CHAPTER VI. Political Agitators

POLITICAL AGITATORS

The essential mark of the agitator is the high value which he places on the emotional response of the public. Whether he attacks or defends social institutions is a secondary matter. The agitator has come by his name honestly, for he is enough agitated about public policy to communicate his excitement to those about him. He idealizes the magnitude of the desirable social changes which are capable of being produced by a specific line of social action. From the standpoint of the administrative mind, we may say that an agitator is one who exaggerates the difference between one rather desirable social policy and another, much as the lover, according to Shaw, is one who grossly exaggerates the difference between one woman and another. Whether agitators behave like physicians or surgeons, as Munro would have it, they are united in expecting much good to come from single acts of innovation. The agitator easily infers that he who disagrees with him is in communion with the devil, and that opponents show bad faith or timidity. Agitators are notoriously contentious and undisciplined; many reforming ships are manned by mutineers. The agitator is willing to subordinate personal considerations to the superior claims of principle. Children may suffer while father and mother battle for the “cause.” But the righteous will not cleave to their families when the field is ripe for the harvest. Ever on the alert for pernicious intrusions of private interest into public affairs, the agitator sees “unworthy” motives where others see the just claims of friendship. Believing in direct, emotional responses from the public, the agitator trusts in mass appeals and general principles. Many of his kind live to shout and write. Their consciences trouble them unless they have periodic orgies of moral fervor. Relying upon the magic of rhetoric, they conjure away obstacles with the ritualistic repetition of principles. They become frustrated and confused in the tangled mass of technical detail upon which successful administration depends. Agitators of the “pure” type, when landed in responsible posts, long to desert the official swivel for the roving freedom of the platform and the press. They glorify men of outspoken zeal, men who harry the dragons and stir the public conscience by exhortation, reiteration, and vituperation.

The first life-history to be excerpted here is that of Mr. A. This is no “institutional” case. Mr. A is aware of no mental pathology, and has never consulted a neurologist, psychiatrist, or “nerve doctor.” He is one of those who at first reluctantly, then whole-heartedly, allowed himself to be studied with the same thoroughness, intimacy, and detachment with which an obviously unstable person would be scrutinized. Mr. A at once saw the advantage for the progress of science of an accumulation of life-histories taken from men who regard themselves as perfectly normal, since so much of our case material is from the ill.

A’s claim to a place among the agitators is not open to question. He was compelled to resign his position when the United States went into the World War on account of the tenacity with which he argued the pacifist position. He had previously run for Congress on the socialist ticket. Suspected of unorthodoxy in the theological school, he steadily became more radical in his views, and was expelled from one denomination. Previously he had been the secretary and principal spokesman for a civic reform organization which had vigorously attacked corruption in municipal affairs. He gradually became convinced that “white collar reforms” were futile as long as the capitalistic system prevailed in this country, and presently threw his energy into the propaganda of labor organization and socialism.

A leading characteristic as moralist, socialist, and pacifist has been his truculence in public on behalf of his cause. Mr. A speaks rapidly, with great fervor and earnestness, and his discourse is studded with abusive epithets, sarcastic jibes, and cutting insinuations. He confesses that he has taken an unmistakable pleasure in “rubbing the fur the wrong way.” He enjoyed nothing better than accepting invitations to lecture on social and economic subjects before conservative audiences, and scandalizing them by declaring that “organized business and organized crime are hard to distinguish from one another,” “corruption and capitalism are one and inseparable,” and “capitalism depends on markets, markets ultimately depend on force, and force means war.” Thus war was the logical result of the capitalistic system.

Mr. A prides himself on his ability to cut holes in the logical fabric spun by conspicuous men. He has engaged prominent preachers of the gospel in correspondence, arguing that something in their writings leads logically to the conclusion that any war, not excepting the last one, is wrong, and that they should confess this openly, declaring their sorrow for having been infected with un-Christian war-hysteria.

He believes that right reason is the hope of mankind, and the name of science is exalted in his mind. He was glad to lay his own life-story on the altar of science, and in the name of science to endure the embarrassment of recalling private facts which most of us try to forget.

Mr. A’s later convictions have been held with enough intensity to redefine many of his earlier opinions. Thus his pacifism brought him into sharp opposition to the government, which resented his expression of the truth as he understood it. Mr. A warmly champions the cause of the individual against official interference in matters of taste and conscience, and has modified his early enthusiasm for prohibition.

Although censorious, accusatory, didactic, and defiant in public address, he is cordial and winning in those face-to-face situations where he is unaware of hostility. His eyes twinkle with good humor, and he is gentle, responsive, and anxious to impress. His speech and gestures are quick, and his manner is alert and often tense.

