Handicaps of Childhood

by H. Addington Bruce

Now, recent research seems to leave no doubt that heredity does operate to some extent in the causation of bashfulness, since most bashful persons—at any rate, among those who come under the care of physicians—have a strain of the neurotic in their family histories. On the other hand, it has been quite as positively established that the matter of external appearances has a causal relation to bashfulness in comparatively few cases, though it may act as an aggravating element. In case after case the first manifestations of true chronic bashfulness have been traced to a period in life far antedating any anxiety on the person's part respecting the way he walks or dresses or looks. More than this, when the bashful themselves are questioned as to the causes of their bashfulness, they usually either profess entire ignorance, or emphasise mental, rather than physical, factors.

"I attribute my bashfulness to no physical cause," is a characteristic response. "I attribute it to a certain weakness of mind, to my lack of self-confidence, to fear of ridicule, and especially to a nervous excitement which I feel whenever others look at me."

Of course, apart from the doubt which such a response casts on the external appearances theory of bashfulness, and its emphasis on the mental, as opposed to the physical, factor, it really throws scarcely any light on the question of causation. Just as there are many awkward, badly dressed, and deformed people who are not bashful, so there are many modest and sensitive ones who go through life in wholly normal fashion, perhaps untroubled even by bashfulness of the occasional type. Quite evidently there still is an underlying something which has to be taken into account before one can fully understand chronic bashfulness.

That something the modern medical psychologist is beginning to believe he has discovered through proceeding on the assumption that bashfulness is far more than a mere innate weakness or character defect; that it is, in reality, a functional nervous trouble, differing only in degree, not in kind, from hysteria and other psychoneuroses. That is to say, the medical psychologist assumes that, as is now believed to be the case in every psychoneurosis, the bashful man is the victim of subconscious memories of distressing incidents in his early life; incidents which, in his case, have had the effect of arousing in an exaggerated degree sentiments of shame or fear.

The supersensitive child, having seen or heard something that profoundly shocks him, or having committed some petty or really serious fault, feels, on the one hand, that he has a shameful secret he must guard carefully, and, on the other hand, fears that people can read his secret in his eyes. Hence, he develops feelings of awkwardness and embarrassment when others look at and speak to him. He fidgets, blushes, stammers, trembles; in a word, displays all the symptoms indicated by the term bashfulness. In the course of time one of two things will happen: either increased knowledge will reassure him, and he will, as the saying is, outgrow his bashfulness; or the hidden fear and shame—even though the original occasion for them may have completely lapsed from conscious remembrance—will fix themselves firmly in his mind, causing a habit of bashfulness which may torture him all his life.

Whether this new theory as to bashfulness of the chronic type holds good invariably, it is as yet impossible to say. Certainly, it has been verified in an astonishingly large number of cases. Time and again, applying some one of the delicate methods by which they tunnel into the most obscure recesses of the mind, medical psychologists have dragged into the full light of conscious recollection forgotten memories which the victims of bashfulness themselves recognise as connected with the onset of their abnormal timidity. Often their bashfulness completely disappears, or is markedly abated, as soon as the memories responsible for it are recovered. Or, when an immediate cure is not wrought, one is pretty sure to result after an explanation of the evolution of the trouble and the application of appropriate suggestions to develop self-confidence and will power.

To illustrate by citing a few instances from life, let me give first the case of a young New England man, who, as usually happens, did not resort to a physician until his bashfulness had begun to interfere with his earning a livelihood.

"I have not the slightest idea what is the matter with me," he told the neurologist whom he consulted, "but the fact is that for a good many years I have felt strangely timid when meeting people. I believe I am naturally of a courageous disposition—certainly I do not suffer from cowardice in the ordinary sense—but I actually blush and tremble if spoken to suddenly or looked at intently. Lately I notice this has been growing worse."

"Can you tell me," the physician asked, "just when you first noticed that you were bashful?"