The duller countenances of the British population betoken a better scheme of life. They suggest stores of reserved nervous force to fall back upon, if any occasion should arise that requires it. This inexcitability, this presence at all times of power not used, I regard," continued Dr. Clouston, "as the great safeguard of our British people. The other thing in you gives me a sense of insecurity, and you ought somehow to tone yourselves down. You really do carry too much expression, you take too intensely the trivial moments of life."

The American overtension and jerkiness and breathlessness and intensity and agony of expression are primarily social, and only secondarily physiological, phenomena. They are bad habits, nothing more or less, bred of custom and example, born of the imitation of bad models and the cultivation of false personal ideals.

9. Cure for Sleeplessness

[SIDIS, Boris, "Secret of Sound Sleep," in an interview with K. Sumner for the American Magazine, February, 1923, Vol. 95, pp. 14-15.] Sleep is not as important as people think it is. Rest is important! In fact, it is essential. But we do not have to be absolutely unconscious (as we are in the sleep state) in order to rest. The lower animals do not sleep as human beings do. They literally sleep with one eye open, sometimes with both eyes partially open. They prick up their ears at sounds which, in our own sleep state, we would not hear. In them, sleep is only a pronounced rest state.

Therefore, the first thing for you to realize, if you are more or less wakeful, is that it is nothing you have cause to worry about. Moreover, this realization that sleep is not all-important will be a great factor in helping you to sleep. Nine-tenths of your difficulty in going to sleep is due to your fear that you won't go to sleep. And nine-tenths of the bad effects of a sleepless night are not the result of your loss of sleep, but of your worry over it.

I do not say this in order to delude you into a better frame of mind, one that is favorable to sleep; but because it is physiologically, as well as psychologically true! People make a sort of fetish of sleep. They fix upon a certain number of hours which they think they must have, in order to be well. Then they measure each night's sleep; and if it is short of the sacred number of hours which they think they must have in order to be well, they are full of worry and fear.

Don't be impatient for sleep to come. Let it take its time. Don't lie there, saying to yourself, "It is two o'clock now! I have to get up at seven. If I don't go to sleep right away I won't get even five hours of sleep-and I ought to have eight!"

If you do pay attention to the time, say to yourself, "I have been in bed, resting, for several hours already. And I have five hours more in which I can rest. Eight hours of rest! It's wonderful to lie here quietly and to know that I am storing up energy all the time."

10. Three Essentials for Mental Health

[BURNHAM, William H., The Normal Mind: An Introduction to Mental Hygiene and the Hygiene of School Instruction, pp. 207-208, 210– 211, 213. New York, D. Appleton & Co., 1924.]

Dr. William H. Burnham gives us in plain straightforward language the minimal essential conditions of human happiness reduced to their lowest terms. His three essentials apply equally well for all, young and old, rich and poor, the healthy and the diseased. These are not mere guesses or opinion. They are founded on observation and many investigations.

The essentials, without which a person cannot be quite sound mentally and with which, apart from accident, infection, or heredity, one can have no serious mental disorder, the absolutely essential conditions are three: a task, a plan, and freedom.

The task in the generic sense includes everything from the immediate and concrete goal of the moment to the objectification of the highest ideals and ends. A plan is necessary to make the work purposive activity. It must be my own task; hence freedom is necessary. . . . A score, perhaps, of recent books in education-in this country, books emphasizing the project method and motivation, in England, books emphasizing purposeful activity and the problem attitude-may be summed up in the words-task, plan, and freedom, and what is involved in them; so that the clear understanding of these fundamental conditions and what they mean for the mental health is more important for the teacher than superficial reading of many books on principles and methods, and worth more than a mere knowledge of all the mental tests, standard scales, and all devices for increasing and measuring the scholastic product, because without this one does not see the meaning of the tests and

scales. With this on the one hand one sees the real value of methods, tests, and devices, and is able to keep clear vision in the field of practical education and hygiene. . . .

These three essentials of mental hygiene and of education for the individual represent also the fundamentals in industry. A task, a plan involving coördinated and purposeful activity, and a maximum of freedom for the individual worker, are the essential conditions of prosperity and industrial health.

11. Nervousness and Its Treatment

Nervousness is a condition of increased irritability of nerve centers and a lack of perfect control or coördination. Vigorous exercise may be beneficial for the restless child, but the nervous or exhausted child should have instead mild exercise and a chance for quiet rest. The nervous child should not be scolded, or in any way induced to worry, or found fault with. A loud voice or unattractive dress on the part of the parent or teacher may be irritating to the nervous child. Teachers should be quick to know signs of nervousness, but the child should never be made conscious of his condition. The establishment of regular habits of work, rest, sleep and play and healthy attitudes are of great value in assisting the child to gain poise and serenity of mind.

