The Art of Helping People Out of Trouble/Chapter 2
Nature and the Soul expressed—America and freedom expressed—In it the finest art,
In it pride, cleanliness, sympathy, to have their chance,
In it physique, intellect, faith—in it just as much as to manage an army or a city, or to write a book—perhaps more,
The youth, the laboring person, the poor person, rivalling all the rest—perhaps outdoing the rest,
The effects of the universe no greater than it;
For there is nothing in the whole universe that can be more effective than a man's or woman's daily behavior can be,
In any position, in any one of these States.
Greatest of all the arts, living is also the most exacting in its demands upon its practitioners. It delights in crises. It chooses its own times and seasons, considering neither the convenience nor the preparedness of its followers. It may present itself in some instant dilemma or it may develop its problems so gradually that one does not realize that an adjustment is at hand. It appears characteristically in the sort of cumulative sequences that seem to pile difficulty upon difficulty, giving rise to the saying that troubles never come singly. Age, youth, wealth, experience—none of these does it spare or respect. It compels the attention and the energy of all mankind.
It is the most exacting of the arts, but it is not beyond mastery. Men have achieved it, are achieving it constantly. Rare is he who has not a fundamental capacity to adjust himself to life. When a man fails where his neighbors succeed, when under substantially the same economic and physical conditions and in the same crisis he falls into trouble which they avoid, it is not necessarily because he lacks the ability to achieve. It may be because he is prevented from using the powers with which he has been endowed. He is blocked; he is handicapped; he is not free. He is bound by habits, emotions, fears, prejudices, superstitions. He is thwarted by those with whom he is intimately associated in work or in pleasure, even by his friends, by the members of his family. He is thrust into trouble as was the little girl whose teacher said of her:
"If Martha is learning anything I don't know it. She never answers any questions. She never has anything to say in class. She just sits and looks."
So stupid did Martha appear to be that until an examination at a psychological clinic showed that she was of sound mind, it was thought that she might possibly be feeble-minded. The difficulty had its chief cause in the behavior of the child's mother.
Martha's parents had wanted their first born to be a boy. That the baby should have been a girl was a great disappointment, and when a son came as their next child, Martha was thrust into the second place. Harry was given precedence in everything. Reproach was always her portion. She was continually being compared with her brother to her own disadvantage.
She would hear her mother tell visitors:
"Martha is stupid, but Harry is bright. Why, Harry even has to help Martha with her lessons."
If it was suggested that Martha run an errand, her mother would say:
"Oh, Martha can't do that. I'll have Harry do it."
When an operation to remove adenoids was prescribed for Martha, her mother exclaimed in her presence:
"Martha will never go to the hospital. She'll just cry. I'll never get her to go."
On another occasion the child was obliged to listen to this comment upon her character:
"When Martha gets a nickel, she keeps it to herself. Harry buys candy and gives it to the other children. But not Martha. You wouldn't catch her giving anything away. She's sort of sly."
Is it surprising that Martha should have been silent in school? Ever since she had been able to remember, her every effort at self-expression had been discouraged before it had had so much as a chance to start. Daily she was being told that she was an inferior person, that she was capable of nothing, and that she amounted to nothing. She was bound as effectively as if she had been in chains. She was shut up within herself by the very person who should have fostered her development. She was not free to adjust herself to life.
Only after the mother had been shown the part she was playing in her daughter's unhappiness did the child begin to receive the opportunities she needed. A changed atmosphere at home and special attention in school released her from her handicaps and stimulated her in the use of her abilities. Not many months had passed before the mother herself said:
"There's the greatest difference in Martha. She's a changed girl."
It is seldom that trouble is so exclusively due to the limitations which people place around an individual. Usually it is brought about by a combination of restrictions from without and inhibitions within. This is illustrated by the difficulty which Stuart Weston found in making one of the most common adjustments, the adjustment to sickness.
His disease was tuberculosis. He had been ill for three years. Most people in such a predicament follow the advice of a physician and take the cure at a sanatorium. This Weston did not do. Despite the urging of his friends and his medical advisors, he remained at home, working intermittently, as his health permitted. Gradually he grew weaker. His family also suffered. At the end of three years his wife was showing the strain of having his invalidism added to the care of five boys and girls. Two of the children had developed symptoms suggestive of tuberculosis, and discouragement had settled down over the whole family.
