Nervous temperament

“ Some later authorities added a fifth temperament, called the Nervous temperament, which was held to be characterized by a medium complexion, large brain, small physical frame, fineness of organization, thin hair, finely cut features, quick lively disposition, intellectual tastes and tendencies, sensitive nature, high capacity for enjoyment and suffering. ”

“ Nervous temperament.—The nervous temperament is indicated by sharp features, light frame, head rather large, face oval, forehead high, eyes expressive, movements quick, neck slender and feelings usually intense. ”

“ We will assume this as a fact: and let me then ask, are men of nervous temperament found to be unfit for the duties and pursuits usually followed by men? If not, why should women of the same temperament be unfit for them? The peculiarities of the temperament are, no doubt, within certain limits, an obstacle to success in some employments, though an aid to it in others. But when the occupation is suitable to the temperament, and sometimes even when it is unsuitable, the most brilliant examples of success are continually given by the men of high nervous sensibility. ”

“ It would be interesting to study how much of this heredity exists in the morbid processes, or in the temperament itself, which offers a fair field for their onset.
Nature exerts herself in a more eccentric manner in the nervous temperament. ”

“ A nervous, excitable temperament, in a perpetual state of vibration, constantly kept on the alert by the workings of passion or thought, may, by its very constitution, leave no moment accessible to an intermission of the incessantly renewed states of pain and pleasure. A lymphatic temperament, on the other hand, a cold disposition, a limited intelligence, poor in ideas, constitute a soil perfectly suited to the frequent appearance and long continuance of indifferent states. ”

“ It is my object here to indicate by what means and by what persons the natural development of the clairvoyant faculty may be achieved. In regard then to the subject, medium or seer, there are two distinct temperaments in which the faculty is likely to be dominant and capable of high and rapid development. The first is the nervous temperament, characterized by extreme activity of body and mind, nervous excitability, dark complexion, prominent features, and wiry frame. Types of this temperament are to be seen in the descriptions of Dante, Swedenborg, Melancthon, Edgar A. Poe and others. ”

“ Physical refinement, delicate hands and feet, etc., appear in families well-bred and rich for several generations.
The 'nervous' temperament also develops in the descendants of sedentary brain-working people. ”

“ But confining ourselves to the domain of human thought, it seems perfectly clear that the differences between persons of different temperament are in reality referable in great part to the varying rates at which nervous impulses are transmitted through the nerves, and to or from the brain. The difference between a person of phlegmatic disposition and a person of sanguine temperament, may thus be properly enough referred to the varying rates with which sensations and feelings are appreciated and acted upon. ”

“ Real illness makes the nervous temperament a much more formidable difficulty —all the sensitive faculties are more sensitive—irritability becomes an obsession and idleness a terror.
The nervous temperament under irritation is very prone to become selfish‌—and very likely to hide behind this selfishness, calling it temperament. The man who flies into a passion when he is disturbed, or who spends his days in torment from the noises of the street ”

“ Your physiology indicates a predominance of the nervous temperament; this gives unusual activity of mind, and furnishes the capacity for a great amount of enjoyment or suffering. Few enjoy or suffer with such intensity as you do. Your happiness or misery depends very much on surrounding influences and circumstances. ”

“ It is under this species that the nervous temperament falls, which is constituted by great sensibility and corresponding mobility, and therefore belongs to the first and the last of those varieties; a temperament chiefly to be found among women. ”

“ When, therefore, two persons, each naturally of an excitable and delicate nervous temperament, choose to unite for life, they have themselves to blame for the concentrated influence of similar tendencies in destroying the health of their offspring, and subjecting them to all the miseries of nervous disease, melancholy, or madness. ”

“ Regularity in hours of work, eating, sleeping, and everything in fact, seems to have been rigidly observed. But is not this more the result of the temperament than the cause of long life? Is not the nervous-sanguine temperament more than any other like a balance-wheel or the pendulum of a clock? ”

“ Such people are much of the time suffering from wounded feelings, are displeased and offended. It is true that some are of a highly nervous temperament and naturally feel things more keenly than others, but it is not this natural nervous sensitiveness that leads to the results above mentioned, it is a morbid and unnatural state into which people allow themselves to enter. The natural feelings may need restraint and careful cultivation, but these morbid feelings need to be got rid of. ”

“ When such higher manifestations of character become possible, however, this 5 is both a philosophical and a peace-making element in society, but it must be remembered that, as 5 is usually of nervous temperament, becoming excited over little things. Inclinations to impulsiveness, and sudden exhibitions of temper are apt to become a serious handicap when brought out by discordant conditions. ”

“ Temperament.—Some are, however, more predisposed to certain types of mood than are others. The organization of our nervous system which we get through heredity undoubtedly has much to do with the feeling tone into which we most easily fall. ”

“ People of this temperament are subject to fits of gloom and despondency, of nervous irritability and suffering, which darken the aspect of the whole world to them, which present lying reports of their friends, of themselves, of the circumstances of their life, and of all with which they have to do. ”

“ In the same way, a moral wound for which we are not prepared may bring about abrupt and prolonged consequences, from which the most robust health does not always protect us; and which is in proportion disastrous if the person on whom it falls is by temperament excitable or nervous. I have over and over seen such shocks cause lasting nervousness. ”

“ This temperament is indicated by a predominance of nervous force, mental activity, reasoning power, imagination, and a brain development rather than bodily strength or physical activity. Those in whom it predominates are distinguished by a slight build, small bones and muscles, general fineness of structure, quick motions, signs of nervous energy, sharp features, thin lips, thin, finely shaped, and often pointed nose, high forehead, and expressive eyes. ”

