The Foundations of Personality

by Abraham Myerson

The baby throws his arms about, kicks his legs, rolls his eyes. In these movements arising from internal activities which, we can only state, relate to vascular distribution, neuronic relations, visceral and endocrinic activities, is the germ of the impulse to activity which it is the function of society and the individual himself to shape into organized useful work. Thus is manifested a native, inherent, potentiality, which we may call the energy of the baby, the energy of man, a something which the environment shapes, but which is created in the laboratory of the individual. The father and mother are delighted with the fine vigorous movements of the child, and there is in that delight the approval that society always gives or tends to give to manifestations of power. We tend involuntarily to admire strength, even though misdirected. The strong man always has followers though he be a villain, and in fact the history of man is to a large extent based on the fact that the strong man evokes enthusiasm and obedience.

This impulse to activity is an unrest, and its satisfaction lies in movement; in other words there is a pleasure or a relief in mere activity. The need of discharging energy, the desire to do so, the pleasure and satisfaction in so doing constitute a cornerstone of the foundation of life and character. This desire for activity, as we shall call it henceforth, is behind work and play; it fluctuates with health and disease, with youth and old age; it becomes harnessed to purpose, it is called into being by motives or inhibited by conflict and indecision and its organization is the task of society. Men differ in regard to the desire for activity, with a range from the inert whose energy is low to the dynamic types that are ever busy and ever seeking more to do.

The child's first movements are aimless, but soon the impressions it receives by striking hands and feet against soft and hard things bring about a dim knowledge of the boundaries of itself, and the kinesthetic impulses from joints and muscles help this knowledge. The outside world commences to separate itself from the "me," though both are vague and shadowy. Soon it learns that one part of the outside world is able to satisfy its hunger, to supply a need, and it commences to recognize the existence of benevolent outside agencies; and it also learns little by little that its instinctive cries bring these agencies to it. I do not mean that the baby has any internal language corresponding to the idea of outside agency, benevolence, etc., but it gets to know that its cries are potent, that a breast brings relief and satisfaction. At first it cries, the breast comes, there is relief and satisfaction, and it makes no connection or no connection is made between these events of outer and inner origin. But the connection is finally made,—desire becomes definitely articulate in the cry of the baby, which thus becomes a plea and a summons. Anticipation of good to come appears and with it the germ of hope and forward looking, and there is realization or disappointment, joy or anger or sorrow. Thus desire is linked up with satisfaction in a definite way, ideas and feelings of demand and supply begin to appear and perhaps power itself, in the vague notion, "I can get milk," commences to be felt. Social life starts when the child associates the mother with the milk, with the desire and the satisfaction. In the relationship established between mother and baby is the first great social contact; love, friendship, discipline, teaching and belief have their origin when, at the mother's breast, the child separates its mother from the rest of the things of the world. And not only in the relief of hunger is the mother active, but she gets to be associated with the relief from wet and irritating clothes, the pleasant bath, and the pleasure of the change of position that babies cry for. Her bosom and her arms become sources of pleasure, and the race has immortalized them as symbolic of motherhood, in song, in story and in myth.

Not only does he associate the mother with the milk but her very presence brings him comfort, even when he is not hungry. It is within the first few months of life that the child shows that he is a gregarious[1] animal,—gregarious in the sense that he is unhappy away from others. To be alone is thus felt to be essentially an evil, to be with others is in itself a good. This gregarious feeling is the sine qua non of social life: when we punish any one we draw away from him; when we reward we get closer to him. All his life the child is to find pleasure in being with people and unhappiness when away from them, unless he be one of those in whom the gregarious instinct is lacking. For instincts may be absent, just as eye pigment is; there are mental albinos, lacking the color of ordinary human feeling. Or else some experience may make others hateful to him, or he may have so intellectualized his life that this instinct has atrophied. This gregarious feeling will heighten his emotions, he will gather strength from the feeling that "others are with him," he will join societies, clubs, organizations in response to the same feeling that makes sheep graze on a hillside in a group, that makes the monkeys in a cage squat together, rubbing sides and elbows. The home in which our child finds himself, though a social institution, is not gregarious; it gives him only a limited contact, and as soon as he is able and self-reliant he seeks out a little herd, and on the streets, in the schoolroom and playground, he really becomes a happy little herd animal.

[1] One of my children would stop crying if some one merely entered his room when he was three weeks old. He was, and is, an intensely gregarious boy.

Let us turn back to the desire for activity. As the power to direct the eyes develops, as hands become a little more sure, because certain pathways in brain and cord "myelinize,"[1] become functional, the outside world attracts in a definite manner and movements become organized by desires, by purpose. It's a red-letter day in the calendar of a human being when he first successfully "reaches" something; then and there is the birth of power and of successful effort. All our ideas of cause and effect originate when we cause changes in the world, when we move a thing from thither to yon. No philosopher, though he becomes so intellectualized that he cannot understand how one thing or event causes another, ever escapes from the feeling that HE causes effects. Purpose, resistance, success, failure, cause, effect, these become inextricably wound up with our thoughts and beliefs from the early days when, looking at a dangling string, we reached for it once, twice, a dozen times and brought it in triumph to our mouth. And our idea that there were forbidden things came when the watchful mother took it out of our mouth, saying, "No, no, baby mustn't!"

[1] At birth, though most of the great nervous pathways are laid down, they are non-functional largely because the fibers that compose them are unclothed, non-myelinated. The various kinds of tracts have different times for becoming "myelinated" as was the discovery of the great analogist, Flechsig.

At any rate, the organization of activity for definite purposes starts. The little investigator is apparently obsessed with the idea that everything it can reach, including its fingers and toes, are good to eat, for everything reached is at once brought to the mouth, the primitive curiosity thus being gustatory. In this research the baby finds that some few things are pleasant, many indifferent and quite a few disgusting and even painful, which may remain as a result not far different from that obtained by investigation in later years. The desire for pleasant things commences to guide its activities. Every new thing is at once an object for investigation, perhaps because its possibilities for pleasure are unknown. That curiosity may have some such origin is at least a plausible statement. At any rate, desire of a definite type steps in to organize the mere desire for activity; and impulse is controlled by purpose.

The child learns to creep, and the delight in progression lies in the fact that far more things are accessible for investigation, for rearrangement, for tasting. It is no accident that we speak of our "tastes" that we say, "I want to taste of experience." That is exactly what the child creeping on the floor seeks,—to taste of experience and to anticipate, to realize, to learn. Out of the desire for activity grows a desire for experience born of the pleasure of excitement that we spoke of previously. This desire for experience becomes built up into strange forms under teaching and through the results of experience. It is very strong in some who become explorers, roues, vagabonds, scientists as a result, and it is very weak in others who stay at home and seek only the safe and limited experience. You see two children in one room,—and one sits in the middle of the floor, perhaps playing with a toy or looking around, and the other has investigated the stove and found it hotter than he supposed, has been under the table and bumped his head, has found an unusually sweet white lump which in later life he will call sugar. The good child is often without sufficient curiosity to be bad, whereas the bad child may be an overzealous seeker of experience.

So our child reaching out for things develops ideas of cause, effect and power, commences to have an idea of himself as a cause and likes the feeling of power. As he learns to walk, the world widens, his sense of power grows, and his feeling of personality increases. Meanwhile another side of his nature has been developing and one fully as important.