A’s physique inclines toward the asthenic end of a hypothetical pyknic-asthenic scale, such as Wertheimer and Hesketh have constructed from Kretschmer’s observations on physical types. He is noticeably lean, but strikes the impressionistic observer as being toward neither the tall nor the short end of the scale. The legs are somewhat longer than the length of the body warrants, and the bony structures of shoulder, hip, knee, and ankle are prominent. The thin face is rather delicately molded, and is given added dignity and distinction by a neat Van Dyke beard. The chest is flat, and the upper ribs fall inward. His erect carriage seems to be a compensation against a predilection toward a scholarly stoop. In middle and later middle life he has been bothered by gastro-intestinal disorders.

The second son of an impecunious village parson, he grew up in straitened circumstances with a brother somewhat his senior. The mother died when A’s youngest sister was born, and the children were cared for by the father and a succession of elderly housekeepers who left faint memories behind them. A and his brother went to an old-fashioned ungraded school, entering at the same time in spite of their disparity in years, so the younger one would not be left alone in the house.

From a very early age A had a certain sense of hostility toward his brother, and a feeling of his own superiority. For a reason that is not clear, the school children teased his brother as the preacher’s son, but left him alone. A was more agile than his brother, and climbed trees and wriggled into tight places with ease. He prided himself in doing things which his brother hesitated to try, and seems to have awed him somewhat, for he remembers having heard his brother tell another schoolboy to let A alone, “because when he gets mad, he can lick me.”

The older boy was held responsible by the father for pranks which were really joint enterprises. On one representative occasion, the father left the house to make a call, ordering the boys to stay indoors. They decided to go out, and their father, who discovered footprints in the snow outside the door, gave the older boy a sound whipping, but let A off scot-free. The younger son was unquestionably the favorite, and his father would frequently chide the older boy for being a dullard, and point with pride to the ease with which A could get his lessons.

Indeed, A got on famously at school. One of his teachers, who chanced to be a college man, told his father that A was brilliant and promising. A also remembers a glow of elation when a relative wrote to say that arrangements must be made for him to have a college education, since he had shown that he could be a worthy successor to his uncle. This uncle was a famous professor, who had written well-known philosophical books, and remained a great hero in the eyes of the family.

The father slept in the same bed with his two sons until they were well along in the teens. For as long as he can remember, A found the touch of his father very pleasant, though the touch of his brother was repugnant. A’s strong hostility against his brother, based on their rivalry for the affections of the father, received a certain justification in the critical episode which occurred as his older brother, who matured early, approached puberty and began to have emissions. The preacher was horrified, for he took this as a sign of masturbation, and masturbation was sinful and dangerous. When he thought that A was sound asleep, he would gravely lecture the older boy on the evil consequences of self-abuse. Sometimes the son would wake up in the morning and discover that an emission had taken place during the night. In a hushed and contrite whisper he would say to his father, “I’ve gone and done it again!” at which the parent would exclaim reproachfully, “Oh!” The boy was presently taken to a physician who seems to have modified the excitement of the father and in some measure to have reassured the son that his manhood was not irreparably lost. Dark rumors about self-abuse were whispered through the village from time to time. The neighborhood idiot was supposed to have brought idiocy upon himself by self-abuse, and a bachelor in the village who went insane was supposed to have suffered from the same vice.

A listened to the rumors and to the nocturnal dialogues between his father and elder brother, and gathered that ominous things were connected with handling one’s self. He felt ashamed of his brother, who brought so much suffering on his father, and silently determined never to be a disappointment to his father. The tag end of a biblical passage about bringing the gray hairs of his father to the grave in shame ran through his mind, and he resolved never to repeat his brother’s weaknesses.

A’s older brother surprised everybody about this time by suddenly changing from a phlegmatic lad into a fervent religious enthusiast. He became converted under dramatic circumstances and joined the church, thus propitiating the unknown powers which might visit horrible punishment upon him for his private iniquities. In this he was running true to the adolescent pattern. Adolescence is notoriously the time when the temptations of the “flesh” multiply and when many youths, oppressed by their “animal” impulses, seek to escape from the burden of guilt by adopting the ceremonial patterns provided in the religious observances of society. Adolescence is so often a period of high ideals, which are typically reaction formations to “low desires,” that adolescence is the happy hunting ground for proselyters of every breed.

