"You want the privileges of this house," scolds Morton's mother. "All right. But for goodness' sake, take some of the responsibilities. Just look at that lawn. It's like a hayfield! And today the garbage man came on his rounds. But no, the can wasn't out on the curb. If mowing the lawn and carrying out the garbage isn't little enough to ask, I'll ask you . . ."
Morton yanked at his hair and gnashed his teeth in a kind of desperation. "Gee, Mother. That's just it. You never ask me. You tell me. You sit 'way up there on a heavenly cloud or something and hand down orders about what little Mortie has to do. Only I'm not little Mortie any more. I've got a mind of my own and Id like to use it."
"Then why don't you remember the lawn and the garbage?"
"Because," said Morton, suddenly calm, "I don't remember because I want to forget."
The same truth holds for many teen-agers. When they are summarily commanded to do things, they are apt to revolt. And the simplest way of rebelling is to forget.
"That sweet smirk that Esther puts on"--Esther's mother grimaces--"and her everlasting apologies! 'I'm so sorry, Mother darling! It completely slipped my mind!!' . . . I could tar and feather her; I could."
Says Fred, "My folks say I should take responsibility. But if you ask me I'm a slave-labor expert. A yes man. A pair of hands, no less, for the dame who takes all the responsibility into her own hands and bosses the show."
Fred feels like a nobody in his home.
In contrast, in their home the twins, Dan and Diane, each feels like somebody. They take a part and a very active one. They are not conscripted into it. Their chores are not assigned arbitrarily. They are given a voice and a choice.
However, it had not always been so.
The big change came after the talk which had started between Father and Mother and which then had spread to include the twins.
"We've gone about this thing all wrong, Del," then father had announced to their mother one evening. "No wonder those kids keep crawling out from under. We've given them the feeling that all we wanted them to do was what we ourselves didn't want to do."
"Well, it's true, isn't it?"
"True, but not good. I read a book that started me thinking and I believe I've come up with something: This is your home and my home. And each of us can get the best out of having a home only as we put ourselves into making a home."
"You're a wonderful man, dear," Del smiled. "My father never talked that way to my mother. He said, 'It's your job, Ma.' And he sat on the side lines, not as cheerleader but as chief Mr. Big Complainer. And my mother, of course, acted the martyr and drafted us to lessen her horrible burden instead of to help in the fun of making and keeping a home."
"Nice philosophy you've got there, Del. But if I remember correctly, it's not all a bed of roses. How about that mess of a stopped-up sink I fixed last week and the mess of clothes you had to wash as result? And how about those times when you're tired and complain so bitterly?"
"Why," with a twinkle, "that's part of the fun. I have as much right to complain as my mother had, haven't I? A fine ambition! . . . Well, anyhow, let's go."
Sunday, November 18, 2007
Controlling sex has more to it than sex
The sexual urges in adolescence are important for many and diverse reasons. Their propelling drive is not only biological. It is emotional, too. Behind it may lie not only the push for sexual outlets but also other emotional forces. The push for hostile outlets, for instance. The struggle to satisfy a too-little-satisfied sense of achievement, to prove one is liked when one feels one isn't and to gain comforting closeness one feels one lacks. The desperate necessity to decry and deny fear. The pathetic wish to be liked and to have one's "bad" parts accepted, and the deep and pervading need to like oneself.
We know now this is true:
The teen-ager uses sex not only TO SATISFY SEX IMPULSES. He may turn to sex SATISFY OTHER IMPULSES as well.
Therefore, to help him control his sexual impulses, we need to consider many things in addition to sex . . .
It's rounding a circle. It takes us back to helping him gain varied satisfactions in the whole of his life.
We know now this is true:
The teen-ager uses sex not only TO SATISFY SEX IMPULSES. He may turn to sex SATISFY OTHER IMPULSES as well.
Therefore, to help him control his sexual impulses, we need to consider many things in addition to sex . . .
It's rounding a circle. It takes us back to helping him gain varied satisfactions in the whole of his life.
In the matter of sex education
In the matter of sex education, probably more than in any other, you're bound to have made mistakes. Own up to them. Admit that you've made them. To yourself admit them for certain. And if you feel like it, admit them to your teen-ager, too.
Keep in mind that good body feelings are permissible. And that there are safe and harmless ways of finding at least temporary, partial gratifications.
Recognize that your child is bound to feel hostile toward you for the fact that you have not been able to meet all the curiosities and questions and sex wishes he has had. You couldn't have. It's impossible. Even so, if you let him get his hostility out for the present and past lacks he has felt, even though some of these are imagined, it will help prevent him from using sex as an indirect way of letting hostility out.
Don't be afraid to set limits and to define what he may and may not do.
If, like many youngsters, he doesn't bring up the subject of sex, you do it if you can.
If you feel embarrassed in doing it, say so.
If he wants to talk, listen to him. If he happens to bring in old fears and childish beliefs, don't make fun of them. Many strange, childish fantasies are commonly held over. Truths often sink in better after fantasies have been expressed.
If you like, it won't hurt, and it may help, to mention some of the child fantasies you now know are common. Tell them much as you would tell a folk tale or story. "Children often imagine--thus and so!" After all, these are childish folk tales that most of our children once told themselves. With the retelling a teen-ager may now be able to sever the connections between fact and fiction that he put together when he was small. But don't pry for old memories. That only does harm.
What he needs now is for us to take his love affairs seriously, which does not, however, mean somberly. We can smile with him but not laugh at him. He wants us to listen to how he feels and to be glad he is telling us. He resents reactions like those of Deborah's parents.
Sobbed fifteen-year-old Deborah, flouncing out of the living room, "You're horrible, you two! Forbidding me to marry Kent when I grow up. I don't care if he isn't socially suitable. I'm going to marry him, I tell you, whether you disapprove or not."
What these teen-agers crave is to have their feelings accepted with reactions similar to those that Edith's folks gave. Although Edith, too, was only fifteen, they listened with serious interest. "He's simply super, let's face it! I don't see how such a wonderful fellow even wants to look at me. We've got so many plans. He's going to study eventually to be a doctor. It doesn't matter how many years it takes. We'll get married as soon as we're old enough and I'll train for a secretarial job or to be an actress, I can't decide quite which. I'd rather be an actress, of course. But then the theater is so demanding. We'd never be together in the evening and that wouldn't work. I expect I'll have an awful job learning shorthand. I haven't that kind of a mind. But you can do anything, almost, for love."
"And it gives you a wonderful feeling," Mother put in, "to dream and plan."
"Only sometimes it's so frustrating because there's such a long stretch to go."
"Yes, I know."
Remember--
These youngsters hope so mightily for our understanding. They want us to respect the fact that they are involved emotionally as deeply as they dare. This affair may last. It may not. Most boys and girls go through several heart-shattering relationships in the process of maturing. They are trying out their fledgling wings, as it were, feeling out what it is like to be a man or a woman in love. * In this process they are enormously grateful for our steady and dignified regard.
Remember--
These boys and girls are struggling to have their love needs and sex needs met at a period in life when they possess bodies that are old enough for complete satisfactions which must, however, be curtailed in a world that says "Wait."
Keep in mind that good body feelings are permissible. And that there are safe and harmless ways of finding at least temporary, partial gratifications.
Recognize that your child is bound to feel hostile toward you for the fact that you have not been able to meet all the curiosities and questions and sex wishes he has had. You couldn't have. It's impossible. Even so, if you let him get his hostility out for the present and past lacks he has felt, even though some of these are imagined, it will help prevent him from using sex as an indirect way of letting hostility out.
Don't be afraid to set limits and to define what he may and may not do.
If, like many youngsters, he doesn't bring up the subject of sex, you do it if you can.
If you feel embarrassed in doing it, say so.
If he wants to talk, listen to him. If he happens to bring in old fears and childish beliefs, don't make fun of them. Many strange, childish fantasies are commonly held over. Truths often sink in better after fantasies have been expressed.
If you like, it won't hurt, and it may help, to mention some of the child fantasies you now know are common. Tell them much as you would tell a folk tale or story. "Children often imagine--thus and so!" After all, these are childish folk tales that most of our children once told themselves. With the retelling a teen-ager may now be able to sever the connections between fact and fiction that he put together when he was small. But don't pry for old memories. That only does harm.
What he needs now is for us to take his love affairs seriously, which does not, however, mean somberly. We can smile with him but not laugh at him. He wants us to listen to how he feels and to be glad he is telling us. He resents reactions like those of Deborah's parents.
Sobbed fifteen-year-old Deborah, flouncing out of the living room, "You're horrible, you two! Forbidding me to marry Kent when I grow up. I don't care if he isn't socially suitable. I'm going to marry him, I tell you, whether you disapprove or not."
What these teen-agers crave is to have their feelings accepted with reactions similar to those that Edith's folks gave. Although Edith, too, was only fifteen, they listened with serious interest. "He's simply super, let's face it! I don't see how such a wonderful fellow even wants to look at me. We've got so many plans. He's going to study eventually to be a doctor. It doesn't matter how many years it takes. We'll get married as soon as we're old enough and I'll train for a secretarial job or to be an actress, I can't decide quite which. I'd rather be an actress, of course. But then the theater is so demanding. We'd never be together in the evening and that wouldn't work. I expect I'll have an awful job learning shorthand. I haven't that kind of a mind. But you can do anything, almost, for love."
"And it gives you a wonderful feeling," Mother put in, "to dream and plan."
"Only sometimes it's so frustrating because there's such a long stretch to go."
"Yes, I know."
Remember--
These youngsters hope so mightily for our understanding. They want us to respect the fact that they are involved emotionally as deeply as they dare. This affair may last. It may not. Most boys and girls go through several heart-shattering relationships in the process of maturing. They are trying out their fledgling wings, as it were, feeling out what it is like to be a man or a woman in love. * In this process they are enormously grateful for our steady and dignified regard.
Remember--
These boys and girls are struggling to have their love needs and sex needs met at a period in life when they possess bodies that are old enough for complete satisfactions which must, however, be curtailed in a world that says "Wait."
Don't have too many don'ts at a time
Don't have too many unnecessary "don'ts" (although you will doubtless have some that you consider necessary and that your child is sure are not).
Don't make rules that you know will only be broken. It's no use, for instance, to forbid necking. You know your youngster will neck after he's reached a stage of bolder interest boy-girlwise. Don't forbid him to talk about sex with other youngsters. He probably will talk about it anyway. Most youngsters do. It serves as a safety valve for letting out feelings that might otherwise take a more hazardous path.
Check yourself frequently:
Do you approve or disapprove when your young one starts going with members of the opposite sex? Are you suspicious or fearful? Do you hold the reins so tight that he wants to break free of them? Are your reins so loose that he misses their steadying effect?
These are hard questions to answer. How you handle the day-by-day details of your teen-ager's dating activities is one way in which you express to him what he can expect of you. How you feel is another. He'll learn from both.
And the repeat of two more important DO'S for you:
Whenever possible talk things over first instead of dictating without discussion. You may need to dictate in the end. But meanwhile the talking will have given your boy or girl a chance to get out his feelings and thoughts.
And: Remember that whether you voice it or not, it's important for you to be able to admit to yourself that he has sex urges which are important to him. Try to bear with him. For one of his great tasks during these years is to find peace with himself on their score.
Don't make rules that you know will only be broken. It's no use, for instance, to forbid necking. You know your youngster will neck after he's reached a stage of bolder interest boy-girlwise. Don't forbid him to talk about sex with other youngsters. He probably will talk about it anyway. Most youngsters do. It serves as a safety valve for letting out feelings that might otherwise take a more hazardous path.
Check yourself frequently:
Do you approve or disapprove when your young one starts going with members of the opposite sex? Are you suspicious or fearful? Do you hold the reins so tight that he wants to break free of them? Are your reins so loose that he misses their steadying effect?
These are hard questions to answer. How you handle the day-by-day details of your teen-ager's dating activities is one way in which you express to him what he can expect of you. How you feel is another. He'll learn from both.
And the repeat of two more important DO'S for you:
Whenever possible talk things over first instead of dictating without discussion. You may need to dictate in the end. But meanwhile the talking will have given your boy or girl a chance to get out his feelings and thoughts.
And: Remember that whether you voice it or not, it's important for you to be able to admit to yourself that he has sex urges which are important to him. Try to bear with him. For one of his great tasks during these years is to find peace with himself on their score.
How do you rate in regard to your youngster's dates
We know that the teen-ager wants and needs the protection of sound rules and regulations to help him control his acts. They bring him the certainty he must have in the face of his own uncertainty until he grows into more mature sureness.
With some boys and girls dependable independence comes earlier than with others. But until it is present, a teen-ager wants your rules. They are enormously important props even though he may resist them.
The respect which you have paid to his feelings will be a large factor in determining the respect he pays to your rules.
The assurance which you feel in regard to what you request will also be important.
What rules are drawn up will depend on your own convictions, your background, the customs of the families with whom you associate. It will depend too on what you learn about the customs and rules among the friends with whom your teen-ager goes.
Do you know about his crowd's dating customs?
Discuss these with him. Find out what his crowd does.
Don't forget, however, that his fantasies may color his reports. What he states may more nearly approximate conditions as he wants them to exist rather than as they do actually exist.
" Susy doesn't have to stay home week nights," Florence reports to her parents. "Florence doesn't have to stay home week nights" Susy reports to hers, adding "You shouldn't keep pressuring me to stay home . . ." "So?" we might ask. "Who's pressuring whom?"
You will not want your child to be too different. And yet on some scores you will need to insist on differences.
About times to go out and the time to come home
"Two nights during the school week are enough for dating. Short dates only. Earlier to bed is a must!!"
"No, Ellen, even though the other girls don't have to be in at any special time, we don't think it's wise for a sixteen-yearold to be out till three or four in the morning. Let's settle on a more reasonable time and stick with it . . ."
"But, Mother, suppose we get into a traffic jam on the way home? Or that all the rest of the kids go for a snack? How can you expect me to get in on the dot of the minute hand?"
"I won't. We'll grant half an hour's leeway . . ."
"And if it's a party, of course I'll just have to stay till the end."
"That's right. Making you leave early wouldn't be fair. So we'll want to know when you go to a real party and where."
"Since we care with whom and where--"
"We'd like to know in general where you're going. To a movie. To a dance or what . . ."
"We may be old-fashioned but we want to meet your boy friends. We don't believe in this horn-blowing routine. When Tom comes for you next time, please invite him in . . ."
"Double dates, yes; single dates, no. Not for the present . . ."
"You said Judd asked you up to his apartment? I'm glad you told me. No, I don't think it's wise."
Do you meet her dates with grace?
When daughter brings her boy friend in, do you, her mother, in an attempt to be charming, give her a feeling that you may be trying to outshine her? Or do you, her father, in your attempt to be a hail fellow, really shove your girl into a back seat?
Don't be a holder-onto or a prier-into. Neither one helps.
Are you a night watchman waiting up
for your youngster's return?
"For heaven's sake, Mother, go to bed!"
Are your punishments too punishing?
"Imagine! They made me call off the big party. I'd been looking forward to it for weeks. That was to teach me! To teach me what? How to be meaner than mean to get even! . . . Anyway I felt they'd turned against me. So I put on my jeans and I took my toothbrush and nightgown and I got on the bus and went to my friend's . . ."
Do you yourself remember the agony of punishments that brought humiliation? They're never worth it, no matter what the crime. If you do deny privileges, at least don't make the
denials cover conspicuous times. And do permit your adolescent "outs" that save face.
Do you practice protective interference?
Do you, for instance, keep young brothers away?
Are you dependable about the car?
You promised he could have it. And then you decided to go out the same night. It might just as well have been the next night because it was just one of those "when-can-we-make-it" affairs.
That's one thing.
But it's another when you already have a date and a relatively unimportant one comes up for him and he starts to beg and you begin to feel "cruel." Do you stick with your conviction anyway that it's right to consider yourself rather than martyr yourself? If you do the latter, resentment is bound to follow and you'll take it out on him in some way no doubt.
How sympathetic are you in those pathetic "crises"?
When she's been starry-eyed, expecting a blind date to be her big moment and he turns out a "flop" . . .
When status and prestige are deflated by a lack of a Saturday night date . . .
When he's turned down or she's stood up . . .
These are awful moments, not to be belittled in their crushing weight.
How is your party behavior?
"My parents! They make pretenses to come downstairs and check. Imagine! My mother came down last night to see if I was burning myself with a fork!!!"
On the other hand . . . "My parents are wonderful! Do you know what they've done? They say young people need independence. So, because our place is small, they fixed up their room so it could be a sitting room, not only a bedroom. Now they're out of the way and comfortable there after the introductions are over when I have my friends in. And they're on hand if I need them, which gives me a feeling that's mighty good . . ."
Remember: There are few absolute rules. Most of them should be reviewed in relation to you, to your child and to the resolution that you can come to in terms of your standards and his standards--always, however, adhering to the standards of health, of safety, and of necessary legal demands.
Sometimes it is possible to make things happier all round if the parents of the boys and girls who go together can comfortably manage to get together.
It happened that Randy went with a group whose parents lived in one neighborhood. Randy's mother was an enterprising and friendly soul. She invited various mothers to tea in the afternoons, some of the fathers and mothers over for afterdinner coffee. What could be more natural under these circumstances than that the talk drift to parents and children?
"I think if we could have some common agreement about what our respective children should and shouldn't do, it would be more comfortable for all of them."
"And for us!"
