American problems from the point of view of a psychologist

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CHAPTER

I. THE FEAR OF NERVES

II. THE CHOICE OF A VOCATION .

Preface

American problems have tempted me to enter into public discussion ever since I became a guest in this hospitable land. But naturally the point of view has shifted somewhat. The first Instinctive impulse was to compare the new impressions with those to which I was accustomed, and thus to measure American Institutions by- German standards. It was the newcomer's point of view from which I wrote my " American Traits." But while the aim of that book was to bring German Ideals nearer to the American public, my deepest Interest In American problems soon led to the opposite effort. I tried to show American work and American Ideals to the Germans. This time my purpose was to give a systematic view of the American people. The book was written In German and later was translated Into English under the title *'The Americans."

But In the meantime I have become one of them. While I have remained a German citizen, I naturally have accepted the American point of view more and more. Impressions which at first struck me as strange slowly have become a matter of course. My Interest In American problems has not decreased on this account, but the angle from which I see them has become a new one. It is no longer the national difference but more my professional lifework which has influenced my attitude toward the public questions. Not as a German but as a psychologist I have begun to take sides as to problems which stir the nation.

In this spirit the following essays are written. Of course this psychological interest determines somewhat the selection of the subjects which I discuss. Problems like those of scholarship and education, of temperance and customs, of superstition and nervousness, stand nearer to the psychologist than those of trusts and tax legislation. Some may even think that this tends to exclude the real problems before the American mind and to give attention only to the by-problems. And yet in certain respects may not the less important problems be the most important ones?

All these essays have appeared in magazines. In The Atlantic Monthly, In McClure's Magazine, in the Metropolitan Magazine and so on, and I am obliged to them for the right to a new appearance. Practically every one of these papers has been discussed with unusual energy throughout the newspapers of the country. May a part of this generous Interest be maintained for this little book. I have revised the papers to a slight degree but only In the case of the essay on prohibition have I hoped to secure a better understanding by adding a lengthy epilogue.

Hugo Munsterberg.

Harvard University.

March 1910.

I

T5EF0RE and since Moliere's immortal comedy, he who fancies himself to be the victim of a disease and suffers from Imaginary symptoms has always been the target of merry jests. But in modern times we see the more serious aspect of the case. On the one side, we know that to Imagine symptoms of disease can be Itself the expression of an abnormal state. And, above all, on the other side, to think oneself Into the role of the patient can be the starting-point for serious disturbances. By a kind of auto-suggestion, the healthy man becomes really 111 if he fixates his mind on the symptoms which he believes he feels. This curious and by no means harmless state may befall not only Individuals, but whole nations, whole generations. Society to-day, and especially the social body of America, Imagines itself to be the pitiable victim of a miserable disease : general nervousness.

Indeed, It Is a dogma of our generation, not that this or that man suffers from neurasthenia or other nervous diseases, but that our whole nervous make-up has become worse ; that nervous troubles are on the Increase ; that our entire social life has become neurasthenic, and that we

I must do our utmost to protect our nerve energies against the tiredness and exhaustion which have become the habitual fate. Our time knows the symptoms, knows the conditions, knows the remedies of this national disease, and all fits together so nicely that the theory seems secure. No one has a right to doubt the facts any longer. All that remains Is to take care that we get a strong dose of the remedies. All parties concerned seem so perfectly satisfied with this vista of social psychology that It might seem easiest not to scrutinize the case, and not to play the physician who unkindly Insists that he wants not only to hear the complaints of the patient, but also to feel his pulse and measure his temperature and examine his lungs and heart. Yet here, too, the case may be one In which the imagined disease will easily become the source of real organic trouble. If our time goes on thinking Itself abnormally nervous. It may Indeed finally become ill; and there are not a few indications that care is necessary. Thus, a little scrutiny may be useful after all.

The symptoms of the Imagined disease are told us everywhere. Most easily visible Is the general hurry and restlessness. Whether we see the Individual rush to his business or devour his lunch, see the overflow of useless movements from the chewing of gum to the ceaseless motion of the rocking chair, or watch the hustling and pushing of the public life, the hasty passing from one interest to another, everything suggests a nervous condition of society. There Is a social unrest which indicates an Inner nervous Irritation. But nervousness shows Itself not only In jerky, twitchy movements but, at the same time. In a quick exhaustion of the nervous energy. We need vacations and excursions, the rest of country life and frequent changes more than any previous generation. Our nerve-energy Is so run down that we can get refreshment only by tickling amusements. After the day's work, who still has the mental force to see a tragedy on the stage? The nerves of our time demand musical comedies. Who still has the Inner concentration to read books? In the last twenty-five years the number of our book-stores has melted down to less than a third, In spite of the increase of the population. We are too nervous to read books. Our nerves can stand only the light short-cut magazine articles. This story of nervous restlessness and nervous fatigue comes to Its greatest expression In the rapid increase of nervous diseases. Two-thirds of our acquaintances have neurasthenia, and nervous prostration Is the fashion for men and women alike. Psychasthenic and hysteric symptoms abound, and the waiting-rooms of the nerve specialists are crowded.

