a man selects a mate because he finds in her fetishes the assurance of safety which those fetishes portended when observed in the appearance of his affectionate, devoted, self-sacrificing mother, whose intelligence and wisdom he never doubted when he was, let us say, ten or fifteen and she was thirty or thirty-five.
and likewise, a woman expects, consciously or unconsciously, that certain physical characteristics which once indicated, when observed in her father's appearance, power, protection, a gainful occupation, sympathy and understanding, etc., will mean exactly the same thing when she finds them reproduced totally or in part in a male human being of the marriageable age.
the parent-child relationship, involving at first boundless devotion on the part of the strong[pg 224] parent to the helpless nursling, infant and child, and later, complete submission of the growing child and adolescent to the older and, supposedly world-wiser, parent, has very little, if anything, in common with the relationship of mate to mate.
sex plays no conscious part in the parent-child relationship.
it does not tinge every action and every thought of the two parties concerned. the secret cravings or the secret repulsion it may awaken never distort consciously the judgments passed by parents on their children, children on their parents. of neurotic unconscious distortions of judgment there is a plenty. never, however, does the strife narrow down to this: "he or she does not satisfy me sexually," "he or she humiliates me sexually by being attracted to others," "he or she is an obstacle to my complete sexual gratification with another," etc., sources of open hostility of the most painfully conscious kind between mates.
the mother who satisfied our egotism became to us beautiful and perfect. the female who employs the same means our mother did, to win us, but who cannot arouse us sexually, never appears to us very attractive physically or mentally.
on the other hand we are apt to disregard, tem[pg 225]porarily at least, the mental deficiencies of the man or woman who gives us the most complete sexual gratification.
from this it will be easily understood that choosing a mate solely on the strength of his or her fetishes, is likely, unless the union be of the most ephemeral kind, to lead to profound disappointment.
it behooves us then to determine accurately what every fetish means and what sort of personality is actually to be found associated with a certain set of physical characteristics.
for i repeat, a man's or woman's personality is to be studied, not in their attitude to their offspring, (for the most savage beast is transformed by the paternal or maternal instinct into a marvel of tenderness, kindness and patience), but in their relation to the social herd and to their sexual mate.
until the study of the ductless glands was given the importance we attach to it today, the word personality denoted a set of attitudes which many psychologists considered as mainly voluntary and amenable to "moral suasion" and other forms of pedagogical approach of the individual. when we read the works of freud, jung, adler, ferenczi and their disciples, we never receive an intimation of[pg 226] the r?le which the endocrines may play in moulding the human personality.
modern endocrinologists on the other hand, seem as indifferent to psychology as the psychoanalysts of yesterday were to neurology and endocrinology. some of them assume that the personality is the glands and that our glands alone shape our thinking and our actions.
both views are narrow and unsatisfactory. the personality is made up primarily of an organism which outward influences can or cannot influence easily. pleasure and pain then shape that organism thru the memories which they leave in it in the form of infinitely small modifications of our autonomic nervous system. that system, in its turn, develops, thru constant stimulation, certain glands or allows them to remain undeveloped thru lack of stimulation or thru negative stimulation.
some of those glands may, thru mere accident of growth, have been already overdeveloped or stunted at birth. individuals free from complexes, however, may easily reestablish the balance of cravings and social inhibitions which threatens at times to be upset by an overdeveloped or underdeveloped gland. complex-ridden individuals on the other hand, use their glandular inferiority unconsciously[pg 227] as a scapegoat for absurd or morbid behavior.
reciprocal influence. we cannot say, therefore, that our behavior is dictated by our glands, but it is influenced by them and reciprocally, our behavior influences our glands. as i said in a previous chapter, hyperthyroidism creates fear, but fear may also create hyperthyroidism. overdevelopment of the sexual apparatus creates a predisposition to sexual overactivity, but sexual thoughts also have a tendency to provoke unusual sexual activity.
there is one thing, however, for which the secretions of our ductless glands are mainly responsible, and which is most important to consider in a study of fetishes. they determine the shape, color and consistency of many parts of our body, such as complexion, hair, teeth, skeletal frame and growth.
a glance at a human body enables one to determine as accurately as an autopsy would, the size of a person's thyroid, adrenals, etc.
as the development of those glands corresponds to the social and sexual behavior of the individual, a review of the various bodily fetishes from the endocrinological point of view will be helpful to the average reader.
in order not to use too many technical terms we[pg 228] shall consider only four of the endocrine glands, the pituitary, the thyroid, the adrenals and the gonads.
