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This fragment of a real conversation, which is typical of numberless others like it, reveals the false and shallow philosophy which, if it becomes our code of national living, will make the lives of our young people abnormal and our twentieth century civilization artificial and neurotic. Even now too many people are thinking about a "career." Mothers are talking about "careers" for their sons.
They were hunched over their cups, not talking. I wondered where they stood. Mannion, Communications Officer, was neurotic, but an old Armed Force man. Discipline meant a lot to him. Kirschenbaum, Power Chief, was a joker, with cold eyes, and smarter than he seemed. The question was whether he was smart enough to idealize the stupidity of retreat now. Kramer walked in, not wasting any time.
Certain neurotic and hysterical men or women who lack thorough physiological training and whose own sexual disturbances have led them to devour omnivorously and unscientifically the psychopathological literature of sex by such authors as Havelock Ellis, Krafft-Ebing, and Freud, are probably unsafe teachers of sex-hygiene.
Neither at the breakfast table nor in his room subsequently did his actions strike me as the actions of a man of insane, neurotic, or violent temperament. He was simply suffering from nerves.
She felt ashamed of her neurotic fancies and her resentment of his lacks in the matter of conventional courtesies of his outward hardness, his want of sympathy with her ideals. He came to her, taking her two hands while keeping his pipe in one of his own so that the whiff of the coarse 'Store-cut' tobacco made her wrinkle her nose and stemmed the tide of emotion.
In the busier parts of the city the constant street noise puts a nervous tax upon the children; the proximity of so many bright and moving objects taxes the eyes; the splash of gaudy and gross advertisements creates a fevered imagination; slang, profanity, and vulgarity lend a smart effect; the merchant's tempting display often leads to theft, and the immodest dress of women produces an evil effect upon the mind of the overstimulated adolescent boy; opportunities to elude observation and to deceive one's parents abound; social control weakens; ideals become neurotic, flashy, distorted; the light and allurement of the street encourage late hours; the posters and "barkers" of cheap shows often appeal to illicit curiosity, and the galaxy of apparent fun and adventure is such as to tax to the full the wholesome and restraining influence of even the best home.
The struggle of the neurotic consists particularly in the conscious appreciation of his goal and of his deficiencies of makeup and in the attempt to reach his goal of full manhood and self-maximization in spite of his handicapping deficiencies.
These Russian and Bavarian minxes were neurotic, fickle, shifting as sand; the daughters of Judæa were sane, cheerful, solid. Then he thought of his own sister married to that vulgarian, Friedland. He saw her, a rosy-cheeked girl, sitting at the Passover table, with its picturesque ritual. How happy were those far-off pious days!
The amount of individual suffering and of loss and expense to society due to failure in this struggle is nothing less than appalling. The victims of emotional hurricanes, "brainstorms," neurotic excess, and intemperate desire are legion. A nation that is overfed, under-exercised, and notably neurasthenic should neglect nothing that makes for prompt and reliable self-control.
The rest of her rebelling against the West, the monotonous days on the boat racing her back to England in November, with nothing to do, too much to eat, and the trail of medicine glasses, cushions, gouty, dyspeptic, and neurotic employers lengthening into the drab future.
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