Family Weekly October 29, 1961
ness of the mind. They were the new owners of a
simple secret which, had they known about it ear
lier, might have eliminated their need for a doctor.
The windmills and dikes they spoke of so know
ingly are a comparison I use to give troubled peo
ple an idea of what probably has gone wrong in
side them, what they themselves may have done
to cause it, and what they can do to correct it
Almost everyone knows that windmills and dikes
are the main types of control which people in The
Netherlands use to keep water from flooding their ,
country. But to make sure, I point out that a wind
mill doesn't just decorate romantic landscapes. It
is a form of water pump that also is used on many
American farms, especially in the prairie states.
Windmills need constant attention and work.
You always have to expend energy to keep
them in repair. If they break down, their owners
may be in serious trouble. That in itself is a worry.
But there is no such strain or anxiety with a
dike. Build a dike right the first time and, except
for having to inspect it occasionally, your worries
about being flooded are over. You can relax and
enjoy life, because besides holding back the raging
waters the dike permits you to lay out orderly
canals. Along those canals, at your command, the
waters flow peacefully.
Now apply these two defense systems to your
emotions. We all know that, if left uncontrolled
like the sea, emotions can swamp us. So our first
object is to get them under control. If the kind of
control we choose, however, is a flock of wind
mills, we And ourselves caught up in a frenzy of
effort to make sure our defense system doesn't
break down. The measure may work, but to keep
it working takes a lot out of us in nervous energy.
The constant strain makes us so edgy we "could
scream." In time it may actually make us sick.
Instead of windmills, therefore, I try to get trou
bled patients to see the benefit of building perma
nent dikes for their emotions. They are agreeably
surprised when like the housewife and the teen
ager they find that as the dike goes up, quiet
canals for draining off emotional surpluses begin
to take the place of turbulence. With a little prac
tice, these patients are soon deepening their
canals and using them, like people of The Nether
lands, to add something positive to their lives.
What happens here is the opposite of what oc
curs in psychosomatic illness. There you have ac
tual bodily disorders arising from emotional con
flicts which the patient buries deep inside himself,
either without realizing it or by means of energy
wasting "windmills."
For A close-up of how emotions can hurt us phys
ically, take anger. This is the emotion hardest
to deal with in our civilized society. Say that, for
the sake of appearances, you choose not to get
angry. Unfortunately, the energy that would have
become anger doesn't just evaporate. If not dis
charged in some way, it turns inward. This is so
because when you are angry, certain other phe
nomena occur besides the feeling of anger, such
as muscle tension and higher blood pressure. Blood
pressure, if kept elevated, thickens artery walls
and makes them stay thick. Soon we have chronic
hypertension, a key factor in heart attacks.
What can we do to direct our emotions so that
they help us instead of hurting us?
The first thing is to accept those emotions with
out false shame or guilt. You can acquire the
ability to do that by reminding yourself that anger,
for example, is normal. In that way you will over
come the need to repress your emotions. The sim
ple fact that you are no longer denying they exist
will, in turn, enable you to find ways of discharg
ing these feelings and of preserving mental health.
Specifically, there are three constructive ways of
discharging your emotions:
1. Play in the right way, and do it regularly.
2. Work in the right way, and don't overdo it
3. Make friends in the right way, and remem
ber that others, too, have emotional problems for
which they may not yet have learned the secret
of dikes and canals.
In everyday life, we can keep our emotions from
either bottling up to hurt us or running wild to
hurt others by making regular, sensible, conscious
use of play. At least 90 percent of play is aggres
sive and involves hitting something: golf, tennis,
ping pong, hunting, fishing you name it In play
we work off our feelings of hostility, frustration,
and anger by hitting something inanimate instead
of a fellow human being.
It doesn't seem to make too much difference
whether we channel the outlet for our emotions
into play actively or passively. When we get riled
up at a ball game and yell, "Kill the ump!" we
enjoy the activity more for having done so. The
excitement of people watching a boxing match is
a classic example of how even spectator sports
provide us with orderly canals for draining off ex
cess antagonism.
Work, too, can supply us with healthy channels
for discharging emotions if we bear in mind that
up to a point, which will be different for everyone,
work by its very nature is competitive. We are
constantly striving to do a better job than the next
fellow and earn more money than we really need
because it shows how much more talented and
aggressive we are.
Up to a point, work done in that spirit can be
healthy. When it becomes an obsession, however,
when we resent weekends because they interfere
with getting on with the job, when we grow bored
with relaxing in the bosom of our family, then v
work is a curse. We are overdoing it. We are on
the brink of trouble unless we can find a breath
er for ourselves in athletics or in a totally differ
ent, preferably unremunerative, kind of work like
mowing the lawn or laying a patio in easy stages.
Women, too, need relief from the frustrations of
their day. What wife and mother isn't constantly
battling something? Household dirt is an endless
frustration. Washing, mending, cooking, and car
ing for often-quarrelsome children can become a
torturous routine.
A family will have only themselves to blame if
they do not see to it that Mother gets relief be
fore the "blowup." This may take the form of a
golf-club membership, swimming at the shore, or
nothing more elaborate than a $2.50 badminton set
for the back yard. The thing that counts is making
sure Mother gets time off for play and then ac
tually plays.
All of us need to take positive emotional-discharge
measures if we hope to achieve anything
like true over-all fitness. This means 1) develop
ing and using canals of the right kind of play and
work to siphon off the accumulated antagonisms
of each day, and 2) providing in that way the
"something extra" of improved muscle tone. Com
bined, these two spell health.
So endowed, each of us is infinitely better
equipped to make friends because we have dis
covered how to resolve the welter of hostilities
inside ourselves that interferes with friendship.
We can keep friends in spite of the frictions that
inevitably arise because we now understand the
mechanism behind those frictions and can make
allowances for it. We can be better neighbors in
spite of the tensions we suffer because we have
faced up to the truth about our emotional selves
and found it not frightening, not undignified, not
shameful, but simply part of being human.
We have faced it, and found it manageable. And
from our success we see, to our amazement and
delight, that others, too, have taken heart
Emotions
This article should not be misinterpreted
as suggesting that each of us is his own best
physician. Today the average person faced
with emotional difficulties has at his com
mand an arsenal of highly trained medical
talent to aid and direct his recovery. He
should use it. This arsenal includes:
1. Hi psychiatrist, who is a medical
doctor with years of specialized training in
afflictions of the mind to round out his com
plete knowledge of the body and its processes;
2. Th psychoanalyst, also a physician,
is a specialist within psychiatry who by en
couraging the patient to delve into his past
life seeks to bring to light the hidden causes
of mental disturbances, and so to effect a
lasting cure;
3. Tha psychologist, who is not a medi
cal doctor but whose long studies of mental
1 Science
function and human motivation enable him
to guide normal minds to the fullest develop
ment of their capacities, and to aid in the
recovery of mental health by those who can
not manage the ordinary tensions of ex
istence unless they get help.
In addition, as physicians, the psychiatrist
and psychoanalyst have access to a remark
able new array of medications which make it
easier for the person in need of help to
cooperate with and benefit from those who
are trained to give it.
My sole purpose in recommending the
building of dikes and canals to control emo
tions constructively is a preventive one. For,
in the last analysis, mental health begins and
ends in the patient himself. It is his to culti
vate or to neglect. May these words help to
reduce neglect among all who read them.
Family Weekly. October 29, 1MI
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