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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Outwitting Our Nerves
+by Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Outwitting Our Nerves
+       A Primer of Psychotherapy
+
+Author: Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury
+
+Release Date: February 8, 2005 [EBook #14980]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OUTWITTING OUR NERVES ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Rick Niles, Ronald Holder and the PG Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+OUTWITTING OUR
+NERVES
+
+A PRIMER OF PSYCHOTHERAPY
+
+BY
+
+JOSEPHINE A. JACKSON, M.D.
+HELEN M. SALISBURY
+
+[Illustration]
+
+NEW YORK
+THE CENTURY CO.
+1922
+
+1921, by
+THE CENTURY CO.
+
+PRINTED IN U.S.A.
+
+
+
+
+TO
+
+MARY PATTERSON MANLY
+
+A LOVER OF TRUTH
+
+
+
+
+FOREWORD
+
+
+"Your trouble is nervous. There is nothing we can cut out and there is
+nothing we can give medicine for." With these words a young college
+student was dismissed from one of our great diagnostic clinics.
+
+The physician was right. In a nervous disorder there is nothing to cut
+out and there is nothing to give medicine for. Nevertheless there is
+something to be done,--something which is as definite and scientific
+as a prescription or a surgical operation.
+
+Psychotherapy, which is treatment by the mental measures of
+psycho-analysis and re-education, is an established procedure in the
+scientific world to-day. Nervous disorders are now curable, as has
+been proved by the clinical results in scores of cases from civil
+life, under treatment by Freud, Janet, Prince, Sidis, DuBois, and
+others; and in thousands of cases of war neuroses as reported by Smith
+and Pear, Eder, MacCurdy, and other military observers. These army
+experts have shown that shell-shock in war is the same as nervousness
+in civil life and that both may be cured by psycho-analysis and
+re-education.
+
+For more than a decade, in handling nervous cases, I have made use of
+the findings of recognized authorities on psychopathology. Truths have
+been applied in a special way, with the features of re-education so
+emphasized that my home has been called a psychological
+boarding-school. As the alumni have gone back to the game of life
+with no haunting memories of usual sanatorium methods, but with the
+equipment of a fuller self-knowledge and sense of power, they have
+sent back a call for some word that shall extend this helpful message
+to a larger circle.
+
+There has come, too, a demand for a book which shall give accurate and
+up-to-date information to those physicians who are eager for light on
+the subject of nervous disorders, and especially for knowledge of the
+significant contributions of Sigmund Freud, but who are too busy to
+devote time to highly technical volumes outside their own specialties.
+
+This need for a simple, comprehensive presentation of the Freudian
+principles I have attempted to meet in this primer of psychotherapy,
+providing enough of biological and psychological background to make
+them intelligible, and enough application and illustration to make
+them useful to the general practitioner or the average layman.
+
+JOSEPHINE A. JACKSON.
+
+Pasadena, California, 1921.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+PART I: THE STRANGE WAYS OF NERVES
+
+CHAPTER I
+                                                     PAGE
+
+In which most of us plead guilty to the charge of "nerves."
+
+NERVOUS FOLK      3
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+In which we learn what "nerves" are not and get a hint of
+what they are.
+
+THE DRAMA OF NERVES      10
+
+
+PART II: "HOW THE WHEELS GO ROUND"
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+In which we find a goodly inheritance.
+
+THE STORY OF THE INSTINCTS      33
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+In which we learn more about ourselves.
+
+THE STORY OF THE INSTINCTS (Continued)      51
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+In which we look below the surface and discover a veritable
+wonderland.
+
+THE SUBCONSCIOUS MIND      77
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+In which we learn why it pays to be cheerful.
+
+BODY AND MIND     118
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+In which we go to the root of the matter.
+
+THE REAL TROUBLE      141
+
+
+PART III: THE MASTERY OF "NERVES"
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+In which we pick up the clue.
+
+THE WAY OUT      183
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+In which we discover new stores of energy and relearn the
+truth about fatigue.
+
+THAT TIRED FEELING      219
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+In which the ban is lifted.
+
+DIETARY TABOOS      250
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+In which we learn an old trick.
+
+THE BUGABOO OF CONSTIPATION      278
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+In which handicaps are dropped.
+
+A WOMAN'S ILLS      300
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+In which we lose our dread of night.
+
+THAT INTERESTING INSOMNIA      322
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+In which we raise our thresholds.
+
+FEELING OUR FEELINGS      333
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+In which we learn discrimination.
+
+CHOOSING OUR EMOTIONS      359
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+In which we find new use for our steam.
+
+FINDING VENT IN SUBLIMATION      379
+
+GLOSSARY      386
+
+BIBLIOGRAPHY      390
+
+INDEX      393
+
+
+
+
+OUTWITTING OUR NERVES
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+_In Which Most of Us Plead Guilty to the Charge of "Nerves."_
+
+NERVOUS FOLK
+
+WHO'S WHO
+
+
+Whenever the subject of "nerves" is mentioned most people begin trying
+to prove an alibi. The man who is nervous and knows that he is
+nervous, realizes that he needs help, but the man who has as yet felt
+no lack of stability in himself is quite likely to be impatient with
+that whole class of people who are liable to nervous breakdown. It is
+therefore well to remind ourselves at once that the line between the
+so-called "normal" and the nervous is an exceedingly fine one.
+"Nervous invalids and well people are indistinguishable both in theory
+and in practice,"[1] and "after all we are most of us more or less
+neurasthenic."[2] The fact is that everybody is a possible neurotic.
+
+[Footnote 1: Putnam: _Human Motives_, p. 117.]
+
+[Footnote 2: DuBois: _Physic Treatment of Nervous Disorders_, p. 172.]
+
+So, as we think about nervous folk and begin to recognize our friends
+and relatives in this class, it may be that some of us will
+unexpectedly find ourselves looking in the mirror. Some of our
+lifelong habits may turn out to be nervous tricks. At any rate, it
+behooves us to be careful about throwing stones, for most of us live
+in houses that are at least part glass.
+
+
+THE EARMARKS
+
+=Am I "Like Folks"?= Before we begin to talk about the real sufferer
+from "nerves," the nervous invalid, let us look for some of the
+earmarks that are often found on the supposedly well person. All of
+these signs are deviations from the normal and are sure indications of
+nervousness. The test question for each individual is this: "Am I
+'like folks'?" To be normal and to be well is to be "like folks." Can
+the average man stand this or that? If he can, then you are not normal
+if you cannot. Do the people around you eat the thing that upsets you?
+If they do, ten chances to one your trouble is not a physical
+idiosyncrasy, but a nervous habit. In bodily matters, at least, it is
+a good thing to be one of the crowd.
+
+Many people who would resent being called anything but normal--in
+general--are not at all loth to be thought "different," when it comes
+to particulars. Are there not many of us who are at small pains to
+hide the fact that we "didn't sleep a wink last night," or that we
+"can't stand" a ticking clock or a crowing rooster? We sometimes
+consider it a mark of distinction to have a delicate appetite and to
+have to choose our food with care. If we are frank with ourselves,
+some of us will have to admit that our own ailments seem interesting,
+while the other person's ills are "merely nervous" or imaginary or
+abnormal. After all, a good many of us will have to plead guilty to
+the charge of nervousness.
+
+We have only to read the endless advertisements of cathartics and
+"internal baths," or to check up the quantity of laxatives sold at any
+drug store, to realize the wide-spread bondage to that great bugaboo
+constipation. He who is constipated can hardly prove an alibi to
+"nerves." Then there are the school-teachers and others who are worn
+out at the end of each year's work, hardly able to hold on until
+vacation; and the people who can't manage their tempers; and those who
+are upset over trifles; and those who are dissatisfied with life. To a
+certain degree, at least, all of these are nervous persons. The list
+grows.
+
+=Half-Power Engines.= These people are all supposed to be well. They
+keep going--by fits and starts--and as they are used to running on
+three cylinders, with frequent stops for repairs, they accept this
+rate of living as a matter of course, never realizing that they might
+be sixty horse-power engines, instead of their little thirty or forty.
+For this large and neglected class of people psychotherapy has a
+stimulating message, and for them many of the following pages have
+been written.
+
+=The Real Sufferers.= These so-called normal people are merely on the
+fringe of nervousness, on the border line between normality and
+disease. Beyond them there exists a great company of those whose lives
+have been literally wrecked by "nerves." Their work interrupted or
+given up for good, their minds harassed by doubts and fears, their
+bodies incapacitated, they crowd the sanatoria and the health resorts
+in a vain search for health. From New England to Florida they seek,
+and on to Colorado and California, and perhaps to Hawaii and the
+Orient, thinking by rest and change to pull themselves together and
+become whole again. There are thousands of these people--lawyers,
+preachers, teachers, mothers, social workers, business and
+professional folk of all sorts, the kind of persons the world needs
+most--laid off for months or years of treatment, on account of some
+kind of nervous disorder.
+
+=Various Types of Nervousness.= The psychoneuroses are of many
+forms.[3] To some people "nerves" means nervous prostration,
+breakdown, fatigue, weakness, insomnia, the blues, upset stomach, or
+unsteady heart,--all signs of so-called neurasthenia or
+nerve-weakness. To others the word "nerves" calls up memories of
+strange, emotional storms that seem to rise out of nowhere, to sweep
+the sky clear of everything else, and to pass as they came, leaving
+the victim and the family equally mystified as to their meaning. These
+strange alterations of personality are but one manifestation of
+hysteria, that myriad-faced disorder which is able to mimic so
+successfully the symptoms of almost every known disease, from tumors
+and fevers to paralysis and blindness.
+
+[Footnote 3: The technical term for nervousness is
+_psycho-neurosis_--disease of the psyche. There are certain "real
+neuroses" such as paralysis and spinal-cord disease, which involve an
+organic impairment of nerve-tissue. However, as this book deals only
+with psychic disturbance, we shall, throughout, use the term
+_neuroses_ and _psycho-neuroses_ indiscriminately, to denote nervous
+or functional disorders.]
+
+To still other people nervous trouble means fear,--just terrible fear
+without object or meaning or reason (anxiety neuroses); or a definite
+fear of some harmless object (phobia); or a strange, persistent,
+recurrent idea, quite foreign to the personality and beyond the reach
+of reason (obsession); or an insistent desire to perform some absurd
+act (compulsion); or perhaps, a deadly and pall-like depression (the
+blues).
+
+As a matter of fact, the neuroses include all these varieties, and
+various shades and combinations of each. There are, however, certain
+mental characteristics which recur with surprising regularity in most
+of the various phases--dissatisfaction, lack of confidence, a sense of
+being alone and shut in to oneself, doubt, anxiety, fear, worry,
+self-depreciation, lack of interest in outside affairs, pessimism,
+fixed belief in one's powerlessness, along whatever line it may be.
+
+Underneath all these differing forms of nervousness are the same
+mechanisms and the same kind of difficulty. To understand one is to
+understand all, and to understand normal people as well; for in the
+last analysis we are one and all built on the same lines and governed
+by the same laws. The only difference is, that, as Jung says, "the
+nervous person falls ill of the conflicts with which the well person
+battles successfully."
+
+
+SUMMARY
+
+Since at least seventy-five per cent. of all the people who apply to
+physicians for help are nervous patients; and since these thousands of
+patients are not among the mental incompetents, but are as a rule
+among the highly organized, conscientious folk who have most to
+contribute to the leadership of the world, it is obviously of vital
+importance to society that its citizens should be taught how to solve
+their inner conflicts and keep well. In this strategic period of
+reconstruction, the world that is being remodeled cannot afford to
+lose one leader because of an unnecessary breakdown.
+
+There is greater need than ever for people who can keep at their tasks
+without long enforced rests; people who can think deeply and
+continuously without brain-fag; people who can concentrate all their
+powers on the work in hand without wasting time or energy on
+unnecessary aches and pains; people whose bodies are kept up to the
+top notch of vitality by well-digested food, well-slept sleep,
+well-forgotten fatigue, and well-used reserve energy. That such a
+state of affairs is no Utopian dream, but is merely a matter of
+knowing how, will appear more clearly in later chapters.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+_In which we learn what "nerves" are not, and get a hint of what they
+are_
+
+THE DRAMA OF NERVES
+
+AN EXPLODED THEORY
+
+
+="Nerves" not Nerves.= Pick up any newspaper, turn over a few pages,
+and you will be sure to come to an advertisement something like this:
+
+    Tired man, your nerves are sick!
+    They need rest and a tonic to restore
+      their worn-out depleted cells!
+
+No wonder people have believed this kind of thing. It has been dinned
+into their ears for many years. They have read it with their breakfast
+coffee and gazed at it in the street cars and even heard it from their
+family physicians, until it has become part and parcel of their
+thinking; yet all the time the fundamental idea has been false, and
+now, at last, the theory is exploded.
+
+So far as the modern laboratory can discover, the nerves of the most
+confirmed neurotic are perfectly healthy. They are not starved, nor
+depleted, nor exhausted; the fat-sheath is not wanting, there is no
+inflammation, there is nothing lacking in the cell itself, and there
+is no accumulation of fatigue products. Paradoxical as it may sound,
+there is nothing the matter with a nervous person's nerves. The
+faithful messengers have borne the blame for so long that their name
+has gotten itself woven into the very language as symbolic of disease.
+When we speak of nervous prostration, neurasthenia, neuroses,
+nervousness, and "nerves" we mean that body and mind are behaving
+badly because of functional disorder. These terms are good enough as
+figures of speech, so long as we are not fooled by them; but accepting
+them in their literal sense has been a costly procedure.
+
+Thanks to the investigations of physiologist and psychologist, usually
+combined in the person of a physician, "nervousness" has been found to
+be not an organic disease but a functional one. This is a very
+important distinction, for an organic disease implies impairment of
+the tissues of the organ, while a functional disorder means only a
+disturbance of its action. In a purely nervous disorder there seems to
+be no trouble with what the nerves and organs are, but only with what
+they do; it is behavior and not tissue that is at fault. Of course, in
+real life, things are seldom as clear-cut as they are in books, and
+so it happens that often there is a combination of organic and
+functional disease that is puzzling even to a skilled diagnostician.
+The first essential is a diagnosis as to whether it be an organic
+disease, with accompanying nervous symptoms, or a functional
+disturbance complicated by some minor organic trouble. If the main
+cause is organic, only physical means can cure it, but if the trouble
+is functional, no amount of medicine or surgery, diet or rest, will
+touch it; yet the symptoms are so similar and the dividing line is so
+elusive, that great skill is sometimes required to determine whether a
+given symptom points to a disturbance of physical tissue or only to
+behavior.
+
+If the physician is sometimes fooled, how much more the sufferer
+himself! Nausea from a healthy stomach is just as sickening as nausea
+from a diseased one. A fainting-spell is equally uncomfortable,
+whether it come from an impaired heart or simply from one that is
+behaving badly for the moment. It must be remembered that in
+functional nervousness the trouble is very real. The organs are really
+"acting up." Sometimes it is the brain that misbehaves instead of the
+stomach or heart. In that case it often reports all kinds of pains
+that have no origin outside of the brain. Pain, of course, is
+perceived only by the brain. Cut the telegraph wire, the nerve, and no
+amount of injury to the finger can cause pain. It is equally true that
+a misbehaving brain can report sensations that have no external
+cause, that have not come in through the regular channel along the
+nerve. The pain feels just the same, is every bit as uncomfortable as
+though its cause were external.
+
+Sometimes, instead of reporting false pains, the brain misbehaves in
+other ways. It seems to lose its power to decide, to concentrate, or
+to remember. Then the patient is almost sure to fancy himself going
+insane. But insanity is a physical disease, implying changes or toxins
+in the brain cells. Functional disorders tell another story. Their
+cause is different, even though the picture they present is often a
+close copy of an organic disease.
+
+=Distorted Pictures.= It should not be thought, however, that the
+symptoms of functional and organic troubles are identical. Hysteria
+and neurasthenia closely simulate every imaginable physical disease,
+but they do not exactly parallel any one of them. It may take a
+skilled eye to discover the differences, but differences there are.
+Functional troubles usually show a near-picture of organic disease,
+with just enough contradictory or inconsistent features to furnish a
+clue as to their real nature. For this reason it is important that the
+treatment of the disease be solely the province of the physician; for
+only the carefully trained in all the requirements of diagnosis can
+differentiate the pseudo from the real, the innocuous from the
+disastrous.
+
+False or nervous neuritis may feel like real neuritis (the result of
+poisons in the blood), but it gives itself away when it localizes
+itself in parts of the body where there is no nerve trunk. The
+exhaustion of neurasthenia sometimes seems extreme enough to be the
+result of a dangerous physical condition; but when this exhaustion
+disappears as if by magic under the proper kind of treatment, we know
+that the trouble cannot be in the body. Let it be said, then, with all
+the emphasis we can command, "nerves" are not physical. Laboratory
+investigation, contradictory symptoms, and response to treatment all
+bear witness to this fact. Whatever symptoms of disturbance there may
+be in pure nervousness, the nerves and organs can in no way be shown
+to be diseased.
+
+
+THE POSITIVE SIDE
+
+="Nerves" not Imaginary.= "But," some one says, "how can healthy
+organs misbehave in this way? Something must be wrong. There must be
+some cause. If 'nerves' are not physical, what are they? They surely
+can't be imaginary." Most emphatically, they are real; nothing could
+be more maddening than to have some one suggest that our troubles are
+"mere imagination." No wonder such theories have been more popular
+with the patient's family than with the patient himself. Many years
+ago a physician put the whole truth into a few words: "The patient
+says, 'I cannot'; his friends say, 'He will not'; the doctor says, 'He
+cannot will.'" He tries, but in the circumstances he really cannot.
+
+=The Man behind the Body.= The trouble is real; the organs do "act
+up"; the nerves do carry the wrong messages. But the nerves are merely
+telegraph wires. They are not responsible for the messages that are
+given them to carry. Behind the wires is the operator, the man higher
+up, and upon him the responsibility falls. In functional troubles the
+body is working in a perfectly normal way, considering the perverted
+conditions. It is doing its work well, doing just what it is told,
+obeying its master. The troubles are not with the bodily machine but
+with the master. The man behind the body is in trouble and he really
+has no way of showing his pain except through his body. The trouble in
+nervous disorders is in the personality, the soul, the realm of ideas,
+and that is not your body, but _you_. Loss of appetite may mean either
+that the powers of the physical organism are busily engaged in
+combating some poison circulating in the blood, or that the ego is "up
+against" conditions for which it has "no stomach." Paralysis may be
+due to a hemorrhage into the brain tissues from a diseased blood
+vessel, or it may symbolize a sense of inadequacy and defeat.
+Exaggerated exhaustion, halting feet, stammering tongue, may give
+evidence of a disturbed ego rather than of a diseased brain.
+
+=All Body and no Mind.= At last we have begun to realize what we ought
+to have known all along,--that the body is not the whole man. The
+medical world for a long time has been in danger of forgetting or
+ignoring psychic suffering, while it has devoted itself to the
+treatment of physical disease.
+
+By way of condoning this fault it must be recognized that the five
+years of medical school have been all too short to learn what is
+needed of physiology and anatomy, histology, bacteriology, and the
+various other physical sciences. But at last the medical schools are
+realizing that they have been sending their graduates out only
+half-prepared--conversant with only one half of a patient, leaving
+them to fend for themselves in discovering the ways of the other half.
+Many an M.D. has gone a long way in this exploration. Native common
+sense, intuition, and careful study have enabled him to go beyond what
+he had learned in his text-books. But in the best universities the
+present-day student of medicine is now being given an insight into the
+ways of man as a whole--mind as well as body. The movement can hardly
+proceed too rapidly, and when it has had time to reach its goal, the
+day of the long-term sentence to nervousness will be past.
+
+In the meanwhile most physicians, lacking such knowledge and with the
+eye fixed largely on the body, have been pumping out the stomach,
+prescribing lengthy rest-cures, trying massage, diet, electricity, and
+surgical operations, in a vain attempt to cure a disease of the
+personality. Physical measures have been given a good trial, but few
+would contend that they have succeeded. Sometimes the patient has
+recovered--in time--but often, apparently, despite the treatment
+rather than because of it. Sometimes, in the hands of a man like Dr.
+S. Weir Mitchell, results seem good, until we realize that the same
+measures are ineffective when tried by other men, and that, after all,
+what has counted most has been the personality of the physician rather
+than his physical treatment.
+
+No wonder that most doctors have disliked nervous cases. To a man
+trained in all the exactness of the physical sciences, the apparent
+lawlessness and irresponsibility of the psychic side of the
+personality is especially repugnant. He is impatient of what he fails
+to comprehend.
+
+=All Mind and no Body.= This unsympathetic attitude, often only half
+conscious on the part of the regular practitioners, has led many
+thousands of people to follow will-o'-the-wisp cults, which pay no
+attention to the findings of science, but which emphasize a
+realization of man's spiritual nature. Many of these cults, founded
+largely on untruth or half-falsehood, have succeeded in cases where
+careful science has failed. Despite fearful blunders and execrable
+lack of discrimination in attempting to cure all the ills that flesh
+is heir to by methods that apply only to functional troubles, ignorant
+enthusiasts and quacks have sometimes cured nervous troubles where the
+conscientious medical man has had to acknowledge defeat.
+
+=The Whole Man.= But thinking people are not willing to desert science
+for cults that ignore the existence of these physical bodies. If they
+have found it unsatisfactory to be treated as if they were all body,
+they have also been unwilling to be treated as if they were all mind.
+They have been in a dilemma between two half-truths, even if they have
+not realized the dilemma. It has remained for modern psychotherapy to
+strike the balance--to treat the whole man. Solidly planted on the
+rock of the physical sciences, with its laboratories, physiological
+and psychological, and with a long record of investigation and
+treatment of pathological cases, it resembles the mind cure of earlier
+days or the assertions of Christian Science about as much as modern
+medicine resembles the old bloodletting, leeching practices of our
+forefathers.
+
+For the last quarter-century there have been scattered groups of
+physicians,--brilliant, patient pioneers,--who, recognizing man as
+spirit inhabiting body, have explored the realm of man's mind and
+charted its paths. These pioneers, beginning with Charcot, have been
+men of acknowledged scientific training and spirit, whose word must be
+respected and whose success in treating functional troubles stands out
+in sharp contrast to the fumblings of the average practitioner in this
+field. The results of their work have been positive, not negative.
+They have not merely asserted that nervous disorders are not physical;
+they have discovered what the trouble is and have found it to be
+discoverable and removable in almost every case, provided only that
+the right method is used.
+
+=Ourselves and Our Bodies.= If the statement that "nervous troubles
+are neither physical nor imaginary but a disease of the personality,"
+sounds rather mystifying to the average person, it is only because the
+average person is not very conversant with his own inner life. We
+shall hope, later on, to find some definite guide-posts and landmarks
+which will help us feel more at home in this fascinating realm. At
+present, we are not attempting anything more than a suggestion of the
+itinerary which we shall follow. A book on physical hygiene can
+presuppose at least a rudimentary knowledge of heart and lungs and
+circulation, but a book on mental hygiene must begin at the beginning,
+and even before the beginning must clear away misconceptions and make
+clear certain fundamental principles. But the gist of the whole matter
+is this: in a neurosis, certain forces of the personality--instincts
+and their accompanying emotions--which ought to work harmoniously,
+having become tangled up with some erroneous ideas, have lost their
+power of coöperation and are working at cross purposes, leaving the
+individual mis-adapted to his environment, the prey of all sorts of
+mental and physical disturbances.
+
+The fact that the cause is mental while the result is often physical,
+should cause no surprise. In the physiological realm we are used to
+the idea that cause and effect are often widely separated. A headache
+may be caused by faulty eyes, or it may result from trouble in the
+intestines. In the same way, we should not be too much surprised if
+the cause of nervous troubles is found to be even more remote,
+provided there is some connecting link between cause and effect. The
+difficulty in this case is the apparent gulf between the realm of the
+spirit and the realm of the body. It is hard to see how an intangible
+thing like a thought can produce a pain in the arm or nausea in the
+stomach. Philosophers are still arguing concerning the nature of the
+relation between mind and body, but no one denies that the closest
+relation does exist. Every year science is learning that ideas count
+and that they count physically, as well as spiritually.
+
+=Such Stuff as "Nerves" are Made Of.= Dr. Tom A. Williams in the
+little composite volume "Psychotherapeutics" says that the neuroses
+are based not on inherently weak nervous constitutions but on
+ignorance and on false ideas. What, then, are some of these erroneous
+ideas, these misconceptions, that cause so much trouble? We shall want
+to examine them more carefully in later chapters, but we might glance
+now at a few examples of these popular bugaboos that need to be slain
+by the sword of cold, hard fact.
+
+=Popular Misconceptions about the Body.=
+
+1 "Eight hours' sleep is essential to health. All insomnia is
+dangerous and is incompatible with health. Nervous insomnia leads to
+shattered nerves and ultimately to insanity."
+
+2 "Overwork leads to nervous breakdown. Fatigue accumulates from day
+to day and necessitates a long rest for recuperation."
+
+3 "A carefully planned diet is essential to health, especially for the
+nervous person. A variety of food, eaten at the same time, is harmful.
+Acid and milk--for example, oranges and milk--are difficult to digest.
+Sour stomach is a sign of indigestion."
+
+4 "Modern life is so strenuous that our nerves cannot stand the
+strain."
+
+5 "Brain work is very fatiguing. It causes brain-fag and exhaustion."
+
+6 "Constipation is at the root of most physical ailments and is
+caused by eating the wrong kind of food."
+
+Some of these misconceptions are household words and are so all but
+universally believed that the thought that they can be challenged is
+enough to bewilder one. However, it is ideas like this that furnish
+the material out of which many a nervous trouble is made. Based on a
+half-knowledge of the human body, on logical conclusions from faulty
+premises, on hastily swallowed notions passed on from one person to
+another, they tend by the very power of an idea to work themselves out
+to fulfilment.
+
+
+THE POWER BEHIND IDEAS
+
+=Ideas Count.= Ideas are not the lifeless things they may appear. They
+are not merely intellectual property that can be locked up and ignored
+at will, nor are they playthings that can be taken up or discarded
+according to the caprice of the moment. Ideas work themselves into the
+very fiber of our being. They are part of us and they _do_ things. If
+they are true, in line with things as they are, they do things that
+are for our good, but if they are false, we often discover that they
+have an altogether unsuspected power for harm and are capable of
+astonishing results, results which have no apparent relation to the
+ideas responsible for them and which are, therefore, laid to physical
+causes. Thinking straight, then, becomes a hygienic as well as a
+moral duty.
+
+=Ideas and Emotions.= Ideas do not depend upon themselves for their
+driving-power. Life is not a cold intellectual process; it is a vivid
+experience, vibrant with feeling and emotion. It therefore happens
+that the experiences of life tend to bring ideas and emotions together
+and when an idea and an emotion get linked up together, they tend to
+stay together, especially if the emotion be intense or the experience
+is often repeated.
+
+The word emotion means outgoing motion, discharging force. This force
+is like live steam. An emotion is the driving part of an instinct. It
+is the dynamic force, the electric current which supplies the power
+for every thought and every action of a human life.
+
+Man is not a passive creature. The words that describe him are not
+passive words. Indeed, it is almost impossible to think about man at
+all except in terms of desire, impulse, purpose, action, energy. There
+are three things that may be done with energy: First, it may be
+frittered away, allowed to leak, to escape. Secondly, it may be locked
+up; this results usually in an explosion, a finding of destructive
+outlets. Finally, it may be harnessed, controlled, used in beneficent
+ways. Health and happiness depend upon which one of the three courses
+is taken.
+
+
+CHARACTER AND HEALTH
+
+Evidently, it is highly important to have a working knowledge of these
+emotions and instincts; important to know enough about them and their
+purpose to handle them rightly if they do not spontaneously work
+together for our best character and health. The problems of character
+and the problems of health so overlap that it is impossible to write a
+book about nervous disorders which does not at the same time deal with
+the principles of character-formation. The laws and mechanisms which
+govern the everyday life of the normal person are the same laws and
+mechanisms which make the nervous person ill. As Boris Sidis puts it,
+"The pathological is the normal out of place." The person who is
+master of himself, working together as a harmonious whole, is stronger
+in every way than the person whose forces are divided. Given a little
+self-knowledge, the nervous invalid often becomes one of the most
+successful members of society,--to use the word successful in the best
+sense.
+
+=It Pays to Know.= To be educated is to have the right idea and the
+right emotion in the right place. To be sure, some people have so well
+learned the secret of poise that they do not have to study the why nor
+the how. Intuition often far outruns knowledge. It would be foolish
+indeed to suggest that only the person versed in psychological lore is
+skilled in the art of living. Psychology is not life; it can make no
+claim to furnish the motive nor the power for successful living, for
+it is not faith, nor hope, nor love; but it tries to point the way and
+to help us fulfil conditions. There is no more reason why the average
+man should be unaware of the instincts or the subconscious mind, than
+that he should be ignorant of germs or of the need of fresh air.
+
+If it be argued that character and health are both inherently
+by-products of self-forgetful service, rather than of painstaking
+thought, we answer that this is true, but that there can be no
+self-forgetting when things have gone too far wrong. At such times it
+pays to look in, if we can do it intelligently, in order that we may
+the sooner get our eyes off ourselves and look out. The pursuit of
+self-knowledge is not a pleasurable pastime but simply a valuable
+means to an end.
+
+
+KNOWING OUR MACHINE
+
+=Counting on Ourselves.= Knowing our machine makes us better able to
+handle it. For, after all, each of us is, in many ways, very like a
+piece of marvelous and complicated machinery. For one thing, our
+minds, as well as our bodies, are subject to uniform laws upon which
+we can depend. We are not creatures of chaos; under certain conditions
+we can count on ourselves. Freedom does not mean freedom from the
+reign of law. It means that, to a certain extent, we can make use of
+the laws. Psychic laws are as susceptible to investigation,
+verification, and use as are any laws in the physical world. Each
+person is so much the center of his own life that it is very easy for
+him to fall into the way of thinking that he is different from all the
+rest of the world. It is a healthful experience for him to realize
+that every person he meets is made on the same principles, impelled by
+the same forces, and fighting much the same fight. Since the laws of
+the mental world are uniform, we can count on them as aids toward
+understanding other people and understanding ourselves.
+
+="Intelligent Scrutiny versus Morbid Introspection."= It helps
+wonderfully to be able to look at ourselves in an objective,
+impersonal way. We are likely to be overcome by emotion, or swept by
+vague longings which seem to have no meaning and which, just because
+they are bound up so closely with our own ego, are not looked at but
+are merely felt. Unknown forces are within us, pulling us this way and
+that, until sometimes we who should be masters are helpless slaves.
+One great help toward mastery and one long step toward serenity is a
+working-knowledge of the causes and an impersonal interest in the
+phenomena going on within. Introspection is a morbid, emotional
+fixation on self, until it takes on this quality of objectivity. What
+Cabot calls the "sin of impersonality" is a grievous sin when
+directed toward another person, but most of us could stand a good deal
+of ingrowing impersonality without any harm.
+
+The fact that the human machine can run itself without a hitch in the
+majority of cases is witness to its inherent tendency toward health.
+People were living and living well through all the centuries before
+the science of psychology was formulated. But not with all people do
+things run so smoothly. There were demoniacs in Bible times and
+neurotics in the Middle Ages, as there are nervous invalids and
+half-well people to-day. Psychology has a real contribution to make,
+and in recent years its lessons have been put into language which the
+average man can understand.
+
+Psychology is not merely interested in abstract terms with long names.
+It is no longer absorbed merely in states of consciousness taken
+separately and analyzed abstractly. The newer functional psychology is
+increasingly interested in the study of real persons, their purposes
+and interests, what they feel and value, and how they may learn to
+realize their highest aspirations. It is about ordinary people, as
+they think and act, in the kitchen, on the street cars, at the
+bargain-counter, people in crowds and alone, mothers and their babies,
+little children at play, young girls with their lovers, and all the
+rest of human life. It is the science of _you_, and as such it can
+hardly help being interesting.
+
+While psychology deals with such topics as the subconscious mind, the
+instincts, the laws of habit, and association of ideas and suggestion,
+it is after all not so much an academic as a practical question. These
+forces govern the thought you are thinking at this moment, the way you
+will feel a half-hour from now, the mood you will be in to-morrow, the
+friends you will make and the profession you will choose, besides
+having a large share in the health or ill-health of your body in the
+meantime.
+
+
+SUMMARY
+
+Perhaps it would be well before going farther to summarize what we
+have been saying. Here in a nutshell is the kernel of the subject:
+
+Disease may be caused by physical or by psychic forces. A "nervous"
+disorder is not a physical but a psychic disease. It is caused not by
+lack of energy but by misdirected energy; not by overwork or
+nerve-depletion, but by misconception, emotional conflict, repressed
+instincts, and buried memories. Seventy-five per cent. of all cases of
+ill-health are due to psychic causes, to disjointed thinking rather
+than to a disjointed spine. Wherefore, let us learn to think right.
+
+In outline form, the trouble in a neurosis may be stated something
+like this:
+
+Lack of adaptation to the social environment--caused by
+  Lack of harmony within the personality--caused by
+    Misdirected energy--caused by
+      Inappropriate emotions--caused by
+        Wrong ideas or ignorance.
+
+Working backward, the cure naturally would be:
+
+Right ideas--resulting in
+  Appropriate emotions--resulting in
+    Redirected energy--resulting in
+      Harmony--resulting in
+        Readjustment to the environment.
+
+If the reader is beginning to feel somewhat bewildered by these
+general statements, let him take heart. So far we have tried merely to
+suggest the outline of the whole problem, but we shall in the future
+be more specific. Nervous troubles, which seem so simple, are really
+involved with the whole mechanism of mental life and can in no way be
+understood except as these mechanisms are understood. We have hinted
+at some of the causes of "nerves," but we cannot give a real
+explanation until we explain the forces behind them. These forces may
+at first seem a bit abstract, or a bit remote from the main theme, but
+each is essential to the story of nerves and to the understanding of
+the more practical chapters in Part III.
+
+As in a Bernard Shaw play, the preface may be the most important part
+of this "drama of nerves." Nor is the figure too far-fetched,
+because, strange as it may seem, every neurosis is in essence a drama.
+It has its conflict, its villain, and its victim, its love-story, its
+practical joke, its climax, and its denouement. Sometimes the play
+goes on forever with no solution, but sometimes psychotherapy steps in
+as the fairy god-mother, to release the victim, outwit the villain,
+and bring about the live-happily-ever-after ending.
+
+
+
+
+PART II: "HOW THE WHEELS GO ROUND"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+_In which we find a goodly inheritance_
+
+THE STORY OF THE INSTINCTS
+
+EACH IN HIS OWN TONGUE
+
+    A fire mist and a planet,
+    A crystal and a cell,
+    A jelly-fish and a saurian,
+    And caves where cavemen dwell;
+    Then a sense of law and beauty,
+    And a face turned from the clod;
+    Some call it evolution
+    And others call it God.[4]
+
+
+If we begin at the beginning, we have to go back a long way to get our
+start, for the roots of our family tree reach back over millions of
+years. "In the beginning--God." These first words of the book of
+Genesis must be, in spirit at least, the first words of any discussion
+of life. We know now, however, that when God made man, He did not
+complete His masterpiece at one sitting, but instead devised a plan by
+which the onward urge within and the environment without should act
+and interact until from countless adaptations a human being was made.
+
+[Footnote 4: William Herbert Carruth.]
+
+As the late Dr. Putnam of Harvard University says, "We stand as the
+representative of a Creative Energy that expressed itself first in far
+simpler forms of life and finally in the form of human instincts."[5]
+And again: "The choices and decisions of the organisms whose lives
+prepared the way through eons of time for ours, present themselves to
+us as instincts."[6]
+
+[Footnote 5: Putnam: _Human Motives_, p. 32.]
+
+[Footnote 6: Putnam: _Human Motives_, p. 18.]
+
+
+INTRODUCING THE INSTINCTS
+
+=Back of Our Dispositions.= What is it that makes the baby jump at a
+noise? What energizes a man when you tell him he is a liar? What makes
+a young girl blush when you look at her, or a youth begin to take
+pains with his necktie? What makes men go to war or build tunnels or
+found hospitals or make love or save for a home? What makes a woman
+slave for her children, or give her life for them if need be?
+"Instinct" you say, and rightly. Back of every one of these well-known
+human tendencies is a specific instinct or group of instincts. The
+story of the life of man and the story of the mind of man must begin
+with the instincts. Indeed, any intelligent approach to human life,
+whether it be that of the mother, the teacher, the preacher, the
+social worker or the neurologist, leads back inevitably to the
+instincts as the starting-point of understanding. But what is
+instinct?
+
+We are apt to be a bit hazy on that point, as we are on any
+fundamental thing with which we intimately live. We reckon on these
+instinctive tendencies every hour of the day, but as we are not used
+to labeling them, it may help in the very beginning of our discussion
+to have a list before our eyes. Here, then, is a list of the
+fundamental tendencies of the human race and the emotions which drive
+them to fulfilment.
+
+THE SPECIFIC INSTINCTS AND THEIR EMOTIONS (AFTER MCDOUGALL)
+
+_Instinct_             _Emotion_
+
+Nutritive Instinct    Hunger
+Flight                Fear
+Repulsion             Disgust
+Curiosity             Wonder
+Self-assertion        Positive Self-feeling (Elation)
+Self-abasement        Negative Self-feeling (Subjection)
+Gregariousness        Emotion unnamed
+Acquisition           Love of Possession
+Construction          Emotion unnamed
+Pugnacity             Anger
+Reproductive Instinct Emotion unnamed
+Parental Instinct     Tender Emotion
+
+These are the fundamental tendencies or dispositions with which every
+human being is endowed as he comes into the world. Differing in degree
+in different individuals, they unite in varying proportions to form
+various kinds of dispositions, but are in greater or less degree the
+common property of us all.
+
+There flows through the life of every creature a steady stream of
+energy. Scientists have not been able to decide on a descriptive term
+for this all-important life-force. It has been variously called
+"libido," "vital impulse" or "élan vital," "the spirit of life,"
+"hormé," and "creative energy." The chief business of this life-force
+seems to be the preservation and development of the individual and the
+preservation and development of the race. In the service of these two
+needs have grown up these habit-reactions which we call instincts. The
+first ten of our list belong under the heading of self-preservation
+and the last two under that of race-preservation. As hunger is the
+most urgent representative of the self-preservative group, and as
+reproduction and parental care make up the race-preservative group,
+some scientists refer all impulses to the two great instincts of
+nutrition and sex, using these words in the widest sense. However, it
+will be useful for our purpose to follow McDougall's classification
+and to examine individually the various tendencies of the two groups.
+
+=In Debt to Our Ancestors.= An instinct is the result of the
+experience of the race, laid in brain and nerve-cells ready for use.
+It is a gift from our ancestors, an inheritance from the education of
+the age-long line of beings who have gone before. In the struggle for
+existence, it has been necessary for the members of the race to feed
+themselves, to run away from danger, to fight, to herd together, to
+reproduce themselves, to care for their young, and to do various other
+things which make for the well-being or preservation of the race. The
+individuals that did these things at the right time survived and
+passed on to their offspring an inherited tendency to this kind of
+reaction. McDougall defines an instinct as "an inherited or innate
+psycho-physical disposition which determines its possessor to perceive
+or pay attention to objects of a certain class, to experience an
+emotional excitement of a particular quality upon perceiving such an
+object, and to act in regard to it in a particular manner, or at least
+to experience an impulse to such action." This is just what an
+instinct is,--an inherited disposition to notice, to feel, and to want
+to act in certain ways in certain situations. It is the something
+which makes us act when we cannot explain why, the something that goes
+deeper than reason, and that links us to all other human
+beings,--those who live to-day and those who have gone before.
+
+It is true that East is East and West is West, but the two do meet in
+the common foundation of our human nature. The likeness between men
+and between races is far greater and far more fundamental than the
+differences can ever be.
+
+=Firing Up the Engine.= Purpose is writ large across the face of an
+instinct, and that purpose is always toward action. Whenever a
+situation arises which demands instantaneous action, the instinct is
+the means of securing it. Planted within the creature is a tendency
+which makes it perceive and feel and act in the appropriate way. It
+will be noticed that there are three distinct parts to the process,
+corresponding to intellect, emotion, will. The initial intellectual
+part makes us sensitive to certain situations, makes us recognize an
+object as meaningful and significant, and waves the flag for the
+emotion; the emotion fires up the engine, pulls the levers all over
+the body that release its energy and get it ready for action, and
+pushes the button that calls into the mind an intense, almost
+irresistible desire or impulse to act. Once aroused, the emotion and
+the impulse are not to be changed. In man or beast, in savage or
+savant, the intense feeling, the marked bodily changes, and the
+yearning for action are identical and unchangeable. The brakes can be
+put on and the action suppressed, but in that case the end of the
+whole process is defeated. Could anything be plainer than that an
+instinct and its emotion were never intended to be aroused except in
+situations in which their characteristic action is to be desired? An
+emotion is the hot part of an instinct and exists solely for securing
+action. If all signs of the emotion are to be suppressed, all
+expression denied, why the emotion?
+
+But although the emotion and the impulse, once aroused, are beyond
+control, there is yet one part of the instinct that is meant to be
+controlled. The initial or receptive portion, that which notices a
+situation, recognizes it as significant, and sends in the signal for
+action, can be trained to discrimination. This is where reason comes
+in. If the situation calls for flight, fear is in order; if it calls
+for fight, anger is in order; if it calls for examination, wonder is
+in order; but if it calls for none of these things, reason should show
+some discrimination and refuse to call up the emotion.
+
+=The Right of Way.= There is a law that comes to the aid of reason in
+this dilemma and that is the "law of the common path."[7] By this is
+meant that man is capable of but one intense emotion at a time. No one
+can imagine himself strenuously making love while he is shaken by an
+agony of fear, or ravenously eating while he is in a passion of rage.
+The stronger emotion gets the right of way, obtains control of mental
+and bodily machinery, and leaves no room for opposite states. If the
+two emotions are not antagonistic, they may blend together to form a
+compound emotion, but if in the nature of the case such a blending is
+impossible, the weaker is for the time being forgotten in the
+intensity of the stronger. "The expulsive power of a new affection" is
+not merely a happy phrase; it is a fact in every day life. The
+problem, then, resolves itself into ways of making the desirable
+emotion the stronger, of learning how to form the habit of giving it
+the head start and the right of way. In our chapter on "Choosing the
+Emotions," we shall find that much depends on building up the right
+kind of sentiments, or the permanent organization of instincts around
+ideas. However, we must first look more closely at the separate
+instincts to acquaint ourselves with the purpose and the ways of each,
+and to discover the nature of the forces with which we have to deal.
+
+[Footnote 7: Sherrington: _Integrative Action of the Nervous System_.]
+
+
+I THE SELF-PRESERVATIVE INSTINCTS
+
+=Hunger.= Hunger is the most pressing desire of the egoistic or
+self-preserving impulse. The yearning for food and the impulse to seek
+and eat it are aroused organically within the body and are behind much
+of the activity of every type of life. As the impulse is so familiar,
+and its promptings are so little subject to psychic control, it seems
+unnecessary to do more than mention its importance.
+
+=Flight and Fear.= All through the ages the race has been subject to
+injury. Species has been pitted against species, individual against
+individual. He who could fight hardest or run fastest has survived and
+passed his abilities on to his offspring. Not all could be strongest
+for fight, and many species have owed their existence to their ability
+to run and to know when to run. Thus it is that one of the strongest
+and most universal tendencies is the instinct for flight, and its
+emotion, fear. "Fear is the representation of injury and is born of
+the innumerable injuries which have been inflicted in the course of
+evolution."[8] Some babies are frightened if they are held too
+loosely, even though they have never known a fall. Some persons have
+an instinctive fear of cats, a left-over from the time when the race
+needed to flee from the tiger and others of the cat family. Almost
+every one, no matter in what state of culture, fears the unknown
+because the race before him has had to be afraid of that which was not
+familiar.
+
+[Footnote 8: Crile: _Origin and Nature of the Emotions_.]
+
+The emotion of fear is well known, but its purpose is not so often
+recognized. An emotion brings about internal changes, visceral changes
+they are called, which enable the organism to act on the emotion,--to
+accomplish its object. There is only so much energy available at a
+given moment, stored up in the brain cells, ready for use. In such an
+emergency as flight every ounce of energy is needed. The large muscles
+used in running must have a great supply of extra energy. The heart
+and lungs must be speeded up in order to provide oxygen and take care
+of extra waste products. The special senses of sight and hearing must
+be sensitized. Digestion and intestinal peristalsis must be stopped in
+order to save energy. No person could by conscious thought accomplish
+all these things. How, then, are they brought about?
+
+=Internal Laboratories.= In the wonderful internal laboratory of the
+body there are little glands whose business it is to secrete chemicals
+for just these emergencies. When an object is sighted which arouses
+fear, the brain cells flash instantaneous messages over the body,
+among others to the supra-renal glands or adrenals, just over the
+kidneys, and to the thyroid gland in the neck. Instantly these glands
+pour forth adrenalin and thyroid secretion into the blood, and the
+body responds. Blood pressure rises; brain cells speed up; the liver
+pours forth glycogen, its ready-to-burn fuel; sweat-glands send forth
+cold perspiration in order to regulate temperature; blood is pumped
+out from stomach and intestines to the external muscles. As we have
+seen, the body as a whole can respond to just one stimulus at a time.
+The response to this stimulus has the right of way. The whole body is
+integrated, set for this one thing. When fear holds the switchboard no
+other messages are allowed on the line, and the creature is ready for
+flight.
+
+But after flight comes concealment with the opposite bodily need, the
+need for absolute silence. This is why we sometimes get the opposite
+result. The heart seems to stop beating, the breath ceases, the limbs
+refuse to move, all because our ancestors needed to hide after they
+had run, and because we are in a very real way a part of them.
+
+=Old-Fashioned Fear.= There is one passage from Dr. Crile's book which
+so admirably sums up these points that it seems worth while to insert
+it at length.
+
+     We fear not in our hearts alone, not in our brains alone, not in
+     our viscera alone--fear influences every organ and tissue. Each
+     organ or tissue is stimulated or inhibited according to its use
+     or hindrance in the physical struggle for existence. By thus
+     concentrating all or most of the nerve force on the
+     nerve-muscular mechanism for defense, a greater physical power is
+     developed. Hence it is that under the stimulus of fear animals
+     are able to perform preternatural feats of strength. For the same
+     reason, the exhaustion following fear will be increased as the
+     powerful stimulus of fear drains the cup of nervous energy even
+     though no visible action may result.... Perhaps the most striking
+     difference between man and animals lies in the greater control
+     which man has gained over his primitive instinctive reactions. As
+     compared with the entire duration of organic evolution, man came
+     down from his arboreal abode and assumed his new rôle of
+     increased domination over the physical world but a moment ago.
+     And now, though sitting at his desk in command of the complicated
+     machinery of civilization, when he fears a business catastrophe
+     his fear is manifested in the terms of his ancestral physical
+     battle in the struggle for existence. He cannot fear
+     intellectually, he cannot fear dispassionately, he fears with all
+     his organs, and the same
+     organs are stimulated and inhibited as if, instead of its being a
+     battle of credit, or position, or of honor, it were a physical
+     battle with teeth and claws.... Nature has but one means of
+     response to fear, and whatever its cause the phenomena are always
+     the same--always physical.[9]
+
+[Footnote 9: Crile: _Origin and Nature of the Emotions_, p. 60 ff.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The moral is as plain as day: Learn to call up fear only when speedy
+legs are needed, not a cool head or a comfortable digestion. Fear is a
+costly proceeding, an emergency measure like a fire-alarm, to be used
+only when the occasion is urgent enough to demand it. How often it is
+misused and how large a part it plays in nervous symptoms, both mental
+and physical, will appear more clearly in later chapters.
+
+=Repulsion and Disgust.= Akin to the instinct of flight is that of
+repulsion, which impels us, instead of fleeing, to thrust the object
+away. It leads us to reject from the mouth noxious and disgusting
+objects and to shrink from slimy, creepy creatures, and has of course
+been highly useful in protecting the race from poisons and snakes. It
+still operates in the tendency to put away from us those things,
+mental or physical, toward which we feel aversion or disgust. Recent
+psychological discoveries have revealed how largely a neurosis
+consists in putting away from us--out of consciousness,--whatever we
+do not wish to recognize, and so it happens that disgust plays an
+unexpected part in nervous disorders.
+
+=Curiosity and Wonder.= Fortunately for the race, it has not had to
+wait until different features of the environment prove to be helpful
+or harmful. There is an instinct which urges forward to exploration
+and discovery and which enables the creature not only to adapt itself
+to the environment but to learn how to adapt the environment to
+itself. This is the instinct of curiosity. It is the impulse back of
+all advance in science, religion, and intellectual achievement of
+every kind, and is sometimes called "intellectual feeling."
+
+=Self-Assertion.= It goes almost without saying that one of the
+strongest and most important impulses of mankind is the instinct of
+self-assertion; it often gets us into trouble, but it is also behind
+every effort toward developed character. At its lowest level
+self-assertion manifests itself in the strutting of the peacock, the
+prancing of the horse, and the "See how big I am," of the small boy.
+At its highest level, when combined with self-consciousness and the
+moral sentiments acquired from society and developed into the
+self-regarding sentiment, it is responsible for most of our ideas of
+right, our conception of what is and what is not compatible with our
+self-respect.
