The problem of the nervous child

Introduction

By De. C. G. Jung,

Zurich,

Switzerland.

I HAVE read the manuscript of Mrs. Evans' book, The Problem of the Nervous Child, with great pleasure and interest. Mrs. Evans' knowledge of her subject matter is based on the solid foundation of practical experience, an experience gained in the difficult and toilsome treatment and education of nervous children. Whoever has had to deal with nervous children knows what an amount of patience, as well as skill, is needed to guide a child out of a wrong pathological attitude into a normal life. This book, as the reader can see on almost every page, is the fruit of an extended work in the field of neuroses and abnormal characters. Despite the fact that there are numbers of books on education, there are very few that occupy themselves with a child's most intimate problems in such a careful and painstaking way. It is self-evident that this contribution will be of great value to any one interested in educational questions. But the physi-

INTRODUCTION

dan should be particularly indebted to the author, as her book will be a valuable co-operation in the fight against the widespread evil of neuroses in adults. /More and more the neurologist of today realizes the fact that the origin of the nervousness of his patients is very rarely of recent date, but that it traces back to the early impressions and developments in childhood. There lies the source of many later nervous diseases. Most of the neuroses originate from a wrong psychological attitude which hinders the adjustment to the environment or to the individual's own requirements. This wrong psychological position which is at the bottom of almost every neurosis has, as a rule, been built up during the course of years and very often began in early childhood as a consequence of incompatible familiar influences. Knowing this, Mrs. Evans lays much stress on the parent's mental attitude and its importance for the child's psychology. One easily overlooks the enormous power of imitation in children. Parents too easily content themselves with the belief that a thing hidden from the child cannot influence it. They forget that the infantile imitation is less concerned with the action than with the parent's state of mind from which the action emanates. I have frequently observed children who were particularly influenced by certain unconscious tendencies of the parents and, in such cases, I have often advised the treatment

vi

INTRODUCTION

of the mother rather than of the child. Through the enlightenment of the parents, their wrong influences can at least be avoided, and thus much can be done for the prevention of later neuroses in the children.

The author particularly insists upon the importance of watching the manifestations of the sexual instinct in childhood. Any one concerned with the education of abnormal children will confirm the existence and the frequency of sexual symptoms in these children. Despite the fact that sexual activity does not belong to the infantile age, it frequently manifests itself in a symptomatic way, viz. as a symptom of abnormal development. An abnormal development does not provide sufficient opportunity for the normal display of the child's energies. Thus, the normal outlet being blocked, the energy accumulates itself and forcibly seeks an abnormal outlet in premature and perverted sexual interests and activities. Infantile sexuality is the most frequent symptom of a morbid psychological attitude. According to my view, it is wrong to consider sexual phenomena in early childhood as the expression of an organic disposition; most of the cases are due to an environment not fitting the child's psychological nature. The attitude of the child toward life is certainly determined by the inherited disposition, but only to a certain extent; on the other side it is the result of the immediate parental in-

vii

INTRODUCTION

flnences and of the educational measures. While the inherited disposition cannot be changed, these latter influences can be improved by suitable methods, and thus the original unfavourable disposition can be overcome. Mrs. Evans' book shows the way, and how to treat even the most intricate cases.

VUl

Self and Character .

. 269

Index

. 297

THE PROBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CBILD

CHAPTER I

The purpose of this book is to aid those parents who in the training or education of their children have arrived at the point where the methods already used have proved inadequate. The child does not respond normally to their most earnest endeavours, and the parent, if he or she has thought much about the matter, has become slightly perplexed, if not actually desperate. I have aimed, not at adding another to the already Long list of textbooks explaining psychoanalytical treatment for nervous troubles, but only at providing a simple introduction to the subject from the special point of view of the relation between parent and child. My attempt to present so large a subject in so small a compass will require me to make statements in a seemingly dogmatic manner, without supporting them with proofs, which I should, but for lack of space, be most happy to give. "With few exceptions, I have avoided the use of technical terms, which are almost necessarily used in describing the ideas fundamental to psychoanalysis. The book, therefore, is addressed primarily to the steadily increasing number of parents who are sufficiently courageous (and never has courage been so essential in every sphere of life as it is at the present day) to overcome their prejudices against scientific methods of managing children.

