excessive indulgence. "The uncertainty of his life, the pronounced strain of melancholy in his temperament, che brooding intensity of his imagination, the weakness of his will . . . contributed to make him the victim of habit against which he fought at times with desperate courage." 38 His erratic conduct estranged the few riends he made. His personality was marked by egoism, conceit, jealousy, envy, selfishness, bad temper, elf-will, and vanity-all so extreme as to prove seriusly maladaptive in his social relationships. The illess of his wife added to his anxieties, particularly as poverty prevented him from providing for her the care he needed. Poe finally broke under the burden of overty and disease. His weakness for drink proved oo much for his frail physique. An only child, left lone in the world, penniless, sick, disgraced-it is no onder he fled into the world of fantasy to escape the train of life. In Berenice he writes: "The realities of he world affected me as visions, and as visions only, hile the wild ideas of the land of dreams became, in rn, not the material of my every-day existence, but very deed that existence utterly and solely in itself.” Telancholy and unworldly, Poe, the introvert, turned > the fascination of beauty, love, and death and deribed them with an artistic fondness that betrayed e ecstasy he found in the comforting grace of comensation.39 Article in the New International Encyclopedia. 1903. Lorine Pruette: "A Psychoanalytical Study of Edgar Allan Poe." nerican Journal of Psychology 1920, 31, 370–402. J. Wood Krutch: Edgar Allan Poe. 1926. to every obs CHAPTER IV THE PSYCHOLOGY OF COMPENSATION ance. THE NATURE OF COMPENSATION . THE integrity of the personality depends upon the successful maintenance of a state of equilibrium among the conflicting forces that threaten to destroy the balPleasure and pain, egoism and altruism, materialism and idealism, all strive to establish themselves in experience. Needs upset the psychic stability; their fulfillment marks its restoration. Avenarius illustrates the principle of equilibrium in discussing attention. A problem arouses a man's interest; he becomes restless under the perplexity; the solution of the problem restores his peace of mind.1 The feeling of inferiority indicates the presence of a need or problem for which compensatory activities seek a satisfactory solution. Old age, youth, wealth, poverty, health, and sickness, all have their typical modes of compensatory behavior. Mental health is preserved by minimizing the disturbing influences which deficiencies exert upon the mind. Compensation is a defense reaction. centration ally, they Edison is he says, Compensation is essentially a resolution of conflicting impulses. "As a mental mechanism, motivating conduct and molding personality, compensation ranks high in importance." 2 Its manifestations are familiar W. T. Bush: "Avenarius and Pure Experience." Archives of Philosophy 1905, No. 2. 'G. K. Pratt: Your Mind and You, p. 21. 1924. 70 undistur and a b turbed h every observer of human nature. Socrates remarked hat his flat nose permitted him to see better. The lind develop a supernormal tactual sensitivity because hey must rely upon their touch sensations to guide hem. A man who has poor eyes cannot read widely, ut where his knowledge may be lacking in the breadth f its perspective, it may be superior in the depth of Es penetration. Nature is so resourceful that where s powers fail in one direction other means of adaptaon are made available. "Deaf children are actually t an advantage in certain respects when compared with ormal youngsters; they have greater powers of conentration and, as their education is developed manuly, they train into excellent craftsmen." 3 Thomas dison is somewhat deaf in his right ear. His defect, e says, has enabled him "to pursue his investigations ndisturbed in the midst of hammerings, conversation, nd a hundred-and-one noises that might have disrbed him had he possessed undisturbed hearing." 4 TEMPORAL SEQUENCE OF INFERIORITY AND Before proceeding further, I would like to point out distinction in temporal or causal sequence between wo cases: (1) an inferiority that leads to compensaon; (2) the hypertrophy (overdevelopment) of one culty, resulting in the atrophy (decay) of others, due specialization. The first case is illustrated by the ct that Edison's defective hearing was compensated y increased powers of concentration in thinking-the Lord Eustace Percy: Address as President of the British Board Education, August, 1925. The Literary Digest, August 8, 1925. THE PSYC Compensa On the one h SCIOUS or un physiologica GE The indi or unconsci pensatory the operati sciously. Lambulism defect precedes and is a causal factor in producing the compensation. The second case can be explained in reference to Edison's social life. "Mr. Edison has few friends. Because of his work he has had to live a great deal by himself and in himself, shut out from the social contacts open to most men. There is probably no other living man of world consequence so isolated from normal society." 5 Let us assume that it was the intense application to his work that deprived him of social life, and not that the lack of social graces led him to devote himself to his research. The hypertrophy of his inventive powers, then, has resulted in the atrophy of his social propensities. In case 1, atrophy was a conditioning cause of hypertrophy; in case 2, hypertrophy was a conditioning cause of atrophy. It is possible that in another man social deficiencies, such as the lack of conversational poise or the possession of a melancholy disposition, would lead him to give all of his time to his work-so that, with the temporal sequence the reverse of case 2, the same improvement in productive labor would be present. The distinction is an important one for the interpretation of biographical material, for in some cases it may appear that inferiority led to compensation, whereas, actually, the defect in one field was the result of specialization in another. Often, however, the situation is a vicious circle,-social inferiority leading to intensive work, intensive work aggravating the social handicaps, and then the increased social inferiority ending in even more intensive work. No legitimate interpretation of motives can be made without taking into account the temporal sequence of events. • Ibid. Compensation falls naturally into two general types. On the one hand, the compensatory process may be concious or unconscious; on the other hand, it may be hysiological or psychological. GENERAL TYPES OF COMPENSATION The individual may compensate either consciously unconsciously. The fundamental nature of the comensatory process is clear in multiple personality, where e operations are carried on, to a large degree, unconiously. Mary Reynolds suffered from reciprocal somambulism. There were two personalities, A and B. was dull, unenterprising; B, lively, independent. and B were, therefore, complementary-what the he had the other lacked. This reciprocal relation is aracteristic of compensation. Compensations may be divided into the physiological ad the psychological. The differentiation is merely 1 artificial one, since it is impossible to state how far ychical factors are concerned in any compensatory evelopment. With this point in mind, the classificaon is a useful one. Physiology abounds with evidence the important rôle that belongs to compensation. Then a man proceeds to a high altitude, the diminned supply of oxygen is rendered innocuous by an creased amount of hemoglobin. "As the pressure of ygen falls in the surrounding air and the supply of ygen to the body becomes imperiled, compensation effected by the increased activity of the red marrow nding out more corpuscles to act as carriers of oxy |