When A’s own emissions began, he was terribly upset by worry and self-accusation. About fifteen he got an emission after a boy had fooled with his genitalia, thinking he was asleep. He was taut with sinful pleasure while the seduction was taking place, which added to his guilty feelings. This was the time when he, too, exhibited a fervent interest in the church. He quickly “overcame” masturbation, but until late in life there was always a “fight” to overcome his “wayward” impulses and his erotic imaginings. In his dreams he often saw roosters and hens performing sexual acts in the barnyard of his old home, and the reappearance of the old scenes is indicative of his early sexual curiosity. Many more of his dreams used common sexual language. Sometimes he was making his way across a valley of snakes, or he was naked and walking toward a goal he could never quite make out. The nude female figure was usually repressed, though it occasionally came through.

He was taken off the farm, on which his father eked out a supplement to his meager salary, by an aunt, who insisted that the boy must have better school facilities. This aunt had always taken a great interest in this promising motherless nephew, and tried to fill his life with the affection which would have been his had his mother lived. As a small boy he had often come on short visits to his aunt. He had slept in the same bed with her, and his lively curiosity about the female figure was partly satisfied by glimpses of his aunt at the morning bath. The aunt had a family with all of whose members he was on good terms, and he was supremely happy to live in town with them. Out on the farm he had been undernourished, but here he was filled out and flourished. He took an active part in the church and in the social activities of the neighborhood.

The early intellectual promise which A had displayed was no mere flash in the pan. He was one of the brilliant students in high school, and passed his college-entrance examinations with such distinction that he entered college with a mild intellectual halo. He resolved to make good scholastically, and this he did, finishing the four years at a first-rate institution at the top of his class.

As time passed, he began to dissent from many of the dogmas of his immediate social environment. During high-school days he had been assigned to act the devil’s advocate and defend the free-trade side in a tariff debate. The more he read and thought about it, the more convinced he was that the free-trade position was sound. His relatives without exception were high-tariff Republicans, and his arguments were countered with sentimental rather than rational appeals. A’s conversion to free trade led him to come out for the Democratic candidate for the presidency. He remembers that the first time he announced this heresy one of his aunts violently pushed her chair away from the table, exclaiming in vexed, incredulous, and reproachful tones, “And to think that my own sister’s son could say such a thing!” His college course in biology converted him to evolution, and he argued this out at great length with one of his uncles, who was a traditionally minded preacher. A began to develop a feeling that intellectual brilliance meant dissenting from the convictions of middle-class people like his own relatives.

So far his nonconformity was strictly confined to a few theories. He was a member of the prayer-meeting group in college, and his fraternity consisted mainly of embryo doctors of theology who scrupulously upheld a rigorous code of personal abstinence from alcohol, tobacco, strong language, and women. One of the young men who had the temerity to enter the house with a lighted cigarette had it gently but firmly removed from his lips. It was in college that A took part in his first law-enforcement drive. The state prohibition law was poorly observed, as A had good reason to know, since he had a collection route which took him to “drug stores” and other equivocal establishments about town. “Tea” was openly ordered at the bar and drunk on the premises. A conceived the idea of leaving posters in these places to advertise the law-enforcement meetings, thus creating something of a stir.

Just before graduating from college A had a talk with a favorite professor. The professor asked him what he proposed to do, and was much interested when A said that he wanted to become a minister. The professor said that during his own active years in the pulpit, before he began to teach, he had learned at least one thing. Every man who was intellectually honest and independent would sooner or later discover that he questioned his own dogmas, and a period of bitter anguish would ensue. If a man were intellectually honest, he would never flinch from the truth, even for the sake of wife and family. But when the period of doubt arose he advised A not to abandon his work too abruptly. He had himself lived through six months of torture during which he had been on the verge of dropping everything and going into business. But finally he had arrived at a faith which he could defend, and stuck to it. “I would rather be drawn and quartered than preach anything I do not believe,” he declared emphatically. This conversation made a deep impression upon A, leading him to anticipate doubts as a mark of intellectual keenness and honesty.

Thus far in his life he had never questioned the tenets of the strict and simple theology of his immediate surroundings. Indeed, he had never met anybody who questioned it. Only a single episode had slightly jarred his complacency and left a tiny scar behind. At one time his Sunday-school teacher had been a young professor of theology who was much more liberal than his contemporaries. A boy in the class had dared to ask something about the authority of the Bible, and the teacher, without the least trace of embarrassment, had replied that authority should not rest on blind faith but upon clear reason. “If the Bible told you to kill your father and your mother, you would not do it. You would not be bound to do it. The justification of the Bible is that its teachings prove to be sound in the experience of all reasonable men.”

In the divinity school the first course which A attended was on the authority of the Bible. It was taught by a smug and full person of some eminence. A was accustomed to distinguish himself by bold opinions, and he undertook to challenge several of the propositions which were supposed to be accepted and repeated by rote. His main point was that authority rested on reason, not on faith. For his pains he got the reputation of being a smart and troublesome upstart of doubtful orthodoxy. His former Sunday-school teacher was a member of the faculty, and A wrote a thesis on the authority of the Bible, in which he elaborated the line of argument which had so much impressed him. Only the constant intercession of this professor kept A from being disciplined, or even expelled, at various times.