But there Is no need to point to the symptoms, as they can easily be foreseen as the necessary and natural consequences of the nerve-racking conditions under which we are bound to live. How often have we heard that our age is that of electricity. Every new Invention and every discovery has hastened the whole rhythm of our life. The adagio of our forefathers has become a prestissimo which must keep us breathless. And with the haste has come the noise. The metropolitan who has to think while the telephone rings and the elevated roars and the typewriter hammers must be a wreck before he is through with his work. Yet, endlessly worse is the inner tension of the life, the multiplicity of our engagements, the pressure of the responsibilities, and above all the sharpness of the competition. It may be that the newspapers are especially responsible. They have enlarged our sphere, so that every day heaps upon us a thousand exciting reports from all over the globe. There is no calling and no profession which does not feel the new, unsafe tension. Truly, it is not only the broker at the stock exchange whose emotions become over-strained. The conditions of the market-place have become such that everybody is over-burdened and has much more to do than his grandfather ever thought of doing. We are forced to automobile through life, and the fugitive impressions of the world through which we are racing must bewilder us and make us dizzy. There is no longer any repose or any relief. Our poor nerves are maltreated from morning to night, from childhood to old age. The nervousness of our time comes with the necessity of a natural effect.

The only thing to be hoped for is at least to find some good remedies, and if we cannot effect a cure, as the case seems desperate, we may bring some passing alleviation. The most immediate help is, of course, the medical. The public does not wait for the physician, but supplies itself with all the nervina from aspirine to the glycerophosphates. But the official drugs cannot suffice for the growing demand for nerve cures. Mental healing and faith cures of all types, Christian Science and church clinics have been superadded. Every day creates new schemes for smoothing the irritated and the exhausted nervous system. Moreover, we try to eliminate at least the unnecessary scratching of our poor nerves. The wave of abstinence legislation has swept over the country. Alcohol surely is poison for weak nerves, but coffee is no better, and tobacco ruins them in another way. The crusade against artificial stimuli is controlled by an instinctive desire to save our wrecked nervous substance. The movement from the city to the country, to the seashore and mountains, aims towards the same goal. We instinctively feel that fresh air and sunshine may bring back to us what we have lost among skyscrapers and smoky chimneys. And best of all, at last the whole nation has learned the blessing of physical exercise. Plowever our daily life may cripple our nerves and our whole organism, everyone nowadays understands that at least half an hour a day must be devoted to physical exercise in order to restore the machinery. Whether we swing the dumb-bells or the golf stick, whether we bicycle or play ball or run, the nerve cure of regular bodily activity has at last been accepted by young and old, by rich and poor, by men and women, by the higher and the lower classes. If we had not this everpresent remedy, the nervousness of the time would be intolerable.

This story of the symptoms, the causes, and the remedies has become the stock equipment of our social neurology, and he who dares to doubt knows that he finds no neutral hearers. Nevertheless, I do not hesitate to claim that this story is imaginative from beginning to end. And if the prejudices are allowed to spread as in recent years, the behef in this self-made disease may indeed become a serious handicap. It is an illusion that our time is more nervous than earlier periods ; it is an illusion that the material and social conditions under which we live are favorable to nervous diseases; it is an Illusion that the highly-praised remedies would really serve their purpose if the disease existed.

To begin with the end, must it really be kept a secret that the dogma of the physical exercise is typical of this whole fabric of imagination? If once we liberate ourselves from the hygienic cant with which our time is overflooded we must recognize the comic aspect of the situation. Millions of people are running wildly to catch a ball, lifting weights in fullest perspiration, trotting with gasping breath, and doing a hundred other useless tricks simply because a meaningless fashion has cruelly thrown them Into such a habit. Of course It seems as if the opposite may quickly be proved. Ask the man on the street whether he would not feel miserably If he gave up his daily exercise, and he will tell you from the bottom of his heart that he cannot live without it. He is right; and yet he is no more right than the morphinist who feels In despair and suffers if he cannot have his Injection; no rnore right than the habitual drinker who would not find sleep at night if he did not have his three mugs of beer after supper, or the other type who would have no appetite if he had no cocktail before the soup. Certainly our whole central nervous system adjusts itself rapidly to new forms of stimulation, and is In a poor state if the habitual excitement is taken away. A craving sets In which must be satisfied. We do not know much about the mechanism, but the facts cannot be doubted. The brain of the smoker really has to suffer if the accustomed daily stimulus is omitted. Is it the right conclusion that for this reason smoking Is necessary for the welfare of the human organism?

