id conditions characterized by a restless, incoordinate activity
of the brain cells points to excess of the post-pituitary secretion as
the cause, or as one of the most important causes. The thyroid and the
adrenal medulla also exert their influence. But the strongest appears
to be the post-pituitary. Phobias, fears which obsess the mind,
anxiety neuroses, suspicions, hallucinations, delusions, nervousness,
all expressions of what we may sum up technically as the imaginative
state of mind, occur and occur frequently, associated with other
symptoms of posterior pituitary overactivity. Persons in whose make-up
it rules are more liable to imagine disturbances of their mentality,
or exhibit a well-developed imaginative streak. Normal states of
overactivity of the post-pituitary such as occur in some women during
the menstrual period and pregnancy, and in some men as part of the
endocrine cycle of their everyday lives, are accompanied by increase
in the susceptibility and vigor of the imagination. Whether the
feeding of excess post-pituitary would lead to a stimulation of the
tendency or ability to imagine is still to be decided. But it is
known that quieting the post-pituitary by various means will cause
a depression of the faculty, and eliminate its pathologic
manifestations.

Psychologists distinguish between the constructive imagination that
expresses itself in an ordered activity and the unbalanced fancies
of the fearful neurotic for example. The post-pituitary confers the
lability of the underlying state of brain in all of these imaginative
tincturings of consciousness. The constructive imagination, one of the
few truly precious gifts of a personality, is probably the expression
of a certain balanced activity of the ante-pituitary and the
post-pituitary.

MOODS AND THE ORGANIC OUTLOOK

The lability the post-pituitary confers upon the combinations of
perceptions and conceptions, grouped as the imagined, extends to
the ruling mood that may be spoken of as the organic outlook.
Post-pituitary in excess, without compensation or balancing by one or
some of the other endocrines, is associated with an instability of
mood and the organic outlook. Concomitant is a defective self-control.
Typically, one sees the effects in the mental abnormalities of women
during the premenstrual period. A number of them have their pituitary
balance upset then, with an overtopping of the ante-pituitary by the
post-pituitary. Irritability, a s