The young man was disposed to take rigid theology none too seriously on account of his increasing disrespect for his father. A and his brother both felt duty bound to return home every summer to help with the farm work. Their father was happy enough to have them rejoin him, but matters never ran smoothly. The father was quick to reassert his parental authority and to criticize freely. Most of the unpleasantness was as usual at the expense of the older son, but some of it was deflected against A. Both sons were uncomfortably aware of the uncouthness of their father in comparison with city preachers. He laughed too boisterously at his own stale witticisms. His ever present dignity was a little ludicrous when he wore an alpaca coat into the fields on the hottest midsummer day.

The social life at the divinity school was wholly satisfying. The students were warmly welcomed by the maidens of the local churches, and several became engaged. A proposed to two girls during his career there, and was turned down as often. He very quickly recovered his good spirits after a night or so of melancholy. The first girl was a relative whom he had known for many years, and the second was a close friend of the family. The double defeat was something of a bruise to his dignity and fed his determination to make a dent on the world.

A’s first congregation was in one of the poorer quarters of a little city. A had no doubt of his towering intellectual superiority over his parishioners, and he found it exasperating when an uneducated housewife presumed to gossip about the dubious orthodoxy of his beliefs. At the end of three years he resigned in disgust at the peppering of criticism directed against his ideas. Looking back at the incident, he feels that he was too hasty.

It was at this first charge that A began to make good copy for the press, and to win a reputation as a sensationalist. He organized a Law and Order League to harry criminals and the police. His pulpit rang with stinging philippics against law-breakers and cowardly public officials. All this gave him a zestful sense of making a stir in the world of real affairs, so that he turned down an offer to join the faculty of a famous university where his old Sunday-school teacher was now located.

A’s new pastorate was among working people in a large city. He at once began to hound the officials for non-enforcement of the law. He led raiding parties to visit the biggest gambling hells and put it up to the police to shut them. Renewed criticisms began to appear of his opinions, and the governing body of his denomination asked him to recant or resign. He refused to budge, and he was soon expelled. He was immediately called to lecture before an ethical society, where his comments on current religious and social problems won a wide hearing. Although attracting much attention, the society was exceedingly poor and A spent a little legacy which he had received upon it, indifferent to his own future.

During these exciting troubles he became a socialist and joined the socialist party. He had sympathized with the hard lot of the poor since he could remember, and had cast his vote for Bryan as a symbol of protest against the indifference of the privileged classes to the privileges of anyone but themselves. His favorite college professor had lost his job during the anarchist hysteria, when he came out against the “judicial murder” of the Haymarket suspects. A was profoundly moved by the spectacle of a man who backed his precepts of independence with sacrifice for their sake. The argument which finally won him for socialism was that political democracy is impossible until economic democracy is realized, and that socialism is simply democracy in industry. The principles of democratic brotherhood, once put to practice in the world of work, would soon govern public relationships of every kind.

His new convictions opened to A a new field of agitation and publicity. Ignoring or overcoming the coolness of certain “horny-handed” elements, he rushed into the little band of socialists, and was presently the congressional candidate. In this campaign he conducted a whirlwind tour of the district and enjoyed himself immensely.

A finally married a capable, motherly school-teacher whom he had known for several years, but whom he had been prevented from marrying until the death of her parents, who heartily disapproved of him. During his bachelor years in the ministry he had certain knowledge that various women were far from averse to becoming the preacher’s wife or mistress. One married woman became the foremost worker in the church and passionately assured him, “I am at your service day or night.” Another woman, whom he barely recognized, came to the pastor’s study, declaring that they must be married at once and “end this awful agony for both of us.” He had not been aware that any agony had begun, and was in no mood to begin it. He recognized that a wife would be a protection, but most of the women who threw themselves in his way were so homely that abstinence remained a pleasure as well as a principle.

For many years there had lurked in his mind the fear that he might not be potent, and he was humiliated to find that he was at first unable to consummate the sexual act. Since he first attempted sexual intercourse when nearly fifty, and had practically never masturbated, his troubles were not atypical, and they fortunately proved to be transitory. He regretted having failed to consult a physician before marriage, and was not at ease until the first of his children came.

