XXXVI
THE POWER OF SUGGESTION
Among my acquaintances is a woman who has a pretty little flapper daughter. The girl is a good little girl, as playful and innocent as a kitten. But she bobs her hair, and paints her face, and rouges her lips, and likes to jazz, and joy-ride, and have a good time just as thousands of other girls of her age and class are doing. All this greatly outrages the mother, who tells her daughter that, in her day, decent girls didn’t paint their faces, or shimmy, and that they stayed at home evenings and read good books, instead of running around with japanned-haired boys. And then she winds up her preachment by accusing her daughter of doing things which she does not do, and prophesying that she will come to a bad end. Of course, it is mother love and mother anxiety that makes this woman keep continually before the girl’s eyes the fate of those who follow the road of pleasure. It never enters her head that she may be precipitating on her child the catastrophe she dreads, but that is precisely what she is doing.
She is making the girl feel that she is sophisticated and worldly-wise—one of the wild, wild women. She is giving the flavor of forbidden fruit to what would otherwise be harmless little amusements. She is making the girl reckless, because she is making her believe that she is under suspicion and is being talked about. Worst of all, she is firmly implanting in the girl’s mind the idea that she is expected to go wrong.
And if anything in the world will put the skids under a girl, it is for her own mother to be continually impressing upon her that she is a wrong ’un.
When you observe the dealings of parents with their children the thing at which you wonder most is that fathers and mothers never seem to realize the power of suggestion. Yet it is one of the most potent forces in the world, and one that can be directed with almost uncanny results to the molding and shaping of the characters of the young. It is hardly too much to say that as the parents think, so are the children. It is the fixed idea the parents stamp indelibly on the plastic childish mind which determines the fate in life of the man or woman.
You can, for instance, take a delicate child and literally “think” it into health or sickness. If the mother keeps the child forever reminded it can’t do what other children do because of its poor heart, it can’t eat this or that because of its bad digestion, and that it mustn’t be crossed because it is so nervous,—that child will grow up into a neurotic invalid. But if the mother impresses on it the thought that it is getting well, and is going to be strong and healthy, unless there is something radically organically wrong, it will overcome the weakness with which it was seemingly threatened.
All of us have seen people actually bring upon themselves diseases they believed they had inherited. They had had it impressed on them from their infancy that they were bound to die of consumption because all the Smiths had tuberculosis. Or, that they were doomed to perish with cancer, because cancer was in the Jones family. Or, to have rheumatism because the Simkins were all rheumatic, and they died of what they believed to be inherited diseases that science has proved not to be inheritable.
It is tragic to think how many parents have killed the children they loved by putting the death thought upon them, and by making them believe that they were doomed, and that there was no use in their trying to be strong and well. It is still more tragic to think of the millions of people who are failures in the world because their fathers and mothers have sapped their courage, and slain their initiative by implanting in their minds the conviction that they were dolts and had not the ability to succeed.
Once establish the inferiority complex in a child’s mind, and it is done for. It accepts the belief that it has no ability to do things, and it attempts nothing. It makes no struggle to rise. It slumps into the humble position its parents have assigned it. This is why perpetual fault-finding with a child intensifies its faults. To nag Johnny continually about his awkwardness, makes him still more awkward. To be forever calling attention to Tom’s shyness, makes him shrink more and more out of sight. To fret at Bob’s dulness, makes him feel that there is no hope for a boy who isn’t quick and alert. Many men never have the courage to demand their just deserts and take the place to which they are entitled in business and society because they were made self-conscious in their childhood. They had it so impressed on their minds that they were blundering louts, and stupid fools, that they shrank within themselves, and never had the nerve to push their fortunes.
And just as you can make a child a failure by holding the thought of its inferiority before it, you can do much to make it a success by holding the thought of achievement before it. We unconsciously strive to be what the people about us expect of us. If Jimmie knows that he has a reputation for beautiful manners, he will act as a gentleman. If Tom knows you expect him to make a mark at school or in business, he will try to make good. If Mary knows you do not think it possible for her to be anything but sweet and innocent, she is not likely to tarnish your ideal.
The power of suggestion is so far reaching in its influence that fathers and mothers should be careful how they use it, and avoid implanting a weak thought, an evil thought, a thought of failure in their children’s minds as they would avoid giving them poison.