"A good idea, Mrs. Jones."
Even so, our youngsters are bound on occasion to protest what we ask. They wouldn't be normal if they didn't.
"I know you think we're old fogies," one father commented, accepting his daughter's feelings, "or old bags, or whatever you call it . . . We are interested, though, in whatever arguments you have. We want to hear them." Thus he provided an action outlet for the feelings of protest. He knew that if revolt and hostility were there it was better to have them come out directly in face-to-face discussion than to have them store up and come out away from home, behind his back.
A few major "don'ts" are important for us too in connection with the "don'ts" that we level at our adolescents.
With some boys and girls dependable independence comes earlier than with others. But until it is present, a teen-ager wants your rules. They are enormously important props even though he may resist them.
The respect which you have paid to his feelings will be a large factor in determining the respect he pays to your rules.
The assurance which you feel in regard to what you request will also be important.
What rules are drawn up will depend on your own convictions, your background, the customs of the families with whom you associate. It will depend too on what you learn about the customs and rules among the friends with whom your teen-ager goes.
Do you know about his crowd's dating customs?
Discuss these with him. Find out what his crowd does.
Don't forget, however, that his fantasies may color his reports. What he states may more nearly approximate conditions as he wants them to exist rather than as they do actually exist.
" Susy doesn't have to stay home week nights," Florence reports to her parents. "Florence doesn't have to stay home week nights" Susy reports to hers, adding "You shouldn't keep pressuring me to stay home . . ." "So?" we might ask. "Who's pressuring whom?"
You will not want your child to be too different. And yet on some scores you will need to insist on differences.
About times to go out and the time to come home
"Two nights during the school week are enough for dating. Short dates only. Earlier to bed is a must!!"
"No, Ellen, even though the other girls don't have to be in at any special time, we don't think it's wise for a sixteen-yearold to be out till three or four in the morning. Let's settle on a more reasonable time and stick with it . . ."
"But, Mother, suppose we get into a traffic jam on the way home? Or that all the rest of the kids go for a snack? How can you expect me to get in on the dot of the minute hand?"
"I won't. We'll grant half an hour's leeway . . ."
"And if it's a party, of course I'll just have to stay till the end."
"That's right. Making you leave early wouldn't be fair. So we'll want to know when you go to a real party and where."
"Since we care with whom and where--"
"We'd like to know in general where you're going. To a movie. To a dance or what . . ."
"We may be old-fashioned but we want to meet your boy friends. We don't believe in this horn-blowing routine. When Tom comes for you next time, please invite him in . . ."
"Double dates, yes; single dates, no. Not for the present . . ."
"You said Judd asked you up to his apartment? I'm glad you told me. No, I don't think it's wise."
Do you meet her dates with grace?
When daughter brings her boy friend in, do you, her mother, in an attempt to be charming, give her a feeling that you may be trying to outshine her? Or do you, her father, in your attempt to be a hail fellow, really shove your girl into a back seat?
Don't be a holder-onto or a prier-into. Neither one helps.
Are you a night watchman waiting up
for your youngster's return?
"For heaven's sake, Mother, go to bed!"
Are your punishments too punishing?
"Imagine! They made me call off the big party. I'd been looking forward to it for weeks. That was to teach me! To teach me what? How to be meaner than mean to get even! . . . Anyway I felt they'd turned against me. So I put on my jeans and I took my toothbrush and nightgown and I got on the bus and went to my friend's . . ."
Do you yourself remember the agony of punishments that brought humiliation? They're never worth it, no matter what the crime. If you do deny privileges, at least don't make the
denials cover conspicuous times. And do permit your adolescent "outs" that save face.
Do you practice protective interference?
Do you, for instance, keep young brothers away?
Are you dependable about the car?
You promised he could have it. And then you decided to go out the same night. It might just as well have been the next night because it was just one of those "when-can-we-make-it" affairs.
That's one thing.
But it's another when you already have a date and a relatively unimportant one comes up for him and he starts to beg and you begin to feel "cruel." Do you stick with your conviction anyway that it's right to consider yourself rather than martyr yourself? If you do the latter, resentment is bound to follow and you'll take it out on him in some way no doubt.
How sympathetic are you in those pathetic "crises"?
When she's been starry-eyed, expecting a blind date to be her big moment and he turns out a "flop" . . .
When status and prestige are deflated by a lack of a Saturday night date . . .
When he's turned down or she's stood up . . .
These are awful moments, not to be belittled in their crushing weight.
How is your party behavior?
"My parents! They make pretenses to come downstairs and check. Imagine! My mother came down last night to see if I was burning myself with a fork!!!"
On the other hand . . . "My parents are wonderful! Do you know what they've done? They say young people need independence. So, because our place is small, they fixed up their room so it could be a sitting room, not only a bedroom. Now they're out of the way and comfortable there after the introductions are over when I have my friends in. And they're on hand if I need them, which gives me a feeling that's mighty good . . ."
Remember: There are few absolute rules. Most of them should be reviewed in relation to you, to your child and to the resolution that you can come to in terms of your standards and his standards--always, however, adhering to the standards of health, of safety, and of necessary legal demands.
Sometimes it is possible to make things happier all round if the parents of the boys and girls who go together can comfortably manage to get together.
It happened that Randy went with a group whose parents lived in one neighborhood. Randy's mother was an enterprising and friendly soul. She invited various mothers to tea in the afternoons, some of the fathers and mothers over for afterdinner coffee. What could be more natural under these circumstances than that the talk drift to parents and children?
"I think if we could have some common agreement about what our respective children should and shouldn't do, it would be more comfortable for all of them."
"And for us!"
"A good idea, Mrs. Jones."
Even so, our youngsters are bound on occasion to protest what we ask. They wouldn't be normal if they didn't.
"I know you think we're old fogies," one father commented, accepting his daughter's feelings, "or old bags, or whatever you call it . . . We are interested, though, in whatever arguments you have. We want to hear them." Thus he provided an action outlet for the feelings of protest. He knew that if revolt and hostility were there it was better to have them come out directly in face-to-face discussion than to have them store up and come out away from home, behind his back.
A few major "don'ts" are important for us too in connection with the "don'ts" that we level at our adolescents.
A word about sex with the same sex
Just as some adolescents get into sexual escapades in a mistaken effort to solve their problems, so do some turn away from sexual expression. Because of the shame and guilt inside them, they may try for one thing to keep sex out of their lives entirely. Or they may turn to members of the same sex to accept them with their sexual needs.
In the preadolescent period and in early adolescence, hero worship and crushes and adherence to friendships with members of the same sex are, as we know, quite in order. They seem to help a boy or girl make the transition from attachments to members of his own family to attachments outside his home.
Most children before adolescence at some time or another have had open sex play with children of the same sex. This is a far more common occurrence than most parents suspect and need not be taken as alarming. It is much as though two little like-sexed dogs were playing around with each other. Unless too much guilt or anxiety has built up, it ordinarily passes without having done any permanent harm.
Some boys and girls, as we've seen, may be slow in developing an interest in the opposite sex. They may be slow in their all-round maturing.
In general, the boy or girl who matures sooner physically will mature sooner socially and emotionally as well, and will evidence interest sooner than does the boy or girl who matures later.
Some boys may turn temporarily with the upsurge of sex feelings at this age to sexual experimentation with other boys. Some girls with other girls. If they are isolated from contacts with the opposite sex, this can readily happen. When contacts become more accessible, then boy-girl attractions are resumed. Keeping away any actual social or physical barriers to being with members of the opposite sex is therefore enormously important all through the adolescent years.
Timidity and hesitance about one's own attractiveness and worth-whileness may set up barriers to free-flowing contacts as surely as high walls or locked doors. Guilt and shame over one's body sensations add to timidity and a feeling of worthlessness. Relieving these may relieve the sense of blight that keeps a youngster apart from the opposite sex.
Parental disapproval and warnings, on the other hand, can fortify hesitance.
Take Winifred, for example. When she was fourteen, her mother said, beaming, "She's such a good, wholesome girl, my Winifred. Thank goodness she's not the type to go for lipstick or boys."
Two years went by without new developments. Winifred's mother looked seriously thoughtful. "Maybe," she apologized, "maybe my girl's a little slow."
Two years later, however, with the worry lines between her brows, she showed real concern. "Can't you please tell me what's wrong with Winifred? She's eighteen and she still scorns the make-up that the other girls around her wear. And I don't believe she knows that boys exist."
Then, with voice dropping, she brought out her great fear. "I've heard so much about homosexuality. If Winifred had any very good girl friends I'd be scared out of my wits. I guess I am anyway, because I understand that a person can have homosexual tendencies without these being openly expressed. Do you suppose they're what Winifred's got?"
Winifred's mother had heard or read that homosexuality could be expressed in open sex practices with members of the same sex. She had also come across the term "latent homosexuality," which means that so much of the person's emotions stay focused on the same sex that not enough of the sex urge is free to attach itself to members of the opposite sex. When development of sexual interests does not appear normally, this sort of halting of emotional development may be playing its part.
Homosexuality is not a physical abnormality. A person is not born with it. Various things may lie at the bottom of it, as, for instance, an exaggerated fear of making relationships with members of the opposite sex and fear fantasies that have become so intense as to halt emotional growth.
Trying to push the boy or girl into boy-girl contacts does little good. Trying to control the matter by lecturing, by threats or by punishment is not effective either. The problem is too complex and complicated. So is that of extreme solitariness or of "wildness." One is neither "worse" nor "better" than the others. They all show disturbances calling for help more skilled and impersonal than the parent is equipped to give.
As far as Winifred was concerned, it did not matter whether there was so-called "homosexuality" or some other basis for her difficulty. The natural interest which she should have had in boys was, for some reason, not in functioning order. This called for professional help just as do escapades which have gone too far. For the person who is trained to understand the language of the unconscious can help the child better to get at the hidden causes and release the fears and emotional disturbances which have either been holding him back or driving him on.
Meanwhile, let us move from these more serious problems to the everyday problems that you, as parents, want to be able to handle yourselves. Let us turn to boy-girl contacts--our major concern--and consider some of the very practical matters related to how your child acts in his early and middle teens. Let's look at some specific points about "dating" rules for him and at questions about you which may help to determine his response.
In the preadolescent period and in early adolescence, hero worship and crushes and adherence to friendships with members of the same sex are, as we know, quite in order. They seem to help a boy or girl make the transition from attachments to members of his own family to attachments outside his home.
Most children before adolescence at some time or another have had open sex play with children of the same sex. This is a far more common occurrence than most parents suspect and need not be taken as alarming. It is much as though two little like-sexed dogs were playing around with each other. Unless too much guilt or anxiety has built up, it ordinarily passes without having done any permanent harm.
Some boys and girls, as we've seen, may be slow in developing an interest in the opposite sex. They may be slow in their all-round maturing.
In general, the boy or girl who matures sooner physically will mature sooner socially and emotionally as well, and will evidence interest sooner than does the boy or girl who matures later.
Some boys may turn temporarily with the upsurge of sex feelings at this age to sexual experimentation with other boys. Some girls with other girls. If they are isolated from contacts with the opposite sex, this can readily happen. When contacts become more accessible, then boy-girl attractions are resumed. Keeping away any actual social or physical barriers to being with members of the opposite sex is therefore enormously important all through the adolescent years.
Timidity and hesitance about one's own attractiveness and worth-whileness may set up barriers to free-flowing contacts as surely as high walls or locked doors. Guilt and shame over one's body sensations add to timidity and a feeling of worthlessness. Relieving these may relieve the sense of blight that keeps a youngster apart from the opposite sex.
Parental disapproval and warnings, on the other hand, can fortify hesitance.
Take Winifred, for example. When she was fourteen, her mother said, beaming, "She's such a good, wholesome girl, my Winifred. Thank goodness she's not the type to go for lipstick or boys."
Two years went by without new developments. Winifred's mother looked seriously thoughtful. "Maybe," she apologized, "maybe my girl's a little slow."
Two years later, however, with the worry lines between her brows, she showed real concern. "Can't you please tell me what's wrong with Winifred? She's eighteen and she still scorns the make-up that the other girls around her wear. And I don't believe she knows that boys exist."
Then, with voice dropping, she brought out her great fear. "I've heard so much about homosexuality. If Winifred had any very good girl friends I'd be scared out of my wits. I guess I am anyway, because I understand that a person can have homosexual tendencies without these being openly expressed. Do you suppose they're what Winifred's got?"
Winifred's mother had heard or read that homosexuality could be expressed in open sex practices with members of the same sex. She had also come across the term "latent homosexuality," which means that so much of the person's emotions stay focused on the same sex that not enough of the sex urge is free to attach itself to members of the opposite sex. When development of sexual interests does not appear normally, this sort of halting of emotional development may be playing its part.
Homosexuality is not a physical abnormality. A person is not born with it. Various things may lie at the bottom of it, as, for instance, an exaggerated fear of making relationships with members of the opposite sex and fear fantasies that have become so intense as to halt emotional growth.
Trying to push the boy or girl into boy-girl contacts does little good. Trying to control the matter by lecturing, by threats or by punishment is not effective either. The problem is too complex and complicated. So is that of extreme solitariness or of "wildness." One is neither "worse" nor "better" than the others. They all show disturbances calling for help more skilled and impersonal than the parent is equipped to give.
As far as Winifred was concerned, it did not matter whether there was so-called "homosexuality" or some other basis for her difficulty. The natural interest which she should have had in boys was, for some reason, not in functioning order. This called for professional help just as do escapades which have gone too far. For the person who is trained to understand the language of the unconscious can help the child better to get at the hidden causes and release the fears and emotional disturbances which have either been holding him back or driving him on.
Meanwhile, let us move from these more serious problems to the everyday problems that you, as parents, want to be able to handle yourselves. Let us turn to boy-girl contacts--our major concern--and consider some of the very practical matters related to how your child acts in his early and middle teens. Let's look at some specific points about "dating" rules for him and at questions about you which may help to determine his response.
To wait or not to
Sooner or later, this question comes up.
"You hear so much these days about it, Len," Howard's mother said very seriously to Howard's father. "Howard's been seeing an awful lot of Ina lately. Don't you think you'd better talk to him?"
Howard's father looked thoughtful. "But he's just a kid, Gay. Only seventeen! Aren't you making far too much of it?"
"They start in awfully young, I've gathered. And they get in awfully deep. And some of it's because they have no one to talk things over with."
"We managed all right."
"But don't you remember, darling? We did an awful lot of agonizing."
"Hmmm!" Father looked sober. "And at that we were a good deal older than Howard. You're in, dear, as the expression goes. You have my blessing to go ahead and start with Howard whenever you wish."
"But Len! It's not my job. It's yours. I was okay when he was small. But in his teens a boy needs to talk with a man rather than a woman. If there's no man in the family it's different, of course. However, if you don't want to, we can ask Dr. Nelson if he will, or Pastor Gray. They've both done a lot with young people. I've had discussions with them and they say it's often easier for a son or daughter to talk with an outsider . . ."
"Not our boy!" belligerently, "I want a try first!
"After all, Howard and I are quite used to talking, man to man. We discuss business and politics and what's in the news. And yet none of those things are as important as this. Only I'll have to count on you, Gay, to give me all the pointers you can from that class you've been going to. And I'd like also to have a couple of up-to-date books."
Even so, when Father opened the subject, he found himself clearing his throat. "I've been wondering, Howard, about you and Ina."
"How do you mean?" with a note of challenge in Howard's voice.
"Hmmm!" thought his father. "He's probably afraid I'm prying into his privacy." And aloud, "I know the two of you like each other a lot and that you have a lot to work out together. I'm not after confidences from you. What you want to tell me is up to you. But I did want to tell you a couple of things that were on my mind."
"Now, Pop, please don't lecture. She's a wonderful girl and I'm terribly much in love with her and she likes me too."
Very simply and directly, then, Howard's father went on to say that he knew that sex feelings were a very great problem when people were in their middle and late teens . . .
"You've said it, Dad. I've only got one life and sometimes I wonder if I'll ever get married or if I'll end up in a uniform on the other side of the world."
Father nodded, accepting Howard's feelings. "I know how it is."
"But, Dad," from Howard, suddenly questioning, "I worry a lot too. It's not really so simple. I want to a lot. I love Ina so much. And then I think of all the things that could happen." And after a pause, "I think the biggest worry is if we were to go ahead, I might get Ina pregnant. And then, just suppose I'd have to leave."
"You've got a big point there. You can't belittle it. Because there isn't any method of birth control that's a hundred per cent reliable. You always take a chance.
"And even if you married with our consent and her parents', you'd be shoved into responsibilities long before you were ready or able to take them on. Marriage then would be something you were forced into instead of the thing you wanted most in life."
Father spoke in the tone of a man philosophizing to himself rather than preaching. And since young people in their middle and late teens are themselves great philosophers if given half a chance, this struck a responsive chord.
"In this life there are a lot of times when you have to settle with partial solutions and make peace within yourself in terms of these. You have to consider the world outside yourself and the world inside yourself as well.
"Because you and Ina are the kind of people who want to have respect from others and who want to have self-respect also, to use an old-fashioned term, I have an idea that you'll feel as I do, that it's better to wait."
Glancing at Howard, Father caught the quick gulp and the serious look of determination.
This was all for now. But here, as elsewhere, Howard's father had considered his boy's feelings as well as his acts. It is not always love, however, that makes a boy or girl "go the limit."