Regular physical exercise of the artificial kind is a habit which, just like the moderate use of light alcoholic beverages, has certain advantages, but which must also be held within the closest limits, unless the disadvantages are to be greater. Certainly it Is no less artificially introduced into our social life, and In this case, too. It Is just as wise not to allow it to become a habit. To wander through the country on a fine day Is a beautiful Inspiration, and healthful for everyone ; to need the walk with mechanical regularity Is the product of a bad training, and to become the slave of Swedish gymnastic apparatus Is no better than slavery to cigars. Of course, for certain purposes, it is desirable to develop the muscular forces of the body; then the physical exercise becomes labor. That Is an entirely different thing. For certain others, especially educational purposes, it Is most desirable to have sport and competitive athletics; then the physical effort becomes pleasure and play. But as mere exercise and restoration, it Is needless In moderation and harmful in strong doses, and the necessity only results from the long training in it. For a long time the pedagogue even believed that muscular effort was the best recreation after the intellectual work of the school child. Nowadays we know that the opposite Is true. Physical exercise demands the energies of the same brain which learns the school lesson and the fatigued brain becomes still more strained if its energies are tapped for a new activity. There is only one source of restitution of used-up brain energy, and that is rest and sleep, together with fresh air and good nourishment. If the craving for physical exercise is not intentionally injected into the body by habitual indulgence in this useless stimulation, the normal personality can do just as good work and remain just as well without such strained effort. Moreover, he enjoys the moderate, occasional use of exercise far more.

No less doubtful in their final effectiveness are the other popular remedies for the nerve troubles of our time. It is certainly no gain that headache powders and the sleeping drugs belong to the equipment of every fashionable woman, and that they are sold over the counter of the soda-fountain. A passing discomfort is too often removed at the expense of really healthy nerves. Still worse is the psychotherapy of dilettanti. It seems to me one of the best indications of the splendid nervous constitution of the nation that it has passed with so little serious harm through the millionfold attacks on its nervous system which the amateurish psychotherapists of every denomination have directed against it. Most of that which the faith healers and mind curists and Christian Scientists and their kin are performing is very well meant and faithfully carried out, but splendidly arranged to create at least mild hysteria in weak nervous systems. Enviable is the race which shows sufficient nerve-strength to pass through It without real damage.

Yet the Illusions are still queerer when our conditions of life are blamed as necessary causes of nervous exhaustion. Is not the nearest aim of our much-advertised technical civilization to save our nerve-energy? It is true that the electric current runs rapidly through the wire, but do we not let it run, so that we may remain quietly seated instead of running ourselves ? The technical mechanism of our life has become more complex just for the sake of making our life itself simpler. The telephone at our desk and the elevator in our hall save us trouble. Where can we find more rest than on an express train? It is true its engine runs faster than that of the slow train, but that does not mean that we feel In a greater hurry when we are comfortably seated in the parlor car of the Limited. Our poor forefathers had to go through much nerve-irritation, but our life is smooth. How their visual brain centers must have suffered from their flickering light and from the astigmatism of lenses in the eye ! We have mild, steady light, and the oculist corrects our lenses. Our triumphing natural science, with all its marvelous Inventions, with Its progress of hygiene and pathology, has primarily removed the friction. Instead of a rough, rocky road, we move along on a smooth, asphalt street, over which there is really no difficulty in proceeding.