+
+=Self-Abasement.= Self-assertion is aroused primarily by the presence
+of others and especially of those to whom we feel in any way
+superior, but when the presence of others makes us feel small, when we
+want to hide or keep in the background, we are being moved by the
+opposite instinct of self-abasement and negative self-feeling. It may
+be either the real or the fancied superiority of the spectators that
+arouses this feeling,--their wisdom or strength, beauty or good
+clothes. Sometimes, as in stage-fright, it is their numerical
+superiority. Bashfulness is the struggle between the two
+self-instincts, assertion and abasement. Our impulse for self-display
+urges us on to make a good impression, while our feeling of
+inferiority impels us to get away unnoticed. Hence the struggle and
+the painful emotion.
+
+=Gregariousness.= Man has been called a gregarious animal. That is,
+like the animals, he likes to run with his kind, and feels a
+pronounced aversion to prolonged isolation. It is this
+"herd-instinct," too, which makes man so extremely sensitive to the
+opinions of the society in which he lives. Because of this impulse to
+go with the crowd, ideas received through education are accepted as
+imperative and are backed up by all the force of the instinct of
+self-regard. When the teachings of society happen to run counter to
+the laws of our being, the possibilities of conflict are indeed
+great.[10]
+
+[Footnote 10: For a thorough discussion of the importance of this
+instinct, see Trotter's _Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War_.]
+
+=Acquisition.= Another fundamental disposition in both animals and
+men is the instinct for possession, the instinct whose function it is
+to provide for future needs. Squirrels and birds lay up nuts for the
+winter; the dog hides his bone where only he can find it. Children
+love to have things for their "very own," and almost invariably go
+through the hoarding stage in which stamps or samples or bits of
+string are hoarded for the sake of possession, quite apart from their
+usefulness or value. Much of the training of children consists in
+learning what is "mine" and what is "thine," and respect for the
+property of others can develop only out of a sense of one's own
+property rights.
+
+=Construction.= There is an innate satisfaction in making
+something,--from a doll-dress to a poem,--and this satisfaction rests
+on the impulse to construct, to fashion something with our own hands
+or our own brain. The emotion accompanying this instinct is too
+indefinite to have a name but it is nevertheless a real one and plays
+a large part in the sense of power which results from the satisfaction
+of good work well done. Later it will be seen how closely related is
+this impulse to the creative instinct of reproduction and how useful
+it can be in drawing off the surplus energy of that much denied
+instinct.
+
+=Pugnacity and Anger.= What is it that makes us angry? A little
+thought will convince us that the thing which arouses our fury is not
+the sight of any special object, but the blocking of any one of the
+other instincts. Watch any animal at bay when its chance for flight
+has gone. The timidest one will turn and fight with every sign of
+fury. Watch a mother when her young are threatened,--bear, or cat or
+lion or human. Fear has no place then. It is entirely displaced by
+anger over the balking of the maternal instinct of protection.
+Strictly speaking, pugnacity belongs among the instincts neither of
+self-preservation nor of race-preservation, but is a special device
+for reinforcing both groups.
+
+As fear supplies the energy for running, so anger fits us for
+fight,--and for nothing but fight. The mechanism is almost identical
+with that of fear. Brain and liver, adrenals and thyroid are the
+means, but the emotion presses the button and releases the energy,
+stopping all digestion and energizing all combat-muscles. The blood is
+flooded with fuel and with substances which, if not used, are harmful
+to the body. We were never meant to be angry without fighting. The
+habit of self-control has its distinct advantages, but it is hard on
+the body, which was patterned before self-control came into fashion.
+The wise man, once he is aroused, lets off steam at the woodpile or on
+a long, vigorous walk. He probably does not say to himself that he is
+a motor animal integrated for fight and that he must get rid of
+glycogen and adrenalin and thyroid secretion. He only knows that he
+feels better "on the move."
+
+The wiser man does not let himself get angry in the first place unless
+the situation calls for fight. However, the fight need not be a
+hand-to-hand combat with one's fellow man. William James has pointed
+out that there is a "moral equivalent for war," and that the energy of
+this instinct may be used to reinforce other impulses and help
+overcome obstacles of all sorts. A good deal of the business man's
+zest, the engineer's determination, and the reformer's zeal spring
+from the fight-instinct used in the right way. As James, Cannon, and
+others have pointed out, the way to end war may be to employ man's
+instinct of pugnacity in fighting the universal enemies of the
+race--fire, flood, famine, disease, and the various social
+evils--rather than let it spend its force in war between nations. Even
+our sports may be offshoots of the fight-instinct, for McDougall holds
+that the play-tendency has its root in the instinct of rivalry, a
+modified form of pugnacity. Evidently fighting-blood is a useful
+inheritance, even to-day, and rightly directed is a necessary part of
+a complete and forceful personality.
+
+This, then, completes the list of self-preservative instincts, those
+which are commonly called egoistic and which have been given us for
+the maintenance of our own individual personal lives. But our
+endowment includes another set of impulses which are no less important
+and which must be reckoned with if human conduct is to be understood.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+_In which we learn more about ourselves_
+
+THE STORY OF THE INSTINCTS (Continued)
+
+II. THE RACE-PRESERVATIVE INSTINCTS
+
+
+=Looking beyond Ourselves.= We sometimes speak of self-preservation as
+though it were the only law of life, while as a matter of fact it is
+but half the story. Nature has seen to it that there shall be planted
+in every living creature an innate urge toward the larger life of the
+race. Although the creature may never give a conscious thought to the
+welfare of the race, he still bears within himself a set of instincts
+which have as their end and aim, not the individual at all, but
+society as a whole, and the life of generations that are to come. He
+is bigger than he knows. Although he may have no notion why he feels
+and acts as he does, and although he may pervert the purpose for his
+own selfish end, he is continually being moved by the mighty impulse
+of the race-life, an impulse which often outrivals the desire I or his
+own personal existence. The craving to reproduce ourselves and the
+craving to cherish and protect our young are among the most dynamic
+forces in life. The two desires are so closely bound together that
+they are often spoken of as one under the name of the sex-instinct, or
+the family instincts. Let us look first at that part of the yearning
+which urges toward perpetuating our own life in offspring.
+
+=Watching Nature Work.= It is wonderful, indeed, to watch Nature in
+the long process of Evolution, as she adapts her methods to the
+growing complexity of the organism. With a variety and ingenuity of
+means, but always with the same steady purpose, she works from the
+lowest levels,--where there is no true reproduction, only
+multiplication by division,--on through the beginning of reproduction
+proper, where a single parent produces the offspring; then on to the
+level where it takes two parents of different structure to produce a
+new organism, and sex-life begins. At first Nature does not even
+demand that father and mother shall come near each other. In the
+water, the female of this type lays an egg, and the male, guided by
+his instinct, swims to it and deposits his fertilizing fluid. In plant
+life, bird and bee, attracted by wonderfully planned perfumes and
+color and honey, are called in to carry the pollen from male to female
+cell.
+
+But it is when we come to the highest level that we find even more
+subtle ways planned to accomplish the desired end. Here we enter the
+realm of individual initiative, for it is not now enough to leave to
+external forces the joining of the two life-elements. In order to make
+a new individual, father and mother must be drawn together, and so
+there enters into the situation a personal relationship with all that
+that implies. Because Nature has had to provide ways of drawing
+individuals to one another, she has put into the higher types of life
+the power of mutual attraction,--a power which in man, the highest of
+all types, is responsible for many outgrowths that seem far removed
+from the original purpose.
+
+=The Love-Motif.= On the one hand, there is the persistent desire to
+be attractive, which manifests itself in the subtlest ways. How many
+of the yearnings and activities of human life have their roots in this
+ancient and honorable desire! The love of pretty clothes,--however it
+may seem to be motivated and however it may be complicated by other
+motives,-draws its energy, fundamentally, from the same need that
+provides the gay plumage and limpid song of the bird or the painted
+wings of the butterfly.
+
+On the other hand, there is the capability of being attracted, with
+all the personal relationships which spring from the power of admiring
+and loving another person. The interest in others does not expend its
+whole force on its primary objects,--mate and children. It flows out
+into all human relationships, developing all the possibilities of
+loving which mean so much in human life; the love of man for man and
+woman for woman, as well as mutual love of man and woman. A force like
+this, once planted, especially in the higher types of life, does not
+spend all its energies in its main trunk. It sends out branches in
+many directions, bearing by-products which are rich in value for all
+of life.
+
+Many of our richest relationships, our best impulses, and our most
+firmly fixed social habits spring from the family instincts of
+reproduction and parental care. The social life of our young people,
+so well calculated to bring young men and women together; all the
+beauty of family life and, as we shall later see, all the broader
+benevolent activities for society in general, are energized by the
+same love-instincts which form so large a part of human nature.
+
+
+LEARNING TO LOVE
+
+=A Four-Grade School.= It is impossible to watch the growth of the
+love-life of a human being, to trace its development from babyhood up
+to its culmination in mating and parenthood, without a sense of wonder
+at the steady purpose behind it all. We used to believe that the love
+for the young girl that suddenly blooms forth in the callow youth was
+an entirely new affair, something suddenly planted in him as he
+developed into manhood; but now we know, thanks to the uncovering of
+human nature by the painstaking investigations of the psycho-analytic
+school of psychologists, that the seeds of the love-life are planted,
+not in puberty, but with the beginning of life itself. Looked at in
+one way, all infancy and childhood are a preparation, a training of
+the love-instinct which is to be ready at the proper time to find its
+mate and play its part in the perpetuation of the race. Nature begins
+early. As she plants in the tiny baby all the organs that shall be
+needed during its lifetime, so she plants the rudiments of all the
+impulses and tendencies that shall later be developed into the
+full-grown instincts. There have been found to be four periods in the
+love-life of the growing child, three of them preparatory steps
+leading up to maturity; periods in which the main current of love is
+directed respectively toward self, parents, comrades, and finally
+toward lover or mate.
+
+=Like Narcissus.= In the first stage, the baby's interest is in his
+own body. He is getting acquainted with himself, and he soon finds
+that his body contains possibilities of pleasurable sensations which
+may be repeated by the proper stimulation. Besides the
+hunger-satisfaction that it brings, the act of sucking is pleasurable
+in itself, and so the baby begins to suck his thumb or his quilts or
+his rattle. Later, this impulse to stimulate the nerves about the
+mouth finds its satisfaction in kissing, and still later it plays a
+definite part in the wooing process; but at first the child is
+self-sufficient and finds his pleasure entirely within himself. Other
+regions of the body yield similar pleasure. We often find a tiny child
+rubbing his genital organs or his thighs or taking exaggerated
+pleasure in riding on someone's foot in order to stimulate these
+nerves, which he has discovered at first merely by chance. When he
+begins to run around, he loves to exhibit his own body, to go about
+naked. None of this is naughtiness or perversion; it is only Nature's
+preparation of trends that she will later need to use. The child is
+normally and naturally in love with himself.[11] But he must not
+linger too long in this stage. None of the channels which his
+life-force is cutting must be dug too deep, else in later life they
+will offer lines of least resistance which may, on occasion, invite
+illness or perversion.
+
+[Footnote 11: This is the stage which is technically known as
+auto-eroticism or self-love.]
+
+=In Love with His Family.= Presently Nature pries the child loose from
+love of himself and directs part of his interests to people outside
+himself. Before he is a year old, part of his love is turned to
+others. In this stage it is natural that at first his affection should
+center on those who make up his home circle,--his parents and other
+members of the household. Even in this early choice we see a
+foreshadowing of his future need. The normal little boy is especially
+fond of his mother, and the normal little girl of her father. Not all
+the love goes to the parent of the opposite sex, but if the child be
+normal, a noticeably larger part finds its way in that direction.
+Observing parents can often see unmistakable signs of jealousy: toward
+the parent of the same sex, or the brother or sister of the same sex.
+The little boy who sleeps with his mother while his father is away, or
+who on these occasions gets all the attention and all the petting he
+craves, is naturally eager to perpetuate this state of affairs. Many a
+small boy has been heard to say that he wished his father would go
+away and stay all the time,--to the horror of the parents who do not
+understand. All this is natural enough, but it is not to be
+encouraged. The pattern of the father or the mother must not be
+stamped too deep in the impressionable child-mind. Too little love and
+sympathy are bad, leading to repression and a morbid turning in of the
+love-force; but too much petting, too many caresses are just as bad.
+Sentimental self-indulgence on the part of the parents has been
+repeatedly proved to be the cause of many a later illness for the
+child. As the right kind of family love and comradeship, the kind that
+leads to freedom and self-dependence, is among the highest forces in
+life, so the wrong kind is among the worst. Parents and their
+substitutes--nurses, sisters, and brothers--are but temporary
+stopping-places for the growing love, stepping-stones to later
+attachments which are biologically more necessary. The small boy who
+lets himself be coddled and petted too long by his adoring relatives,
+who does not shake off their caresses and run away to the other boys,
+is doomed to failure, and, as we shall later see, probably to
+illness.[12]
+
+[Footnote 12: One of the best discussions of this theme is found in
+the chapter "The Only or Favorite Child," by A.A. Brill, in
+_Psychoanalysis_.]
+
+In the later infantile period, the child, besides wanting to exhibit
+his own body, shows marked interest in looking at the bodies of
+others, and marked curiosity on sex-questions in general. He
+particularly wants to know "where babies come from." If his questions
+are unfortunately met by embarrassment or laughing evasion, or by
+obvious lying about the stork or the doctor or the angels, his
+curiosity is only whetted, and he comes to the very natural conclusion
+that all matters of sex are sinful, disgusting, and indecent, and to
+be investigated only on the sly. This conception cannot be brought
+into harmony with the unconscious mental processes arising from his
+race-instincts nor with his instinctive sense that "whatever is is
+right." The resulting conflict in some four-year-old children is
+surprisingly intense. Astonished indeed would many parents be if they
+knew what was going on inside the heads of their "innocent" little
+children; not "bad" things, but pathetic things which a little candor
+would have avoided.
+
+Alongside the rudimentary impulses of showing and looking, there is
+developed another set of trends which Nature needs to use later on,
+the so-called sadistic and masochistic impulses, the desire to
+dominate and master and even to inflict pain, and its opposite impulse
+which takes pleasure in yielding and submitting to mastery. These
+traits, harking back to the time when the male needed to capture by
+force, are of course much more evident in adolescence and especially
+in love-making, but have their beginning in childhood, as many a
+mother of cruel children knows to her sorrow. In adolescence, when
+sex-differentiation is much more marked, the dominating impulse is
+stronger in the boy and the yielding impulse in the girl; but in
+little children the differentiation has not yet begun.
+
+=Gang and Chum.= At about four or five years the child leaves the
+infantile stage of development, with its self-love and its intense
+devotion to parents and their substitutes. He begins to be especially
+interested in playmates of his own sex, to care more for the opinions
+of the gang--or if it be a little girl, of the chum--than for those of
+the parents. The life-force is leading him on to the next step in his
+education, freeing him little by little from a too-hampering
+attachment to his family. This does not mean that he does not love
+his father and mother. It means only that some of his love is being
+turned toward the rest of the world, that he may be an independent,
+socially useful man.
+
+This period between infancy and puberty is known as the latency
+period. All interest in sex disappears, repressed by the spontaneously
+developing sense of shame and modesty and by the impact of education
+and social disapproval. The child forgets that he was ever curious on
+sex-matters and lets his curiosity turn into other, more acceptable
+channels.
+
+=The Mating-Time.= We are familiar with the changes that take place at
+puberty. We laugh at the girl who, throwing off her tom-boy ways,
+suddenly wants her skirts let down and her hair done up. We laugh at
+the boy who suddenly leaves off being a rowdy, and turns into a
+would-be dandy. We scold because this same boy and girl who have
+always been so "sweet and tractable" become, almost overnight, surly
+and cantankerous, restive under authority and impatient of family
+restraint. We should neither laugh nor scold, if we understood. Nature
+is succeeding in her purpose. She has led the young life on from self
+to parents, from parents to gang or chum, and now she is trying to
+lead it away from all its earlier attachments, to set it free for its
+final adventure in loving. The process is painful, so painful that it
+sometimes fails of accomplishment. In any case, the strain is
+tremendous, needing all the wisdom and understanding which the family
+has to offer. It is no easy task for any person to free himself from
+the sense of dependence and protection, and the shielding love that
+have always been his; to weigh anchors that are holding him to the
+past and to start out on the voyage alone.
+
+At this time of change, the chemistry of the body plays an important
+part in the development of the mental traits; all half-developed
+tendencies are given power through the maturing of the sex-glands,
+which bind them into an organization ready for their ultimate purpose.
+The current is now turned on, and the machinery, which has been
+furnished from the beginning, is ready for its task. After a few false
+starts in the shape of "puppy love," the mature instinct, if it be
+successful, seeks until from among the crowd it finds its mate. It has
+graduated from the training-school and is ready for life.
+
+
+CIVILIZATION'S PROBLEM
+
+=When Nature's Plans Fall Through.= We have been describing the normal
+course of affairs. We know that all too often the normal is not
+achieved. Inner forces or outer circumstances too often conspire to
+keep the young man or the young woman from the culmination toward
+which everything has been moving. If the life-force cannot liberate
+itself from the old family grooves to forge ahead into new channels,
+or if economic demands or other conditions make postponement
+necessary, then marriage is not possible. All the glandular secretions
+and internal stimuli have been urging on to the final consummation,
+developing physical and emotional life for an end that does not come;
+or if it does come, is not sufficient to satisfy the demands of the
+age-old instinct which for millions of years knew no restraint. In any
+case, man finds himself, and woman herself, face to face with a
+pressing problem, none the less pressing because it is in most cases
+entirely unrecognized.
+
+=Blundering Instincts.= The older a person is, the more fixed are his
+habits. Now, an instinct is a race-habit and represents the
+crystallized reactions of a past that is old. Whatever has been done
+over and over again, millions of times, naturally becomes fixed,
+automatic, tending to conserve itself in its old ways, to resist any
+change and to act as it has always acted. This conserves energy and
+works well so long as conditions remain the same. But if for any
+reason there comes a change, things are likely to go wrong. By just so
+far as things are different, an automatic habit becomes a handicap
+instead of a help.
+
+This having to act under changed conditions is exactly the trouble
+with the reproductive instinct. Under civilization, conditions have
+changed but the instinct has not. It is trying to act as it always
+has acted, but civilized man wills otherwise. The change that has come
+is not in the physical, external environment, but in man himself and
+in the social environment which he has created. There is in man an
+onward urge toward new and better things. Side by side with the desire
+to live as he always has lived, there is a desire to make new
+adaptations which are for the advancement of the whole race-life.
+Besides the natural wish to take his desires as he finds them, there
+is also the wish to modify them and use them for higher and more
+socially useful ends.
+
+As the race has found through long experience that monogamy is to be
+preferred to promiscuous mating; that the highest interests of life
+are fostered by loyalty to the institution of the family; that the
+careful rearing of several children rather than the mere production of
+many is in the long run to be desired; and that a single standard of
+morality is practicable; so society has established for its members a
+standard which is in direct opposition to the immeasurable urge of the
+past. To make matters worse, there have at the same time grown up in
+many communities a standard of living and an economic competition
+which still further limit the size of the family and the satisfaction
+of the reproductive impulse.
+
+=The Perpetual Feud.= There thus arises the strategic struggle
+between that which the race has found good in the past and that which
+the race finds good in the present. As the older race-experience is
+laid in they body and built into the very fiber of the individual,
+inherited as an innate impulse, it has become an integral part of
+himself, an individual need rather than a social one. On the other
+hand, man has, as another innate part of his being, the desire to go
+with the herd, to conform to the standards of his fellows, to be what
+he has learned society wants him to be. Hence the struggle, insistent,
+ever more pressing, between two sets of desires within the man
+himself; the feud between the past and the present, between the
+natural and the social, between the selfish and the ideal. On one
+side, there is the demand for instinctive satisfaction; on the other,
+for moral control; on one side the demand for pleasure; on the other,
+the demands of reality.[13]
+
+[Footnote 13: "All the burdens of men or society are caused by the
+inadequacies in the association of primal animal emotions with those
+mental powers which have been so rapidly developed in
+man-kind."--Shaler quoted by Hinkle: Introduction to Jung's
+_Psychology of the Unconscious_.]
+
+Two factors intensify the conflict. In the first place, the older
+habits have the head start. Compared with the almost limitless extent
+of our past history, our desire for the control of the instincts is
+very new indeed. It requires the long look and the right perspective
+to understand how very lately we have entered into our new conditions
+and how old a habit we are trying to break. In the second place, the
+larger part of the stimulus comes from within the body itself. When
+studying the other instincts, we saw that the best way to control was
+to refuse to stimulate when the situation was not suitable for
+discharge. But with the organically aroused sex-instinct there is no
+such power of choice. We may fan the flame by the thoughts we think or
+the environment we seek, or we may smother the flame until it is out
+of sight, but we cannot extinguish it by any act of ours. The issue
+has always been too important to be left to the individual. The
+stimulation comes, primarily, not by way of the mind but by way of the
+body. With this instinct we cannot "stop before we begin," because
+Nature has taken the matter out of our hands and begins for us.
+
+
+THE BULWARK WE HAVE BUILT
+
+With the competing forces so strong and the issues so great, it is not
+to be wondered at that society has had to build up a massive bulwark
+of public opinion, to establish regulations and fix penalties that are
+more stringent than those imposed in any other direction. Nor is it
+remarkable that in its effort to protect itself, society has sometimes
+made mistakes.
+
+These blunders seem to lie in two directions. Assuming that it is
+nearly impossible for the male to control his instincts, and that,
+after all, it does not matter so much whether he does or not, society
+has blinked at license in men, and thus has fostered a demoralizing,
+anti-social double standard which has broken up countless homes, has
+been responsible for the spread of venereal diseases, and has been
+among the greatest curses of modern civilization. At the same time
+society, in its efforts to maintain its standards for woman, has
+taught its children, especially its girls, that anything savoring of
+the word "sexual" is sinful, disgusting, and impure. To be sure, very
+many women have modified their childish views, but an astonishingly
+large number conserve, even in maturity, their warped ideas about the
+whole subject of sex. Many a mature woman secretly believes that she,
+at least, is not guilty of harboring anything so "vulgar" as a
+reproductive instinct, not realizing that if this were so, she would
+be, in very truth, a freak of nature.
+
+Of course, woman is by nature as fully endowed with sex instincts as
+is man. Kipling portrays the female of the species as "deadlier than
+the male" in that the very framework of her constitution outlines the
+one issue for which it was launched,--stanch against any attack which
+might endanger the carrying on of life. Feeling the force of this
+instinctive urge, she braces herself against precipitancy in response
+by what seems almost a negation.
+
+Just as we lean well in when riding around a corner, in order to keep
+ourselves from falling out, so by an "over-compensation" for what is
+unconsciously felt to be danger woman increases her feeling of safety
+by setting up a taboo on the whole subject of sex. It is time that we
+freed our minds from the artificial and perverted attitude toward this
+dominant impulse; time to rescue the word "sex" from its implications
+of grossness and sensuousness, and to recognize the instinct in its
+true light as one of the necessary and holy forces of life, a force
+capable of causing great damage, but also holding infinite
+possibilities for good if wisely directed.
+
+Society only gets its members into trouble when, even by implication,
+it attempts to deny its natural make-up, and allows little children to
+grow up with the false idea that one of their strongest impulses is to
+be shunned by them as a thing of shame. We cannot dam back the flood
+by building a bulwark of untruth, and then expect the bulwark to hold.
+
+=Adaptable Energy.= We neither have to give in to our over-insistent
+desires nor to deny that they exist. Man has a power of adaptation.
+Just when we seem to run up against a dead wall, to face an
+irreconcilable conflict, we find a wonderful power of indirect
+expression that affords satisfaction to all the innate forces without
+doing violence to the ethical standards which have proved so necessary
+for the development of character.
+
+Hunger, which, like the reproductive instinct, is stimulated by the
+changing chemistry of the body, can be satisfied only by achieving its
+primary purpose, the taking of material food; but the creative impulse
+to reproduce oneself possesses a unique ability to spiritualize itself
+and expend its energy in other lines of creative endeavor. There seems
+to be some sort of close connection between the especially intense
+energy of the reproductive instinct and the modes of expression of the
+instinct for construction; a connection which makes possible the
+utilization of threatening destructive energy by directing it toward
+socially valuable work. Just as we harness the mountain stream and use
+its wild force to light our cities, or catch the lightning to run our
+trolley cars, so we find man and woman--under the right
+conditions--easily and naturally switching over the power of their
+surplus sex-energy to ends which seem at first only slightly related
+to its original aim, but which resemble it in that they too are
+self-expressive and creative. If a person is able to express himself
+in some real way, to give himself to socially needed work; if he can
+reproduce himself intellectually and spiritually in artistic
+production, in invention, in literature, in social betterment, he is
+drawing on an age-old reservoir of creative energy, and by so doing is
+relieving himself of inner tension which would otherwise seek less
+beneficent ways of expression.
+
+The world knew all this intuitively for a long time before it knew it
+theoretically. The novelists, who are unconsciously among the best
+psychologists, have thoroughly worked the vein. The average man knows
+it. "He was disappointed in love," we say, "and we thought he would go
+to pieces, but now he has found himself in his work"; or, "She will go
+mad if she doesn't find some one who needs her." It is only lately
+that science has caught up with intuition, but now the physicians and
+psychologists who have had the most intimate and first-hand
+acquaintance with the human heart are recognizing, to a man, this
+unique power of the love-instinct and its possibilities for creative
+work of every sort.[14]
+
+[Footnote 14: Among those who have shown this connection between the
+love-force and creative work are Freud, Jung, Jelliffe, White, Brill,
+Jones, Wright, Frink, and the late Dr. Putnam of Harvard University,
+who writes: "Freud has never asserted it as his opinion and it
+certainly is not mine, that this is the only root from which artistic
+expression springs. On the other hand, it is probable that all
+artistic productions are partly referable to this source. A close
+examination of many of them would enable any one to justify the
+opinion that it is a source largely drawn upon."--_Human Motives_. p.
+87.]
+
+
+=Higher Levels.= Freud has called this spiritualization of natural
+forces by a term borrowed from chemistry. As a solid is "sublimated"
+when transformed into a gas, so a primal impulse is said to be
+"sublimated" when it is diverted from its original object and made to
+serve other ends. By this power of sublimation the little
+exhibitionist, who loved to show himself, may become an actor; the
+"cruel" boy who loved to dissect animals may become a surgeon; the
+sexually curious child may turn his curiosity to other things and
+become a scholar; the "born mother," if denied children of her own or
+having finished with their upbringing, may take to herself the
+children of the city, working for better laws and better care for
+needy little ones; the man or woman whose sex-instinct is too strong
+to find expression in legitimate, direct ways, may find it a valuable
+resource, an increment of energy for creative work, along whatever
+line his talent may lie.
+
+There is no more marvelous provision in all life than this power of
+sublimation of one form of energy into another, a provision shadowing
+forth almost limitless possibilities for higher adaptations and for
+growth in character. As we think of the distance we have already
+traveled and the endless possibilities of ever higher excursions of
+the life-force, we feel like echoing Paul's words: "He who began a
+good work in you will perfect it unto the end." The history of the
+past holds great promise for the future.
+
+=When Sublimation Fails.= But in the meantime we cannot congratulate
+ourselves too heartily. Sublimation too often fails. There are too
+many nervous wrecks by the way, too many weak indulgers of original
+desires, too many repressed, starved lives with no outlet for their
+misunderstood yearnings; and, as we shall see, too many people who, in
+spite of a big lifework, fail to find satisfaction because of
+unnecessary handicaps carried over from their childhood days.
+"Society's great task is, therefore, the understanding of the
+life-force, its manifold efforts at expression and the way of
+attaining this, and to provide as free and expansive ways as possible
+for the creative energy which is to work marvelous things for the
+future."
+
+If "the understanding of the life force" is to be available for use,
+it must be the property of the average man and woman, the fathers and
+mothers of our children, the teachers and physicians who act as their
+advisers and friends.[15] This chapter is intended to do its bit
+toward such a general understanding.
+
+[Footnote 15: "Appropriate educational processes might perhaps guide
+this enormous impulsive energy toward the maintenance instead of the
+destruction of marriage and the family. But up to the present time,
+education with respect to this moral issue has commonly lacked any
+such constructive method. The social standard and the individual
+impulse have simply collided, and the individual has been left to
+resolve the conflict, for the most part by his own resources."--G.A.
+Coe: _Psychology of Religion_, p. 150.]
+
+
+PARENTAL INSTINCT AND TENDER EMOTION
+
+=Until They Can Fly.= Only half of Nature's need is met by the
+reproductive instinct. Her carefulness in this direction would be
+largely wasted without that other impulse which she has planted, the
+impulse to protect the new lives until they are old enough to fend for
+themselves. The higher the type of life and the greater the future
+demands, the longer is the period of preparation and consequent period
+of parental care. This fact, coupled with man's power for lasting
+relationships through the organization of permanent sentiments, has
+made the, bond between parent and child an enduring one. Needless to
+say, this relationship is among the most beautiful on earth, the
+source of an incalculable amount of joy and gain. However, as we have
+already suggested, there lurks here, as in every beneficent force, a
+danger. If parents forget what they are for, and try to foster a more
+than ordinary tie, they make themselves a menace to those whom they
+most love. Any exaggeration is abnormal. If the childhood bond is
+over-strong, or the childhood dependence too long cultivated, then the
+relationship has overstepped its purpose, and, as we shall later see,
+has laid the foundation for a future neurosis.
+
+=Mothering the World.= Probably no instinct has so many ways of
+indirect expression as this mothering impulse of protection. Aroused
+by the cry of a child in distress, or by the thought of the weakness,
+or need, or ill-treatment of any defenseless creature, this
+mother-father impulse is at the root of altruism, gratitude, love,
+pity, benevolence, and all unselfish actions.
+
+There is still a great difference of opinion as to how man's spiritual
+nature came into being; still discussion as to whether it developed
+out of crude beginnings as the rest of his physical and mental
+endowment has developed, or whether it was added from the outside as
+something entirely new. Be that as it may, the fact remains that man
+has as an innate part of his being an altruistic tendency, an
+unselfish care for the welfare of others, a relationship to society as
+a whole,--a relationship which is the only foundation of health and
+happiness and which brings sure disaster if ignored. The egoistic
+tendencies are only a part of human nature. Part of us is naturally
+socially minded, unselfish, spiritual, capable of responding to the
+call to lose our lives in order that others may find theirs.
+
+
+SUMMARY
+
+Civilized man as he is to-day is a product of the past and can be
+understood only as that past is understood. The conflicts with which
+he is confronted are the direct outcome of the evolutional history of
+the race and of its attempt to adapt its primitive instincts to
+present-day ideals.
+
+Character is what we do with our instincts. According to Freud, all
+of a man's traits are the result of his unchanged original impulses,
+or of his reactions against those impulses, or of his sublimation of
+them. In other words, there are three things we may do with our
+instincts. We may follow our primal desires, we may deny their
+existence, or we may use them for ends which are in harmony with our
+lives as we want them to be. As the first course leads to degeneracy,
+the second to nervous illness, and the third to happy usefulness, it
+is obviously important to learn the way of sublimation. Sometimes this
+is accomplished unconsciously by the life-force, but sometimes
+sublimation fails, and is reestablished only when the conscious mind
+gains an understanding of the great forces of life. This method of
+reeducation of the personality as a means of treatment in nervousness
+is called psycho-therapy.
+
+=Religion's Contribution.= If it be asked why, amid all this
+discussion of instincts and motives we have made no mention of that
+great energizer religion, we answer that we have by no means forgotten
+it, but that we have been dealing solely with those primary tendencies
+out of which all of the compound emotions are made. Man has been
+described as instinctively and incurably religious, but there seems no
+doubt that religion is a compound reaction, made up of
+love,--sympathetic response to the parental love of God,--fear,
+negative self-feeling, and positive self-feeling in the shape of
+aspiration for the desired ideal of character; all woven into several
+compound emotions such as awe, gratitude, and reverence.
+
+It goes almost without saying that religion, if it be vital, is one of
+the greatest sources of moral energy and spiritual dynamic, and that
+it is and always has been one of the greatest aids to sublimation that
+man has found. A force like the Christian religion, which sets the
+highest ideal of character and makes man want to live up to it, and
+which at the same time says, "You can. Here is strength to help you";
+which unifies life and fills it with purpose; which furnishes the
+highest love-object and turns the thought outward to the good of
+mankind--such a force could hardly fail to be a dynamic factor in the
+effort toward sublimation. This book, however, deals primarily with
+those cases for which religion has had, to call science to her aid in
+order to find the cause of failure, to flood the whole subject with
+light, and to help cut the cords which, binding us to the past, make
+it impossible to utilize the great resources that are at hand for all
+the children of men.
+
+=Where We Keep Our Instincts.= It must have been impossible to read
+through these two chapters on instinct without feeling that, after
+all, we are not very well acquainted with ourselves. The more we look
+into human nature, the more evident it becomes that there is much in
+each one of us of which we are only dimly aware. It is now time for us
+to look a little deeper,--to find where we keep these instinctive
+tendencies with which it is possible to live so intimately without
+even suspecting their existence. We shall find that they occupy a
+realm of their own, and that this realm, while quite out of sight, is
+yet open to exploration.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+_In which we look below the surface and discover a veritable
+wonderland_
+
+THE SUBCONSCIOUS MIND
+
+STRANGERS TO OURSELVES
+
+
+=Hidden Strings.= A collie dog lies on the hearthrug. A small boy with
+mischievous intent ties a fine thread to a bone, hides himself behind
+a chair, and pulls the bone slowly across the floor. The dog is thrown
+into a fit of terror because he does not know about the hidden string.
+
+A Chinese in the early days of San Francisco stands spell-bound at the
+sight of a cable car. "No pushee. No pullee. Go allee samee like
+hellee!" He does not know about the hidden string.
+
+A woman of refinement and culture thinks a thought that horrifies her
+sensitive soul. It is entirely out of keeping with her character as
+she knows it. In her misunderstanding she considers it wicked and
+thrusts it from her, wondering how it ever could have been hers. She
+does not know about the hidden string.
+
+In the last two chapters we thought together about some of these
+strings, examining the fibers of which they are made and learning in
+what directions they pull. We found them to be more powerful than we
+should have supposed, more insistent and less visible. We found that
+instinctive desire is the string, the cable that energizes our every
+act, but that our desires are neither single nor simple, and are but
+rarely on the surface. Many of us live with them a long time, feeling
+the tug, but not recognizing the string.
+
+=There's a Reason.= We take our thoughts and feelings and actions for
+granted, without stopping very often to wonder where they come from.
+But there is always a reason. When the law of cause and effect reaches
+the doorsill of our minds, it does not stop short to give way to the
+law of chance. We wake up in the morning with a certain thought on
+top. We say it "just happens." But nothing ever just happens. No
+thought that ever comes into our heads has been without its
+history,--its ancestors and its determining causes. But what about
+dreams? They, at least, you say, have no connections, no past and no
+future, only a weird, fantastic present. Strange to say, dreams have
+been found to be as closely related to our real selves, as interwoven
+with the warp and woof of our lives as are any of our waking thoughts.
+Even dreams have a reason.
+
+We find ourselves holding certain beliefs and prejudices, interested
+in certain things and indifferent to others, liking some foods, some
+colors and disliking others. Search our minds as we will, we find no
+clue to many of these inner trends. Why?
+
+The answer is simple. The cause is hidden below the surface. If we try
+to explain ourselves on the basis of the open-to-inspection part of
+our minds, we must come to the conclusion that we are queer creatures
+indeed. Only by assuming that there is more to us than we know, can we
+find any rational basis for the way we think and feel and act.
+
+=A Real Mind.= We learn of our internal machinery by what it does. We
+must infer a part of our minds which introspection does not reveal, a
+mind within the mind, able to work for us even while we are unaware of
+its existence. This inner mind is usually known as the subconscious,
+the mind under the level of consciousness.[16] We forget a name, but
+we know that it will come to us if we think about something else.
+Presently, out of somewhere, there flashes the word we want. Where was
+it in the meanwhile, and what hunted it out from among all our other
+memories and sent it up into consciousness? The something which did
+that must be capable of conserving memories, of recognizing the right
+one and of communicating it,--surely a real mind.
+
+[Footnote 16: Writers of the psycho-analytic school use the word
+"unconscious" to denote the lower layers of this region, and
+"fore-conscious" to denote its upper layers. Morton Prince uses the
+terms "unconscious" and "conscious" to denote the different strata. As
+there is still a good deal of confusion in the use of terms, it has
+seemed to us simpler to use throughout only the general term
+"subconscious."]
+
+One evening my collaborator fumbled unsuccessfully for the name of a
+certain well-known journalist and educator. It was on the tip of her
+tongue, but it simply would not come, not even the initial letter. In
+a whimsical mood she said to herself just as she went to sleep,
+"Little subconscious mind, you find that name to-night." In the middle
+of the night she awoke, saying, "Williams--Talcott Williams." The
+subconscious, which has charge of her memories, had been at work while
+she slept.
+
+The history of literature abounds in stories of under-the-surface
+work. The man of genius usually waits until the mood is on, until the
+muse speaks; then all his lifeless material is lighted by new
+radiance. He feels that some one outside himself is dictating. Often
+he merely holds the pen while the finished work pours itself out
+spontaneously as if from a higher source.
+
+But it is not only the man of genius who makes use of these unseen
+powers. He may have readier access to his subconscious than the rest
+of us, but he has no monopoly. The most matter-of-fact man often says
+that he will "sleep over" a knotty problem. He puts it into his mind
+and then goes about his business, or goes to sleep while this unseen
+judge weighs and balances, collects related facts, looks first at one
+side of the question and then at the other, and finally sends up into
+consciousness a decision full of conviction, a decision that has been
+formulated so far from the focus of attention that it seems to be
+something altogether new, a veritable inspiration.
+
+We must infer the subconscious from what it does. Things
+happen,--there must be a cause. Some of the things that happen
+presuppose imagination, reason, intelligence, will, emotion, desire,
+all the elements of mind. We cannot see this mind, but we can see its
+products. To deny the subconscious is to deny the artist while looking
+at his picture, to disbelieve in the poet while reading his poem, and
+to doubt the existence of the explosive while listening to the report.
+The subconscious is an artist, a poet, and an explosive by turns. If
+we deny its existence, a good portion of man's doings are
+unintelligible. If we admit it, many of his actions and his
+afflictions which have seemed absurd stand out in a new light as
+purposeful efforts with a real and adequate cause.
+
+=The Submerged Nine Tenths.= The more deeply psychologists and
+physicians have studied into these things, the more certainly have
+they been forced to the conclusion that the conscious mind of man, the
+part that he can explore at will, is by far the smaller part of his
+personality. Since this is to some people a rather startling
+proposition, we can do no better than quote the following statement
+from White on the relation of consciousness to the rest of the psychic
+life:
+
+     Consciousness includes only that of which we are _aware_, while
+     outside of this somewhat restricted area there lies a much wider
+     area in which lie the deeper motives for conduct, and which not
+     only operates to control conduct, but also dictates what may and
+     what may not become conscious. Stanley Hall has very forcibly put
+     the matter by using the illustration of the iceberg. Only
+     one-tenth of the iceberg is visible above water; nine-tenths is
+     beneath the surface. It may appear in a given instance that the
+     iceberg is being carried along by the prevailing winds and
+     surface currents, but if we keep our eyes open we shall sooner or
+     later see a berg going in the face of the wind, and, so,
+     apparently putting to naught all the laws of aerodynamics. We can
+     understand this only when we come to realize that much the
+     greater portion of the berg is beneath the surface and that it is
+     moving in response to invisible forces addressed against this
+     submerged portion.
+
+     Consciousness only arises late in the course of evolution and
+     only in connection with adjustments that are relatively complex.
+     When the same or similar conditions in the environment are
+     repeatedly presented to the organism so that it is called upon to
+     react in a similar and almost
+     identical way each time, there tends to be organized a mechanism
+     of reaction which becomes more and more automatic and is
+     accompanied by a state of mind of less and less awareness.[17]
+
+[Footnote 17: White: _Mechanisms of Character Formation_.]
+
+It is easy to see the economy of this arrangement which provides
+ready-made patterns of reaction for habitual situations and leaves
+consciousness free for new decisions. Since an automatic action,
+traveling along well-worn brain paths, consumes little energy and
+causes the minimum of fatigue, the plan not only frees consciousness
+from a confusing number of details, but also works for the
+conservation of energy. While consciousness is busy lighting up the
+special problems of the moment, the vast mass of life's demands are
+taken care of by the subconscious, which constitutes the bulk of the
+mind. "Properly speaking, the unconscious is the real psyche."[18]
+
+[Footnote 18: Freud: _Interpretation of Dreams_, p. 486.]
+
+=The Heart of Psychology.= In the face of all this, it is not to be
+wondered at that the problem of the subconscious has been called not
+one problem of psychology but the problem. It cannot be denied that
+the discoveries which have already been made as to its activities have
+been of immense practical importance in the understanding of normal
+conduct and in the treatment of the psycho-neuroses.
+
+If some of the methods--such as hypnosis, automatic writing, and
+interpretation of dreams--which are used to investigate its activities
+seem to savor of the charlatan and the mountebank, it is because they
+have occasionally been appropriated by the ignorant and the
+unscrupulous. Their real setting is the psychological laboratory and
+the physician's office. In the hands of men like Sigmund Freud, Boris
+Sidis, and Morton Prince, they are as scientific as the apparatus of
+any other laboratory and their findings are as susceptible of proof.
+We may, then, go forward with the conviction that we are walking on
+solid ground and that the main paths, at least, will turn into beaten
+highways.
+
+
+ANCESTRAL MEMORIES
+
+=Race-Memories.= An individual as he stands at any moment is the
+product of his past,--the past which he has inherited and the past
+which he has lived. In other words, he is a bundle of memories
+accumulated through the experience of the race, and through his own
+experience as a person. Some of these memories are conscious, and
+these he calls his, while others fail to reach consciousness and are
+not recognized as part of his assets.
+
+The instincts form the starting-point of mind, conscious and
+subconscious, and are the foundation upon which the rest is built.
+They often show themselves as part of our conscious lives, but their
+roots are laid deep in the subconscious from which they can never be
+eradicated. This deepest-laid instinctive layer of the subconscious is
+little subject to change. It represents the earlier adjustments of the
+race, crystallized into habit. It takes no account of the differences
+between the present and the past. It knows no culture, no reason, no
+lately acquired prudence. It is all energy and can only wish, or urge
+toward action. But since only those race-memories became instincts
+which had proved needful to the race in the long run, they are on the
+whole beneficent forces, working for the good of the race and the good
+of the individual, if he learns how to handle them aright and to adapt
+them to present conditions.
+
+This instinctive urge toward action arouses in the individual an
+organic response that is felt as a tension or craving and is mainly
+dependent upon its own chemical constitution at the moment. Hunger is
+the sensation caused by the little muscular contractions in the
+stomach when the body is low in its food supply. Sudden fright is felt
+as an all-gone sensation "at the pit of the stomach." What really
+happens is a tightening up of the circular muscles of the
+blood-vessels lying in the network of the solar plexus, and a spasm of
+the muscles of the digestive tract. The hungry stomach impels to
+action until satisfied; the physical discomfort in fear impels toward
+measures of safety. The apparatus that is made use of by the
+subconscious in carrying out this instinctive urge is called the
+autonomic nervous system.[19] It regulates all the functions of
+living, not only under the stress of emotion, but during every moment
+of waking or sleeping.
+
+[Footnote 19: Kempf: "The Tonus of Automatic Segments as a Cause of
+Abnormal Behavior," _Journal of Nervous and Mental Diseases_, January,
+1921.]
+
+=A Capable Manager.= The conscious mind could not possibly send
+messages to the numerous glands that fit the body for action, nor
+attend to all the delicate adjustments that enter into the process.
+The conscious mind in most of us does not even know of the existence
+of the organs and secretions involved, but something sends the
+messages and it is something that has a remarkable likeness to mind as
+we usually think of mind,--something which takes advantage of the past
+and gages means to an end with a nicety that excites our wonder.
+
+=Take no Anxious Thought.= We take food into our stomachs and forget
+about it, if we are wise; and this subconscious overseer who through
+millions of years of experience has learned how to digest food does
+the rest. As with digestion, so with our heart-action; we lie down at
+night fairly sure that there will be no break in the regular rhythm of
+its beat. The subconscious overseer is "on the job" and he never
+rests. No matter how hard we sleep, he never lets us forget to take a
+breath; and if we trust him, he is very likely to wake us up at the
+appointed time in the morning. Also, if we trust him, he carries us
+off to sleep as though we were babies. Has he not had long practice in
+the days before insomnia was invented?
+
+=First Aid to the Injured.= In times of infection or injury, this
+subconscious manager is better than any doctor. The doctors say with
+truth that they only assist nature. If the infection is internal,
+antitoxins are produced within the body. If the injury is external,
+like a cut, the messages fly, and white blood-corpuscles are marshaled
+to take care of poisons and build up the tissue. If the injury is of
+the kind that needs rest, the subconscious doctor knows it. He
+therefore causes pain and rigidity, in order to induce us to hold the
+injured part still until it is restored.
+
+Crile reminds us of a fact that is often noticed by surgeons. If
+patients under ether are handled roughly, especially in the intestinal
+region, respiration quickens and there are tremors and even convulsive
+efforts which interfere with the surgeon's work. The conscious mind
+cannot feel. It is asleep. But the subconscious mind, whose business
+it is to protect the body, is trying to get away from injury. The body
+uses up as much energy as though it had run for miles, and when the
+patient wakes up, we say that he is suffering from shock. The
+subconscious mind which is not affected by ether, has been exhausting
+itself in a vain attempt to get the body away from harm.
+
+=A Tireless Servant.= When the conscious mind undertakes a job, it is
+always more or less subject to fatigue. But the subconscious after its
+long practice seems never to tire. We say that its activities have
+become automatic. With all its inherited skill, the subconscious, if
+left to itself, can be depended upon to run the bodily machinery
+without effort and without hitch. The only things that can interfere
+with its work are the wrong kind of emotions and the wrong kind of
+suggestions from the conscious mind. Barring these, it goes its way
+like a trusty servant, looking after details and leaving its master's
+mind free for other things. Having been "in the family" for
+generations, it knows its business and resents any interference with
+its duties or any infringement of its rights.
+
+No man, then, comes into this world without inheritance: he receives
+from his ancestors two goodly sets of heirlooms, the instincts and the
+mechanism which carries on bodily functions. This is the capital with
+which man starts life; but immediately he begins increasing this
+capital, adding memories from his own experience to the accumulated
+race-records.
+
+
+PERSONAL MEMORIES
+
+No more startling secret has been unearthed by science than the
+discovery of the length and minuteness of our memories. No matter how
+much one may think he has forgotten, the tablets of his mind are
+closely written with records of infinitesimal experiences, shadowy
+sensations, old happenings which the conscious self has lost entirely
+and would scarcely recognize as its own. Many of these brain records,
+or neurograms, as Prince calls them, are never aroused from their
+dormant conditions. But others, aroused by emotion or association of
+ideas, may after years of inactivity, come forth again either as
+conscious memories or as subconscious forces, or even as physiological
+memories,--bodily repetitions of the pains, palpitations, and tremors
+of old emotional experiences.
+
+=Irresistible Childhood.= An experience that is forgotten is not
+necessarily lost. Although the first few years of childhood are lost
+to conscious memory, these years outweigh all others in their
+influence on character. The Jesuit priest was right when he said,
+"Give me a child until he is six years old, and he will be a Catholic
+all his life." As Frink has so ably shown, the determining factors
+that enter into any adult choice, such as the choice of the Catholic
+or the Protestant faith, are in a large measure made up of
+subconscious memories from early childhood, forgotten memories of
+Sunday-school and church, of lessons at home or passages in
+books,--experiences which no voluntary effort could recall, but which
+still live unrecognized in our mature judgments and beliefs. Naturally
+we do not acknowledge these subconscious motives. We like to believe
+that all our decisions are based on reason, and so we invent plausible
+arguments for our attitudes and our actions, arguments which we
+ourselves implicitly believe. This process of substituting a plausible
+reason for a subconscious one is known as rationalization, a process
+which every one of us engages in many times a day.
+
+It is indeed true that the child is father to the man. Those first
+impressionable years, when we believed implicitly whatever any one
+told us and when through ignorance we reacted emotionally to ordinary
+experiences, are molding us still, making us the men and women we are
+to-day, coloring with childish ideas many of the attitudes of our
+supposedly reasoning life. Bergson says:
+
+     The unconscious is our historical past. In reality the past is
+     preserved automatically. In its entirety probably it follows us
+     at every instant; all that we have felt, thought and willed from
+     our earliest infancy is there, leaning over the present which is
+     about to join it, pressing against the portals of consciousness
+     that would fain leave it outside.
+
+=Spontaneous Outbursts.= "How do we know all this?" some one says.
+"What is the evidence for these sweeping statements? If we cannot
+remember, how can we discover these strange memories that are so
+powerful but so elusive? If they are below the level of consciousness,
+are they not, in the very nature of the case, forever hidden from
+view, in the sphere of the occult rather than that of science?"
+
+The answer to these questions is determined by one important fact; the
+line between the conscious and subconscious minds does not always
+remain in the same place; the "threshold of consciousness" is
+sometimes displaced, automatically allowing these buried memories to
+come to the surface. In sleep and delirium, in trance and
+hallucination, in hysteria and intoxication, the tables are turned;
+the restraining hand of the conscious mind is loosened and the
+submerged self comes forth with all its ancient memories.
