LIBRARY
PSYCHOLOGY
AND
SOCIAL SANITY
BOOKS BY HUGO MUNSTERBERG
Psychology and Life, Boston, 1899
Grundziige der Psychologic, Leipzig, 1900
American Traits, Boston, 1902
Die Amerikaner, Berlin, 1904
The Americans, New York, 1904
Principles of Art Education, New York, 1905
The Eternal Life, Boston, 1905
Science and Idealism, Boston, 1906
Philosophic der Werte, Leipzig, 1907
On the Witness Stand, New York, 1908
Aus Deutsch Amerika, Berlin, 1908
The Eternal Values, Boston, 1909
Psychotherapy, New York, 1909
Psychology and the Teacher, New York, 1910
American Problems, New York, 1910
Psychologic und Wirtschaftsleben, Berlin, 1912
Vocation and Learning, St. Louis, 1912
Psychology and Industrial Efficiency, Boston, 1913
American Patriotism, New York, 1913
Grundziige der Psychotechnik, Leipzig, 1914
Psychology and Social Sanity, New York, 1914
PSYCHOLOGY AND
SOCIAL SANITY
BY
HUGO MUNSTERBERG
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & CO.
GARDEN CITY NEW YORK
1914
Copyright, 1914, by
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
All rights reserved, including that of
translation into foreign languages,
including the Scandinavian
To
DR. I. ADLER
IN FRIENDSHIP
PREFACE
It has always seemed to me a particular duty of the
psychologist from time to time to leave his laboratory
and with his little contribution to serve the outside
interests of the community. Our practical life is filled
with psychological problems which have to be solved
somehow*, and if everything is left to commonsense and
to unscientific fancies about the mind, confusion must
result, and the psychologist who stands aloof will be
to blame.
Hence I tried in my little book "On the Witness
Stand" to discuss for those interested in law the value
of exact psychology for the problems of the courtroom.
In "Psychotherapy" I showed the bearing of a
scientific study of the mind on medicine. In "Psy-
chology and the Teacher" I outlined its consequences
for educational problems. In "Psychology and In-
dustrial Efficiency" I studied the importance of exact
psychology for commerce and industry. And I con-
tinue this series by the present little volume, which
speaks of psychology's possible service to social sanity.
vii
PREFACE
I cannot promise that even this will be the last, as I
have not yet touched on psychology's relation to re-
ligion, to art, and to politics.
The field which I have approached this time de-
manded a different kind of treatment from that in the
earlier books. There I had aimed at a certain syste-
matic completeness. When we come to the social
questions, such a method would be misleading, as any
systematic study of these psychological factors is still
a hope for the future. Many parts of the field have
never yet been touched by the plow of the psychologist.
The only method which seems possible to-day is to
select a few characteristic topics of social discussion and
to outline for each of them in what sense a psychologist
might contribute to the solution or might at least fur-
ther the analysis of the problem. The aim is to show
that our social difficulties are ultimately dependent
upon mental conditions which ought to be cleared up
with the methods of modern pyschology.
I selected as illustrations those social questions which
seemed to me most significant for our period. A few
of them admitted an approach with experimental
methods, others merely a dissection of the psychological
and psychophysiological roots. The problems of sex,
of socialism, and of superstition seemed to me especially
PREFACE
important, and if some may blame me for overlooking
the problem of suffrage, I can at least refer to the chap-
ter on the jury, which comes quite near to this militant
question.
Most of this material appears here for the first time.
The chapter on thought transference, however, was
published in shorter form in the Metropolitan Magazine,
that on the jury, also abbreviated, in the Century Mag-
azine, and that on naive psychology in the Atlantic
Monthly. The paper on sexual education is an argu-
ment, and at the same time an answer in a vivid dis-
cussion. Last summer I published in the New York
Times an article which dealt with the sex problem. It
led to vehement attacks from all over the country.
The present long paper replies to them fully. I hope
sincerely that it will be my last word in the matter.
The advocates of sexual talk now have the floor; from
now on I shall stick to the one policy in which I firmly
believe, the policy of silence.
HUGO MUNSTERBERQ.
Cambridge, Mass., January, 1914.
