Handicaps of Childhood

by H. Addington Bruce

Similarly, boyhood weaknesses and failings, carrying with them profound feelings of shame and apprehension, were found responsible for the bashfulness experienced by Doctor Hartenberg's dish-washing patient and Doctor Bechterew's visitor with the black spectacles.

Always, in truth, the story seems to be the same: there has been in the chronically bashful man's early life some specific shock, fright, or anxiety, which, provoking in a supersensitive mind feelings of extreme embarrassment, has established a bashfulness that may not fully yield to any method of treatment until the remote and usually forgotten cause is recalled to remembrance.

Happily, this requirement is not always necessary. As an eminent medical psychologist once said to me:

"It is my experience that, in many cases, a cure can be brought about simply by developing the patient's will power, either through suggestion in hypnosis, or through psychic re-education in the normal waking state. In such instances, it is enough to explain to the patient that his bashfulness undoubtedly had its origin in some shock which he has forgotten; that while, in the beginning, he may have had reason enough for feeling bashful, that reason has long since been outlived; and that his present bashfulness is actually nothing more than a bad habit, the result of self-suggestion.

"Attacking the problem this way and applying strong counter-suggestion, it frequently is possible to effect a cure without a tedious preliminary ransacking of subconscious memories. When, however, this method fails, psychoanalytic investigation becomes indispensable."

Manifestly of even greater importance than the cure of bashfulness is its prevention. This, on any theory of its causation, and especially on the view here advanced, is primarily a matter resting with parents. The appearance in a growing boy or girl of symptoms of habitual uneasiness and embarrassment when with other children or older persons should be regarded as a reason for real anxiety. Actually, however, as in the case of children who show extreme or persistent jealousy, most parents are inclined to dismiss such symptoms from their minds with the careless remark, "Yes, he's bashful; but that's nothing. He'll outgrow it." Unfortunately, he may not outgrow it without definite aid and guidance.

For one thing, the effort should immediately be made to develop in him interests, whether scholastic or athletic—preferably both—that will take him out of himself. Whatever else may be said of bashfulness, it is always, like selfishness, a sign of excessive preoccupation, conscious or unconscious, with thoughts of self. The bashful boy, no less than the bashful man, is abnormally self-centred. And, besides endeavouring to weaken his extreme egoism, there should be a systematic attempt to cultivate self-control and self-reliance; while, at the same time, his confidence should be tactfully sought, to draw from him a statement as to anything that is particularly perplexing or worrying him, and thereby to gain a vantage point for effectually banishing doubt and anxiety from his mind.

To banish doubt and anxiety from his mind! I am put in remembrance of another serious life handicap, allied to bashfulness in having as a basic element lack of self-reliance and self-confidence, and, like bashfulness, originating in childhood experiences. This handicap is the habit of futile doubting and reasoning, whether about matters of importance or matters of no importance. In some people the habit of futile doubting is so extreme as to amount to a veritable disease. Again, let me make use of an instance from real life to bring out concretely the condition I have in mind.

To a neurologist in the city of Washington there came a man thirty years of age. There was nothing in his appearance to set him apart from other people. He was intelligent-looking, well dressed, well mannered, and he did not seem at all out of health. But this, in effect, is what he said to the neurologist:

"Doctor, I have come to you as a last resort, and if you cannot help me I do not know what I shall do. I am mentally all in pieces. My mind is so weak that I cannot even decide what clothes I ought to put on.