+
+It is a common experience to have a patient in delirium repeat
+long-forgotten verses or descriptions of events that the "real man"
+has lost entirely. The renowned servant-girl, quoted by Hudson, who in
+delirium recited passage after passage of Hebrew, Latin, and Greek,
+which she had heard her one-time master repeat in his study, is
+typical of many such instances.[20]
+
+[Footnote 20: Hudson: _The Law of Psychic Phenomena_, p. 44. Quoted
+from _Coleridge's Biographia Literaria_, Vol. I, p. 117 (edit. 1847).]
+
+A young girl of nineteen, a patient of mine, lapsed for several weeks
+into a dissociated state in which she forgot all the memories and
+ideas of her adult life, and returned to the period of her childhood.
+She used to say that she saw things inside her head and would
+accurately describe events that took place before she was two years of
+age,--scenes which she had completely forgotten in her normal life.
+One day when I asked her to tell me what she was seeing, she began to
+talk about "little sister" (herself) and "little brother." "Little
+sister and brother were the two little folks that lived with their
+mother and their daddy and they were playing on the sand-pile. You
+know there was only one sand-pile, not like all the ones they have
+down here (at the seaside), and they had a bucket that they would put
+sand in and they would dump it out again and they would make nice
+things, you know; they would play with their little dog Ponto and he
+was white with black and brown spots on him. Little brother had white
+hair and he was bigger than little sister and he had a little waist
+with ruffles down the front and around the collar and a black coat
+that came down to his knees and it had two little white bands around
+it. Some of the waists he wore had blue specks and some had red and
+black specks in it.
+
+"Little sister had yellow curls and she had a blue coat with jiggly
+streaks of white in it, and she had a little white bonnet that was
+crocheted, and she had little blue mittens on that were tied to a
+string that went around her neck and down the other arm. It got pretty
+cold where they lived. Little sister and little brother would go out
+to the pile of leaves and jump on them and bounce and they would
+crackle. The leaves came down from the trees all of a sudden when they
+got tired, and they were different colors, brown and red. Little
+sister could walk then but she could not walk one other time before
+then; she could stand up by holding to a chair, but she could not go
+herself. One morning Big Tom said 'Run to Daddy' and she went to her
+daddy, and after that she always walked; they were glad and she was
+glad. She walked all day long. Big Tom was a man who used to help
+Daddy and little sister always liked him. He was a nice man."
+
+The mother verified this scene of the first walking, saying that it
+had occurred on her own wedding-anniversary when the child was
+twenty-three months old.
+
+One night I heard the same patient talk in her sleep in the slow and
+hesitating manner of a child reading phonetically from a printed page.
+I soon recognized the words as those of a poem of Tagore's, called "My
+Prayer," and remembered that a magazine containing the poem had been
+lying on the bed during the day. When she had finished I wakened her,
+saying, "Now tell me what you have been dreaming." She answered in
+her childish way, "I think I do not dream." She went to sleep
+immediately and again repeated the poem, word for word, without a
+single mistake. Again I awakened her with the words, "Now tell me what
+you have been dreaming." And again she answered, "I think I do not
+dream." I said: "But yes; don't you remember you were just saying,
+'When the time comes for me to go'?" (the last line of the poem). "Oh,
+yes," she said, "I was seeing it, and I think I'll not go to sleep
+again. It tires me so to see it."
+
+While she was awake she had no recollection of having seen the poem
+and was indeed in her dissociated state quite incapable of
+understanding its meaning. Asleep, she saw every word as plainly as if
+the page had been before her eyes.
+
+The distorted pictures of dreams are always made of the material which
+past experiences have furnished and which have in many cases been
+dropped out of consciousness for years only to rise out of their long
+oblivion when the conscious mind has been put to sleep.
+
+=Unearthing Old Experiences.= However, psychology does not have to
+wait for buried memories to come forth of their own free will. It has
+a number of successful ways of summoning them from their hiding-place
+and helping them across the line into consciousness. In the hands of
+skilled investigators and therapeutists, hypnosis, hypnoidization,
+automatic writing, crystal-gazing, abstraction, free association,
+word-association, and interpretation of dreams have all been
+repeatedly successful in bringing to light memories which apparently
+have been for many years completely blotted out of mind. As we become
+better acquainted with these technical devices we shall find that
+there are four kinds of experiences whose records are carefully stored
+away in our minds. Some were always so far from the center of our
+attention that we could swear they never had been ours; others,
+although once present in consciousness, were so trivial and
+unimportant that it seems ridiculous to suppose them conserved; others
+never came into our waking minds at all and entered our lives only in
+special states, such as sleep or delirium or dreams. All these we
+should expect to forget; the astonishing thing is that they ever were
+conserved. But there is a fourth class that is different. It is made
+up of experiences that were so vital, so emotional, so closely woven
+into the fiber of our being that it seems impossible that they ever
+could be forgotten. Let us look at a few examples of records of all
+these four kinds of experiences, examples chosen from hundreds of
+their kind as illustrations of the all-embracing character of buried
+memories.[21]
+
+[Footnote 21: For further examples see Prince, _The Unconscious_;
+Prince, _The Dissociation of a Personality_, and Hudson, _The Law of
+Psychic Phenomena_.]
+
+=Out of the Corners of Our Eyes.= In the first place, we are much
+more observing than we imagine. We may be so interested in our own
+thoughts that details of our environment are entirely lost on the
+conscious mind, but the subconscious has its eyes open, and its ears.
+People in hypnosis have been known to repeat verbatim whole passages
+from newspapers which they had never consciously read. While they were
+busy with one column, their wide-awake subconscious was devouring the
+next one, and remembering it. Prince relates the story of a young
+woman who unconsciously "took in" the details of a friend's
+appearance:
+
+     I asked B.C.A. (without warning and after having covered her
+     eyes) to describe the dress of a friend who was present and with
+     whom she had been conversing perhaps some twenty minutes. She was
+     unable to do so beyond saying that he wore dark clothes. I then
+     found that I myself was unable to give a more detailed
+     description of his dress, although we had lunched and been
+     together about two hours. B.C.A. was then asked to write a
+     description automatically. Her hand wrote as follows (she was
+     unaware that her hand was writing):
+
+     "He has on a dark greenish gray suit, a stripe in it--little
+     rough stripe; black bow cravat; shirt with three little stripes
+     in it; black laced shoes; false teeth; one finger gone; three
+     buttons on his coat."
+
+     The written description was absolutely correct. The stripes in
+     the coat were almost invisible. I had not noticed
+     his teeth or the loss of a finger and we had to count the buttons
+     to make sure of their number owing to their partial concealment
+     by the folds of the unbuttoned coat. The shoe-strings I am sure
+     under the conditions would have escaped nearly every one's
+     notice.[22]
+
+[Footnote 22: Prince: _The Unconscious_, p. 53.]
+
+Automatic writing, the method used to uncover this subconscious
+perception, is a favorite method with some investigators and is often
+used by Morton Prince. The hand writes without the direction of the
+personal consciousness and usually without the person's being aware
+that it is writing. A dissociated person does this very easily; other
+people can cultivate the ability, and perhaps most of us approach it
+when we are at the telephone, busily writing or drawing remarkable
+pictures while the rest of us is engaged in conversation.
+
+The present epidemic of the Ouija board shows how many persons there
+are who are able to switch off the conscious mind and let the
+subconscious control the muscles that are used in writing. The fact
+that the writer has no understanding of what he is doing and believes
+himself directed by some outside power, in no way interferes with the
+subconscious phenomenon.
+
+=Everyday Doings.= Besides perceptions which were originally so far
+from the focus of attention that the conscious mind never caught them
+at all, there are the little experiences of everyday life, fleeting
+thoughts and impressions which occupy us for a minute and then
+disappear. Every experience is a dynamic fact and no matter how
+trivial the experience may be or how completely forgotten, it still
+exists as a part of the personality.
+
+An amusing example of the everyday kind of forgotten experience
+occurred during the writing of this chapter. I wrote a sentence which
+pleased me very well. This is the sentence: "In the esthetic processes
+of evolution they [man's desires] have sunk below the surface as soon
+as formed, and have been covered over by an elastic and snug-fitting
+consciousness as the skin covers in the tissues and organs of the
+body." After showing this passage to my collaborator and remarking
+that this figure had never been used before, I was partly chagrined
+and partly amused to have her bring me the following sentence from
+White and Jelliffe: "Consciousness covered over and obscured the inner
+organs of the psyche just as the skin hides the inner organs of the
+body from vision." My originality had vanished and I was close to
+plagiarism. Indeed, if a history of plagiarism could be written, it
+would probably abound in just such stories. I had read the article
+containing this sentence only once, about three years before, and had
+never quoted it or consciously thought of it. It had lain buried for
+three years, only to come forth as an original idea of my own. Who
+knows how many times we all do just this thing without catching
+ourselves in the trick?
+
+=Back-Door Memories.= There are other kinds of memories which hide in
+the subconscious, memories of experiences which have not come in by
+the front door, but have entered the mind during special states, such
+as sleep, delirium, intoxication, or hypnosis. What is known as
+post-hypnotic suggestion is the functioning of a suggestion received
+during hypnosis and emerging later as an impulse without being
+recognized as a memory. A man in a hypnotic state is told that at five
+o'clock he will take off his clothes and go to bed, without
+remembering that such a suggestion has been given him. He awakens with
+no recollection of the suggestion, but at five o'clock he suddenly
+feels impelled to go to bed, even though his unreasonable desire puts
+him into a highly embarrassing position. The suggestion, to be thus
+effective, must have been conserved somewhere in his mind outside of
+consciousness.
+
+Suggestions that enter the mind during the normal sleep are also
+recorded,--a fact that carries a warning to people who are in the
+habit of talking of all sorts of matters while in the room with
+sleeping children. I have sometimes suggested to sleeping patients
+that on waking they will remember and tell me the cause of their
+symptoms. The following example shows not only the conservation of
+impressions gained in sleep, but also the sway of forgotten ideas of
+childhood, still strong in mature years. This young woman, a trained
+nurse, with many marked symptoms of hysteria, had been asked casually
+to bring a book from the Public Library. She cried out in
+consternation, "Oh, no, I am afraid!" After a good deal of urging she
+finally brought the book, although at the cost of considerable effort.
+Later, while she was taking a nap, I said to her, "You will not
+remember that I have talked to you. You will stay asleep while I am
+talking and while you are asleep there will come to your mind the
+reasons why you are afraid to go to the Public Library. When you
+waken, you will tell me all about it." Upon awakening, she said: "Oh,
+do you know, I can tell you why I have always been afraid to go to the
+Public Library. While I was in Parochial School, Father ---- used to
+come in and tell us children to use the books out of the school
+library and never to go to the Public Library." I questioned her
+concerning her idea of the reason for such an injunction and what she
+thought was in the books which she was told not to read. She
+hesitatingly stated that it was her idea, even in childhood, that the
+books dealt with topics concerning the tabooed subject of the birth of
+children and kindred matters.
+
+=Smoldering Volcanoes.= Let us now consider those emotional
+experiences which seem far too compelling to be forgotten, but which
+may live within us for years without giving any evidence of their
+existence. Memories like these are apt to be anything but a dead past.
+
+Many of my own patients have uncovered emotional memories through
+simply talking out to me whatever came into their minds, laying aside
+their critical faculty and letting their minds wander on into whatever
+paths association led them. This is known as the free-association
+method, and simple as it seems, is one of the most effective in
+uncovering memories which have been forgotten for years. One of my
+patients, a refined, highly educated woman of middle age, had suffered
+for two years with almost constant nausea. One day, after a long talk,
+with no suggestion on my part, only an occasional, "What does that
+remind you of?" she told with great emotion an experience which she
+had had at eighteen years of age, in which she had for a moment been
+sexually attracted to a boy friend, but had recoiled as soon as she
+realized where her impulse was leading her. She had been so horrified
+at the idea of her degradation, so nauseated at what she considered
+her sin, that she had put it out of her mind, denied that such a
+thought had ever been hers, repressed the desire into the
+subconscious, where it had continued to function unsatisfied,
+unassimilated with her mature judgments. Her nausea was the symbol of
+a moral disgust. Physical nausea she was willing to acknowledge, but
+not this other thing. Upon reciting this old experience, with every
+sign of the original shame, she cried: "Oh, Doctor! why did you bring
+this up? I had forgotten it. I haven't thought of it in thirty years."
+I reminded her that I couldn't bring it up,--I had never known
+anything about it. With the emotional incoming of this memory and the
+saner attitude toward it which the mature woman's mind was able to
+take, the nausea disappeared for good. This case is typical of the
+psycho-neuroses and we shall have occasion to refer to it again. The
+present emphasis is on the fact that an emotional memory may be buried
+for many years while it still retains the power of reappearing in more
+or less disguised manifestation.
+
+=Repressed Memories.= If we ask how so burning a memory could escape
+from the consciousness of a grown woman, we are driven to the
+conclusion that this forgetting can be the result of no mere quiet
+fading away, but that there must have been some active force at work
+which kept the memory from coming into awareness. It was not lost. It
+was not passive. Out of sight was not out of mind. There must have
+been a reason for its expulsion from the personal consciousness. In
+fact, we find that there is a reason. We find that whenever a vital
+emotional experience disappears from view, it is because it is too
+painful to be endured in consciousness. Nor is it ever the pain of an
+impersonal experience or even the thought of what some one else has
+done to us that drives a memory out of mind. As a matter of fact, we
+never expel a memory except when it bears directly on ourselves and on
+our own opinion of ourselves. We can stand almost anything else, but
+we cannot stand an idea that does not fit in with our ideal for
+ourselves. This is not the pious ideal that we should like to live up
+to and that we hope to attain some day, not the ideal that we think we
+ought to have--like never speaking ill of others or never being
+selfish--but the secret picture that each of us has, locked away
+within him, the specifications of ourselves reduced to their lowest
+terms, below which we cannot go. Energized by the instinct of positive
+self-feeling, and organized with the moral sentiments which we have
+acquired from education and the ideals of society, especially those
+acquired in early childhood, this ideal of ourselves becomes
+incorporated into our conscience and is an absolute necessity for our
+happiness.
+
+We have found that when two emotions clash, one drives out the other.
+So in this case, the woman's positive self-feeling of self-respect,
+combined with disgust, drove from the field that other emotion of the
+reproductive instinct which was trying to get expression. Speaking
+technically, one repressed the other. The woman said to herself, "No,
+I never could have had such a thought," and promptly forgot it.
+Needless to say, this kind of handling did not kill the impulse.
+Buried in the depths of her soul, it continued to live like a live
+coal, until in later years, fanned by the wind of some new experience,
+it burst into flame.
+
+In this case the wish had originally flashed into awareness for an
+instant, but very often the impulse never gets into consciousness at
+all. The upper layers of the subconscious, where the acquired ideals
+live, automatically work to keep down any desires which are thought to
+be out of keeping with the person as he knows himself. He then would
+emphatically deny that such desires had ever had any place in his
+life.
+
+Freud has called this repressing force the psychic censor. To get into
+consciousness, any idea from the subconscious must be able to pass
+this censor. This force seems to be a combination of the
+self-regarding and herd-instincts, which dispute with the instinct for
+reproduction the right to "the common path" for expression.
+
+A considerable part of any person's subconscious is made up of
+memories, wishes, impulses, which are repressed in this way. Of course
+any instinctive desire may be repressed, but it is easy to understand
+why the most frequently denied impulse, the instinct of reproduction,
+against whose urgency society has cultivated so strong a feeling,
+should be repressed more frequently than any other.[23]
+
+[Footnote 23: See foot-note, p. 145, Chap. VII.]
+
+=Past and Present.= It matters not, then, in what state experiences
+come to us, whether in sleep or delirium, intoxication or hypnosis, or
+in the normal waking condition. They are conserved and may exert great
+influence on our normal lives. It matters not whether the experiences
+be full of meaning and emotion or whether they be so slight as to pass
+unnoticed, they are conserved. It matters not whether these
+experiences be mere sense-impressions, or inner thoughts, whether they
+be unacknowledged hopes or fears, undesirable moods and unworthy
+desires or fine aspirations and lofty ideals. They are conserved and
+they may at a later day rise up to bless or to curse us long after we
+had thought them buried in the past. The present is the product of the
+past. It is the past plus an element of choice which keeps us from
+settling down in the despair of fatalism and enables us to do
+something toward making the present that is, a help and not a
+stumbling-block to the present that is to be.
+
+
+SOME HABITS OF THE SUBCONSCIOUS
+
+=The Association of Ideas.= It is only by something akin to poetic
+license that we can speak of lower and higher strata of mind. When we
+carry over the language of material things into the less easily
+pictured psychic realm, it is sometimes well to remind ourselves that
+figures of speech, if taken too literally, are more misleading than
+illuminating. When we speak of the deep-laid instinctive lower levels
+of mind and the higher acquired levels, we must not imagine that these
+strata are really laid in neat, mutually exclusive layers, one on top
+of the other in the chambers of the mind. Nor must we imagine the
+mental elements of instinct, idea, and memory as jumbled together in
+chaotic confusion, or in scattered isolated units. As a matter of
+fact, the best word to picture the inside of our minds is the word
+"group." We do not know just how ideas and instincts can group
+themselves together, but we do know that by some arrangement of brain
+paths and nerve-connections, the laws of association of ideas and of
+habit take our mental experiences and organize them into more or less
+permanent systems. Instinctive emotions tend to organize themselves
+around ideas to form sentiments; ideas or sentiments, which through
+repetition or emotion are associated together, tend to stay together
+in groups or complexes which act as a whole; complexes which pertain
+to the same interests tend to bind themselves into larger systems or
+constellations, forming moods, or sides to one's character. It is not
+highly important to differentiate in every case a sentiment from a
+complex, or a complex from a constellation, especially as many writers
+use "complex" as the generic term for all sorts of groups; but a
+general understanding of the much-used word "complex" is necessary
+for a comprehension of modern literature on psychology, psychotherapy
+or general education.
+
+"=What Is a Complex=?" Reduced to its lowest terms, a complex is a
+group. It may be simply a group of associated movements, like lacing
+one's shoes or knitting; it may be a group of movements and ideas,
+like typewriting or piano-playing, which through repetition have
+become automatic or subconscious; it may be merely a group of ideas,
+such as the days of the week, the alphabet or the multiplication
+table. In all these types it is repetition working through the law of
+habit that ties the ideas and movements together into an organic
+whole. Usually, however, the word complex is reserved for psychic
+elements that are bound together by emotion. In this sense, a complex
+is an emotional thought-habit. Frink's definition, which is one of the
+simplest, recognizes only this emotional type: "A complex is a system
+of connected ideas, having a strong emotional tone, and displaying a
+tendency to produce or influence conscious thought and action in a
+definite and predetermined direction."[24]
+
+[Footnote 24: Frink: "What Is a Complex?" _Journal American Medical
+Assoc_., Vol. LXII, No. 12, Mar. 21, 1914.]
+
+Emotion and repetition are the great welders of complexes. Emotion is
+the strongest cement in the world. A single emotional experience
+suffices to bind together ideas that were originally as far apart as
+the poles.
+
+Sometimes a complex includes not only ideas, movements, and emotions,
+but physiological disturbances and sensations. Some people cannot go
+aboard a stationary ship without vomiting, nor see a rose, even though
+it prove to be a wax one, without the sneezing and watery eyes of
+hay-fever. This is what is known as a "conditioned reflex." Past
+associations plus fear have so welded together idea and bodily
+manifestation that one follows the other as a matter of course, long
+after the real cause is removed. In such ways innumerable nervous
+symptoms arise. The same laws which form healthy complexes, and,
+indeed, which make all education possible, may thus be responsible for
+the unhealthy mal-adaptive association-habits which lie back of a
+neurosis. Fortunately, a knowledge of this fact furnishes the clue to
+the re-education that brings recovery.
+
+A complex may be either conscious or unconscious, but as it usually
+happens that either all or part of its elements are below the surface,
+the word is oftenest used to mean those buried systems of the
+subconscious mind that influence thought or behavior without
+themselves being open to scrutiny. It is these buried complexes,
+memory groups, gathered through the years of experience, that
+determine action in uniform and easily prophesied directions. Every
+individual has a definite complex about religion, about politics,
+about patriotism, about business, and it is the sum of these buried
+complexes which makes up his total personality.
+
+=Displacement.= Association or grouping is, then, an intrinsic power
+of mind; but as all life seems to be built on opposites--light and
+darkness, heat and cold, love and hate--so mind, which is capable of
+association, is capable also of displacement or the splitting apart of
+elements which belong together. There is such a thing as the simple
+breaking up of complexes, when education or experience or neglect
+separate ideas and emotions which had been previously welded together;
+but displacement is another matter. Here there is still a path between
+idea and emotion; they still belong to the same complex, but the
+connection is lost sight of. The impulse or emotion attaches itself to
+another substitute idea which is related to the first but which is
+more acceptable to the personality. Sometimes the original idea is
+forgotten; repressed, or dissociated into the subconscious, as in
+anxiety neurosis; and sometimes it is merely shorn of its emotional
+interest and remembered as an unrelated or insignificant idea, as in
+compulsion neurosis.
+
+=Transference.= Another kind of displacement which seems hard to
+believe possible until it is repeatedly encountered in intelligent
+human beings is the process called transference, by which everybody at
+some time or other acts toward the people he meets, not according to
+rational standards but according to old unconscious attitudes toward
+other people. Each of us carries, within, subconscious pictures of the
+people who surrounded us when we were children; and now when we meet a
+new person we are likely unconsciously to say to ourselves--not, "This
+person has eyebrows like my mother, or a voice like my nurse," or,
+"This person bosses me around as my father used to do," but, "This is
+my mother, this is my nurse, this is my father." Whereupon we may
+proceed to act toward that person very much as we did toward the
+original person in childhood.
+
+Transference is subconsciously identifying one person with another and
+behaving toward the one as if he were that other. Analysis has
+discovered that many a man's hostile attitude toward the state or
+religion or authority in general, is nothing more than this kind of
+displacement of his childhood's attitude toward authority in the
+person of his perhaps too-domineering father. Many a woman has married
+a husband, not for what he was in himself, but because she
+unconsciously identified him with her childish image of her father.
+
+Students of human nature have always recognized the kind of
+displacement which transfers the sense of guilt from some major act or
+attitude to a minor one which is more easily faced, just as _Lady
+Macbeth_ felt that by washing her hands she might free herself from
+her deeper stain. This is a frequent mechanism in the
+psychoneuroses--not that neurotics are likely to have committed any
+great crime, but that they feel subconsciously that some of their
+wishes or thoughts are wicked.
+
+=The Phenomena of Dissociation.= When an idea or a complex, a
+perception or a memory is either temporarily or permanently shoved out
+of consciousness into the subconscious, it is said to be dissociated.
+When we are asleep, the part of us that is usually conscious is
+dissociated and the submerged part takes the stage. When we forget our
+surroundings in concentration or absent-mindedness, a part of us is
+dissociated and our friends say that we are "not all there," or as
+popular slang has it, "Nobody home." When a mood or system of
+complexes drives out all other moods, one becomes "a different
+person." But if this normal dissociation is carried a step farther, we
+may lose the power to put ourselves together again, and then we may
+truly be said to be dissociated. Almost any part of us is subject to
+this kind of apparent loss. In neurasthenia the happy, healthy
+complexes which have hitherto dominated our lives may be split off and
+left lying dormant in the subconscious; or the power of will or
+concentration may seem to be gone. In hysteria we may seem to lose the
+ability to see or feel or walk, or we may lose for the time all
+recollection of certain past events, or of whole periods of our lives,
+or of everything but one system of ideas which monopolizes the field
+of attention. Sometimes great systems of memories, instincts, and
+complexes are alternately shifted in and out of gear, leaving first
+one kind of person on top and then another.[25] Stevenson's _Dr.
+Jekyll_ and _Mr. Hyde_ is not so fantastic a character as he seems.
+Any one who doubts the ability of the mind to split itself up into two
+or more distinct personalities, entertaining totally different
+conceptions of life, disliking each other, playing tricks on each
+other, writing notes to each other, and carrying on a perpetual feud
+as each tries to get the upper hand, should read Morton Prince's
+"Dissociation of a Personality," a fascinating account of his famous
+case, Miss Beauchamp.
+
+[Footnote 25: When a memory or system of memories is suddenly lost
+from consciousness the person is said to be suffering from amnesia or
+pathological loss of memory.]
+
+=Internal Warfare.= Conflict, often accentuated by shock or fatigue,
+represses or drives down certain ideas, perceptions, wishes, memories,
+or complexes into the subconscious, where they remain, sometimes
+dormant and passive but often dynamic, emotional, carrying on an
+over-excited, automatic activity, freed from the control of reason and
+the modifying influence of other ideas, and able to cause almost any
+kind of disturbance. So long as there is team-work between the
+various parts of our personality we are able to act as a unit; but
+just as soon as we break up into factions with no communication
+between the warring camps, so soon do we become quite incapable of
+coördination or adjustment, like a nation torn by civil war. Many of
+the seemingly fantastic and bizarre mental phenomena of which a human
+being is capable are the result of this kind of disintegration.
+
+However, nature has a remarkable power for righting herself, and it is
+only under an accumulation of unfortunate circumstances that there
+appears a neurosis, which is nothing more than a functioning of
+certain parts of the personality with all the rest dissociated. We
+shall later inquire more fully into the causes that lead up to such a
+result and shall find that the mechanisms involved are these processes
+of organization and disorganization by which mind is wont to group
+together or separate the various elements within its borders.
+
+
+SUMMARY
+
+Gathering up our impressions, we find a number of outstanding
+qualities which we may summarize in the following way:
+
+The Subconscious is:
+
+_1 Vast yet Explorable_
+
+The fraction that could accurately show the relation of the conscious
+to the unconscious part of ourselves would have such a small numerator
+and such a huge denominator that we might well wonder where
+consciousness came in at all.[26] Some one has likened the
+subconscious to the great far-reaching depths of the Mammoth Cave, and
+consciousness to the tiny, flickering lamp which we carry to light our
+way in the darkness. However, ever the subconscious mind is becoming
+explorable, and it may be that science is giving the tiny lamp the
+revealing power of a great searchlight.
+
+[Footnote 26: "The entire active life of the individual may be
+represented by a fraction, the numerator of which is any particular
+moment, the denominator is the rich inheritance of the
+past."--Jelliffe: "The Technique of Psychoanalysis," _Psychoanalytic
+Review,_ Vol. III, No. 2, p. 164.]
+
+_2 Ancient yet Modern_
+
+The lowest layers of the subconscious, represented by the instincts,
+are as old as life itself, with their lineage reaching back in direct
+and unbroken line to the first living things on the ooze of the ocean
+floor. The higher strata are more modern, full, and accurate records
+of our own lifetime, beginning with our first cry and ending with
+to-day's thoughts.
+
+_3 Primitive yet Refined_
+
+The lowest level, representing the past of the race, is primitive like
+a savage, and infantile, like a child; it is instinctive, unalterable,
+and universal; it knows no restraint, no culture, and no prudence. The
+higher level, the storehouse of individual experience, bears the
+marks of acquired ideals, of cultivated refinement, and represents
+among other things the precepts and prudence of civilized society.
+
+_4 Emotional yet Intellectual_
+
+Our records of the past are not dead archives, but living
+forces--persistent, urging, dynamic and emotional. They give meaning
+to new experiences, color our judgments, shape our beliefs, determine
+our interests, and, if wrongly handled, make their way into
+consciousness as neurotic symptoms.
+
+However, the subconscious is not all emotion. It is a mind capable of
+elaborate thought, able to calculate, to scheme, to answer doubts, to
+solve problems, to fabricate the purposeful, fantastic allegories of
+dreams and to create from mere knowledge the inspired works of genius.
+
+But the subconscious has one great limitation, it cannot reason
+inductively. Given a premise, this mind can reason as unerringly as
+the most skilful logician; that is, it can reason deductively, but it
+cannot arrive at a general conclusion from a number of particular
+facts. However, except for inductive reasoning and awareness, the
+subconscious seems to possess all the attributes of conscious mind and
+is in fact an intellectual force to be reckoned with.
+
+_5 Organized yet Disorganizable_
+
+The subconscious mind is a highly organized institution, but like all
+such institutions it is liable to disorganization when rent by
+internal dissension. Ordinarily it keeps its ideas and emotions, its
+complexes and moods in fairly accurate order, but when upset by
+emotional warfare, it gets its records confused and falls into a
+chaotic state which makes regular business impossible.
+
+_6 Masterful yet Obedient_
+
+The subconscious, which is master of the body, is in normal life the
+servant of consciousness. One of its outstanding qualities is
+suggestibility. Since it cannot reason from particulars to a general
+conclusion it takes any statement given it by consciousness, believes
+it implicitly and acts accordingly.
+
+The pilot wheel of the ship is, after all, the conscious mind,
+insignificant in size when compared with the great mass of the vessel,
+but all-powerful in its ability to direct the course of the voyage.
+
+Nervous persons are people who are too much under the sway of the
+subconscious; so, too, are some geniuses, who narrowly escape a
+neurosis by finding a more useful outlet for their subconscious
+energies. While the poet, the inventor, and the neurotic are likely to
+be too largely controlled by the subconscious, the average man is to a
+greater extent ruled by the conscious mind; and the highest type of
+genius is the man whose conscious and subconscious minds work together
+in perfect harmony, each up to its full power.
+
+If, as many believe, the next great strides of science are to be in
+this direction, it may pay some of us to be pioneers in learning how
+to make use of these undeveloped riches of memory, organization, and
+surplus energy. The subconscious, which can on occasion behave like a
+very devil within us, is, when rightly used, our greatest asset, the
+source of powers whose appearance in the occasional individual has
+been considered almost superhuman, but which prove to be
+characteristically human, the common inheritance of the race of man.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+_In which we learn why it pays to be cheerful_
+
+BODY AND MIND
+
+THE MISSING LINK
+
+
+=Ancient Knowledge.= People have always known that mind in some
+strange way carries its moods over into the body. The writer of the
+Book of Proverbs tells us, from that far-off day, that "A merry heart
+doeth good like a medicine, but a broken spirit drieth the bones."
+Jesus in His healing ministry always emphasized the place of faith in
+the cure of the body. "Thy faith hath made thee whole," is a frequent
+word on His lips, and ever since His day people have been
+rediscovering the truth that faith, even in the absence of a worthy
+object, does often make whole. Faith in the doctor, the medicine, the
+charm, the mineral waters, the shrine, and in the good God, has
+brought health to many thousands of sufferers. People have always
+reckoned on this bodily result from a mental state. They have
+intuitively known better than to tell a sick person that he is looking
+worse, but they have not always known why. They have known that a fit
+of anger is apt to bring on a headache, but they have not stopped to
+look for the reason, or if they have, they have often gotten
+themselves into a tangle. This is because there has always been, until
+recently, a missing link. Now the link has been found. After the last
+chapter, it will not be hard to understand that this connecting link,
+this go-between of body and mind, is nothing else than the
+subconscious mind. When we remember that it has the double power of
+knowing our thoughts and of controlling our bodies, it is not hard to
+see how an idea can translate itself into a pain, nor to realize with
+new vividness the truth of the statement that healthy mental states
+make for health, and unhealthy mental states for illness.
+
+=Suggestion and Emotion.= There are still many gaps in our knowledge
+of the ways of the subconscious, but investigation has thrown a good
+deal of light on the problem. Two of the principles already discussed
+are sufficient to explain most of the phenomena. These are, first,
+that the subconscious is amenable to control by suggestion, and
+secondly, that it is greatly influenced by emotion. Tracing back the
+principles behind any example of the power of mind over body, one
+finds at the root of the matter either a suggestion or an emotion, or
+both. If, then, the stimulating and depressing effects of mental
+states are to be understood, the first Step must be a fuller
+understanding of the laws governing suggestion and emotion.
+
+
+THE CONTAGION OF IDEAS
+
+One of the most important points about the subconscious mind is its
+openness to suggestion. It likes to believe what it is told and to act
+accordingly. The conscious mind, too,--proud seat of reason though it
+may be,--shares this habit of accepting ideas without demanding too
+much proof of their truth. Even at his best, man is extremely
+susceptible to the contagion of ideas. Most of us are even less immune
+to this mental contagion than we are to colds or influenza; for ideas
+are catching. They are such subtle, insinuating things that they creep
+into our minds without our knowing it at all; and once there, they are
+as powerful as most germs.
+
+Let a person faint in a crowded room, and a good per cent. of the
+women present will begin to fan themselves. The room has suddenly
+become insufferably close. After we have read half a hundred times
+that Ivory soap floats, a fair proportion of the population is likely
+to be seized with desire for a soap that floats,--not because they
+have any good reason for doing so, but simply because the suggestion
+has "taken." As for the harbingers of spring, they are neither the
+birds nor the wild flowers, but the blooming windows of the
+milliners, which successfully suggest in wintry February that summer
+is coming, and that felt and fur are out of season. It is evident that
+all advertising is suggestion.
+
+The training of children, also, if it is done in the right way, is
+largely a matter of suggestion. The little child who falls down and
+bumps his head is very likely to cry if met with a sympathetic show of
+concern, while the same child will often take his mishaps as a joke if
+his elders meet them with a laugh or a diverting remark. Unlucky is
+the child whose mother does not know, either consciously or
+intuitively, that example and contagion are more powerful--and more
+pleasant--than command and prohibition.
+
+=Everything Suggestive.= Human beings are constantly communicating,
+one to another. Sometimes they "get over" an idea by means of words,
+but often they do it in more subtle ways,--by the elevation of an
+eyelid, the gesture of a hand, composure of manner in a crisis, or a
+laugh in a delicate situation. A suggestion is merely an idea passed
+from one person to another, an idea that is accepted with conviction
+and acted upon, even though there may be no logic, no reason, no proof
+of its truth. It is an influence that takes hold of the mind and works
+itself out to fulfilment, quite apart from its worth or
+reasonableness. Of course, logical persuasion and argument have their
+place in the communication of ideas; an idea may be conveyed by other
+ways than suggestion. But while suggestion is not everything, it is
+equally true that there is suggestion in everything. The doctor may
+give a patient a very rational explanation of his case, but the
+doubtful shake of the head or the encouraging look of his eye is quite
+likely to color the patient's general impression. The eyes of our
+subconscious are always open, and they are constantly getting
+impressions, subtle suggestions that are implied rather than
+expressed.
+
+=Abnormal Suggestibility.= While everybody is suggestible, nervous
+people are abnormally so. It may be, as McDougall suggests, that they
+have so large an amount of submission or negative self-feeling in
+their make-up that they believe anything, just because some one else
+says it is true. Sometimes it is lack of knowledge that makes us
+gullible, and at other times the cause of our suggestibility is
+failure to use the knowledge that we have. Sometimes our ideas are
+locked away in air-tight compartments with no interaction between
+them. The psychologists tell us that suggestion is greatly favored by
+a narrowing of the attention, a "contraction of the field of
+consciousness," a dissociation of other ideas through concentration.
+This all simply means that we forget to let our common sense bring to
+bear counter ideas that might challenge a false one; or that worry--a
+veritable "spasm of the attention"--has fixed upon an idea to the
+exclusion of all others; or that through fatigue or the dissociation
+of sleep or hypnosis or hysteria, our reasoning powers have been
+locked out and for the time being are unable to act.
+
+It was through experiments on hypnotized subjects that scientists
+first learned of the suggestibility of the subconscious mind. In
+hypnosis a person can be made to believe almost anything and to do
+almost anything compatible with the safety and the moral sense of the
+individual. The instinct of self-preservation will not allow the most
+deeply hypnotized person to do anything dangerous to himself; and the
+moral complexes, laid in the subconscious, never permit a person to
+perform in earnest an act of which the waking moral sense would
+disapprove. Within these limits, a person in the dissociated hypnotic
+state can be made to accept almost any suggestion. We found in the
+last chapter how open to suggestion is a person in normal sleep. Of
+the dissociation of hysteria we shall have occasion to speak in later
+chapters. Although all these special states heighten suggestibility,
+we must not forget how susceptible each of us is in his normal waking
+state.
+
+=Living Its Faith.= All this gathers meaning only when we realize that
+ideas are dynamic. They always tend to work themselves out to
+fulfilment. The subconscious no sooner gets a conviction than it tries
+to act it out. Of course it can succeed only up to a certain limit.
+If it believes the stomach to have cancer, it cannot make cancer, but
+it can make the stomach misbehave. One of my patients, on hearing of a
+case of brain-tumor immediately imagined this to be her trouble, and
+developed a pain in her head. She could not manufacture a tumor, but
+she could manufacture what she believed to be the symptoms.
+
+There was another patient who was supposed to have brain-tumor. This
+young woman seemed to have lost almost entirely the power to keep her
+equilibrium in walking. Her center of gravity was never over her feet,
+but away out in space, so that she was continually banging from one
+side of the room to the other, only saving herself from injury by
+catching at the wall or the furniture with her hands. Several
+physicians who had been interested in the case had found the symptoms
+strongly suggestive of brain-tumor. There were, however, certain
+unmistakable earmarks of hysteria, such as childlike bland
+indifference to the awkwardness of the gait which was a grotesque
+caricature of several brain and spinal-cord diseases, with no accurate
+picture of any single one. This was evidently a case, not of actual
+loss of power but a dissociation of the memory-picture of walking. The
+patient was a trained nurse and knew in a general way the symptoms of
+brain-tumor. When the suggestion of brain-tumor had fixed itself in
+her mind she was able subconsciously to manufacture what she believed
+to be the symptoms of that disease.
+
+By injecting a keen sense of disapprobation and skepticism into the
+hitherto placidly accepted state of disability, by flashing a mirror
+on the physical and moral attitudes which she was assuming, I was able
+to rob the pathological complex of its (altogether unconscious)
+pleasurable feeling-tone, and to restore to its former strength and
+poise a personality of exceptional native worth and beauty. After a
+few weeks at my house she was able to walk like a normal person and
+went back to her work, for good.
+
+We have already learned enough about the inner self to see in a faint
+way how it works out its ideas. Since the subconscious mind runs the
+bodily machinery, since it regulates digestion, the building up of
+tissue, circulation, respiration, glandular secretion, muscular tonus,
+and every other process pertaining to nutrition and growth, it is not
+difficult to see how an idea about any of these matters can work
+itself out into a fact. A thought can furnish the mental machinery
+needed to fulfil the thought. Some one catches the suggestion:
+"Concentration is hard on the brain. It soon brings on brain-fag and
+headache." Not knowing facts to the contrary, the suggestible mind
+accepts the proposition. Then one day, after a little concentration,
+the idea begins to work. Whereupon the autonomic nervous system
+tightens up the blood-vessels that regulate the local blood supply,
+too much blood stays in the head, and lo, it aches! The next time, the
+suggestion comes with greater force, and soon the habit is
+formed,--all the result of an idea. It is a good thing to remember
+that constant thought about any part of the body never fails to send
+an over-supply of blood to that part; of course that means congestion
+and pain.
+
+=Hands Off!= By sending messages directly to an organ through the
+nerve-centers or by changing circulation, the subconscious director of
+our bodies can make any part of us misbehave in a number of ways. All
+it needs is a suggestion of an interfering thought about an organ. As
+we have insisted before, the subconscious cannot stand interference.
+Sadler well says: "Man can live at the equator or exist at the poles.
+He can eat almost anything and everything, but he cannot long stand
+self-contemplation. The human mind can accomplish wonders in the way
+of work, but it is soon wrecked when directed into the channels of
+worry."[27] In other words, hands off!--or rather, minds off! Don't
+get ideas that make you think about your body. The surest way to
+disarrange any function is to think about it. It is a stout heart that
+will not change its beat with a frequent finger on the pulse, and a
+hearty stomach that will not "act up" under attention. "Judicious
+neglect" is a good motto for most occasions. Take no anxious thought
+if you would be well. Know enough about your body to counteract false
+suggestions; fulfil the common-sense laws of hygiene,--eight hours in
+bed, plenty of exercise and fresh air, and three square meals a day.
+Then forget all about it. "A mental representation is already a
+sensation,"[28] and we have enough legitimate sensations without
+manufacturing others.
+
+[Footnote 27: Sadler: _Physiology of Faith and Fear_.]
+
+[Footnote 28: DuBois: _Psychic Treatment of Nervous Disorders_.]
+
+=From Real Life.= Startling indeed are the tricks that we can play on
+ourselves by disregarding these laws. A patient who was unnecessarily
+concerned about his stomach once came to me in great alarm, exhibiting
+a distinct, well-defined swelling about the size of a match-box in the
+region of his stomach. I looked at it, laughed, and told him to forget
+it. Whereupon it promptly disappeared. The first segment of the rectus
+muscle had tied itself up into a knot, under the stimulus of anxious
+attention.
+
+Another patient appeared at my door one day saying, "Look here!"
+Examination showed that her abdomen was swollen to the size of more
+than a six-months pregnancy. As it happened, this woman had a friend
+who a short time before had developed a pseudo, or hysterical
+pregnancy which continued for several months. My patient, accepting
+the suggestion, was prepared to imitate her. I gave her a punch or
+two and told her to go and dress for luncheon. In the afternoon she
+had returned to her normal size.
+
+Another woman, suffering from chronic constipation, was firmly
+convinced that her bowels could not move without a cathartic, which I
+refused to give. However, I did give her some strychnine pills,
+carefully explaining that they were not for her intestines and that
+they would have no effect there. She did not believe me, and promptly
+began to have an evacuation every day. It seems that sometimes two
+wrong ideas are equal to a right one.
+
+If doctors fully realized the power of suggestion, they would be more
+careful than they sometimes are about suggesting symptoms by the
+questions they ask their patients.
+
+A patient of mine with locomotor-ataxia suffered from the usual train
+of symptoms incident to that disease. It turned out, however, that
+many of the symptoms had been suggested by the questions of former
+physicians who had asked him whether he had certain symptoms and
+certain disabilities. The patient had answered in the negative and
+then promptly developed the suggested symptoms. When I told him what
+had happened, these false symptoms disappeared leaving only those
+which had a real physical foundation.
+
+Another patient, a young girl, complained of a definite localized
+pain in her arm, and told me that she was suffering from angina
+pectoris. As we do not expect to find this disease in a young person,
+I asked her where she got such an idea. "Dr. ---- told me so last
+May." "Did you feel the pain in this same place before that time?" I
+asked. She thought a minute and then answered: "Why no, I had a pain
+around my heart but I did not notice it in my arm until after that
+consultation." The wise physician lets his patients describe their own
+symptoms without suggesting others by the implication of his
+questions.
+
+=Autosuggestion.= Of course we must remember that an idea cannot
+always work itself out immediately. Conditions are not always ripe. It
+often lies fallow a long time, buried in the subconscious, only to
+come up again as an autosuggestion, a suggestion from the self to the
+self. If some one tells us that nervous insomnia is disastrous, and we
+believe it, we shall probably store up the idea until the next time
+that chance conditions keep us awake. Then the autosuggestion "bobs
+up," common sense is side-tracked, we toss and worry--and of course
+stay awake. An autosuggestion often repeated becomes the strongest of
+suggestions, successfully opposing most outside ideas that would
+counteract it,--reason enough for seeing to it that our
+autosuggestions are of the healthful variety.
+
+At the base of every psycho-neurosis is an unhealthful suggestion.
+This is never the ultimate cause. There are other forces at work. But
+the suggestion is the material out of which those other forces weave
+the neurosis. Suggestibility is one of the earmarks of nervousness. A
+sensible and sturdy spirit, stable enough to maintain its equilibrium,
+is a fairly good antidote to attack. "As a man thinketh in his heart,
+so is he."
+
+
+WHY FEELINGS COUNT
+
+=The Emotions Again.= It seems impossible to discuss any psychological
+principle without finally coming back to the subject of emotions. It
+truly seems that all roads lead to the instincts and to the emotions
+which drive them. And so, as we follow the trail of suggestion, we
+suddenly turn a corner and find ourselves back at our
+starting-point--the emotional life. Like all other ideas, suggestions
+get tied up with emotions to form complexes, of which the
+driving-power is the emotion.
+
+If we look into our emotional life, we find, besides the true
+emotions, with which we have become familiar in Chapter III, a great
+number of feelings or feeling-tones which color either pleasurably or
+painfully our emotions and our ideas. On the one hand there are
+pleasure, joy, exaltation, courage, cheer, confidence, satisfaction;
+and on the other, pain, sorrow, depression, apprehension, gloom,
+distrust, and dissatisfaction. Every complex which is laid away in
+our subconscious is tinted, either slightly or intensely, with its
+specific feeling-tone.
+
+=Emotions--Tonic and Poisonous.= All this is most important because of
+one vital fact; joyful emotions invigorate, and sorrowful emotions
+depress; pleasurable emotions stimulate, and painful emotions burden;
+satisfying emotions revitalize, and unsatisfying emotions sap the
+strength. In other words, our bodies are made for courage, confidence,
+and cheer. Any other atmosphere puts them out of their element,
+handicapped by abnormal conditions for which they were never
+fashioned. We were written in a major key, and when we try to change
+over into minor tones we get sadly out of tune.
+
+There is another factor; painful emotions make us fall to pieces,
+while pleasant emotions bind us together. We can see why this is so
+when we remember that powerful emotions like fear and anger tend to
+dissociate all but themselves, to split up the mind into separate
+parts and to force out of consciousness everything but their own
+impulse. Morton Prince in his elaborate studies of the cases of
+multiple personality, Miss Beauchamp and B.C.A., found repeatedly that
+he had only to hypnotize the patient and replace painful, depressing
+complexes by healthy, happy ones to change her from a weak, worn-out
+person, complaining of fatigue, insomnia, and innumerable aches and
+pains, into a vigorous woman, for the time being completely well. On
+this point he says:
+
+     Exalting emotions have an intense synthesizing effect, while
+     depressing emotions have a disintegrating effect. With the
+     inrushing of depressive memories or ideas ... there is suddenly
+     developed a condition of fatigue, ill-being and disintegration,
+     followed after waking by a return or accentuation of all the
+     neurasthenic symptoms. If on the other hand, exalting ideas and
+     memories are introduced and brought into the limelight of
+     attention, there is almost a magical reversal of processes. The
+     patient feels strong and energetic, the neurasthenic symptoms
+     disappear and he exhibits a capacity for sustained effort. He
+     becomes re-vitalized, so to speak.[29]
+
+[Footnote 29: Prince: _Psycho-therapeutics_, Chap. I.]
+
+In cases like this the needed strength and energy are not lost; they
+are merely side-tracked, but the person feels as weak as though he
+were physically ill.
+
+
+BODILY RESPONSE TO EMOTIONAL STATES
+
+=Secretions.= Let us look more carefully into some of the
+physiological processes involved in emotional changes. Among the most
+apparent of bodily responses are the various external secretions.
+Tears, the secretion of the lachrymal glands in response to an
+emotion, are too common a phenomenon to arouse comment. It is common
+knowledge that clammy hands and a dry mouth betray emotion. Every
+nursing mother knows that she dares not become too disturbed lest her
+milk should dry up or change in character. Most people have
+experienced an increase in urine in times of excitement; recently
+physiologists have discovered the presence of sugar in the urine of
+students at the time of athletic contests and difficult
+examinations.[30] We have seen what an important role the various
+internal secretions, such as the adrenal and thyroid secretions play
+in fitting the body for flight and combat, and how large a part fear
+and anger have in their production. Constant over-production of these
+secretions through chronic states of worry is responsible for many a
+distressing symptom.
+
+[Footnote 30: Cannon.]
+
+Most graphic evidence of the disturbance of secretions by emotion is
+found in the response of the salivary and gastric glands to painful or
+pleasurable thinking. As these are the secretions which play the
+largest part in the digestive processes, they lead us naturally to our
+next heading.
+
+=Digestion.= Everybody knows that appetizing food makes the mouth
+water, but not everybody realizes that it makes the stomach water
+also. Nor do we often realize the vital place that this watering has
+in taking care of our food. "Well begun is half-done," is literally
+true of digestion. A good flow of saliva brings the food into contact
+with the taste-buds in the tongue. Taste sends messages to the
+nerve-centers in the medulla oblongata; these centers in turn flash
+signals to the stomach glands, which immediately "get busy" preparing
+the all-important gastric juice. It takes about five minutes for this
+juice to be made ready, and so it happens that in five minutes after
+the first taste, or even in some cases after the first smell, the
+stomach is pouring forth its "appetite juice" which determines all the
+rest of the digestive process, in intestines as well as in stomach.
+Experiments on dogs and cats by Pawlow, Cannon, and others have shown
+what fear and anger and even mildly unpleasant emotions do to the
+whole digestive process. Cannon tells of a dog who produced 66.7 cubic
+centimeters of pure gastric juice in the twenty minutes following five
+minutes of sham feeding (feeding in which food is swallowed and then
+dropped out of an opening in the esophagus into a bucket instead of
+into the stomach). Although there was no food in the stomach, the
+juice was produced by the enjoyment of the taste and the thought of
+it. On another day, after this dog had been infuriated by a cat, and
+then pacified, the sham feeding was given again. This time, although
+the dog ate eagerly, he produced only 9 cubic centimeters of gastric
+juice, and this rich in mucus. Evidently a good appetite and
+attractively served food are not more important than a cheerful mind.
+Spicy table talk, well mixed with laughter, is better than all the
+digestive tablets in the world. What is true of stomach secretions is
+equally true of stomach contractions. "The pleasurable taking of food"
+is a necessity if the required contractions of stomach and intestines
+are to go forward on schedule time. A little extra dose of adrenalin
+from a mild case of depression or worry is enough to stop all
+movements for many minutes. What a revelation on many a case of
+nervous dyspepsia! The person who dubbed it "Emotional Dyspepsia" had
+facts on his side.