One of the practical results of the newer psychology of the unconscious is the discovery of a means, never before systematically used, of arousing the child's interest in his school environment ; another, which is much more striking in its novelty, a means of adapting a child to the home environment. This seems the more strange, as it is thought by many that, of all places, the home is the one where the child is expected to be the best fitted. Most of the students of child-training, at any rate that part of them for whom this book is intended, will have had no scientific study of the laws of human development but will have tried in a more or less systematic way, to profit by the lessons of their own childhood in guiding youth along the difficult path of infancy and the still more arduous path of adolescence. And if it is desirable to use as few technical terms as possible, it is still more desirable to avoid abstruse discussions. I shall, therefore, give only the end results of present-day research and observation on the subject, with examples of cases.

THE NEGATIVE CHARACTER

These cases will show that every child has a negative character as well as a positive or affirmative one. The child takes pleasure not only in complying with the suggestions of parents and others but also in going contrary to them. This universal tendency to go against advice or direction is what I mean by this negative character. To be sure the negative character of the child is of great value to him in his contact with the world in later life; but it is most important that the parents should not be the most frequent object of this negative activity. The parents, on the other hand, should know how to manage the instinctive resistance of their children, a resistance which is essential to the rightly developed character of all humans. Its manifestations are therefore inevitable in children, who are the most natural of humans. The parents who see this trait as a necessary trait of all character, will realize that it has only to be directed from the home outward to the world to become one of the most valuable traits possessed by the child. They will, therefore, be the more anxious to understand how the expression of this negative character in the home can be diminished by the child's home training. For in the home, where peace and harmony should reign, it is desirable to have as little friction and antagonism as possible.

THE PROBLEM OF THE NERVOIJiS CHH^D

There is a reason why the negative character of the child is sometimes brought out and developed to the uttermost in some homes, while the atmosphere of others does not furnish the conditions for its growth. This cause frequently lies in the actions of the parents, in their treatment of the child. Most parents, however, and most teachers, who ought to be prepared on this point, as soon as the information contained in this and similar books ^ can be assimilated, are profoundly ignorant, through no fault of their own, of the way in which their own actions affect the children under their care.

As soon as the child can use words he is almost universally, by parent and teacher alike, supposed to be able to reason with the thoughts which these words represent to adults — a very illogical supposition for the adult to make. If the child's physical ability to say ^^ ethics," ** moral principles, '^ ^* psychology,'' ^^epistemology," implied an understanding of what the terms meant, then and only then would teacher and parents have a right to expect a child's acts to be moral. But the parent, acting with an inevitable unreason, expects in the child an understanding of the thmgs

1 Compare Wilfrid Lay: Man*s Unconscious Conflict (N. Y., 1917) and The Child's Unconscious Mind (1919).

STATEMENT OF THE PEOBLEM

denoted by words which the child himself can only hear and pronounce. Now and then this discrepancy flashes into momentary clearness to the parent who hears a child innocently repeat some profanity or obscenity which he may have picked up on the street.

The first signs of interest and activity in surroundings are shown by the asking of innumerable questions. They are simple and disconnected. Where? Who? Why? How? The limited experience of the child causes much repetition. Words are learned before meanings and accepted uses of words. Mere perception is intellectually developed into conception. If in answering these questions we go far ahead of the child's experience of life, our words have no meaning for him. Here is a pitfall for the unwary parent or teacher who is ignorant of the slow growth of the child's power to think. A parent often mistakes for real knowledge a child's facility in picking up words and his apt attempts at using them.

The child has eyes and sees not, has ears and hears not, simply because he has not had the experience which alone constitutes true seeing and hearing. For this reason there arises a very peculiar and generally unappreciated condition. The child seems to understand because he can repeat words. Therefore the parent, having caused the child to learn and repeat a number of

THE PROBLEM OF THE NEEVOUS CHH^D

words which express high moral aims, fatuously thinks the child understands and wishes to attain those aims.

An illustration is seen when parents are trying to arouse a feeling of repentance in a child, who has wilfully disobeyed, and insist that the repentance be shown in a set phrase of ^ * I am very sorry, please forgive me for being so naughty." There has been no change of heart in the child nor greater understanding of moral responsibility, but the parents usually feel they have won a great victory and are ignorant of the fact that the child has not meant every word he repeated. When he is again allowed to go out and play he rarely shows any desire to better his future conduct. If there has been punishment he goes out to find something to smash or to beat up his companions, but if he has a gentler nature and the life current does not flow so swiftly within him, his bruised feelings are too sore for action. And such quiet reactions are mistaken for repentance. As I look back over the youthful years of a generation ago, I find that the boy or girl who would really say '^I ought not to have done that. My parents know what is best for me and I will never do it again'' has often been dissipated in college life, and morally weak. Through thoughtlessness parents acquire a habit of taking it for granted that the child should put a high valuation on the parents' services, which, however, the child cannot do, as he has not yet sufficient reasoning power to appreciate them.