Shortly after marrying, A came to the end of his financial resources, and found it necessary to relinquish his lecturing for other work until a suitable congregation should requisition his services. When a call finally came, the war broke out in Europe, and A denounced it with his customary ardor. He had read a book which popularized Prince Kropotkin’s thesis that mutual aid and not struggle is the key to the evolutionary process. War was irrational because it contravened the principle of mutual aid, and it was un-Christian because it set the hand of man against his brethren. As the hour of America’s participation drew nearer, A saw that his outspoken position would cause trouble. But he was accustomed to take a radical view and stick to it, and the idea of compromising his independence for the sake of family obligations was intolerable. His characteristic optimism also misled him into overestimating the amount of pacifism which his congregation would put up with, and soon he was forced to resign.

A was left financially high and dry, and rather hoped that his wife would be willing to starve with him, if need be, as a gesture of sanity in a war-mad world. He was left financially dependent upon his family, and upon such support as was forthcoming from wealthy radical sympathizers. Since his own professional opportunities were curtailed, and he never applied for other types of work, he was left dependent upon others. He was somewhat embarrassed by this, but was never depressed by it, or by the social ostracism which was entailed by his unpopular stand. As he once expressed it, “melancholy is alien to a fighting nature.”

Looking back over A’s career, certain private motives appear which were well organized in his early family life, and continued to operate with considerable strength during his adult years.

A had a strongly repressed hatred for his brother. He was consciously aware of his own coldness toward the brother, but succeeded in barring from consciousness any recognition of the emotional charge on this attitude. The older boy was his rival for the affection of his father, and A’s quickness and boldness were cultivated in an effort to outstrip his brother. He showed many of the traits of the over active younger child, as Adler has frequently described them. A felt rather ashamed of his brother, who went through school and college with no special distinction, and whose modest subsequent career was prosaically respectable. A struggled to keep hostile thoughts about his brother out of his mind, and sought to keep his attention away from the brother by corresponding or visiting with him infrequently.

Although A never frankly faced his own animosity toward this brother, he was plagued by a sense of guilt for his unfraternal attitude. This conflict was partially resolved by a reactive formation and by displacement. The reactive formation was the reverse of the anti-brother drive, but it was only supportable by displacing his affection upon remote social objects. He generalized his own prohibition against brother-hatred to all society, and identified himself with the workers and with humanity at large, serving a poverty-stricken congregation, spending his own money on the work of the church, adopting the socialist dream of a brotherly state, and demanding the abolition of fratricidal war.

His love for the downtrodden and for humanity (this reactive displacement of his own brother-hostility) was buttressed by the usual rationalizations. The democratic ideal in politics, the ideal of effective equality in political power, had his support, and he adopted socialism when it was presented to him as industrial democracy (brotherhood), the indispensable antecedent of genuine political democracy (brotherhood). His early prohibition appeals were cast in the form of an appeal to the brotherhood sentiments. He argued that every man was his brother’s keeper, and therefore bound to refrain from an example which might lead his weaker brother to dash his foot against a stone. War meant the destruction of mutual (brotherly) aid among those who were brethren in Christ. A’s brother-hatred, so manifest in his younger days, and so potent in arousing guilt feelings, created this disposition to choose generalized brother-substitutes to love, and to elaborate brotherly ideologies to defend his position. Then by keeping his distance from the physical brother, he could maintain a comfortable adjustment.

Another significant private motive, whose organization dates from early family days, but whose influence was prominent in adult behavior, was A’s struggle to maintain his sexual repressions. He erected his very elaborate personal prohibitions into generalized prohibitions for all society, and just as he laid down the law against brother-hatred, he condemned deviations from the rigid puritanical code by which he lived. Individuals who possess superego structures of such rigor often try to protect themselves from the strain of sexual excitement by keeping away from “temptation,” or by removing “temptation” from their environment. Thus Mr. A avoided exposing himself to “lewd speech” and “immoral suggestion.” Consciences of such severity can often be traced back in deeply analyzed cases to unusually strong repressions at the time when infantile masturbatory activities are being curbed. And it often happens that the rôle of the intimidator is taken not only by the male but by the female imago. In another highly moralistic person, who was thoroughly psychoanalyzed, this came out distinctly. Thus for several days the subject dreamed of standing before a butcher shop where he had been sent by his mother, and where he saw his father sharpening long knives. Or he saw his mother, dressed as Brünnhilde, carrying a sword, while he cowered on a marble stairway. After many dreams of this kind, the original situations finally burst into view. They involved what were interpreted as direct threats to cut off a hand if the child didn’t cease handling himself.

That A was never able to abolish his sexuality is sufficiently evident in his night dreams and daydreams. In spite of his efforts to “fight” these manifestations of his “antisocial impulses,” they continued to appear. Among the direct and important consequences which they produced was a sense of sin, not only a sense of sexual sin, but a growing conviction of hypocrisy. His “battle” against “evil” impulses was only partially successful, and this produced a profound feeling of insecurity.