+
+=Circulation.= It is not the heart only that pumps the blood through
+the body. The tiny muscles of the smallest blood-vessels, by their
+elasticity are of the greatest importance in maintaining an even flow,
+and this is especially influenced by fear and depression. Blushing,
+pallor, cold hands and feet, are circulatory disturbances based
+largely on emotions. Better than a hot-water bottle or electric pads
+are courage and optimism. A patient of mine laughingly tells of an
+incident which she says happened a number of years ago, but which I
+have forgotten. She says that she asked me one night as she carried
+her hot-water bottle to bed, "Doctor, what makes cold feet?" and that
+I lightly answered "Cowardice!" Whereupon she threw away her beloved
+water-bag and has never needed it since.
+
+There is a disturbance of the circulation which results in very
+marked swelling and redness of the affected part. This is known as
+angio-neurotic edema, or nervous swelling. I do not have to go farther
+than my own person for an example of this phenomenon. When I was a
+young woman I taught school and went home every day for luncheon. One
+day at luncheon, some one of the family criticized me severely. I went
+back to school very angry. Before I entered the school-room, the
+principal handed me some books which she had ordered for me. They were
+not at all the books I wanted, and that upset me still more. As I went
+into the schoolroom, I found that my face was swollen until my eyes
+were almost shut; it was a bright red and covered with purplish
+blotches. My fingers were swollen so that I could not bend the joints
+in the slightest degree. It was a day or two before the disturbance
+disappeared, and the whole of it was the result of anger.
+
+We hear much to-day about high blood pressure. They say that a man is
+as old as his arteries, and now it is known that the health of the
+arteries depends largely on blood pressure. Since this is a matter
+that can be definitely measured at any minute, we have an easy way of
+noting the remarkable effect of shifting emotions. Sadler tells of an
+ex-convict with a blood pressure of 190 millimeters. It seems that he
+was worrying over possible rearrest. On being reassured on this
+point, his blood pressure began to drop within a few minutes, falling
+20 mm. in three hours, and 35 mm. by the following day.
+
+=Muscular Tone.= A force that affects circulation, blood pressure,
+respiration, nutrition of cells, secretion, and digestion, can hardly
+fail to have a marked effect on the tone of the muscles, internal as
+well as external. When we remember that heart, stomach, and intestines
+are made of muscular tissue, to say nothing of the skeletal muscles,
+we begin to realize how important is muscular tone for bodily health.
+Over and over again have I demonstrated that a courageous mind is the
+best tonic. Perhaps an example from my "flat-footed" patients will be
+to the point. One woman, the young mother of a family, came to me for
+a nervous trouble. Besides this, she had suffered for seven or eight
+years from severe pains in her feet and had been compelled to wear
+specially made shoes prescribed by a Chicago orthopedist. The shoes,
+however, did not seem to lessen the pain. After an ordinary day's
+occupation, she could not even walk across the floor at dinner-time. A
+walk of two blocks would incapacitate her for many days. She was
+convinced that her feet could never be cured and came to me only on
+account of nervous trouble. On the day of her arrival she flung
+herself down on the couch, saying that she would like to go away from
+everybody, where the children would never bother her again. She was
+sure nobody loved her and she wanted to die. Within three weeks, in
+ordinary shoes, this woman tramped nine miles up Mount Wilson and the
+next day tramped down again. Her attitude had changed from that of
+irritable fretfulness to one of buoyant joy, and with the moral change
+had come new strength in the muscles. The death of her husband has
+since made it necessary for her to support the family, and she is now
+on her feet from eight to fourteen hours a day, a constant source of
+inspiration to all about her, and no more weary than the average
+person.
+
+Flabbiness in the muscles often causes this trouble with the feet.
+"The arches of the foot are maintained by ligaments between the bones,
+supported by muscle tendons which prevent undue stretching of the
+ligaments and are a protection against flat-foot."[31] Muscle tissue
+has an abundant blood supply, while ligaments have very little and
+soon lose their resiliency if unsupported. Any lack of tone in the
+calf-muscles throws the weight on the less resistant ligaments and on
+the cartilages placed as cushions between the bony structures of the
+arch. This is what causes the pain.[32]
+
+[Footnote 31: Grey's Anatomy--"The Articulations."]
+
+[Footnote 32: Actual loss of the arch by downward displacement of the
+bones cannot be overcome by restoring muscle-tone. The majority of
+so-called cases of flatfoot are, however, in the stage amenable to
+psychic measures.]
+
+Flat-footedness is only one result of weak muscles. Eye-strain is
+another; ptosis, or falling of the organs, is another. In a majority
+of cases the best treatment for any of these troubles is an
+understanding attempt to go to the root of the matter by bracing up
+the whole mental tone. The most scientific oculists do not try to
+correct eye trouble due to muscular insufficiency by any special
+prisms or glasses. They know that the eyes will right themselves when
+the general health and the general spirits improve. I have found by
+repeated experience with nervous patients that it takes only a short
+time for people who have been unable to read for months or years to
+regain their old faculty. So remarkable is the power of mind.
+
+
+SUMMARY
+
+We have found that the gap between the body and the mind is not so
+wide as it seems, and that it is bridged by the subconscious mind,
+which is at once the master of the body and the servant of
+consciousness. In recording the physical effects of suggestion and
+emotion, we have not taken time to describe the galvanometers, the
+weighing-machines and all the other apparatus used in the various
+laboratory tests; but enough has been said to show that when doctors
+and psychologists speak of the effect of mind on body, they are
+dealing with definite facts and with laws capable of scientific
+proof.
+
+We have emphasized the fact that downcast and fearful moods have an
+immediate effect on the body; but after all, most people know this
+already. What they do not know is the real cause of the mood. When a
+nervous person finds out why he worries, he is well on the way toward
+recovery. An understanding of the cause is among the most vital
+discoveries of modern science.
+
+The discussion, so far, has merely prepared us to plunge into the
+heart of the question: What is it that in the last analysis makes a
+person nervous, and how may he find his way out? This question the
+next two chapters will try to answer.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+_In which we go to the root of the matter_
+
+THE REAL TROUBLE
+
+
+PIONEERS
+
+=Following the Gleam.= Kipling's Elephant-child with the "'satiable
+curiosity" finally asked a question which seemed simple enough but
+which sent him on a long journey into unknown parts. In the same way
+man's modest and simple question, "What makes people nervous?" has
+sent him far-adventuring to find the answer. For centuries he has
+followed false trails, ending in blind alleys, and only lately does he
+seem to have found the road that shall lead him to his journey's end.
+
+We may be thankful that we are following a band of pioneers whose
+fearless courage and passion for truth would not let them turn back
+even when the trail led through fields hitherto forbidden. The leader
+of this band of pioneers was a young doctor named Freud.
+
+
+THE SEARCH FOR TRUTH
+
+=Early Beginnings.= In 1882, when Freud was the assistant to Dr.
+Breuer of Vienna, there was brought to them for treatment a young
+woman afflicted with various hysterical pains and paralyses. This
+young woman's case marked an epoch in medical history; for out of the
+effort to cure her came some surprising discoveries of great
+significance to the open-minded young student.
+
+It was found that each of this girl's symptoms was related to some
+forgotten experience, and that in every case the forgetting seemed to
+be the result of the painfulness of the experience. In other words,
+the symptoms were not visitations from without, but expressions from
+within; they were a part of the mental life of the patient; they had a
+history and a meaning, and the meaning seemed in some way to be
+connected with the patient's previous attitude of mind which made the
+experience too painful to be tolerated in consciousness. These
+previous ideas were largely subconscious and had been acquired during
+early childhood. When by means of hypnosis a great mass of forgotten
+material was brought to the surface and later made plain to her
+consciousness, the symptoms disappeared as if by magic.
+
+=A Startling Discovery.= For a time Breuer and Freud worked together,
+finding that their investigations with other patients served to
+corroborate their former conclusions. When it became apparent that in
+every case the painful experience bore some relation to the love-life
+of the patient, both doctors were startled. Along with most of the
+rest of the world, they had been taught to look askance at the
+reproductive instinct and to shrink from realizing the vital place
+which sex holds in human life.
+
+Breuer dropped the work, and after an interval Freud went on alone. He
+was resolved to know the truth, and to tell what he saw. When he
+reported to the world that out of all his hundreds of patients, he had
+been unable, after the most careful analysis, to find one whose
+illness did not grow from some lack of adjustment of the sex-life, he
+was met by a storm of protest from all quarters. No amount of evidence
+seemed to make any difference. People were determined that no such
+libel should be heaped on human nature. Sex-urge was not respectable
+and nervous people were to be respected.
+
+Despite public disapproval, the scorn of other scientists, and the
+resistance of his own inner prejudices, Freud kept on. He was forced
+to acknowledge the validity of the facts which invariably presented
+themselves to view. Like Luther under equal duress, he cried: "Here I
+stand. I can do no other."
+
+=Freudian Principles.= Gradually, as he worked, he gathered together a
+number of outstanding facts about man's mental life and about the
+psycho-neuroses. These facts he formulated into certain principles,
+which may be summed up in the following way.
+
+1 There is no _chance_ in mental life; every mental phenomenon--hence
+every nervous phenomenon--has a cause and meaning.
+
+2 Infantile mental life is of tremendous importance in the direction
+of adult processes.
+
+3 Much of what is called forgetting is rather a repression into the
+subconscious, of impulses which were painful to the personality as a
+whole.
+
+4 Mental processes are dynamic, insisting on discharge, either in
+reality or in phantasy.
+
+5 An emotion may become detached from the idea to which it belongs and
+be displaced on other ideas.
+
+6 Sex-interests dominate much of the mental life where their influence
+is unrecognized. The disturbance in a psycho-neurosis is always in
+this domain of sex-life. "In a normal sexual life, no neurosis." If a
+shock is the precipitating cause of the trouble, it is only because
+the ground was already prepared by the sex-disturbance.
+
+Freud was perhaps unfortunate in his choice of the word "sex," which
+has so many evil connotations; but as he found no other word to cover
+the field, he chose the old one and stretched its meaning to include
+all the psychic and physical phenomena which spring directly and
+indirectly from the great processes of reproduction and parental care,
+and which ultimately include all and more than our word "love."[33]
+
+[Footnote 33: Freud and his followers have always said that they saw
+no theoretical reason why any other repressed instinct should not form
+the basis of a neurosis, but that, as a matter of fact, they never had
+found this to be the case, probably because no other instinct comes
+into such bitter and persistent conflict with the dictates of society.
+Now, however, the Great War seems to have changed conditions. Under
+the strain and danger of life at the front there has developed a kind
+of nervous breakdown called shellshock or war-neurosis, which seems in
+some cases to be based not on the repression of the instinct of
+race-preservation but on the unusual necessity for repression of the
+instinct of self-preservation. Army surgeons report that wounded men
+almost never suffer from shell-shock. The wound is enough to secure
+the unconsciously desired removal to the rear. But in the absence of
+wounds, a desire for safety may at the same time be so intense and so
+severely repressed that it seizes upon the neurosis as the only
+possible means of escape from the unbearable situation. In time of
+peace, however, the instinct of reproduction seems to be the only
+impulse which is severely enough repressed to be responsible for a
+nervous breakdown.]
+
+=Later Developments.= Little by little, the scientific world came to
+see that this wild theorizer had facts on his side; that not only had
+he formulated a theory, but he had discovered a cure, and that he was
+able to free people from obsessions, fears, and physical symptoms
+before which other methods were powerless. One by one the open-minded
+men of science were converted by the overpowering logic of the
+evidence, until to-day we find not only a "Freudian school," counting
+among its members many of the eminent scientists of the day, but we
+find in medical schools and universities courses based on Freudian
+principles, with text-books by acknowledged authorities in medicine
+and psychology. We find magazines devoted entirely to psycho-analytic
+subjects,[34] besides articles in medical journals and even numerous
+articles in popular magazines. Not only is the treatment of nervous
+disorders revolutionized by these principles but floods of light are
+thrown on such widely different fields of study as ancient myths and
+folk lore, the theory of wit, methods of child training, and the
+little slips of the tongue and everyday "breaks" that have until
+recently been considered the meaningless results of chance.
+
+[Footnote 34: _The Psychoanalytic Review_ and the _International
+Journal of Psychoanalysis._]
+
+=A Searching Question.= We find, then, that when we ask, "What makes
+people nervous?" we are really asking: "What is man like, inside and
+out, up and down? What makes him think, feel, and act as he does every
+hour of every day?" We are asking for the source of human motives, the
+science of human behavior, the charting of the human mind. It is hard
+to-day to understand how so much reproach and ridicule could have been
+aroused by the statement that the ultimate cause of nervousness is a
+disturbance of the sex-life. There has already been a change in the
+public attitude toward things sexual.
+
+Training-courses for mothers and teachers, elementary teaching in the
+schools, lectures and magazine articles have done much to show the
+fallacy of our old hypersensitive attitude. Since the war, some of us
+know, too, with what success the army has used the Freudian principles
+in treating war-neurosis, which was mistakenly called shell-shock by
+the first observers. We know, too, more about the constitution of
+man's mind than the public knew ten years ago. When we remember the
+insistent character of the instincts and the repressive method used by
+society in restraining the most obstreperous impulse, when we remember
+the pain of such conflict and the depressing physical effects of
+painful emotions, we cannot wonder that this most sharply repressed
+instinct should cause mental and physical trouble.
+
+=What about Sublimation?= On the other hand, it has been stated in
+Chapter IV that although this universal urge cannot be repressed, it
+can be sublimated or diverted to useful ends which bring happiness,
+not disaster, to the individual. We have a right, then, to ask why
+this happy issue is not always attained, why sublimation ever fails.
+If a psycho-neurosis is caused by a failure of an insistent instinct
+to find adequate expression, by a blocking of the libido or the
+love-force, what are the conditions which bring about this blocking?
+The sex-instinct of every respectable person is subject to restraint.
+Some people are able to adjust themselves; why not all? The question,
+"What makes people nervous?" then turns out to mean: What keeps people
+from a satisfactory outlet for their love-instincts? What is it that
+holds them back from satisfaction in direct expression, and prevents
+indirect outlet in sublimation? Whatever does this must be the real
+cause of "nerves."
+
+
+THE CAUSES OF "NERVES"
+
+=Plural, not Singular.= The first thing to learn about the cause is
+that it is not a cause at all, but several causes. We are so well made
+that it takes a combination of circumstances to upset our equilibrium.
+In other words, a neurosis must be "over-determined." Heredity, faulty
+education, emotional shock, physical fatigue, have each at various
+times been blamed for a breakdown. As a matter of fact, it seems to
+take a number of ingredients to make a neurosis,--a little unstable
+inheritance plus a considerable amount of faulty upbringing, plus a
+later series of emotional experiences bearing just the right
+relationship to the earlier factors. Heredity, childhood reactions,
+and later experiences, are the three legs on which a neurosis usually
+stands. An occasional breakdown seems to stand on the single leg of
+childhood experiences but in the majority of cases each of the three
+factors contributes its quota to the final disaster.
+
+=Born or Made?= It used to be thought that neurotics, like poets, were
+born, not made. Heredity was considered wholly responsible, and there
+seemed very little to do about it. But to-day the emphasis on heredity
+is steadily giving way to stress on early environment. There are, no
+doubt, such factors as a certain innate sensitiveness, a natural
+suggestibility, an intensity of emotion, a little tendency to nervous
+instability, which predispose a person to nerves, but unless the
+inborn tendency is reinforced by the reactions and training of early
+childhood, it is likely to die a natural death.
+
+
+CHILDHOOD EXPERIENCES
+
+=Early Reactions.= Freud found that a neurotic is made before he is
+six years old. When by repeated explorations into the minds of his
+patients, he made this important discovery, he at first believed that
+the disturbing factor was always some single emotional experience or
+shock in childhood,--usually of a sexual nature. But Freud and later
+investigators have since found that the trouble is not so often a
+single experience as a long series of exaggerated emotional reactions,
+a too intense emotional life, a precocity in feeling tending toward
+fixation of childhood habits, which are thus carried over into adult
+life.
+
+=Fixation of Habits.= Fixation is the word that expresses all
+this,--fixation of childish habits. A neurotic is a person who made
+such strong habits in childhood that he cannot abandon them in
+maturity. He is too much ruled by the past. His unconscious emotional
+thought-habits are the complexes which were made in childhood and
+therefore lack the power of adaptation to mature life.
+
+We saw in Chapter IV that Nature takes great pains to develop in the
+child the psychic and physical trends which he will need later on in
+his mature love-life, and that this training is accomplished in a
+number of well-defined periods which lead from one to the other. If,
+however, the child reacts too intensely, lingers too long in any one
+of these phases, he lays for himself action lines of least resistance
+which he may never leave or to which he may return during the strain
+and stress of adult life.
+
+In either case, the neurotic is a grown-up child. He may be a very
+learned, very charming person, but he is nevertheless dragging behind
+him a part of his childhood which he should have outgrown long ago.
+Part of him is suffering from an arrest of development,--not a leg or
+an arm but an impulse.
+
+=Precocious Emotions.= The habits which tend to become fixed too soon
+seem to be of four kinds; the habit of loving, the habit of rebelling,
+the habit of repressing normal instincts, and the habit of dreaming.
+In each case it is the excess of feeling which causes the
+trouble,--too much love, too much hate, too much disgust, or too much
+pleasure in imagination. Exaggeration is always a danger-signal. An
+overdeveloped child is likely to be an underdeveloped man. Especially
+in the emotions is precocity to be deplored. A premature alphabet or
+multiplication table is not nearly so serious as premature intensity
+of feeling, nor so likely to lead later to trouble. Of course fixation
+in these emotional habits does not always lead to a serious breakdown.
+If the fixation is not too extreme, and if later events do not happen
+to accentuate the trouble, the arrest of development may merely show
+itself in certain weaknesses of character or in isolated symptoms
+without developing a real neurosis.
+
+Let us examine each of these arrested habits and the excess emotion
+which sets the mold before it is ready for maturity.
+
+=Too Much Self-Love.= In the chapter on the reproductive instinct, we
+found that the natural way to learn to love is by successively loving
+oneself, one's parents and family, one's fellows, and one's mate. If
+the love-force gets too much pleasure in any one of these phases, it
+finds it hard to give up its old love and to pass on to the next
+phase. Thus some children take too much pleasure in their own bodies
+or, a little later, in their own personalities. If they are too much
+interested in their own physical sensations and the pleasure they get
+by stimulating certain zones of the body, then in later life they
+cannot free themselves from the desire for this kind of satisfaction.
+Try as they may, they cannot be satisfied with normal adult relations,
+but sink back into some form of so-called sex-perversion.
+
+Perhaps it is another phase of self-love which holds the child too
+much. If, like Narcissus, he becomes too fond of looking at himself,
+is too eager to show off, too desirous of winning praise, then forever
+after he is likely to be self-conscious, self-centered, thinking
+always of the impression he is making, unable ever to be at leisure
+from himself. He is fixed in the Narcissistic stage of his life, and
+is unadapted to the world of social relations.
+
+=Too Much Family-love.= We have already spoken of the danger of
+fixation in the second period, that of object-love--the period of
+family relationships. The danger is here again one of degree and may
+be avoided by a little knowledge and self-control on the part of the
+parents. The little girl who is permitted to lavish too much love on
+her father, who does not see anybody else, who cannot learn to like
+the boys is a misfit. The wise mother will see that her love for her
+boy does not express itself too much by means of hugs and kisses. The
+mother who shows very plainly that she loves her little boy better
+than she loves her husband and the mother who boasts that her
+adolescent boy tells her all his secrets and takes her out in
+preference to any girl--that deluded mother is trying to take
+something that is not hers, and is thereby courting trouble. When her
+son grows up, he may not know why, but no girl will suit him, and he
+will either remain a bachelor or marry some older woman who reminds
+him subconsciously of his mother. His love-requirements will be too
+strict; he will be forever trying either in phantasy or in real life
+to duplicate his earlier love-experiences. This, of course, cannot
+satisfy the demands of a mature man. He will be torn between
+conflicting desires, unhappy without knowing why, unable either to
+remain a child or to become a man, and impelled to gain
+self-expression in indirect and unsatisfactory ways.
+
+Since it is not possible in this space to recite specific cases which
+show how often a nervous trouble points back to the father-mother
+complex,[35] it may help to cite the opinions of a few of our best
+authorities. Freud says of the family complex, "This is the root
+complex of the neurosis." Jelliffe: "It is the foot-rule of
+measurement of success in life": by which he means that just so far as
+we are able at the right time to free ourselves from dependence on
+parents are we able to adjust ourselves to the world at large.
+Pfister: "The attitude toward parents very often determines for a
+life-time the attitude toward people in general and toward life
+itself." Hinkle: "The entire direction of lives is determined by
+parental relationships."
+
+[Footnote 35: This is technically known as the Oedipus Complex.]
+
+=Too Much Hate.= Besides loving too hard, there is the danger of
+hating too hard. If it sounds strange to talk of the hatreds of
+childhood, we must remember that we are thinking of real life as it is
+when the conventions of adult life are removed and the subconscious
+gives up its secrets.
+
+Several references have been made to the jealousy of the small child
+when he has to share his love with the parent of the same sex. For
+every little boy the father gets in the way. For every little girl the
+mother gets in the way. At one time or other there is likely to be a
+period when this is resented with all the violence of a child's
+emotions. It is likely to be very soon repressed and succeeded by a
+real affection which lasts through life. But underneath, unmodified by
+time, there may exist simultaneously the old childish image and the
+old unconscious reaction to it, unconscious but still active in
+indirect ways.
+
+Jealousy is very often united with the natural rebellion of a child
+against authority. The rebellion may, of course, be directed against
+either parent who is final in authority in the home. In most cases
+this is the father. As the impulse of self-assertion is usually
+stronger in boys than in girls, and as the boy's impulse in this
+direction is reinforced by any existing jealousy toward his father, we
+find a strong spirit of rebellion more often playing a subconscious
+part in the life of men than of women. The novelist's favorite theme
+of the conflict between the young man and "the old man" represents the
+conscious, unrepressed complex. More often, however, there is true
+affection for the father, while the rebellion which really belongs to
+the childish father-image is displaced or transferred to other symbols
+of authority,--the state, the law, the king, the school, the teacher,
+the church, or perhaps to religion and authority in general.
+Anarchists and atheists naturally rationalize their reasons for
+dissent, but, for all that, they are not so much intellectual pioneers
+as rebellious little boys who have forgotten to grow up.
+
+=Liking to be "Bossed."= There is a worse danger, however, than too
+much rebellion, and that is too little rebellion. Sometimes this
+yielding spirit is the result of an overdose of negative self-feeling
+and an under-dose of positive self-feeling; but sometimes it is
+over-compensation for the repressed spirit of rebellion which the
+child considers wicked. Consciously he becomes over-meek, because he
+has to summon all his powers to fight his subconscious insurrection.
+Whether he be meek by nature or by training, he is likely to be a
+failure. Everybody knows that the child who is too good never amounts
+to anything. He who has never disobeyed is a weakling. Naturally
+resenting all authority, the normal individual, if he be well trained,
+soon learns that some authority is necessary. He rebels, but he learns
+to acquiesce, to a certain degree. If he acquiesces too easily,
+represses too severely his rebellious spirit, swings to the other
+extreme of wanting to be "bossed," he is very likely to end as a
+nervous invalid, unfitted for the battles of life. The neurotic in the
+majority of cases likes authority, clings to it too long, wants the
+teacher to tell him what to do, wants the doctor to order him around,
+is generally over-conscientious, and afraid he will offend the "boss"
+or some one else who reminds him of the father-image. All this carries
+a warning to parents who cannot manage their children without
+dominating their lives, even when the domination is a kindly one.
+Perhaps the modern child is in more danger of being spoiled than
+bullied, but analysis of nervous patients shows that both kinds of
+danger still exist.
+
+=Too Much Disgust.= The third form of excessive emotion is disgust.
+The love-force, besides being blocked by a fixation of childish love
+and of childish reactions toward authority, is very often kept from
+free mature self-expression by a perpetuation of a childish reaction
+against sex. We hardly need dwell longer on the folly of teaching
+children to be ashamed of so inevitable a part of their own nature.
+Disgust is a very strong emotion, and when it is turned against a part
+of ourselves, united with that other strong impulse of self-regard and
+incorporated into the conscience, it makes a Chinese wall of exclusion
+against the baffled, misunderstood reproductive instinct, which is
+thrust aside as alien.
+
+=Restraint versus Denial.= Repression is not merely restraint. It is
+restraint plus denial. To the clamoring instinct we say not merely,
+"No, you _may_ not," but "No, you _are_ not. You do not exist. Nothing
+like you could belong to me." The woman with nausea (Chapter V) did
+not say to herself: "You are a normal, healthy woman, possessed of a
+normal woman's desires. But wait a while until the proper time comes."
+Controlled by an immature feeling of disgust, she had said: "I never
+thought it. It cannot be."
+
+The difference is just this. When an ungratifiable desire is honestly
+faced and squarely answered, it is modified by other desires, chooses
+another way of discharge, and ceases to be desire. When a desire is
+repressed, it is still desire, unsatisfied, insistent, unmodifiable by
+mature points of view, untouched by time, automatic, and capable of
+almost any subterfuge in order to get satisfaction. A repressed desire
+is buried, shut away from the disintegrating effects of sunlight and
+air. While the rest of the personality is constantly changing under
+the influence of new ideas, the buried complex lives on in its
+immaturity, absolutely untouched by time.
+
+=Childish Birth-theories.= When a child's questions about where babies
+come from are met by evasions, he is forced to manufacture his own
+theories. His elders would laugh if they knew some of these theories,
+but they would not laugh if they knew how often the childish ideas,
+wide of the truth, furnish the material for future neuroses. Frink
+tells the story of a young woman who had a compulsion for taking
+drugs. Although not a drug-fiend in the usual sense, she was
+constantly impelled to take any kind of drug she could obtain. It was
+finally revealed that during her childhood she had tried hard to
+discover how babies were made, and had at last concluded that they
+grew in the mother as a result of some medicine furnished by the
+doctor. The idea had long been forgotten, only to reappear as a
+compulsion. The natural desire for a child was strong in her, but was
+repressed as unholy in an unmarried woman. The associated childish
+idea of drug-taking was not repellent to her moral sense and was used
+as a substitute for the real desire to bear a child.
+
+Many of my patients have suffered from the effect of some such
+birth-theories. One young girl, twenty years old, was greatly
+afflicted with myso-phobia, or the fear of contamination. She spent
+most of her time in washing her hands and keeping her hands and
+clothing free from contamination by contact with innumerable harmless
+objects. When cleaning her shoes on the grass, she would kneel so that
+the hem of her skirt would touch the grass, lest some dust should fly
+up under her clothes. After eating luncheon in the park with a girl
+who had tuberculosis, she said that she was not afraid of tuberculosis
+in the lungs, but asked if something like tuberculosis might not get
+in and begin to grow somewhere else. Her life was full to overflowing
+of such compulsive fears.
+
+As opportunity offered itself from day to day, I would catch her
+compulsive ideas in the very act of expressing themselves, and would
+pin her down as to the association and the source of her fear, always
+taking care not to make suggestions or ask leading questions. She was
+finally convinced out of her own mouth that her real fear was the idea
+of something getting into her body and growing there. Then she told
+how she had questioned her mother about the reproductive life and had
+been put off with signs of embarrassment. For a long time she had been
+afraid to walk or talk with a boy, because, not knowing how conception
+might occur, she feared grave consequences.
+
+Very soon after the beginning of her conversations with me, the girl
+realized that her fear was really a disguised desire that something
+might be planted within and grow. With her new understanding of
+herself, her compulsions promptly slipped away. She began to eat and
+sleep, and to live a happy, natural life.
+
+=Chronic Repression.= It takes first-hand acquaintance with nervous
+patients to realize how common are stories like these. Unnecessary
+repressions based on false training are the cause of many a physical
+symptom and mental distress which a little parental frankness might
+have forestalled.[36]
+
+[Footnote 36: Parents who are eager to handle this subject in the
+right way are often sincerely puzzled as to how to go about it. No
+matter how complete their education, it is very likely to fail them at
+this critical point. For the benefit of such parents, let it be said
+with all possible emphasis that the first and most important step must
+be a change in their own mental attitude. If there is left within them
+the shadow of embarrassment on the subject of sex, their children will
+not fail to sense the situation at once. A feeling of hesitation or a
+tendency to apologize for nature makes a far deeper impression on the
+child-mind than do the most beautiful of half-believed words on the
+subject. And this impression, subtle and elusive as it may seem, is a
+real and vital experience which is quite likely to color the whole of
+the child's life. If you would give your children a fair start, you
+must first get rid of your own inner resistances. After that, all will
+be clear sailing.
+
+In the second place, take the earliest opportunity to bring up the
+subject in a natural way. A young father told me recently that his
+little daughter had asked her mother why she didn't have any lap any
+more. "And of course your wife took that chance to tell her about the
+baby that is coming," I said. "Oh, no," he answered, "she did nothing
+of the kind. Mary is far too young to know about such things." There
+are always chances if we are on the look out for them--and the earlier
+the better. It has been noticed that children are never repelled by
+the idea of any natural process unless the new idea runs counter to
+some notion which has already been formed. The wise parent is the one
+who gets in the right impression before some other child has had a
+chance to plant the wrong one.
+
+Then, too, we elders are judged quite as much by what we do not say as
+by what we do. Happy is the child who is not left to draw his own
+conclusions from the silence and evasiveness of his parents. The
+sex-instruction which children are getting in the schools is often
+good, but it usually comes too late--the damage is always done before
+the sixth year.
+
+When it comes to the exact words in which to explain the phenomena of
+generation and birth each parent must naturally find his own way. The
+main point is that we must tell the truth and not try to improve on
+nature. If we say that the baby grows under the mother's heart and
+later the child learns that this is not true, he inevitably gets the
+idea that there is something not nice about the part of the body in
+which the baby does grow. What could be wrong with the simple truth
+that the father plants a tiny seed in the mother's body and that this
+seed joins with another little seed already there and grows until it
+is a real baby ready to come into the world? The question as to how
+the father plants the seed need cause no alarm. If brothers and
+sisters are brought up together with no artificial sense of false
+modesty, they very early learn the difference between the male and the
+female body. It is simple enough to tell the little child the function
+of the male structure. And it is easy to explain that the seeds do not
+grow until the little boy and girl have grown to be man and woman and
+that the way to be well and to have fine strong children is to leave
+the generative organs alone until that time. A sense of the dignity
+and high purpose of these organs is far more likely to prevent
+perversions--to say nothing of nervousness--than is an attitude of
+taboo and silence.]
+
+A certain amount of repression is inevitable and useful, but a
+neurotic is merely an exaggerated represser. He represses so much of
+himself that it will not stay down.[37] He builds up a permanent
+resistance which automatically acts as a dam to his normal sex
+instinct and forces it into undesirable outlets.
+
+[Footnote 37: "A neurosis is a partial failure of repression." Frink:
+_Morbid Fears and Compulsions_.]
+
+A resistance is a chronic repression, repression that has become fixed
+and subconscious, a habit that has lost its flexibility and outlives
+its usefulness. It is a fixation of repression, and is built out of an
+over-strong complex or emotional thought habit, acquired during
+childhood, incorporated into the conscience and carried over into
+maturity, where it warps judgment and interferes with normal
+development because it is fundamentally untrue and at variance with
+the laws of nature.
+
+=Too Much Day-Dreaming.= The fourth habit which holds back the adult
+from maturity and predisposes toward "nerves" is the habit of
+imagination. It need hardly be said that a certain kind of imagination
+is a good thing and one of man's greatest assets. But the essence of
+day-dreaming is the exact opposite; it is the desire to see things as
+they are not, but as we should like them to be,--not in order that we
+may bring them to pass, but for the mere pleasure of dreaming. Instead
+of turning a microscope or a telescope on the world of reality, as
+positive imagination does, this negative variety refuses even to look
+with the naked eye. To dream is easier than to do; to build up
+phantasies is easier than to build up a reputation or a fortune; to
+think a forbidden pleasure is easier than to sublimate.
+"Pleasure-thinking" is not only easier than "reality-thinking,"--it is
+the _older_ way.
+
+Children gratify many of their desires simply by imagining them
+gratified. Much of the difficulty of later life might be avoided if
+the little child could be taught to work for the accomplishment of his
+pleasures rather than to dream of them. The normal child gradually
+abandons this "pleasure-thinking" for the more purposeful thinking of
+the actual world, but the child who loiters too long in the realm of
+fancy may ever after find it hard to keep away from its borders. His
+natural interest in sex, if artificially repressed, is especially
+prone to satisfy itself by way of phantasy.
+
+=Turning back to Phantasy.= In later life, when the love-force for one
+reason or another becomes too strong to be handled either directly or
+indirectly in the real world, there comes the almost irresistible
+impulse to regress to the infantile way and to find expression by
+means of phantasy. After long experience Freud concluded that phantasy
+lies at the root of every neurosis. Jung says that a sex-phantasy is
+always at least one determiner of a nervous illness, and Jelliffe
+writes that the essence of the neurosis is a special activity of the
+imagination.
+
+Such a statement need not shock the most sensitive conscience. The
+very fact that a neurosis breaks out is proof that the phantasies are
+repellent to the owners of them and are thrust down into the
+subconscious as unworthy. In fact, every neurosis is witness to the
+strength of the human conscience. No phantasy could cause illness. It
+is the phantasy plus the repression of it that makes the trouble, or
+rather it is the conflict between the forces back of the phantasy and
+the repression. The neurosis, then, turns out to be a "flight from the
+real," the result of a desire to run away from a difficulty. When a
+problem presses or a disagreeable situation is to be faced, it is
+easier to give up and fall ill than to see the thing through to the
+end. Here again, we find that nervousness is a regression to the
+irresponsible reactions of childhood.
+
+=Maturity versus Immaturity.= We have been thinking of the main causes
+of "nerves" and have found them to be infantile habits of loving,
+rebelling, repressing, and dreaming. We have tried to show that these
+habits are able to cause trouble because of their bearing on that
+inevitable conflict between the ancient urge of the reproductive
+instinct and the later ideals which society has acquired. If this
+conflict be met in the light of the present, free from the backward
+pull, of outgrown habits, an adjustment is possible which satisfies
+both the individual and society. We call this adjustment sublimation.
+This is rather a synthesis than a compromise, a union of the opposing
+forces, a happy utilization of energy by displacement on more useful
+ideas. But if the conflict has to be met with the mind hampered by
+immature thinking and immature feeling; if the demands of the
+here-and-now are met as if it were long ago; if unhealthy and untrue
+complexes, old loves and hates complicate the situation; if to the
+necessary conflict is added an unnecessary one; then something else
+happens. Compromise of some kind must be made, but instead of a happy
+union of the two forces a poor compromise is effected, gaining a
+partial satisfaction for both sides, but a real one for neither. The
+neurosis is this compromise.
+
+
+LATER EXPERIENCES
+
+=The Last Straw.= The precipitating cause may be one of a number of
+things. It may be entirely within, or it may be external. Perhaps it
+is only a quickening of the maturing instincts at the time of
+adolescence, making the love-force too strong to be held by the old
+repressions. Perhaps the husband, wife, or lover dies, or the
+life-work is taken away, depriving the vital energy of its usual
+outlets. Perhaps the trigger is pulled by an emotional shock which
+bears a faint resemblance to old emotional experiences, and which
+stimulates both the repressing and repressed trends and makes the
+person at the same time say both "Yes," and "No."[38] Perhaps
+physical fatigue lets down the mental and moral tension and makes the
+conflict too strong to be controlled. Perhaps an external problem
+presses and arouses the old habit of fleeing from disagreeable
+reality. Any or all these factors may cooperate, but not one of them
+is anything more than a last straw on an overburdened back. No
+calamity, deprivation, fatigue, or emotion has been able to bring
+about a neurosis unless the ground was prepared for it by the earlier
+reactions of childhood.
+
+[Footnote 38: "The external world can only cause repression when there
+was already present beforehand a strong initial tension reaching back
+even to childhood."--Pfister: _Psychoanalytic Method_, p. 94.]
+
+
+THE BREAKDOWN ITSELF
+
+="Two Persons under One Hat."= We can understand now why a neurotic
+can be described in so many ways. We often hear him called an
+especially moral, especially ethical person, with a very active
+conscience; an intensely social being, unable to be satisfied with
+anything but a social standard; a person with "finer intellectual
+insight and greater sensitiveness than the rest of mankind." At the
+same time we are told that a neurosis is a partial triumph of
+anti-social, non-moral factors, and that it is a cowardly flight from
+reality; we hear a nervous invalid called selfish, unsocial, shut in,
+primitive, childish, self-deceived. Both these descriptions are true
+to life. A neurosis is an ethical struggle between these two sets of
+forces. If the lower set had triumphed, the man would have been merely
+weak; if the higher set had been victorious, he would have been
+strong. As it is, he is neither one nor the other,--only nervous. The
+neurosis is the only solution of the struggle which he is able to
+find, and serves the purpose of a sort of armed armistice between the
+two camps.
+
+
+SERVING A PURPOSE
+
+If a neurosis is a compromise, if it is the easiest way out, if it
+serves a purpose, it must be that the individual himself has a hand in
+shaping that purpose. Can it be that a breakdown which seems such an
+unmitigated disaster is really welcomed by a part of our own selves?
+Nothing is more intensely resented by the nervous invalid than the
+accusation that he likes his symptoms,--and no wonder. The conscious
+part of him hates the pain, the inconvenience, and the disability with
+a real hatred. It is not pleasant to be ill. And yet, as it turns out,
+it is pleasanter to be ill than it is to bear the tension of
+unsatisfied desire or to be undeceived about oneself. Every symptom is
+a means of expression for repressed and forgotten impulses and is a
+relief to the personality. It tends to the preservation of the
+individual, rather than to his destruction. The nervous invalid is not
+short-lived, but his family may be! It has been said that a neurosis
+is not so much a disease as a dilemma. Rather might it be said that
+the neurosis is a way out of the dilemma. It is a harbor after a
+stormy sea, not always a quiet harbor, but at least a usable one.
+Unpleasant as it is, every nervous symptom is a form of compensation
+which has been deliberately though unconsciously chosen by its owner.
+
+=Rationalizing Our Distress.= Among other things, a nervous symptom
+furnishes a seemingly reasonable excuse for the sense of distress
+which is behind every breakdown. Something troubles us. We are not
+willing to acknowledge what it is. On the other hand, we must appear
+reasonable to ourselves, so we manufacture a reason. Perhaps at the
+time when the person first feels distress, he is on a railroad train.
+So he says to himself, "It is the train. I must not go near the
+railway"; and he develops a phobia for cars. Perhaps at the onset of
+the fear he happens to have a slight pain in the arm. He makes use of
+the pain to explain his distress. He thinks about it and holds on to
+it. It serves a purpose, and is on the whole less painful than the
+feeling of unexplained impending disaster which is attached to no
+particular idea. Perhaps he happens to be tired when the conflict
+first gets beyond control. So he seizes the idea of fatigue to explain
+his illness. He develops chronic fatigue and talks proudly of
+overwork. In every case the symptom serves a real purpose, and is,
+despite its discomfort, a relief to the distressed personality.
+
+A neurosis is a subconscious effort at adjustment. Like a physical
+symptom, it is Nature's way of trying to cure herself. It is an
+attempt to get equilibrium, but it is an awkward attempt and hardly
+the kind that we would choose when we see what we are doing.
+
+=Securing an Audience.= Besides furnishing relief from too intense
+strain, a nervous breakdown brings secondary advantages that are at
+most only dimly recognized by the individual. One of the most intense
+cravings of the primitive part of the subconscious is for an audience;
+a nervous symptom always secures that audience. The invalid is the
+object of the solicitous care of the family, friends, physician, and
+specialist. Pomp and ceremony, so dear to the child-mind, make their
+appeal to the dissociated part of the personality. The repressed
+instincts, hungry for love and attention, delight in the petting and
+special care which an illness is sure to bring. Secretly and
+unconsciously, the neurotic takes a certain pleasure in all the
+various changes that are made for his benefit,--the dismantling of
+striking clocks, the muffling of household noises, the banishing of
+crowing roosters, and the changes in menu which must be carefully
+planned for his stomach.
+
+This characteristic of finding pleasure in personal ministrations is
+plainly a regression to the infantile phase of life. The baby demands
+and obtains the center of the stage. Later he has to learn to give it
+up, but the neurotic gets the center again and is often very loth to
+leave it for a more inconspicuous place.
+
+=Capitalizing an Illness.= Then, too, a neurosis provides a way of
+escape from all sorts of disagreeable duties. It can be capitalized in
+innumerable ways,--ways that would horrify the invalid if he realized
+the truth. Much of the resentment manifested against the suggestion
+that the neurosis is psychic in origin is simply a resistance against
+giving up the unconsciously enjoyed advantages of the illness. An
+honest desire to get well is a long step toward cure.
+
+The purposive character of a nervous illness is well illustrated by
+two cases reported by Thaddeus Hoyt Ames.[39] A young woman, the
+drudge of the family, suddenly became hysterically blind, that is, she
+became blind despite the fact that her eyes and optic nerves proved to
+be unimpaired. She remained blind until it was proved to her that a
+part of her welcomed the blindness and had really produced it for the
+purpose of getting away from the monotony of her unappreciated life at
+home. She naturally resented the charge but finally accepted it and
+"turned on" her eyesight in an instant. The other patient, a man,
+became blind in order to avoid seeing his wife who had turned out to
+be not at all what he had hoped. When he realized what he was doing,
+he decided that there might be better ways of adjusting himself to his
+wife. He then switched on his seeing power, which had never been
+really lost, but only disconnected and dissociated from the rest of
+his mind.
+
+[Footnote 39: Thaddeus Hoyt Ames: _Archives of Ophthalmology_, Vol.
+XLIII, No. 4, 1914.]
+
+That the conscious mind has no part in the subterfuge is shown by the
+fact that both patients gave up their artificial haven as soon as they
+saw how they had been fooling themselves. The fact remains that every
+neurosis is the fulfilment of a wish,--a distorted, unrecognized,
+unsatisfactory fulfilment to be sure, but still an effort to satisfy
+desire. As Frink remarks, "A neurosis is a kind of behaviour." We
+always choose the conduct we like. It is a matter of choice. Does not
+this answer our question as to why some people always take unhealthy
+suggestions? If we take the bad one, it is because it serves the need
+of a part of our being.
+
+
+SIGN LANGUAGE
+
+=Talking in Symbols.= We have several times suggested that a nervous
+symptom is a disguised, indirect expression of subconscious impulses.
+It is the completeness of the disguise which makes it so hard for us
+to realize its true meaning. It takes a stretch of the imagination to
+believe that a pain in the body can mean a pain in the soul, or that
+a fear of contamination can signify a desire to bear a child. But in
+all this we must not forget the primitive, childlike nature of the
+instinctive life.
+
+The savage and the child do not think as civilized man thinks. Savage
+or child thinks in pictures; he acts his feelings; he groups things
+according to superficial resemblances, he expresses an idea by its
+opposite; he talks in symbols. We still use these devices in poetic
+speech and in everyday thought. A wedding-ring stands for the marriage
+bond; the flag for a nation; a greyhound for fleetness; a wild beast
+for ferocity; sunrise for youth; and sunset for old age. "The essence
+of language consists in the statement of resemblance. The expression
+of human thought is an expression of association."[40]
+
+[Footnote 40: Trigant Burrow: _Journal of American Medical
+Association_, Vol. LXVI, No. II, 1916.]
+
+The association may be so accidental and superficial as to seem absurd
+to another person, or it may be so fundamental as to express the
+universal thought of man from the beginning of time. Many of the signs
+and symbols which crop out in neurotic symptoms and in normal dreams
+are the same as those which appear in myths, fairy tales and folk-lore
+and in the art of the earlier races.
+
+=A Secret Code.= When the denied instincts of a man's repressed life
+insist on expression, and when the shocked proprieties of his
+repressing life demand conformity to social standards, the
+subconscious, held back from free speech, strikes a compromise by
+making use of figurative language. As Trigant Burrow says, if the
+moral repugnance is very strong, the disguise must be more elaborate,
+the symbols more far-fetched. The symbols of nervous symptoms and of
+dreams are a "secret code," understood by the sender but meaningless
+to the censoring conscience, which passes them as harmless.
+
+=The Right Kind of Symbolism.= Sublimation itself is merely a symbolic
+expression of basic impulses. It follows the line of our make-up,
+which naturally and fundamentally is wont to let one thing stand for
+another and to express itself in indirect ways. Sublimation says: "If
+I cannot recreate myself in the person of a child, I will recreate
+myself in making a bridge, or a picture, or a social settlement,--or a
+pudding." It says: "If I cannot have my own child to love, I will
+adopt an orphan-asylum, or I will work for a child-labor law." It
+merely lets one thing stand for another and transfers all the passions
+that belong to the one on to the other, which is the same thing as
+saying that it gives vent to its original desire by means of symbolic
+expression.
+
+=The Wrong Kind of Symbolism.= A nervous disorder is an unfortunate
+choice of symbols. Instead of spiritualizing an innate impulse, it
+merely disguises it. The disguise takes a number of forms. One of the
+commonest ways is to act out in the body what is taking place in the
+soul. The woman with nausea converted her moral disgust into a
+physical nausea, which expressed her distress while it hid its
+meaning. The girl who was tired of seeing her work, and the man who
+wanted to avoid seeing his wife chose a way out which physically
+symbolized their real desire. A dentist once came to me with a
+paralyzed right arm. He had given up his office and believed that he
+would never work again. It turned out that his only son had just died
+and that he was dramatizing his soul-pain by means of his body. His
+subconscious mind was saying, "My good right arm is gone," and saying
+it in its own way. Within a week the arm was playing tennis, and ever
+since it has been busy filling teeth. There were, of course, other
+factors leading up to the trouble, but the factor which determined its
+form was the sense of loss which acted itself out through the body.
+
+Sometimes, as we have seen, the disguise takes another form. Instead
+of conversion into a physical symptom, it lets one idea stand for
+another and displaces the impulse or the emotion to the substitute
+idea. The girl with the impulse to take drugs fooled her conscience by
+letting the drug-taking idea stand for the idea of conception. The
+girl with the fear of contamination carried the disguise still
+farther by changing the desire into fear,--a very common subterfuge.
+
+=The Case of Mrs. Y.= There came to me a short time ago a little woman
+whose face showed intense fright. For several months she had spent
+much of the time walking the floor and wringing her hands in an agony
+of terror. In the night she would waken from her sleep, shaking with
+fear; soon she would be retching and vomiting, although she herself
+recognized the fact that there was nothing the matter with her
+stomach.
+
+Part of the time her fear was a general terror of some unknown thing,
+and part of the time it was a specialized fear of great intensity. She
+was afraid she would choke her son, to whom she was passionately
+devoted. During the course of the treatment, which followed the lines
+of psycho-analysis to be described in the next chapter, I found that
+this fear had arisen one evening when she was lying reading by the
+side of her sleeping child. Suddenly, without warning, she had a sort
+of mental picture of her own hands reaching out and choking the boy.
+Naturally she was terrified. She jumped out of bed, decided that she
+was losing her mind and went into a hysterical state which her husband
+had great trouble in dispelling. After that she was afraid to be left
+alone with her children lest she should kill them.
+
+During the analysis it was discovered that what she had been reading
+on that first night was the thirteenth verse of the ninety-first
+Psalm. "Thou shalt tread upon the lion and the adder. The young lion
+and the dragon thou shalt trample under foot." To her the adder meant
+the snake, the tempter in the Garden of Eden, and hence sex. What she
+wanted to choke was her own insistent sex urge of which the child was
+the symbol and the result. On later occasions she had the same sort of
+hallucinations in connection with another child and on sight of a
+brutish kind of man who symbolized to the subconscious mind the
+sex-urge, of which she was afraid. Not so much by what her mother had
+said as by what she had avoided saying, and by her expression whenever
+the subject was mentioned, had she given her little daughter a
+fundamentally wrong idea of the reproductive instinct. Later when the
+girl was woman grown she still clung to the old conception, deploring
+the sex-part of the marriage relation and feeling herself too refined
+to be moved by any such sensual urge. But the strong sex-instinct
+within her would not be downed. It was so insistent as to be an object
+of terror to her repressing instinct, which could not bring itself to
+acknowledge its presence. The fear that came to the surface was merely
+a disguised and symbolic representation of this real fear which was
+turning her life into a nightmare.
+
+The nausea and vomiting in this woman seemed to be symbolic of the
+disgust which she felt subconsciously at the thought of her own
+sex-desires, but sometimes the physical disturbances which accompany
+such phobias are the natural physical reactions to the constant fear
+state. Indigestion, palpitation, and tremors are not in themselves
+symbolic of the inner trouble but may be the result of an overdose of
+the adrenal and thyroid secretions and the other accompaniments of
+fear. In such cases the real symptom is the fear, and the physical
+disturbance an incidental by-product of the emotional state. In any
+case a nervous symptom is always the sign of something else--a
+hieroglyph which must be deciphered before its real meaning can be
+discovered.
+
+
+SUMMARY
+
+=Three Kinds of People.= Absurd as it sounds, "nerves" turn out to be
+a question of morals; a neurosis, an affair of conscience; a nervous
+symptom an unsettled ethical struggle. The ethical struggle is not
+unusual; it is a normal part of man's life, the natural result of his
+desire to change into a more civilized being. The people in the world
+may be divided into three classes, according to the way they decide
+the conflict.
