Your Mind and How It Works

To understand yourself, you must understand the workings of the Human Mind in the Head.

Let us take up first the allegedly "normal" Human Mind, starting with the over-all picture. I have drawn this picture, showing the entire central nervous system of the average male and the internal parts of the body that relate to it (Figure I).

Because of its central location we shall consider first the spine (F). I'm sure all spine lovers will be pleased when I state categorically that the spine is the most important part of the central nervous system.*

At the top the spine is connected firmly with the base of the brain. At the bottom the spine disappears into the underwear. If it were not for the spine, people would be pretty flabby, and if they sat down too quickly at dinner their heads would fall forward into the soup.

The spine was originally discovered by an early Greek doctor and amateur anatomist named Vertebrae Anaxius.(2 stars) Vertabrae discovered the spine entirely by accident. One afternoon his nurse came to work wearing a bare-midriff sheet, and in the spirit of camaraderie he slipped his arm around her waist, put his hand on her back, and there it was (the spine).

During the next few months Vertebrae spent many pleasant hours verifying his original impressions and was well on his way to several other important discoveries when his experiments were brought to an abrupt close by an ugly scene with the nurse's husband. However, despite these distractions, Vertebrae did ascertain that the spine is not one long continuous bone, but a series of small segments held together by flexible cartilage. Vertebrae and his associates spent years and all their funds in various public places, identifying and naming these segments, and today, 2200 years later, in memory of his work, we still refer to these segments as "joints."

The spine is connected to the most unlikely parts of the body. It is connected by means of "nerves." These nerves carry messages to the brain. This is the spine's chief function and it is especially important in times of Emergency. To illustrate: suppose a typical Emergency arises. Say, for instance, you get your elbow stuck in a mustard jar.

Immediately, the elbow sends a message to the spine and up through the spine, past the collarbone, past the T-zone, right up to the brain.

The message says. "Help, I'm stuck in a mustard jar! Roger, Over. Elbow." But the brain, as we shall learn a bit later, has more important things to worry about, so it sends a message busy, saying. "Don't bother me; I'm busy. Over and out." Then it ignores the whole situation.

This, naturally, induces a state of irritability in the elbow. The elbow begins to fret and mutter and shift about inside the mustard jar, and after waiting a few minutes it sends another message up through the spine to the brain, saying. "I'ts pretty easy for you to say, 'Don't bother me; I'm busy,'but I'm the one that's stuck, and I think one should have a little consideration for others."

And then it sends another message and another and another.

These messages, unanswered, begin to pile up at the base of the brain around the medulla oblongata (G, on Figure I), and they form a block.

This block interferes with the activity of the central nervous system (although the medulla oblongata is a very important part of same) and can lead to several unpopular mental malfunctions; i.e., Water on the Brain. (Taken up in a few paragraphs. Don't look ahead, but read this part first. Unless you have Water on the Brain, in which case look ahead right away.)

Now that we have the proper background, we can take up the brain directly. Here we have a detailed drawing of the Average Male Head, with the Average Male Nose, the Average Male Chin, and the Average Male Brain.

You will notice that the male brain is divided into four basic parts, or "regions." They are:

1. Olfactory

2. Sensory

3. Auditory

4. Jane Russell

The term "Jane Russell," which is used to designate Part 4 (which may be broken down into two subsclassifications), will quickly be recognized as the real cause of all that trouble between brain and elbow during the late unpleasantness (medium dark). Part 4 also enjoys a predominate position in the brain, taking up 92% of its total area. As you can see, this messes up the balance.

This state of imbalance in the male brain occasionally leads to various eccentricities such as marriage and shaving.

The Female

I think I can safely state that I have a deep and accurate understanding of the female nervous system and its reactions under emotional stress. I have devoted many hours to gaining this understanding, and I don't regret a single dollar of it. I have discovered that females are shorter, rounder, and prettier than males. They are shyer, more sensitive, and friendlier. They also have an unduly suspicious nature and are frequently obsessed with the disgusting idea that they "must get in early."

Below, I have made a sectional drawing of an Average Female Head with the Average Female Hair-do, Nose, and Chin, and the Average Female Brain.

If you study the drawing carefully, you will see that the female brain is slightly smaller and less complex than the male brain. The female brain is divided into only two parts: (1) dollars and (2) cents.

However, it has been proved that the size of the brain has no connection with intelligence, and the female brain, while smaller, is much more active than the male brain. Especially when it comes to influencing the male brain after 8:30 P.M. Eastern Standard Time.

For some time I have been conducting a long-range series of tests to determine the intelligence of a number of females representing a cross section of their sex.

