Handicaps of Childhood

by H. Addington Bruce

This second illustrative instance brings out vividly a fact that deserves to be emphasised—the fact, namely, that, at bottom, these doubting manias are only exaggerations of a phenomenon of common occurrence. There are times when virtually everybody is tormented by doubts regarding matters that ought not to cause any indecision or perplexity. Moreover, while comparatively few people feel the need of going to a physician to be cured of abnormal doubting, there are many others who might advantageously seek the specialist's aid. People are often blind to their great weakness in this respect, though their friends may see clearly that their vacillation with regard to things great or small constitutes a defect that of itself accounts amply for their inability to make headway in the world and rise above mediocrity.

Like the Washington neurologist's patient, if in less degree, there are people to whom the choice of clothing presents a prodigious problem. To others, the choice of foods is a never-ending puzzle. At every meal they find themselves sadly at a loss to decide what they shall eat. Others, again, acting in much the fashion of the young man treated by Doctor Sidis, conjure up visions of possible mistakes and mishaps in connection with the writing and mailing of letters, the opening or shutting of doors and windows, the carrying of umbrellas, etc. Also, there are doubters of a kind well described by an observant physician:

"There are people who doubt whether their friends really think anything of them. They think that, though they treat them courteously, this may be only common politeness, and that they may really resent their wasting their time when they call on them. They hesitate to ask these people to do things for them, though, over and over again, the friends may have shown their willingness, and, above all, by asking favours of them in turn, may have shown that they were quite willing to put themselves under obligations.

"They doubt about their charities. They wonder whether they may really not be doing more harm than good, though they have investigated the cases, or have had them investigated, and the objects of their charity may have been proved to be quite deserving. They hesitate about the acquisition of new friends, and doubt whether they should give them any confidence, and whether the confidences they have received from them are not really baits."[12]

Here, decidedly, we have a state of affairs not only breeding unhappiness, but involving a vast waste of nervous energy. This it is that chiefly makes the yielding to trivial doubts a menace to human welfare. To conserve energy for useful purposes, we are so constituted that ordinarily the little acts of everyday life—our rising, dressing, eating, attending to household or business details of a routine character—are done by us automatically. We take it for granted that we do them correctly, and, usually, we so do them. If now and then we make a mistake, we think little about it. Rightly, we regard it as of no account, compared with matters of more importance. Thus we conserve our energy for our life work. Whereas the doubter about trivialities fritters his energy away.

And, now, taking up the question of the causation of this costly habit of doubting about trivialities, let us turn once more to the cases of the two morbid doubters who consulted the Washington and Boston specialists.

In both of these cases, psychological analysis was undertaken to ascertain the causes of the exaggerated tendency to doubt. In both it was found that the patients had been subjected in childhood to conditions almost inevitably productive of a profound distrust of self. This was particularly true in the Washington case. The patient in this case was the only son of parents whose love had led them to be over-solicitous about him. When he was a little fellow they could not bear to have him out of their sight, lest something should happen to him. They had anticipated his wishes, done for him things that he might very well have done for himself; and, when he did attempt to do things for himself, they intervened to help him.

The result was an enfeebling of his consciousness and of his will. The man grew up without initiative. People had always done things for him, had always decided things for him. How could any one expect him to decide anything for himself? It was not that he was naturally weak-minded, weak-willed; it was that his training had engendered in him conditions making for mental confusion and instability of purpose.

Such was the outcome of the neurologist's psychological study of his case. It held the possibilities of a cure, through psychic re-education, having as its starting point the emancipation of this child of thirty from slavish dependence on his parents. And, in the end, after nearly two years of patient effort, a cure was actually effected.

In the second case, distrust of self had been produced in quite another way. This patient's parents had not spoiled him by over-attention. On the opposite, they had not given enough thought to the importance of developing in him emotional control, the need for which was particularly indicated in his early childhood by great dreaminess and sensitiveness of disposition. His special need for training in the control of his emotions was further evinced by the violence of his reactions to happenings of a disturbing nature. Once, for instance, when he unexpectedly met a deformed, paralysed man, he fell to the ground in a faint.