Evening star., 1941-11-20
Of Stars, Men
And Atoms
Notebook Of Science Progress
In Laboratory. Field
And Study
By Thomas r. Henry.

1
: ington are trying to keep out OF the
Army small group of men in whose
ranks are some of the foremost business
executives, authors, artists and musicians
in the United States.
In the same group are some Of the
worst scoundrels in American life.
If they are inducted, and the United
States goes to war some OF them may
get Congressional Medals of Honor.
/ But, says the William A. White Psy-
chiatric Foundation, such heroes may
be incredibly expensive. The president
OF the foundation. DR.. Harry Stack
Sullivan, is psychiatric advisor to the
Selective Service headquarters
The bad bets are divided into two
groups and the average representative
of either might impress a Draft Board
! physician as ideal material
First are the 'psychopathic personali-
ties" who, says the foundation, ARE
wholly disqualified from any form of
| national serviCe-by reason in essence,
| of a defect of personal reality and
corresponding inability to apprehend the
| reality OF others, to be explained as
| failure to develop those aspects of per-
| sonality which make possible an orderly
/ social life with others.
Because they are often Of at least
average intelligence. these folk COM
/ monty use language at least as skllfully
! as do people harrassed with the necessity
of real and relatively durable co-opera-
| ton with others. What is convenient at
the moment becomes automatically true,
to them. They take people in not so
much by design as because their defect
permits the past to seem almost any
thing it would have been to further the
qualification of whatever impulse the
immediate situation calls out. The facts
are that these people are at best only
accidentally useful to others, and that
they usually are serious detriment TO
those who are in contact with them
They are in other words. pathological
liarS-the fellows who usually make
good impression on an employer when
they apply for a job and fail miserably
once they are at work.
The foundation is composed OF doc
tors. They look upon the psychopathic
personality as an unfortunate. in need
of medical attention. But. as DR.. Sulli-
van stresses III conversation. they don't
ike him. Most laymen do. To the
pSychlatrist. he is a person suffering from
foul disease. In the Army he Is
likely to be picked as a non-com by
officers unable 10 delve under his super
fetal aspects.
Quite different is the story Of the
second personality group whose men,
bers the psychiatrists say. should be
looked over very carefully. They are the
"schizoidS" described as persons who
suffer handicap by primary reason of
extreme preoccupation with personal
reality and that of others Early expe
rience has produced in these folks an
extreme SenSitivity to others. arising
from a basic conviction that the person
himself is below par with those with
whom it is imperative that he get along,
or against whom it comes eternally to be
necessary TO protect himself
These schizoid people may show
themselves in their behavior as any
thing from ruthless and unprincipled
'Supermen' to pathetically incompetent
blundererS who seem fated to defeat
any kindly attention to their welfare.
| The ruthless, unprincipled personality
has evolved out OF an extremity of
misery. 1t is not a group of traits man
ifest from infancy onward. 1t is
remedy that has been found for un
bearable pain: enthusiastically different
from the quasi-personality of the psyco-
path which is mere mirroring of
eXpediency.
The helpless the shiftless. the vague.
the wistful and all the other distress
ingly incompetent schizoids are people
who have progressed some distance along
the road to growth by Specialization. but
who have had to abandon the realiza-
ton of equal responsibility and dignity.
They may have come to shield their
tenuous Self-respect with all too trans
parently wish-fulflling illusions about
themselves and their potentialities.
They may have evolved extremely fam
tastic delusions as to their personal
merits and power"
The schizoids, the foundation holds,
are good emergency soldiers but very
poor material for extended campaigns.
With dust of ages forming countless
clouds about them so thick they could
work only while wearing flltering masks
Smithsonian Institution archeologist
and a group of Mexican laborers have
just completed excavation of four caves
in the mountains of Coahuila, Northern
Mexico. where they recovered skeletons
and artifactS of a strange race of cave
men who found refuge there several
thousand years ago.
Traces of this curious people, whose
! culture was one of the most primitive
yet found in the New World, were dis
covered several years ago by DR.. Frank
| H. Stezler, curator of anthropology of
| the United States National Museum, in
mountain caves of the Texas Big Bend
country.
Their bones showed that they were
an exceptionally long gheaded people,
perhaps an early offshoot of the South
western basketmakers. They were food
| gatherers and hunters. There were no
traces of even the beginnings Of agri-
| culture. pottery or domestic animals.
The object this year of Walter Taylor,
Smithsonian collaboration, was to trace
the southward extension Of this people
into the Mexican mountains. In the
| caves where excavations were carried out,
as well as in 10 other sites examined
|