Summed up, here are the results to date:

The conclusive nature of these results leaves no doubt as to the energy inherent in the female brain.

In addition to her brain, the female is abetted in her ability to influence the male brain by a well-developed central nervous system of her own.(See Figure V.)

I went to a lot of trouble and expense to make this drawing ($2890.70,amortized over a two-year period, to be exact), and I haven't had time to do too much technical research. However, from this diagram we can see that the female nervous system is capable of taking care of itself.

It is, as a matter of fact, part of our American tradition to give credit to feminine intelligence as a stabilizing and guiding force in all of man's endeavors. This is ridiculous.

Now that we know something about the physical structure of the Human Mind, let's see what happens when something goes wrong, as it is certain to, these days.

I like to compare the mind to a delicately adjusted piece of machinery that is turning out little beer-can openers. And I think of thoughts as the little beer-can openers, popping out of the machine. When the machine starts turning out bent beer-can openers, or rusty beer-can openers, then something has gone haywire with the machine. When a person's mind stops turning out perfect beer-can openers, then that person is well on the way to becoming Copeless (defined as the inability to cope with life). And he is also likely to wind up with a houseful of beer cans that he is unable to open.

A fine example of when can happen to the mind when such a situation arises is illustrated by the case of Thomas Alva Edison, who suffered from Water on the Brain, a condition peculiar to males.

Case of thomas alva edison *

When Thomas Alva Edison was born, he was a normal, healthy child, but his mother always thought he was sickly. There was nothing wrong with him, but she was constantly taking his temperature. Whenever she thought of it she would shove a thermometer in his mouth. Thomas kept chewing the ends of the thermometers and swallowing the mercury. In five years Thomas swallowed the mercury out of 231 thermometers. Then, when he was six years old, they had a very warm summer. In two weeks Thomas was nine feet tall.

He was nine feet tall, but he only weighed forty-three pounds. He was so tall and thin that whenever he got into the bathtub he had to coil, which he considered undignified. He soon began to brood and fret, and in no time at all (fourteen years) he wound up in my office. (continued on page -45)

Your Mind (continued from page 2)

I quickly diagnosed his symptoms (sloshing, gurgling) as indicating Water on The Brain. I was correct. Below is a reproduction of an X-ray picture of Thomas' head (Figure VI.)

I tried everything to help Thomas. I had him wear a hat made of blotting paper, and I tried heat-lamp treatments in an effort to bring him to a boil. Nothing helped. His condition was so far advanced there was only one remedy – surgery.

I decided to attempt the Schwine-Kitzenger Operation and install an over flow pipe in Thomas' head. This was a very expensive operation – it cost me over two hundred dollars just to join the Plumber's Union – but it was successful. I installed the overflow pipe along with an automatic control mechanism (Figure VII).

The pipe and control mechanism worked fine, and a monograph that I wrote describing the operation was published by the California Medical Association and later made into a motion picture entitled, Love Under Deep Anesthesia.

My patient, Thomas, however, eventually came to a bad end. One day when he was walking home from school, he got his shoelace caught in the chain and flushed himself to death.

Anxiety-Caused-By-Feeling-of-Rejection Complex. Case of Lucy Mildred S.

I first met Lucy Mildred S. Socially. I had been out of town for eight months, and when I got back a friend of mine telephoned and wanted to get me a blind date with a friend of his fiance. I agreed and, excited by the adventurous possiblities of such an arrangement, I changed my shirt and gave myself a more liberal application of a new masculine after-shave lotion, a scent that was so virile and masculine it came in a hairy bottle.

At eight o'clock I met Lucy Mildred. She was only five feet and one inch tall. But she weighed two hundred and ninety-seven pounds. She had three teeth missing in the front, and a wart on the end of her nose, and she was almost baldheaded in the back. Yet, in spite of all this, the noise her army shoes made when she walked repelled me.

I discovered that Lucy Mildred had been rejected by four other men previously (I also discovered that she had only met four other men previously), and had definite anxiety feelings about her ability to get a husband.

I had a long talk with Lucy Mildred, and I found that her problem had its roots in her childhood. As a child, she had suffered from a feeling of Inadequacy in Social Games, such as leapfrog.

Her playmates had always refused to let Lucy Mildred play leapfrog with them, and she wrongly believed it was because they didn't like her. This was not so. You see, at the age of ten, Lucy Mildred already weighed two hundred pounds and was considered large for her age. And the one time her friends had invited her to play leapfrog, she squashed three little girls and drove one stiff-legged nine-year-old four feet into the concrete sidewalk.

