Psychology and parenthood

by H. Addington Bruce

These children, twenty-seven in number, were pupils in a Cleveland public school; they were afflicted with tooth-decay to a varying extent, and they were mentally backward, being from one to four years retarded in their school-work. At Professor Wallin’s direction their teeth and gums were treated, they were taught to use a tooth-brush properly, and to chew their food thoroughly. Before the dental treatment began they were twice given five psychological tests, to ascertain their memory-power, attention-power, etc.; the same tests were twice given to them while the treatment was under way; and, six months after its termination, or just before the close of the school-year 1910–1911, the tests were again given twice.

Comparing the results of the different testings, a progressive and remarkable improvement was found. In ability to memorise, the average improvement for the group was 19 per cent.; in attention power, 60 per cent.; in adding, 35 per cent.; in ability to associate words having an opposite meaning, 129 per cent.; and in general association ability, 42 per cent. More than this, and testifying incontrovertibly to the direct influence of the dental treatment in promoting vigour of thought, only one of the children failed of promotion, six completed thirty-eight weeks of school-work in twenty-four weeks, and one boy did two years’ work in one year. Yet all of these children, remember, had formerly been quite unable to keep up with the work of their grades.

How explain this great improvement? Only on the theory that, by repairing their teeth and drilling them in the rudiments of mouth hygiene, a stop had been put to a disease-process which involved both nervous strain and—through the swallowing of the toxic products of tooth-decay—a poisoning of the supply of blood to the brain, with consequent lessening of the brain’s ability to function properly.

Eye trouble, particularly in the way of hypermetropia, or far-sightedness, is another frequent cause of laziness in school-children, and the correction of the defective vision often is followed by a marked access of vigour and alertness. In such cases, however, the laziness is usually manifest only in the school-room, the child being active enough at play, when no strain is put on the eyes comparable with that occasioned by reading.

To cite a single instance, a little boy of ten was reported as being so inattentive at school and so uninterested in his work as to yawn and become sleepy when required to read. As no amount of scolding sufficed to turn him from his idle ways, and as he began to complain of headaches and nervousness, he was finally taken to an oculist. To the surprise of his parents, who had always believed his vision normal, he was found to be suffering from latent hypermetropia; and, on being provided with the proper eye-glasses, he soon demonstrated, by the rapidity with which he improved in his studies and the interest he now showed in them, that his laziness had been determined by the condition of his eyesight.

In fact, any bodily defect that is of such a character as to impose an excessive strain on the nervous system tends to produce an asthenic condition, with accompanying apathy and indolence. And, even when the local trouble is only temporary, its disappearance is not necessarily followed, as it was in the instances just narrated, by a return to energetic, effective activity. For, in the meantime, the idler may have acquired an unconscious—or, to be more precise, a subconscious—belief that sustained exertion is and always must be beyond his powers. Thus a vicious circle is established, the belief in his incapacity causing him to act in such a way as to intensify the asthenic state, and the resultant increased feeling of debility operating, in its turn, to confirm and strengthen his erroneous belief. In other words, he is now suffering chiefly from a “fixed idea,” and his condition is that of any psycho-neurotic patient.

On this point all who have made a scientific study of laziness are in substantial agreement. We must, flatly affirms the pioneer investigator Doctor Maurice de Fleury, “take the indolent for what they nearly always are—neuropaths; and neurosis for what it always is—bad habits of cerebral activity.” The longer a man has been an idler, the more deeply rooted, of course, will be his subconscious conviction that exertion is impossible to him; but, according to de Fleury and other investigators, once this conviction is broken down, he will find that he can work, and work to good purpose.

The effecting of a cure, needless to say, is not always easy. It requires co-operation on the part of the patient, and on the physician’s part intelligent and sympathetic use of both physiological and psychological methods of treatment. Hygienic measures must be adopted to tone up the nervous system, to improve the circulation, the digestion, the nutrition—to develop, as far as possible, a general feeling of well-being. The idler must gradually be trained to occupy himself usefully—not, perhaps, for many hours at a time, but for regular stated periods, however short. And to this end, the effort has to be made, from the outset, to awaken in him an absorbing interest in the attainment of some one specific aim in life, thereby replacing his baneful fixed idea of incapacity for work with the opposed and beneficial obsession of something that he must and can accomplish.

Here we come to what is by far the most important factor in the cure of laziness—the dynamic, regenerative power of some special interest.[2] Even your idler, enfeebled by positive organic weakness, may rise superior to himself and achieve marvels, if only his enthusiasm be sufficiently aroused to a definite end. It was thus, for example, with Charles Darwin.