CONTENTS
MOB
PREFACE vii
CHAPTER
I. SEX EDUCATION 3
II. SOCIALISM 71
HI. THE INTELLECTUAL UNDERWORLD .... 113
IV. THOUGHT TRANSFERENCE , 141
V. THE MIND OF THE JURYMAN 181
VI. EFFICIENCY ON THE FARM 205
VII. SOCIAL SINS IN ADVERTISING 229
VJLLL. THE MIND OF THE INVESTOR 253
IX. SOCIETY AND THE DANCE 273
X. NAIVE PSYCHOLOGY , 291
PSYCHOLOGY
AND
SOCIAL SANITY
I
SEX EDUCATION
THE time is not long past when the social question
was understood to mean essentially the question of the
distribution of profit and wages. The feeling was that
everything would be all right in our society, if this great
problem of labour and property could be solved rightly.
But in recent years the chief meaning of the phrase has
shifted. Of all the social questions the predominant,
the fundamentally social one, seems nowadays the
problem of sex, with all its side issues of social evils and
social vice. It is as if society feels instinctively that
these problems touch still deeper layers of the social
structure. Even the fights about socialism and the
whole capitalistic order do not any longer stir the con-
science of the community so strongly as the grave con-
cern about the family. All public life is penetrated by
sexual discussions, magazines and newspapers are over-
flooded with considerations of the sexual problem, on
the stage one play of sexual reform is pushed off by the
[3]
PSYCHOLOGY AND SOCIAL SANITY , x
next, the pulpit resounds with sermons on sex, sex
education enters into the schools, legislatures and
courts are drawn into this whirl of sexualized public
opinion; the old-fashioned policy of silence has been
crushed by a policy of thundering outcry, which is
heard in every home and every nursery. This loud-
ness of debate is surely an effect of the horror with
which the appalling misery around us is suddenly
discovered. All which was hidden by prudery is dis-
closed in its viciousness, and this outburst of indig-
nation is the result. Yet it would never have swollen
to this overwhelming flood if the nation were not con-
vinced that this is the only way to cause a better-
ment and a new hope. The evil was the result of the
silence itself. Free speech and public discussion alone
can remove the misery and cleanse the social lif e. The
parents must know, and the teachers must know, and
the boys must know, and the girls must know, if the
abhorrent ills are ever to be removed.
But there are two elements in the situation which
ought to be separated in sober thought. There may be
agreement on the one and yet disagreement on the
other. It is hardly possible to disagree on the one fac-
tor of the situation, the existence of horrid calamities,
and of deplorable abuses in the world of sex, evils of
[4]
SEX EDUCATION
which surely the average person knew rather little, and
which were systematically hidden from society, and
above all, from the youth, by the traditional method of
reticence. To recognize these abscesses in the social
organism necessarily means for every decent being the
sincere and enthusiastic hope of removing them. There
cannot be any dissent. It is a holy war, if society
fights for clean living, for protection of its children
against sexual rum and treacherous diseases, against
white slavery and the poisoning of married life. But
while there must be perfect agreement about the moral
duty of the social community, there can be the widest
disagreement about the right method of carrying on this
fight. The popular view of the day is distinctly that
as these evils were hidden from sight by the policy of
silence, the right method of removing them from the
world must be the opposite scheme, the policy of un-
veiled speech. The overwhelming majority has come to
this conclusion as if it were a matter of course. The
man on the street, and what is more surprising, the wo-
man in the home, are convinced that, if we disapprove
of those evils, we must first of all condemn the silence
of our forefathers. They feel as if he who sticks to the
belief in silence must necessarily help the enemies of
society, and become responsible for the alarming in-
15]
PSYCHOLOGY AND SOCIAL SANITY
crease of sexual affliction and crime. They refuse to
see that on the one side the existing facts and the burn-
ing need for their removal, and on the other side the
question of the best method and best plan for the fight,
are entirely distinct, and that the highest intention for
social reform may go together with the deepest convic-
tion that the popular method of the present day is
doing incalculable harm, is utterly wrong, and is one of
the most dangerous causes of that evil which it hopes to
destroy.