Also, Lucy Mildred's family had been unusually strict with her, not allowing her to go upstairs in their home, because of their firm conviction that she would fall through the ceiling. Since the only bathroom in the house was upstairs, this caused complications.

Unfortunately, Lucy Mildred took these prohibitions personally, and decided to run away from home, and so she came to New York, where she quickly got a job as a chorus girl in a Broadway musical comedy. The producer wanted only tall, slender girls in the chorus, but Lucy Mildred lied.

Lucy Mildred soon learned that one cannot run away from one's troubles. Her personality kept deteriorating, until it finally collapsed. The last I heard of her she had decided to live dangerously and had taken a high-salaried position as Westbrook Pegler's food taster.

Somatic Conditions And Related Problems

We must always remember the interrelation between the mind and the body. The activities of the mind and the body cannot be divorced (Body vs. Mind, 384 Nevada Supreme Court, 553, 1924), and many physical conditions are caused by a mental shock or impediment.

For instance, I remember when I was about ten years old, my father went through a brief period during which he worried constantly about his business, which had something to do with a popular soft drink that he manufactured in the wagon shed from sugar and fermented corncobs.

Some men from the Federal government came around several times, and Father worried so much about business and the men from the government that he grew a full beard, dyed his hair black, and began speaking with an exaggerated Italian accent. All of these things, purely physical symptoms, were caused by Father's worrying – in other words, by his mental state.

An even more concrete example was the case of my cousin Stanley, whose condition was caused originally by something that happened before he was born. The night before Stanley "arrived," his mother was out on the state highway, hitchhiking back home from work. As she was walking along a particularly dark stretch of road, she was badly frightened by an oncoming motorcycle. This had an unfortunate effect on Stanley.

Having only one eye in the center of his head let Stanley in for a few bad moments as a baby. His mother, who was confused by the whole thing, kept shoving dirty laundry into his mouth, under the impression that he was a Bendix washer.

However, it turned out all right, because when Stanley was just two years old, his normal eyes developed (Figure IX).

This made the family pretty happy, because up (continued on page 47) Your Mind (continued from page 45) until then they'd been afraid that Stanley wasn't going to be normal.

But as Stanley grew up he began to feel "different," as he expressed it. He started imagining that people were looking at him on the streets, and he began to be moody and sullen. I recall one day when we had lunch together in a restaurant. Stanley just sat there, silent staring at the waitress, his soup, and his hat. It was unnerving.

I kept telling Stanley tht he shoundn't let his little peculiarity upset him. In fact, I told him he should feel that his extra eye was an asset. And it worked. Today Stanley is well Adjusted and quite proud of the fact that he is the only man in the coountry with 20-20-20 vision.

Phobias

This is the general term used to designate a number a number of obsessive "Action Patterns" that are set in motion when the subject comes in contact with some particularly uncopable facet of his environment. In this regard my sister Thelma has always been interesting to psychologists.

As a child, Thelma seemed perfectly normal and happy. The only unusual incident in her youth occurred when she was sixteen. Father had suffered a temporary financial reverse, and as there were (continued on page 49) Your Mind (continued from page 47) a great many mouths to feed,(1 star) he decided to send Thelma to board with old Judge Vernon and do his cooking and housework. This was a pleasant arrangement, for the old Judge was lonely, having no children of his own, and he soon grew quite attached to Thelma.

Nevertheless, after Father had a talk with him and gave Thelma a padlock for the door to her room, it worked out all right.

But today, Thelma has grown to young womanhood and is suffering from a peculiar phobia that none of us have been able to understand. (See Figure X).

Thelma's phobia is this: she has a morbid fear of revolving doors.

At the present time I am working on a theory that this phobia is the result of an earlier "Double-Oedipus-Reversed Complex with a Half Gainer." This, in simple language, is a complex caused by either (1) an abnormal fear on the part of the child that it has no abnormal fears of any possible abnormal fears it might have about either or both of its parents, or (2) an acid condition of the stomach.**

Thelma's case presents a clear-cut example of the phobia. Other common examples are:

1. Claustrophobia,fear of being enclosed

2. Altophobia,fear of high places

3. Hydrophobia,fear of water

4. Alcoholism,fear of one's wife

5. Actrophobia,fear of bit players used in Joan Crawford pictures

6. Saxophobia,musical composition recorded by "Jelly Roll" Morton and the Six Brown Brothers (Brunswick)

7. Ochrephobia,fear of being covered with gold paint (gilt complex)

8. Multiphobia,combination offer of any two of the above

Hallucinations

A hallucination is possibly the most direct result of Copelessness. The subject, rejecting his environment completely, imagines himself to be something or somebody else.