The mental disposition of the child, really so little understood by parents, is entirely determined by his very early environment, unless he is physically burdened by afflictions visited upon him by the sins of his forefathers. This disposition is composed of a veritable potpourri of family influences, and is frequently a great obstacle to the individual in his endeavour to accommodate himself to the world outside of the family. It is the unquestioned duty of the parent so to influence the child, not alone by words but also by the much more potent actions of everyday conduct, that his natural cravings and instinctive activities may be guided to a conscious purpose and intelligent action, and that he may be able to climb over the family environment and attain the essential characteristics of an independent man.

IMITATION

The discrepancy between the child's ready use of words, the meanings of which he does not understand, and his great difficulty in grasping thei moral relations of his acts is explained by the fact that his first means of fitting himself into his social surroundings are imitative. Even we adults, when suddenly set in a novel social environment, are likely to feel awkward in our

THE PKOBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CBILD

anxiety to appear experienced. We carefully watch other people and do as they do. Not all imitation, however, is deliberate. An example is the contagious cough that runs around the congregation in church, or the fit of yawning that one bored or sleepy person catches from another. We may be surprised to find ourselves thus coughing or yawning, and so far is it from being intentional that we may find it difficult to stop.

In the child imitation is even more spontaneous. It has indeed a very important function to perform, as it puts the present-day child in possession of a degree of proficiency in various forms of activity which he would not be able to acquire, unless he had them before his eyes in actual operation. These are things which the race has needed and taken long ages to develop. But the child, seeing them, can imitate them readily, or at least can attain in a short time a proficiency in actions which have been brought to perfection only by evolution during the development of the race.

The remark is often made that children in one family, even with the same bringing up, are so different. Twins of the same sex, though perhaps having strong facial resemblance when children, will in later life develop different tendencies. Observation shows us that in large families children are not treated in the same way. It is not possible for pare^rits to do so, Parents are inflU"

8 ■ enced in the treatment of children by the fact that each hour of the day brings to the parents varying emotions, disappointments, joys and sorrows. The child's hourly experience in the home thus depends both upon the reactions which the parents have made to their surroundings when they were children, and upon the effect on the mother and father of the surroundings which the child may or may not have comprehended. Thus ai\ accident to parents which the child may have seen, but in which he has not himself been injured, such as the runaway of a horse, may have the effect of causing the child ever after to dislike horses. Also it may have the other effect of making the parents over-careful about the child's experience with horses. Or the parents' attitude toward ^ach other may have the effect of determining the sunny or cloudy temperament of the child, a quality which is likely to persist into later life and become a mental habit.

Another factor in the home influence of the child is that of prenatal conditions. The mother, through some unpleasant experience during her pregnancy, may have formed an unpleasant association with the child which will affect her subsequent treatment of it. Or financial troubles may have occurred to make the child an unexpected burden. Again, the carrying out of parental theories of bringing up children may be attempted with a first child, and with later children abandoned, on account of lack of perseverance, or other human weakness. The father, remembering the escapades of his own youth, is frequently on the watch to nip in the bud any indication of such actions on the part of his son who, born with a different innate disposition and a totally different mental environment, and not knowing the father's suspicions, must either use violence in breaking away from the tight grasp of overpowering authority or become a weakling and a failure.

The parents' problem is to impart their knowledge and experience in such a way as to encourage the child's intelligence and not to balk it with prohibitions; to discipline it and not to repress it; to train it up, and not to choke it with their own fears. The child's mental development should neither be discouraged nor allowed to run wild. How best to train the child's mind morally and intellectually, thus producing the finest character, will be more clearly understood, if the parents are able to grasp the fundamental principles of mental behaviour.