Sexual escapades may, for one thing, be a defiant gesture by the teen-ager. Revolt over our condemnation of his sex feelings may then add itself to revolt over other things about which he is already hostile. He may then take to using sex as a means of letting his hostility out.
Says Wilma, sixteen, "I got sick and tired of my parents' lack of understanding. I got sick and tired of their constant blame. I know if they knew what I've done, it would hurt them. Maybe," protesting angrily, "maybe I should feel terrible. But I don't."
Underneath the surface, however, Wilma did. For entering into a sex act with one person in order to hurt another person has little to do with love. Obviously it cannot bring security. It can bring only an increased sense of guilt.
Another reason why an adolescent "goes the limit" is to find a closeness and a confirmation he feels he has lacked. In this case what he is seeking, however, is rarely companionship or mutuality. In his mind he pastes a parent picture onto the partner and goes to him with dependence, trying to get him to be an imagined substitute parent who will give him the acceptance he feels his real parents haven't. Most of all he wants acceptance for the sexual impulses which he believes his parents have refused to countenance.
His dilemma is clear.
After all, the person he has turned to is not a parent. Factually the adolescent is still dependent on his real parents because of his age if for no other reason. And so when he returns to them after his escapade, he comes feeling anxious and miserably apologetic in spite of his attempts to deny this. He fears that they may find out and condemn him--perhaps even discard him. Whatever security he had with them before is lessened now by the worry that floods within.
Some boys and girls try to gain a sense of achievement and prowess through sexual exploits. Some try through daring to prove that their fears of being hurt and punished are unfounded.
But these efforts usually fail.
Even where the love motive prevails, anxiety enters.
The adolescent who has intercourse before he is emotionally ready for a steady, steadfast relationship ordinarily is torn. It is practically impossible to grow up in our present culture without acquiring hesitance and doubt.
And so, as parents we do well to take a firm stand: "It's better for you to wait to have intercourse until you are old enough to marry. And it's best to be married before you do."
Here are some of the reasons:
Sexual compatibility is important in marriage. Because of feelings we do not fully comprehend, it often takes a while to work out a sexual relationship so that it is satisfying. Full, mutual enjoyment may not be reached for a period of time.
"You mean we may not like sex together right away?" asked down-to-earth, frank young Harriet. "It may take us a while to get used to each other? Perhaps we'll be discouraged at moments meanwhile. And if we're not married, I, for one, would be scared to death that John might get tired of me and leave."
To enjoy sex fully, one must be able to be oneself fully. One must be able to be free and vital in many aspects of the mutual relationship. But where fear of desertion enters, constriction enters also. And this ties a person up and defeats sexual adjustment.
"You mean I've got to be free enough to be myself--to get mad, for instance, when I feel mad at John, and that I need to be able to take it too when he gets moody." And yet not be afraid that he'll run away."
"That's about it. Ordinarily you can work it out better when you know you're assured of being together, not having to worry whether one or the other in an angry or discouraged moment will call it quits."
Among the conditions that facilitate compatibility is the intimate tie of living and working together. Sharing a home and mutual endeavors backed by the feel of steadiness that comes with marriage--this is more conducive to sexual adjustment than the fly-by-night arrangements. For the latter cause anxiety and unrest to enter during a time in which making adaptation to one another calls for stability and peace.
One mother exclaimed, "At last I can see things clearly These young ones want their parents to ADMIT IT'S ALL RIGHT FOR THEM TO HAVE GOOD FEELINGS and at one and the same time to HELP THEM CONTROL THEIR ACTS."
As with other feelings, sexual feelings need to be channeled.
"You hear so much these days about it, Len," Howard's mother said very seriously to Howard's father. "Howard's been seeing an awful lot of Ina lately. Don't you think you'd better talk to him?"
Howard's father looked thoughtful. "But he's just a kid, Gay. Only seventeen! Aren't you making far too much of it?"
"They start in awfully young, I've gathered. And they get in awfully deep. And some of it's because they have no one to talk things over with."
"We managed all right."
"But don't you remember, darling? We did an awful lot of agonizing."
"Hmmm!" Father looked sober. "And at that we were a good deal older than Howard. You're in, dear, as the expression goes. You have my blessing to go ahead and start with Howard whenever you wish."
"But Len! It's not my job. It's yours. I was okay when he was small. But in his teens a boy needs to talk with a man rather than a woman. If there's no man in the family it's different, of course. However, if you don't want to, we can ask Dr. Nelson if he will, or Pastor Gray. They've both done a lot with young people. I've had discussions with them and they say it's often easier for a son or daughter to talk with an outsider . . ."
"Not our boy!" belligerently, "I want a try first!
"After all, Howard and I are quite used to talking, man to man. We discuss business and politics and what's in the news. And yet none of those things are as important as this. Only I'll have to count on you, Gay, to give me all the pointers you can from that class you've been going to. And I'd like also to have a couple of up-to-date books."
Even so, when Father opened the subject, he found himself clearing his throat. "I've been wondering, Howard, about you and Ina."
"How do you mean?" with a note of challenge in Howard's voice.
"Hmmm!" thought his father. "He's probably afraid I'm prying into his privacy." And aloud, "I know the two of you like each other a lot and that you have a lot to work out together. I'm not after confidences from you. What you want to tell me is up to you. But I did want to tell you a couple of things that were on my mind."
"Now, Pop, please don't lecture. She's a wonderful girl and I'm terribly much in love with her and she likes me too."
Very simply and directly, then, Howard's father went on to say that he knew that sex feelings were a very great problem when people were in their middle and late teens . . .
"You've said it, Dad. I've only got one life and sometimes I wonder if I'll ever get married or if I'll end up in a uniform on the other side of the world."
Father nodded, accepting Howard's feelings. "I know how it is."
"But, Dad," from Howard, suddenly questioning, "I worry a lot too. It's not really so simple. I want to a lot. I love Ina so much. And then I think of all the things that could happen." And after a pause, "I think the biggest worry is if we were to go ahead, I might get Ina pregnant. And then, just suppose I'd have to leave."
"You've got a big point there. You can't belittle it. Because there isn't any method of birth control that's a hundred per cent reliable. You always take a chance.
"And even if you married with our consent and her parents', you'd be shoved into responsibilities long before you were ready or able to take them on. Marriage then would be something you were forced into instead of the thing you wanted most in life."
Father spoke in the tone of a man philosophizing to himself rather than preaching. And since young people in their middle and late teens are themselves great philosophers if given half a chance, this struck a responsive chord.
"In this life there are a lot of times when you have to settle with partial solutions and make peace within yourself in terms of these. You have to consider the world outside yourself and the world inside yourself as well.
"Because you and Ina are the kind of people who want to have respect from others and who want to have self-respect also, to use an old-fashioned term, I have an idea that you'll feel as I do, that it's better to wait."
Glancing at Howard, Father caught the quick gulp and the serious look of determination.
This was all for now. But here, as elsewhere, Howard's father had considered his boy's feelings as well as his acts. It is not always love, however, that makes a boy or girl "go the limit."
Sexual escapades may, for one thing, be a defiant gesture by the teen-ager. Revolt over our condemnation of his sex feelings may then add itself to revolt over other things about which he is already hostile. He may then take to using sex as a means of letting his hostility out.
Says Wilma, sixteen, "I got sick and tired of my parents' lack of understanding. I got sick and tired of their constant blame. I know if they knew what I've done, it would hurt them. Maybe," protesting angrily, "maybe I should feel terrible. But I don't."
Underneath the surface, however, Wilma did. For entering into a sex act with one person in order to hurt another person has little to do with love. Obviously it cannot bring security. It can bring only an increased sense of guilt.
Another reason why an adolescent "goes the limit" is to find a closeness and a confirmation he feels he has lacked. In this case what he is seeking, however, is rarely companionship or mutuality. In his mind he pastes a parent picture onto the partner and goes to him with dependence, trying to get him to be an imagined substitute parent who will give him the acceptance he feels his real parents haven't. Most of all he wants acceptance for the sexual impulses which he believes his parents have refused to countenance.
His dilemma is clear.
After all, the person he has turned to is not a parent. Factually the adolescent is still dependent on his real parents because of his age if for no other reason. And so when he returns to them after his escapade, he comes feeling anxious and miserably apologetic in spite of his attempts to deny this. He fears that they may find out and condemn him--perhaps even discard him. Whatever security he had with them before is lessened now by the worry that floods within.
Some boys and girls try to gain a sense of achievement and prowess through sexual exploits. Some try through daring to prove that their fears of being hurt and punished are unfounded.
But these efforts usually fail.
Even where the love motive prevails, anxiety enters.
The adolescent who has intercourse before he is emotionally ready for a steady, steadfast relationship ordinarily is torn. It is practically impossible to grow up in our present culture without acquiring hesitance and doubt.
And so, as parents we do well to take a firm stand: "It's better for you to wait to have intercourse until you are old enough to marry. And it's best to be married before you do."
Here are some of the reasons:
Sexual compatibility is important in marriage. Because of feelings we do not fully comprehend, it often takes a while to work out a sexual relationship so that it is satisfying. Full, mutual enjoyment may not be reached for a period of time.
"You mean we may not like sex together right away?" asked down-to-earth, frank young Harriet. "It may take us a while to get used to each other? Perhaps we'll be discouraged at moments meanwhile. And if we're not married, I, for one, would be scared to death that John might get tired of me and leave."
To enjoy sex fully, one must be able to be oneself fully. One must be able to be free and vital in many aspects of the mutual relationship. But where fear of desertion enters, constriction enters also. And this ties a person up and defeats sexual adjustment.
"You mean I've got to be free enough to be myself--to get mad, for instance, when I feel mad at John, and that I need to be able to take it too when he gets moody." And yet not be afraid that he'll run away."
"That's about it. Ordinarily you can work it out better when you know you're assured of being together, not having to worry whether one or the other in an angry or discouraged moment will call it quits."
Among the conditions that facilitate compatibility is the intimate tie of living and working together. Sharing a home and mutual endeavors backed by the feel of steadiness that comes with marriage--this is more conducive to sexual adjustment than the fly-by-night arrangements. For the latter cause anxiety and unrest to enter during a time in which making adaptation to one another calls for stability and peace.
One mother exclaimed, "At last I can see things clearly These young ones want their parents to ADMIT IT'S ALL RIGHT FOR THEM TO HAVE GOOD FEELINGS and at one and the same time to HELP THEM CONTROL THEIR ACTS."
As with other feelings, sexual feelings need to be channeled.
What shall I do with these desires
Meanwhile, as we have recognized repeatedly, beneath the surface our adolescent is tremendously concerned with his feelings. He is pulling back from them, uncertain. He wants to like himself. He wants others to like him. He doesn't want to show or do what he believes is "bad." And yet the urges in him are strong.
Inside him expectation is warring with hesitance and hope is arguing with fear.
In some way, somehow, his body feelings must be managed.
He would like to ask: What can I do with these feelings? How can I control them without crushing them out? Please, can't you help me find some way that's safe and lets me feel I'm all right?
If we are to help him, we must keep in mind what we know well at this point--that even though the strength of his urgency is stepped up, the sex feelings themselves are not new.
Far earlier, in all probability, he found a way of gratifying the body feelings through touching himself.
With the unfolding interest in sex and the fresh wave of feelings accompanying physical development, the boy or girl usually starts masturbating once again or continues it with a stronger and more irresistible urge. Then, if old feelings of shame and guilt persist, as they many times do, the increased urgency makes for greater conflict.
He tries to stop.
He can't.
He struggles in vain. Inside himself he suffers untold agonies. He feels himself a horrible failure. He can't like himself. How can anyone like him?
The misery of self-condemnation makes fear heavier in him. It makes him feel more than ever that he is "bad." He deserves to be punished or hurt.
And so he is all set to believe anew any old "horror" stories about masturbation that reach his ears from the outside or that echo inside from his "forgotten" past.
On a sound scientific basis we can say masturbation in itself does not mar body or mind. We can say that many boys and many girls do it. And that it hurts neither. It does not make a girl frigid. It does not make her less capable of enjoying sex when she marries. Nor does it make a man impotent. It does not drain his sap or waste his seed. There are millions of sperm cells in the testicles and new millions are constantly being generated.
"Like in a factory!" one teen-ager exclaimed in relief.
Asked Carl, another teen-ager, full of worry, "Are you quite certain Pop, it won't make you crazy?"
"No, it won't. That's a stupid old superstition."
The belief arose out of what doctors and attendants noticed in institutions for the mentally ill. People who are insane do often lose inhibitions. They lose their sense of time and place and do many things openly which ordinarily would be confined to privacy. This Carl's father made clear to his son.
Time and time again, a boy or girl feels that others can tell what they have been doing by looking at them.
"Isn't there a certain look about you? Or dark circles? Or a pasty, pimply skin?"
Such things are completely untrue.
So also is another worry that many parents have. "I've heard," said one, "that if a person masturbates, it keeps him solitary. He is apt to find too much satisfaction in it and won't bother then to seek satisfaction in more mature ways."
The person who has within himself emotional conflicts that make him withdraw may use prolonged masturbation well past the time when he could be marrying. If our youngster is a recluse and we know that he masturbates, our concern needs to be directed at removing the solitariness, not at removing the solace. Using the masturbation as solace is the result, not the cause. needs a solace. The more afraid he is, the more he needs it. Fear that he will be hurt by "giving in" to his sex feelings only adds to this need.
Occasionally a parent feels free enough and convinced enough inside himself to say casually, "It doesn't hurt! Not in any way."
Occasionally a parent can even add, "I was unwise to frighten you by silly warnings when you were little. I know now that that was one of the mistakes I made in bringing you up."
At best, masturbation can only be a substitute. Until the sex drive can permissibly lead to mature contacts and the culmination of love and mating, the problem remains of finding some means of temporarily handling sexual feelings.
Parents who know that the sex drive is strong know also that it will in some fashion have to be released. They know that stifling it and trying to keep it under entirely makes it more difficult to control.
"I've heard that when you play football hard enough, it takes care of the sex instincts," says Rod crestfallenly. "I certainly wish it would."
"They say if you keep your mind on higher things and are real, real busy, you won't have time for sexy thoughts," says Rhoda with equal discouragement.
Some adolescents cannot, other adolescents can and do manage to divert sex feelings into nonsexual channels. It's as if the urge to procreate biologically were transferred to the urge to create in some social or intellectual sphere.
Great and zealous devotion to a cause, especially in a group with others who are similarly devoted, may call forth so much creative energy that the sex urge diminishes in its place of importance.
Sometimes quite another thing is true. The fact that the sex urge is attached too strongly to fear may make it necessary to turn to so-called "higher" outlets. Fanaticism of one sort or another may be as much a sign of emotional conflict as is the sowing of wild oats. It is, however, rarely as shocking to parents. For it does not bring social censorship down.
Biological and social creativity do not exclude each other, fortunately, or man would not prosper. A healthy interest in artistic, religious or other modes of expression need not exclude a healthy interest in sex. However, the teen-ager who throws himself with wholehearted enthusiasm into activities ordinarily does discharge enough emotional energy to make the controlling and channeling of the sex urge easier.
This makes good sense.
He needs satisfying achievements, satisfying endeavors, sports and hobbies, outgoing friendly relationships, memberships in groups, taking part in social and religious activities.
Different youngsters will, of course, emphasize different things according to differing dispositions, strivings and tastes.
Different parents will also hold to different emphases and beliefs.
If you happen to be among those parents who feel that they do not want to say anything openly to their children, still if you can accept and understand inside yourself what their true feelings are--this will be all to the good. They will sense your understanding and this will be helpful in and of itself.
Inside him expectation is warring with hesitance and hope is arguing with fear.
In some way, somehow, his body feelings must be managed.
He would like to ask: What can I do with these feelings? How can I control them without crushing them out? Please, can't you help me find some way that's safe and lets me feel I'm all right?
If we are to help him, we must keep in mind what we know well at this point--that even though the strength of his urgency is stepped up, the sex feelings themselves are not new.
Far earlier, in all probability, he found a way of gratifying the body feelings through touching himself.
With the unfolding interest in sex and the fresh wave of feelings accompanying physical development, the boy or girl usually starts masturbating once again or continues it with a stronger and more irresistible urge. Then, if old feelings of shame and guilt persist, as they many times do, the increased urgency makes for greater conflict.
He tries to stop.
He can't.
He struggles in vain. Inside himself he suffers untold agonies. He feels himself a horrible failure. He can't like himself. How can anyone like him?
The misery of self-condemnation makes fear heavier in him. It makes him feel more than ever that he is "bad." He deserves to be punished or hurt.
And so he is all set to believe anew any old "horror" stories about masturbation that reach his ears from the outside or that echo inside from his "forgotten" past.
On a sound scientific basis we can say masturbation in itself does not mar body or mind. We can say that many boys and many girls do it. And that it hurts neither. It does not make a girl frigid. It does not make her less capable of enjoying sex when she marries. Nor does it make a man impotent. It does not drain his sap or waste his seed. There are millions of sperm cells in the testicles and new millions are constantly being generated.
"Like in a factory!" one teen-ager exclaimed in relief.
Asked Carl, another teen-ager, full of worry, "Are you quite certain Pop, it won't make you crazy?"
"No, it won't. That's a stupid old superstition."
The belief arose out of what doctors and attendants noticed in institutions for the mentally ill. People who are insane do often lose inhibitions. They lose their sense of time and place and do many things openly which ordinarily would be confined to privacy. This Carl's father made clear to his son.