lo AMERICAN PROBLEMS

Of course it Is true that the social life has become more manifold and the outer tension has become stronger; but It Is entirely misleading to believe that that Is in itself a greater strain on the nervous system. The scientific psychologist brings no clearer conviction from his laboratory study of mental life than that of the relativity of mental states. Our attention, our feeling, our Interest, our excitement never depend upon the mere amount of the stimulus. The same amount may make a strong Impression at one time, at another a faint one, again under other conditions no impression at all. Everything depends upon its relation to the background. If three voices are shouting,, the noise becomes noticeably stronger when a fourth Is added, but If thirty are heard, one more or even five more will not be heard: ten more would have to join to make a perceptible difference. And if three hundred produce a noise, fifty more will not add anything: now a hundred must be brought in to secure the slightest growth in Intensity of the sound. The shouting of the hundred men when they fall in with three hundred makes no more Impression than one man when he joins only three others. This law prevails universally. The conditions for a feeling of difference, and therefore for an emotional excitement, are always relative. Two street boys who quarrel about a cent are no less enraged than two captains of industry who quarrel about a million. It Is absurd to measure the effect of our surroundings on our brain by the mere mass and size and strength of the attacking stimulus. The proportion alone is decisive. What may be the source of

THE FEAR OF NERVES ii

strongest emotion in the colorless village life may be a hardly noticeable, mild variation for the globe-trotter, which leaves scarcely a trace in his mind.

No less important is another psychological fact: the mental adaptation which slowly levels down even the strongest impression. The miller does not hear the noise of the mill. No one of us feels the touch of his clothes. In the same way we have become insensitive by adaptation to our tumultuous surroundings. When we return from the mountain woods, we hear the roaring of the city for a day or two, and then it sinks below our consciousness and no longer harms our well-adapted nerves. ^

Moreover, while our modern life has become more manifold, its emotional strain is rather less severe than that of the past. Our life is less sentimental and more realistic and businesslike. No longer do we write the letters full of feeling which our grandparents wrote: we of to-day dictate notes. We do not keep emotional diaries : instead, we subscribe to the clipping bureau. Above all, our public life and our welfare is less threatened by dangers and sudden changes — the chief source of nervous shocks. Not only the meteorologist of the weather bureau tells us a long time beforehand when the thunder-storm or the hailstorm is to come ; our social life and our politics in this age of the cable are served by their weather bureaus, too. Excitement and public fear have been tuned down. Our growing tolerance works in the same manner. Conflicts are less embittered. On the whole we enjoy our disagreements and make pleasant after-dinner speeches out of them, and applaud the good stories of our opponent. This Is no age for being especially nervous.

Of course it cannot be overlooked that such inner changes never move in one direction only. They may remove certain evils and open the sources of others. A simple yes or no does not answer such complex questions. For Instance, we pointed out that a reason for the nervousness of earlier generations was emotionalism and sentimentality, and that this has yielded to a cooler mutual relation of men. In the light of modern psychopathology we begin to understand that this may, nevertheless, be a condition for nervousness of a very different kind. Recent years have shown that many of the hysteric and psychasthenic disturbances are simply the result of a suppressed memory of disagreeable experiences. An unpleasurable event which failed to find its natural expression becomes in a way strangulated in the mind and begins to work mischief there In the brain centers, even without conscious knowledge of the person. Now it is evident that sentimentality brings with it a mutual confidence and intimacy in which everyone finds many more opportunities of expressing the feelings of his mind, and thus disburdening his inner life from such mischievous intrusions. The businesslike soberness of our modern times has taken away this chance for confession ; and many a nervous system may be wrecked, where a confessional might have saved it. This shows how the Ideal mental state cannot be prescribed by a simple psychological formula, but at least so much ought to be clear to the social psychologist, that neither our nervous system

THE FEAR OP NERVES 13

nor the surroundings of our life should be blamed for our tiredness and restlessness.

But there is no need of going on showing ttie illusory ideas as to the causes of our general nervousness. We can take a straighter road and insist that this nervousness Itself is an illusion. Of course, nervous diseases are plentiful ; and whatever medical science can do to relieve them, and whatever hygiene can do to prevent them, must be done most earnestly and insistently. The recent development of scientific psychotherapy promises much for the alleviation of this human burden. But the more ready recognition of nervous diseases does not justify the claim that nervousness has rapidly increased, and that it is the signature of our time. And what is more important, in no way does it justify the nervousness over nervousness which has been spread by this uncritical acceptance of the illusory claim. It is arbitrary, for instance, to see in the rush and hurry a sign of nervousness. It is practically a sign of lack of co-ordination, a certain remainder of untrained impulsiveness and disconnectedness of movements which, on the whole, begins to disappear, or at least to be pushed westward. The jerky movements, the chewing and rocking and putting the feet on the table will soon be overcome, just as the spitting has nearly disappeared from the Eastern cities. On the contrary, the Americans strike the observant foreigner as rather too patient. They are ready to tolerate delays and to wait quietly where the European would have become irritated, and they waste time wherever there is the least opportunity as only a very rich nation can afford to do. They begin their youth by wasting at least two years in school, reaching at nineteen a point which every intelligent being can certainly reach — by seventeen. After such thorough training in time-wasting, they persistently carry on the method. It is an illusion to believe that they change it and become time-saving simply because in traveling they jump up from their seats and rush to the end of the car ten minutes before their train reaches the station.

