As all educators are well aware, the first years of life and the adolescent period are not only the years of greatest physical growth, but the years when the severest demands are made on the mind, both by the task of acquiring knowledge and by the perturbations of adolescence. They are the years when the mind, in its immaturity, is most in need of some protective mechanism to enable it automatically and at frequent intervals to take a holiday as it were. Such a mechanism is admirably provided in laughter, which, as every laugher will at once appreciate, when not unduly prolonged leaves behind it a pleasurable feeling of exhilaration and greater mental as well as physical well-being.
We laugh, then, in infancy and adolescence, not primarily because we are “light-hearted” or “amused,” but to satisfy a natural instinct of both physiological and psychological utility. We laugh less in maturity, partly because we have not, as a rule, the same necessity of getting rid of surplus nervous energy, partly because our minds have passed the tender formative age, and partly because widening experience has developed sentiments and ideas tending to inhibit laughter. Nevertheless we do still need to a certain extent the relief which laughter brings; we feel in some degree the old hunger for it, and consequently, often at very slight provocation, we yield, and even cultivate opportunities for yielding, to the impulse which was so conspicuously operant in the years of our youth. As with every instinct, moreover, the laughing process may, and occasionally does, become perverted, as in the laughter of cynicism and contempt, and in the abnormal laughter of the overwrought—itself, however, the modern medical psychologist assures us, a medium of relief from an unbearable strain.
As to the things at which we commonly laugh—the “laughable” whose nature has so perplexed philosophers—all that may safely be said is that their laugh-provoking power depends not so much on an inherent “comicality” as on the circumstances under which they occur to us, and our point of view toward them as determined by previous training and experience. Certainly, for instance, we cannot laugh at a subtle bit of wit until we have had education in the appreciation of the skilful use of language. The instincts of imitation and of sympathy, further, have a share in determining on many an occasion the functioning of the laughing instinct. Time and again we laugh merely because we see other people laughing. Personally I am inclined to think also that much at which we laugh as adults is laughable to us only by reason of subconscious association with similar occurrences which chanced to move us to laughter in our childhood. But on this point nothing positive should be asserted pending psychological investigation which has yet to be made.
Conceding, however, that the laughable is and must always remain elusive, baffling, uncertain, there need be no uncertainty as to our view of laughter itself. To laugh—to laugh spontaneously and heartily—is under nearly every circumstance a good thing both for the body and for the mind. Like sleep, it refreshes; like food, it strengthens. Humanity in truth would be the poorer—and the shorter-lived—were it ever to lose this splendid heritage of the power to laugh.
This is why I have said so much about laughter in the present book. To parents in especial knowledge of its true significance is important. They will not then fall into the mistake, too often made at present, of curbing their children’s instinctive tendency to laugh. Rather, they should deliberately seek to cultivate in them a keen sense of humour, and encourage them in merriment—not because it is a thing pleasing in itself, but because of its positive developmental value. Directly or indirectly to repress this basic instinct is always dangerous, leading to warpings of character, and at times undoubtedly contributing to the causation of that strangest and most misunderstood of human maladies, hysteria, to which we must now give some consideration.
VII
HYSTERIA IN CHILDHOOD
A little girl, a pupil in a German school, made her appearance in class one morning with a bandage about her head. In answer to her teacher’s questions, she said she had been operated upon for ear trouble at a local hospital the day before. She described every detail of the operation, which, it seemed, had been exceedingly painful.
For some time she wore the bandage to school every day, and frequently complained that her ear was still troubling her. Her teacher was properly sympathetic, and, chancing to meet one of the girl’s relatives, expressed her anxiety for the child, and the hope that she would soon be completely cured.