The truth of the old adage that example is better than precept is rarely realized by parents. Not only do we appeal, in teaching any dexterity, such as penmanship, mainly to the example of a perfectly written word to be copied, but in golf or tennis, for instance, one learns more from the coaching of a professional than from any number of textbooks that may be read. Furthermore, the proverb refers chiefly to the tendency of example to call forth an impulsive imitation that is largely determmed by admiration, A parent's attempt to inculcate pure utterance is fruitless if he has the accent of a Cockney, or to enforce clean hands and other personal neatness if the parents' hands are unwashed and their house is in disorder. Children imitate parents without being aware of it and even unobserved by the parents. Possibly the children imitate the parents out of sheer adoration, and in this case there should be some excellence in the model to be adored. The parent who is unable to understand, and to accommodate his ways to his children must either learn what is wrong with himself that his child does not thrive, or the child will come into painful conflict with a world of external reality outside of the home. The child with a wrong home environment will seldom fit into the world, and will have one painful experience after another to show him his faulty adaptation to life 's requirements. The parent must study himself as the gardener studies the soil, temperature and climatic conditions, and must observe the child as the gardener observes the plants during every period of their growth. He must know as intimately as possible the nature of both, the plant and its environment, in order to bring it to perfect blossom and plenteous fruit.

PSYCHOAN-ALYSIS

The preparatory psychoanalytic work of taking a nervous child's history in clinics or in private practice shows that even before the fifth year of the child's life may appear the first indications of a conflict which is later to take place between the group of parental wishes and the child's struggles to establish his individual identity — a conflict which must be the cause of the nervousness that has led the parent to take the child to the psychoanalyst.

In the following chapters, by relating several cases which have come under my care and instruction by the analytic method, I hope to show how the parents in following out their ideals of training or education have obstructed their children's adaptation to social environment. Many parents observe in their children acts that they cannot understand. Moreover, even their most successful experiences are accompanied by a number of failures in either the school^ home or business life of some of their children. One boy does not get on as he should, another deteriorates in character or bodily health under what seems the same treatment that improves his brother. In such cases the parents are tempted to consider the boy's natural badness or dullness at fault, while the more advantageous course would be not only to study their own methods, but also to make a careful diagnosis of the boy's nature.

During an analy^tic treatment the analyst is comparable to a bridge over which the patient escapes from the troubles originating in his childhood into another sphere of thought where the point of view is completely changed. The tears, restlessness, general unhappiness and inability to fit into the niche where he has been placed by birth or circumstances, give place to an entirely new mental situation. Through analysis the patient is shown that life is like a country where he must pass through varying degrees of heat, cold and humidity. To the child, especially, life in the workaday world is indeed often very cold and causes him to feel that no one loves him. Home life, on the contrary, may have been very warm, loading him with caresses, with privileges, with toys and playmates. The home influence may have projected itself abroad in travel and in whatever else the fond parents (judging of the child's needs by their own desires) can think of to help the child through his difficulties. In such instances the parents' inevitable judging of the child by themselves does the child much harm, for the circumstances are so different. When an adult, for example, is needing rest to recuperate from his output of energy, he is likely to require the child to be quiet, although the child is needing

THE PEOBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHHiD

a larger opportunity to use his accumulated and increasing energy.

SUPERHEATED FAMILY ATMOSPHERE

Not only is the home life of some children unduly warm on account of excessive shelter, but that of other children is too cold. The feeling of coldness from which the child often suffers is caused either by a lack of sympathy and understanding on the part of the parents, or by the parents* being too much occupied with their own problems to lower their minds to the child's level, and merely envying the child because he seems to be free from care. In this journey of life, which we must travel with each child, we must ourselves be f arseeing. We must watch for the obstructions which he is apt to encounter and, as soon as he sees them, we must explain them to him, being very careful not to explain more than he sees. We have been over the path before and know what is coming, but his mind is too much occupied with the wonders around him to look ahead. He must travel slowly to see fully. He must develop slowly so that the mind and body keep pace together.

Just as the child suffers because of instincts aroused too early, or from a mind stimulated with knowledge it cannot assimilate, and as the body suffers indigestion from too much and too rich food, so a kind of moral indigestion results from appetites that are awakened hut which cannot be gratified. Like a hothouse plant forced to early blossom, the precocious child may be admired for being so *^ bright'* when so young, but like the Easter rose bush and lilies, he stops budding. Some unwise college professors, in experimental work, have forced the minds of their children to a remarkable development so that the adolescent was doing the work of an adult in mathematics and philosophy. They proudly announced to the world the great discovery that a child's mind should receive intensive training beginning as early as four years old, because those early years are the most receptive and the mind is free from the problems of later life. After several years we learn that the end of those abnormal developments has been an attempt to restore the exhausted energy in a nerve sanitarium, or by a term in jail.