Of course the reports of the hospitals and of the doctors seem to speak with figures. But may it not be with our psychasthenias and neurasthenias as it was when appendicitis became fashionable? The statistical reports of a certain European army showed that in ten years the number of appendicitis cases became four times larger, but a further scrutiny of the statistics demonstrated that exactly in the same percentage in which this favorite disease was growing, all which had been classed as general intestinal troubles happily decreased. In short, it was evident that the spreading of the dreaded ailment was an illusion. It had only found a new name. Now it certainly is well that we have all the new names for the nervous disturbances and that we understand their character better to-day, but indeed a danger arises if this knowledge is turned into a discouragement, into an exaggerated attentiveness to states which an earlier period ignored or simply handled as variations of temperament and mood and imagination and will. Yes, the history of medicine points rather clearly to the opposite fact that nervous diseases have become less general, compared perhaps with medieval times. At least our time is spared the nervous epidemics of former centuries.

Least of all ought we to measure the good or poor states of our national nerves by the complaints of tiredness. It Is true there are persons who demand from their nerves more than hygienic life would allow because they are too little provided with the healthy feeling of fatigue which nature has arranged as a warning sign for the exhaustion of the nervous system. But incomparably larger Is the number of those who have trained themselves to feel fatigued long before any exhaustion is threatening. It Is a weakness of will and attention which causes the deceitful impression of nervous exhaustion, which Is really nothing but a poor habit. Imitation plays a big role In It ; continuous Indulgence a greater. The longing for rest and for Interruption of regular work can become just as much a craving and vicious custom as the longing for stimulants. And just as every new artificial stimulation reenforces the desire, every new yielding to such pseudo-tiredness makes work more and more uncomfortable.

Here we have finally reached a true evil which cannot be brushed aside as an illusion; yes, an evil which is too often responsible for that national fancy of general nervousness. That from which the people really suffer, and perhaps suffer more than any other nation, more than any other time, is the weakness of attention. To be sure attention Is a function of the brain, and therefore ultimately Is an act of our nervous system. But its weakness and lack of development is not a nervous disease; it is a bad habit of the nerves, but not nervousness. It is a wrong of the mind, but not a mental disease. And because this true evil is spreading in a most dangerous way it is important to recognize it and to warn against any misunderstanding, as if the symptoms which result from it were symptoms which demand the physician. The more the confusion between lack of attention and nervous weakness is favored, the greater are the chances that we shall coddle the nerves more and more, and in that way create nervous diseases without curing the fundamental wrong.

The foreigner who studies the American character will always be deeply Impressed by the wonderful striving for self-assertion, self-perfection, and self-realization, which gives meaning and significance to this greatest democracy of the world. But there is one trait which he instinctively perceives, in spite of all his enthusiasm in the strength and glory of the New World. He cannot help feeling the lack of accuracy and thoroughness, the superficiality, the go-as-you-please character of the work; and this ultimately always means the lack of voluntary attention. The small respect for the expert in every field, the condescending smile for the dry theory, belong together with the carelessness with which the girls spell and the boys calculate. Every feature of our social life shows an unwillingness to concentrate attention. Only that which can be followed without effort is welcome. The serious drama is deserted, and the vaudeville houses are crowded; the serious editorials of the newspapers disappear, and the racy style wins success ; the yellow-press tone colors larger and larger parts of politics, and even of court and church. And yet what else is the meaning of it but the victory of involuntary attention and the defeat of voluntary attention?

Human nature is indeed so arranged that the attention at first follows in an involuntary way all that is shining, loud, sensational and surprising. The real development of mankind lies in the growth of the voluntary attention, which is not passively attracted, but which turns actively to that which is important and significant and valuable in Itself. No one is born with such a power. It has to be trained and educated. Yes, perhaps the deepest meaning of education is to secure this mental energy which emancipates itself from haphazard stimulations of the world and firmly holds that which conforms to our purposes and ideals. This great function of education is too much neglected. As a reaction against a rigid, empty, mechanical instruction, there swept over the country a wave of electivism which was meant to bring the blessings of freedom, but which did bring primarily a destruction of self-discipline. It is not difficult to foresee that much of this work must be undone. If kindergarten methods are allowed to penetrate where self-discipline of attention should be learned, the future citizen has lost his chance.