“ The temperament studies by the psychologists and philosophers have been too broad and too classical to be of practical value. Sanguine and choleric temperament, the bilious, the nervous and the phlegmatic, the quick and the slow, all these are broad divisions, and no man really exemplifies them. ”

“ It does not follow that every hysterical person has the artistic temperament; for nervous instability may be the outcome of nervous disease, epilepsy, insanity, or even simple neuroticism in the parents. But so powerful is the influence of the imagination over the body, that the vivid imagination connoted by the artistic temperament controls the nervous system, and when it reaches a certain intensity expresses itself in some abnormal way. And it is the abnormal psychical condition that is of so much significance in literature and philosophy. ”

“ With the physiological ones we are not concerned, but the psychical manifestation should be of the greatest interest to all students of literature who are also presumably students of life. The artistic temperament is always associated with a measure of nervous instability. And where there is nervous instability there will always be a tendency to hysteria. ”

“ Temperament indicates a peculiarity in constitution, causing a liability to particular diseases, or to a special character in any disease to which a person becomes subject. Four temperaments are usually recognized—the sanguine, phlegmatic, bilious, and nervous, but unmixed specimens of these temperaments are rarely seen. ”

“ The truth of this proposition has been ably proved by Dr. Cullen in his First Lines.
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3. It affects most frequently persons of a sanguineous temperament; but sometimes it affects persons of nervous and phlegmatic temperaments. The idle and luxurious are more subject to it, than the labouring and temperate part of mankind. Women are said to be less subject to it than men. ”

“ The remaining fifteen enjoy good health, but are distinguished, almost without exception, by a markedly neurotic temperament, indicated by an anxious tendency of mind, quickness of perception, æsthetic taste, disposition to alternations of impulse and procrastination. ”

“ He was now entirely rid of his nervous misgivings, of his forced aggressiveness, of the imperative desire to show himself different from his surroundings. He felt now that his surroundings explained him. ”

“ If a neurosis is a compromise, if it is the easiest way out, if it serves a purpose, it must be that the individual himself has a hand in shaping that purpose. Can it be that a breakdown which seems such an unmitigated disaster is really welcomed by a part of our own selves? Nothing is more intensely resented by the nervous invalid than the accusation that he likes his symptoms,—and no wonder. ”

“ Whoever runs amuck in his emotions runs amuck in his whole being. The nervous invalid with his exhausted and sensitive body, his upset mind and irrational conduct is a living illustration of the central place of the emotions in the realm of the personality. ”

“ Imagine two steel knife-blades with their keen edges crossing each other at right angles, and moving to and fro. Our whole nervous organization is 'on-edge' at the thought; and yet what emotion can be there except the unpleasant nervous feeling itself, or the dread that more of it may come? The entire fund and capital of the emotion here is the senseless bodily effect which the blades immediately arouse. This case is typical of a class: where an ideal emotion seems to precede the bodily symptoms, it is often nothing but an anticipation of the symptoms themselves. ”

“ All that the will does is to emphasize and linger over those which seem pertinent, and ignore the rest. Through this hovering of the attention in the neighborhood of the desired object, the accumulation of associates becomes so great that the combined tensions of their neural processes break through the bar, and the nervous wave pours into the tract which has so long been awaiting its advent. And as the expectant, sub-conscious itching there, bursts into the fulness of vivid feeling, the mind finds an inexpressible relief. ”

“ Our nerves enter intimately into every feeling, thought, act of life, into every function of our bodies, into every aspiration of our souls. They determine our digestion and our destinies; they may even influence the destinies of others. Let us turn a few pages of a life and see the cost of defective nervous-living. ”

“ He had a muddled idea, common to men of his stamp, that women assume nervousness because they think it pretty and becoming to them, and that if one could only convince them of the folly of it they might be induced to lay it aside, in the same way that they lay aside mincing steps and simpering voices. A man who prided himself, as he did, upon his knowledge of horses, might, one would think, have grasped a truer notion of the nature of nervousness, which is a mere matter of temperament. ”

“ Evidently, it is highly important to have a working knowledge of these emotions and instincts; important to know enough about them and their purpose to handle them rightly if they do not spontaneously work together for our best character and health. The problems of character and the problems of health so overlap that it is impossible to write a book about nervous disorders which does not at the same time deal with the principles of character-formation. The laws and mechanisms which govern the everyday life of the normal person are the same laws and mechanisms which make the nervous person ill. ”

“ Between these extremes lie the instincts that are so called in our ordinary speech, and that you would probably have thought of, if you had been asked to give [207] examples of human instincts: such things as fear, love, rivalry, jealousy, pugnacity, bashfulness, self-assertion, various lines of ‘interest.’ All these names, and many like them, stand for inherited nervous dispositions which are realised or expressed in emotion. They too are differently combined, and exist in varying degree, in different individuals; and they too are common, in some measure, to all humanity. ”

“ If the individuals who live most happily in the city and in the country are contrasted, there is reason to suppose that the mental opposition expresses nervous differences. In one we have the more rapid, more changeable, and more consuming thinker, while the thought of the other is slower, more persistent, and less wasteful of nervous energy. ”

“ Is not heredity rather than choice to blame? And what can a person do about it?" These questions are so closely bound up with the problems of nervous symptoms of indigestion, fatigue, a woman's ills, hysterical pains and sensations, and with all the problems of emotional control, that we shall do well to look more carefully into this question of sensibility, which is really the question of the relation of the individual to his environment. ”