12. Training in Mental Hygiene

[BURNHAM, William H., "Mental Health for Normal Children," Mental Hygiene, 1918, Vol. 2, pp. 19-22.]

The simple principles of mental hygiene are based both on world-old experience and on scientific study. They should be practiced in every home, and heeded in all forms of school instruction and discipline. Among the most important of them are the following:

1. Children should be given opportunity for normal reaction to their natural instincts and impulses-to be active in play and work, to sleep at need, to express their emotions, not only to assert themselves, but to serve others and coöperate with them. Function, response to stimulation, action, work, represent the first condition of mental as well as physical health.

2. Children should be trained to control their activities and impulses. Natural and helpful control is not by repression and direct inhibition, but rather by indirect control. We control one muscle

by contracting an antagonistic muscle; we control one action by doing something else, one interest by developing other interests; we stop thinking of one thing by thinking of something else. Repression means a short-circuiting of the nervous reaction and the dissipation of energy within the nervous system itself, instead of normal expression in coördinated activity. Control means the utilization of the nervous energy in developing a new and healthful form of activity that may take the place of the unwholesome activity. Every interest is potentially a means of self-control.

3. Children should be taught to concentrate attention on the one thing in hand. Children naturally do this. When the school attempts to transfer their attention from their spontaneous interests to the more artificial scholastic interests, care should be taken not to weaken the natural habit of concentrated attention. Short periods, complete attention, no dawdling, should be the rule. . . . Attention should usually be focussed upon the present situation; and in the moral and emotional training children should be taught to live one day at a time, to settle their moral accounts every night, never to hold a grudge, never to let the sun go down upon their wrath, to look upon each morning as a new day in which to improve, but not to carry over their troubles from yesterday.

4. Attention to the present situation implies orderly association, the next condition of efficiency and mental health. But in all subjects and all methods of instruction and training care should be taken to avoid all confusion and interference of association. Disorderly association means the beginning of mental conflict and worry. Tasks should be simple and definite, instructions clear and concrete, decisions and actions straightforward and wholehearted. Thus habits of orderly association are developed.

5. The fifth condition of mental health is an active attitude in the face of difficulties. The trying situations of childhood, "when a feller needs a friend," the occasions of worry, of fear, and rage, represent opportunity for the most important training. Vigorous action is normal. The repression of action probably means shortcircuiting and nervous strain. Normal activity for a child on occasion of fear, for example, may be to run away from the object of emotion or to attack it. The latter is morally better and usually safer and more healthful. By attempting always to do the best thing in a difficult situation, a habit of the utmost importance for the mental health is soon developed.

6. The sixth condition of mental hygiene concerns normal social relations. It is better for a child's mental health to eat and play and work and study with other children than alone or merely with adults. To act with others as follower or leader, to serve, to cooperate, on occasion to resent, or to fight, represent healthful attitudes and healthful forms of activity; to deceive, to act cruelly, to be suspicious, to hold a grudge, represent unhealthful as well

as unsocial mental attitudes. The only child in a family, and others who have lacked opportunity for social development, should be given special training.

7. The seventh condition of healthful mental activity is a normal sense of dependence. This is perhaps the essential psychological element in religion-a sense of dependence on a Supreme Being, or on the beneficent laws and forces of nature, or on the moral strength of humanity, or the categorical undebatable authority of duty, or one's sense of honor, absolute and worthwhile for its own sake. If not tampered with, this seems to develop normally in children; first as dependence on one's own parents, later as dependence on something higher. The adult's duty in regard to this activity is chiefly negative-never to cast any reflections upon the parent, or the child's religion, or sense of duty or honor, this sacred shrine of the child's moral life; never to ask a child to act contrary to his conscience or to do a thing contrary to his sense of honor.

All this represents the positive side. If, on the negative side, the obviously bad habits and unwholesome complexes of association are avoided, with reasonable care for proper alternation of work and rest, and sleep and normal hygiene in general, we have the conditions for the development of the mental health. These conditions can be ensured only by the coöperation of the home and the school; and it is vitally important that parents take care that habits of health, in eating, activity, and sleep, be developed in the home.

QUESTIONS AND PROBLEMS

1. What is meant by mental hygiene?

2. List some of the excessive fears that are often found among people. What treatment do such individuals need?

3. What is worry? How can it be conquered?

4. What did Dr. Clouston probably mean by this statement: “You Americans wear too much expression on your faces. The duller countenances of the British population betoken a better scheme of life."

5. What are the causes of sleeplessness? How can it be cured? 6. What treatment should be given people who are suffering from exhaustion, or "nerves"?

7. Cite instances where teachers or parents were unable to get along with children because of unfortunate mental attitudes.

8. What are the three essentials for a normal, hygienic, and happy life?

9. Will it attach a child to you more to do him a service, or to let the child render a service to you? Why?