Time and time again, a boy or girl feels that others can tell what they have been doing by looking at them.
"Isn't there a certain look about you? Or dark circles? Or a pasty, pimply skin?"
Such things are completely untrue.
So also is another worry that many parents have. "I've heard," said one, "that if a person masturbates, it keeps him solitary. He is apt to find too much satisfaction in it and won't bother then to seek satisfaction in more mature ways."
The person who has within himself emotional conflicts that make him withdraw may use prolonged masturbation well past the time when he could be marrying. If our youngster is a recluse and we know that he masturbates, our concern needs to be directed at removing the solitariness, not at removing the solace. Using the masturbation as solace is the result, not the cause. needs a solace. The more afraid he is, the more he needs it. Fear that he will be hurt by "giving in" to his sex feelings only adds to this need.
Occasionally a parent feels free enough and convinced enough inside himself to say casually, "It doesn't hurt! Not in any way."
Occasionally a parent can even add, "I was unwise to frighten you by silly warnings when you were little. I know now that that was one of the mistakes I made in bringing you up."
At best, masturbation can only be a substitute. Until the sex drive can permissibly lead to mature contacts and the culmination of love and mating, the problem remains of finding some means of temporarily handling sexual feelings.
Parents who know that the sex drive is strong know also that it will in some fashion have to be released. They know that stifling it and trying to keep it under entirely makes it more difficult to control.
"I've heard that when you play football hard enough, it takes care of the sex instincts," says Rod crestfallenly. "I certainly wish it would."
"They say if you keep your mind on higher things and are real, real busy, you won't have time for sexy thoughts," says Rhoda with equal discouragement.
Some adolescents cannot, other adolescents can and do manage to divert sex feelings into nonsexual channels. It's as if the urge to procreate biologically were transferred to the urge to create in some social or intellectual sphere.
Great and zealous devotion to a cause, especially in a group with others who are similarly devoted, may call forth so much creative energy that the sex urge diminishes in its place of importance.
Sometimes quite another thing is true. The fact that the sex urge is attached too strongly to fear may make it necessary to turn to so-called "higher" outlets. Fanaticism of one sort or another may be as much a sign of emotional conflict as is the sowing of wild oats. It is, however, rarely as shocking to parents. For it does not bring social censorship down.
Biological and social creativity do not exclude each other, fortunately, or man would not prosper. A healthy interest in artistic, religious or other modes of expression need not exclude a healthy interest in sex. However, the teen-ager who throws himself with wholehearted enthusiasm into activities ordinarily does discharge enough emotional energy to make the controlling and channeling of the sex urge easier.
This makes good sense.
He needs satisfying achievements, satisfying endeavors, sports and hobbies, outgoing friendly relationships, memberships in groups, taking part in social and religious activities.
Different youngsters will, of course, emphasize different things according to differing dispositions, strivings and tastes.
Different parents will also hold to different emphases and beliefs.
If you happen to be among those parents who feel that they do not want to say anything openly to their children, still if you can accept and understand inside yourself what their true feelings are--this will be all to the good. They will sense your understanding and this will be helpful in and of itself.
Thursday, November 15, 2007
Hostility does not ordinarily exclude love
Both HOSTILITY AND LOVE are bound to exist IN EVERY CLOSE RELATIONSHIP. Hostility does not ordinarily exclude love.
But--
Hostility can become dangerous and choke out love when it is shoved down into the unconscious and is left there indefinitely to spread.
However, it is not safe for hostility to come out willy-nilly. Of this you can be justifiably afraid.
Getting rid of "bad" feelings any old way does not help.
Suppose a boy holds up a bank, taking the clerk as a symbol of his father, just as Jed took the car as a symbol. Obviously bringing out his hostility in this manner can only make his fears and his troubles increase. Besides worse things happening, he accumulates other father symbols to fear and hath-namely, the police.
On the other hand, if a child broods alone in solitary fashion over his hurts either real or imagined, he consciously or unconsciously builds up fantasies of what he would like to do to get even and he frightens himself. Then what usually happens is that he is taken to task by the policeman part of himself which he long ago acquired by being father-inside-himself to himself. He may become painfully severe with himself, driving himself into depressed helplessness for one thing, afraid of venturing anything lest he venture too much. Or he may become an ascetic, punishing himself out of enjoyment, becoming prudish and prissy and over good.
Let us repeat: Getting "bad" feelings out any old way does not help. It does not help to get them out in dangerous pursuits or in solitary imaginings. Neither does it help to have them accepted, say, by some fellow "delinquent" whom one doesn't respect. Nor by a friend, even, of one's own age who one feels is basically no stronger than oneself.
Troubled feelings must be got out to a person from whom the teen-ager can gather strength. This means you or another acceptant adult.
They must be got out in acts that do not get him into trouble.
They must be got out in ways that let him rest in the firm knowledge that he has done no actual harm.
And they must, as you know, be got out in ways that do not shatter self-regard . . .
But--
Hostility can become dangerous and choke out love when it is shoved down into the unconscious and is left there indefinitely to spread.
However, it is not safe for hostility to come out willy-nilly. Of this you can be justifiably afraid.
Getting rid of "bad" feelings any old way does not help.
Suppose a boy holds up a bank, taking the clerk as a symbol of his father, just as Jed took the car as a symbol. Obviously bringing out his hostility in this manner can only make his fears and his troubles increase. Besides worse things happening, he accumulates other father symbols to fear and hath-namely, the police.
On the other hand, if a child broods alone in solitary fashion over his hurts either real or imagined, he consciously or unconsciously builds up fantasies of what he would like to do to get even and he frightens himself. Then what usually happens is that he is taken to task by the policeman part of himself which he long ago acquired by being father-inside-himself to himself. He may become painfully severe with himself, driving himself into depressed helplessness for one thing, afraid of venturing anything lest he venture too much. Or he may become an ascetic, punishing himself out of enjoyment, becoming prudish and prissy and over good.
Let us repeat: Getting "bad" feelings out any old way does not help. It does not help to get them out in dangerous pursuits or in solitary imaginings. Neither does it help to have them accepted, say, by some fellow "delinquent" whom one doesn't respect. Nor by a friend, even, of one's own age who one feels is basically no stronger than oneself.
Troubled feelings must be got out to a person from whom the teen-ager can gather strength. This means you or another acceptant adult.
They must be got out in acts that do not get him into trouble.
They must be got out in ways that let him rest in the firm knowledge that he has done no actual harm.
And they must, as you know, be got out in ways that do not shatter self-regard . . .
Understanding our child's feelings
We want to help each teen-ager of ours grow into the best person he can possibly be.
We want to understand him as a maturing individual, taking into account his potentialities, not pushing him but helping him to move ahead.
We want to learn better how to allow him enough freedom for growth of the independence which he needs to assume bit by bit.
We want to become sensitive to how he may be misinterpreting facts and imagining things and then building on what he imagines rather than on what is actually true. For in this way we shall be able to see more clearly where he needs help in setting himself straight.
We want to know how to provide adequate guideposts and adequate boundary lines so that he does not go too far and do unwise things which might get him into trouble.
We want to know enough about our own hopes and fears and expectations to prevent these from causing unnecessary conflict between us and inadvertently getting in the way of what we are sincerely striving to do for him.
Toward these ends, we shall need to lay the groundwork on two great corner stones.
UNDERSTANDING OUR CHILD'S FEELINGS and UNDERSTANDING OUR OWN FEELINGS
These are the firmest foundations for SUCCESS in bringing him up.
Curiously, we build the first best when we build the second first. Then the structure of our relationship rises all the more solidly and the major problems of living with our teen-agers are well on their way to being solved.
We want to understand him as a maturing individual, taking into account his potentialities, not pushing him but helping him to move ahead.
We want to learn better how to allow him enough freedom for growth of the independence which he needs to assume bit by bit.
We want to become sensitive to how he may be misinterpreting facts and imagining things and then building on what he imagines rather than on what is actually true. For in this way we shall be able to see more clearly where he needs help in setting himself straight.
We want to know how to provide adequate guideposts and adequate boundary lines so that he does not go too far and do unwise things which might get him into trouble.
We want to know enough about our own hopes and fears and expectations to prevent these from causing unnecessary conflict between us and inadvertently getting in the way of what we are sincerely striving to do for him.
Toward these ends, we shall need to lay the groundwork on two great corner stones.
UNDERSTANDING OUR CHILD'S FEELINGS and UNDERSTANDING OUR OWN FEELINGS
These are the firmest foundations for SUCCESS in bringing him up.
Curiously, we build the first best when we build the second first. Then the structure of our relationship rises all the more solidly and the major problems of living with our teen-agers are well on their way to being solved.
Your child's feelings are important
Your adolescent may put on bravado or an I-don't-care manner. He may appear callous and noncommittal, as if nothing you do makes any impression. But underneath he reacts keenly. He is at an age when his feelings are heightened and quickened.
Many times he is reacting with surges of feeling within him bigger than he can comfortably manage. They frighten him. And so, he tries often to cover up to himself as well as to you what he feels. His I-don't-careness is one of his coverings. His air of how-big-I-am is another. Actually he is deeply desirous of having you understand.
Many times he is daydreaming and fantasying inside him. He is stretching reality beyond its boundaries, visioning ahead into the future, often with mistaken ideas born out of the past. And strange though this may sound to you--it is often these mistaken ideas and fantasies which prompt him in how he behaves.
Take Tina, who has just turned fifteen. Her father had been died. When Tina was five, petite, alive, and full of dancing, her mother had had a boy friend. Evening after evening when this big man came over, Tina would whirl and twirl in giddy excitement, as delighted as her mother and showing it more openly, in the thrill of having a man around again like the daddy she had last seen when she was three. She would grow gigglier and sillier and wilder in her attempts to capture his attention.
"Don't be so silly, Tina," her mother would chide.
"Hey, girl, calm down. Do you want to scare me away?" the boy friend would banter.
Then came a sad day when the big man no longer came to take mother out. Tina didn't know that he and her mother had decided that they didn't fit together. Tina at five mistakenly imagined that the wildness for which she was chided and her glee in having a man around were the cause of his going.
At fifteen Tina had forgotten the whole incident. But whenever she met a boy who called forth small stirrings of excitement in her she would suddenly become aloof and condescending.
"I could brain her," her mother complained. "She's pretty as a picture. And yet when she freezes up that way she's left out of half the parties. I get furious at her. But I get even more furious at myself. What have I done wrong to make her like this?"
From Tina: "I don't know what it is. I just can't loosen up or talk or laugh or be gay when I'm with boys . . ."
Deep down inside her she unconsciously feared that if she were gay or giddy or silly, they would leave . . .
Like Tina's mother, parents today are apt to blame themselves for almost everything. They dwell on the mistakes they think they have made. They berate themselves unduly, not knowing that often a youngster's imaginings cause a lot of his trouble.
What was holding Tina back were her fantasies based on old, forgotten and mistaken imaginings. But her mother's irritation at her only made matters worse. As her mother came to understand that the fear of imagined things was blocking Tina, she grew more warmly sympathetic. In place of the push of mother condemnation, Tina gained the backing of mother love to help her through.
In adolescence many old unsolved fears crop up more frighteningly. Many old wishes stir more disturbingly. Many old imaginings press more vividly. Those of us who live and work with children need to understand the drives and wishes and fears that commonly propel them. Then, when a youngster behaves in ways that now seem inexplicable, we shall be able to say to ourselves, "Look, he isn't doing these things to spite me. Nor is he necessarily failing because I've been a failure. His faulty behavior isn't necessarily a result of faulty handling. I've made mistakes, naturally. But he is also in the grip of mistaken ideas. These have entered into making him do the foolish, frightened, unthinkable things he does. Since I see that I'm not all to blame, I feel less defensive and more sympathetic and tolerant."
This is heartening. As more of us realize that the blame for everything big and small does not have to rest on our shoulders, we can breathe a deep sigh, spread our arms wide and lift our heads higher. This frees us, in turn, to focus more profoundly on what we want for our child.
Many times he is reacting with surges of feeling within him bigger than he can comfortably manage. They frighten him. And so, he tries often to cover up to himself as well as to you what he feels. His I-don't-careness is one of his coverings. His air of how-big-I-am is another. Actually he is deeply desirous of having you understand.
Many times he is daydreaming and fantasying inside him. He is stretching reality beyond its boundaries, visioning ahead into the future, often with mistaken ideas born out of the past. And strange though this may sound to you--it is often these mistaken ideas and fantasies which prompt him in how he behaves.
Take Tina, who has just turned fifteen. Her father had been died. When Tina was five, petite, alive, and full of dancing, her mother had had a boy friend. Evening after evening when this big man came over, Tina would whirl and twirl in giddy excitement, as delighted as her mother and showing it more openly, in the thrill of having a man around again like the daddy she had last seen when she was three. She would grow gigglier and sillier and wilder in her attempts to capture his attention.
"Don't be so silly, Tina," her mother would chide.
"Hey, girl, calm down. Do you want to scare me away?" the boy friend would banter.
Then came a sad day when the big man no longer came to take mother out. Tina didn't know that he and her mother had decided that they didn't fit together. Tina at five mistakenly imagined that the wildness for which she was chided and her glee in having a man around were the cause of his going.
At fifteen Tina had forgotten the whole incident. But whenever she met a boy who called forth small stirrings of excitement in her she would suddenly become aloof and condescending.
"I could brain her," her mother complained. "She's pretty as a picture. And yet when she freezes up that way she's left out of half the parties. I get furious at her. But I get even more furious at myself. What have I done wrong to make her like this?"
From Tina: "I don't know what it is. I just can't loosen up or talk or laugh or be gay when I'm with boys . . ."
Deep down inside her she unconsciously feared that if she were gay or giddy or silly, they would leave . . .
Like Tina's mother, parents today are apt to blame themselves for almost everything. They dwell on the mistakes they think they have made. They berate themselves unduly, not knowing that often a youngster's imaginings cause a lot of his trouble.
What was holding Tina back were her fantasies based on old, forgotten and mistaken imaginings. But her mother's irritation at her only made matters worse. As her mother came to understand that the fear of imagined things was blocking Tina, she grew more warmly sympathetic. In place of the push of mother condemnation, Tina gained the backing of mother love to help her through.
In adolescence many old unsolved fears crop up more frighteningly. Many old wishes stir more disturbingly. Many old imaginings press more vividly. Those of us who live and work with children need to understand the drives and wishes and fears that commonly propel them. Then, when a youngster behaves in ways that now seem inexplicable, we shall be able to say to ourselves, "Look, he isn't doing these things to spite me. Nor is he necessarily failing because I've been a failure. His faulty behavior isn't necessarily a result of faulty handling. I've made mistakes, naturally. But he is also in the grip of mistaken ideas. These have entered into making him do the foolish, frightened, unthinkable things he does. Since I see that I'm not all to blame, I feel less defensive and more sympathetic and tolerant."
This is heartening. As more of us realize that the blame for everything big and small does not have to rest on our shoulders, we can breathe a deep sigh, spread our arms wide and lift our heads higher. This frees us, in turn, to focus more profoundly on what we want for our child.
What parents fear
Ever since the bursting of the fearful bomb in Hiroshima, we have known that our children are facing an age different from any previous age. They will have to possess the courage and the ability to stand up for what they feel is right; the ability to defend it. They will need to be strong where strength is called for and gentle where gentleness can help. They will need the ability to be angry and aggressive where indignation and aggressiveness are appropriate. Able to be kindly and loving and tolerant in the normal course of their daily lives.
They will need whatever heritage of hope and faith we can bequeath them. They will need to know from us that people can still have moments of vivid enjoyment and times of relaxation and thoughtfulness and calm.
Because we know that our leadership is more important than ever before, we worry more when we feel a child of ours growing away from us. We are more bewildered still when we see him manifesting traits of which we disapprove. We ask ourselves anxiously what makes him so moody? What makes him standoffish? Too forward? Too timid? Too tempestuous? Too meek?
We wonder: Why does there seem at times to be a chasm widening between us? Why does he look down on us and tell us virtually that we know nothing? What can we do to get him over acting as if he knew it all?
What can we do about his argumentativeness? His sudden withdrawals? What does it mean when he seems so secretive, as if he were living his life apart, not wanting to let us in? What about his confidence in us? Just yesterday, it seemed, he depended so on us. Today perhaps a little. Tomorrow not at all. For what is he searching when he wanders away?
A father says: "My kid has me stumped. One day he's reading about world affairs and discussing them like an old man.
The next day, he's tearing up bits of sponge and floating them in the tub like a two-year-old, claiming he's carrying on great experiments. He's a neither-nor. You don't know how to treat him."
A mother says: "My girl's an enigma. One day she demands, 'Why won't you let me do anything on my own?' The next day she's scolding, 'Why won't you do anything with me?' . . . I wish I knew what she really wants."
A son says: "My dad keeps quarterbacking me, and my mom wants me to do everything without any reminding. You don't know if you're expected to be eight or eighty. It's rough."
A daughter says: "I'm too old to be a squab and too young to be a chicken. What am I? I guess a dead duck, that's all."
Each young one speaks according to his own lights, prompted by his own feelings. Yet each after his own fashion is saying the same things:
These are the years when the pull backward and the push forward are at a tug of war with each other . . . These are the years when we are wishing for yet fearing the things to come.
As for us--we, the parents, are looking forward to our children's growing up, yet we fear the separation. We are hoping that they will gradually form boy-girl contacts, yet we fear that the demon sex may move in too quickly and that they will lose their sense of proportion and hurdle too many barriers too fast.