the pituitary gland is a small body, the size of a pea, located in the turkish saddle (sella turcica), at the base of the brain and closely behind the root of the nose. some have called it a brain within the brain with a miniature skull of its own within the skull.
the pituitary regulates the rhythms of the body, from the bony growth of the skeleton to the rate of the heart and respiration, from the periods of sleep and waking time to the periods of menstruation.
if a part of the pituitary of a dog is removed, the animal becomes sleepy, fat, perverse in its sex cravings; puppies cease to grow when submitted to such an operation; autopsy of many human dwarfs has shown that their pituitary was undeveloped. people whose pituitary is insufficient in its action have a tendency to lose their hair, have a very dry skin, a dull mentality, sometimes suffer from epilepsy and crave sugar in large quantities. they are generally obese, the fat accumulating on the lower abdomen and the feet and ankles. louis berman in his excellent book on the endocrines "glands regulating the personality," presents as a perfect likeness of the "hypopituitary type" the fat boy of the pick[pg 229]wick papers whose emloyment with mr. wardle consisted in alternate sleeping and eating.
i will quote from berman's book a description of the opposite type, the individual in whom the pituitary gland is too active.
"if the overaction begins in childhood or adolescence, that is, before puberty, there results a great elongation of the bones, so that a giant is the consequence.... if the overaction happens after puberty, when the long bones have set and can not grow longer, a peculiar, diffuse enlargement of the individual occurs, especially of his hands and feet and head. the nose, ears, lips and eyes get larger and coarser. all those people are rather big and tall to begin with, heavy jawed, burly, with overhanging eyebrows and an aggressive manner. rabelais' most famous character, gargantua, belongs to the group. we recruit more drum majors than prime ministers from among those people."
the pituitary has a strong influence on sexual activities. young animals whose pituitary has been surgically damaged will not be able to reproduce themselves when reaching adulthood. feeding pituitary glands to hens on the other hand, causes them to lay thirty per cent more eggs than they would naturally.
[pg 230]
the thyroid is a transformer of energy. it is a large reddish mass located in front and on both sides of the trachea, consisting of two lobes connected by a bridge of the same tissue.
the thyroid activates the fires of the body. an active thyroid means life at "concert pitch." a sluggish thyroid means a slow, negative existence.
to a poor thyroid correspond a pasty complexion, watery eyes with heavy lids, a depressed pug nose, large ears, thin hair, scanty eyebrows and eyelashes, short, brittle nails, irregular, bad teeth, broad, pudgy hands and feet, generally cold.
with an overactive thyroid we observe a high color, sleeplessness, restlessness, a tendency to lose weight, emotionalism, profuse perspiration, bright, large eyes, good white teeth.
the adrenal glands are about the size of a bean and located on top of the kidneys. they secrete adrenin which, when poured into the blood, causes muscular tension, accelerates the heart beats and the breathing rate, dilates the pupil and produces fear or anger according to the relative size of the core (medulla) or envelop (cortex) of the adrenals.
in timid animals (and women) the cortex is thin, in courageous animals (and men) the cortex is[pg 231] rather thick. according to the thickness of your cortex you shall, in an emergency, resort to either fight or flight.
a man with a thin cortex looks feminine, a woman with a thick cortex looks mannish.
the adrenals control the color of the skin, the growth of hair, the size of the canine teeth and the color of the teeth. to good adrenals correspond an olive complexion, much hair on the body, rather yellowish teeth and strong canines. the bearded lady of the circus is a woman with overdeveloped adrenals and a thick cortex.
weak adrenals go with cold extremities, a hairless body, poor canines, lack of ambition, discouragement, fatigability, etc.
the gonads or sex glands, testes in man, ovaries in woman, affect thru the secretions of their interstitial cells, the pitch of the voice, the growth of pubic hair, the size of the breasts, the distribution of fat.
good gonads mean masculine looking men and feminine looking women. poor gonads mean feminine looking men, hairless and with overdeveloped breasts, talking in a high-pitched voice, with a tendency to obesity and laziness (eunuchs); scrawny[pg 232] looking women who may later in life grow abnormally fat, with, in their youth, flat chests, scanty menstruation, etc.
healthy gonads also retard senility. gonads whose interstitial cells have been rehabilitated by the steinach operation bring a new youth to the organism, mentally and physically.
other glands, the thymus, pancreas, parathyroid, pineal body also play an important part in shaping the human body and with it the personality. the limits of this book do not allow me, however, to discuss them even superficially.