This self-punishing strain of insecurity might be alleviated, he found, by publicly reaffirming the creed of repression, and by distracting attention to other matters. A’s rapid movements, dogmatic assertions, and diversified activities were means of escape from this gnawing sense of incapacity to cope with his own desires and to master himself. Uncertain of his power to control himself, he was very busy about controlling others, and engaged in endless committee sessions, personal conferences, and public meetings for the purpose. He always managed to submerge himself in a buzzing life of ceaseless activity; he could never stand privacy and solitude, since it drove him to a sense of futility; and he couldn’t undertake prolonged and laborious study, since his feeling of insecurity demanded daily evidence of his importance in the world.

A’s sexual drives continued to manifest themselves, and to challenge his resistances. He was continually alarmed by the lurking fear that he might be impotent. Although he proposed marriage to two girls when he was a theology student, it is significant that he chose girls from his immediate entourage, and effected an almost instantaneous recovery from his disappointments. This warrants the inference that he was considerably relieved to postpone the test of his potency, and this inference is strengthened by the long years during which he cheerfully acquiesced in the postponement of his marriage to the woman who finally became his wife. He lived with people who valued sexual potency, particularly in its conventional and biological demonstration in marriage and children, and his unmarried state was the object of good-natured comment. His pastoral duties required him to “make calls” on the sisters of the church, and in spite of the cheer which he was sometimes able to bring to the bedridden, there was the faint whisper of a doubt that this was really a man’s job. And though preaching was a socially respectable occupation, there was something of the ridiculous in the fact that one who had experienced very little of life should pass for a privileged censor of all mankind.

He had long practice in the art of the impostor. From the plight of his older brother, A learned that he would lose the affection of his father if he was discovered to have indulged in certain practices like masturbation. He resolved never to do anything to cause his father to withdraw his affection, and when he was not entirely successful in living up to this ideal, he pretended to virtues which he did not possess. Never once was he found out, and his life was the life of a “model” boy and man. This reputation he owed in part to his abstinences, but likewise to his concealments. He learned to cultivate the mask of rectitude, and succeeded in carrying off the rôle so successfully that he was never found out during adolescence or adulthood.

Cut off by his impotence fears from loving others fully and completely, A loved himself the more. He had unbounded confidence in the brilliance of his mind, and this intellectual arrogance was nourished by the easy ascendance which he won over the poorly educated people among whom he worked. He was careful to keep in environments where his mind would not be put to the test of keen competition. A didn’t compete with the clergymen who had the largest posts in his denomination, he struck out for himself in no hazardous business or professional enterprise, he took up and finished no piece of investigation; instead he cut a big figure among the workers, among whom he was the best-educated and the best-known leader. His chances of being elected to Congress when he was nominated were never good, and he had everything to gain and nothing to lose by making a campaign. After the days of his scholarly ascendance in high school and college, A fell out of competition in academic pursuits.

He valued his capacity to produce words. Ferenczi remarked in conversation with me that the revolutionary agitators who had come to his attention had been noticeably deficient in the intensity of their emotional attachment to objects. They were notably indifferent to the accumulation of property, and they were lacking in possessive jealousy in their sexual life. This deficiency in warmth of affective experience was sensed by the revolutionaries themselves, who felt that they were in some way estranged from others. Their orgiastic indulgence in language is to be interpreted as an effort to heighten the affective intensity of their own lives. Either because the emotional life is physiologically defective or because the libido is too narcissistically fixated, this general description holds true of some obsessive and many psychotic persons. It was no doubt a factor in the history of A.

Before following out the full implications of this struggle of A’s to repress his sexuality, we will take up another topic of major and not unrelated importance. I refer to A’s ambivalence toward his father. A was not conscious of the full force of his hatred and his love for his father, but his personality history is full of evidence of the formative influence of these bipolar attitudes. In the course of his competition with his older brother, A accepted abstinence from genital indulgence as the price of holding paternal preference. Now psychoanalytic findings are unanimous in showing that genital indulgence is not given up without a continuous struggle, and that recurring waves of sexuality break against the barrier of the introjected prohibition, and reanimate hostile impulses against the sanctioning authority. It is of the utmost importance for A’s development that he fought to bar from consciousness any hostile thought directed against his father, and that he succeeded in repressing his father-hatred very deeply. He was able to identify himself with the father, and to copy many of the paternal standards and attributes. The strength of these identifications is indicated by the tenacity with which A held to certain paternal patterns. Although his much-touted uncle had been a famous writer and professor, A remained a preacher, even when tempted by a flattering offer to leave his first humble parish for the faculty of a great university. He cherished the paternal prejudice against money-making and money-makers. His boyhood home was where some wealthy people spent their summers, and A’s father would speak contemptuously of “the fashionables” who loitered ostentatiously past the house. This was an additional determiner of A’s subsequent devotion to the welfare of the poor, which manifested itself in financial sacrifice and socialist agitation. A was very susceptible to old men, and idealized not only his early teachers, but a venerable pacifist who approved of his wartime conduct.