They will need whatever heritage of hope and faith we can bequeath them. They will need to know from us that people can still have moments of vivid enjoyment and times of relaxation and thoughtfulness and calm.
Because we know that our leadership is more important than ever before, we worry more when we feel a child of ours growing away from us. We are more bewildered still when we see him manifesting traits of which we disapprove. We ask ourselves anxiously what makes him so moody? What makes him standoffish? Too forward? Too timid? Too tempestuous? Too meek?
We wonder: Why does there seem at times to be a chasm widening between us? Why does he look down on us and tell us virtually that we know nothing? What can we do to get him over acting as if he knew it all?
What can we do about his argumentativeness? His sudden withdrawals? What does it mean when he seems so secretive, as if he were living his life apart, not wanting to let us in? What about his confidence in us? Just yesterday, it seemed, he depended so on us. Today perhaps a little. Tomorrow not at all. For what is he searching when he wanders away?
A father says: "My kid has me stumped. One day he's reading about world affairs and discussing them like an old man.
The next day, he's tearing up bits of sponge and floating them in the tub like a two-year-old, claiming he's carrying on great experiments. He's a neither-nor. You don't know how to treat him."
A mother says: "My girl's an enigma. One day she demands, 'Why won't you let me do anything on my own?' The next day she's scolding, 'Why won't you do anything with me?' . . . I wish I knew what she really wants."
A son says: "My dad keeps quarterbacking me, and my mom wants me to do everything without any reminding. You don't know if you're expected to be eight or eighty. It's rough."
A daughter says: "I'm too old to be a squab and too young to be a chicken. What am I? I guess a dead duck, that's all."
Each young one speaks according to his own lights, prompted by his own feelings. Yet each after his own fashion is saying the same things:
These are the years when the pull backward and the push forward are at a tug of war with each other . . . These are the years when we are wishing for yet fearing the things to come.
As for us--we, the parents, are looking forward to our children's growing up, yet we fear the separation. We are hoping that they will gradually form boy-girl contacts, yet we fear that the demon sex may move in too quickly and that they will lose their sense of proportion and hurdle too many barriers too fast.
You Needn't Be at Cross-Purposes
No time in the life of parents brings as many puzzling questions as does that period when their children are in the teen years. At no time are parents as apt to feel so perplexed and so much in need of new understandings.
You look at your daughter with the woman's curves beginning to shape her body, and for a fleeting moment you see in her the baby whose curling fingers clung to your hand some twelve years earlier. You look at your son reaching for his razor, and for a second you see the stocky little boy who took his first wobbly steps across the carpet some thirteen years back. They are the same people, yes. They have the same bodies grown bigger. The same minds. But a bewildering change has come over them. They are no longer little children. Neither are they men or women. And yet we who are their parents feel the same responsibilities for them. We still need to manage, guide and help them. Legally, morally, spiritually, this is our desire and goal.
Because the task of helping children through the teen years is such a vital one, we are searching as we have never searched before for courage, wisdom and deepened insights.
Fortunately today there are things to know that can lessen old misconceptions which have stood between us and our children. There are things to learn that can make us better able to help them grow into the kind of men and women we want them to be and who are so urgently needed in today's world. Out of these can grow new understanding and new faith in ourselves.
You look at your daughter with the woman's curves beginning to shape her body, and for a fleeting moment you see in her the baby whose curling fingers clung to your hand some twelve years earlier. You look at your son reaching for his razor, and for a second you see the stocky little boy who took his first wobbly steps across the carpet some thirteen years back. They are the same people, yes. They have the same bodies grown bigger. The same minds. But a bewildering change has come over them. They are no longer little children. Neither are they men or women. And yet we who are their parents feel the same responsibilities for them. We still need to manage, guide and help them. Legally, morally, spiritually, this is our desire and goal.
Because the task of helping children through the teen years is such a vital one, we are searching as we have never searched before for courage, wisdom and deepened insights.
Fortunately today there are things to know that can lessen old misconceptions which have stood between us and our children. There are things to learn that can make us better able to help them grow into the kind of men and women we want them to be and who are so urgently needed in today's world. Out of these can grow new understanding and new faith in ourselves.
Living with your children
When you find out that something is natural in your child which you thought was naughty, you can breathe more easily . . .
When you find that some feeling in you is normal that you thought was not, you can take things in better spirit . . .
When you get some concrete and practical examples and principles, and some help and guidance, you can feel more assured.
LIVING WITH YOUR TEENAGER does not mean giving up life for him. Living WITH does not mean only living FOR. Living for--when it stands alone by itself--by itself brings sacrifice. Living with brings fruition on both sides--on his and on yours.
In its best sense it means caring about and considering one another, accepting imperfections, mistakes and uncertainties. Living through the battling moments, not trying to evade them. Acquiring increasing sympathy for the impatient and irritable and irrational moments. Acquiring the ability to communicate strength and love through the struggling and unhappy moments that inevitably come. Enjoying the high moments, and cherishing the quiet moments of peace.
A teenager said cynically, "Parents are people who try to help you but don't know you well enough to do so."
Your goal is to be another kind of parent. One who helps his children realistically by knowing and understanding them well.
By now you have glimpsed that understanding of him involves also understanding of yourself.
Your feelings and his feelings are continuously jostling and meshing with each other.
The hopes you have had for yourself meet constantly with the hopes you have for him.
The doubts you have had about yourself meet with your doubts about him.
Your old and new fears and your old and new imaginings often press unrealistically into your relationship with him.
Out of your own youth you bring a wealth of memories to bear on his youth. Reevaluating these may take away some of your fears for him. They may enable you the better to feel with him, the vantage point of your adulthood giving you a greater sense of ease and steadiness with which to help him move more steadily through his tremulous reachings to become an adult.
By accepting yourself more confidently as an adult who has once also been an adolescent, you may come to accept him more warmly, thus helping him gain fuller confidence in himself.
When you find that some feeling in you is normal that you thought was not, you can take things in better spirit . . .
When you get some concrete and practical examples and principles, and some help and guidance, you can feel more assured.
LIVING WITH YOUR TEENAGER does not mean giving up life for him. Living WITH does not mean only living FOR. Living for--when it stands alone by itself--by itself brings sacrifice. Living with brings fruition on both sides--on his and on yours.
In its best sense it means caring about and considering one another, accepting imperfections, mistakes and uncertainties. Living through the battling moments, not trying to evade them. Acquiring increasing sympathy for the impatient and irritable and irrational moments. Acquiring the ability to communicate strength and love through the struggling and unhappy moments that inevitably come. Enjoying the high moments, and cherishing the quiet moments of peace.
A teenager said cynically, "Parents are people who try to help you but don't know you well enough to do so."
Your goal is to be another kind of parent. One who helps his children realistically by knowing and understanding them well.
By now you have glimpsed that understanding of him involves also understanding of yourself.
Your feelings and his feelings are continuously jostling and meshing with each other.
The hopes you have had for yourself meet constantly with the hopes you have for him.
The doubts you have had about yourself meet with your doubts about him.
Your old and new fears and your old and new imaginings often press unrealistically into your relationship with him.
Out of your own youth you bring a wealth of memories to bear on his youth. Reevaluating these may take away some of your fears for him. They may enable you the better to feel with him, the vantage point of your adulthood giving you a greater sense of ease and steadiness with which to help him move more steadily through his tremulous reachings to become an adult.
By accepting yourself more confidently as an adult who has once also been an adolescent, you may come to accept him more warmly, thus helping him gain fuller confidence in himself.
Our adolescent's feelings
By true regard for the FEELINGS WE HAD IN OUR OWN ADOLESCENCE we gain truer regard for OUR ADOLESCENT'S FEELINGS right now.
It is not easy to recapture exactly how we felt. We can get at memories, perhaps, of being too fat, too thin, too tall, too short. Memories, perhaps, of various uncomfortable moments. Of being unable to be convincing when we wanted most to convince. Of being unable to be attractive when we wanted most to attract. Too eager, perhaps. Or too bungling. Dreaming about things to come and shamefaced about our dreaming. Wondering about life and trying not to wonder. Feeling old, terribly old.
"Like our children now! And being treated terribly young!"
"Why do we smile when we think of ourselves as adolescents?" a group of parents asked themselves.
"Perhaps out of charity."
"To tell ourselves that feelings we had then were nonexistent, especially the sex feelings, because we thought them so bad."
"Or we smile to pass over the memory of having wanted to flaunt those feelings . . ."
"And to forget that we had the revolt feelings too . . ."
"What do you mean, the revolt feelings?"
"The hostile feelings against our parents when we felt they were old-fashioned and foolish and didn't know anything."
"You mean, when we thought that we knew it all . . ."
"We didn't like to see certain feelings in ourselves then. We don't like to see them in our adolescents now. The sex feelings and the hostile feelings, those were the worst. They still are."
Ask yourself: Do you remember your feelings toward your parents? Your struggles to break loose? Your worried resentments when you felt they were holding the reins too tight? Your sorry anger when you felt what to you spelled a lack of support?
Do you remember your feelings toward your bodies? Your feelings toward girls if you were a boy and toward boys if you were a girl? Your feelings about love and marriage? Your wonderings about sex and sex contact and birth?
As you read this book you will be reminded of these questions again and again. If you remember little, perhaps as you read you will remember more. You may come upon things that will make you exclaim, "I'd forgotten about that!" Or "Oh, I see! I, too, must have felt that way without realizing it then."
We have buried so much. Sometimes even while an event was happening, we shoveled its most important meanings under the soil of consciousness, because inside of us it touched old feelings of fear or hesitance, guilt or shame. Even so, it still can propel us to meet our children's feelings with unnecessary fear and hesitance, with uncalled-for guilt and shame.
The more we can recapture those young feelings of ours with clarity, with honesty and without too great a sense of apology, the more shall we grow in acceptance and understanding of our children. The more shall we be able to know and learn about them. The better able shall we be to help them grow and mature.
It is not easy to recapture exactly how we felt. We can get at memories, perhaps, of being too fat, too thin, too tall, too short. Memories, perhaps, of various uncomfortable moments. Of being unable to be convincing when we wanted most to convince. Of being unable to be attractive when we wanted most to attract. Too eager, perhaps. Or too bungling. Dreaming about things to come and shamefaced about our dreaming. Wondering about life and trying not to wonder. Feeling old, terribly old.
"Like our children now! And being treated terribly young!"
"Why do we smile when we think of ourselves as adolescents?" a group of parents asked themselves.
"Perhaps out of charity."
"To tell ourselves that feelings we had then were nonexistent, especially the sex feelings, because we thought them so bad."
"Or we smile to pass over the memory of having wanted to flaunt those feelings . . ."
"And to forget that we had the revolt feelings too . . ."
"What do you mean, the revolt feelings?"
"The hostile feelings against our parents when we felt they were old-fashioned and foolish and didn't know anything."
"You mean, when we thought that we knew it all . . ."
"We didn't like to see certain feelings in ourselves then. We don't like to see them in our adolescents now. The sex feelings and the hostile feelings, those were the worst. They still are."
Ask yourself: Do you remember your feelings toward your parents? Your struggles to break loose? Your worried resentments when you felt they were holding the reins too tight? Your sorry anger when you felt what to you spelled a lack of support?
Do you remember your feelings toward your bodies? Your feelings toward girls if you were a boy and toward boys if you were a girl? Your feelings about love and marriage? Your wonderings about sex and sex contact and birth?
As you read this book you will be reminded of these questions again and again. If you remember little, perhaps as you read you will remember more. You may come upon things that will make you exclaim, "I'd forgotten about that!" Or "Oh, I see! I, too, must have felt that way without realizing it then."
We have buried so much. Sometimes even while an event was happening, we shoveled its most important meanings under the soil of consciousness, because inside of us it touched old feelings of fear or hesitance, guilt or shame. Even so, it still can propel us to meet our children's feelings with unnecessary fear and hesitance, with uncalled-for guilt and shame.
The more we can recapture those young feelings of ours with clarity, with honesty and without too great a sense of apology, the more shall we grow in acceptance and understanding of our children. The more shall we be able to know and learn about them. The better able shall we be to help them grow and mature.
Your feelings speak louder than what you say or do
Just as surely as a horseback rider communicates uncertainty to his horse no matter how much he tries to hide it, so do we communicate our feelings to the youngsters whom we guide.
One night Tom's father listened to a lecturer say that it was unwise to put too much emphasis on school grades. "Some children do better in one field than another. Some do better manually; some mechanically. Some are working up to capacity at a B level; some at a C level. Not everybody can get all A's. Nor are all A's important for everybody. A child doesn't need all A's to be successful in life. What he does need is to feel that his parents--and his teachers--are with him, all A's or not."
Tom's father had nodded and had said to himself: "Yes, that sounds right."
Next day Tom brought home his report card. As usual, he'd been strong in shop and "manual skills" and weak in what he called "that highbrow stuff."
His father, however, remained obedient to the precept he was trying to follow. He looked the card over and handed it back with a casual air.
Neither spoke.
Tom's father went on drawing at his pipe. Tom sat ganglylegged, shoving his feet on the carpet, back and forth, until he finally blurted out, "I didn't do such a good job."
"Weell," from his father calmly but with a speeded up puffing in and out. "It's a good enough card, Tom."' But underneath he didn't feel it was. He did care despite his effort to hide this from himself and from Tom.
Tom sensed it. The discrepancy between what his father felt and what his father said bothered him. As he put it to his counselor later, "I knew he wanted to say, 'If you don't do better, you'll never be a success.' He tries not to push but he pushes too much . . ."
And then Tom came out with a profound truth: "You can push with silence as much as with noise." His father's feelings had spoken louder than his words.
Tom was angry. "If he pushes, I'll push back. He's dishonest, that's what he is. I'll be damned if I'll work from now on. I'll be damned if I'll do anything to please him!"
Rodney's father, in contrast, was more honest. He had heard the same lecture. He too had said, "That's a good idea."
Like Tom, Rodney was strong in mechanical abilities. He was also good in sports. As usual the rest of his card was only fair.
Rodney's father started off by saying, "It doesn't really matter." But then he changed his tune. "Yes, Rod, it does . . .
"That guy who lectured said you shouldn't care too much about your kid's grades as long as he's working. And you work plenty hard. I know I shouldn't want you to get all A's but I do . . . Why, I wonder? There are things in life besides grades."
"Football, for instance," Rodney ventured.
"That's what I counted on when I was your age," Rodney's father answered.
"You were team captain . . ."
"Uh-huh, but what did it net me?"
"You talk about it enough."
"I know."
Rodney's father seemed puzzled but he went on thinking out loud. "It was no use hitching my wagon to a football. It let me down plenty. I counted on it, but the profs got my number as a numskull and I flunked out of college . . . I guess when I said grades weren't important I was trying to fool you, just like I was trying to fool myself. I still wish I'd done better . . ."
"Okay, Dad, okay!" Rodney countered a little impatiently. "I see your point. Only don't push me to make up for not pushing yourself when you were young. I've told you I want to go to work and not to college, so let me be."
Rodney's father nodded and smiled a broad, quiet smile.
"The grades don't matter. You're okay, kid." It had the right sound now, clear as a bell when he said it. He felt it, that was why. His feeling and words were one.
As Rodney went out he smiled an answering smile shyly back at his father, and suddenly his father knew profoundly there was one thing that did matter more than grades. He and his boy were friends.
At times our feelings are such that we cannot share them. We don't always have to. But neither need we dissemble. We can always admit, "I'm bothered by something inside me; not by you." This proves immeasurably relieving for the teen-ager who is so prone to blame himself.
On the other hand, it's quite possible to use our feelings to make our children go our way more than is helpful or fair to them. Like a girl who sheds tears to get a lover to do her bidding. We then play on a child's heartstrings and get him to be a yes man too often for his own good.
It is also quite possible to give in to our own wishes too often. Then the load of demands grows so big our children rebel at everything. Then, if we want them to do something really important, they still will renege.
By giving more thought to our own wishes, we can often prevent such an impasse. By giving ourselves due attention, we often become able to forgo some of our wishes more peacefully than we anticipate and without as much sense of sacrificing what we believe is right.
"You know," said one father, "I used to say, 'What's right is right and under no circumstances am I going to let my children by-pass it.' But since I've taken my own wishes into the picture more honestly, I see that I often call things right simply because they are right-er for me."
It doesn't make us lose caste to change our minds. It doesn't hurt, for instance, to say, "Skip it, Jane. It isn't necessary after all to stop at the store for me. I forgot you had a club meeting this afternoon. I was thoughtless to ask."
Another thing that can help immeasurably is to bring our own adolescence to bear on the wishes we have for our children. The thinking-back process can make for "less pressurizing," to use one youngster's phrase.
We know we can't handle our teen-agers precisely as we were handled. Times have changed. The world has changed. Children are different. We are different. But in many "feeling" respects still the same.
Most of us see our adolescent children with bewilderment carried over from our own adolescence. Because of our own puzzled feelings about ourselves as we were then, we often feel puzzled about our children now. Remembering what our feelings were then can help clarify our feelings now. And this in turn helps us act more wisely. Just as Rodney's father benefited by recapturing how he felt when he was young, so can we in many instances.
One night Tom's father listened to a lecturer say that it was unwise to put too much emphasis on school grades. "Some children do better in one field than another. Some do better manually; some mechanically. Some are working up to capacity at a B level; some at a C level. Not everybody can get all A's. Nor are all A's important for everybody. A child doesn't need all A's to be successful in life. What he does need is to feel that his parents--and his teachers--are with him, all A's or not."
