Atlanta tri-weekly journal. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1920-19??, 1921-08-04
THOSE WHO GOSSIP
By H. Addington Bruce
THAT those who gossip are not n
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T\1AT those who gossip are not mere
ly malicious-minded persons, but
persons of diseased mind, is the as
sertion recently and emphatically made by
certain public officials whose duties bring
them into fairly frequent contact with scan
dal-mongers and slanderers. Says one such
official; E. C. B. Jenkins, secretary to the
Chicago board of police commissioners
"The neighborhood gossip and the anony-
nous letter writer suffer from one of the
! nastiest, lowest and most vicious forms of in
sanity known to medical circles.
'Their distorted imagination visualizes
scenes which they would have come true, and
their insane mind Immediately grasps the
story and they repeat it as if it were true"
This last statement undoubtedly describes
correctly, if somewhat over-concisely, the
mechanism by which gossip is set in motion.
And, undoubtedly, to gossip outrageously is
in many cases a symptom of brain disease.
Mattoidism is the name which long ago was
given to this particular mental malady.
Yet, in all fairness to gossips, it must be
said that, after all, one may gossip, even Cos
sip extraordinarily, without actually being a
victim of mattoidism In fact what a tend
ency to gossip usually shows is nothing more
serious than a neurotic inability or unWill-
ingness to face unpleasant facts as regards
ones self.
If circumstances do away with these facts,
then the tendency to gossip may itself die
away. IT, however, the unpleasant facts per-
sist, so is the gossiping likely to persist, and
may gradually involve a transition from
mere neuroticism to outright insanity.
Though, at any time before this transition
is quite accomplished, possibilities of self
cure are available to the gossip, provided
only that enlightenment be gained as to the
true cause of the gossiping.
The gossip must recognize, more specific
ally, that the people he gossips about are
or seem to him, more advantageously condi-
toned in life than he. They are perhaps
Weather, perhaps healthier, perhaps better
situated socially, perhaps better educated,
perhaps happier At all events, for one rea-
son or another they give him a CALLING sense
of inferiority.
1t would be comfortable to be rid of this
feeling. One way to be rid of it is, first, to
wish the envieL ones would behave in fash
ion stamping them with inferiority them
selves. From the wish that they would be-
have in an inferior way is but step to the
belief that they do thus behave.
Gossip about them promptly follows, if
from no other motive than to persuade the
world of the gossip's intrinsic superiority to
those he gossips about. Though there is al
ways the further and more urgent motive of
helping the gossip himself to feel superior.
The cure, manifestly, is first of all some
exceedingly frank self-study on the gossip's
part, as a preliminary to approaching the
personal shortcomings that need to be over
come At once should follow effort to over
come them.
When they are overcome-as they usually
can be-the desire for sef-protection
through gossip will be no longer felt, and
consequently the dangerous luxury of gossip
will no longer be INDUCED in.
Copyright, 1921, by The Associated News
papers.)