The negative side of A’s attitude toward authority came out in the choice of the abstract (remote) objects upon which to vent his hatred. The hostility which was denied conscious recognition and direct indulgence against the actual father was displaced against substitute symbols, such as the dogma which required the acceptance of the Scriptures by faith, of the capitalistic system, and of the militarists.

When A was introduced to a stranger, he was genial, talkative, and anxious to impress. When he was aware of opposition in his environment, he overreacted at once, hurling a vast repertory of jibes and flouts and sneers at the offender. This gives a clue to an important element in his makeup which will come out very distinctly in subsequent cases, namely, a strong latent homosexual trend. When the individual is not able to achieve full heterosexual adjustment, the sexual libido tends to work itself out in more primitive ways, and one of the phases of emotional development is the homosexual epoch. Earlier, however, than the adolescent homosexual period is the phase connected with the suppression of auto-erotic activities. The child characteristically uses its nutritional object (nurse-mother) for the sake of stimulating his own erogenous zones as much as possible. This “incestuous” drive is curbed, and the child is denied the pleasure of promiscuously fingering others, and of manually stimulating his own genitalia. Though the nurse or mother, who is the target of the desires of the child, also administers the prohibitions, the sanction which lurks most prominently in the background is the strength of the father. Reduced to its ultimate expression, this sanction is the threat of depriving the child of his much-valued organs unless he observes the “hands off” prohibition. The “normal” development is for the hostile protest at authoritarian interference to subside, and for the child to copy the idealized father. The repression of hostilities and the identification with the father do not take place instantly. Identification is not achieved without a phase in which the child plays a femininely passive rôle toward the father, and this is the passively homosexual reaction which may for one reason or another be unusually strong. A’s fantasies of his father’s beautiful skin are common screen fantasies for more primitive drives.

A’s tendency to overreact to the stranger who is merely polite, and to interpret the stranger’s interest as a “personal” one, is characteristic of the one in whom this passive “winning” rôle is of some importance. He tries to create an overpersonal relationship in those somewhat formal situations where ordinary conversational requirements are such as to force conventional compliments.

The overreactive hostility toward those who merely differ from him is partially motivated by the desire to punish those who have rejected the affection which he all too quickly volunteers. This wound to his narcissism demands that wounds shall be inflicted on the offending objects. Now it is commonly observed that repressed drives are likely to secure partial gratification in the very activities which are in part a protection against them. Sneers and jibes would at first seem to free him from those who arouse and reject him, but this is not the whole result. A exceeded the bounds of convention and became recklessly provocative. His wild assaults and defiances tended to provoke the social environment into attacking him, and thus to gratify two powerful unconscious drives. He wanted to be forced into a passive, feminine, victimized rôle, and to inflict upon himself the punishment which he deserved for excessive hatred of others. Thus A felt quite happy, escaping moods of depression, as long as he was indulging his hostility against conspicuous conventional authorities in society, and as long as he was suffering from society’s retaliatory measures. His romantic idea of starving to death as a gesture of sanity in a war-mad world is indicative of his pleasure in the “martyr rôle.”

He could not endure “inharmonious” people, and built up a “soft” and overindulgent group around him. He had a small group of admirers who turned to him for advice and who looked up to his superior wisdom and moral courage. Nothing pained him more than the slightest jar in personal relations. This disparity between his demands for gentleness in the primary group, and his genius for creating a disturbance in a secondary group, suggests the tension produced within his personality by the struggle with the feminine component. He was careful to keep away from close-working subordination to a powerful personality. He stayed in environments where his authority was unchallenged. In the church he was both a financial pillar and the pastor, and among the socialists he was sustained by the halo of moral and cultural prestige.

It is noteworthy that though A was venomous when publicly opposed, he was capable of a wooing and persuasive strain which he could effectively use in his proselyting work. His humor was of the mock-modesty variety, and relieved the moral earnestness of his discourses. A showed much tenacity and skill in following people whom he once loved and respected, and in attempting to convert them to a community of views with him. He displayed a strong impulse to enter into and to cultivate personal interchanges by correspondence.

That A found the task of asserting himself in the world rather arduous is suggested by the desire for dependence upon women. He entered into a whole series of “platonic” friendships (“platonic” in the popular and not in the correct use of the word) with women, and he accepted economic support from his wife for several years. He was very “sensitive,” and required a great deal of coddling in the home.