The causes of this failure to make the adjustment to sickness lay partly with Weston and partly with the people and things about him. He had been prejudiced against the State Sanatorium by false reports of how its patients suffered from neglect. A young woman who had lived across the street from his home had gone there and died. Weston thought he might meet the same fate. He was afraid, also, that if he should go to the sanatorium, his mother-in-law would see to it that there would be no home awaiting him when he returned. He and his mother-in-law had never been able to endure each other. If he was self-sufficient, self-reliant, and self-assertive, so too was she, and at every point they clashed. Weston suspected—perhaps not wholly without justification—that she would use his absence to induce his wife to come and live with her. This meant to him that Mrs. Weston, who lacked the force to resist so strong a will, would become a drudge at the boarding-house which her mother conducted, that the children would be placed in institutions, and that the life of the family would be broken.
Along with this fear was Weston's feeling that he was being overlooked. His pride was hurt by the attitude from which he thought people now regarded him. In the years when all was well, he had been the head of the household. He had made the decisions and his will had dominated every plan. Now that he was sick, those who had come to help him failed to consult him about his family. Conversation with him was limited to efforts to persuade him to enter the sanatorium. Gradually he came to feel that he was regarded only as something to be got rid of, a case to be sent away whether he wanted to go or not. His hurt feelings blocked his judgment. He was no longer free in thought or in action, and he remained at home.
The social worker who was asked to help recognized that here lay the heart of Weston's difficulty. She appreciated his desire to plan for himself and his family, and began at once to seek his advice at every step, bringing his wife into their discussions, so that his decisions were not solitary as they had been before his illness, but were made with Mrs. Weston participating. As soon as Weston realized that his opinion was being considered, and that he was once more a factor in the destinies of the household, he ceased to feel the pique which had been blocking his judgment. He could now think much more clearly about his disease and the appropriate treatment.
The fear that his mother-in-law would break up his home could be allayed only by assurances from the woman herself. These were procured by an appeal to her sympathies. Weston was explained to his mother-in-law. She was shown that the traits to which she objected were, after all, only the evidences of a strong character; that it was his very devotion to his family which kept him at home, and that his whole hope of recovery lay in his going away to the sanatorium in an easy frame of mind. The mother-in-law was persuaded at least to the point of neutrality, and, indeed, a little beyond, for she helped in the preparations for Weston's journey.
Meanwhile, Weston's prejudice against the State Sanatorium had been met by efforts to arrange for his admission to another institution. While the attempt was unsuccessful, it showed Weston that he was not being forced to go where he did not wish to go; and when it was suggested that in the absence of any other place he make a trial of the State Sanatorium, with the understanding that if he did not like it he should return, he went quite willingly. It is a long-established principle of human nature that to say "you must" when a man says "I won't" only makes his "no" the firmer, while to set him free to do as he pleases dissipates his opposition and releases his energies for a wise decision.
Even more difficult than the adjustment which the sick person must make to his illness is that which is often involved for the other members of the household. Certainly, this was true of the problem with which Mrs. Slater was confronted. Following an attack of influenza, her husband had found it difficult to recover his strength. He could not summon his energies in the way that for the past few years had made him a valuable and trusted workman. He left a steady job and began wandering about the country. Sometimes he sent money to his family. Sometimes he did not. Sometimes he wrote home and sometimes he forgot to do so. Finally he consulted a physician who returned paresis as the diagnosis. The prognosis was a slow mental deterioration that would finally leave him wholly irresponsible.
Mrs. Slater could not accept this fact. She would not believe that her husband's illness was serious or that he was not a competent human being. She continued to expect him to be the person he had been and to play his usual part in the family life. When he failed to do so, she showed a resentment that occasionally expressed itself in a sharp and exacting attitude toward Mr. Slater as guilty of desertion and non-support, but more often in a bitterness toward other people and in a struggle for the rehabilitation of her husband that took her attention from homeand children.