+
+=The Primitive.= The first class merely capitulate to their primitive
+desires. They may not be nervous, but it is safe to say that they are
+rarely happy. The voice of conscience is hard to drown, even when it
+is not strong enough to control conduct. Happily it often succeeds in
+making us miserable, when we desert the ways that have proved best for
+our kind. The "immoral" person has not yet "arrived"; he simply
+disregards the collective wisdom of society and gives the victory to
+the primitive forces which try to keep man back on his old level. We
+cannot break the ideals by which man lives, and still be happy.
+
+=The Salt of the Earth.= The second class of people decide the
+conflict in a way that satisfies both themselves and society. They
+give the victory to the higher trends and at the same time make a
+lasting peace by winning over the energy of the undesirable impulses.
+By sublimation they divert the threatening force to useful work and
+turn it out into real life, using its steam to make the world's wheels
+go round. Their love-force, unhampered by childish habits, is free to
+give itself to adult relationships or to express itself symbolically
+in socially helpful ways.
+
+=Nervous People.= To the third class belong the people who have not
+finished the fight. These are the folk with "nerves," the people in
+whom the conflict is fiercest because both sides are too strong. The
+victory goes to neither side; the tug of war ends in a tie. Since the
+energy of the nervous person is divided between the effort to repress
+and the effort to gain expression, there is little left for the
+external world. There is plenty of energy wasted on emotion, physical
+symptoms, phantasy, or useless acts symbolizing the struggle.
+
+A neurotic is a normal person, "only more so." His impulses are the
+same impulses as those of every other person; his complexes are the
+same kind of complexes, only more intense. He is an exaggerated human
+being. He may be only slightly exaggerated, showing merely a little
+character-weakness or a slight physical symptom, or he may be so
+intensified as to make life miserable for himself and everybody near
+him. It is quantity, not quality, that ails him, for he differs from
+his steady-going neighbor not in kind but in degree. More of him is
+repressed and a larger part of him is fixed in a childish mold.
+
+=Tricking Ourselves.= A neurosis is a confidence game that we play on
+ourselves. It is an attempt to get stolen fruit and to look pious at
+the same time,--not in order to fool somebody else but to fool
+ourselves.
+
+No nervous symptom is what it seems to be. It is an arch pretender. It
+pretends to be afraid of something it does not fear at all, or to
+ignore something that interests it intensely. It pretends to be a
+physical disease, when primarily it has nothing to do with the body;
+and the person most deluded is the one who "owns" the symptom. Its
+purpose is to avoid the pain of disillusionment and to furnish relief
+to a distracted soul which dares not face itself.
+
+Although the true meaning of a symptom is hidden, there is fortunately
+a clue by which it can be traced. Sometimes it takes the art of a
+psychic detective to follow the clues down, down through the different
+layers of the subconscious mind, until the troublesome impulses and
+complexes are found and dragged forth,--not to be punished for
+breaking the peace but to be led toward reconciliation. But "that is
+another story," and belongs to another chapter. We are approaching THE
+WAY OUT.
+
+PART III--THE MASTERY OF "NERVES"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+_In which we pick up the clue_
+
+THE WAY OUT
+
+THE SCIENCE OF RE-EDUCATION
+
+
+There is a story of an Irishman at the World's Fair in Chicago.
+Although his funds were getting low, he made up his mind that he would
+not go home without a ride on a camel. For several minutes he stood
+before a sign reading: "First ride 25¢, second ride 15¢, third ride
+10¢." Then, scratching his head, he exclaimed, "Faith, and I'll take
+the third ride!" Should there by any chance be a reader who, eager to
+find the way out without paying the price of knowledge, is tempted to
+say to himself "Faith, and I'll begin with Part III," we give him fair
+warning that if he does so, he will in all probability end by putting
+down the book in a confused and skeptical frame of mind.
+
+It is difficult to find our way out of a maze without some faint idea
+of the path by which we got in. He who brings to this chapter the
+popular notion that nervousness is the result of worn-out
+nerve-cells, can hardly be expected to understand how it can be cured
+by a process of mental adjustment. Suggestion to that effect can
+scarcely fail to appear to him faddish and unpractical. But once a
+person has grasped the idea that "nerves" are merely a slip in the cog
+of hidden mental machinery, and has acquired at least a
+working-knowledge of "the way the wheels go round," he can scarcely
+fail to understand that the only logical cure must consist in some
+kind of readjustment of this underground machinery. If "nerves" were
+physical, then only physical measures could cure, but as they are
+psychic, the only effective measures must be psychic.
+
+=Gross Misconceptions.= Nervousness is caused by a lack of adjustment
+to the world as it is; therefore the only possible cure must be some
+sort of readjustment between the person's inner forces and the demands
+of the social world. As this lack of adjustment is concerned chiefly
+with the repressed instinct of reproduction, it is only natural that
+there should be people who believe that "the way out" lies in some
+form of physical satisfaction of the sex-impulse--in marriage, in
+changing or ignoring the social code, in homo-sexual relations or in
+the practice of masturbation. But we have only to look about us to see
+that this prescription does not cure. Freud naïvely asks whether he
+would be likely to take three years to uncover and loosen the psychic
+resistances of his patients, if the simple prescription of sex-license
+would give relief.
+
+Since there are as many married neurotics as single, it is evident
+that even marriage is not a sure preventive of nervousness. License,
+on the other hand, can satisfy only a part of the individual's
+craving. Freud insists that the sex-instinct has a psychic component
+as well as a physical one, and that it is this psychic part which is
+most often repressed. He maintains that for complete satisfaction
+there must be psychic union between mates, and that gratification of
+the physical component of sex when dissociated from psychic
+satisfaction, results in an accumulation of tension that reacts badly
+on the whole organism.
+
+The psychic tension accumulating in adult sex-relations has its
+inception in the mistaken attitude on the part of the wife, who
+remains true to her childhood training that any pleasure in sex is
+vulgar; or on the part of the man, who reacts to the mood of the wife,
+or is held by his own unbroken mother-son complex; or on the part of
+both the tension piles up because of society's taboo upon rearing
+large families. As the first two factors in this lack of adjustment
+grew largely out of some kind of faulty education or from faulty
+reaction to early experiences, the only effective way to secure a
+better adaptation must be through a re-education which reaches down
+to that part of the personality that bears the stamp of the
+unfortunate early factors.
+
+=Remaking Ourselves.= As a matter of fact, the science of
+psychotherapy or mental treatment is simply the science of
+re-education,--a process designed to break up old unhealthy complexes
+which disrupt the forces of the individual, and to build up healthy
+complexes which adjust him to the social world and enable him to use
+his energy in useful ways.
+
+Fortunately, minds can be changed. It is easier to make over an
+unhealthy complex than to make over a weak heart, to straighten out a
+warped idea than to straighten a bent back. Remarkable indeed have
+been some of the transformations in people who are supposed to have
+passed the plastic period in life. While it is true that some persons
+become "set" in middle life, and almost impervious to new ideas, it is
+also true that a person at fifty has more richness of experience upon
+which to draw, more appreciation of the value of the good, than has a
+person at twenty. If he really wants to change himself, he can do
+wonderful things by re-education.
+
+The first step in this re-education is a grasp of the facts. If you
+want to pull yourself out of a nervous disorder, first of all learn as
+much as you can about the causes of "nerves," about the general laws
+of mind and body, and about your own mental quirks. If this is not
+sufficient, go to a specialist trained in psychotherapy and let him
+help you uncover those trouble-making parts of your personality which
+you cannot find for yourself. It is the purpose of this book to
+summarize the facts which most need to be known. Let us now consider
+those methods which the psychopathologist finds most useful in helping
+his patients to self-knowledge and readjustment.
+
+=Various Methods.= As there are a number of schools of medicine, so
+there are a number of distinct methods of psychotherapy, each with its
+own theories and methods of procedure, and each with its ardent
+supporters. These methods may be classified into two groups. The first
+group includes those methods, hypnosis and psycho-analysis, which make
+a thorough search through the subconscious mind for the buried
+complexes causing the trouble, and might, therefore, be called
+"re-education with subconscious exploration." The other group,
+includes so-called explanation and suggestion, or methods of
+"re-education without subconscious exploration," which content
+themselves with making a general survey and building up new complexes
+without going to the trouble of uncovering the buried past. Although
+the theory and the technique vary greatly, the aim of all these
+methods is the same,--the readjustment of the individual to life.
+
+RE-EDUCATION WITH SUBCONSCIOUS EXPLORATION
+
+=Hypnosis.= The method by which most of the important early
+discoveries were made is hypnosis, or artificial sleep, a method by
+which the conscious mind is dissociated and the subconscious brought
+to the fore. It was through hypnosis that Freud, Janet, Prince, and
+Sidis made their first investigations into the nature of nervousness
+and worked their first cures. With the conscious mind asleep and its
+inhibitions out of the way, a hypnotized patient is often able to
+remember and to disclose to the physician hidden complexes of which he
+is unaware when awake. Hypnosis may thus be a valuable aid to
+diagnosis, enabling the physician to determine the cause of
+troublesome symptoms. He may then begin to make suggestions calculated
+to break up the old complexes and to build new ones, made up of more
+healthful ideas, desirable emotions and happy feeling-tones. As we
+have seen, a hypnotized subject is highly suggestible. His
+counter-suggestions inactivated, he believes almost anything told him
+and is extremely susceptible to the doctor's influence.
+
+The dangers of hypnosis have been much exaggerated. Indeed, as an
+instrument in the hands of a competent physician, it is not to be
+feared at all. It has, however, its limitations. Many times the very
+memories which need to be unearthed refuse to come to the surface.
+Stubborn resistances are more likely to be subconscious than
+conscious, and may prove too strong to be overcome in this way.
+Moreover, the road to superficial success is very inviting. It is easy
+to cure the symptom, leaving the ultimate cause untouched and ready to
+break out in new manifestations. The drug and drink habits may be
+broken up without making any attempt to discover the unsatisfied
+longings which were responsible for the habit. A pain may be cured
+without finding the mental cause of the pain or initiating any
+measures to guard against its return, and without giving the patient
+any insight into the inner forces with which he still has to deal.
+
+Since nervousness is a state of exaggerated suggestibility and
+abnormal dissociation, many psychologists believe that it is unwise to
+employ a method which heightens the state of suggestibility and
+encourages the habit of dissociation. They feel that it is wiser to
+use less artificial methods which rest on the rational control of the
+conscious mind and make the patient better acquainted with his own
+inner forces and more permanently able to cope with new manifestations
+of those forces. They believe that the character of the patient is
+strengthened and his morale raised by methods which increase the
+sovereignty of reason and decrease the role of unreasoning
+suggestibility.
+
+=Psycho-Analysis.= Freud's contribution has been not only a discovery
+of the general causes of nervousness, but a special means of locating
+the cause in any particular case. Abandoning hypnosis, he developed
+another method which he called psycho-analysis. What chemical analysis
+is to chemistry, psycho-analysis is to the science of the mind. It
+splits up the mental content into its component parts, the better to
+be examined and modified by the conscious mind. Psycho-analysis is
+merely a technical process for discovering repressed complexes and
+bringing them into consciousness, where they may be recognized for
+what they are and altered to meet the demands of real life. It is a
+device for finding and removing the cause of nervousness,--for
+bringing to light hidden desires which may be honestly faced and
+efficiently directed instead of being left to seethe in dangerous
+insurrection. In order permanently to break up a real neurosis, a man
+must first know himself and then change himself. He must gain insight
+into his own mental processes and then systematically set to work to
+change those processes that unfit him for life.
+
+We shall later find that a detailed self-discovery through
+psycho-analysis is not always necessary, and that a more general
+understanding of oneself is sufficient for the milder kinds of
+nervousness. But because of the promise which psycho-analysis holds
+out to those stubborn cases before which other methods are powerless;
+because of the invaluable understanding of human nature which it
+places at the disposal of all nervous people, who may profit by its
+findings without undergoing an analysis; and because of the flood of
+light which it sheds on the motives, conduct, and character of every
+human being, no educated person can afford to be without a general
+knowledge of psycho-analysis.[41]
+
+[Footnote 41: It is unfortunate that the records of an analysis are
+too voluminous for use in so brief an account as this. Since the
+report of one case would fill a book, and a condensed summary would
+require a chapter, we must refer to some of the volumes which deal
+exclusively with the psychoanalytic principles. For a list of these
+books, see Bibliography.]
+
+=A Chain of Associations.= Psycho-analysis is not, like hypnosis,
+based on dissociation; it is based on the association of ideas. Its
+main feature is a process of uncritical thinking called "free
+association." To understand it, one must realize how intricately woven
+together are the thoughts of a human being and how trivial are the
+bonds of association between these ideas. One person reminds us of
+another because his hair is the same color or because he handles his
+fork in the same way. Two words are associated because they sound
+alike. Two ideas are connected because they once occurred to us at the
+same time. A subtle odor or a stray breeze serves to remind us of some
+old experience. Connections that seem far-fetched to other people may
+be quite strong enough to bind together in our minds ideas and
+emotions which have once been associated, even unconsciously, in past
+experience.
+
+In this way, thoughts in consciousness and in the upper layers of the
+subconscious are connected by a series of associations, forming links
+in invisible chains that lead to the deepest, most repressed ideas.
+Even a dissociated complex has some connection with the rest of the
+mind, if we only have the patience to discover it. Therefore, by
+adopting a passive attitude, by simply letting his thoughts wander, by
+talking out to the physician everything that comes to his mind without
+criticizing or calling any thought irrelevant or far-fetched, and
+without rejecting any thought because of its painful character, the
+patient is helped to trace down and unearth the troublesome complex
+which may have been absolutely forgotten for many years. He is helped
+to relive the childhood experiences back of the over-strong habits
+which lasted into maturity.
+
+=Resisting the Probe.= Naturally, it is not all fair sailing. The
+subconscious impulses which repressed the painful complex in the first
+place still shrink from uncovering it. In many cases the resistance is
+very strong. It, therefore, often happens that after a time the
+patient becomes restive; he begins to criticize the doctor and to
+ridicule the method. His mind goes blank and no thought will come; or
+he refuses to tell what does come. The nearer the probe comes to the
+sore spot, the greater the pain of the repressing impulses and the
+stronger the resistance. Usually a strange thing happens; the patient,
+instead of consciously remembering the forgotten experiences, begins
+to relive them with his original emotions transferred on to the
+doctor. Depending upon what person of his childhood he identifies with
+him, the patient develops either a strong affection or an intense
+antagonism to the physician, attitudes called in technical terms
+positive and negative transference. If the analyst is skilful, he is
+able to circumvent all the subterfuges of the resisting forces and to
+uncover and modify the troublesome complexes. Sometimes this can be
+accomplished at one sitting, but more often it requires long hours of
+conversation. Freud has spent three years on a single difficult case,
+and very frequently the analysis drags out through weeks or months.
+The amount of mental material is so great, especially in a person who
+is no longer young, that every analysis would probably be an
+interminable affair if it were not for three valuable ways of finding
+the clue and picking up the scent somewhere near the end of the trail.
+The first of these clues is nothing else than so despised a phenomenon
+as the patient's own night-dreams, which turn out to be not
+meaningless jargon, as we have supposed, but significant utterances of
+the inner man.
+
+=The Message of the Dream.= When Freud rescued dreams from the mental
+scrap-basket and learned how to piece them together so that their
+message to man about himself became for the first time intelligible,
+he furnished the human race with what will probably be considered its
+most valuable key to the hidden mysteries of the mind. Freeing the
+dream from the superstition of olden times and from the neglect of
+later days, Freud was the first to discover that it is part and parcel
+of man's mental life, that it has a purpose and a meaning and that the
+meaning may be scientifically deciphered. It then invariably reveals
+itself to be not a prophecy for the future but an interpretation of
+the present and of the past, an invaluable synopsis of the drama which
+is being staged within the personality of the dreamer.
+
+As modern man has swung away from the idea of the dream as a warning
+or a prophecy, he has accepted the even more untrue conception of
+dreaming as the mere sport of sleep,--the "babble of the mind," the
+fantastic and insignificant freak-play of undirected mental processes,
+or the result of physical sensations without relation to the rest of
+mental life. No wonder, then, that Freud's startling dictum, "A dream
+is a disguised fulfilment of a repressed wish," should be met with
+astonishment and incredulity. When a person is confronted for the
+first time with this statement, he invariably begins to cite dreams in
+which he is pursued by wild beasts, or in which his loved ones are
+seen lying dead. He then triumphantly asserts that no such dream
+could be the fulfilment of a wish.
+
+The trouble is that he has overlooked the word "disguised." Like wit
+and some figures of speech, a dream says something different from what
+it means. It deals in symbols. Its "manifest content" may be merely a
+fantastic and impossible scene without apparent rhyme or reason, but
+the "latent content," the hidden meaning, always expresses some urgent
+personal problem. Although the dream may seem to be impersonal and
+unemotional, it nevertheless deals in every case with some matter of
+vital concern to the dreamer himself. It is a condensed and composite
+picture of some present problem and of some related childish repressed
+wish which the experiences of the preceding day have aroused.
+
+As Frink says, a dream is like a cartoon with the labels
+omitted--absolutely unintelligible until its symbols are interpreted.
+Although some dreams whose symbolism is that which man has always
+used, can be easily understood by a person who knows, many dreams are
+meaningless, even to an experienced analyst, until the patient himself
+furnishes the labels by telling what each bit of the picture brings to
+his mind. The dream, as a rule, merely furnishes the starting-point
+for free association.
+
+Each symbol is an arrow pointing the way to forbidden impulses which
+are repressed in waking life but which find partial expression during
+sleep. The subconscious part of the conscience is still on the job, so
+the repressed desires can express themselves only in distorted ways
+which will not arouse the censor and disturb sleep. The purpose of the
+dream is thus two-fold,--to relieve the tensions of unsatisfied
+desire, and to do this in such a subtle way as to keep the dreamer
+asleep. Sometimes it fails of its purpose, but when there is danger of
+our discovering too much about ourselves, we immediately wake up,
+saying that we have had a bad dream.
+
+It is at first difficult to believe that we are capable of this
+elaborate mental work while we are fast asleep. However, a little
+investigation shows us to be more clever than we realize. The
+subconscious mind, in its effort to satisfy both the repressing and
+the repressed impulses, carries on very complicated processes,
+disguises material by allowing one person to stand for another, two
+persons to stand for one, or one person to stand for two; it shifts
+emotion from important to trivial matters, dramatizes, condenses, and
+elaborates, with a skill that is amazing. We are all of us very clever
+playwrights and makers of allegories--in our sleep. Also, we are all
+very clever at getting what we want, and the dream secures for us, in
+a way, something which we want very much indeed and which the world
+of social restraint or our own warped childish notion denies us.
+
+Not every one can become an interpreter of dreams. It takes a skilled
+and patient specialist thoroughly to understand the process. But it is
+fortunate indeed that we possess such a valuable means of diagnosis
+when extraordinary conditions make it necessary to explore the
+subconscious in the search for trouble-making complexes.[42]
+
+[Footnote 42: For further study of the dream, see Freud:
+_Interpretation of Dreams_; and _General Introduction to
+Psycho-Analysis_.]
+
+=The Word-Test.= Although dreams furnish the main clues to buried
+complexes, they are by no means the only instrument of the
+psycho-analyst. Another device, called the association word-test, has
+been developed by Dr. Carl Jung of Switzerland. The analyst prepares a
+list of perhaps one hundred words, which he reads one by one to the
+patient, hoping in this way to strike some of the emotional reactions
+of which the patient himself is unaware. The latter responds with the
+first word that comes into his mind, no matter how absurd it may seem.
+The responses themselves are often significant, but the time that
+elapses is even more so. It usually happens that it takes very much
+longer for some responses than for others. If a patient's average time
+is one or two seconds, some responses may take five or ten or twenty
+seconds. Sometimes no word comes at all and the patient says that his
+mind is a blank. He coughs or blushes, grows pale or trembles, showing
+all the signs of emotion even when he himself has no notion of the
+cause. The significant word has hit upon a subconscious association
+with some emotional complex. The blocking of the mind is an effort of
+the resistance to keep the painful ideas out of consciousness. The
+telltale word then furnishes a starting point for further
+associations.
+
+One of my patients blocked on the word "long." Instead of saying
+"short" or "pencil" or "road" or "day" or any other word which might
+naturally be associated with "long," she laughed and said that no word
+would come. Finally an emotional memory came to light. It seems that
+this woman had been courted by a man whom she unconsciously loved, but
+whom she had "turned down" because she was ambitious for a career.
+After the man had moved to another town, my patient heard that he was
+engaged to another girl. She then realized that she loved him and
+began to long for him with her whole heart. The meaningful word "long"
+thus led us to one of the emotional memories for which we were
+seeking.
+
+="Chance" Signs.= There are other clues to hidden inner processes,
+other sign-posts pointing to the cause of a neurosis. Not only through
+dreams and through emotional reactions to certain words does the
+subconscious reveal its desires, but also through the little slips of
+the tongue and of the pen, the "chance" acts and unconscious
+mannerisms which are usually ignored as entirely insignificant. When
+we "make a break" and say what we secretly mean but wish to hide from
+ourselves or others; when we forget an appointment which part of us
+really wishes to avoid, or forget a name with which we are perfectly
+familiar; when we lose the pen so that we cannot write or the desk key
+so that we cannot work; when we blunder and drop things and do what we
+did not mean to do; then we may know--the normal as well as the
+nervous person--that our subconscious minds with their repressed
+desires are trying to get the reins and are partially succeeding.
+
+An example from my own life may illustrate the point. In building a
+number of houses, I had occasion often to use the word studding, but
+on every occasion, I forgot the word and always had to end lamely by
+saying "those pieces of timber that go up and down." Each time the
+builder supplied the word, but the next time it was no more
+accessible. Finally, the reason came to me. One day when I was a
+little child I looked out of the window and cried, "Oh, see that great
+big beautiful horse." My grandmother exclaimed, "Sh! sh! that is a
+stud horse." Over-reaction to that impression repressed the word stud
+so successfully that as a grown woman I could not recall another word
+which happened to contain the same syllable.
+
+During an analysis a patient of mine who had a mother-in-law situation
+on her hands told me a dream of the night before. "I dreamed that my
+mother-in-law, who has really been very ill, was taken with a
+sinking-spell. I rushed to the telephone to call the doctor, but found
+to my terror that I could not remember his number." "What is his
+number?" I asked, knowing that she ought to know it perfectly.
+"Two-eight-nine-six," she answered at once. The number really was
+2876. Asleep and awake, her repressed desire for release from the
+mother-in-law's querulous presence was attempting to have its way. In
+the dream, she avoided calling the doctor by forgetting his number
+entirely. Awake, she evaded the issue by remembering a wrong number.
+In the dream she thinly disguised her desire by displacing the anxious
+emotion from the sense of her own guilty wishes to the idea of the
+mother-in-law's death. When confronted with this interpretation, the
+woman readily acknowledged its truth.
+
+Even stammering, which has always been considered a physical disorder,
+has been proved, by psycho-analysis, to be the sign of an emotional
+disturbance. H. Addington Bruce reports the case of one of Dr. Brill's
+patients, a young man who had been stammering for several years.
+Observation revealed the fact that his chief difficulty was with
+words beginning with K and although at first he firmly denied any
+significance to the letter, he later confessed that his sweetheart
+whose name began with K had eloped with his best friend and that he
+had vowed never to mention her name again. Upon Dr. Brill's suggestion
+he tried to think of the unfaithful lover as Miss W., but soon
+returned, saying that he was stammering worse than ever. Investigation
+showed that the additional unpronounceable words contained the letter
+W. When he was induced to renounce his oath never to call the girl's
+name again, he found that he had no more difficulty with his
+speech.[43]
+
+[Footnote 43: H. Addington Bruce; "Stammering and Its Cure,"
+_McClure's_, February, 1913.]
+
+Thus we see that even the halting tongue of a stammerer may point the
+way to the buried complex for which search is being made.
+
+Since there is no accident in mental life, and since there is behind
+every action a force or group of forces, no smallest action is
+insignificant to the person trained to understand.
+
+If this at first seems disturbing, it is only because we do not
+realize that there is nothing within of which we need be ashamed.
+People are very much alike, especially in the deeper layers of their
+being. What belongs to the whole human race does not need to be
+hidden away in darkness. There is nothing to lose and everything to
+gain by an increasing understanding of the chance signals which reveal
+the forces at work within the depths of the mind. To the analyst every
+little unconscious act is a valuable clue pointing toward the end of
+his quest.[44]
+
+[Footnote 44: For further discussion of this subject, see Freud's
+_Psycho-pathology of Everyday Life_, translated by A.A. Brill.]
+
+=The Aim of Psycho-Analysis.= As we have seen, the object of all this
+technique is the discovery and the removal of the resistances which
+have been keeping the emotional conflicts in the dark. It is a long
+step just to learn that there are resistances; and by reliving, bit by
+bit, the earlier experiences responsible for unfortunate habits, we
+find that the habits themselves lose much of their old power. They can
+be seen for what they are, and changed to suit present conditions. A
+wish is incomparably stronger when unconscious than when conscious;
+and the old stereotyped, automatic reactions tend to cease when once
+they have been seen for what they are. They become assimilated with
+the rest of the personality and modified by the mature attitudes of
+the conscious mind. The person then re-educates himself by the very
+act of discovering himself. In other cases, the uncovering is merely
+the first step in the process of re-education. The analyst then
+assumes the rôle of educator, cutting away old shackles, breaking down
+false standards, building up new complexes, showing the patient the
+naturalness of his desires, inducing him to look at them as biologic
+facts, and showing him how to sublimate those which may not find
+direct expression; in fact, leading him out into the self-expression
+of a free, unhampered life.[45]
+
+[Footnote 45: "It will be readily understood that in the
+reconstruction of the shattered purposes, the frustrated hopes and the
+outraged instincts which are found to lie at the source of those human
+woes we call 'nervous disorders,' there takes place a gradual
+transposition of values, a total recasting of ideas, and that through
+the whole process, education in the deepest meaning of the word,
+enters at last into its full sovereign rights."--Trigant Burrow.]
+
+Among my patients at one time was a woman subject to terrible fits of
+despondency. She was happily married and enjoyed the marriage
+relationship, but could not free herself from a terrible sense of
+guilt and degradation, a sense which was so acute that she wanted to
+end her life. Although she was an active member of a church, she was
+starving for the real message of the church, continually bound by a
+feeling of aloofness which made her a stranger in the midst of
+friends. Psycho-analysis revealed an experience of her childhood which
+she had kept a secret all these years. It seems that when she was
+seven years of age an old minister had driven her into town and had
+made some sort of sex-approach on the way. Although ignorant of its
+significance, the child was badly frightened and overcome with a sense
+of guilt. She had already inferred that such subjects were not to be
+mentioned and she hesitated long before telling even her mother.
+Smoldering within her through the years had been this emotional
+complex about the sex-life and about people connected with a church,
+so that even as a grown woman the relationships of her mature years
+were completely ruined by her old childish reaction. With insight as
+to the cause of her trouble, she was able to modify her attitudes and
+to live a free and happy life.
+
+Several years ago there came to me a man of exceptional intellectual
+ability, who for years had been totally incapacitated because of blind
+resistances built up in childhood. Although married to a woman whom he
+thoroughly liked and admired, he was absolutely miserable in his
+married life. He had, in fact, a deep-rooted complex against marriage,
+and had only allowed himself to be captured because the woman, with
+whom he had been good friends, had cried when he refused to marry her.
+During analysis it transpired that as a little boy of four he had
+often seen his silly young mother cry because she could not have a new
+dress. He had taken her side and bitterly felt that she was abused by
+his father. Later, at six, he had heard some coarse stories about sex
+to which he had over-reacted. Still later he had heard the workmen on
+the farm say that they could not go to the gold-fields because they
+had wives and were held back by marriage. "There are no idle words
+where children are," and this little boy had built up such a strong
+complex against marriage that he could not possibly be happy as a
+grown man. He was as much crippled by the old scar as is an arm which
+is bent and stunted from a deep scar in the flesh. After the analysis
+had broken up the adhesions, he found himself free, able to give
+mature expression to his repressed and dissatisfied love-instincts.
+
+Psycho-analysis is not a process of addition, but one of subtraction.
+Like a surgical operation, it undoes the results of old injuries,
+removes foreign material, and gives nature a chance to develop freely
+in her own satisfactory way.
+
+
+RE-EDUCATION WITHOUT SUBCONSCIOUS EXPLORATION
+
+=Simple Explanation.= So far, "the way out" sounds rather involved. It
+seems to require a special kind of doctor and a complicated, lengthy
+process before the exact trouble can be determined. But, fortunately
+for the average nervous patient, this lengthy process of analysis is
+by no means always necessary. People with troublesome nervous
+symptoms, and even those who have had a serious breakdown, are
+constantly being cured by a kind of re-education which breaks up
+subconscious complexes without trying to bring them to the surface. If
+the dead past can be let alone, so much the better. Sometimes a
+bullet buried in the flesh sends up a constant stream of discomfort
+until it is dug out and removed; but if it has carried in no infection
+and the body can adjust itself, it is usually considered better to let
+it remain.
+
+The subconscious makes its own deductions. If resistances are not too
+strong it is often possible to introduce healthy ideas by way of the
+conscious reason, to break up old habits, and make over the mentality
+without going to the trouble of uncovering some of the reactions which
+are responsible for the difficulty.
+
+=Moral Hygiene.= Because this is true, there has grown up a kind of
+psychotherapy which is known as simple explanation, or persuasion. As
+usually practised, this kind of re-education pays very little
+attention to the ultimate cause of "nerves." It has little to say
+about repressed instincts or the real reasons for fearful emotions and
+physical symptoms. Instead, it attacks the symptom itself, contenting
+itself with teaching the patient that his trouble is psychic in
+origin; that it is based on exaggerated suggestibility and
+uncontrolled emotionalism; that it is made out of false ideas about
+the body, illogical conclusions, and unhealthy feeling-tones; and that
+it may be cured by a kind of moral hygiene, which breaks up these old
+habits and replaces them with new and better ones. It tries to
+inculcate the cheerful attitude of mind; to give the patient the
+conviction of power; to correct his false ideas about his stomach, his
+heart, or his head; to train him out of his emotionalism; to lead him
+into a state of mind more largely controlled by reason; and to make
+him find some useful and absorbing work.
+
+This kind of mental and moral treatment has been sufficient to cure
+many neuroses of long standing. In cases that are helped by this
+method, the patient's love-force, robbed of the material out of which
+it has woven its disguise, and trained out of its bad habits by
+re-education, automatically makes its own readjustments and forces new
+channels for itself out into more useful activities. Very many nervous
+persons seem to need nothing more than this simple kind of help.
+
+=When Simple Explanation Does not Explain.= For very many cases,
+however, this procedure, good as it is, does not go deep enough.
+Although it gives a sound objective education about the facts of one's
+body, it furnishes only the most superficial subjective knowledge of
+one's inner life. If the inner struggle be bitter, the competing
+forces will hold on to their poor refuge in the symptom, despite any
+number of explanations that the symptom can have no physical cause.
+Sometimes it is enough for a person to be shown that he is too
+suggestible, but often it is far more helpful for him to get an
+inkling as to why he likes unhealthy suggestions, and to understand
+something of his starved instincts which he may learn to satisfy in
+better ways.
+
+
+PSYCHOLOGICAL EXPLANATION
+
+Between the two extremes of the cases which need a real analysis and
+those which are cured by simple explanation, I have found the great
+bulk of nervous cases. To simple explanation with its highly useful
+information, I therefore add what might be called psychological
+explanation, a re-education which makes use of all that illuminating
+material unearthed by the explorations of hypnosis and especially of
+psycho-analysis. Along with correct ideas about such matters as
+digestion, sleep, and fatigue, I give, so far as the patient is able
+to understand, a comprehension of the rights of the denied instincts,
+the ways of the subconscious, the fettering hold of unfortunate
+childish habits, the various mental mechanisms by which we fool
+ourselves, and the ways by which we may make better adaptations.
+
+=According to the Patient.= The treatment varies according to the
+nature of the trouble, and is somewhat dependent on the mentality of
+the patient. There are many people who would only be confused by being
+forced into a study of mental phenomena. Not being students, they
+would be more bewildered than helped by the details of their inner
+mechanisms. Others, of studious habits and inquiring minds, are
+encouraged to browse at will in a library of psychotherapy and to
+learn all that they can from the best authorities.
+
+In any case, I give the patients as much as they are able to take of
+my own understanding of the subject. There are no secrets in this
+method. The patient is treated as a rational human being who has
+nothing to lose and everything to gain by the fullest knowledge that
+he is able to acquire. Without forcing him to plunge in over his
+depth, I encourage him to understand himself to the fullest possible
+extent. Besides individual private conferences, we have twice a day an
+informal gathering of all the patients in my household--"the family"
+as we like to call ourselves--for a reading or talk on the various
+ways of the body and the mind, which need to be understood for normal
+living and for the cure of nerves. Very often people of only average
+education, long without the opportunity of study, gain in a
+surprisingly short time enough insight to make new adaptations and
+cure themselves. For this, a college education is not nearly so
+important as an open mind. It is because of the success of this method
+that I have been encouraged to reach a larger number of people by
+means of a book, based on the same plan of re-education.
+
+=Explanation vs. Suggestion.= Re-education through this kind of
+explanation is simply a matter of learning the truth and acting upon
+it. It is a process of real enlightenment, and is very different from
+suggestion which trades upon the patient's credulity, increasing his
+already exaggerated suggestibility.
+
+Freud illustrates the difference between suggestion and
+psycho-analysis by saying that suggestion is like painting and
+psycho-analysis like sculpture. Painting adds something from the
+outside, plastering over the canvas with extraneous matter, while
+sculpture cuts away the unnecessary material and reveals the angel in
+the marble. So suggestion covers over the real trouble by crying,
+"Peace, peace, when there is no peace." Without attempting to remove
+the cause, it says to the patient: "You have no pain. You are not
+tired. You will sleep to-night. You will be cheerful." Sometimes the
+suggestion works and sometimes it does not, but at best the relief is
+likely to be a mere temporary makeshift. The symptom may be relieved,
+but the character is not changed and therefore no permanent relief is
+assured. It is far better for a nervous person to say to himself,
+"There is something wrong and I am going to find it," than to keep
+repeating over and over, "There is nothing wrong," and so on through a
+list of half-believed autosuggestions.
+
+On the other hand, psycho-analysis, and this kind of re-education
+based on psycho-analytic principles, do not pay a great deal of
+attention to the individual symptom. Instead of adding from without
+they try to take away whatever has proved a hindrance to normal
+growth and development, and to remove unnecessary resistances which
+are responsible for the symptom, and which have been holding the
+patient back from the fullest self-expression.
+
+=Incantation vs. Knowledge.= There came to me one day a well-known
+public woman who had suffered from nervous indigestion for many years.
+As she was able to be with me for only one night, we had time for just
+one conversation, but in that time she discovered what she was doing
+and lost her indigestion. In the course of the conversation she turned
+to me, saying: "Doctor, I know what a force suggestion is. I believe
+in its power. Will you tell me why I have not been able to cure myself
+of this trouble? Every night after I go to bed I repeat over and over
+these Bible verses," naming a number of passages relating to God's
+goodness and care for His children. My answer was something like this:
+"You are too intelligent a woman to be cured by an incantation. When
+you feel surging up within you the sense of God's goodness, or when
+you actually want to realize His loving kindness, then by all means
+repeat the verses. But don't prostitute those wonderful words by
+making them into a charm and then expect them to cure your
+indigestion. It is a desecration of the words and a denial of your own
+intelligence. Autosuggestion is a powerful force, but real
+psychotherapy is based not on the mechanical repetition of any set of
+words, but on a knowledge of the truth."
+
+=The "Bullying Method."= Sometimes, to be sure, explanation is not
+enough. The brain paths between the associated ideas are so deeply
+worn that no amount of persuasion avails. It is easy for the doubter
+to say: "Well, that sounds very well, but my case is different. I have
+tried over and over again and I know." With people of this sort, an
+ounce of demonstration is worth a pound of argument.
+
+By way of illustration we might mention the man who couldn't eat eggs.
+To be sure, he had tried many times but always had suffered the most
+intense cramps in his stomach, and no amount of talk could make him
+believe that an egg was not poison to him. I took the straight road of
+simply proving to him that he was mistaken, and had him eat an egg.
+After a time of apprehension and retching, he vomited the egg,
+thinking, of course, that he had proved his point. To his
+astonishment, I said, "Now, let's go and eat another." With great
+consternation, he finally complied, evidently expecting to die on the
+spot; but as I immediately prescribed a game of tennis, he scarcely
+had time to think of the pain, which in fact failed to appear.
+However, as he thereafter insisted on eating four eggs a day,--with
+eggs at top-notch price I decided that the joke was on the doctor!
+
+=Enjoying the Right Things.= In substituting healthful complexes for
+unhealthful ones, psychotherapy not only changes ideas and emotions,
+but alters the feelings of pleasure or pain that are bound up with the
+ideas. Dr. Tom A. Williams writes: "The essence of psychotherapy and
+education is to associate useful activities with agreeable
+feeling-tones and to dissociate from injurious acts the agreeable
+feeling-tones that may have been acquired." Right character consists
+not so much in enjoying things as in enjoying the right things.
+
+Some people enjoy being martyrs. They love to tell about the terrible
+strain they have been under, the amount of work they have done, or the
+number of times they have collapsed. One of my patients gave every
+evidence of satisfaction as he told about his various breakdowns. "The
+last time I was ill," or "That time when I was in the sanatorium,"
+were frequent phrases on his lips. Finally, after I had asked him if
+he would boast about the number of times he had awkwardly fallen down
+in the street, and had shown him that a neurosis is not really a
+matter to be proud of, he saw the point and stopped taking pleasure in
+his mistakes.
+
+Such signs of pleasure in the wrong things are evidence of suppressed
+wishes which we do not acknowledge but try to gratify in indirect
+ways.[46] The pleasure which ought to be associated with the idea of
+good work well done has somehow been switched over to the idea of
+being an invalid. The satisfaction which ought to go with a sense of
+power and ability to do things has attached itself to the idea of
+weakness and inability. The pleasurable feeling-tone which normally
+belongs to ministering to others, regresses in the nervous invalid to
+the infantile satisfaction of being ministered unto.
+
+[Footnote 46: For a further elaboration of this theme, see Holt: _The
+Freudian Wish_.]
+
+But these things are only a habit. A good look in the mirror soon
+makes one right about face and start in the other direction. Once
+started, a good habit is built up with surprising ease. It is really
+much more satisfying to cook a good dinner for the family's comfort
+than to think about one's ills; much pleasanter to enjoy a good meal
+than to insist on hot water and toast. Once we have satisfied our
+suppressed longings in more desirable ways, or by a process of
+self-training have initiated a new set of habits, we feel again the
+old zest in normal affairs, the old interest and pleasure in
+activities which add to the joy of life. Thus does re-education fit a
+man to take his place in the world's work as a socially useful being,
+no longer a burden, but a contributor to the sum total of human
+happiness.
+
+
+SUMMARY
+
+=Knowing and Doing.= Having set out to learn how to outwit our
+nerves, we are now ready to sum up conclusions and in the following
+chapters to apply them to the more common nervous symptoms. It has
+been shown that a nervous person is in great need of change,--not,
+indeed, a change in climate or in scene, in work or in diet, but a
+change in the hidden recesses of his own being. Outwitting nerves
+means first and foremost changing one's mind, an inner and spiritual
+process very different from the kind of change which used to be
+prescribed for the nervous invalid.
+
+As Putnam says, the slogan of the suggestion-school of psychotherapy
+has always been, "You can do better if you try"; while that of the
+psycho-analytic school is, "You can do better when you know." Refuting
+the old adage, "Where ignorance is bliss 'tis folly to be wise," the
+best methods of psychotherapy insist that the first step in any
+thorough-going attempt to change oneself must be the great step of
+self-knowledge. As the conflicts which result in "nerves" are always
+far beyond those mental regions which are open to scrutiny, a real
+self-knowledge requires an examination of the half-conscious or wholly
+unconscious longings which are usually ignored. A real understanding
+of self comes only when one is willing, to analyze his motives until
+he sees the connection between them and his nervous symptoms, which
+are but the symbolic gratification of desires he dares not
+acknowledge.
+
+Although these deeply buried complexes are the real force behind a
+nervous illness, the material out of which the symptoms are
+manufactured is taken largely from superficial misconceptions
+concerning the bodily functions. It is therefore a great help, also,
+to possess a fund of information,--not technical nor detailed but
+accurate as far as it goes,--about the more important workings of the
+bodily machinery. A little knowledge about the actual chemistry of
+fatigue and the way it is automatically cared for by the body is
+likely to do away with the idea of nervous exhaustion as resulting
+from accumulation of fatigue. A simple understanding of the biological
+and physiological facts concerning the assimilation of food and the
+elimination of waste material leaves the intelligent person less ready
+to convert his psychic discomfort into indigestion and constipation.
+Chapters IX to XIII in this book, which at first glance may seem to
+belong to a work on physiology rather than on psychology are designed
+to give just such needed insight.
+
+But knowing the truth is only the first half of the way out. Every
+neurosis is a deliberate choice by a part of the personality.
+Self-discovery is helpful only when it leads to better ways of
+self-expression. The final aim of psychotherapy is the happy
+adjustment of the individual to the demands of society and the
+establishment of useful outlets for his energy. This phase of the
+subject will be discussed more fully in Chapter XVI.
+
+=The Future Hope.= Much has been said about the cure of a neurosis.
+There are enough people already in the maze of nervousness to warrant
+the setting up of numerous signs reading, "This way out." But after
+all, is not a blocking of the way in of vastly more importance? As it
+is always easier to prevent than to cure, so it is easier to train
+than to reform. If re-education is the cure, why is not education the
+ounce of prevention which shall settle the problem for all time?
+
+If the general public understood what "nerves" are, it is hardly
+conceivable that there could be so many breakdowns as there are at
+present. If a man's family and friends, to say nothing of himself,
+understood what he is doing when he suddenly collapses and has to quit
+work, it is not likely that he would choose that way out of his
+difficulties.
+
+Most important of all, when parents know that the foundation of
+nervousness is laid in childhood, they will see to it that their
+children are started right on the road to health. When fathers and
+mothers realize that an over-strong bond between parents and children
+is responsible for a large proportion of nervous troubles, most of
+them will make sure that such exaggeration is not allowed to develop.
+
+And, finally, when parents are freed from their "conspiracy of
+silence" by a reverent attitude toward the whole of life, their very
+saneness will impart to their children a wholesome respect for the
+reproductive instinct. There will then be found in the next generation
+fewer half-starved men and women carrying the burden of unnecessary
+repressions and the pain of unsatisfied yearnings.
+
+Not that such a day will usher in the millennium. We are not
+suggesting a panacea for all the social ills. There is an inevitable
+conflict between the instinctive urge of the life-force and the
+demands of society, a conflict which makes men and women either finer
+or baser, according to the way they handle it. What is claimed is that
+the right kind of education--using the word in its largest, deepest
+sense--will remove the most fruitful cause of nervousness by taking
+away the extra burden of misconception and making it easier for people
+to be "content with being moral."[47]
+
+[Footnote 47: Frink: _Morbid Fears and Compulsions._]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+_In which we discover new stores of energy and learn the truth about
+fatigue_
+
+THAT TIRED FEELING
+
+UNFAILING RESOURCES
+
+
+"They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall
+mount up with wings as eagles. They shall run and not be weary. They
+shall walk and not faint."
+
+It is safe to say that many a person loves this promise of the prophet
+Isaiah without taking it in anything like a literal sense. The words
+are considered to be so figurative and so highly spiritualized that
+they seem scarcely to relate at all to this earthly life, much less to
+the possibilities of these physical bodies.
+
+Besides the nervous folk who feel themselves so weary that they
+scarcely have strength to live, there are thousands upon thousands of
+men and women who are called normal but who have lost much of the joy
+of life because they feel their bodies inadequate to meet the demands
+of everyday living.
+
+To such men and women the Biblical promise, "As thy day, so shall thy
+strength be," comes now as the message of modern science. Nature is
+not stingy. She has not given the human race a meager inheritance. She
+did not blunder when she made the human body, nor did she allow the
+spirit of man to develop a civilization to whose demand his body is
+not equal. After its long process of development through the survival
+of the fittest, the human body, unless definitely diseased, is a
+perfectly adequate instrument, as abundantly able to cope with the
+complex demands of modern society as with the simpler but more
+strenuous life of the stone age. The body has stored within its cells
+enough energy in the shape of protein, carbohydrate and fat to meet
+and more than meet any drains that are likely to be made upon it,
+either through the monotony of the daily grind or the excitement of
+sudden emergency. Nature never runs on a narrow margin. Her motto
+seems everywhere to be, "Provide for the emergency, enough and to
+spare, good measure, pressed down, running over." She does not start
+her engines out with insufficient steam to complete the journey. On
+the contrary, she has in most instances reserve boilers which are
+almost never touched. As a rule the trouble is not so much a lack of
+steam as the ignorance of the engineer who is unacquainted with his
+engine and afraid to "let her out."
+
+="The Energies of Men."= Perhaps nothing has done so much to reveal
+the hidden powers of mankind as that remarkable essay of Professor
+William James, "The Energies of Men."[48] Listen to his introductory
+paragraph as he opens up to us new "levels of energy" which are
+usually "untapped":
+
+[Footnote 48: James: _On Vital Reserves_.]
+
+     Every one knows what it is to start a piece of work, either
+     intellectual or muscular, feeling stale--or _cold_, as an
+     Adirondack guide once put it to me. And everybody knows what it
+     is to "warm up to his job." The process of warming up gets
+     particularly striking in the phenomenon known as the "second
+     wind." On usual occasions we make a practice of stopping an
+     occupation as soon as we meet the first effective layer (so to
+     call it) of fatigue. We have then walked, played or worked
+     "enough," so we desist. That amount of fatigue is an efficacious
+     obstruction on this side of which our usual life is cast. But if
+     an unusual necessity forces us to press onward, a surprising
+     thing occurs. The fatigue gets worse up to a certain critical
+     point, when gradually or suddenly it passes away, and we are
+     fresher than before. We have evidently tapped a level of new
+     energy, masked until then by the fatigue-obstacle usually obeyed.
+     There may be layer after layer of this experience. A third and
+     fourth "wind" may supervene. Mental activity shows the phenomenon
+     as well as physical, and in exceptional cases we
+     may find, beyond the very extremity of fatigue-distress, amounts
+     of ease and power that we never dreamed ourselves to own, sources
+     of strength habitually not taxed at all, because habitually we
+     never push through the obstruction, never pass those early
+     critical points.
+
+Again Professor James says:
+
+     Of course there are limits; the trees don't grow into the sky.
+     But the plain fact remains that men the world over possess
+     amounts of resource which only very exceptional individuals push
+     to their extremes of use. But the very same individual, pushing
+     his energies to their extreme, may in a vast number of cases keep
+     the pace up day after day, and find no "reaction" of a bad sort,
+     so long as decent hygienic conditions are preserved. His more
+     active rate of energizing does not wreck him; for the organism
+     adapts itself, and as the rate of waste augments, augments
+     correspondingly the rate of repair.[49]
+
+[Footnote 49: Ibid., pp. 6-7.]
+
+Another psychologist, Boris Sidis, writes: "But a very small fraction
+of the total amount of energy possessed by the organism is used in its
+relation with the ordinary stimuli of its environment."[50] These
+men--Professor James and Dr. Sidis--represent not young enthusiasts
+who ignorantly fancy that every one shares their own abundant
+strength, but careful men of science who have repeatedly been able to
+unearth unsuspected supplies of energy in "worn out" men and women,
+supposed to be at the end of their resources. Every successful
+physician and every leader of men knows the truth of these statements.
+What would have happened in the great war if Marshal Foch had not
+known that his men possessed powers far beyond their ken, and had not
+had sublime faith in the "second wind"?
+
+[Footnote 50: Sidis: P. 112 of the composite volume
+_Pychotherapeutics_.]
+
+=What about Being Tired?= If all these things are true, why do people
+need to be told? If man's equipment is so adequate and his reserves
+are so ample, why after all these centuries of living does the human
+race need to learn from science the truth about its own powers? The
+average man is very likely to say that it is all very well for a
+scientist sitting in his laboratory to tell him about hidden
+resources, but that he knows what it is to be tired. Is not the crux
+of the whole question summed up in that word "tired"? If we do not
+need to rest, why should fatigue exist? If the purpose of fatigue
+seems to be to slow down our efforts, why should we disregard it or
+seek to evade its warnings? The whole question resolves itself into
+this: What is fatigue? In view of the hampering effect of
+misconception on this point, it is evident that the question is not
+academic, but intensely practical. We shall find that fatigue is of
+two kinds,--true and false, or physical and moral, or physiological
+and nervous,--and that while the two kinds feel very much alike,
+their origin and behavior are quite different.
+
+
+PHYSIOLOGICAL FATIGUE
+
+=Fatigue, not Exhaustion.= In the first place, then, fatigue very
+seldom means a lack of strength or an exhaustion of energy. The
+average man in the course of a lifetime probably never knows what it
+is to be truly exhausted. If he should become so tired that he could
+in no circumstances run for his life, no matter how many wild beasts
+were after him, then it might seem that he had drained himself of all
+his store of energy. But even in that case, a large part of his
+fatigue would be the result of another cause.