There is much to be said in favor of such a procedure. At one time, before I conceived the doctine of Avoidism (to be explained in a later article), I considered the idea of "Artifically Induced Mass Hallucinations" as the way to solve modern man's problems.

Later, I discarded the idea, but in those days I was impetuous and had a number of "Jiffy Hallucination Kits" made up to sell to the public. These kits were based upon the Dale Carnegie Theory that "everthing subconsciously hates everything and everybody."

The kits would enable any average citizen to activate this subconscious dislike for reality and "get away from it all" by becoming anything he wanted, from a Park Bench (Inanimate Object, Outdoor Kit #554B) to Bob Hope (Bob Hope Kit #6A).***

The kits were rather ingenious, and worked like this. If someone figured out that the person he was was a no-good, had no friends, and was generally maladjusted, he would come to me and tell me that he wanted to become someone else for a change, say, for instance, the Emperor Nero. I would sell him the "Historical Figure, Early Roman, Kit #363B." This kit contained a number of devices that represented the essence of modern life. Itemized, they were:

"4 self-operating automobile horns

3 continuous – ringing telephone bells

1 automatic riveting gun

18 recordings of radio singing commercials

1 recording of radio disk jockey introducing bop record

1 cylinder of compressed air taken from Seventh Avenue Subway (N.Y.)

1 box of aspirin (empty)

1 recording of neighbors arguing about politics

1 drugstore-type tuna-salad-and-pea-nut-butter sandwich

1 copy of next year's Income Tax Forms

1 television set

1 sealed box

"Directions:Start the automobile horns, the telephone bells, and the riveting gun. Start playing all of the recordings simultaneously. Turn on the television set. Release compressed air. Start eating sandwich. Study Income Tax Form. Look in aspirin box and discover that it is empty.

"At this point a specially constructed timing device will pop open the sealed box, inside of which is:

1 toga

1 crown of olive leaves

1 violin

1 box of matches"

The kits were remarkably successful. One elderly gentleman with a loose upper plate who lived in Mobile, Alabama, came to see me and told me he was tired of being an elderly gentleman with a loose upper plate who lived in Mobile, Alabama. I suggested a complete change. I sold him the "Musical Instrument, Steinway, Kit #20B," and he became a Grand Piano. In two weeks, he had forgotten all of his past worries about the upper plate and spent most of his time trying to get himself tuned.

Of course, there were a few dissatisfied users. One man who became a Baked Potato ("Goober Kit #44C") was always complaining because the hunks of butter he put on top of his head wouldn't melt.

I mention these details about the kits because, in spite of their acknowledged affectiveness, the public did not respond to the idea, and I still happen to have a few dozen assorted kits on hand. I would welcome correspondence from any enterprising party interested in their purchase. Wholesalers invited. No triflers.

A Word Of Warning

These few case histories, although only scratching the surface, have, I hope, given you an indicaion of the quantity and quality of the Personality Problems afecting people today. By "people I don't mean other people. These problems can and may effect you!

*At the Neuropathologists' Convention in 1948 a Dr. Carl Gassoway insisted on submitting a paper in which he said that the medulla oblongata was the most important part of the central nervous system. There is nothing to be said for this idiotic statement.

**Patented 280 B.C. by V. Anaxius, Athens, Greece. No. VXXIILVXIV. Later reports that the spine was discovered by a Russian named Molochev were politically inspired and entirely false.

*A fictitious name used to protect real identity of patient.

* There were twelve in our family, and fifteen mouths to feed. There is an explanation for this but I have been asked not to give it.

** When my good friend and one of our most able Congressmen, the Honorable Hummon Clabbercutt, recently inserted this theory in the "Congressional Record" he received an avalanche of mail, all of which was highly favorable (with the exception of thirty-six threatening and rather vulgar telegrams that stated that the sender, a Dr. Carl Gassoway, was starting a petition for Representative Clabbercutt's recall. These messages were turned over to the FBI.

***I only sold one of these Bob Hope Kits. It was quite a few years ago, and I was surprised to make the sale because at that time there was no such person as Bob Hope. However, the kit worked so well that the buyer, a young tap dancer named Lester some-thing-or-other, went on the radio and became Bob Hope. An interesting sidelight.

Figure I * In anatomy class we had lady instructors.

Figure II Normal Elbow Elbow Stuck In Mustard Jar (French Medium Dark)

Figure III Sectional Drawing of Average Male Head

Figure IV Average Female Head

Figure V Female Nervous System

Figure VI Patient Before Surgery

Figure VII Patient After Schwine-Kitzenger Operation

Figure VIII Cousin Stanley At Birth

Figure IX Stanley At The Age Of 25 Months

Figure X Sister Thelma Today