The psychologist, I am convinced, must here stand
on the unpopular side. To be sure, he is not unac-
customed to such an unfortunate position in the camp
of the disfavoured minority. Whenever a great move-
ment sweeps through the civilized world, it generally
starts from the recognition of a great social wrong and
from the enthusiasm for a thorough change. But these
wrongs, whether they have political or social, economic
or moral character, are always the products of both
physical and psychical causes. The public thinks first of
all of the physical ones. There are railroad accidents:
therefore improve the physical technique of the signal
system; there is drunkenness: therefore remove the
whiskey bottle. The psychical element is by no means
ignored.' Yet it is treated as if mere insight into the
[6]
SEX EDUCATION
cause, mere good will and understanding, are sufficient
to take care of the mental factors involved. The social
reformers are therefore always discussing the existing
miseries, the possibilities of improvements in the world
of things, and the necessity of spreading knowledge and
enthusiasm. They do not ask the advice of the psychol-
ogist, but only his jubilant approval, and they always
feel surprised if he has to acknowledge that there seems
to him something wrong in the calculation. The psy-
chologist knows that the mental elements cannot be
brought under such a simple formula according to which
good will and insight are sufficient; he knows that the
mental mechanism which is at work there has its own
complicated laws, which must be considered with the
same care for detail as those technical schemes for im-
provement. The psychologist is not astonished that
though the technical improvements of the railways are
increased, yet one serious accident follows another, as long
as no one gives attention to the study of the engineer's
mind. Nor is he surprised that while the area of pro-
hibition is expanding rapidly, the consumption of beer
and whiskey is nevertheless growing still more quickly,
as long as the psychology of the drinker is neglected.
The trusts and the labour movements, immigration and
the race question, the peace movement and a score of
[7]
PSYCHOLOGY AND SOCIAL SANITY
other social problems show exactly the same picture
everywhere insight into old evils, everywhere enthu-
siasm for new goals, everywhere attention to outside
factors, and everywhere negligence of those functions
of the mind which are independent of the mere will of
the individual.
But now since a new great wave of discussion has
arisen, and the sexual problem is stirring the nation,
the psychologist's faith in the unpopular policy puts
him into an especially difficult position. Whenever he
brings from his psychological studies arguments which
point to the errors in public prejudices, he can present
his facts in full array. Nothing hinders him from speak-
ing with earnestness against the follies of hasty and
short-sighted methods in every concern of public life,
if he has the courage to oppose the fancies of the day.
But the fight in favour of the policy of silence is dif-
ferent. If he begins to shout his arguments, he him-
self breaks that role of silence which he recommends.
He speaks for a conviction, which demands from him
first of all that he shall not speak. The more eagerly
he spreads his science, the more he must put himself
in the wrong before his own conscience. He is thus
thrown into an unavoidable conflict. If he is silent,
the cause of his opponents will prosper, and if he ob-
[8]
SEX EDUCATION
jects with full arguments, his adversaries have a per-
fect right to claim that he himself sets a poor example
and that his psychology helps still more to increase that
noisy discussion which he denounces as ruinous to the
community. But hi this contradictory situation the
circle must be broken somewhere, and even at the risk
of adding to the dangerous tumult which he condemns,
the psychologist must break his silence in order to plead
for silence. I shall have to go into all the obnoxious
detail, for if I yielded to my feeling of disgust, my ret-
icence would not help the cause while all others are
shouting. I break silence in order to convince others
that if they were silent, too, our common social hopes
and wishes would be nearer to actual fulfilment.
But let us acknowledge from the start that we stand
before an extremely complicated question, in which no
routine formula can do justice to the manifoldness of
problems. Most of these discussions are misshaped
from the beginning by the effort to deal with the whole
social sex problem, while only one or another feature is
seriously considered. Now it is white slavery, and
now the venereal diseases; now the demands of eu-
genics, and now the dissipation of boys; now the in-
fluence of literature and drama, and now the effect of
sexual education in home and school; now the medical
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PSYCHOLOGY AND SOCIAL SANITY
situation and the demands of hygiene, and now the
moral situation and the demands of religion; now the
influence on the feministic movement, and now on art
and social life; now the situation in the educated middle
classes, and now in the life of the millions. We ought
to disentangle the various threads in this confusing
social tissue and follow each by itself. We shall see
soon enough that not only the various elements of the
situation awake very different demands, but that often
any single feature may lead to social postulates which
interfere with each other. Any regulation prescription
falsifies the picture of the true needs of the time.