Tom's father had nodded and had said to himself: "Yes, that sounds right."
Next day Tom brought home his report card. As usual, he'd been strong in shop and "manual skills" and weak in what he called "that highbrow stuff."
His father, however, remained obedient to the precept he was trying to follow. He looked the card over and handed it back with a casual air.
Neither spoke.
Tom's father went on drawing at his pipe. Tom sat ganglylegged, shoving his feet on the carpet, back and forth, until he finally blurted out, "I didn't do such a good job."
"Weell," from his father calmly but with a speeded up puffing in and out. "It's a good enough card, Tom."' But underneath he didn't feel it was. He did care despite his effort to hide this from himself and from Tom.
Tom sensed it. The discrepancy between what his father felt and what his father said bothered him. As he put it to his counselor later, "I knew he wanted to say, 'If you don't do better, you'll never be a success.' He tries not to push but he pushes too much . . ."
And then Tom came out with a profound truth: "You can push with silence as much as with noise." His father's feelings had spoken louder than his words.
Tom was angry. "If he pushes, I'll push back. He's dishonest, that's what he is. I'll be damned if I'll work from now on. I'll be damned if I'll do anything to please him!"
Rodney's father, in contrast, was more honest. He had heard the same lecture. He too had said, "That's a good idea."
Like Tom, Rodney was strong in mechanical abilities. He was also good in sports. As usual the rest of his card was only fair.
Rodney's father started off by saying, "It doesn't really matter." But then he changed his tune. "Yes, Rod, it does . . .
"That guy who lectured said you shouldn't care too much about your kid's grades as long as he's working. And you work plenty hard. I know I shouldn't want you to get all A's but I do . . . Why, I wonder? There are things in life besides grades."
"Football, for instance," Rodney ventured.
"That's what I counted on when I was your age," Rodney's father answered.
"You were team captain . . ."
"Uh-huh, but what did it net me?"
"You talk about it enough."
"I know."
Rodney's father seemed puzzled but he went on thinking out loud. "It was no use hitching my wagon to a football. It let me down plenty. I counted on it, but the profs got my number as a numskull and I flunked out of college . . . I guess when I said grades weren't important I was trying to fool you, just like I was trying to fool myself. I still wish I'd done better . . ."
"Okay, Dad, okay!" Rodney countered a little impatiently. "I see your point. Only don't push me to make up for not pushing yourself when you were young. I've told you I want to go to work and not to college, so let me be."
Rodney's father nodded and smiled a broad, quiet smile.
"The grades don't matter. You're okay, kid." It had the right sound now, clear as a bell when he said it. He felt it, that was why. His feeling and words were one.
As Rodney went out he smiled an answering smile shyly back at his father, and suddenly his father knew profoundly there was one thing that did matter more than grades. He and his boy were friends.
At times our feelings are such that we cannot share them. We don't always have to. But neither need we dissemble. We can always admit, "I'm bothered by something inside me; not by you." This proves immeasurably relieving for the teen-ager who is so prone to blame himself.
On the other hand, it's quite possible to use our feelings to make our children go our way more than is helpful or fair to them. Like a girl who sheds tears to get a lover to do her bidding. We then play on a child's heartstrings and get him to be a yes man too often for his own good.
It is also quite possible to give in to our own wishes too often. Then the load of demands grows so big our children rebel at everything. Then, if we want them to do something really important, they still will renege.
By giving more thought to our own wishes, we can often prevent such an impasse. By giving ourselves due attention, we often become able to forgo some of our wishes more peacefully than we anticipate and without as much sense of sacrificing what we believe is right.
"You know," said one father, "I used to say, 'What's right is right and under no circumstances am I going to let my children by-pass it.' But since I've taken my own wishes into the picture more honestly, I see that I often call things right simply because they are right-er for me."
It doesn't make us lose caste to change our minds. It doesn't hurt, for instance, to say, "Skip it, Jane. It isn't necessary after all to stop at the store for me. I forgot you had a club meeting this afternoon. I was thoughtless to ask."
Another thing that can help immeasurably is to bring our own adolescence to bear on the wishes we have for our children. The thinking-back process can make for "less pressurizing," to use one youngster's phrase.
We know we can't handle our teen-agers precisely as we were handled. Times have changed. The world has changed. Children are different. We are different. But in many "feeling" respects still the same.
Most of us see our adolescent children with bewilderment carried over from our own adolescence. Because of our own puzzled feelings about ourselves as we were then, we often feel puzzled about our children now. Remembering what our feelings were then can help clarify our feelings now. And this in turn helps us act more wisely. Just as Rodney's father benefited by recapturing how he felt when he was young, so can we in many instances.
Your Feelings Are Important
Uppermost in a parent's feelings these days lies our own concern over the ever-present problem of authority. We are eager to give our teenager enough responsibility but we fear giving him too much leeway. We know he must develop independence. And yet we fear that he may get out of hand and out of control. We have heard so much talk about the necessity for parents (and for teachers) to give adolescent children freedom that we often hesitate to step in. Then when we do step in to assume authority we are often afraid that what we are doing is wrong.
Actually during most of his teens, this teenager of ours still needs us to rely on.
He still needs OUR FIRMNESS to help him stand MORE FIRMLY HIMSELF.
Some forbiddings, restrictions and demands are bound to enter in home, in school and in other groups where he finds himself.
"I hate to put the brakes on, but I have to," one woman remarked. "There's a bunch of thirteen-year-olds in the neighborhood and they congregate at our place. When they get to roughhousing and to throwing the couch pillows around and spilling Coke and soda pop over the rugs, I have to call a halt."
Says another to her seventeen-year-old: "I can't have you and your friends burning holes in the furniture. We can't afford new upholstery every few months."
"No, Son," says a father, "I'm not willing to have you play football, with that knee of yours."
"No matter how important that party is, and I know it's terribly important, you're running a temp, dear, and you've got to stay home."
"No. We are not going to let you use the car if you get another ticket for careless driving."
"I don't care what others do, Daughter, but I don't believe in a sixteen-year-old girl dating with a twenty-two-year-old fellow."
As in the old days when he was little, three rules must still reign:
This is important for health and safety.
This is important to protect property.
This is important because of law and order and social acceptability.
These are firm bases for standing firm. Actually, however, they do not enter into too many of the issues that confront us. And this is fortunate because when the burden of forbiddings, restrictions and demands overbalances the chances for independent action, a child loses self-confidence. He either becomes afraid to act or he becomes rebellious.
On many more occasions another issue enters. When we step in with the authoritarian voice, we are frequently saying:
This is important because it's important to ME!
If we are altogether honest, a great many of the issues that arise are important actually for this reason and for this reason mainly. We want a thing done because we feel the way we do about it.
This does not mean, however, that we should wave our desires aside. They're an essential part of the picture. They must be taken into account. When we frankly consider our own feelings, we put ourselves in a much stronger position than when we claim that they have little to do with what we ask.
"But," admitted one mother, "'way down inside me I'm ashamed of insisting on anything for my own sake. Somehow I feel I have no right to want what I want. So I start selling myself a bill of goods. I tell myself that my children have to mind because it's good for children to mind. Actually, however, I know that's nonsense. It makes me into a dictator when the days of dictatorship should be past. Then, because I'm divided inside and feeling guilty, I get irritated and irritable and picky and I wobble uncertainly and I'm not effective at all."
"While I," her husband put in, "I'm the opposite. The less justified I feel in wanting things my way the more justified I act. I become a regular bully. I pound the table and grow insistent. I see now what I'm doing. I'm covering my real feelings with a lot of shouting. And I end by getting my children's revolt."
Most of us want what we want because we want it. But we manage to find ways of hiding this. Shades of our childhood rise in us. Old prohibitions reecho: "Don't be selfish or selfcentered. Don't think of yourself. Think of others, my dear." In consequence, we are seldom honest or free in declaring our wants.
Instead we may rake up a high pile of grievances to justify our demands. "You never use your head so I have to use mine for you." We may heap up proof that a child is too young to know what to do. "So he needs us to tell him from the vantage point of our superior age and experience." We keep pushing relatively unimportant reasons to the fore. And we think more of them simply because they make us appear to be thinking less of ourselves.
Obviously this is folly. A far more productive policy is to try to be honest.
"You will have to make your bed before you leave for school in the morning. It gets under my skin to have it left undone all day." This is a very different thing from saying, "Unless you learn to make your bed as you should, you won't know how to take care of your own home properly when you get married." In the former, you are being more honest about your feelings. You are admitting that it's for you you're asking. You're not putting on an act that it's for your child.
He may still scold at you roundly. But basically he will love and respect you far more for being honest than he will if he senses any sham. In the long run, knowing that you are open and square with him wins cooperation to a far greater degree than many a more reasonable '"reason" that is essentially less sincere.
It does no good to pretend you don't want a thing because you feel that wanting it is no good. You may fool yourself often, but you don't often fool him.
Actually during most of his teens, this teenager of ours still needs us to rely on.
He still needs OUR FIRMNESS to help him stand MORE FIRMLY HIMSELF.
Some forbiddings, restrictions and demands are bound to enter in home, in school and in other groups where he finds himself.
"I hate to put the brakes on, but I have to," one woman remarked. "There's a bunch of thirteen-year-olds in the neighborhood and they congregate at our place. When they get to roughhousing and to throwing the couch pillows around and spilling Coke and soda pop over the rugs, I have to call a halt."
Says another to her seventeen-year-old: "I can't have you and your friends burning holes in the furniture. We can't afford new upholstery every few months."
"No, Son," says a father, "I'm not willing to have you play football, with that knee of yours."
"No matter how important that party is, and I know it's terribly important, you're running a temp, dear, and you've got to stay home."
"No. We are not going to let you use the car if you get another ticket for careless driving."
"I don't care what others do, Daughter, but I don't believe in a sixteen-year-old girl dating with a twenty-two-year-old fellow."
As in the old days when he was little, three rules must still reign:
This is important for health and safety.
This is important to protect property.
This is important because of law and order and social acceptability.
These are firm bases for standing firm. Actually, however, they do not enter into too many of the issues that confront us. And this is fortunate because when the burden of forbiddings, restrictions and demands overbalances the chances for independent action, a child loses self-confidence. He either becomes afraid to act or he becomes rebellious.
On many more occasions another issue enters. When we step in with the authoritarian voice, we are frequently saying:
This is important because it's important to ME!
If we are altogether honest, a great many of the issues that arise are important actually for this reason and for this reason mainly. We want a thing done because we feel the way we do about it.
This does not mean, however, that we should wave our desires aside. They're an essential part of the picture. They must be taken into account. When we frankly consider our own feelings, we put ourselves in a much stronger position than when we claim that they have little to do with what we ask.
"But," admitted one mother, "'way down inside me I'm ashamed of insisting on anything for my own sake. Somehow I feel I have no right to want what I want. So I start selling myself a bill of goods. I tell myself that my children have to mind because it's good for children to mind. Actually, however, I know that's nonsense. It makes me into a dictator when the days of dictatorship should be past. Then, because I'm divided inside and feeling guilty, I get irritated and irritable and picky and I wobble uncertainly and I'm not effective at all."
"While I," her husband put in, "I'm the opposite. The less justified I feel in wanting things my way the more justified I act. I become a regular bully. I pound the table and grow insistent. I see now what I'm doing. I'm covering my real feelings with a lot of shouting. And I end by getting my children's revolt."
Most of us want what we want because we want it. But we manage to find ways of hiding this. Shades of our childhood rise in us. Old prohibitions reecho: "Don't be selfish or selfcentered. Don't think of yourself. Think of others, my dear." In consequence, we are seldom honest or free in declaring our wants.
Instead we may rake up a high pile of grievances to justify our demands. "You never use your head so I have to use mine for you." We may heap up proof that a child is too young to know what to do. "So he needs us to tell him from the vantage point of our superior age and experience." We keep pushing relatively unimportant reasons to the fore. And we think more of them simply because they make us appear to be thinking less of ourselves.
Obviously this is folly. A far more productive policy is to try to be honest.
"You will have to make your bed before you leave for school in the morning. It gets under my skin to have it left undone all day." This is a very different thing from saying, "Unless you learn to make your bed as you should, you won't know how to take care of your own home properly when you get married." In the former, you are being more honest about your feelings. You are admitting that it's for you you're asking. You're not putting on an act that it's for your child.
He may still scold at you roundly. But basically he will love and respect you far more for being honest than he will if he senses any sham. In the long run, knowing that you are open and square with him wins cooperation to a far greater degree than many a more reasonable '"reason" that is essentially less sincere.
It does no good to pretend you don't want a thing because you feel that wanting it is no good. You may fool yourself often, but you don't often fool him.
Saturday, November 10, 2007
Motor Reaction Units
Before we proceed to study the specific reflex response mechanisms, we may consider certain purely motor, or efferent systems, which are apparently in-built by ontogenetic forces. The preexistence of such "reaction units" greatly facilitates the development of learned response because they constitute ready-made coördination systems which can be appropriated as occasion demands by higher nervous centers. Thus, motor learning does not have to begin with a chaos of individual nerve and muscle fibre units, but finds such units already assembled into automatisms, which are approximately correct, in their general character, for voluntary action. These motor units can be conceived as being essentially independent of any particular afferent nerve paths, although it may happen that certain of them are actually connected anatomically with special afferent mechanisms, for the execution of particular reflex movements.
We have already given numerous specific examples of such motor units. In order to find many others, we have only to analyze our own movements (or postures) into gross physiological parts. Consider, for example, the case of the hand. There are several characteristic movements and postures which are possible for each of the fingers and the hand as a whole. Thus, a finger may be flexed, extended, lifted, depressed, or moved either right or left in the plane of the palm. The hand may be flexed at the wrist, either backwards or forwards; the fist may be clenched, the thumb and fore-finger may be brought together (as in grasping an object), etc. Of course, we cannot be certain that all of these possible elementary movements are based upon nervous automatisms; in fact, we may feel quite sure that some of the hand movements result only from prolonged practice which--more frequently than not--is directed towards overcoming such automatisms. Consider, for instance, the difficulty with which we learn to flex the fourth and fifth fingers independently of each other. This difficulty in itself demonstrates the existence of an innate coördinating device which operates to flex all of the fingers at once, although the index finger has a special independent control unit of its own.
It may seem to some readers that such simple movements as are above considered should not require any very special nervous arrangements to permit their execution. However, the necessity of considerable apparatus will be realized when one appreciates that even the simplest of these movements requires the simultaneous and balanced innervation of hundreds of individual muscle fibres, which may have a rather complicated anatomical distribution. In order that a smooth and coördinated movement shall occur, the impulses must not only be distributed to the appropriate outwardly conducting neurones, but they must be suitably regulated both with regard to their temporal course and their intensities.
Now, as a rule, we find that such regulation is not exclusively central in its origin, since ordinarily it involves so-called "proprioceptive" afferent nerve currents. These proprioceptive currents are in a class by themselves among afferent impulses, since they convey information to motor adjustment mechanisms in regard to the outcome of adjustments which have just been made. Therefore, they provide the essentials of an ideal mechanism for muscular control, since the control need not depend arbitrarily upon the activity of the central agency, but may involve the actual state of the motor organ, which reacts upon and modulates the innervations of the centers, through the medium of the proprioceptive impulses. Thus, we can imagine the innerration of a muscle to be throttled by the proprioceptive impulses, which result from its own contraction, in a quantitative manner so that the state of tension in the muscle is due to the balance between the proprioceptive and the essential adjustor energies, which react upon each other at the adjustor point. Now, it seems almost certain that motor regulation devices of this sort, involving proprioceptive impulses as cardinal features, are present in the organism as a direct hereditary endowment. As we have already indicated, the cerebellum--an important portion of the brain--appears to be the natural locus of many regulatory systems of this kind.
As a complement, or correlative of these purely motor control mechanisms, it would not be surprising to find hereditarily founded devices of an exclusively afferent nature, which are an addition to the sense-organs and their obvious nerve channels. The general mechanisms of the sensory side of the cerebral cortex may perhaps be included in this class, and, at a later point in our argument, we shall introduce the notion of further specific arrangements of an afferent character, which provide what we shall regard as "the hereditary basis of learning by experience."
We have already given numerous specific examples of such motor units. In order to find many others, we have only to analyze our own movements (or postures) into gross physiological parts. Consider, for example, the case of the hand. There are several characteristic movements and postures which are possible for each of the fingers and the hand as a whole. Thus, a finger may be flexed, extended, lifted, depressed, or moved either right or left in the plane of the palm. The hand may be flexed at the wrist, either backwards or forwards; the fist may be clenched, the thumb and fore-finger may be brought together (as in grasping an object), etc. Of course, we cannot be certain that all of these possible elementary movements are based upon nervous automatisms; in fact, we may feel quite sure that some of the hand movements result only from prolonged practice which--more frequently than not--is directed towards overcoming such automatisms. Consider, for instance, the difficulty with which we learn to flex the fourth and fifth fingers independently of each other. This difficulty in itself demonstrates the existence of an innate coördinating device which operates to flex all of the fingers at once, although the index finger has a special independent control unit of its own.
