recurrence of war, with its fearful toll of human life and its still more fearful toll of hard-earned human savings, perplexing though they are as social problems, nevertheless might become much clearer in the light thrown upon them by the study of the laws of mental relaxation.

In the present stage of human culture, war seems like a species of insanity. It is no longer taken for granted. It no longer fits in as a part of the natural order of events. It seems anomalous and grotesque. It has lost its glory and seems now barbaric. We have been so long accustomed to have our disputes settled by courts of law, whose decisions are based upon principles of justice, that an appeal to mere brute force in the settlement of international disputes appears to us more and more absurd. Recently the reversionary character of war has been startlingly revealed to us by the reversionary logic and the reversionary morals which accompany It. And yet wars one after another, each more terrible than the last, are flaunted in the face of nineteenth and twentieth century civilization, are flaunted directly in the face of world-wide movements for international conciliation.

In like manner the use of alcohol, from the standpoint of modern science, appears as a kind of insanity. Scientific study has now shown that alcohol has none of the good effects upon the body or mind which formerly it was supposed to have, and that it is not even a stimulant. Yet the consumption of alcohol steadily increases.

Under these circumstances we should welcome any light, however small, which psychology can throw upon these subjects. The desire for alcohol and the instinct for war are phenomena which lie in the field of psychology, and reformers will make little headway against these evils unless they take into account the psychological motives.

We may, if we choose, redouble again our efforts against alcohol, but it would be the part of reason to find out, if we can, the causes of this growing desire in order that they may, if possible, be removed. So we may, if we choose, redouble our efforts toward universal peace, but a more rational method would seem to be to find out the deep-lying causes of war and see whether anything can be done to remove them.

In the chapters which follow, an attempt is made to treat these subjects psychologically and in particular to consider them from the standpoint of phylogenetic experience. We must call to mind not only the animal and savage past from which man has emerged, but also the forces or tendencies which are manifest in his development. It is not sufficient to explain war by recalling that man is a fighting animal, that he has literally fought his way up to manhood. It is far more important to understand that his constant advance has been attended by conditions of tension and stress which have made his periodic and temporary reversion to primitive habits an actual condition of renewed progress. It is still more important to learn how the supreme intelligence with which evolution has finally crowned mankind may be used to devise some means, by which these periodic reversions to savagery may be made unnecessary.

Lately we have seemed to forget that human progress is rhythmical, that mankind advances by a series of relapses and recoveries, and that after each recovery there is new ground gained, sometimes very much new ground.

It may be that we have here the explanation of war, and it may be that there are conditions present in the social life of our times which intensify these rhythmical reversionary tendencies, so that no manner of himianitarian effort can withstand the periodic demand for war, just as no manner of prohibitive legislation and no manner of science sermons can stem the desire for alcohol. Especially in the last century has "progress," as it is called, been very rapid, — progress in science, in industry, in invention, in everything, — and the tension and rapidity of our lives have become correspondingly great. After great tension there must be great relaxation. There is a limit to the strain which the social mind can stand. It is imperative that we study the laws of mental tension and mental relaxation. The psychology of play may throw much light on the psychology of war.

No engineer or architect undertakes to build a bridge or skyscraper without an accurate knowledge of the strength of material. Modern life is a kind of social skyscraper. The minds of the individuals who constitute society are the material. This material is put under too much tension. A collapse necessarily follows. In our social life these collapses appear as reactions or reversions, sometimes cataclysmic, as in the case of the war in Europe, sometimes sporadic, as in the dancing crazes and the amusement crazes in America.

In the following pages an attempt has been made to study the strength of this human material, to study the causes of the social strains and the forms and directions taken by the social reactions. If these studies teach us nothing more, they will at least show that the folly of explaining war by referring it to mere political rivalries is no less than that of referring amusement crazes to "frivolity" and the desire for alcohol to "depravity."

Chapter II The Psychology Of Play Chapter II

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PLAY

TT THEN we think of play, we usually have VV in mind the play of children. But grown-ups likewise play, and to their plays we sometimes apply the word "sport." Since it is our purpose in this book to study relaxation in its various forms, evidently it is sport, rather than play in its narrower sense, that we are especially interested in, for one could hardly speak of the play of children as a form of relaxation.

Many books have been written about play, and it is the play of children that they usually deal with, a subject indeed of the greatest interest and the most vital importance. Little or no study has been made of the psychology of the play of adults, and this is unfortunate for two reasons : first, because of the importance of the subject itself in its relation to certain fundamental problems of our social life, and, second, because the play of children receives new and valuable light when it is studied in its relation to the play of man in the wider sense.

While our interest, then, in this chapter is primarily in the play of adults considered as a form of relaxation, nevertheless it is very evident that we could make no progress in this study without first examining the nature of play in general and without first considering the theories of play which other writers have proposed. It will be interesting, then, to follow this plan and see whether the old theories of play are satisfactory, and if not, whether it is possible to propose a new theory which shall bring the plays of children and the plays of men into harmony with each other, and at the same time into harmony with the laws of recreation and relaxation in general.