II
We certainly follow the present trend of the discus-
sion if we single out first of all the care for the girls who
are in danger of becoming victims of private or profes-
sional misuse as the result of their ignorance of the
world of erotics. This type of alarming news most
often reaches the imagination of the newspaper reader
nowadays, and this is the appeal of the most sensational
plays. The spectre of the white slavery danger threat-
ens the whole nation, and the gigantic number of ille-
gitimate births seems fit to shake the most indifferent
citizen. Every naive girl appears a possible victim
flOl
SEX EDUCATION
of man's lust, and all seem to agree that every girl
should be acquainted with the treacherous dangers
which threaten her chastity. The new programme
along this line centres in one remedy: the girls of all
classes ought to be informed about the real conditions
before they have an opportunity to come into any
bodily contact with men. How far the school is to
spread this helpful knowledge, how far the wisdom of
parents is to fill these blanks of information, how far
serious literature is to furnish such science, and how
far the stage or even the film is to bring it to the masses,
remains a secondary feature of the scheme, however
much it is discussed among the social reformers.
The whole new wisdom proceeds according to the
simple principle which has proved its value in the field
of popular hygiene. The health of the nation has in-
deed been greatly improved since the alarming ignor-
ance in the matters of prophylaxis in disease has been
systematically fought by popular information. If the
mosquito or the hookworm or the fly is responsible for
diseases from which hundreds of thousands have to suf-
fer, there can be no wiser and straighter policy than to
spread this knowledge to every corner of the country.
The teachers in the schoolroom and the writers in the
popular magazines cannot do better than to repeat the
[11]
PSYCHOLOGY AND SOCIAL SANITY
message, until every adult and every child knows where
the enemy may be found and helps to destroy the in-
sects and to avoid the dangers of contact. This is the
formula after which those reformers want to work who
hold the old-fashioned policy of silence in sexual mat-
ters to be obsolete. Of course they aim toward a mild
beginning. It may start with beautiful descriptions of
blossoms and of fruits, of eggs and of hens, before it
comes to the account of sexual intercourse and human
embryos, but if the talking is to have any effect supe-
rior to not talking, the concrete sexual relations must
be impressed upon the imagination of the girl before
she becomes sixteen years of age.
Here is the real place for the psychological objection.
It is not true that you can bring such sexual knowledge
into the mind of a girl in the period of her development
with the same detachment with which you can deposit
in her mind the knowledge about mosquitoes and house-
flies. That prophylactic information concerning the
influence of the insects on diseases remains an isolated
group of ideas, which has no other influence on the mind
than the intended one, the influence of guiding the
actions in a reasonable direction. The information
about her sexual organs and the effects on the sexual
organism of men may also have as one of its results a
[12]
SEX EDUCATION
certain theoretical willingness to avoid social dangers.
But the far stronger immediate effect is the psycho-
physiological reverberation in the whole youthful or-
ganism with strong reactions on its blood vessels and
on its nerves. The individual differences are extremely
great here. On every social level we find cool natures
whose frigidity would inhibit strong influences in these
organic directions. But they are the girls who have
least to fear anyhow. With a much larger number the
information, however slowly and tactfully imparted,
must mean a breaking down of inhibitions which held
sexual feelings and sexual curiosity in check.