+
+=A Matter of Chemistry.= True fatigue is a chemical affair. It is the
+result of recent effort,--physical, mental, or emotional,--and is the
+sum of sensations arising from the presence of waste material in the
+muscles and the blood. The whole picture becomes clear if we think of
+the body as a factory whose fires continuously burn, yielding heat and
+energy, together with certain waste material,--carbon dioxide and ash.
+Within man's body the fuel, instead of being the carbon of coal is the
+carbon of glycogen or animal starch, taken in as food and stored away
+within the cells of the muscles and the liver. The oxygen for
+combustion is continuously supplied by the lungs. So far the factory
+is well equipped to maintain its fires. Nor does it fail when it comes
+to carrying away waste products. Like all factories, the body has its
+endless chain arrangement, the blood stream, which automatically picks
+up the debris in its tiny buckets--the blood-cells and serum--and
+carries it away to the several dumping-grounds in lungs, kidneys,
+intestines, and skin.
+
+Besides the products of combustion, there are always to be washed away
+some broken-down particles from the tissues themselves, which, like
+all machinery, are being continuously worn out and repaired. By
+chemical tests in the laboratory, the physiologist finds that a muscle
+which has recently been in violent exercise contains among other
+things carbon dioxid, urea, creatin, and sarco-lactic acid, none of
+which are found in a rested muscle. Since all this debris is acid in
+reaction and since we are "marine animals," at home only in salt water
+or alkaline solution, the cells must be quickly washed of the fatigue
+products, which, if allowed to accumulate, would very soon poison the
+body and put out the fires.
+
+=No Back Debts.= The human machine is regulated to carry away its
+fatigue products as fast as they are made, with but slight lagging
+behind that is made good in the hours of sleep, when bodily activities
+are lessened and time is allowed for repair. Unless the body is
+definitely diseased, it virtually never carries over its fatigue from
+one day to another. In the matter of fatigue, there are no old debts
+to pay. Nature renews herself in cycles, and her cycle is twenty-four
+hours,--not nine or ten months as many school-teachers seem to
+imagine, or eleven months as some business men suppose. In order to
+make assurance doubly sure, many set apart every seventh day for a
+rest day, for change of occupation and thought, and for catching up
+any slight arrears which might exist. But the point is that a healthy
+body never gets far behind.
+
+If through some flaw in the machine, waste products do pile up, they
+destroy the machine. If the heart leaks or the blood-cells fail in
+their carrying-power, or if lungs, kidneys or skin are out of repair,
+there is sometimes an accumulation of fatigue products which poisons
+the whole system and ends in death. But the person with tuberculosis
+or heart trouble does not usually allow this to happen. The body
+incapacitated by disease limits its activities as closely as possible
+within the range of its power to take care of waste matter. Even the
+sick body does not carry about its old toxins. The man who had not
+eliminated the poisons of a month-old effort would not be a tired man.
+He would be a dead man.
+
+=A Sliding Scale.= If all this be true, real fatigue can only be the
+result of recent effort. If one is still alive, the results of earlier
+effort must long since have disappeared. The tissue-cells retain not
+the slightest trace of its effects. Fatigue cannot possibly last,
+because it either kills us or cures itself. Up to a certain point, far
+beyond our usual high-water mark, the more a person does the more he
+can do. As Professor James has pointed out, the rate of repair
+increases with the rate of combustion. Under unusual stress, the rate
+of the whole machine is increased: the heart-pump speeds up,
+respirations deepen and quicken, the blood flows faster, the endless
+chain of filling and emptying buckets hurries the interchange of
+oxygen and carbon dioxid, until the extreme capacity is reached and
+the organism refuses to do more without a period of rest.
+
+The whole arrangement illustrates the wonderful provisions of Nature.
+Although each individual is continuously manufacturing enough
+carbonic-acid gas to kill himself in a very few minutes, he need not
+be alarmed for fear that he may forget to expel his own poisons.
+Nobody can hold his breath for more than a few minutes. The naughty
+baby sometimes tries, but when he begins to get black in the face, he
+takes a breath in spite of himself. The presence of carbonic-acid gas
+in the circulation automatically regulates breathing, and the greater
+the amount of gas the deeper the breath. The faster we burn the faster
+we blow. As with breathing, so with all the rest of elimination and
+repair. The body dares not get behind.
+
+="Second Wind."= A city man frequently sets out on a mountain tramp
+without any muscular preparation for the trip. He walks ten or fifteen
+miles when his average is not over one or two. Sometimes after a few
+hours he feels himself exhausted, but a glorious view opens out before
+him and he goes on with new zest. He has merely increased his rate of
+repair and drawn on a new stock of energy. That night he is tired, and
+the next day he is likely to be stiff and sore. There is a little
+fatigue left in him, but it takes only a day or two for the body to be
+wholly refreshed, especially if he hastens the process by another good
+walk. Up to a certain point, far beyond our usual limit, the more we
+do, the more we can do.
+
+One day after a long walk my little daughter said that she could go no
+farther and waited to be carried. But she soon spied a dog on ahead
+and ran off after him with new zest. She followed the dog back and
+forth, running more than a mile before she reached home, and then in
+the exuberance of her spirits, ran around the house three times.
+
+=The Emotions Again.= What is the key that unlocks new stores of
+energy and drives away fatigue? What is it in the amateur
+mountain-climbers that helps the body maintain its new standard? What
+keeps indefatigable workers on the job long after the ordinary man has
+tired? Is it not always an invigorating emotion,--the zest of
+pursuit, the joy of battle, intense interest in work, or a new
+enthusiasm? All great military commanders know the importance of
+morale. They know that troops can stand more while they are going
+forward than while running away, that the more contented and hopeful
+they are, the better fighters they make; discouragement, lack of
+interest, the fighting of a losing game, dearth of appreciation,
+futility of effort, monotony of task, all conspire in soldier or
+civilian to use up and to lock up energy which might have been
+available for real work. Approaching the matter from a new angle, we
+find once more that the difference between strength and weakness is in
+many cases merely a difference in the emotions and feeling-tones which
+habitually control.
+
+Fatigue is a safety-device of nature to keep us within safe limits,
+but it is a device toward which we must not become too sensitive. As a
+rule it makes us stop long before the danger point is reached. If we
+fall into the habit of watching its first signals, they may easily
+become so insistent that they monopolize attention. Attention
+increases any sensation, especially if colored by fear. Fear adds to
+the waste matter of fatigue little driblets of adrenalin and other
+secretions which must somehow be eliminated before equilibrium is
+reestablished. This creates a vicious circle. We are tired, hence we
+are discouraged. We are discouraged, hence we are more tired. This
+kind of "tire" is a chemical condition, but it is produced not by work
+but by an emotion. He who learns to take his fatigue philosophically,
+as a natural and harmless phenomenon which will soon disappear if
+ignored, is likely to find himself possessed of exceptional strength.
+We can stand almost any amount of work, provided we do not multiply it
+by worry. We can even stand a good deal of real anxiety provided it is
+not turned in on ourselves and directed toward our own health.
+
+="Decent Hygienic Conditions."= If fatigue products cannot pile up,
+why is extra rest ever needed? Because there is a limit to the supply
+of fuel. If the fat-supply stored away for such emergencies finally
+becomes low, we may need an extra dose of sleeping and eating in order
+to let the reservoirs fill again. But this never takes very long. The
+body soon fills in its reserves if it has anything like common-sense
+care. The doctrine of reserve energy does not warrant a careless
+burning of the candle at both ends. It presupposes "decent hygienic
+conditions,"--eight hours in bed, three square meals a day, and a fair
+amount of fresh air and exercise.
+
+="Over There."= On the other hand, the stories that floated back to us
+from the war zone illustrate in the most powerful way what the human
+body can do when necessity forbids the slightest attention to its
+needs. One of the best of these stories is Dorothy Canfield's account
+of Dr. Girard-Mangin, "France's Fighting Woman Doctor." Better than
+any abstract discussion of human endurance is this vibrant narrative
+of that little woman, "not very strong, slightly built, with some
+serious constitutional weakness," who lived through hardships and
+accomplished feats of daring which would have been considered beyond
+the range of possibility--before the war.
+
+Think of her out there in her leaky makeshift hospital with her twenty
+crude helpers and her hundreds of mortally sick typhoid patients; four
+hundred and seventy days of continuous service with no place to
+sleep--when there was a chance--except a freezing, wind-swept attic in
+a deserted village. Think of her in the midst of that terrible Battle
+of Verdun, during four black nights without a light, among those
+delirious men, and then during the long, long ride with her dying
+patients over the shell-swept roads. Listen to her as she speaks of
+herself at the end of that ride, without a place to lay her head: "Oh,
+then I did feel tired! That morning for the first time I knew how
+tired I was, as I went dragging myself from door to door begging for a
+room and a bed. It was because I was no longer working, you see. As
+long as you have work to do you can go on." Then listen to her as she
+receives her orders to rush to a new post, before she has had time to
+lay herself on the bed she has finally found. "Then at once my
+tiredness went away. It only lasted while I thought of getting to bed.
+When I knew we were going into action once more, I was myself again."
+Watch her as she rides on through the afternoon and the long dangerous
+night; as she swallows her coffee and plum-cake, and operates for five
+hours without stopping; as she sleeps in the only place there is--a
+"quite comfortable chair" in a corner; and as she keeps up this life
+for twenty days before she is sent--not on a vacation, mind you, but
+to another strenuous post.[51]
+
+[Footnote 51: Dorothy Canfield: _The Day of Glory._]
+
+This brave little woman is not an isolated example of extraordinary
+powers. The human race in the great war tapped new reservoirs of power
+and discovered itself to be greater than it knew. Professor James's
+assertions are completely proved,--that "as a rule men habitually use
+only a small part of the powers which they actually possess," and that
+"most of us may learn to push the barrier (of fatigue) further off,
+and to live in perfect comfort on much higher levels of power."
+
+=How?= The practical question is: how may we--the men and women of
+ordinary powers, away from the extraordinary stimulus of a crisis like
+the great war--attain our maximum and drop off the dreary mantle of
+fatigue which so often holds us back from our best efforts? It may be
+that the first step is simply getting a true conception of physical
+fatigue as something which needs to be feared only in case of a
+diseased body, and which is quite likely to disappear under a little
+judicious neglect.
+
+In the second place, fatigue shows itself to be closely bound up with
+emotions and instincts. The great releasers of energy are the
+instincts. What but the mothering instinct and the love of country
+could uncover all those unsuspected reserves of Dr. Girard-Mangin and
+others of her kind? What is it but the enthusiasm for work which
+explains the indefatigable energy of Edison and Roosevelt? If the
+wrong kind of emotion locks up energy, the right kind just as surely
+unlocks great stores which have hitherto lain dormant. If most people
+live below their possibilities, it is either because they have not
+learned how to utilize the energy of their instinctive emotions in the
+work they find to do, or because some of their strongest instincts
+which are meant to supply motive power to the rest of life are locked
+away by false ideas and unnecessary repressions, and so fail to feed
+in the energy which they control. In such a case, the "spring tonic"
+that is needed is a self-knowledge which shall release us from
+hampering inhibitions and set us free for enthusiastic
+self-expression.
+
+
+NERVOUS FATIGUE
+
+_What of the Nervous Invalid?_ If the normal man lives constantly
+below his maximum, what shall we say of the nervous invalid?
+Fatigability is the very earmark of his condition. In many instances
+he seems scarcely able to raise his hand to his head. Sometimes he can
+scarcely speak for weariness. Frequently to walk a block sends him to
+bed for a week. I once had a patient who felt that she had to raise
+her eyelids very slowly for fear of over-exertion. She could speak
+only about two or three words a day, the rest of the time talking in
+whispers. She could not raise a glass to her lips if it were full of
+water, but could manage it if only half full. A person nearly dead
+with some fatal disease does not appear more powerless than a typical
+neurasthenic.
+
+If it he true that accumulation of fatigue is promptly fatal, what
+shall we say of the woman who says that she is still exhausted from
+the labor of a year ago,--or of ten years ago? What of the business
+man who travels from sanatorium to sanatorium because five years ago
+he went through a strenuous year? What of the college student who is
+broken down because he studied too hard, or the teacher who is worn
+out because of ten hard years of teaching? There can be but one
+answer. No matter what their feelings, they can be suffering from no
+true physiological fatigue. Something very real has happened to them,
+but only through ignorance and the power of suggestion can it be
+called fatigue and attributed to overwork.
+
+=Stories of Real People.= Perhaps if we look over the stories of a few
+people who have been members of my household, we may work our way to
+an understanding of the truth. We give only the barest outline of the
+facts, thinking that the cumulative effect of a number of cases will
+outweigh a more detailed description of one or two. The most casual
+survey shows that whatever it was that burdened these fine men and
+women, it was not lack of energy. No matter how extreme had been their
+exhaustion, they were able at once, without rest or any other physical
+treatment, to summon strength for exertions quite up to those of a
+normal person.
+
+The second point that stands out clearly to any one acquainted with
+these inner histories is the conviction that in each case the trouble
+was related in some way to the unsatisfied love-life, to the insistent
+and thwarted instinct of reproduction. In some cases no search was
+made for the cause. The simple explanation that there was no lack of
+power was sufficient to release inhibited energy. But in every case
+where the cause was sought, it was found to be some outer lack of
+satisfaction, or some inner repression of the love-force.
+
+=From Prostration to Tennis.= One young woman, Miss A., had suffered
+for ten years from the extremest kind of fatigue. She could not walk a
+block without support and without the feeling of great exhaustion.
+Before her illness she had had a sweetheart. Not understanding her
+normal physical sensations when he was near, she had felt them
+extremely wicked and had repressed them with all her strength. Later,
+she broke off the engagement, and a little while after developed the
+neurosis. Within a week after coming to my house, she was playing
+tennis, walking three miles to church, and generally living the life
+of a normal person.
+
+=Making Her Own Discoveries.= Then there was Miss B. who for four
+years had been "exhausted." She had such severe pains in her legs that
+she was almost helpless. If she sewed for half an hour on the sewing
+machine, she would be in bed for two weeks. Although she was engaged
+to be married, she could not possibly shop for her trousseau. Two
+years before, a very able surgeon had been of the opinion that the
+pain in the legs was caused by an ovarian tumor. He removed the tumor,
+assuring the patient that she would be cured. However, despite the
+operation and the force of the suggestion, the pains persisted.
+
+After she had been with me for a few days, she sewed for an hour on
+the machine. In a day or so she took a four-mile walk in a cañon near
+the house and, on returning in the afternoon, walked two and a half
+miles down town to do some shopping. I did not make an analysis in
+her case because she recovered so quickly,--going home well within two
+weeks. But she declared that she had found the cause while reading in
+one of the books on psychology. I had my suspicions that the
+long-drawn-out engagement had something to do with the trouble, but I
+did not confirm my opinion. A long engagement, by continually
+stimulating desire without satisfying it, only too often leads to
+nervous illness.
+
+=Afraid of Heat.= Professor X., of a large Eastern college, had been
+incapacitated for four years with a severe fatigue neurosis and an
+intense fear of heat. Constantly watching the weather reports, he was
+in the habit of fleeing to the Maine coast whenever the
+weather-prophet predicted warm weather. After a short reëducation, he
+discovered that his fatigue was symbolic of an inner feeling of
+inadequacy, and that it bore no relation to his body. Discarding his
+weariness and throwing all his energies into the Liberty Loan
+Campaign, he found himself speaking almost continuously throughout one
+of the hottest days in the history of California, with the thermometer
+standing at 107 degrees. After that he had no doubt as to his cure.
+
+=In Bed from Fear.= Miss C. was carried into my house rolled in a
+blanket. She had been confined to her bed except for fifteen minutes a
+day, during which time she was able to lie in a hammock! It seems
+that her illness was the result of fear, an over-reaction to early
+teaching about self-abuse. Her mother had frightened her terribly by
+giving her the false idea that this practice often leads to insanity.
+Having indulged in self-abuse, she believed herself going insane, and
+very naturally succumbed to the effects of such a fear. After a few
+days of re-education, she was as strong as any average person. Having
+no clothing but for a sick-room, she borrowed hat, skirt, and shoes,
+and walked to church, a three-mile walk.
+
+=Empty Hands.= Miss Y., a fine woman of middle age, suffering from
+extreme fatigue could neither sleep nor eat. She could only weep. She
+had spent her life taking care of an invalid girl who had recently
+died. Now her hands were empty. Like many a mother whose family has
+grown up, she had no outlet for her mothering instinct, and her sense
+of impotency expressed itself in the only way it knew how,--through
+her body. As there is never any lack of unselfish work to be done, or
+of people who need mothering, she soon found herself and learned how
+to sublimate her energy in useful activities.
+
+=Defying Nature.= One young man from Wyoming had felt himself obliged
+to give up his business because he could neither work nor eat. It soon
+cropped out that he and his wife had decided that they must not have
+any children. With a better understanding of the great forces which
+they were defying, his strength and his appetite came back and he went
+back to work, rejoicing.
+
+=Left-over Habits.= Often a state of fatigue is the result of a
+carried-over habit. One of my patients, a young girl, had several
+years before been operated on for exophthalmic goiter. This is a
+disease of the thyroid gland, and is characterized by rapid heart,
+extreme fatigue, and numerous other symptoms. Although this girl's
+goiter had been removed, the symptoms still persisted. She could not
+walk nor do even a little work, like wiping a few dishes. I took her
+down on the beach, let her feel her own pulse and mine and then ran
+with her on the sand. Again I let her feel our pulses and discover for
+herself that hers had quickened no more than was normal and had slowed
+down as soon as mine. After a few such lessons, she was convinced that
+her symptoms were reverberations for which there was no longer any
+physical cause.
+
+Another young girl, Miss L., had had a similar operation for goiter
+six years before. Since that time she had been virtually bedridden.
+During the first meal she had at my house her sister sat by her couch
+because she must not be left alone. By the second meal the sister had
+gone, and Miss L. ate at the table with the other guests. That night
+she managed to crawl upstairs, with a good deal of assistance and
+with great terror at the probable results of such an effort. After
+that, she walked up-stairs alone whenever she had occasion to go to
+her room. Her heart will always be a little rapid and her body will
+never be very strong, but she now lives a helpful happy life at home
+and among her friends.
+
+In cases like this the exaggeration proves the counterfeit. Nobody
+could have been so down and out _physically_ without dying. The
+exaggeration secures attention and gives the little satisfaction to
+the natural desires which are denied expression, and which gain an
+outlet through habit along the lines previously worn by the real
+disease. Many a person is still suffering from an old pain or an old
+disability whose cause has long since disappeared, but which is
+stamped on the mind and believed in as a present reality. Since the
+sensation is as real as ever, it is sometimes very hard to believe
+that it is not legitimate, but if the person is intelligent, a little
+explanation and re-education usually suffices.
+
+=Twenty Years an Invalid.= Mr. S., from Ohio, had spent much of his
+time for twenty years going from one sanatorium to another. There was
+scarcely a health resort in the country with which he was not
+familiar. The day he came to me he felt himself completely exhausted
+by the two-block walk from the car. He explained that he could
+scarcely listen to what I was saying because his brain was so fagged
+that concentration was impossible. When asked to read a book, he
+dramatically exclaimed, "Books and I have parted company!" I set him
+to work reading "Dear Enemy" but it was not a week before he was
+devouring the deeper books on psychology, in complete forgetfulness of
+the pains in his head. Playing golf and walking at least six miles
+every day, he rejoiced in a new sense of strength in his body, which
+for twenty years he had considered "used up." He is now doing a
+man-sized job in the business and philanthropic life of his home city.
+
+=Brain-fag.= This feeling of brain-fag is one of the commonest nervous
+symptoms; and almost always it is supposed to be the result of
+intellectual overwork. Some people who easily accept the idea that
+physical work cannot cause nervous breakdown can scarcely give up the
+deep-rooted notion that intense mental work is harmful. Intellectual
+effort does give rise to fatigue in exactly the same way as does
+physical exertion, but the body takes care of the waste products of
+the one just as it does those of the other. Du Bois says that out of
+all his nervous cases he has not found one which can be traced to
+intellectual overwork. I can say the same thing, and I know no case in
+all the literature of the subject whose symptoms I can believe to be
+the result of mental labor.
+
+The college students who break down are not wrecked by intellectual
+work. In some cases, one strong factor in their undoing is the strain
+and readjustment necessary because of the discrepancies between some
+of their deepest religious beliefs and the truth as they learn it in
+the class-room. The other factors are merely those which play their
+part in any neurosis.
+
+=Re-educating the Teacher.= School-teachers are prone to believe
+themselves worn out from the mental work and the strain of the
+strenuous life of teaching. Many a fine, conscientious teacher has
+come to me with this story of overwork. But the school-teacher is as
+easily re-educated as is any one else. I usually begin the process by
+stating that I taught school myself for ten years and can speak from
+experience. After I explain that there is no physical reason why the
+teachers of some cities are fagged out at the end of nine months while
+those in other cities whose session is longer can hold on for ten
+months, and stenographers who lead just as strenuous a life manage to
+exist with only a two-weeks' vacation, they begin to see that perhaps
+after all they have been fooling themselves by a suggestion, "setting"
+themselves for just so long and expecting to be done up at the end of
+the term. Many of these same teachers have gone back to their work
+with a new sense of "enough and to spare" and some of them have
+written back that they have passed triumphantly through especially
+trying years with no sense of depletion.
+
+In any work, it is the feeling of strain which tells, the emotionalism
+and feeling sorry for oneself because one has a hard job. It is
+wonderful what a sense of power comes from the simple idea that we are
+equal to our tasks.
+
+=Sudden Relief.= The story of Mr. V. illustrates Professor James's
+statement that often the fatigue gets worse up to a certain critical
+point, and then suddenly passes away. Mr. V. was another patient who
+was "physically exhausted." When the rest of "the family" went
+clamming on the beach, he felt himself too weak for such exertions, so
+I left him on the sand to hold the bag while the rest of us dug for
+clams. The minute I turned my back he disappeared. I found him lying
+flat on his back, resting, behind the bulk-head. I decided that he
+needed the two-mile walk home and we all set out to walk. "Doctor,
+this is cruel. It is dangerous. My knees can never stand this. I shall
+be ill!" ran the constant refrain for the first mile. Then things went
+a bit better. Toward the last he found, to his absolute astonishment,
+that the fatigue had entirely rolled away. The last half-mile he
+accomplished with perfect ease. Needless to say, he never again
+complained of physical exhaustion.
+
+=False Neuritis.= Miss T. was suffering from fatigue and very severe
+pains in her arms, pains which were supposed to be the result of real
+neuritis, but which did not correspond to the physiological picture of
+that disease. A consultation revealed the fact that her love-instinct
+had been repeatedly stimulated, and then at the last, when it had
+expected satisfaction, had been disappointed. A discussion of her
+life, its inner forces, and her future aims helped to pull her
+together again and give her instinct new outlets. The pains and the
+fatigue disappeared at once.
+
+=Something Wrong.= These cases are chosen at random and are typical of
+scores of others. In no single case was the trouble feigned or
+imaginary or unreal. But in every case it was a mistake. _The sense of
+loss of muscular power was really a sense of loss of power on the part
+of the soul._ Some inner force was reaching out, reaching out after
+something which it could never quite attain. As it happened, in every
+case that I analyzed, the force which felt itself defeated and
+inadequate was the thwarted instinct of reproduction. Like a man
+pinned to the ground by a stronger force, it felt itself most helpless
+while struggling the hardest. Just as we feel a thrill of fright when
+we step up in the dark and find no step there, so this instinct had
+gotten itself ready for a step which was not there. Inner repressions
+or outer circumstances had denied satisfaction and left only an
+undefined sense that something was wrong. The life-force, feeling
+itself helpless, limp, tired, had no way of expressing itself except
+in terms of the body. Since expression is itself a relief and an
+outlet for feeling, the denied desire had seized on suggestions of
+overwork to explain its sense of weariness, and had symbolized its
+soul-pain by converting it into a physical pain. The feeling of
+inadequacy was very real, but it was simply displaced from one part of
+the personality to another,--from an unknown, inarticulate part to one
+which was more familiar and which had its own means of expression.
+
+=Locked-up Energy.= We do not know just how the soul can make its pain
+so intensely real to the body, but we do know that any conviction on
+the part of the subconscious mind is quickly expressed in the physical
+machine. A conviction of pain or of powerlessness is very soon
+converted into a feeling which can scarcely be denied. The mere
+suggestion that the body is overworked is enough to make it tired.
+
+We know, too, that the instincts are the great releasers of energy. So
+it happens that when our most dynamic instinct--that for the
+reproduction of the race--is repressed, we lack one of the greatest
+sources of usable energy. The energy is there, but it is not
+accessible. Inhibited and locked away, it is not fed into the engine,
+and we feel exactly as though it were _nil_. Despite its name, the
+disease neurasthenia does not signify a real asthenia or weakness.
+Rather, it is a disorder in which there is plenty of energy that has
+somehow been temporarily misplaced. Then, too, we must remember that
+under the depressing influence of chronic fear, not quite so much
+energy is stored away as would otherwise be. All the bodily functions
+are slowed down; food is not so completely assimilated, the heart-beat
+is weakened, the breathing is more shallow, and fatigue products are
+more slowly eliminated. As Du Bois says, "An emotion tires the
+organism more than the most intense physical or intellectual work."
+
+=Avoid the Rest-Cure.= It is a healthful sign that the rest-cure is
+fast going out of style. Wherever it has helped a nervous patient, the
+real curative agent has been the personality of the doctor and the
+patient's faith in him. The whole theory was based on ignorance of the
+cause of nerves. People suffering from "nervous exhaustion" are likely
+to be just as "tired" after a month in bed as they were before. Why
+not? Physical fatigue is quickly remedied, and what can rest do after
+that? What possible effect can rest have on the fatigue of a
+discouraged instinct? Since the best releaser of energy is enthusiasm,
+don't try to get that by lying around in bed or playing checkers at a
+health resort.
+
+
+SUMMARY
+
+If you are chronically and perpetually fatigued, or if you tire more
+easily than the other people you know, consult a competent physician
+and let him look you over. If he tells you that you have neither
+tuberculosis, heart trouble, Bright's disease, nor any other
+demonstrable disease, that you are physically fit and "merely
+nervous," give yourself a good shake and commit the following
+paragraphs to memory.
+
+
+     A CATECHISM FOR THE WEARY ONE
+
+     WHAT?
+
+     Q. What is fatigue?
+
+     A. It is a chemical condition resulting from effort that is very
+     recent.
+
+     Q. What else creates fatigue?
+
+     A. Worry, fear, resentment, discontent, and other depressing
+     emotions.
+
+     Q. What magnifies fatigue?
+
+     A. Attention to the feeling.
+
+     Q. What makes us weary long after the cause is removed?
+
+     A. Habit.
+
+     WHY?
+
+     Q. Why do many people believe themselves over-worked?
+
+     A. Because of the power of suggestion.
+
+     Q. Why do they take the suggestion?
+
+     A. Because it serves their need and expresses their inner feelings.
+
+     Q. Why are they willing to choose such an uncomfortable mode of
+     expression?
+
+     A. Because they don't know what they are doing, and the
+     subconscious is very insistent.
+
+     WHO?
+
+     Q. Who gets up tired every morning?
+
+     A. The neurotic.
+
+     Q. Who fancies his brain so exhausted that a little concentration
+     is impossible?
+
+     A. The neurotic.
+
+     Q. Who still believes himself exhausted as the result of work that
+     is now ancient history?
+
+     A. The neurotic.
+
+     Q. Who lays all his woes to overwork?
+
+     A. The neurotic.
+
+     Q. Who complains of fatigue before he has well begun?
+
+     A. The neurotic.
+
+     Q. Who may drop his fatigue as soon as he "gets the idea?"
+
+     A. The neurotic.
+
+     HOW?
+
+     Q. How can he get the idea?
+
+     A. By understanding himself.
+
+     Q. How may he express his inner feelings?
+
+     A. By choosing a better way.
+
+     Q. How can he forget his fatigue?
+
+     A. By ignoring it.
+
+     Q. How can he ignore it?
+
+     A. By finding a good stiff job.
+
+     If he wants advice in a nutshell, here it is: Get understanding!
+     Get courage! Get busy!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+_In which the ban is lifted_
+
+DIETARY TABOOS
+
+MISUNDERSTOOD STOMACHS
+
+
+=Modern Improvements.= Most people have heard the story of the little
+girl who wanted to know what made her hair snap. After she had been
+informed that there was probably electricity in her hair, she sat
+quiet for a few minutes and then exclaimed: "Our family has all the
+modern improvements! I have electricity in my hair and Grandma has gas
+on her stomach!" Judged by this standard many American families are
+well abreast of the times; and if we include among the modern
+improvements not only gas on the stomach but also nervous dyspepsia,
+acid stomach, indigestion, sick-headache, and biliousness, we must
+conclude that a good proportion of the population is both modern and
+improved.
+
+Despite all this the stomach is one of the best-equipped mechanisms in
+the world. It, at least, is not modern. After their age-long
+development the organs of the body are remarkably standardized and
+adapted to the work required of them. It is safe to say that ninety
+per cent. of all so-called "stomach trouble" is due not to any
+inherent weakness of the organ itself but to a misunderstanding
+between the stomach and its owner.
+
+=Organic Trouble.= Unfortunately, there are a few real organic causes
+for trouble. There are a few cancers of the stomach and a certain
+number of ulcers. But if the patients whom I have seen are in any way
+typical, the ulcers that really are cannot compare in number with the
+ulcers that are supposed to be. Patients go to physicians with so many
+tales of digestive distress that even the best doctors are fooled
+unless they are especially alert to the ways of "nerves." They must
+find some explanation for all the various functional disturbances
+which the patients report, and as they are in the habit of taking only
+the body into account, they find the diagnosis of stomach ulcer as
+satisfactory as any.
+
+There is, of course, such a thing as an enlarged or sagging stomach.
+But it is only in the rarest of cases that such a condition leads to
+any functional disturbances unless complicated by suggestion. In most
+cases a person can go about his business as happily as ever unless he
+gets the idea that ptosis must inevitably lead to pain and discomfort.
+
+Confusion sometimes arises when the stomach is blamed for
+disturbances which originate elsewhere. One day a very sick-looking
+girl came to me with eager expectation written all over her face. Her
+stomach was misbehaving and she had heard that I could cure nervous
+indigestion. It needed little more than a glance to know that she was
+suffering from organic heart trouble. A boy of sixteen had been taking
+a stomach-tonic for three months, but the thin, wiry pulse pointed to
+a different ailment. His digestive disturbances were merely the echo
+of an organic disease of the kidneys. When the body is burdened by
+disease, it may have little energy left for digesting food, but in
+that case the trouble must be sought in other quarters than the
+stomach.
+
+Aside from a few organic difficulties, there is almost no real disease
+of the stomach. Its misdoings are not matters of food and chemistry,
+muscle-power and nerve supply, but are the end results of slips in the
+mental and emotional life of its owner.
+
+=Fads Dynamogenic.= What is it that gives the impetus to fads about
+eating, or about religious belief? Are they advocated by the
+individual whose libido is finding abundant expression in the natural
+channels of business and family life, or by his less fortunate brother
+who can gain a sense of power only by means of some unaccustomed idea?
+William James says:
+
+     This leads me to say a word about ideas considered as dynamogenic
+     agents or stimuli for unlocking what would otherwise be unused
+     reservoirs of individual power.... In general, whether a given
+     idea shall be a live idea depends more on the person into whose
+     mind it is injected than on the idea itself. Which is the
+     suggestive idea for this person and which for that one? Mr.
+     Fletcher's disciples regenerate themselves by the idea (and the
+     fact) that they are chewing and re-chewing and super-chewing
+     their food. Dr. Dewey's pupils regenerate themselves by going
+     without their breakfast--a fact, but also an ascetic idea. Not
+     every one can use these ideas with the same success.
+
+Because it is so adaptable and sturdy, the stomach lends itself
+readily to these devices for gaining self-expression; but the danger
+lies in bringing the process of digestion into conscious attention
+which interferes with automatic functioning. Still further, the
+disregard of physiological chemistry is likely to deprive the body of
+food-stuffs which it requires.
+
+The average person is too sensible to be carried off his feet by the
+enthusiasm of the health-crank, but as most of us are likely to pick
+up a few false notions, it may be well to be armed with the simple
+principles of food chemistry in order to combat the fads which so
+easily beset us and to know why we are right when we insist on eating
+three regular meals of the mixed and varied diet which has proved
+best for the race through so many years of trial and experience.
+
+
+WHAT WE NEED TO EAT
+
+=The Essence of Dietetics.= To the layman the average discussion of
+food principles is, to say the least, confusing. Dealing largely, as
+it does, with unfamiliar terms like carbohydrate and hydrocarbon and
+calories, it is hard to translate into the terms of the potatoes left
+over from dinner and the vegetables we can afford to buy. But the
+practical deductions are not at all difficult to understand. Boiled
+down to their simplest terms, the essential principles may be stated
+in a few sentences. The body must secure from the food that we eat,
+tissue for its cells, energy for immediate use or to be stored for
+emergency, mineral salts, vitamins, water and a certain bulk from
+fruits and vegetables,--this latter to aid in the elimination of waste
+matter.
+
+Food for repairing bodily tissue is called protein and is secured from
+meat, eggs, milk, and certain vegetables, notably peas. Fuel for heat
+and energy is in two forms--carbohydrate (starch and sugar) and fat.
+We get sugar from sugar-cane and beets, and from syrups, fruit, and
+honey. Starch is furnished from flour products--mainly bread--from
+rice, potatoes, macaroni, tapioca, and many vegetables. Fats come from
+milk and butter, from nuts, from meat-fat--bacon, lard and suet--and
+from vegetable oils. The mineral salts are obtained mainly from fruit
+and vegetables, which also provide certain mysterious vitamins
+necessary for health, but as yet not well understood.
+
+=What the Market Affords.= The moral from all this is plain. The human
+body needs all the foods which are ordinarily served on the table.
+Whenever, through fad or through fear, we leave out of our diet any
+standard food, we are running a risk of cutting the body down on some
+element which it needs. They say that variety is the spice of life. In
+the matter of food it is more than that, it is the essence of life.
+Eat everything that the market affords and you will be sure to be well
+nourished. If you leave out meat you will make your body work overtime
+to secure enough tissue material from other foods. If you leave out
+white bread, you will lose one of the greatest sources of energy. If
+you leave out tomatoes and cucumbers and strawberries, you deprive
+your body of the salts and vitamins which are essential.
+
+=A Simple Rule.= There is one point that is good to remember. The
+average person needs twice as much starch as he needs of protein and
+fat together. That is, if he needs four parts of protein and three of
+fat, he ought to eat about fourteen parts of starch. This does not
+mean that we need to bother ourselves with troublesome tables of what
+to eat, but only to keep in mind in a general way that we need more
+bread and potatoes than we do meat and eggs. The body does not have
+to rebuild itself every day. It is probable that a good many people
+eat too much protein food. If a man is doing hearty work he must have
+a good supply of meat, but the average person needs only a moderate
+amount. Here again, the habits of the more intelligent families are
+likely to come pretty near the dictates of science.
+
+=For the Children.= The mother of a family ought to know that the
+children need plenty of bread, butter, and milk. Despite all the
+notions to the contrary, good well-baked white bread is neither
+indigestible nor constipating. It is indeed the staff of life. Two
+large slices should form the background of every meal, unless there is
+an extraordinary amount of other starchy food or unless the person is
+too fat. Milk-fat (from whole milk, cream, and butter) is by far the
+best fat for children. Besides fat, it furnishes a certain
+growth-principle necessary for development. As the dairyman cannot
+raise good calves on skimmed milk, so we cannot raise robust children
+without plenty of butter and milk. The pity of it is that poor people
+are forced to try! Milk is also the best protein for children, whose
+kidneys may be overstrained by trying to care for the waste matter
+from an excessive quantity of eggs and meat. Bread and butter, milk,
+fruit, vegetables, and sugar in ample quantities and meat and eggs in
+moderate quantities are pretty sure to make the kind of children we
+want. Above all things, let us train them not to be afraid of normal
+amounts of any regular food or of any combination of foods.
+
+=The Fear of Mixtures.= There are many people who can without
+flinching face almost any single food, but who quail before mixtures.
+Perhaps there is no notion which is more firmly entrenched in the
+popular mind than this fear of certain food-combinations, acquired
+largely from the advertisements of certain so-called "food
+specialists."
+
+The most persistent idea is the fear of acid and milk. It is
+interesting to watch the new people when they first come to my table.
+Confronted with grape-fruit and cream at the same meal, or oranges and
+milk, or cucumbers and milk, they eat under protest, in consternation
+over the disastrous results that are sure to follow. Out of all these
+scores of people, many of whom are supposed to have weak stomachs, I
+have never had one case of indigestion from such a combination. When a
+person knows that the stomach juices themselves include hydrochloric
+acid which is far more acid than any orange or grapefruit, that the
+milk curdles as soon as it reaches the stomach, and that it must
+curdle if it is to be digested, he has to be very "set" indeed if he
+is to cling to any remnant of fear.
+
+Of course to say that the stomach is well prepared chemically,
+muscularly, and by its nerve supply to handle any combination of
+ordinary food in ordinary amounts is not the same thing as saying that
+we may devour with impunity any amount of anything. It is a good thing
+for every one to know when he has reached his limit, and a person with
+organic heart disease should avoid eating large quantities at one
+time, or when he is extraordinarily fatigued or emotionally disturbed,
+lest at such a time he may put a fatal strain on the pneumogastric
+nerve that controls both stomach and heart.
+
+
+THE FEAR OF CERTAIN FOODS
+
+=Physical Idiosyncrasies.= Most of our false fears on food subjects
+come from some tradition--either a social tradition or a little
+private, pet tradition of one's own. Some one once was ill after
+eating strawberries and cream. What more natural than to look back to
+those little curdles in the dish and to start the tradition that such
+mixtures are dangerous? The worst of it is that the taboo habit is
+very likely to grow. One after another, innocent foods are thrown out
+until one wonders what is left. A patient of mine, Mr. G., told me
+that he had a short time before gone to a physician with a tale of woe
+about his sour stomach. "What are you eating?" asked the doctor. "Bran
+crackers and prunes." "Then," said the learned doctor, "you will have
+to cut out the prunes!" Needless to say, this man ate everything at my
+table, and flourished accordingly.
+
+There may be such a thing as physical idiosyncrasies for certain
+foods. I have often heard of them, but I have never seen one. I have
+often challenged my patients to show me some of the "spells" which
+they say invariably follow the eating of certain foods, but I have
+almost never been given an exhibition. The man who couldn't eat eggs
+did throw up once, but he couldn't do it a second time. Many people
+have threatened to break out with hives after strawberries. One woman
+triumphantly brought me what looked like a nice eruption, but which
+proved to be the after-results of a hungry flea! After that she ate
+strawberries,--without the flea and without the hives.
+
+=Not Miracles but Ideas.= Conversions on food subjects are so common
+at my table that I should have difficulty in remembering the
+individual stories. Scores of them run together in my mind and make a
+sort of composite narrative something like this: "Oh, no, thank you, I
+don't eat this. You really must excuse me. I have tried many times and
+it is invariably disastrous." Then a reluctant yielding and a day or
+two later some talk about miracles. "It really is wonderful. I don't
+understand," etc. Experiences like these only go to show the power of
+the subconscious mind, both in building up wrong habit-reactions and
+in quickly substituting healthy ones, once the false idea is removed.
+
+Among my stomach-patients there were two men, brothers-in-law,
+immigrants from the Austrian Tyrol, and now resident in one of the
+cow-boy states. Leonardo spoke little English, and though Giovanni
+understood a very little, he spoke only Italian.
+
+Several years before I knew them, Giovanni had developed a severe case
+of stomach trouble and had finally gone to a medical center for
+operation. The disturbance, however, was not relieved by the operation
+and before long his brother-in-law fell into the same kind of trouble.
+For several years the two had spent much of their time dieting,
+vomiting, and worrying over their sour stomachs. Giovanni finally
+became so ill that his sick-benefit society had actually assessed its
+members to pay for his funeral expenses. About this time a business
+man of their town, impressed by the cure of a former patient who had
+made a quick recovery after seven years of invalidism, persuaded the
+two men to take their little savings and come to California to be
+under my care. The evening meal and breakfast went smoothly enough,
+although the menu included articles which they had been taught to
+avoid. However, as I left the house on a necessary absence soon after
+breakfast, I saw Leonardo weeping in the garden and Giovanni spitting
+up his breakfast, out at the entrance gate. On my return, I found one
+of "the family" literally sitting on the coat-tails of Leonardo, while
+Giovanni hovered at a distance, safe from capture. Leonardo upbraided
+me bitterly for having undone all the gain they had made in the long
+months of rigid dieting, for now the vomiting had returned, because
+they had eaten sugar on their oatmeal at breakfast! I made Leonardo
+drink an egg-nog, took him into the consultation-room and held my hand
+on his knee to keep him in his chair, while explaining to him as best
+I could the physiologic action of the hydrochloric acid on the
+digestive juice, which he feared as a sour stomach, the sign of
+indigestion.
+
+During the conversation I said, "I suppose Giovanni imitated you in
+this mistaken fear about your health." The reply was, "No, I got it
+off him!" Nearly two hours later he exclaimed in astonishment: "Why,
+that milk hasn't come up! Maybe I am cured!" "Of course you are
+cured," I answered; "there never was anything really the matter with
+your stomach, so you are cured as soon as you think you are."
+
+Later Giovanni was inveigled into the house by the promise that he
+would have to eat nothing more than milk soup. All was smooth sailing
+after this. For my own part I feared for the permanency of the cure,
+for they were returning to the old environment. But more than three
+years have passed, and grateful letters still come telling of their
+continued health.
+
+Another patient, a teacher of domestic science in a big Eastern
+university, had lived on skimmed milk and lime-water from Easter to
+Thanksgiving. Several attempts to enlarge the dietary by adding cream
+or white of egg had only served to increase the sense of discomfort.
+Finding nothing in the history of the case to warrant a diagnosis of
+organic disease of the stomach, I served her plate with the regular
+dinner, bidding her have no hesitancy even over the pork chops and
+potato chips. She gained nine pounds in weight the first week, and in
+two and a half months was forty pounds to the good.
+
+=When Re-education Failed.= But there is one patient who has had to
+have his lesson repeated at intervals. This man laughingly calls
+himself a disgrace to his doctor because he is a "repeater." His story
+illustrates the power of an autosuggestion and the disastrous effect
+of attention to a physiological function. When Mr. T. came first to me
+he weighed only 120 pounds, although he is over six feet tall and of
+large frame. From the age of sixteen he had followed fads in eating
+and thought he had a weak stomach. I treated his "weak stomach" to
+everything there was in the market, including mince-pies, cabbage,
+cheese, and all the other so-called indigestibles. He gained 16-1/2
+pounds the first week and 31 pounds in five weeks. One would think
+that the idea about the weak stomach would have died a natural death,
+but it did not. Again and again he came back to me like a living
+skeleton, the last time weighing only 105 pounds, and again and again
+he has gone back to his home in the Middle West plump and well. Twice
+while he was at home he underwent unnecessary operations, once for an
+ulcer that was not there and once for supposed chronic spasm of the
+pylorus. Needless to say, the operations did not help. You cannot cut
+out an idea with a knife. Neither can you wash it out with a
+stomach-pump; else would Mr. T. long ago have been cured! This
+particular idea of his seems to be proof against all my best efforts
+at re-education. Psycho-analysis is impracticable, partly because of
+the duration of the habit of repression, but the history, and certain
+symbolic symptoms, indicate the Freudian mechanisms at work. All I can
+do is to feed him up, bully him along, and keep him from starving to
+death. Just now he is doing very well at home, although he has moved
+to California so as not to be too far away from "the miracle-worker."
+
+If Mr. T.'s case had been typical, I should long ago have lost my
+faith in psychotherapy. Keeping people from starving is worth while,
+but is less satisfactory than curing them of what ails them. The
+nervous patient who has a relapse is no credit to his doctor. It is
+only when the origin of his trouble is not removed that the bond of
+transference tends to become permanent. The neurotic who is well only
+while under the influence of his physician is still a neurotic.
+However, as most people's complexes are neither so deeply buried nor
+so obstinate as this, a simple explanation or a single demonstration
+is usually enough to loose the fettering hold of old misconceptions.
+
+
+COMMON AILMENTS
+
+="Gas on the Stomach."= We all know people who suffer from "gas."
+Indeed, very few of us escape an occasional desire to belch after a
+hearty meal. But the person with nervous indigestion rolls out the
+"gas" with such force that the noise can sometimes be heard all over
+the house. He may keep this up for hours at a time, under the
+conviction that he is freeing himself from the products of fermenting
+food. He may exhibit a well-bloated stomach as proof of the disastrous
+effect of certain articles of diet. The gas and the bloating are
+supposed to be the sign and the seal of indigestion, a positive
+evidence that undigested food is fermenting in the stomach.
+
+But what is fermentation? It is, necessarily, a question of the growth
+of bacteria and is a process which we may easily watch in our own
+kitchens. Bread rises when the yeast-cells have multiplied and acted
+on the starch of the flour, producing enough gas to raise the whole
+mass. Potatoes ferment because bacteria have multiplied within them.
+Canned fruit blows up because enough bacteria have developed inside to
+produce sufficient gas to blow open the can. Every housewife knows
+that it takes time for each of these processes. Bread has to stand
+several hours before it will rise; potatoes do not ferment under
+twelve hours, and canned fruit is not considered safe from the
+fermenting process under three days. Evidently there is some mistake
+when a person begins to belch forth "gas" within an hour or two after
+a meal. As a matter of fact, it is not gas at all but merely air that
+is swallowed with the food or that was present in the empty stomach.
+
+When the food enters the stomach it necessarily displaces air, which
+normally comes out automatically and noiselessly. But if, through fear
+or attention, a certain set of muscles contract, the pent-up air may
+come forth awkwardly and noisily or it may stay imprisoned until we
+take measures to let it out. A hearty laugh is as good as anything,
+but if that cannot be managed, we may have to resort to a cup of hot
+water which gives the stomach a slap and makes it let go. Two belches
+are enough to relieve the pressure. After that we merely go on
+swallowing air and letting it out again, a habit both awkward and
+useless.
+
+If the emotion which ties the muscle-knot is very intense, and the
+stomach refuses to let go under ordinary measures, the pain may be
+severe. But a quantity of hot water or a dose of ipecac is sure to
+relieve the situation. If the person is able to give himself a good
+moral slap and relax his unruly muscles, he reaches the same end by a
+much pleasanter road.
+
+Some people are fond of the popular remedy of hot water and soda.
+Their faith in its efficacy is likely to be increased by the good
+display of gas which is sure to follow. As any cook knows, soda and
+acid always fizz. The soda is broken up by the hydrochloric acid of
+the stomach and forms salt and carbon dioxid, a gas. However, as the
+avowed aim of the remedy is the relief of gas rather than its
+manufacture, and as the soda uses up the hydrochloric acid needed in
+digestion, the practice cannot be recommended as reasonable.
+
+=Gastritis.= I once knew a woman who went to a big city to consult a
+fashionable doctor. When she returned she told with great satisfaction
+that the doctor had pronounced her case gastritis. "It must be true,"
+she added, "because I have so much gas on my stomach!" The diagnosis
+of gastritis used to be very common. The ending _itis_ means
+inflammation,--gastritis, enteritis, colitis, each meaning
+inflammation of the corresponding organ. An inflammation implies an
+irritant. There can be no kind of _itis_ without the presence of
+something which irritates the membrane of the affected part. If we
+get unusual and irritating bacteria in some spoiled food, we are
+likely to have an acute inflammation until the offending bacteria are
+expelled. But an inflammation of this kind never lasts. People who
+have had ptomaine poisoning sometimes assert that they are afterwards
+susceptible to poisoning by the kind of food which first made them
+ill. Such a susceptibility is not so much a hold-over effect from the
+poison as a hold-over fear which tends to repeat the physical reaction
+whenever that food is eaten. I, myself, have had ptomaine poisoning
+from canned salmon, but I have never since had any trouble about
+eating salmon.
+
+=Sour Stomach.= Sometimes when a person lies down an hour or so after
+a meal, some of the contents of his stomach comes up in his throat.
+Then if he be ignorant of physiology, he may be very much alarmed
+because his stomach is "sour." Not knowing that he would have far
+greater cause for alarm if his stomach were _not_ sour, he may, if the
+idea is interesting to him, begin to restrict his diet, to take
+digestive tablets, and to develop a regular case of nervous dyspepsia.
+Sometimes when the specialists measure the amount of hydrochloric acid
+in the stomach, they do find too much or too little acid; but this
+merely means that an emotion has made the glands work overtime or has
+stopped their action for a little while. The functions of the body
+are so very, very old that there is little likelihood of permanent
+disturbance.
+
+=Biliousness.= The stomach is not the only part of the body concerning
+which we lack proper confidence. Next to it the liver is the most
+maligned organ in the whole body. Although the liver is about as
+likely to be upset in its process of secreting bile as the ocean is
+likely to be lacking in salt, many an intelligent person labels every
+little disturbance "biliousness" and lays it at the door of his
+faithful, dependable liver.
+
+As a matter of fact, the liver is liable to injury from virtually but
+three sources--alcohol, bacterial infection, and cancer--and even a
+liver hardened by alcohol goes on secreting bile as usual. The patient
+dies of dropsy but not of "liver complaint."
+
+Some people act as if they thought bile were a poison. On the
+contrary, it is a very useful digestant; it aids in keeping down the
+number of harmful bacteria and helps to carry the food from intestines
+to blood. Every day the liver manufactures at least a pint of this
+important fluid. The body uses what it needs and stores the surplus
+for reserve in the gall-bladder. The flow is continuous and, despite
+all appearances to the contrary, there is no such thing as a torpid or
+an over-active liver.
