WITHOUT A PERSONALITY.

Press, Volume LXI, Issue 18362, 21 April 1925, Page 2

WITHOUT A PERSONALITY.

—* - THE PRESSURE OF LIFE.

A coroner has just declared that after holding inquests by hundreds on such cases, the cause of the action of unfortunate suicides seems to become more mysterious than ever, writes . a correspondent in the London 'Chronicle." He was dealing with the oa,se of the poor young woman dispenser at a London hospital, who, with good employment, congenial work, and witn years of practical experience behind her, took her life, to the amazement of her associates. In a letter found in her handbag she wrote: "I cannot bear life any longer; it is too cruel. . . • The blame is entirely mine. I was born without a personality." O. It is strange how, on the edge oi death, a woman can illuminate the mystery of life by a vivid sentence that flares up like a sudden light in. black darkness. By a generous convention, which has lost its utility, we record a verdict of "Suicide while of unsound mind," but those sentences quoted above were writen itn a moment of profound) wisdoni. There are people without personality, and life can become to them a dreaded and unbearable tyranny. To be without personality i.-j to stanJ up to life like a scarecrow that fall.; before a heightened wind. It is to be bereft of a will to face difficulty. It is to be frightened at the least diversion from the ordinary routine pt existence andi to imagine that one lias no connexion with things as they are. The result is an inescapable feeling that one is, as the French say, "aux abois avec neant" —at bay with nothingness/ My own professional experience teaches me that between 20 and 30 ai» the danger years, and that parents and friends should exert all vigilance in that trying passage in the voyage of life.

With the insight of genius. Itudyard Kipling wrote of "the half-collapse" that seta in about 22 in the case of young men who, aware of life as a reality for the first time, shrink from its Vague and darkening terrors. Younfe women suffer from the same realisation, but in a worsened form, because when Nature's claims remain; unsatisfied as the years pass, a terrible sense of loneliness and isolation hardens li'ket a wall of ice ' imprisoning the submerged. The mrdical superintendent of s. great mental hospital once told me, during an official inspection, that the explanation of the mental collapse of many was because their resistance to the pressure of life was unequal to the str.iin. They managed to struggle on under the sheltering care of others, but when left to themselves reason shuddered and lost its sway. Hence, this fresh lesson of the. case of the young woman dispenser should lie pondered. The opening years of independent lifo are becoming increasingly trying. . The times are out. of joint and the strain bears hardly on. the young. Thev must be encouraged to link up as many associations and interests aa are within reach. And, older folk, do not think the youny "are old enough to bft left to themselves." For to be left to oneself is to be in danger.