The new ideas become the centre of attention, the
whole world begins to appear in a new light, everything
which was harmless becomes full of meaning and sug-
gestion, new problems awake, and the new ideas irra-
diate over the whole mental mechanism. The new
problems again demand their answers. Just the type
of girl to whom the lure might become dangerous will be
pushed to ever new inquiries, and if the policy of infor-
mation is accepted in principle, it would be only wise
to furnish her with all the supplementary knowledge
which covers the multitude of sexual perversions and
social malpractices of which to-day many a clean mar-
ried woman has not the faintest idea. But to such a
[13]
PSYCHOLOGY AND SOCIAL SANITY
girl who knows all, the surroundings appear in the new
glamour. She understands now how her body is the
object of desire, she learns to feel her power, and all this
works backward on her sexual irritation, which soon
overaccentuates everything which stands in relation to
sex. Soon she lives in an atmosphere of high sexual
tension in which the sound and healthy interests of a
young life have to suffer by the hysterical emphasis on
sexuality. The Freudian psychoanalysis, which threat-
ens to become the fad of the American neurologists,
probably goes too far when it seeks the cause for all
neurasthenic and hysteric disturbances in repressed
sexual ideas of youth. But no psychotherapist can
doubt that the havoc which secret sexual thoughts
may bring to the neural life, especially of the unbal-
anced, is tremendous. Broken health and a distorted
view of the social world with an unsound, unclean, and
ultimately immoral emphasis on the sexual relations may
thus be the sad result for millions of girls, whose girl-
hood under the policy of the past would have remained
untainted by the sordid ideas of man as an animal.
Yet the calamity would not be so threatening if the
effect of sexual instruction were really confined to the
putrid influence on the young imagination. The real
outcome is not only such a revolution in the thoughts,
114]
SEX EDUCATION
but the power which it gains over action. We have
only to consider the mechanism which nature has pro-
vided. The sexual desire belongs to the same group of
human instincts as the desire for food or the desire for
sleep, all of which aim toward a certain biological end,
which must be fulfilled in order to secure life. The
desire for food and sleep serves the individual himself,
the desire for the sexual act serves the race. In every
one of these cases nature has furnished the body with a
wonderful psychophysical mechanism which enforces
the outcome automatically. In every case we have a
kind of circulatory process into which mental excite-
ments and physiological changes enter, and these are
so subtly related to each other that one always in-
creases the other, until the maximum desire is reached,
to which the will must surrender. Nature needs this
automatic function; otherwise the vital needs of in-
dividual and race might be suppressed by other inter-
ests, and neglected. In the case of the sexual instinct,
the mutual relations between the various parts of this
circulatory process are especially complicated. Here
it must be sufficient to say that the idea of sexual pro-
cesses produces dilation of blood vessels in the sexual
sphere, and that this physiological change itself becomes
the source and stimulus for more vivid sexual feelings,
[15]
PSYCHOLOGY AND SOCIAL SANITY
which associate themselves with more complex sexual
thoughts. These in their turn reinforce again the
physiological effect on the sexual organ, and so the play
goes on until the irritation of the whole sexual appara-
tus and the corresponding sexual mental emotions reach
a height at which the desire for satisfaction becomes
stronger than any ordinary motives of sober reason.
This is the great trick of nature in its incessant ser-
vice to the conservation of the animd race. Mono-
gamic civilization strives to regulate and organize these
race instincts and to raise culture above the mere lure
of nature. But that surely cannot be done by merely
ignoring that automatic mechanism of nature. On the
contrary, the first demand of civilization must be to
make use of this inborn psychophysical apparatus for its
own ideal human purposes, and to adjust the social
behaviour most delicately to the unchangeable mech-
anism. The first demand, accordingly, ought to be
that we excite no one of these mutually reinforcing
parts of the system, neither the organs nor the thoughts
nor the feelings, as each one would heighten the activi-
ties of the others, and would thus become the starting
point of an irrepressible demand for sexual satisfac-
tion. The average boy or girl cannot give theoretical
attention to the thoughts concerning sexuality without
[16]
SEX EDUCATION
the whole mechanism for reinforcement automatically
entering into action. We may instruct with the best
intention to suppress, and yet our instruction itself
must become a source of stimulation, which neces-
sarily creates the desire for improper conduct. The
policy of silence showed an instinctive understanding of
this fundamental situation. Even if that traditional
policy had had no positive purpose, its negative func-
tion, its leaving at rest the explosive sexual system of the
youth, must be acknowledged as one of those wonderful
instinctive procedures by which society protects itself.
The reformer might object that he gives not only
information, but depicts the dangers and warns against
the ruinous effects. He evidently fancies that such a
black frame around the luring picture will be a strong