insignificant message from the subconscious becomes a
distressing and alarming symptom. The person whose mental ear is
strained to catch every little creaking of his internal machinery can
always hear some kind of rumble. If he deliberately lowers his
thresholds to the whole class of stimuli pertaining to himself, there
is small wonder that they sweep over the boundaries into consciousness
with irresistible force.

=The Motives for Sensitiveness.= Sensitiveness is largely a matter of
choice, but what determines choice? Why is it that one person chooses
altruism as the master threshold that determines the level of all the
others, while another person who ought to be equally fine lowers his
thresholds only to himself? What makes a person too interested in his
own sensations and feelings? As usual there is a cause.

The real cause back of most cases of chronic sensitiveness is an
abnormal desire for attention. Sometimes this love of attention arises
from an under-developed instinct of self-assertion, or "inferiority
complex." If there is a sense of inadequacy, a feeling of not being so
important as other people, a person is quite likely to over-compensate
by making himself seem important to himself and to others in the only
way he knows. All unconsciously he develops an extreme sensitiveness
which somehow heightens his self-regard by making him believe himself
finely and delicately organized, and by securing the notice of his
associates.

Or, again, the love of attention may be simply a sign of arrested
development, a fixation of the Narcissistic period of childhood which
loves to look at itself and make the world look. Or there may be lack
of satisfaction of the normal adult love-life, a lack of the love and
attention which the love-instinct naturally craves. If this instinct
is not getting normal outlet, either directly through personal
relationships or indirectly through a sublimated activity, what is
more natural than that it should turn in on itself, dissociate its
interest in other things and occupy itself with its own feelings, and
at the same time secure the coveted attention through physical
disability, with its necessity for special ministration?

In any case there is likely to develop a general overreaction to all
outside stimulation, a hypersensitiveness to some particular kind of
stimulus, or a chronic hysterical pain which somehow serves the
personality in ways unknown to itself. No one "feels his feeling