It may seem to some readers that such simple movements as are above considered should not require any very special nervous arrangements to permit their execution. However, the necessity of considerable apparatus will be realized when one appreciates that even the simplest of these movements requires the simultaneous and balanced innervation of hundreds of individual muscle fibres, which may have a rather complicated anatomical distribution. In order that a smooth and coördinated movement shall occur, the impulses must not only be distributed to the appropriate outwardly conducting neurones, but they must be suitably regulated both with regard to their temporal course and their intensities.
Now, as a rule, we find that such regulation is not exclusively central in its origin, since ordinarily it involves so-called "proprioceptive" afferent nerve currents. These proprioceptive currents are in a class by themselves among afferent impulses, since they convey information to motor adjustment mechanisms in regard to the outcome of adjustments which have just been made. Therefore, they provide the essentials of an ideal mechanism for muscular control, since the control need not depend arbitrarily upon the activity of the central agency, but may involve the actual state of the motor organ, which reacts upon and modulates the innervations of the centers, through the medium of the proprioceptive impulses. Thus, we can imagine the innerration of a muscle to be throttled by the proprioceptive impulses, which result from its own contraction, in a quantitative manner so that the state of tension in the muscle is due to the balance between the proprioceptive and the essential adjustor energies, which react upon each other at the adjustor point. Now, it seems almost certain that motor regulation devices of this sort, involving proprioceptive impulses as cardinal features, are present in the organism as a direct hereditary endowment. As we have already indicated, the cerebellum--an important portion of the brain--appears to be the natural locus of many regulatory systems of this kind.
As a complement, or correlative of these purely motor control mechanisms, it would not be surprising to find hereditarily founded devices of an exclusively afferent nature, which are an addition to the sense-organs and their obvious nerve channels. The general mechanisms of the sensory side of the cerebral cortex may perhaps be included in this class, and, at a later point in our argument, we shall introduce the notion of further specific arrangements of an afferent character, which provide what we shall regard as "the hereditary basis of learning by experience."
Hereditarily Determined Specific Responses
Let us now consider what particular aspects of human or animal behavior can be explained in terms of reflex mechanisms such as we have outlined in the previous chapter. The forms of response which can be included under this classification will be primarily hereditary in their determination, since they must depend principally upon anatomical arrangements of neurones which are built into the organism at birth, or which develop as an inevitable consequence of congenital forces. The factors which may be involved in addition to anatomical continuity, such as threshold, chronaxy, and sensitiveness to general organic conditions, must also be regarded as having an hereditary basis. Nevertheless, we may find that the exercise of such reflex mechanisms, or their interactions with one another, produce significant changes in their operation.
Successive Reflex Combinations
Sometimes reflexes which are antagonistic to one another, when simultaneously aroused, can combine harmoniously in succession. Some of the commonest movements, such as walking, involve a rhythmic succession or alternation of antagonistic reflexes: flexion followed by extension, or the like. It has been shown that, in certain cases, the motor process of extension itself arouses the reflex of flexion, or vice versa, so that an orderly sequence results. The notion of a chain of reflexes, so arranged that the motor phase of one member generates the stimulus to the next member, has frequently been advocated as an explanation of complex acts of a seemingly instinctive nature. Reflexes may be combined into more complex response systems either in this manner or because their respective stimuli are simultaneously provided by the environment.
Reflex Prepotency
From our present point of view, the fourth determinant of the issue of a conflict, as listed by Sherrington, is probably the most interesting of all. It consists in the species or kind of reflex which is involved. Certain classes of reflexes exhibit very superior strength when they come into conflict with reflexes belonging to a different class. Among such very potent--or "prepotent"--reflexes are those which are aroused by stimulation of nociceptive sense-organs. These are receptors, or senseorgans which respond specifically to injurious stimuli, their most important exemplars being the receptors of the pain sense. It is natural that the reflexes which are set off by pain stimulation should dominate over those which are aroused by innocuous stimuli, such as mere contact, since an appropriate reaction to the former is of vital importance to the welfare of the organism. The dominance of the flexion over the scratch reflex, which we have already mentioned above, is explained by this principle of the prepotency of nociceptively aroused reactions, since the flexion reflex is a response to a needle prick, whereas the scratch reflex follows from a harmless touch. However, if the pain stimulus is sufficiently weak and the tactile one sufficiently strong, the scratching action may appear, and become dominant over the continuous flexion process. Nociceptive reflexes show a tendency to persist in the face of general disturbances of nervous activity which obliterate many other reflex processes, thus showing the peculiar vitality of the former types of response.
Sherrington points out, furthermore, that any reflex arising from the stimulation of receptors which can produce strongly pleasant or unpleasant (affective) consequences in consciousness, tends to prevail over other types of reflexes in the case of conflict. He calls such reflexes in general "pseudaffective." The sexual reflexes, such as the embracing reaction in the case of the male frog during the breeding season, show a prepotency as great as, or greater than that which is exhibited by nociceptive reflexes. In order to complete our terminology, it seems advisable to invent the adjective, beneceptive, to designate sensory processes and attached reflexes which are of the character of the sexual responses, as contrasted with those of pain. Nociceptors may be defined as sensory cells, or afferent mechanisms, which are particularly attuned to injurious agencies; whereas beneceptors may be considered as similarly qualified with respect to especially beneficial environmental, or organic, conditions. We can then say that reflexes which are aroused by the stimulation of either nociceptors or beneceptors tend, other things being equal, to dominate over the motor tendencies appertaining to other forms of sensory excitation.
All of the factors which control the outcome of conflicts between reflex arcs apparently can be interpreted as different grounds of response intensity, presumably in the adjustor stage of the reflex. This applies not only to the influence of spinal induction, fatigue, and stimulus magnitude, but also to the species of reflexes, since it seems highly probable that the nociceptively and beneceptively aroused adjustor processes have a high degree of nervous power. This is evidenced by the fact that their normal, unimpeded expressions show great strength and persistence. The conflict of response tendencies is therefore fundamentally a quantitative affair, in which the result is dependent upon the comparative magnitudes of the positive and negative forces which are operative. For it seems that each response tendency must be capable of acting both positively and negatively: positively in seeking its own expression, and negatively in opposing the expression of its antagonists.
Sherrington points out, furthermore, that any reflex arising from the stimulation of receptors which can produce strongly pleasant or unpleasant (affective) consequences in consciousness, tends to prevail over other types of reflexes in the case of conflict. He calls such reflexes in general "pseudaffective." The sexual reflexes, such as the embracing reaction in the case of the male frog during the breeding season, show a prepotency as great as, or greater than that which is exhibited by nociceptive reflexes. In order to complete our terminology, it seems advisable to invent the adjective, beneceptive, to designate sensory processes and attached reflexes which are of the character of the sexual responses, as contrasted with those of pain. Nociceptors may be defined as sensory cells, or afferent mechanisms, which are particularly attuned to injurious agencies; whereas beneceptors may be considered as similarly qualified with respect to especially beneficial environmental, or organic, conditions. We can then say that reflexes which are aroused by the stimulation of either nociceptors or beneceptors tend, other things being equal, to dominate over the motor tendencies appertaining to other forms of sensory excitation.
All of the factors which control the outcome of conflicts between reflex arcs apparently can be interpreted as different grounds of response intensity, presumably in the adjustor stage of the reflex. This applies not only to the influence of spinal induction, fatigue, and stimulus magnitude, but also to the species of reflexes, since it seems highly probable that the nociceptively and beneceptively aroused adjustor processes have a high degree of nervous power. This is evidenced by the fact that their normal, unimpeded expressions show great strength and persistence. The conflict of response tendencies is therefore fundamentally a quantitative affair, in which the result is dependent upon the comparative magnitudes of the positive and negative forces which are operative. For it seems that each response tendency must be capable of acting both positively and negatively: positively in seeking its own expression, and negatively in opposing the expression of its antagonists.
Factors Deciding Reflex Conflict
The most interesting relationship, from our present point of view, is, however, that which obtains between antagonistic reflexes. The adjustor mechanisms of such reflexes are set to use the same final common path, in different ways, so that it is physically impossible for them to operate simultaneously--at least to any good effect. However, their interference is based upon a nervous rather than a physical incompatibility. The evolution of the nervous mechanism has evidently been such as to guard against the simultaneous arousal of inconsistent reactions, which could lead to no useful result. As an example of such interference we may consider what happens when the scratch reflex and the so-called flexion reflex of the hind limb of the dog are simultaneously excited. One of these reactions demands a steady flexion of the limb, while the other requires alternate extension and flexion, so that the two cannot occur at the same time. As a rule, the scratch reflex is suppressed, and steady flexion becomes dominant when these two mechanisms are simultaneously aroused. This is attributed to one of the fundamental principles which determine the outcome of reflex conflicts, and which we shall consider below.
Four different classes of factors which govern the outcome of a conflict between opposed reflex tendencies. The first of these consists of "spinal induction," of which there are two kinds, immediate and successive. Immediate spinal induction is a process of alliance and reinforcement operating between similar reflexes. In accordance with the principle of this process, the reflexes which are in conflict may be assisted to win by their allies. "In union there is strength." In a complex organism, a contest is usually staged, not between physiologically simple reflexes, but between groups of associated reflex mechanisms. Successive spinal induction is a rather different kind of process, which has the status of an after-effect of inhibition. If a given reflex tendency has been inhibited, it is liable to reappear with augmented strength when the inhibiting force is removed. For example, stimulation of the flexion reflex lowers the threshold of excitation for the extensor muscles, which are inhibited during flexion. This "rebound" action can also be observed quite readily in the more complex forms of human behavior.
Another important determinant of the issue of a conflict between reflexes is found in the factor of fatigue. Continued repetition of a reflex process decreases the facility with which it is aroused, so that a reflex which is in the fatigued state will be more readily overcome by a second reflex agency. Two reflex mechanisms which are unequally fatigued will tend, in a conflict, to be successful in inverse proportion to the degree of their fatigue. The locus of the fatigue is probably in the synapse or adjustor, although in some cases it is sensory. In the situation which we are considering, the fatigue is not localizable in the muscle, or in the motor nerves (final common path). The condition of refractory phase may also act in a manner similar to that which is characteristic of fatigue, although the former condition is of such shorter duration. Lack of oxygen or the presence of drugs may produce analogous effects, depressing or enhancing conflicting reflex forces unequally, and hence affecting the outcome of the struggle.
Sherrington regards the relative intensities of the conflicting reflexes as the most powerful determinants of the issue of a conflict between them. The intensity of the afferent process depends primarily upon that of the stimulus, so that a reflex which is aroused by a weak stimulus will tend to be dominated by an antagonistic one having a stronger stimulus as a cause. However, the sensitiveness of the sensory mechanism, and the size of the afferent nerve, must also be considered. The smaller the number of fibres in the nerve, the lower its power usually is over the effectors. Moreover, afferent currents which are aroused at a considerable distance from the effector, which they seek to control, are at a disadvantage when in conflict with reflexes having a shorter path. Other features can, perhaps, be found which enter into the determination of the intensity of the conflicting adjustor processes, and which may thus have a bearing upon the outcome of the combat.
Four different classes of factors which govern the outcome of a conflict between opposed reflex tendencies. The first of these consists of "spinal induction," of which there are two kinds, immediate and successive. Immediate spinal induction is a process of alliance and reinforcement operating between similar reflexes. In accordance with the principle of this process, the reflexes which are in conflict may be assisted to win by their allies. "In union there is strength." In a complex organism, a contest is usually staged, not between physiologically simple reflexes, but between groups of associated reflex mechanisms. Successive spinal induction is a rather different kind of process, which has the status of an after-effect of inhibition. If a given reflex tendency has been inhibited, it is liable to reappear with augmented strength when the inhibiting force is removed. For example, stimulation of the flexion reflex lowers the threshold of excitation for the extensor muscles, which are inhibited during flexion. This "rebound" action can also be observed quite readily in the more complex forms of human behavior.
Another important determinant of the issue of a conflict between reflexes is found in the factor of fatigue. Continued repetition of a reflex process decreases the facility with which it is aroused, so that a reflex which is in the fatigued state will be more readily overcome by a second reflex agency. Two reflex mechanisms which are unequally fatigued will tend, in a conflict, to be successful in inverse proportion to the degree of their fatigue. The locus of the fatigue is probably in the synapse or adjustor, although in some cases it is sensory. In the situation which we are considering, the fatigue is not localizable in the muscle, or in the motor nerves (final common path). The condition of refractory phase may also act in a manner similar to that which is characteristic of fatigue, although the former condition is of such shorter duration. Lack of oxygen or the presence of drugs may produce analogous effects, depressing or enhancing conflicting reflex forces unequally, and hence affecting the outcome of the struggle.
Sherrington regards the relative intensities of the conflicting reflexes as the most powerful determinants of the issue of a conflict between them. The intensity of the afferent process depends primarily upon that of the stimulus, so that a reflex which is aroused by a weak stimulus will tend to be dominated by an antagonistic one having a stronger stimulus as a cause. However, the sensitiveness of the sensory mechanism, and the size of the afferent nerve, must also be considered. The smaller the number of fibres in the nerve, the lower its power usually is over the effectors. Moreover, afferent currents which are aroused at a considerable distance from the effector, which they seek to control, are at a disadvantage when in conflict with reflexes having a shorter path. Other features can, perhaps, be found which enter into the determination of the intensity of the conflicting adjustor processes, and which may thus have a bearing upon the outcome of the combat.
The Interaction of Reflexes
If the neuromuscular system of an organism contained only a single reflex mechanism, the problem of motivation would be solved for it by an understanding of factors exclusively of the character above discussed. Possibly an organization as simple as this can be demonstrated in certain sensitive plants. In the case of such an organism, having but a single reflex, we should merely need to inquire concerning the presence or absence of the specific stimulus, its intensity and point of application, and the contemporary state of the adjustor mechanism of the reflex. Whenever the reaction was observed to occur, we could explain it by demonstrating the existence of the appropriate object or stimulus. If the reaction should fail in the presence of the object, we should look either for some peripheral factor rendering the latter inoperative, or for some reduction of sensitivity on the part of the adjustor, or other stages of the mechanism.
However, there is, perhaps, no animal organism--even among protozoa, which possess no true nervous system--in which the science of a single reflex would serve to account for all behavior. An organism such as that of any vertebrate, possessing a very large number of reflex mechanisms, will frequently be subjected to stimuli which tend to arouse a number of them simultaneously. In this case two general possibilities appear. First, two or more reflexes may occur together in comparative harmony or, second, they may interfere with one another in such a manner that certain of the stimulated reactions are suppressed. In this case we have a situation closely resembling that which is usually contemplated when the question of motives is raised in connection with human voluntary behavior. The individual is pressed by a number of different forces, and frequently has to make an exclusive choice between them as regards his behavior. However, it sometimes happens that two or more stimuli give rise not merely to reflex tendencies which do not interfere, but which are positively helpful to one another, so that we must speak of allied as well as of opposed and indifferently related reflex mechanisms.
It therefore becomes of great importance to understand the factors which control the combination of reflex tendencies, and, in particular, the outcome of interference between such tendencies. This topic is the one to which Sherrington has made so many contributions in his doctrines of the "integrative action of the nervous system." The alliance or opposition of reflexes is ordinarily attributable to their use of the same motor apparatus, including the efferent neurones. Such neurones constitute, in the Sherrington terminology, the "final common path" of the reflexes in question. When the reflex adjustor mechanisms tend to energize the common path in the same manner, there is a strong probability of alliance. As an example, we may consider what happens when the scratch reflex of the dog is stimulated from two different points on the skin of the back. In this case the reaction is usually stronger than it would be if only one of the points had been affected. This situation as involving two logically separable scratch reflexes, a view which may be justified by the fact that the reaction ordinarily applies the claws to the spot which is stimulated, and, so, is specific with respect to this particular region. The degree to which the two stimuli reinforce each other is in fact proportional to their proximity on the skin. However, it is possible to find widely divergent forms of sensory excitation which are capable of combining in the production of a single reaction. For example, simultaneous stimulation of the skin of the foot, and of the sensory nerve of the so-called ham-string muscle contribute to the same muscular action, which consists in a flexion of the leg. It is even possible to demonstrate a general tendency for sensory excitation at any point whatsoever in the body to reinforce any concomitant motor process, although of course this tendency has many specific exceptions. Inhibitory processes, also, may combine so as to reinforce one another in their repressive effects.
Reflex mechanisms which are not compelled to utilize the same final common path may occur simultaneously without either reinforcing or opposing one another. Thus, wagging of the tail and the scratch reflex may, in the case of the spinal dog, occur together without either aiding or interfering with each other. Similarly, in the normal human organism, constriction of the pupil of the eye bears no appreciable relationship to the reflex of coughing, so that the two may occur simultaneously without interacting.
However, in many cases we find that reflexes which are lacking in final common paths, nevertheless, do actually have a bearing upon one another, as a consequence of their organization into some more complex system of response. For example, the reflex movements of the stomach are inhibited when the "instinct" of fear is aroused, although the motor expressions of fear are not primarily gastric in nature. Moreover, as Sherrington points out, neutrality between reflex actions tends to disappear as the processes in question increase in intensity.
However, there is, perhaps, no animal organism--even among protozoa, which possess no true nervous system--in which the science of a single reflex would serve to account for all behavior. An organism such as that of any vertebrate, possessing a very large number of reflex mechanisms, will frequently be subjected to stimuli which tend to arouse a number of them simultaneously. In this case two general possibilities appear. First, two or more reflexes may occur together in comparative harmony or, second, they may interfere with one another in such a manner that certain of the stimulated reactions are suppressed. In this case we have a situation closely resembling that which is usually contemplated when the question of motives is raised in connection with human voluntary behavior. The individual is pressed by a number of different forces, and frequently has to make an exclusive choice between them as regards his behavior. However, it sometimes happens that two or more stimuli give rise not merely to reflex tendencies which do not interfere, but which are positively helpful to one another, so that we must speak of allied as well as of opposed and indifferently related reflex mechanisms.