As I have intimated above, the conduct of a child follows a pattern usually formed by the environmental influences which are operative before the fifth year, a pattern which may be slightly modified by experiences accumulated thereafter. At adolescence deep physical changes, which have been going on, cumulate in making a man or a woman out of the body, but the mind frequently develops at a different rate. There comes a great longing for freedom to try the new-found power of manhood or womanhood. Then the parents see

THE PROBLEM OF THE NEEVOUS CHHjD

in the boy or girl the **know-it-alP' attitude (so trying to the home circle), feelings of superiority to authority or criticism and sudden paying of attention to personal appearance, with an increased interest in the opposite sex. **The sudden awakening of feelings and passions, redundant energy, rapid mental processes, scintillating wit, as in plays upon words and phrases and unique ideas, hopefulness and enthusiasm, vigorous and retentive memory, hasty decision, persistence to the point of obstinacy, scorn of obstacles, represent the attitude toward a world opening to the expanding vision as new and strange, and reveals a crisis in growth the significance of which is not to be underestimated. ' '

These symptoms of new life springing up in the child should be welcomed by the parents as indicating that another man is being added to the great army of life. It only needs the first love affair to show that the age of puberty is being successfully passed. I shall explain later the consequence of the adolescent age not being successfully passed through. From research in that field we have learned that age is not properly counted by years, but by the all-around development of the individual.

INTELLIGENCE TESTS

At the present time a great deal of attention has been attracted to the intelHgence tests adopted by several universities in this country to supplement or take the place' of the regular entrance examinations. This grading of general intelligence has been already carried to quite a scientific accuracy, but the all-around development just mentioned is essentially different from the intelligence measured by these tests, and should not be confused with it. The psychical development to which I refer here, may be absent in persons whose intelligence is shown by the tests to be of the highest order. On the other hand, the psychical development concerns the intimate personal relationships of the individual, primarily to the members of his or her own family. Many people quite adult in physical size and strength have yet the mental conduct of infants, not necessarily with regard to practical affairs but with regard to their emotional reactions toward their personal environment. In the intelligence tests ^ very definite means of demarcation are obtained, such that it is possible to say that an individual is exactly ten years old, mentally, twelve years, or fourteen years, or an average or superior adult. Beyond these classes it is impossible to differentiate people with regard to intelligence alone. In the matter of the psychical development, however, it might almost be said that there are an infinite number of gradations between the indi-

lAs described in The Measurem^t Of Intelligence bj^ Louig M, Terman, New York, 1916.

vidual who is emotionally an infant and the one who is a fully developed adult.

One sees many old infants, who go around unattended, being physically anywhere from fifteen to eighty calendar years of age, but in initiative and self-reliance merely babies. The fact that they usually enjoy poor health attracts the attention and interest of some one, who seeks to make them more comfortable. If they marry they frequently become the mothers or fathers of nervous children and are likely to wreck the marital happiness of any normal spouse to whom they may be linked. These elderly infants who have been seeking infantile means of satisfaction all their lives are seen in many strata of society. We have examples in the men who live in clubs. Short of being rocked to sleep their wants are anticipated and attended to in the most comfortable fashion, the men always holding a pipe or a cigar in the mouth for something to suck on. Women, too, find infantile satisfaction in playing bridge or giving their children entirely into the care of nurse-maids with as inefficient oversight as is the carelessness of little girls who play with dolls. People with fads are playing with life as children play at living, and I have been surprised to find that men and women, retiring to the life of a nunnery or monastery for the sole purpose of avoiding the responsibilities of living, yet think themselves examples of goodness. In them we see a regression to lives of meditation and stagnation, virtually a return to a prenatal existence. Surely there is greater glory in meeting and conquering temptations than in hiding away from them.

EARLY INFLUENCES

In assisting at the psychological examination of several thousand men in a city lodging house I was interested to observe the retarded mental development shown in the history of the alcoholics. There was usually a mother or sister who had made a comfortable home for the patient. *^I kept steady work until after her death, and then I had no one to care if I went to the devil, and the barroom was always warm with something to eat and drink, to warm up a fellow's spirits." When asked why they had not married, the reply was the usual one: **Well, if I could have found a girl who was worth marrying I would have been glad to marry, but I never could find the right girl, and yet I wanted to marry to have a home of my own.'' This really meant that if he could have found a girl who would have been a mother to him, and cared for him as tenderly, he would have married, but the girls had also revealed their wishes to find in him more than he had to give of love and sympathy. He was really unfit to marry because he wanted all the sympathy in the home. And so we see the character of the