This failure to adjust herself to her husband's illness was chiefly due to her unwillingness to face the disappointment that the acceptance of it involved. Mrs. Slater came of an industrious, orderly, hard-working stock, thrifty, steady, home-abiding people to whom the unusual seldom happened. Mr. Slater was her great adventure. He swept into her life with a picturesqueness and a glibness that thrilled and fascinated her. His had been a vagabond youth, spent chiefly at the races where he knew the bookmakers as well as the horses. He was all that Mrs. Slater's family was not; careless about money, ready to trust everything to chance, and a most interesting person. Mrs. Slater sensed a certain dubiousness in the attitude of her relatives and became engaged without having confided her love affair to any one.
Within a year after her wedding, it became evident that she had married a dissipated fellow who was given to drunken sprees and who could not be depended upon to provide for himself and his family. Frequently during a period of six or seven years she was obliged to seek shelter with her parents for him and the children. She felt his failure keenly, and her pride forbade her the relief that she might have had by unburdening herself to her mother.
Then there came a great change in Mr. Slater. He awoke from one of his sprees to a sense of sin. He was converted from his old ways. He joined a rescue mission, and for four years he was a man to be pointed out as an example. This was the happiest time in Mrs. Slater's married life. She could now be proud of her husband. He was the successful head of his family, a steady workman, and a leader in the church. Her judgment in marrying him was vindicated.
It was this period of happiness that the development of paresis brought to a close. Mrs. Slater could not believe that it was the end. She had only just become accustomed to prosperity. She had participated vicariously in her husband's achievements. Her romance had come true. That it must all cease was too terrible to think about. She could not adjust herself to the new situation. She was too beclouded with emotion to face the facts.
Yet it was precisely this which she must do if she was to be of any use to herself or to her husband or to the children. The social case worker whom she consulted began a work of interpretation that continued for months. She prepared Mrs. Slater for the doctor's report that it was paresis, not influenza, which was affecting Mr. Slater. She explained the course which the disease might be expected to take and how it might affect his behavior. When Mrs. Slater insisted that the pain which her husband suffered after the use of salvarsan indicated that the doctors did not know anything about his trouble, the experiences of other people were cited as proof that this was the frequent consequence of these treatments. When Mr. Slater in a sudden flash of energy enjoyed a brief prosperity, the social worker kept in touch with Mrs. Slater so that she could prepare her for the ultimate collapse. Always what had been foretold about the disease took place, until Mrs. Slater began to perceive what was inevitable.
She had lost her husband. He could no longer be the source of interest and inspiration which, despite his weaknesses, he had always been to her; but there were the children, which in the struggle of the past months she had neglected. Here was a means of renewal and strength. Could she discover in the care of them an outlet for the energy which had been going into the vain attempt to prove that her husband was a normal man, she might achieve a measure, at least, of happiness. An opportunity was found for her to spend a day or two a week as a mother's helper in a family where she might observe what child training can mean. This gave her a new vision, while the fact that she was appreciated by her employer brought her assurance and confidence for the meeting of her own problems. Gradually the hope that she had built upon her husband's recovery was transferred to an interest in the education of her children and the making of her adjustment had been begun.
The principles involved in the solution of Mrs. Slater's problem were fundamentally the same as those underlying the treatment of the difficulties of Weston and of the little girl who was silent in school. Each one of these persons was blocked by fears and inhibitions of various kinds. They were stopped from the free use of their energies. They needed to be released from the cramping influence of unfavorable associates and of their own emotions. For the little girl this was accomplished by giving her greater opportunity for self-expression in school and by helping her mother to understand her. For Weston it was done by sympathetically interpreting him to his mother-in-law and by enabling him to return to a larger self-determination both in the making of plans for the family and in the selection of the place in which he would try to overcome his disease. For Mrs. Slater it was achieved by assisting her to face the dreaded fact of her husband's mental condition, and by finding for her in the welfare of her children a new channel for activity.
The details of what was done for each of these persons varied, but the goal of the work was the same. Whatever processes are followed in helping a man out of trouble, whether or not they consist, as here, in interpreting people to each other and to themselves, in stimulating initiative and in opening opportunity for self-expression, they should all focus upon the task of releasing the individual from the misunderstandings, the inhibitions, and the restrictive influences that block his development, and of encouraging him always to a higher use of his abilities. To help a man in this way is to prepare him for the making of all his adjustments and to set him upon the road to the mastery of the art of living. Let life be ever so exacting, it yields itself to him who is free.