+
+It is true that after a "bilious" person has vomited for a few minutes
+he is likely to throw up a certain amount of bile, which is supposed
+to have been lying in his stomach and causing the nausea. In fact,
+however, this bile is merely a part of the usual supply stored away in
+the gall-bladder. By the very act of retching, the bile is forced out
+of the bile channels into the stomach and thence up into the mouth.
+Anybody can throw up bile at any time if he only tries hard enough.
+
+One of the favorite habits of certain people is the taking of calomel
+and salts. After such a dose they view with satisfaction the green
+character of the stools and conclude that they have rid themselves of
+a great amount of harmful matter. As a matter of fact, the greater
+part of the coloring in the stools is from the calomel itself, changed
+in the intestines from one salt of mercury to another. Any excess bile
+is the result of the irritating action of the calomel on the
+intestinal wall, an irritation which makes the bowel hurry to cast out
+this foreign substance without waiting for the bile to be absorbed as
+usual.
+
+A patient once told me that he had bought medicine from a street fakir
+and by his direction had followed it with a dose of salts. He saved
+the bowel movement, washed it in a sieve, and discovered a great
+number of "gall-stones," which the medicine had so effectively washed
+from his system. He was much astonished when I told him that his
+gall-stones were merely pieces of soap. He did not know that
+everybody manufactures soap in his body every day, and that by taking
+an extra quantity of oil in the shape of the fakir's medicine and an
+extra quantity of potash in the salts, he had merely augmented a
+normal physiological process. The supposed action of calomel belongs
+to the same class of phenomena, and has no slightest effect on the
+liver or on real gall-stones, which are the precipitate of bile-salts
+in the gall-bladder, and which cannot be reached by any medicine.
+
+If the popular notions about biliousness are ill founded, what then
+causes the disturbances which undoubtedly do occur and which show
+themselves in attacks of nausea or sick headache? The answer can be
+given in a word of four letters; a coated tongue, a bilious attack and
+a sick headache are all the outcome of a mood. Stocks have gone down
+or the wife is cranky or the neighbors are hateful. Adrenalin and
+thyroid secretions are poured out as the result of emotion; digestion
+is stopped, circulation disturbed, and the whole apparatus thrown out
+of gear.
+
+=Sick-Headache.= Sick-headache is primarily a circulatory disturbance;
+and although the disturbance may have been inaugurated by some
+chemical unbalance, the sum total of the force that makes a
+sick-headache is emotional. The emotion, of course, need not be
+conscious in order to be effective. If we picture the arteries all
+over the body as being supplied with, among other things, a wall of
+circular muscles, and then imagine messages of emotion being flashed
+to the nerves controlling this muscle wall, we may get an idea of what
+happens just before a sick-headache. Some parts of the arteries
+contract too much and other parts relax. The arteries to the head
+tighten up at the extremities and become loose lower down. The force
+of the blood-stream against the constricted portion can hardly fail to
+cause pain. The sick part of the headache is merely a sympathetic
+strike of the nerves which control circulation and stomach.
+
+The moral of all this is plain. If a sick-headache is the result of an
+emotional spasm of the blood-vessels, the obvious cure is a change of
+the emotion. Some people manage it by going to a party or a picnic,
+others by ignoring the symptoms and keeping on with their work. A
+woman physician whom I know was in the midst of a violent headache
+when called out on an obstetrical case. She felt sorry for herself,
+but went on the case. In the strenuous work which followed, she quite
+forgot the headache, which disappeared as if by magic.
+
+Sometimes it happens that a headache recurs periodically or at regular
+intervals. It is easy to see that in such cases the exciting cause is
+fear and expectation. At some time in the past, headaches have
+occurred at an interval of, say, fourteen days; as the next
+fourteenth day approaches the sufferer says to himself: "It is about
+time for another headache. I am afraid it will come to-morrow," and of
+course it comes. One man told me that if he ate Sunday-night supper he
+inevitably had a headache on Monday morning. We were about to sit down
+to a simple Sunday supper and he refused very positively to join us. I
+told him he could stay all night and that I would take care of him if
+the Monday sickness appeared. He accepted my challenge but was unable
+to produce a headache. In fact, he felt so unusually flourishing the
+next morning that he insisted on frying the bacon for my entire
+family. That was the end of the Monday headaches.
+
+=A Few Examples.= As sick-headache has always been considered a rather
+stubborn difficulty, not amenable to most forms of treatment, it may
+be well to cite a few cases which were helped by educational methods.
+A patient came home from a walk one day and announced that he was
+going to bed. When questioned, be said: "I am tired and I have a
+sick-headache. Isn't it logical to go to bed?" To which I answered
+that it would be far more logical to put some food into his stomach
+and change the circulation than to lie in bed and think about his
+pain. This man was completely cured. I have had patients throw up one
+meal, and very rarely two, but I have never had to supply more than
+three meals at a time. The waste of food I consider amply justified by
+the benefit to the patient.
+
+There once came to me an elderly woman, the wife of a poor minister.
+She was suffering from attacks of nausea, which recurred every five to
+ten days with intense pain through the eyes, and with photo-phobia or
+fear of light. I found that she had by dint of heroic efforts raised a
+large and promising family on the salary of an itinerant
+minister--from four hundred to six hundred a year! All the time she
+had been feeling sorry for herself because her husband did not
+appreciate her. One day, after reading one of his letters which seemed
+to show an utter lack of appreciation of all that she was doing, she
+fell down in the field beside her plow, paralyzed. From that time on
+she had been more or less of an invalid, continually nursing her
+grudge and complaining that she ought not to have been made to bear so
+many children.
+
+After I had heard this plaint over and over for about a week, I said:
+"Perhaps you ought not to have had that little daughter, the little
+ewe-lamb. Maybe she was one too many." "Oh, no," came the quick
+response. "I couldn't have spared _her_." Then I went down the line of
+the fine stalwart sons. Perhaps she could have spared John or Tom or
+Fred? Finally she saw the whole matter in a different light,--saw
+herself as a queen among women, the mother of such a family.
+
+As to the husband, I tried to show her that she was not very clever
+to live with a man all those years without discovering that he was not
+likely to change. "You can't change him but you can change your
+reaction to him. If something keeps hurting your hand, you don't keep
+on being sore. You grow callous. Isn't it about time you grew a moral
+callous, too?"
+
+I put her on the roof to sleep, on account of her fear of light. Only
+once did she start a headache, which I quickly nipped in the bud by
+making her get up and dress. She had come to stay "three months or
+four,--if I get along well." At the end of four weeks she left, an
+apparently well woman. The last I heard of her she was stumping the
+state for temperance, the oldest of an automobile party of speakers,
+and the sturdiest physically. With the emotional grievance,
+disappeared also the physical effects in stomach and head.
+
+Miss S., a very brilliant woman, ambitious to make the most of her
+life, had been shelved for twenty-five years because of violent
+sick-headaches which made it impossible for her to undertake any kind
+of work. She had not been able to read a half-hour a day without
+bringing on a terrible headache. I insisted on her reading, and very
+soon she was so deep in psychological literature that I had difficulty
+in making her go to bed at all. After learning the cause of her
+headaches and gaining greater emotional control, she succeeded so
+well in freeing herself from the old habit, that she now leads the
+busiest kind of useful life with only an occasional headache, perhaps
+once in six months.
+
+A certain minister suffered constantly from a dull pain in his head,
+besides having violent headaches every few days. He started in to have
+a bad spell the day after his arrival at my house. As I was going out
+of the door, he caught my sleeve. "Doctor," he said, "would it be bad
+manners to run away?" "Manners?" I answered. "They don't count, but
+morals, yes." He stayed--and that was his last bad headache. Both
+chronic and periodic pains disappeared for good.
+
+One woman who had suffered from bad headaches for eighteen years lost
+them completely under a process of re-education. On the other hand, I
+have had patients who were not helped at all. The principles held good
+in their cases, but they were simply not able to lose the old habit of
+tightening up the body under emotion.
+
+=Hysterical Nausea.= Sometimes nausea is merely the physical symbol of
+a subconscious moral disgust. We have already told the stories of "the
+woman with the nausea" (Chapter V) and of Mrs. Y. (Chapter VII). These
+cases are typical of many others. Their bodies were perfectly normal,
+and when, through psycho-analysis and re-education, they were helped
+to make over their childish attitudes toward the sex-life, the nausea
+disappeared.
+
+=Loss of Appetite.= A nervous patient with a good appetite is "the
+exception that proves the rule." The neurotic is usually under weight
+and often complains that he feels satiated almost as soon as he begins
+to eat. Loss of appetite may, of course, mean that the body is busy
+combating toxins in the blood, but in a nervous person it usually
+means a symbolic loss of appetite for something in life, a struggle of
+the personality against something for which he has "no stomach."
+Psycho-analysis often reveals the source of the trouble, and a little
+bullying helps along the good work. By simply taking away a harmful
+means of expression, we may often force the subconscious mind to find
+a better language.
+
+
+SUMMARY
+
+Since the stomach seems to be an organ which is much better fitted to
+care for food than to care for a depressing emotion or a false idea,
+it seems far more sensible to change our minds than to keep enlarging
+our list of eatables which are taboo.
+
+And since most indigestion is in very truth nothing more nor less than
+an emotional disturbance, worked up by fear, anger, discontent, worry,
+ignorance, suggestion, attention to bodily functions which are meant
+to be ignored, love of notice and the conversion of moral distress
+into physical distress, the best diet list which can be furnished to
+Mr. Everyman in search of health must read something like this:
+
+                              MENU
+
+     Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday,
+                             Sunday
+
+  A Calm Spirit                            Plenty of Good Cheer
+      A Varied Diet                           Commonsense
+                          Good Cooking
+                 Judicious Neglect of Symptoms
+            Forgetfulness of the Digestive Process
+                   A Little Accurate Knowledge
+                       A Determination to
+                         BE LIKE FOLKS
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+_In which we relearn an old trick_
+
+THE BUGABOO OF CONSTIPATION
+
+POPULAR SUPERSTITIONS
+
+
+In line with the taboos connected with the taking of food are the
+ceremonials attendant upon its elimination. Taking anxious thought
+about functions well established by nature is a feature of
+conversion-hysteria, the displacement of emotional desire from its
+psychic realm into symbolic physical expression. Whatever other
+symptoms nervous people may manifest, they are almost sure to be
+troubled with chronic constipation. It is true that there are many
+constipated people who do not seem to be nervous and who resent being
+classed among the neurotics. Everybody knows that the occasional
+individual who has difficulty in swallowing his food is nervous and
+that the, trouble lies not in the muscles of his throat but in the
+ideas of his mind. But very few people seem to realize that the more
+common individual who makes hard work of that other simple
+process--elimination of his intestinal waste matter--is suffering
+from the same kind of disturbance and giving way to a nervous trick.
+When all the facts are in, the constipated person will have hard work
+to clear himself of at least one count on the charge of nerves.
+
+=An Oft-told Tale.= Sooner or later, then, the neurotic, whether he
+calls himself a neurotic or not, is very likely to begin worrying over
+his diet or his sedentary occupation. He imagines himself the victim
+of autointoxication, afflicted with paralysis of the colon or dearth
+of intestinal secretions. He leaves off eating white bread, berries,
+cheese, chocolate, and many another innocent food, and insists on a
+diet of bran-biscuit, flaxseed breakfast-foods, prunes, spinach,
+cream, and olive-oil with doses of mineral oil between meals. In all
+probability, he begins a course of massage or he starts to take extra
+long walks and to exercise night and morning, pulling his knees up to
+his chin and touching his fingers to his toes. When all these measures
+fail, he gives in to the morning enema or the nightly pill, in
+imminent danger of succumbing to a life-long habit.
+
+
+THE TRUTH ABOUT CONSTIPATION
+
+=What the Colon Is For.= It is well, then to have a fair understanding
+of the structure and purpose of our intestinal machinery. Contrary to
+general opinion, the intestines are not a dumping-ground but a
+digestive organ. After the food is partly digested in the stomach, it
+passes through a twenty-two foot tube (the small intestine) into a
+five-foot tube (the large intestine or colon) where digestion is
+completed, the nutriment is absorbed, and the waste matter is passed
+on and out through the rectum. As the food passes along the colon,
+pushed slowly ahead by the peristaltic wave, or rhythmic muscular
+contractions of the intestinal wall, it is seized upon by the four
+hundred varieties of friendly bacteria which inhabit the intestines of
+every healthy person, and is changed into a form which the body can
+assimilate. Digestion in the stomach and small intestine is carried on
+by means of certain digestive juices, but in the large intestine it is
+the bacteria which do the work. Without them we could not live.
+
+Around the colon is a thick network of little blood vessels, all of
+which lead straight to the liver, the storehouse of the body. After
+the food is fully digested, it is passed through the thin intestinal
+wall into these tiny vessels and carried away to liver and muscles for
+storage or for immediate use.
+
+This process of absorption is carried on throughout the whole length
+of the colon. Not until the very end of the intestine is reached is
+all the nutrition abstracted. The bowel-content can properly be called
+waste matter only after it has reached the rectum or pouch at the
+lower end of the colon. Even then, this waste matter is not poison,
+but merely indigestible material which the body cannot handle.
+
+=Food, not Poison.= The colon is not a cesspool but a digestive and
+assimilating organ. Its content is not poison but food. Active
+elimination is important not so much because delay causes
+autointoxication or poisoning as because too large a mass is hard to
+manage and irritates the intestinal wall. The problem is not so much
+one of toxicology as of simple mechanics. If Nature had put within the
+body five feet of tubing which could easily become a cesspool and a
+breeder of poison, it is not at all likely that she would have laid
+alongside an elaborate system of blood vessels leading not out to the
+kidneys but into the storehouse of the liver; and if civilized man's
+changed manner of living had so upset Nature's plans as easily to
+transform his internal machinery into a chronic source of danger, we
+may be sure that he would long ago have gone the way of the unfit and
+succumbed to his own poisons.
+
+=Possible Invasions.= It is true that the intestinal tract, like the
+rest of the body, is open to attack by harmful bacteria. But in a
+great majority of cases, these enemy bacteria are either quickly
+destroyed by the beneficent microbes within or are immediately cast
+out as unfit. Any germs irritating to the intestinal wall cause the
+mucous membrane to produce an unusual flow of mucus which washes away
+the offending bacteria in what we call a diarrhea.[52]
+
+[Footnote 52: If the invading army proves obstinate and the diarrhea
+continues a day or so, it is wise to assist Nature by a dose of
+castor-oil, which gives an additional insult to the intestinal wall,
+spurs it on to a desperate effort, and hastens the cleansing process.
+In severe cases the more promptly the castor-oil is administered the
+better. Such emergency measures are very different from the habitual
+use of insulting drugs.]
+
+Sometimes the wrong kind of bacteria do persist, causing anemia,
+rheumatism, sciatica, or neuritis. When these disorders are not the
+result of infection from teeth, tonsils, or other sources of poison,
+but are really caused by intestinal bacteria, I have found that a diet
+of buttermilk (lactic acid bacteria), with turnip-tops or spinach to
+supply the necessary mineral salts, often succeeds in planting the
+right bacteria and driving out the disturbing ones. These disorders
+are invasions from without, like tuberculosis or malaria, and are as
+likely to attack the person with easy bowel movements as the one with
+the most chronic constipation.
+
+=Autointoxication.= A good deal of the talk about autointoxication is
+just talk. It sounds well and affords an easy explanation for all
+sorts of ills, but in a large majority of cases the diagnosis can
+hardly be substantiated. Uninformed writers of newspaper articles on
+the care of the body, or purveyors of purgatives or apparatus for
+internal baths are fond of dilating on the "foulness of the colon" as
+a leading cause of disease. As a rule, they advise either a strict
+diet, some kind of cathartic, or an elaborate process of washing out
+the colon to clear the body of its terrible accumulation of poisons.
+
+=Cathartics and Enemas.= He who makes a practice of flushing out his
+intestinal tract with high enemas and internal baths is like a person
+who eats a good dinner and then proceeds to wash out his stomach. In
+the mistaken idea that he is making himself clean, he is washing what
+was never intended to be washed and robbing the body of the nutrition
+which it needs. And the man who persists in the pill habit is making a
+worse mistake, adding insult to injury and forcing the mucous membrane
+to toughen itself against such malicious attacks.
+
+=Cathartics and Operations.= Even in emergencies, the use of
+purgatives as a routine measure is happily decreasing year by year.
+For many years I have deplored the use of purgatives before and after
+operations. That other practitioners are coming to the same conclusion
+is witnessed by a number of papers recently read in medical societies
+condemning purgation at the time of operation.
+
+Among the most favorably received papers of the California Medical
+Societies have been one by Emmet L. Rixford, surgeon of the Stanford
+University Medical College, read before the Southern California
+Medical Society at Los Angeles December 8, 1916, and one by W.D.
+Alvarez at the California Medical Society, Del Monte, 1918,--both
+condemning the use of purgatives as a routine measure before
+operations. An article entitled the "Use and Abuse of Cathartics" in
+the "Journal of the American Medical Association" admirably summarizes
+the disadvantages of purgation at such a time.[53]
+
+[Footnote 53: "1 Danger of dissemination of infection throughout the
+peritoneal cavity, in case localized infection exists.
+
+"2 Increased absorption of toxins and greater bacterial activity by
+reason of the fact that undigested food has been carried down into the
+colon to serve as pabulum for bacteria, and that liquid feces form a
+better culture medium than solid feces.
+
+"3 Increased distention of the intestine with gas and fluid, when it
+should be empty....
+
+"4 Psychic and physical weakness produced by dehydration of the body,
+disturbance in the salt balance of the system, and the loss of sleep
+occasioned by the frequent purging during the night preceding the
+operation. As Oliver Wendell Holmes says: 'If it were known that a
+prize fighter were to have a drastic purgative administered two or
+three days before a contest, no one will question that it would affect
+the betting on his side unfavorably. If this be true for a powerful
+man in perfect health, how much more true must it be of the sick man
+battling for life.'
+
+"5 Increase in postoperative distress and danger: thirst, gas pains,
+and even ileus...."--_Journal of American Medical Association_, Vol.
+73, No. 17, p. 1285, Oct. 25. 1919.]
+
+Four years ago I was called to a near-by city to see a former patient
+who two days before had had a minor operation,--removal of a cyst of
+the breast. She was dazed, almost in a state of surgical shock and
+very near collapse. I found that she had been put through the usual
+course of purgation before operation and starvation afterward, and I
+diagnosed her condition as a state bordering on acidosis, or lowering
+of the alkaline salts of the body. I ordered food at once. She rallied
+and recovered.
+
+A few months later this same woman had to undergo a much more serious
+operation for multiple fibroids of the uterus and removal of the
+appendix. This time I advised the surgeon against the use of any
+purgative, and he took my remarks so seriously that he did not even
+allow an enema to be given. This time the patient showed no signs of
+exhaustion and had very few gas pains. I firmly believe that the day
+will soon come when a patient under operation, or a patient after
+childbirth, will no longer be depleted by a weakening and dehydrating
+cathartic and by a period of starvation, at a time when he needs all
+the energy he can summon.
+
+=Cathartics and Childbirth.= The article referred to in the "Journal
+of the American Medical Association" cites the experiences of Dr. R.
+McPherson of the Lying-in Hospital of New York, "who showed that the
+routine purgation after confinement is not only useless but harmful.
+Of 322 women who were not purged, only three had fever (and one of
+them a mammary abscess); most of them had normal bowel movements and
+those who did not were given an enema every third day. Of 322 women
+who were delivered by the same technique and the same operators but
+were purged in the usual routine manner, twenty-eight had some fever."
+This experience of one physician is corroborated by that of others who
+find that the more we tamper with the natural functions in time of
+stress the harder do we make the recuperative process. There are
+certainly times when catharsis is necessary but "one thing is certain,
+the day for routine purgation is past."[54] Even in emergencies we
+need to know why we administer cathartics and in chronic cases we may
+be sure that they are always a mistake.
+
+[Footnote 54: Ibid, p. 1286.]
+
+="An Old Trick."= Before we make a practice of interfering with
+Nature's processes, it is well to remember how old and stable those
+processes are. As long as there has been the taking in of food, there
+has been also the casting out of waste matter. The sea-anemone closes
+in on the little mollusk that floats against its waving petals,
+assimilates what it can and rejects the rest. In the long line from
+sea-anemone to man, this automatic process of elimination has gone on
+without a hitch, adapting itself with perfect success to the changing
+habits of the varying types of life. So old a process is not easily
+upset. And, be it noted, in the human body this automatic, involuntary
+process still goes on with very little trouble until it reaches a
+point in the body where man, the thinking animal, tries to control it
+by conscious thought.
+
+=A Question of Evacuation.= Much of the misconception about
+constipation arises from the mistaken idea that this is a disorder of
+the whole intestine or at least of the whole colon. As a matter of
+fact, the trouble is almost wholly in the rectum. There is no trouble
+with the general traffic movement, but only with the unloading at the
+terminus. In my experience, the patient reports that he feels the
+fecal mass in the lower part of the rectum, but that he is unable to
+expel it. Examination by finger or by X-ray reveals a mass in the
+rectal pouch. If there is a piling up of freight further back on the
+line, it is only because the unloading process has been delayed at the
+terminus.
+
+So long as the bowel-content is in the region of automatic control,
+there is very little likelihood of trouble. An occasional case of
+organic trouble--appendicitis, lead-colic, mechanical obstruction, new
+growths or spinal-cord disease--may cause a real blockade, but in
+ninety-nine cases out of every hundred there is little trouble so long
+as the involuntary muscles, working automatically under the direction
+of the subconscious mind, are in control. By slow or rapid stages, on
+time or behind time, the bowel-content reaches the upper part of the
+rectum and passes through a little valve into the lower pouch. Here is
+where the trouble begins.
+
+=Meddlesome Interference.= In the natural state the little human, like
+the other animals, empties his bowel whenever the fecal mass enters
+the lower portion of the rectum. The presence of the mass in the
+rectum constitutes a call to stool which is responded to as
+unthinkingly as is the desire for air in the taking of a breath. But
+the tiny child soon has to learn to control some of his natural
+functions. At the lower end of the rectum there is a purse-string
+muscle called the _Sphincter-ani_, an involuntary muscle which may
+with training be brought partly under voluntary control. Under the
+demands of civilization, the baby learns to tighten up this muscle
+until the proper time for evacuation. Then, if he be normal, he lets
+go, the muscles higher up contract and the bowel empties itself
+automatically, as it always did before civilization began.
+
+There is, however, a possibility of trouble whenever the conscious
+mind tries to assume control of functions which are meant to be
+automatic. Under certain conditions necessary control becomes
+meddlesome interference. If the child for one reason or another takes
+too much interest in the function of elimination; if he likes too much
+the sense-gratification from stimulation of the rectal nerves and
+learns to increase this gratification by holding back the fecal mass;
+if he gets the idea that the function is "not nice" and takes the
+interest that one naturally feels in subjects that are taboo; or if he
+catches from his elders the suggestion that the bowel movement is a
+highly important process and that something disastrous is likely to
+happen unless it is successfully performed every day; then his very
+interest in the matter tends to interfere with automatic regulation,
+and to cause trouble.
+
+Just as people often find it hard to let go the bladder muscle and
+urinate when in a hurry or under observation, and just as an
+apprehensive woman in childbirth tightens up the purse-string muscle
+of the womb, so the little child, or the grown up who catches the
+suggestion of difficulty in the bowel movement, loses the trick of
+letting go. Instead of merely exercising control by temporarily
+inhibiting the function, he tries to carry through the process itself
+by voluntary control--and fails. Constipation is a perfect example of
+the power of suggestion, and of the troublesome effect of a fear-idea
+in the realm of automatic functions.
+
+
+FOOD AND CONSTIPATION
+
+Since the waste matter from all foods finally reaches the rectum, and
+since constipation is merely a difficulty in the forces of expulsion,
+it is hard to see how any normal food in the quantities usually eaten
+could have the slightest effect on the problem. When we remember that
+it takes food from twelve to twenty-four hours to reach the rectum,
+and that it has during all that time been subjected to the action of
+the powerful chemicals of the digestive tract, it is hard to imagine a
+piece of cheese, of whatever variety, strong enough to stop the
+contraction of the muscles of the upper rectum or to tie the
+sphincter-muscle into a knot. It would be difficult to find a food
+which could pass without effect through twenty-seven feet of
+intestinal tubing only to become suddenly effective on the wall of the
+rectum. If the wrong kind of food is the cause of constipation, why
+does the rectum prove to be the most refractory portion of the tube?
+On what principle could a piece of chocolate inhibit the call to stool
+or contract the sphincter muscle? On the other hand, even if it should
+be conceded that constipation were the result of lack of lubricating
+secretions in the colon, how could two tablespoonfuls of mineral oil
+be a sufficient lubricant after being mixed with liquid and solid food
+through many feet of the intestinal tract?
+
+=An Adaptable Apparatus.= The lining of the intestines has plenty of
+secretions to take care of its function. It is as well adapted to the
+vicissitudes of life as are the other parts of the body. The muscular
+coat is no more liable to paralysis or spasm than are the voluntary
+muscles. As the skin adapts itself to all waters and all weathers,
+and as the lungs adjust themselves to varying air-pressures, so the
+intestinal wall makes ready adaptation to any common-sense demands,
+adjusting itself with ease to an athletic or a sedentary life, and to
+the normal variations of diet. What man has eaten throughout the
+centuries man may eat to-day. If you will but believe it, your
+intestines will make no more objection to white bread, blackberries,
+and cheese, along with all other ordinary articles of food, than the
+skin makes to varying kinds of water. Naturally, the suggested idea
+that a food will constipate tends to carry itself out to fulfilment
+and to prevent the call to stool from rising to the level of
+consciousness; but the real force lies not in the food but in the
+suggestion.
+
+=The Bran Fad.= It is when we try to improve on the normal human diet
+that we really insult the body. He who leaves off eating nourishing
+white bread and takes to bran muffins is simply cheating his body.
+Bran has a small food value, but the human body is not made to extract
+it. Not only does bran fail to give us any nourishment itself, but it
+lessens the power of the intestines to care for other food.[55] The
+fad for bran is based on the well-known fact that we need a certain
+quantity of bulk in order to stimulate the intestinal wall to normal
+peristalsis. We do need bulk, but not more than we naturally get from
+a normal and varied diet including a reasonable amount of fruit and
+vegetables.
+
+[Footnote 55: See an article entitled "Bread and Bran," _Journal of
+American Medical Association_, July 5, 1919, p. 36.]
+
+It is true that the suggestion of the efficacy of bran, dates,
+spinach, or any other food is frequently quite sufficient to give
+relief, temporarily, just as massage, manipulation of the vertebrae,
+the surgeon's knife, or mineral oil may be enough to carry the
+conviction of power to a suggestible individual. But who wants to take
+his suggestions in such inconvenient forms as these?
+
+=Change of Water.= Another popular superstition centers around
+drinking-waters. There are people who cannot move from one town to
+another, much less take an extensive trip, without a fit of
+constipation--or a box of pills. If they only knew it, there is no
+water on earth which could make a person constipated. A new water,
+full of unusual minerals, might hasten the bowel movement, but on what
+possible principle could it retard it? Constipation has nothing to do
+with food or with water, but solicitous care about either can hardly
+fail to create the trouble which it tries to avoid.
+
+
+THE CURE
+
+=Taking off the Brakes.= Since constipation is wholly due to the
+acceptance of a false suggestion, the only logical cure must be
+release from the power of that suggestion. "He is able as soon as he
+thinks he is able"; not that thought gives the power, but that the
+right thought releases the inhibition of the mistaken thought. As soon
+as the brakes are taken off, the internal machinery is quite able to
+make the wheels go round. The bowel will empty itself if we let it.
+The function of elimination is not a new trick learned with difficulty
+by the aged, but a trick as old and as elemental as life itself. Like
+balancing on a bicycle, it may not be done by any voluntary muscular
+effort, but it just does itself when one learns how.
+
+Once the sense of power comes, once the mind forgets to be doubtful or
+afraid, then the old automatic habit invariably reasserts itself.
+Meddlesome interference may throw the mechanism out of gear, but
+fortunately it cannot strip the gears. Constipation is an inhibition
+or restraint of function, but is never a loss of function. No one is
+too old, no one is too fixed in the bad habit to relearn the old
+trick. I have had a good many patients with chronic constipation, but
+I have never had one who failed to learn. Real conviction speedily
+brings success, and in many cases success seems to outrun conviction.
+So efficient is Nature if she has only half a chance!
+
+=Some People Who Learned.= Unless you are over ninety-two, do not
+despair. One old lady of that age, a sort of patient by proxy, was
+able to cure herself without even one consultation. Her daughter had
+been a patient of mine and had been cured of the constipation with
+which she had been busy for many years. The mother, who believed her
+own bowel paralyzed, had been in the habit of lying on the bed and
+taking a copious enema every second day of her life. When, however,
+she heard of her daughter's cure, the bright old woman gave up her
+enemas and let her bowels do their own functioning. She stayed cured
+until her death at ninety-five.
+
+=A Fifty-year Habit.= Another old lady was not quite so easily
+convinced. She ridiculed the idea that her son of fifty, who had been
+"constipated in his cradle" could be cured of his lifelong habit, but
+he was cured. As long as there is life and the light of reason, so
+long may Nature's functions be reëstablished.
+
+=The Whole Family.= Nor is any one too young to learn. A tiny baby is
+easily taught. There came to me for two consultations a mother and her
+two babies, all three constipated. The four-year-old child, mentally
+deficient, had been fed on milk of magnesia from his infancy, and the
+four-months-old baby had been started on the same path. I explained to
+the mother the mechanism of elimination, told her to give up
+cathartics, and to set a regular time for herself and the baby, but
+was a little dubious about the mentally deficient four-year-old.
+However she soon reported that they had all three promptly acquired
+the new habit. Four years later she told me that they had never had
+any more trouble.
+
+=A Record History.= When Miss H. first came to my house, she told a
+story that was almost incredible. She said that for many months she
+had been taking eight tablespoonfuls of mineral oil three times a day
+besides a cathartic at night, and an enema in the morning. No wonder
+she was a little dubious over such mild treatment as mine seemed to
+be!
+
+Constipation was only one of this young woman's troubles. She could
+not sleep and was so fatigued that she believed herself at the end of
+her physical capital. When she first came to me she had tears in her
+eyes most of the time and used to confide to various people that she
+was sure she was a patient that I could not cure,--a very common
+belief among nervous invalids! She was sure that I did not understand
+her case, and that she could not get anything out of this kind of
+treatment.
+
+It was only a very short time, however, before her bowels were
+functioning like those of a normal person. She lost her insomnia and
+her fatigue and went away as well as ever. When she got back to her
+office, she found that her old position, which she had believed secure
+to her, had been given to another. She had to go out and hunt a new
+job and face conditions harder than she had had before, but she came
+through with flying colors. A short time ago Miss H. came back to see
+me,--a happy, robust young woman, very different from the person I had
+first known. She assured me that she had never had any return of her
+old symptoms and that she was as well as a person could be.
+
+=Living up to a Suggestion.= Mrs. T. had not had a natural movement of
+the bowels in twenty-five years. After the birth of a child,
+twenty-five years before, her physician had told her that her muscles
+had been so badly torn in labor that they could not carry through a
+natural movement. After that she had never gone a day without a pill
+or an enema. I explained to her that when any muscle of the rectum is
+injured in childbirth, it is the sphincter-ani, and that since this is
+the muscle whose contraction holds back the bowel content, its injury
+would tend to over-free evacuation rather than to constipation. She
+saw the point and within two or three days regained her old power of
+spontaneous evacuation.
+
+=Practical Steps.= The first step, then, in acquiring normal habits is
+the conviction of the integrity of our physical machines and a
+determination not to interfere by thought, or by physical meddling,
+with the elemental functions of our bodies. After this all-important
+step, there are a few practical suggestions which it is well to
+follow. Most of them are nothing more than the common-sense habits of
+personal hygiene which are so obvious as to be almost axiomatic, but
+which are nevertheless often neglected:
+
+1 Eat three square meals a day.
+
+2 Drink when thirsty, having conveniently at hand the facilities for
+drinking.
+
+3 Heed the call to stool as you heed the call of hunger. When the
+stool passes the little valve between the upper and lower portions of
+the rectum, it gives the signal that the time for evacuation has come.
+If this signal is always heeded, it will automatically start the
+machinery that leads to evacuation. If it is persistently ignored
+because one is too busy, or because the mind is filled with the idea
+of disability, the call very soon fails to rise to the level of
+consciousness. The feces remain in the rectum, and the bad habit is
+begun.
+
+4 Choose a regular time and keep that appointment with yourself as
+regularly as possible. In all the activities of Nature, there is a
+rhythm which it is well to observe.
+
+5 Take time to acquire the habit. Do not be in a hurry. Do not strain.
+No amount of effort will start the movement. Just let it come of
+itself.
+
+6 Finally, should the unconscious suggestion of lack of power
+stubbornly remain in force, take a small enema on the third day. If
+the waste matter accumulates for three or more days, the bulk becomes
+so great that the circular muscles of the rectum are unable to handle
+it, just as the fingers cannot squeeze down to expel water from too
+large a mass of wet blankets. Take only a small enema--never over a
+quart at a time--and expel the water immediately. One or two such
+measures will bring away the mass in the rectum. The material farther
+up still contains food elements and is not yet ready for expulsion.
+Lessen the amount of water each time until no outside help is needed.
+Once you get the right idea, all enemas will be superfluous.
+
+
+SUMMARY
+
+If you would have in a nutshell an epitome of the truth about
+constipation, indigestion, insomnia, and the other functional
+disturbances common to nervous folk, you can do, no better than to
+commit to memory and store away for future reference that choice
+limerick of the centipede, which so admirably sums up the whole matter
+of meddlesome interference:
+
+    A centipede was happy quite
+    Until a frog in fun
+    Said, "Pray, which leg comes after which?"
+    This raised her mind to such a pitch,
+    She lay distracted in the ditch,
+    Considering how to run.
+
+Whoever tries to consider "which leg comes after which" in any line
+of physiological activity, is pretty sure to find himself in the ditch
+considering how to run. Wherefore, remember the centipede!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+_In which handicaps are dropped_
+
+A WOMAN'S ILLS
+
+"THE FEMALE OF THE SPECIES"
+
+
+If ever there was a man who wished himself a woman, he has hidden away
+the desire within the recesses of his own heart. But one does not have
+to wait long to hear a member of the female sex exclaim with evident
+emotion, "Oh, dear, I wish I had been born a man!" It is probable that
+if these same women were given the chance to transform themselves
+overnight, they would hesitate long when it actually came to the
+point. The joys of being a woman are real joys. However, in too many
+cases these joys seem hardly to compensate for the discomforts of the
+feminine organism. It is the body that drags. Painful menstrual
+periods, the dreaded "change of life," various "female troubles" with
+a number of pregnancies scattered along between, make some of the
+daughters of Eve feel that they spend a good deal of their lives
+paying a penalty merely for being women. Brought up to believe
+themselves heirs to a curse laid on the first woman, they accept their
+discomforts with resignation and try to make the best of a bad
+business.
+
+="Since the War."= Nothing is quite the same since the war. Among
+other things we have learned that many of our so-called handicaps were
+nothing but illusions,--base libels on the female body. Under the
+stern necessity of war the women of the world discovered that they
+could stand up under jobs which have until now been considered quite
+beyond their powers. Society girls, who were used to coddling
+themselves, found a new joy in hard and continuous work; middle-aged
+women, who were supposed to be at the time of life when little could
+be expected of them, quite forgot themselves in service. Ambulance
+drivers, nurses, welfare workers, farmerettes, Red-Cross workers,
+street-car conductors and "bell-boys," revealed to themselves and to
+the world unsuspected powers of endurance in a woman's body. Although
+some of the heavier occupations still seem to be "man's work," better
+fitted for a man's sturdier body, we know now that many of these
+disabilities were merely a matter of tradition and of faulty training.
+
+There still remains, however, a goodly number of women who are
+continuously or periodically below par because of some form of
+feminine disability. Some of these women are suffering from real
+physical handicaps, but many of them need to be told that they are
+disabled not by reason of being women but by reason of being nervous
+women.
+
+="Nerves" Again.= Despite the organic disturbances which may beset the
+reproductive organs, and despite the havoc wrought by venereal
+diseases, it may be said with absolute assurance that the majority of
+feminine ills are the result neither of the natural frailty of the
+female body, nor even of man's infringement of the social law, but are
+the direct result of false suggestion and of false attitudes toward
+the facts of the reproductive life. The trouble is less a difficulty
+with the reproductive organs than a difficulty with the reproductive
+instinct. "Something wrong" with the instinct is translated by the
+subconscious mind into "something wrong" with the related generative
+organs, and converted into a physical pain.
+
+That this relation has always been dimly felt is shown by the fact
+that the early Greeks called nervous disorders _hysteria_, from the
+Greek word for womb. It is only lately, however, that the blame has
+been put in the right place and the trouble traced to the _instinct_
+rather than to the _organs_ of reproduction.
+
+=Why Women Are Nervous.= Although women hold no monopoly, it must be
+conceded that they are particularly prone to "nerves." The reason is
+not hard to find. Since the leading factor in a neurosis is a
+disturbance of the insistent instinct of reproduction, a disturbance
+usually based on repression, then any class of persons in whom the
+instinct is particularly repressed would, in the very nature of the
+case, be particularly liable to nervousness.
+
+No one who thoroughly knows human nature would attempt to deny that
+woman is as strongly endowed as man with the great urge toward the
+perpetuation of the race, or that she has had to repress the instinct
+more severely than has man. The man insists on knowing that the
+children he provides for are his own children. Whatever the degree of
+his own fidelity, he must be sure that his wife is true to him. Thus
+has grown up the insistence that, no matter what man does, woman, if
+she is to be counted respectable, shall control the urge of the
+instinct and live up to the requirements of continence set for her by
+society.
+
+Unfortunately, however, there is more often blind repression than
+rational control. The measures taken to prevent a girl's becoming a
+tom-boy are measures of sex-repression quite as much as of
+sex-differentiation. Over-reaction of sensitive little souls to
+lessons in modesty often causes distortion of normal sex-development.
+Ignorance concerning the phenomena of life is commended as innocence,
+while it really implies a sex-curiosity which has been too severely
+repressed. The young woman blushes at thoughts of love, while the
+young man is filled with a sense of dignity. We smile at the picture
+of "Miss Philura's" confusion as she hesitatingly sends up to her
+Creator a petition for the much-desired boon of a husband. But really,
+why shouldn't she want one? Many a young woman, in order to deaden her
+senses to the unsuspected lure of the reproductive instinct by what is
+really an awkward attempt at _sublimation_, makes a fetish of dress
+and social position and considers only the marriage of convenience;
+or, on the other hand, she scorns men altogether and throws herself
+into a "career."
+
+Young men are not so often taught to repress, but neither are they
+taught to swing their vital energies into altruistic channels through
+sublimation. Since the woman of his class will not marry him until he
+has money, the young man too often satisfies his undirected instincts
+in a commercial way. The statistics of venereal diseases prove that
+here, as elsewhere, goods subject to barter are subject to
+contamination. In a late marriage, too often a contaminated body
+accompanies the material possessions which the standards of society
+have demanded of a husband.
+
+But the woman pays in still other coin for the repressions arising
+from faulty childhood training. Unable to find expression for herself
+either in marriage or in devotion to work, because some old childish
+repression is still denying all outlet to her legitimate desire, she
+frequently falls into a neurosis; or if she escapes a real breakdown,
+she gives expression to unsatisfied longings in some isolated nervous
+symptoms which in many cases center about the organs of generation.
+There then results any one of the various functional disturbances
+which are only too often mistaken for organic disease. What is needed
+in cases like this is not a gynecologist nor a surgeon, but a
+psycho-pathologist--or perhaps only a grasp of the facts. Let us look
+at the more common of these disturbances in order to gain an
+understanding of the situation.
+
+
+THE MENSTRUAL PERIOD
+
+=Potential Motherhood.= Among the normal phenomena of a woman's life
+is the recurring cycle of potential motherhood. Every three or four
+weeks a new ovum or egg matures in the ovary and undergoes certain
+chemical changes, which send into the blood a substance called a
+hormone. This hormone is a messenger, stimulating the mucous membrane
+of the womb into making its velvet pile longer and softer, and its
+nutrient juices more abundant in readiness for the ovum.
+
+The same stimulus causes the whole organism to make ready for a new
+life. As in hunger, the chemistry of the body produces the
+muscle-tension that is felt as a craving for food, so this recurring
+chemical stimulus produces a definite craving in body and mind. This
+craving brings about an increased irritability or sensitiveness to
+stimuli which may result either in a joyous or a fretful mood.
+
+During sleep the social inhibitions are felt less distinctly and the
+sleeper dreams love-dreams woven from messages coming up from all the
+minute nerve-endings in the expectant reproductive organs. But if no
+germ-cell travels up the womb-canal and tube to meet and impregnate
+the ovum, the womb-lining rejects the egg as chemically unfit. All the
+furbishings are loosened from the walls and slowly cast out,
+constituting the menstrual flow. The phenomenon as a whole is a
+physiological function and should be accompanied by a sense of
+well-being and comfort as is the exercise of any other function, such
+as digestion or muscular activity. Only too often, however, it is
+dreaded as an unmitigated disaster, a time for giving up work or fun
+and going to bed with a hot-water bottle until "the worst is over."
+Let us see how this perversion comes about.
+
+=Why Menstruation Is Painful.= What sort of atmosphere is created for
+the young girl as she attains puberty? Most girls get their first
+inkling of the menstrual period from the periodic "sick spells" of
+mother or sister. This knowledge comes without conscious thought and
+is a direct observation of the subconscious mind, which records
+impressions with the accuracy and completeness of a photographic
+plate. Hearing the talk about a "sick-time" and observing the signs of
+"cramps" among older friends, the young girl's subconscious mind plays
+up to the suggestion and recoils with fear from the newly experienced
+sensations in the maturing organs of reproduction.
+
+This recoil of fear interferes with the circulation in the functioning
+organs, just as fear blanches the face or hinders digestion. There is
+several times as much blood in the stomach when it is full of food as
+there is between meals, but we do not for this reason fancy that we
+have a pain after each meal. There is more blood in the generative
+organs during their functioning, but this means pain only when fear
+ties up the circulation and causes undue congestion. Fear acts further
+on the sturdy muscle of the womb, tying it up into just such knots as
+we feel in the esophagus when we say that we have a lump in the
+throat. It is safe to say that ninety-five cases of painful
+menstruation out of every hundred are caused by fear and by the
+expectation of pain. The cysts and tumors responsible for pain are so
+rare as to be fairly negligible, when compared with these other
+causes.
+
+Dr. Clelia Duel Mosher of Stanford University has for many years
+carried on careful investigations among the students of the
+university. After describing in detail certain physical exercises
+which she has found of value, she continues:
+
+     But more important even than this is an alteration of the morbid
+     attitude of women themselves toward this function; and almost
+     equally essential is a fundamental change in the habit of mind on
+     our part as physicians; for do we not tend to translate too much,
+     the whole of a woman's life into terms of menstruation? If every
+     young girl were taught that menstruation is not normally a "bad
+     time" and that pain or incapacity at that period is as
+     discreditable and unnecessary as bad breath due to decaying
+     teeth, we might almost look for a revolution in the physical life
+     of women.... In my experience the traditional treatment of rest
+     in bed, directing the attention solely to the sex-zone of the
+     body, and the accepted theory that it is an inevitable illness
+     while at the same time the mind is without occupation, produces a
+     morbid attitude and favors the development and exaggeration of
+     whatever symptoms there may be.[56]
+
+[Footnote 56: Clelia Duel Mosher: _Health and the Woman Movement_, pp.
+25, 26, 19.]
+
+=Pre-Menstrual Discomfort.= If it be objected that women often feel
+badly for a day or two before the period begins, before they know that
+it is due, and that this feeling of discomfort could not be caused by
+fear and expectation, it is easy to reply that the subconscious mind
+knows perfectly what is happening within the body. The emotion of
+fear, working within the subconscious, is able to translate all the
+varying bodily sensations into feelings of distress without any
+knowledge on the part of the conscious mind.
+
+Sometimes before the period begins, a girl feels blue and upset for a
+day or two, a sign that the instinct is getting discouraged. The whole
+body is saying, "Get ready, get ready," but it has gotten ready many
+times before, and to no purpose. Unsatisfied striving brings
+discouragement. What reaches consciousness is a feeling of pessimism
+and a general dissatisfaction with life as a whole. If, instead of
+giving in to the blues or going to bed and predicting a pain, the girl
+finds other outlets for her energy, she finds that after all, her
+instinct may be satisfied in indirect ways and that she has strangely
+come into a new supply of _vim_.
+
+=The Purpose of the Pain.= Although suggestion is behind all nervous
+symptoms, there is a deeper reason for the disturbance. When an
+unhealthy suggestion is seized and acted upon, it is because some
+unsatisfied part of the personality sees in it a chance for
+accomplishing its own ends. The pre-menstrual period is the
+blooming-time, the mating-time, the springtime of the organism. That
+means eminently a time for coming into notice, that one's charms may
+attract the desired complement. But if the rightfully insistent
+instinctive desires are held in check by unnatural repressions and
+misapplied social restrictions, the starved instinct can obtain
+expression only by a concealment of purpose. The disguise assumed is
+often one of indifference or positive distaste for the allurements of
+the other sex. But, as we know, an instinctive desire will not be
+denied. In this case, the misguided instinct which has been given the
+suggestion that menstruation means illness, fits this conception into
+the scheme of things and obtains notice in a roundabout way by the
+attention given to the invalid.
+
+=The Treatment.= To find that the symptom has a purpose rather than a
+cause gives the indication for the treatment. Judicious neglect causes
+the symptom to cease by defeating its very purpose,--that of drawing
+attention to itself. The person who never mentions her discomfort,
+thinks about it as little as possible, and goes about her business as
+usual, is likely to find her trouble gone before she realizes it.[57]
+
+[Footnote 57: Violent exercise at this time is unwise, but continuing
+one's usual activity helps the circulation and keeps the mind from
+centering on the affected part. The physiological congestion is unduly
+intensified by standing; therefore all employments should afford
+facilities for the woman to sit at least part of the time while
+continuing work.]
+
+A little explanation gives the patient insight into the workings of
+her own mind, and usually causes the pain to disappear in short order.
+Astonished, indeed, and filled with gratitude have been some of my
+young-women patients who had all their lives been unable to plan any
+work or social engagements for the time of this functioning. Many of
+them were the worst kind of doubters when they were told that to go to
+bed and center their attention on the generative organs only made the
+muscles tighten up and the circulation congest. They could not
+conceive themselves up and around, pursuing their normal life during
+such a time. However, as they have found by experience that this point
+of view is not an optimistic dream, they have broken up the
+confidence-game which their subconscious had been playing on them, and
+have gone on their way rejoicing.
+
+There was one young girl, a doctor's daughter, who suffered
+continuously from pain in the abdomen, and from back-pain which
+increased so greatly at the time of the menses that she was in the
+habit of going to bed for several days, to be waited on with
+solicitous care by her family. In an attempt to cure the trouble she
+had undergone an operation to suspend the uterus, but the pain had
+continued as before. When she came to me, I explained to her that
+there was no physical difficulty and that her trouble was wholly
+nervous. I made her play tennis every day and she had just finished a
+game when her period came on. She stayed up for luncheon, went for a
+walk in the afternoon, ate her dinner with the family, and behaved
+like other people. Her mother telephoned that evening and when I told
+her what her daughter had been doing, she gasped in astonishment. She
+had difficulty in believing that the new order was not miracle but
+simply the working out of natural law. Since that time her daughter
+has had no more trouble.
+
+=The Ounce of Prevention.= If young girls had wiser counselors in
+their mothers and physicians, the misconception would never occur, and
+such an indirect outlet would not be needed; the organic sensations
+incident to puberty and the recurring menstrual period would have
+something of the significance of the annunciation to Mary, bringing
+wonder and a sense of well-being.
+
+When your little daughter arrives at maturity, give her a joyous
+initiation into the noble order of women. She will welcome the new
+function as a badge of womanhood and as a harbinger of wonderful
+things to come.
+
+A girl of fifteen came under my care to be helped out of a mood of
+increasing depression and uneasiness. Her glance was furtive, yet
+anxiously expectant. Tears came unbidden as she sat alone or fingered
+the keys of the piano. Tactful questioning elicited no response as to
+reasons for her unhappiness. Opportunities for giving confidence were
+not accepted. At a chance moment our talk drifted to the subject of
+menstruation. "Your periods are regular and easy; and do you know what
+they are for?" Then I painted for her a picture of the preparations
+that are made throughout the whole organism, for the germ-cell that
+comes each month and has in it all the possibilities of a new little
+life.
+
+The result of this confidential talk may seem fanciful to any one but
+an eye-witness. We had only a week's association, but the depression
+ceased, the furtive look and deprecatory manner were replaced by a
+joyous buoyancy. In a few weeks the thin neck and awkward body rounded
+out into the symmetry which usually precedes the establishment of
+puberty, but which was delayed in this case until the unconscious
+conflict resolved itself.
+
+=In the Large.= Looked at from any angle, this subject is an important
+one. There are involved not only the physical comfort and convenience
+of the sufferers themselves, but also the economic prospects of women
+as a whole. If women are to demand equal opportunity and equal pay,
+they must be able to do equal work without periodic times of illness.