It therefore becomes of great importance to understand the factors which control the combination of reflex tendencies, and, in particular, the outcome of interference between such tendencies. This topic is the one to which Sherrington has made so many contributions in his doctrines of the "integrative action of the nervous system." The alliance or opposition of reflexes is ordinarily attributable to their use of the same motor apparatus, including the efferent neurones. Such neurones constitute, in the Sherrington terminology, the "final common path" of the reflexes in question. When the reflex adjustor mechanisms tend to energize the common path in the same manner, there is a strong probability of alliance. As an example, we may consider what happens when the scratch reflex of the dog is stimulated from two different points on the skin of the back. In this case the reaction is usually stronger than it would be if only one of the points had been affected. This situation as involving two logically separable scratch reflexes, a view which may be justified by the fact that the reaction ordinarily applies the claws to the spot which is stimulated, and, so, is specific with respect to this particular region. The degree to which the two stimuli reinforce each other is in fact proportional to their proximity on the skin. However, it is possible to find widely divergent forms of sensory excitation which are capable of combining in the production of a single reaction. For example, simultaneous stimulation of the skin of the foot, and of the sensory nerve of the so-called ham-string muscle contribute to the same muscular action, which consists in a flexion of the leg. It is even possible to demonstrate a general tendency for sensory excitation at any point whatsoever in the body to reinforce any concomitant motor process, although of course this tendency has many specific exceptions. Inhibitory processes, also, may combine so as to reinforce one another in their repressive effects.
Reflex mechanisms which are not compelled to utilize the same final common path may occur simultaneously without either reinforcing or opposing one another. Thus, wagging of the tail and the scratch reflex may, in the case of the spinal dog, occur together without either aiding or interfering with each other. Similarly, in the normal human organism, constriction of the pupil of the eye bears no appreciable relationship to the reflex of coughing, so that the two may occur simultaneously without interacting.
However, in many cases we find that reflexes which are lacking in final common paths, nevertheless, do actually have a bearing upon one another, as a consequence of their organization into some more complex system of response. For example, the reflex movements of the stomach are inhibited when the "instinct" of fear is aroused, although the motor expressions of fear are not primarily gastric in nature. Moreover, as Sherrington points out, neutrality between reflex actions tends to disappear as the processes in question increase in intensity.
Inhibition
The synapses, or adjustors, are ordinarily mechanisms by which a nerve current or excitation is passed positively from an afferent to an efferent channel, although usually with radical modification in the nature of the process. However, it appears that in certain cases the action of the synapse, or adjustor is algebraically opposite to excitation, producing an effect known as inhibition. Inhibition is not merely a failure to excite, but involves a repression or blocking of excitations which would otherwise have occurred. The process of inhibition is of particular interest in connection with the interaction of two or more reflexes, since it is a prerequisite to the creation of conflict between them. However, a central inhibitory effect is found even in the case of single reflexes. For example, such a movement of the hind limb of the dog as is involved in the scratch reflex, requires not only an excitation of the nerve fibres which energize the flexor muscles, but a simultaneous inhibition of the fibres controlling the extensor muscles, which are mechanically opposed to the flexors. Accordingly, the adjustor which is in control of this reflex must inhibit the extensors while it is exciting the flexors, and there is conclusive evidence that the inhibitory effect occurs within the spinal cord, rather than in the muscles.
Special Properties of Reflex Centers
In general, we do not find it possible to explain either the spatial, or the temporal structures of the reaction by reference merely to those of the afferent portion of the response process. In the case of the scratch reflex, the stimulus may be substantially continuous in its action, whereas the innervation of the leg muscles is intermittent, so as to produce the scratching movements. Consequently, we must suppose that the central or motor elements are equipped with a device for generating intermittent or alternating action, on the basis of a continuous innervation from the afferent side. Sometimes, however, the explanation lies in the fact that the first phases of the motor process bring new afferent impulses into existence which combine with the original ones in a systematic manner to modify, or control, the course of the reaction. In the phenomenon known as after-discharge, which is characteristic of reflexes, the reaction continues for some time after the stimulus, and presumably the afferent nerve current, have ceased.
The properties of reflexes which we have considered above distinguish them to a considerable extent from simple nerve conduction of a non-reflex character. This latter type of conduction is that which occurs between points in a single neurone, or fibre, a process which is not observable in isolation in any of the complex organisms, but which must nevertheless be regarded as a component feature of any response, however complicated. Consequently, the distinguishing characteristics of the reflex must be attributed to some constituent of the reflex arc which is additional to the individual neurones which enter into it. Sherrington believes that this feature consists in the synapses or junction points between the afferent and efferent conductors. As compared with plain nerve fibres or "nerve trunks," synapses must therefore be supposed to possess the following properties which are shown by reflex mechanisms: (1) slow speed of response, especially in the form of a prolonged initial delay (latent period), (2) extensive afterdischarge, (3) lack of correspondence of rhythm of stimulus and effect, (4) lack of correspondence between the intensity gradations of stimulus and effect, (5) resistance to a single stimulus, combined with a summation of the effects of successive small stimuli, (6) conduction only from afferent to efferent, (7) relatively great fatiguability, (8) relatively great general variability of the threshold, (9) very long refractory periods, (10) great dependency upon oxygen and (11) relatively great susceptibility to the action of drugs. These characteristics may be summarized by saying that the synapse appears to exhibit greater inertia, and resistance to the passage of a nerve current than does a continuous single nerve fibre, or group of such fibres operating in parallel.
The conception of a synapse as consisting merely of a junction point between an afferent and an efferent conductor, is undoubtedly altogether too simple. It is highly probable that such junction points can possess peculiar and complex properties which differentiate them from the conjoined neurones. In particular, we can readily understand how they can exhibit an increased resistance to the passage of nerve impulses, since there is an apparent break in the continuity of the conducting tissue at the synaptic points, so that the impulse has--so to speak--to leap across a gap. However, it is almost certain that in the majority of reflexes, special central nerve mechanisms are concerned which involve centrally located nerve cells as well as junction points. Nevertheless, such central mechanisms may be regarded as being interpolated between the afferent and efferent structures and as being logically separable from either of the latter. The most convenient general term for this central mechanism, including the synapse. It will of course be realized that in any concrete reflex a very large number of synapses must be operative simultaneously, all of these with their complex interrelations being comprised in the adjustor process or structure.
The properties of reflexes which we have considered above distinguish them to a considerable extent from simple nerve conduction of a non-reflex character. This latter type of conduction is that which occurs between points in a single neurone, or fibre, a process which is not observable in isolation in any of the complex organisms, but which must nevertheless be regarded as a component feature of any response, however complicated. Consequently, the distinguishing characteristics of the reflex must be attributed to some constituent of the reflex arc which is additional to the individual neurones which enter into it. Sherrington believes that this feature consists in the synapses or junction points between the afferent and efferent conductors. As compared with plain nerve fibres or "nerve trunks," synapses must therefore be supposed to possess the following properties which are shown by reflex mechanisms: (1) slow speed of response, especially in the form of a prolonged initial delay (latent period), (2) extensive afterdischarge, (3) lack of correspondence of rhythm of stimulus and effect, (4) lack of correspondence between the intensity gradations of stimulus and effect, (5) resistance to a single stimulus, combined with a summation of the effects of successive small stimuli, (6) conduction only from afferent to efferent, (7) relatively great fatiguability, (8) relatively great general variability of the threshold, (9) very long refractory periods, (10) great dependency upon oxygen and (11) relatively great susceptibility to the action of drugs. These characteristics may be summarized by saying that the synapse appears to exhibit greater inertia, and resistance to the passage of a nerve current than does a continuous single nerve fibre, or group of such fibres operating in parallel.
The conception of a synapse as consisting merely of a junction point between an afferent and an efferent conductor, is undoubtedly altogether too simple. It is highly probable that such junction points can possess peculiar and complex properties which differentiate them from the conjoined neurones. In particular, we can readily understand how they can exhibit an increased resistance to the passage of nerve impulses, since there is an apparent break in the continuity of the conducting tissue at the synaptic points, so that the impulse has--so to speak--to leap across a gap. However, it is almost certain that in the majority of reflexes, special central nerve mechanisms are concerned which involve centrally located nerve cells as well as junction points. Nevertheless, such central mechanisms may be regarded as being interpolated between the afferent and efferent structures and as being logically separable from either of the latter. The most convenient general term for this central mechanism, including the synapse. It will of course be realized that in any concrete reflex a very large number of synapses must be operative simultaneously, all of these with their complex interrelations being comprised in the adjustor process or structure.
Variations in Reflex Sensitivity
Now another class of factors which enter into the determination of a reflex are those which influence its sensitivity, or threshold. Perhaps the simplest of these is exemplified in the principle of summation of successive stimuli. A brief stimulus may be quite inadequate to arouse a reflex, but at the same time it increases the sensitiveness of the system to the action of a second brief stimulus, and this effect accumulates until the reaction appears. Thus, the history of stimulation during immediately preceding intervals may be a factor in determining the effectiveness of a stimulus. An influence which is the reverse of summation is found in phenomena of fatigue or refractory phase. Fatigue may occur in the receptors, due to the continued action of the stimulus, so that adequate afferent nerve currents are not set up or, on the other hand, it may be localized at the central, or synaptic point and interfere with the arousal of the motor sector of the reflex arc even when the afferent sector is operating normally. Refractory phase is a temporary condition, immediately following the discharge of the motor tendency, under which it is very difficult to rearouse the response. The degree of difficulty may vary from complete impossibility, during the period just subsequent to the discharge, to a relatively slight increase in difficulty later on when the normal condition has nearly been reëstablished.
Although the continued exercise of the nerve center causes fatigue, at a much later time an increase of sensitivity may be noted as a consequence of exercise. In addition to these influences, we must also consider the effect of changes in the chemical constitution of the lymph which surrounds the nerve cells. The presence of such drugs as alcohol, strychnine, or morphine in these fluids has a tremendous influence upon the central response to afferent nerve impulses; and variations in the oxygen and carbon dioxide content are also accompanied by important alterations of sensibility. Lack of oxygen tends to prolong the refractory and fatigue phases, while strychnine greatly increases the excitability. Different nerve centers or transfer points exhibit different degrees of sensitiveness to such chemical agencies, so that the chemical condition of the medium may determine the outcome of a conflict between two simultaneously aroused response tendencies.
Although the continued exercise of the nerve center causes fatigue, at a much later time an increase of sensitivity may be noted as a consequence of exercise. In addition to these influences, we must also consider the effect of changes in the chemical constitution of the lymph which surrounds the nerve cells. The presence of such drugs as alcohol, strychnine, or morphine in these fluids has a tremendous influence upon the central response to afferent nerve impulses; and variations in the oxygen and carbon dioxide content are also accompanied by important alterations of sensibility. Lack of oxygen tends to prolong the refractory and fatigue phases, while strychnine greatly increases the excitability. Different nerve centers or transfer points exhibit different degrees of sensitiveness to such chemical agencies, so that the chemical condition of the medium may determine the outcome of a conflict between two simultaneously aroused response tendencies.
Qualitative Factors in Reflex Control: Chronaxy
Nevertheless, there are still further complications which must be introduced even in the case of a so-called simple reflex. Anatomical conjunction is not the only feature which determines the exact path which is taken by the response currents. Even in the stimulus stage of the process, we can demonstrate the dependency of the path upon the intensity or quality of the stimulating force. If we act upon the skin of the dog's back with forces different from those of rubbing or tickling, we are liable to bring out reactions which differ from scratching, since these different forces may be picked up by other kinds of receptors, and may not excite those which are connected with the scratch mechanism. If we subject the organism to the action of light, we shall naturally arouse only those reactions which can be set off through the optically sensitive organs, the eyes, regardless of the fact that the light may be incident uniformly upon the entire bodily surface. In the same way, a low degree of heat will evoke only reflexes which are associated with the heat-sensitive receptors. A high degree of heat, however, may involve the response of pain nerves, which are also aroused by other stimuli which threaten the skin with injury. Thus there is a filterinq action of the receptors with reference to different kinds of stimuli, at the very outset of the response process, so that the exact character of the reaction will depend not only upon the anatomical point of incidence of the stimulus but also upon its qualitative (and quantitative) nature.
This principle of the determination of the exact response path through filtration, resonance, or some similar action is of fairly obvious application at the stimulus stage, since the differences which are involved can usually be incorporated in our definition of the object,--of which we regard the reaction as a function. There is, however, plenty of evidence that similar principles are operative in subsequent stages of the response where their exact nature is not so apparent. It is necessary to have recourse to these principles to explain certain directional features of conduction which do not seem to be completely accounted for by anatomical conjunction. For example, in the case of the scratch reflex, we find that there is a general innervation of the class of muscles known as flexors, regardless of whether they are attached to the ankle, the knee, or the hip of scratching limb. In the case of a different reflex, which is known as the extensor thrust, another class of muscles, the extensors, is involved. It is likely that this selection of particular classes of motor apparatus is not wholly due to the more anatomical conjunction of the corresponding neurones, but depends also upon the special character of the afferent nerve currents, which spread semi-diffusely through the spinal cord and arouse only those output mechanisms which are particularly sensitized, or resonant to the given afferent currents. If we endeavor to picture more exactly the mechanism of this process, we may be tempted to utilize Hartley's notion of resonance in nerve centers, particularly since it has been shown experimentally that the nerve current is pulsatory, or intermittent in character, somewhat resembling an alternating electrical current (including radio frequency disturbances). Accordingly, it might seem that we have only to suppose that nerve centers, synapses, or points at which outgoing currents are set up, can be tuned to certain frequencies of nerve vibration, just as we tune a radio set. A selective radio receiver can be subjected simultaneously to a vast number of different waves, coming from many broadcasting stations, but will respond only to the one with which it is in resonance. Another radio receiver in exactly the same environment, but differently tuned, will respond to quite a different wave. Mechanical devices analogous to muscles, might readily be activated by the response of such radio receivers.
However, the nervous current is not exactly comparable to an alternating electrical current, and the principle of resonance cannot be applied to it in the same form which is applicable to alternating or radio currents. Nevertheless, a modified principle, that of syntony--as defined by Lapicque--can be utilized. According to this view, each neurone or muscle exhibits a natural temporal course, or speed of process which Lapicque calls chronaxy. If stimuli are applied to the unit at a rate which corresponds to this chronaxy, the unit is aroused much more readily than would be the case if the rate, or temporal character, were different. A muscle fibre and its attached motor neurones are said by Lapicque to have the same chronaxy; and an afferent nerve of similar chronaxy would more readily arouse this syntonized motor unit than would some other afferent nerve having a different chronaxy.
This principle of the determination of the exact response path through filtration, resonance, or some similar action is of fairly obvious application at the stimulus stage, since the differences which are involved can usually be incorporated in our definition of the object,--of which we regard the reaction as a function. There is, however, plenty of evidence that similar principles are operative in subsequent stages of the response where their exact nature is not so apparent. It is necessary to have recourse to these principles to explain certain directional features of conduction which do not seem to be completely accounted for by anatomical conjunction. For example, in the case of the scratch reflex, we find that there is a general innervation of the class of muscles known as flexors, regardless of whether they are attached to the ankle, the knee, or the hip of scratching limb. In the case of a different reflex, which is known as the extensor thrust, another class of muscles, the extensors, is involved. It is likely that this selection of particular classes of motor apparatus is not wholly due to the more anatomical conjunction of the corresponding neurones, but depends also upon the special character of the afferent nerve currents, which spread semi-diffusely through the spinal cord and arouse only those output mechanisms which are particularly sensitized, or resonant to the given afferent currents. If we endeavor to picture more exactly the mechanism of this process, we may be tempted to utilize Hartley's notion of resonance in nerve centers, particularly since it has been shown experimentally that the nerve current is pulsatory, or intermittent in character, somewhat resembling an alternating electrical current (including radio frequency disturbances). Accordingly, it might seem that we have only to suppose that nerve centers, synapses, or points at which outgoing currents are set up, can be tuned to certain frequencies of nerve vibration, just as we tune a radio set. A selective radio receiver can be subjected simultaneously to a vast number of different waves, coming from many broadcasting stations, but will respond only to the one with which it is in resonance. Another radio receiver in exactly the same environment, but differently tuned, will respond to quite a different wave. Mechanical devices analogous to muscles, might readily be activated by the response of such radio receivers.
However, the nervous current is not exactly comparable to an alternating electrical current, and the principle of resonance cannot be applied to it in the same form which is applicable to alternating or radio currents. Nevertheless, a modified principle, that of syntony--as defined by Lapicque--can be utilized. According to this view, each neurone or muscle exhibits a natural temporal course, or speed of process which Lapicque calls chronaxy. If stimuli are applied to the unit at a rate which corresponds to this chronaxy, the unit is aroused much more readily than would be the case if the rate, or temporal character, were different. A muscle fibre and its attached motor neurones are said by Lapicque to have the same chronaxy; and an afferent nerve of similar chronaxy would more readily arouse this syntonized motor unit than would some other afferent nerve having a different chronaxy.
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