There are indications of the way in which his very early experiences influenced his trait formation. The infant takes pleasure in activities centering about the mouth, and this at first involves pleasurable sucking and later on, as the teeth begin to push through, this involves pleasurable biting. In our culture this leads to a withdrawal of the nipple, precipitating one of the major crises of growth. Weaning is the first substantial loss which is inflicted upon the individual after birth, and the way in which it is met establishes reaction patterns which may serve as important prototypes for subsequent behavior. About the time that the weaning deprivation occurs, the child is exposed to another set of conditions which demand sacrifice. He is supposed to control the elimination of his feces by giving up a part of his body at regular intervals. The growing child is also supposed to sacrifice another source of irresponsible pleasure by blocking his impulses to handle his genitalia. When the taboo on handling the genital organs for erotic purposes is set up with particular stringency by the methods adopted to curb early masturbation, some of the energy of the personality regresses to reanimate previous auto-erotic dispositions. This involves strengthening of the anal and oral components of the personality.

On the basis of the oral and anal origin of various traits, Karl Abraham has worked out a psychoanalytic theory of character formation. The material which is available on A is too scanty to reveal the psychological mechanisms of infancy and early childhood. If a cross-section of his later character traits be tentatively interpreted in the light of Abraham’s scheme, it may be said to show a predominance of traits from the oral phase of development. A striking characteristic of A has always been his optimism. He has never become despondent and passed through serious “blue spells,” whether he lost his job, reached the end of his financial resources, lost a bride, or suffered social ostracism from all but a small though admiring circle. Disappointments and some illness have brought him comparatively little worry. Abraham traces this trait to the earliest level of character organization, saying that it indicates a child who, thanks to the abundance of nursing care, is accustomed to find the world responding copiously and quickly to his demands. A always felt an inner assurance that he would be cared for, and that all would come out for the best in the end “to those who serve the Lord, and are called according to his purpose.” He accepted a position of economic dependence upon his wife, and upon the charity of radical ladies, without conflict. His nurse was still there to provide for him. A never showed any interest in accumulating money, and generously shared all that he possessed. His small legacy was eaten up by the society over which he presided, and he was always on the poverty line.

He not only gave bountifully of such money as he possessed, but copiously of his ideas. Automatically he took the lead in conversation, genially pouring forth streams of ideas. The savagery of his attack on those who disagreed with him, though an oral trait in part, stems, according to Abraham, not from the sucking phase of early development, but from the next succeeding or oral-sadistic phase.

Those individuals who have difficulty in accepting their heterosexuality are cut off from normal sex life, and seek to emphasize the acts preparatory to, and not consummatory of, copulation. An interest in sexual peeping was in some measure gratified by A’s experiences in listening to the personal difficulties of those who came to him for counsel. The high value which he placed on appearing before the public, while perhaps adequately accounted for on the basis of his father-identification, probably had the additional advantage of gratifying his exhibitionistic drive. Since drink is in legend and life a frequent precursor of copulation, the reformer exaggerates its importance, and tries to stop it. Alcohol was early associated with sexual excesses in the mind of A, and his hostility to it was something more than a simple reflection of his milieu.

A’s intensity of manner betrayed the magnitude of the neurotic conflicts within his own personality. This intensity is not alone due to the insecurity arising from the failure to exterminate his own conscious awareness of sex, nor to his sense of sin for erotic impulses, nor to his fears of impotence, nor to the reaction organized when he was competing with his brother for the attention of the father. His sexual inhibitions removed from him one of the most dependable means of disposing of the tensions which arise from the miscellaneous frustrations met with in the course of daily life.

We have traced A’s demand for widespread emotional response to his difficulties of personal adjustment, especially in the field of early sexual development. We have followed through the displacement of the drives, which were originally organized with reference to the family circle, on to remote social objects, resulting in the espousal of ideals of social change. We have seen that A’s particular technique for arousing emotional response was denunciatory oratory, and that such a technique expressed important underlying drives of his personality. Since A happened to be a socialist, it is natural to compare him with the socialist thinkers studied by Werner Sombart in Der proletarische Sozialismus. There is no doubt that A is numbered among the “artificial” rather than the “natural” men, since his relation to reality is less direct than with the “natural” type. But it cannot be said that social criticism was as deeply motivated in his life as among the men mentioned by Sombart. He expressed himself not only in radical agitation but in conservative, moralistic agitation. His career was not wrecked at any particular point in his history, and he possessed no mania for destruction, although showing much resentment against his family, and indulging in an active fantasy life. He was fundamentally an agitator, and secondarily a social radical.