+When employers of women tell us that they regularly have to hire extra
+help because some of their workers lose time each month, we realize
+how great is the aggregate of economic waste, a waste which would
+assuredly be justified if the health of the country's womanhood were
+really involved, but which is inefficient and unnecessary when caused
+merely by ignorant tradition. "Up to standard every day of every
+week," is a slogan quite within the range of possibility for all but
+the seriously ill. When reduced to their lowest terms, the
+inconveniences of this function are not great and are not too dear a
+price to pay for the possibilities of motherhood.
+
+
+THE "CHANGE OF LIFE"
+
+=Another Phantom Peril.= As the young girl is taught to fear the
+menstrual period, so the older woman is taught to dread the time when
+the periods shall cease. Despite the general enlightenment of this day
+and age, the menopause or "change of life" is all too frequently
+feared as a "critical period" in a woman's life, a time of distressing
+physical sensations and even of danger to mental balance.
+
+As a matter of fact, the menopause is a physiological process which
+should be accomplished with as little mental and physical disturbance
+as accompanies the establishment of puberty. The same internal
+secretion is concerned in both. When the function of ovulation ceases
+the body has to find a new way to dispose of the internal secretion of
+the ovary. Its presence in the blood is the cause of the sudden
+dilatation of the blood-vessels that is known as the "hot flash."
+
+The matter is altogether a problem of chemistry, with the necessity
+for a new adjustment among the glands of internal secretion. The body
+easily manages this if left to itself, but is greatly interfered with
+by the wrong suggestion and emotion. We have already seen how quickly
+emotion affects all secretions and how easily the adrenal and thyroid
+glands are influenced by fear. This is the root of the trouble in many
+cases of difficult "change." If an occasional body is not quite able
+to regulate the chemical readjustment, we may have to administer the
+glands of some other animal, but in the majority of cases, the body,
+unhampered by an extra burden of fear, is quite able to make its own
+adjustments. The hot flash passes in a moment, if not prolonged by
+emotion or if not converted into a habit by attention.
+
+One source of trouble in the menopause is that it comes at a time in a
+woman's life when she is likely to have too much leisure. In no way
+can a woman so easily handicap her body at this time as by stopping
+work and being afraid. Those women who have to go on as usual find
+themselves past the change almost before they know it,--unless they
+consider themselves abused, and worry over the necessity for working
+through such a "critical time."
+
+=Three Rules.= Here are a few pointers which have have been of help to
+a number of women:
+
+1 Remember that this is a physiological process and therefore
+abundantly safeguarded by Nature. If you don't expect trouble you will
+not be likely to find it.
+
+2 Remember that the sweating and flushing are made worse by notice.
+
+3 Do everything in your power to keep from the public the knowledge
+that you are no longer a potential mother. If you are past forty, do
+not mop your face or gasp for breath or carry a fan to the theater!
+Shun attention and fear, and you will be surprised at the ease with
+which the "change" is effected.
+
+=Nature's Last Chance.= While we are on the subject of the middle-aged
+woman, it may be well to mention a phenomenon sometimes noticed in the
+early forties. Often an "old maid" who has considered herself settled
+for life in her bachelor estate, suddenly takes to herself a husband.
+(I use the verb advisedly!) Mothers who have thought their
+child-bearing days long past sometimes find themselves pregnant. "The
+child of her old age" is not an uncommon occurrence. Unmarried women
+who have "kept straight" all their lives sometimes go down before
+temptation at this late time. There is a reason. It is as though
+Nature were making a last desperate attempt to produce another life
+before it is too late, speeding up all the internal secretions and
+flashing insistent messages throughout the whole organism.
+
+It may help some woman who feels herself inexplicably impelled toward
+the male sex to know that she is not being "tempted by the devil" but
+merely driven by the insistent chemicals within her body. She is
+likely to rationalize and tell herself that it is too bad for a
+worth-while person like herself to leave no progeny behind her; or she
+may say, as one of my patients did when contemplating running away
+with another woman's husband,--that she could make that man so much
+happier than his wife did, and that she really owed it to him as well
+as to herself. When a woman knows what is the matter with her, it
+makes it easier to bide her time and wait for the demands of Nature to
+subside. Chemicals may not be so romantic as love, but neither are
+they so melodramatic!
+
+
+OTHER TROUBLES
+
+="Speaking of Operations."= Physicians are often called upon to
+diagnose some such vague symptom as pain in the abdomen, back and
+head; ache in the legs; constipation, or loss of appetite. Since the
+patient is very insistent that something shall be done, the physician
+may be driven to operate, even when he has an uneasy feeling that the
+trouble is "merely nervous." Sixty per cent. of the operations on
+women are necessitated by the results of gonorrheal infection. Next in
+frequency up to recent date, have been operations for nervous symptoms
+which could in no way be reached by the knife. Only too often a
+nerve-specialist hears the tale of an operation which was supposed to
+cure a certain pain but which left it worse rather than better. It is
+a pleasure to see some of these pains disappear under a little
+re-education, but one cannot help wishing that the re-education had
+come before the knife instead of after it.
+
+A skilled surgeon can cut almost anything out of a person's body, but
+he cannot cut out an instinct. It sometimes takes great skill to
+determine whether the trouble is an organic affection or a functional
+disturbance caused by the misdirected instinct of reproduction. Often,
+however, the clinical pictures are so different as to leave no room
+for doubt, provided the diagnostician has his eyes open and is not
+over-persuaded by the importunity of the poor neurotic, who insists
+that the surgeon shall remove her appendix, her gall-bladder, her
+genital organs, and her tonsils, and who finally comes back that he
+may have a whack at the operation scar.
+
+=The Bearing of Children.= A number of years ago I became acquainted
+with a charming young married woman who had all her life recoiled with
+fear from the phenomena of sex. She had been afraid of menstruation
+and of marriage, and had at this time almost a phobia for pregnancy
+and childbirth. Before long she came to me in terror, telling me that
+she had become pregnant. I explained to her that pregnancy is the time
+when most women are at their best, that the nausea which is often
+troublesome in the beginning is caused merely by a mixing of messages
+from the autonomic nerves, which refer new sensations in the womb to
+the more usual center of activity in the stomach; and that after the
+body has become accustomed to these sensations, most women experience
+a greater sense of well-being and peace than at any other time in
+life. We had a conversation or two on the subject and everything
+seemed to go well for a while.
+
+As it happened, this young woman and her husband came to call on me
+one afternoon just before the baby was expected. During the visit she
+began to show signs of being in labor. Again she was in terror. Again
+I explained the phenomena of labor, telling her that the
+womb-contractions are caused by the presence in the blood of a
+chemical secretion (hormone) which continues its good work as long as
+there is a state of confidence, but which sometimes stops under fear
+or apprehension. I explained that these womb-efforts are a peristaltic
+movement, a contraction of the upper muscles and a letting go of the
+purse-string muscle at the mouth of the womb, and that fear only tends
+to tie up this purse-string muscle, making a difficult process out of
+one which was intended by Nature to be much more simple. She seemed to
+understand and to lose a good deal of her fright.
+
+About six o'clock the couple went home on the street car from the
+upper end of Pasadena to the far end of Los Angeles. The next morning
+I had a jubilant telephone message from the happy father, announcing
+that the boy-baby had arrived at midnight and that, wonderful to
+relate, he had come without the mother's experiencing any pain
+whatever.
+
+I give this account for what it is worth, without of course contending
+that labor could always be as easy as this. It happened that this girl
+was a normal, healthy woman and that there were no complications of
+any kind in the process of childbirth. A right attitude of mind could
+not have corrected any physical difficulty, but it did seem to help
+her let go of her fear, which would of itself have caused long and
+painful labor.
+
+A patient once told me that when her first baby came, she happened to
+be out in the country where she had to call in a doctor whom she did
+not know. He was an uncouth sort of fellow who inspired fear rather
+than confidence. She soon found that labor stopped whenever he came
+into the room, and started again when he went out. She had the good
+sense to send him out and complete her labor with only the help of her
+mother. Unfortunate is the obstetrician who does not know how to
+inspire a feeling of confidence in his patients. Even childbirth may
+be mightily helped or hindered by the mother's state of mind.
+
+
+SUMMARY
+
+A woman's body has more stability than she knows. It is sometimes out
+of order, but it is more often misunderstood; usually it is an
+unobtrusive and satisfactory instrument, quite fit for its daily
+tasks. The average woman is really well put together. We hear about
+the ones who have difficulty, but not about the great majority who do
+not. We notice the few who are upset during the menopause, and forget
+all the others. To be comfortable and efficient most of the time is,
+after all, merely to be "like folks."
+
+The special functions which Nature has been perfecting in a woman's
+body are as a rule, easily carried through unless complicated by false
+ideas or by fear.
+
+If the woman who has no organic difficulty but who still finds herself
+handicapped by her body, will cease being either resigned to her
+languishing lot or envious of her stalwart brothers; if instead she
+will set out to learn how to be efficient as a woman, she will find
+that many of her ills are not the blunders of an inefficient Creator,
+but are home-made products, which quickly vanish in the light of
+understanding.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+_In which we lose our dread of night._
+
+THAT INTERESTING INSOMNIA
+
+THE FEAR OF STAYING AWAKE
+
+
+To sleep or not to sleep! That is the question. In all the world there
+is nothing to equal it in importance,--to the man with insomnia. His
+days are mere interludes between troubled nights spent in restless
+tossing to and fro and feverish worry over the weary day to come. His
+mind filled with ideas about the disastrous effects of insomnia, he
+imagines himself fast sliding down hill toward the grave or the
+insane-asylum. It is true that his conversation very often politely
+begins something like this: "Good morning. Did you sleep well last
+night?" but if we fail to respond by an equally polite "and I hope you
+had a good night?" he seems restless until he has somehow
+disillusioned us by stating the exact number of hours and minutes
+during which he was able to lose himself in slumber.
+
+We must not ridicule the man who doesn't sleep. We are all very much
+alike. If any one of us happens to lie awake for a night or two, he is
+likely to get into a panic, and if the spell should last a week, he
+begins looking up steamship agents and talking of voyages to Southern
+seas. The fact is that most people are dreadfully afraid of insomnia.
+Knowing the effects of a few nights of enforced wakefulness, and
+having had a little experience with the fagged feeling after a
+restless night, they believe themselves only logical when they fall
+into a panic over the prospect of persistent insomnia.
+
+=Two Kinds of Wakefulness.= As a matter of fact, insomnia is a phantom
+peril. There is not the slightest danger from lying awake nights,
+provided one is not kept awake by some irritating physical stimulus.
+All fear of insomnia is based on ignorance of the difference between
+enforced wakefulness and deliberate wakefulness, or insomnia. The man
+who has acquired the habit may stay awake almost indefinitely without
+appreciable harm, but the one who is kept awake for a week by a pain,
+by a chemical poison from infection, or by the necessity for staying
+up on his job, may easily be in a state of exhaustion. Even in cases
+of prolonged pain or over-exertion, the body tends to maintain its
+equilibrium by hastening its rate of repair and by falling asleep
+before the danger point is reached. It is almost impossible to impair
+permanently the tissue of the brain except in the presence of a
+chemical irritant. In case of infection we often have to give medicine
+to neutralize the effect of the poison or to resort to narcotics which
+make the brain cells less susceptible to irritation. But nervous
+insomnia is another story.
+
+
+A HARMLESS HABIT
+
+=Long-Lived Insomniacs.= A man of my acquaintance once said in all
+seriousness and with evident alarm: "I am following in the footsteps
+of my mother. She lived to be seventy years old and she had insomnia
+all her life." If this man had been preaching a sermon on the
+harmlessness of chronic insomnia, he could not have chosen a better
+text, but he seemed just as much concerned about himself as if his
+mother had died from the effects of three months' wakefulness. People
+can live healthy lives during twenty or thirty years of insomnia
+because chronic insomnia is nothing more or less than a habit, and
+"habit spells ease." The brain cells are not irritated by either
+internal or external stimuli; there is no effort to keep awake;
+virtually no energy is expended,--except in restless tossing and
+worry. If the body is kept still and emotion eliminated, fatigue
+products are washed away and the reserves are filled in with perfect
+ease.
+
+=Thinking in Circles.= Habit means automatic, subconscious activity,
+with the least expenditure of energy and the least amount of fatigue.
+We have already noted the ease with which heart and diaphragm muscles
+carry on their work from the beginning of life to its end. Anything
+relegated to the subconscious mind can be kept up almost indefinitely
+without tire, and to this subconscious type of activity belong the
+thoughts of a chronic insomniac. Despite all assertions to the
+contrary, his conscious mind is not really awake. If he is questioned
+about the happenings of the night, he is likely to have been unaware
+of the most audible noises. The thoughts that run through his brain
+are not new, constructive, energy-consuming thoughts, but the same old
+thoughts that have been going around in circles for days and weeks at
+a time.
+
+It is true that a person sometimes chooses to wake up and do his
+constructive planning in the night. This kind of thought does bring
+fatigue, up to a certain point. After that the body hastens its rate
+of repair or automatically goes to sleep. Activity of this kind is
+always a matter of choice. He who really prefers sleep will shut the
+drawers containing the day's business and leave them shut until
+morning.
+
+=Day-Dreaming at Night.= However, the man who makes a practice of
+staying awake rarely does much real thinking. He lets the thoughts run
+through his mind as they will, builds air-castles of things he would
+like to do and can't, or other kinds of air-castles about the
+disastrous effects of his insomnia on the day that is to come; he
+worries over his health, or his finances, and grieves over his
+sorrows. He is really indulging himself, thinking the thoughts he
+likes most to think, and these consume but little energy. Like a horse
+that knows the rounds, they can go jogging on indefinitely without
+guidance from the driver.
+
+
+WHAT CAUSES THE FATIGUE
+
+=Tossing and Fretting.= The thing that tires is not the insomnia but
+the emotion over the insomnia. If people who fail to sleep are
+perpetually fagged out, it is not from loss of sleep, but from worry
+and tossing. Often they spend a good deal of the night feeling sorry
+for themselves. They turn and toss, exclaiming with each turn: "Why
+don't I sleep? How badly I shall feel to-morrow! What a night! What a
+night!" Such a spree of emotionalism can hardly fail to tire, but it
+is not fair to blame the insomnia.
+
+He who makes up his mind to it can rest almost as well without sleep
+as with it, provided he keeps his mind calm and his body relaxed.
+"Decent hygienic conditions" demand not necessarily eight hours of
+sleep but eight hours of quiet rest in bed. Tossing about drives away
+sleep and uses up energy. I make it a rule that my patients shall not
+turn over more than four times during the night. This is more
+important than that they should sleep. To be sure, I do not stay awake
+to enforce the rule, but most people catch the idea very quickly and
+before they know it they are sleeping.
+
+
+HOW TO GO TO SLEEP
+
+=Ceasing to Care.= The best way to learn to sleep is not to care
+whether you do or not. Nothing could be better than DuBois's advice:
+"Don't look for sleep; it flies away like a pigeon when one pursues
+it."[58] Attention to anything keeps the mind awake, and most of all,
+attention to sleep. More than one person has waked up to see whether
+or not he was going to sleep. We cannot, however, fool ourselves by
+merely pretending indifference. The only sensible way is to get the
+facts firmly fixed in our minds so that we actually realize that we do
+not need more sleep than our bodies take. As soon as it is realized
+that insomnia is really of no importance, it tends to disappear.
+
+[Footnote 58: DuBois: _Psychic Treatment of Nervous Disorders_, p.
+339.]
+
+=Catching the Idea.= There came one day for consultation a very
+healthy-looking woman, a deaconess of the Lutheran Church. "Doctor,"
+she said, "I came to get relief from insomnia. For twenty years I have
+not slept more than one or two hours a night." "Why do you want more?"
+I asked. "Why, isn't it very unhealthy not to sleep?" she exclaimed
+in astonishment. "Evidently not," I answered.
+
+This woman had tried every doctor she could think of, including the
+splendid S. Weir Mitchell. Her insomnia had become a preoccupation
+with her, her chief thought in life. All I did was to explain to her
+that her body had been getting all the sleep it needed, and that
+neither body nor mind was in the least run down after twenty years of
+sleeplessness. "When you cease being interested in your insomnia, it
+will go away, although from a health standpoint it matters very little
+whether it does or not." We had two conversations on the subject, and
+a week later she came back to tell me that she was sleeping eight
+hours a night.
+
+One woman had had insomnia for thirty years. After I had explained to
+her that her body had adjusted itself to this way of living and that
+she need not try to get more sleep, she snored so loud all night and
+every night that the rest of the family began to complain!
+
+A certain banker proved very quick at catching the idea. He had been
+so troubled with insomnia and intense weakness that his doctors
+prescribed a six-months voyage in Southern waters. Knowing that my
+prescriptions involved a change in point of view rather than in scene,
+he came to me. Although he had been getting only about half an hour's
+sleep a night, he went to sleep in his chair the first evening, and
+then went upstairs and slept all night. He resumed his duties at the
+bank, walking a mile and a half the first day and three miles the
+second. During the months following, he reported, "No more insomnia."
+
+=Keeping Account.= A bright young college graduate came to me for a
+number of ailments, chief among them being sleeplessness. She was also
+overcome by fatigue, having spent four months in bed. A four-mile walk
+in the cañon and a few other such outings soon dispelled the fatigue,
+but the insomnia proved more obstinate. After she had been with me for
+a week or two, I took her aside one day for a little talk. "Well?" I
+said as we sat down. Then she began: "Sunday night I was awake from
+half-past one to four, Monday from twelve to one, Tuesday from one to
+three, Wednesday from two to four, Thursday--" By this time she became
+aware of the quizzical expression on my face and began to be
+embarrassed. Then she stopped and laughed. "Well," she said, "I did
+not know that I was paying so much attention to my sleep." She was
+bright enough to see the point at once, gave up her preoccupation in
+the all-absorbing topic and promptly forgot to have any trouble with
+so natural a function as sleep.
+
+=Making New Associations.= Examples like this show how natural is
+childlike slumber when once we take away the inhibitions of a
+hampering idea. Age-old habits like sleep are not lost, but they may
+easily be interfered with by a little too much attention. When a
+person who can scarcely keep his eyes open all the evening is
+instantly wide awake as soon as his head touches the pillow, we may be
+sure that a part of his trouble comes from the wrong associations
+which he has built up with the thought of night. When a dear little
+old lady told me of her constant state of apprehension about going to
+bed, I said to her: "When I go to my room, the darkness says sleep.
+When I take off my clothes, the very act says sleep. When I put my
+head on the pillow, the pillow says sleep." She liked that and found
+herself able to sleep all night. The next evening she wanted another
+"sleeping-potion" but as I did not want her to become dependent on
+anybody's suggestion, I put my mouth up close to her ear and
+whispered, "Abra ca dabra, dum, dum, dum." She laughed, but saw the
+point. After that she slept very well. She merely broke the habit by
+making a new kind of association with the thought of bed. Nature did
+the rest.
+
+It seems hardly necessary to remark that drug-taking is the most
+inefficient way of handling the situation. Everybody knows that
+narcotics are harmful to the delicate cells of the brain and that the
+dose has to be continuously increased in cases of chronic insomnia.
+If a person realizes that the drug is far more harmful than the
+insomnia itself, he is weak indeed to yield to temptation for the sake
+of a few nights of sleep. As the cause of insomnia is psychic, so the
+only logical cure is a new idea and a new attitude of mind.
+
+
+THE PURPOSE OF INSOMNIA
+
+Like all nervous symptoms, insomnia is not an affliction but an
+indulgence. Somehow, and in ways unknown to the conscious mind, it
+brings a certain amount of satisfaction to a part of the personality.
+No matter how unpleasant it may be, no matter how much we consciously
+fear it, something inside chooses to stay awake.
+
+Started, as a rule, through suggestion or imitation, insomnia is
+sometimes kept up as a means of making ourselves seem important,--to
+ourselves and to others. It at least provides an excuse for thinking
+and talking about ourselves, and furnishes a certain feeling of
+distinction. If something within us craves attention, even staying
+awake may not be too dear a price to pay for that attention. Strange
+to say, there are other times when the insomnia is chosen by the
+primitive subconscious mind with the idea of doing penance for
+supposed sins whose evil effects might possibly be avoided by this
+kind of expiation. Analysis shows that motives like this are not so
+uncommon as might be supposed. In other cases insomnia is chosen for
+the chance it gives for phantasy-building. A person denied the right
+kind of outlet for his instincts may so enjoy the day-dreaming habit
+that he prolongs it into the night, really preferring it to sleep.
+Such a state of affairs is not at all incompatible with an intense
+conscious desire to sleep and a real fear of insomnia. So strange may
+be the motives hidden away within the depths of the most prosaic
+individual!
+
+
+SUMMARY
+
+Nervous insomnia is something which a part of us makes use of and
+another part fears. It is a mistake on both sides. Although not in the
+least dangerous, the habit can hardly be considered a satisfactory
+form of amusement. Nature has provided a better way to spend the
+night, a way to which she speedily brings us when we choose to let her
+do it.
+
+We do not have to ask for sleep as for a special boon which may be
+denied. We simply have to lie down in trust, expecting to be carried
+away like a child. If our expectation is not at once realized we can
+still trust, as with relaxed mind and body we lie in calm content,
+knowing that Nature is, minute by minute, restoring us for another
+day.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+_In which we raise our thresholds_
+
+FEELING OUR FEELINGS
+
+FINELY STRUNG VIOLINS
+
+
+The young girl had been telling me about her symptoms. "You know,
+Doctor," she said. "I am a very sensitive person. In fact, I have
+always been told that I am like a finely strung violin." There was
+pride in every tone of her voice,--pride and satisfaction over
+possessing an organization so superior to the common clay of the
+average person. It was a typical remark, and showed clearly that this
+girl belonged among the nervous folk. For the nervous person is not
+only over-sensitive, but he accepts his condition with a secret and
+half-conscious pride as a token of superiority.
+
+It seems that there are a good many kinds of sensitiveness. Whether it
+is a good or bad possession depends entirely on what kind of things a
+person is sensitive to. If he is quick to take in a situation, easily
+impressed with the needs of others, open-doored to beauty and to the
+appeal of the spiritual, keenly alive to the humorous, even when the
+joke is on himself and the situation uncomfortable, then surely he has
+a right to be glad of his sensitiveness. But too often the word means
+something else. It means feeling, intensely, physical sensations of
+which most people are unaware, or reacting emotionally to situations
+which call for no such response. It means, in short, feeling our
+feelings and liking to feel them. There seems to be nothing
+particularly praiseworthy or desirable about this kind of
+sensitiveness. If this is what it means to be a "finely-wrought
+violin," it might even be better to be a bass drum which can stand a
+few poundings without ruin to its constitution.
+
+"But," says the sensitive person, "are we not born either violins or
+drums? Is not heredity rather than choice to blame? And what can a
+person do about it?" These questions are so closely bound up with the
+problems of nervous symptoms of indigestion, fatigue, a woman's ills,
+hysterical pains and sensations, and with all the problems of
+emotional control, that we shall do well to look more carefully into
+this question of sensibility, which is really the question of the
+relation of the individual to his environment.
+
+
+SELECTING OUR SENSATIONS
+
+=Reaction and Over-Reaction.= Every organism, if it is to live, must
+be normally sensitive to its environment. It must possess the power
+of response to stimuli. As the sea-anemone curls up at touch, and as
+the tiny baby blinks at the light, so must every living thing be able
+to sense and to react to the presence of a dangerous or a friendly
+force. Only by a certain degree of irritability can it survive in the
+struggle for existence. The five senses are simply different phases of
+the apparatus for receiving communications from the outside world.
+Other parts of the machinery catch the manifold messages continually
+pouring into the brain from within our bodies themselves. These
+communications cannot be stopped nor can we prevent their impress on
+the cells of the brain and spinal cord, but we do have a good deal to
+say as to which ones shall be brought into the focus of attention and
+receive enough notice to become real, conscious sensations.
+
+=Paying Attention.= If a human being had to give conscious attention
+to every stimulus from the outer world and from his own body, to every
+signal which flashes itself along his sensory nerves to his brain, he
+would need a different kind of mind from his present efficient but
+limited apparatus. As it is, there is an admirable provision for
+taking care of the messages without overburdening consciousness. The
+stream of messages never stops, not even in sleep. But the conscious
+mind has its private secretary, the subconscious, to receive the
+messages and to answer them.
+
+During any five minutes of a walk down a city street a man has
+hundreds of visual images flashed upon the retina of the eye. His eye
+sees every little line in the faces of the passers-by, every detail of
+their clothing, the decorations on the buildings, the street signs
+overhead, the articles in the shop-windows, the paving of the
+sidewalks, the curbings and tracks which he crosses, and scores of
+other objects to most of which the man himself is oblivious. His ear
+hears every sound within hearing distance,--the honk of every horn,
+the clang of every bell, the voices of the people and the shuffle of
+feet. Some part of his mind feels the press of his foot on the
+pavement, the rubbing of his heel on his stocking, the touch of his
+clothing all over his body, and all those so-called kinesthetic
+sensations,--sensations of motion and balance which keep him in
+equilibrium and on the move, to say nothing of the never-ending stream
+of messages from every cell of every muscle and tissue of his body.
+
+Out of this constant rush of stimuli our man gives attention to only
+the smallest fraction. Whatever is interesting to him, that he sees
+and hears and feels. All other sensations he passes by as indifferent.
+Unless they come with extraordinary intensity, they do not get over
+into his consciousness at all.
+
+="Listening-in" on the Subconscious.= The subconscious mind knows and
+needs to know what is happening in the farthermost cell of the body.
+It needs to know at any moment where the knees are, and the feet;
+otherwise the individual would fall in a heap whenever he forgot to
+watch his step. It needs to know just how much light is entering the
+eye, and how much blood is in the stomach. To this end it has a system
+of communication from every point in the body and this system is in
+constant operation. Its messages never cease. But these messages were
+never meant to be in the focus of attention. They are meant only for
+the subconscious mind and are generally so low-toned as to be easily
+ignored unless one falls into the habit of listening for them. Unless
+they are invested with a significance which does not belong to them,
+they will not emerge into consciousness as real sensations.
+
+=Psychic Thresholds.= Boris Sidis has given us a word which has proved
+very useful in this connection. The limit of sensitivity of a
+cell--the degree of irritability--he calls the stimulus-threshold.[59]
+As the wind must come in gusts to drive the rain in over a high
+doorsill, so must any stimulus--an idea or a sensation--come with
+sufficient force to get over the obstructions at the doorway of
+consciousness. These psychic thresholds do not maintain a constant
+level. They are raised or lowered at will by a hidden and automatic
+machinery, which is dependent entirely on the ideas already in
+consciousness, by the interest bestowed upon the newcomer. The
+intensity of the stimuli cannot be controlled, but the interest we
+feel in them and the welcome given them are very largely a matter of
+choice.
+
+[Footnote 59: Sidis: _Foundations of Normal and Abnormal Psychology_,
+Chap. XXX.]
+
+Each organism has a wide field of choice as to which ideas and which
+physical stimuli it shall welcome and which it shall shut out. We may
+raise our thresholds, build up a bulwark of indifference to a whole
+class of excitations, shut our mental doors, and pull down the shades;
+or we may lower the thresholds so that the slightest flicker of an
+idea or the smallest pin-prick of a sensation finds ready access to
+the center of attention.
+
+=Thresholds and Character.= There are certain thresholds made to shift
+frequently and easily. When one is hungry any food tastes good, for
+the threshold is low; but the food must be most tempting to be
+acceptable just after a hearty meal. On the other hand, a fairly
+constant threshold is maintained for many different kinds of stimuli.
+These stimuli are always bound together in groups, and make appeal
+depending upon the predominating interest. As anything pertaining to
+agriculture is noticed by a farmer, or any article of dress by a
+fashionable woman, so any stimulus coming from a "warm" group is
+welcomed, while any from a "cold" group is met by a high threshold.
+The kind of person one is depends on what kind of things are "warm"
+to him and what kind are "cold." The superman is one who has gained
+such conscious control of his psychic thresholds that he can raise and
+lower them at will in the interests of the social good.
+
+=Thresholds and Sensations.= The importance of these principles is
+obvious. The next chapter will show more of their influence on ideas
+and emotions; but for the present we will consider their lessons in
+the sphere of the physical. Psychology speaks here in no uncertain
+terms to physiology. Whoever becomes fascinated by the processes of
+his own body is bound to magnify the sensations from those processes,
+until the most 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 feelings"
+unless, despite all discomfort, he really enjoys them. A hard
+statement to accept perhaps, but one that is repeatedly proved by a
+specialist in "nerves"!
+
+
+DETERMINING CAUSES
+
+=Accidental Association.= In many cases, the form which the
+sensitiveness takes is merely a matter of accident. Often it is based
+on some small physical disability, as when a slight tendency to take
+cold is magnified into an intense fear of fresh air.
+
+Sometimes a past fleeting pain which has become associated with the
+stream of thought of an emotional moment--what Boris Sidis calls the
+moment-consciousness--is perpetuated in consciousness in place of the
+repressed emotion. "In the determination of the pathology of hysteria,
+the accidental moment plays a much greater part than is generally
+recognized; if a painful affect--emotion--originates while eating but
+is repressed, it may produce nausea and vomiting and continue for
+months as an hysterical symptom."[60]
+
+[Footnote 60: Freud: _Selected Papers_, p. 2.]
+
+One of Freud's patients, Miss Rosalie H----, found while taking
+singing-lessons that she often choked over notes of the middle
+register, although she took with ease notes higher and lower in the
+scale. It was revealed that this girl, who had a most unhappy home
+life, had, during a former period, often experienced this choking
+sensation from a painful emotion just before she went for her music
+lesson. Some of the left-over sensations had remained during the
+singing, and as the middle notes happen to involve the same muscles as
+does a lump in one's throat, she had often found herself choking over
+these notes. Later on, while living in a different city and in a
+wholly different environment, the physical sensations from her throat
+muscles, as they took these middle notes, brought back the associated
+sensations of choking,--without, however, uncovering the buried
+emotion.[61] Many a painful hysterical affliction is based on just
+such mechanisms as these. As Freud remarks, "The hysteric suffers
+mostly from reminiscences."[62]
+
+[Footnote 61: Ibid, p. 43.]
+
+[Footnote 62: Ibid, p. 5.]
+
+=Subconscious Symbolism.= Sometimes, as we have seen, the form which
+a hypersensitiveness assumes is not determined by any physical
+sensation, either past or symbolism which acts out in the body the
+drama of the soul.
+
+=Facing the Facts.= Whatever the motives and whatever the determining
+causes, hypersensibility is in any case a feeling of feelings which is
+not warranted by the present situation. Hypersensitiveness is never
+anything but a makeshift kind of satisfaction. Despite certain
+subconscious reasoning, it does not make one more important nor more
+beloved. Neither does it furnish a real expression for that great
+creative love-instinct whose outlet, if it is to bring satisfaction,
+must be a real outlet into the external world. An understanding of the
+motives is helpful only when it makes clear that they are
+short-sighted motives and that the real desires back of them may be
+satisfied in better ways.
+
+
+SOME LOWERED THRESHOLDS
+
+As the public appetite for specific cases appears to be insatiable, we
+will give from real life some examples of low thresholds which were
+raised through re-education. One hesitates to write down these
+examples because when they are on paper they sound like advertisements
+of patent medicines. However, there is no magic in any of these cures,
+but only the working out of definite laws which may be used by other
+sufferers, if they only know. Re-education through a knowledge of
+oneself and the laws at work really does remarkable things when it has
+a chance.
+
+="Danger-Signals" without the Danger.= There was the man who had queer
+feelings all over his body, especially in his head and stomach, and
+who considered these sensations as danger-signals warning him to stop.
+This man had worked up from messenger boy to a position next to the
+president in one of the transcontinental railroad systems. On the
+appearance of these "danger-signals" he had tried to resign but had
+been given a year's leave of absence instead. Half the year had gone
+in rest-cure, but he was still afraid to eat or work, and believed
+himself "done for." After three weeks of re-education he saw that
+instead of having overdrawn his capital, he had in another sense
+overdrawn his sensations. He went away as fit as ever, finished his
+leave of absence doing hard labor on his farm, and then went back to
+even harder tasks, working for the Government in the administration of
+the railroads during the war. He is still at work.
+
+=Enjoying Poor Health.= There was the woman who had been an invalid
+for twenty years, doing little else during all that time than to feel
+her own feelings. Because of the distressing sensations in her
+stomach, she had for a year taken nothing but liquid nourishment. She
+had queer feelings in her solar-plexus and indeed a general luxury of
+over-feeling. She could not leave her room nor have any visitors. She
+was the star invalid of the family, waited on by her two hard-working
+sisters who earned the living for them all.
+
+Her sisters had inveigled her to my house under false pretenses,
+calling it a boarding-house and omitting to mention that I was a
+doctor, because "she guessed she knew more about her case than any
+doctor." For the first week I got in only one sentence a day,--just
+before I slipped out of the door after taking in her "liquid
+nourishment." But at the end of the week I announced that thereafter
+her meals would be served in the dining-room. When she found that
+there was to be no more liquid nourishment, she had to appear at the
+family table. After that it was only a short time before she was at
+home, cooking for her sisters. When she saw the role she had been
+unconsciously playing, she could hardly wish to go on with it.
+
+=Feeling His Legs.= Mr. R. suffered from such severe and distressing
+pains in his legs that he believed himself on the verge of paralysis.
+He was also bothered by a chronic emotional state which made him look
+like a "weepy" woman. His eyes were always full of tears and his chin
+a-quiver, and he had, as he said, a perpetual lump in his throat.
+Under re-education both lump and paralysis disappeared completely and
+Mr. R. took his wife across the continent, driving his machine with
+his own hands--and feet.
+
+=A Subconscious Association.= Mr. D.'s case admirably illustrates the
+return of symptoms through an unconscious association. He was a
+lawyer, prominent in public affairs of the Middle West, who had been
+my patient for several weeks and who had gone home cured of many
+striking disabilities. Before he came to me, he had given up his
+public work and was believed by all his associates to be afflicted
+with softening of the brain, and "out of the game" for good. From
+being one of the ablest men of his State, he had fallen into such a
+condition that he could neither read a letter nor write one. He could
+not stand the least sunshine on his head, and to walk half a mile was
+an impossibility. He was completely "down and out" and expected to be
+an invalid for the rest of his life.
+
+But these symptoms had one by one disappeared during his five-weeks
+stay with me. He had done good stiff work in the garden, carried a
+heavy sack of grapefruit a mile in the hot sun, and was generally his
+old self again. Now he was back in the harness, hard at work as of
+old. Suddenly, as he sat reading in his home one evening, all his old
+symptoms swept over him,--the pains in his head and legs, the pounding
+of the heart, the "all-gone" sensations as though he were going to die
+on the spot. He became almost completely dissociated, but through it
+all he clung to the idea which he had learned,--namely that this
+experience was not really physical as it seemed but was the result of
+some idea, and would pass. He did not tell any one of the attack,
+ignored it as much as possible, and waited. In a few minutes he was
+himself again. Then he looked for the cause and realized that the
+article he was reading was one he had read several months previous,
+when suffering most severely from the whole train of symptoms. When
+the familiar words had again gone into his mind, they had pressed the
+button for the whole physiological experience which had once before
+been associated with them. This is the same mechanism as that involved
+in Prince's case, Miss Beauchamp, who became completely dissociated at
+one time when a breeze swept across her face. When Dr. Prince looked
+for the cause, he found that once before she had experienced certain
+distressing emotions while a breeze was fanning her cheek. The
+recurrence of the physical stimulation had been sufficient to bring
+back in its entirety the former emotional complex.
+
+=Another Kind of Association.= One of my women patients illustrates
+another kind of association-mechanism, based not on proximity in time
+but proximity of position in the body. This woman had complained for
+years of "bladder trouble" although no physical examination had been
+able to reveal any organic difficulty. She referred to a constant
+distress in the region of the bladder and was never without a certain
+red blanket which she wrapped around her every time she sat down.
+During psycho-analysis she recounted an experience of years before
+which she had never mentioned to anybody. During a professional
+consultation her physician, a married man, had suddenly seized her and
+exclaimed, "I love you! I love you!" In spite of herself, the woman
+felt a certain appeal, followed by a great sense of guilt. In the
+conflict between the physiological reflex and her moral repugnance,
+she had shunted out of consciousness the real sex-sensation and had
+replaced it with a sensation which had become associated in her
+subconscious mind with the original temptation. Since the nerves from
+the genital region and from the bladder connect with the same segment
+of the spinal cord, she had unconsciously chosen to mix her messages,
+and to cling to the substitute sensation without being in the least
+Conscious of the cause. As soon as she had described the scene to me
+and had discerned its connection with her symptoms, the bladder
+trouble disappeared.
+
+=Afraid of the Cold.= Patients who are sensitive to cold are very
+numerous. Mr. G.--he of the prunes and bran biscuits--was so afraid of
+a draft that he could detect the air current if a window was opened a
+few inches anywhere in a two-story house. He always wore two suits of
+underwear, but despite his precautions he had a swollen red throat
+much of the time. His prescription was a cold bath every morning, a
+source of delight to the other men patients, who made him stay in the
+water while they counted five. He was required to dress and live like
+other folks and of course his sensitiveness and his sore throat
+disappeared.
+
+Dr. B----, when he came to me, was the most wrapped-up man I had ever
+met. He had on two suits of underwear, a sweater, a vest and suit
+coat, an overcoat, a bear-skin coat and a Jaeger scarf--all in
+Pasadena in May!
+
+Besides this fear of cold, he was suffering from a hypersensitiveness
+of several other varieties. So sensitive was his skin that he had his
+clothes all made several sizes too big for him so that they would not
+make pressure. He was so aware of the muscles of the neck that he
+believed himself unable to hold up his head, and either propped it
+with his hands or leaned it against the back of a chair.
+
+He had been working on the eighth edition of his book, a scientific
+treatise of nation-wide importance, but his eyes were so sensitive
+that he could not possibly use them and had to keep them shaded from
+the glare. He was so conscious of the messages of fatigue that he was
+unable to walk at all, and he suffered from the usual trouble with
+constipation. All these symptoms of course belonged together and were
+the direct result of a wrong state of mind. When he had changed his
+mind, he took off his extra clothes, walked a mile and a half at the
+first try, gave up his constipation, and went back to work. Later on I
+had a letter from him saying that his favorite seat was an overturned
+nail-keg in the garden and that he was thinking of sawing the backs
+off his chairs.
+
+Miss Y---- had worn cotton in her ears for a year or two because she
+had once had an inflammation of the middle ear, and believed the
+membrane still sensitive to cold. There was Miss E----, whose
+underwear always reached to her throat and wrists and who spent her
+time following the sun; and Dr. I----, who never forgot her heavy
+sweater or her shawl over her knees, even in front of the fire. The
+procession of "cold ones" is almost endless, but always they find that
+their sensitiveness is of their own making and that it disappears when
+they choose to ignore it.
+
+=Fear of Light.= Fear of cold is no more common than fear of light.
+Nervous folk with half-shut eyes are very frequent indeed. From one
+woman I took at least seven pairs of dark glasses before she learned
+that her eye was made for light. A good example is furnished by a
+woman who was not a patient of mine at all, but merely the sister of a
+patient. After my patient had been cured of a number of distressing
+symptoms--pain in the spine, sore heels, a severe nervous cough,
+indigestion and other typical complaints,--she began to scheme to get
+her sister to come to me.
+
+This sister, the wife of a minister in the Middle West, had a constant
+pain in her eyes, compelling her to hold them half-shut all the time.
+When she was approached about coming to me, she said indignantly, "If
+that doctor thinks that my trouble is nervous, she is much mistaken,"
+and then proceeded to get well. Once the subconscious mind gets the
+idea that its game is recognized, it is very apt to give it up, and it
+can do this without loss of time if it really wants to.
+
+=Pain at the Base of the Brain.= Of all nervous pains, that in the
+back of the neck is by all odds the most common. It is rare indeed to
+find a nervous patient without this complaint, and among supposedly
+well folk it is only too frequent. Indeed, it almost seems that in
+some quarters such a pain stands as a badge of the fervor and zeal of
+one's work.
+
+But work is never responsible for this sense of discomfort. Only an
+over-sensitiveness to feelings or a false emotionalism can produce a
+pain of this kind, unless it should happen to be caused by some poison
+circulating in the blood. The trouble is not with the nerves or with
+the spine, despite the fad about misplaced vertebræ. When a doctor
+examines a sensitive spine, marking the sore spots with a blue pencil,
+and a few minutes later repeats the process, he finds almost
+invariably that the spots have shifted. They are not true physical
+pains and they rarely remain long in the same place.
+
+Pain in the spine and neck is an example of exaggerated sensibility or
+over-awareness. Since all messages from every part of trunk and limb
+must go through the spinal cord, and since very many of them enter the
+cord in the region of the neck and shoulder blades, it is only natural
+that an over-feeling of these messages should be especially noticed in
+this zone.
+
+Sometimes a false emotionalism adds to the discomfort by tensing the
+whole muscular system and making the messages more intense. When a
+social worker or a business man gets tense over his work or ties
+himself into knots over a committee meeting, he not only foolishly
+wastes his energy but makes his nerves carry messages that are more
+urgent than usual. Then if he is on the look-out for sensations, he
+all the more easily becomes aware of the central station in the spine
+where the messages are received. By centering his attention on this
+station and tightening up his back-muscles, he increases this
+over-awareness and easily gets himself into the clutch of a vicious
+habit.
+
+Sometimes a tenseness of the body is the result, not of a false
+attitude toward one's work, but of a lack of satisfaction in other
+directions. If the love-force is not getting what it wants, it may
+keep the body in a state of tension, with all the undesirable results
+of such tension. The person who keeps himself tense, whether because
+of his work or because of tension in other directions, has not really
+learned how to throw himself into his job and to forget himself, his
+emotions, and his body.
+
+=Various Pains.= Tender spots may appear in almost any part of the
+body. There was the girl with the sore scalp, who was frequently so
+sensitive that she could not bear to have a single hair touched at its
+farthermost end, and who could not think of brushing her hair at such
+a time. There was the man whose wrists and ankles were so painful that
+the slightest touch was excruciating; the woman with the false
+sciatica; the man with the so-called appendicitis pains; and the man
+with the false neuritis, who always wore jersey coats several sizes
+too large. Each one of these false pains was removed by the process of
+re-education.
+
+=Low Thresholds to Fatigue.= Mr. H. was habitually so overcome by
+fatigue that he could not make himself carry through the slightest
+piece of work, even when necessity demanded it. On Sunday night, when
+there was no one else to milk the cow, he had had to stop in the
+middle of the process and go into the house to lie down. To carry the
+milk was impossible, so low were his thresholds to the slightest
+message of fatigue. It turned out that things were not going right in
+the reproductive life. His threshold was low in this direction, and it
+carried down with it all other thresholds. After a general revaluation
+of values, he found himself able to keep his thresholds at the normal
+level.
+
+A fine, efficient missionary from the Orient had been so overcome with
+fatigue that he was forced to give up all work and return to this
+country. He had been with me for a while and was again ready to go to
+work. He came one day with a radiant face to bid me good-by. "Why are
+you so joyous?" I asked. "Because," he answered, "before I came home I
+was so fatigued that it used me up completely just to see the native
+servants pack our luggage. Now we are taking back twice as much, and I
+not only packed it all myself but made the boxes with my own hands. No
+more fatigue for me!"
+
+A charming young girl who in many ways was an inspiration to all her
+associates fell into the habit of over-feeling her fatigue. "You know,
+Doctor," she said, "that I give out too much of myself; everybody
+tells me so." That was just the trouble. Everybody had told her so,
+and the suggestion had worked. It did not take her long to learn that
+in scattering abroad she was enriching herself, and that her "giving
+out" was not exhausting to her but rather the truest kind of
+self-expression. It is only when a "giving out" is accompanied by a
+"looking in" that it can ever deplete. The "See how much I am
+giving," and "How tired I shall be," attitude could hardly fail to
+exhaust, but a real self-expression and the fulfilment of a real
+desire to give are never anything else than exhilarating. There is
+something wrong with the minister who is used up after his Sunday
+sermons. If his message and not himself is his real concern, he will
+have only a normal amount of fatigue, accompanied by a general sense
+of accomplishment and well-being, after he has fed his flock. To be
+sure, I have never been a minister, but I have had a goodly number
+among my patients and I speak from a fairly close acquaintance with
+their problems.
+
+=Stopping Our Ears.= Roosters seem to be a perpetual source of
+annoyance to the folk whose thresholds are not under proper control.
+But as roosters seem to be necessary to an egg-eating nation, it seems
+simpler to change the threshold than to abolish the roosters. There
+was one woman who complained especially about being disturbed by
+early-morning Chanticleers. I explained that the crowing called for no
+action on her part, and that therefore she should not allow it to come
+into consciousness. "Do you mean," she said, "that I could keep from
+hearing them?" As it happened, she was sitting under the clock, which
+had just struck seven. "Did you hear the clock strike?" I asked. "No,"
+she said; "did it strike?"
+
+This poor little woman, who suffered from a very painful back and
+other distressing symptoms, had been married at sixteen to a roué of
+forty; and, without experiencing any of the psychic feelings of sex,
+had been immediately plunged into the physical sex-relations. Since
+sex is psycho-physical and since any attempt to separate the two
+elements is both desecrating and unsatisfactory; it is not surprising
+that misery, and finally divorce, had been her portion. Another
+equally unpleasant experience had followed, and the poor woman in the
+strain and disappointment of her love-life, and in the lowering of the
+thresholds pertaining to this thwarted instinct, had unconsciously
+lowered the thresholds to all physical stimuli, until she was no
+longer master of herself in any line. When she saw the reason for her
+exaggerated reactions, she was able to gain control of herself, and to
+find outlet in other ways.
+
+Too many persons fall into the way of being disturbed by noises which
+are no concern of theirs. As nurses learn to sleep through all sounds
+but the call of their own patients, so any one may learn to ignore all
+sounds but those which he needs to hear. Connection with the outside
+world can be severed by a mental attitude in much the same way as this
+is accomplished by the physical effect of an anaesthetic. Then the
+usual noises, those which the subconscious recognizes as without
+significance, will be without power to disturb. The well-known New
+York publisher who spent his last days on his private yacht, on which
+everything was rubber-heeled and velvet-cushioned, thought that he
+couldn't stand noises; but how much more fun he would have had, if
+some one had only told him about thresholds!
+
+
+SUMMARY
+
+There are two kinds of people in the world,--masters and puppets.
+There is the man in control of his thresholds, at leisure from himself
+and master of circumstance, free to use his energy in fruitful ways;
+and there is the over-sensitive soul, wondering where the barometer
+stands and whether people are going to be quiet, feeling his feelings
+and worrying because no one else feels them, forever wasting his
+energy in exaggerated reactions to normal situations.
+
+This "ticklish" person is not better equipped than his neighbor, but
+more poorly equipped. True adjustment to the environment requires the
+faculty of putting out from consciousness all stimuli that do not
+require conscious attention. The nervous person is lacking in this
+faculty, but he usually fails to realize that this lack places him in
+the class of defectives. A paralyzed man is a cripple because he
+cannot run with the crowd; a nervous individual is a cripple, but only
+because he thinks that to run with the crowd lacks distinction.
+Something depends on the accident of birth, but far more depends on
+his own choice. Understanding, judicious neglect of symptoms,
+whole-souled absorption in other interests, and a good look in the
+mirror, are sure to put him back in the running with a wholesome
+delight in being once more "like folks."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+_In which we learn discrimination_
+
+CHOOSING OUR EMOTIONS
+
+LIKING THE TASTE
+
+
+It was a summer evening by the seaside, and a group of us were sitting
+on the porch, having a sort of heart-to-heart talk about
+psychology,--which means, of course, that we were talking about
+ourselves. One by one the different members of the family spoke out
+the questions that had been troubling them, or brought up their
+various problems of character or of health. At length a splendid Red
+Cross nurse who had won medals for distinguished service in the early
+days of the war, broke out with the question: "Doctor, how can I get
+rid of my terrible temper? Sometimes it is very bad, and always it has
+been one of the trials of my life." She spoke earnestly and sincerely,
+but this was my answer: "You like your temper. Something in you enjoys
+it, else you would give it up." Her face was a study in astonishment.
+"I don't like it," she stammered; "always after I have had an
+outburst of anger I am in the depths of remorse. Many a time I have
+cried my eyes out over this very thing." "And you like that, too," I
+answered. "You are having an emotional spree, indulging yourself first
+in one kind of emotion and then in another. If you really hated it as
+much as you say you do, you would never allow yourself the indulgence,
+much less speak of it afterward." Her astonishment was still further
+increased when several of the group said they, too, had sensed her
+satisfaction with her moods.
+
+Hard as it is to believe, we do choose our emotions. We like emotion
+as we do salt in our food, and too often we choose it because
+something in us likes the savor, and not because it leads to the
+character or the conduct that we know to be good.
+
+
+THE POWER OF CHOICE
+
+Whether we believe it or not, and whether we like it or not, the fact
+remains that we ourselves decide which of all the possible emotions we
+shall choose, or we decide not to press the button for any emotion at
+all.
+
+To a very large extent man, if he knows how and really wishes, may
+select the emotion which is suitable in that it leads to the right
+conduct, has a beneficial effect on the body, adapts him to his social
+environment, and makes him the kind of man he wants to be.
+
+=The Test of Feeling.= The psychologist to-day has a sure test of
+character. He says in substance: "Tell me what you feel and I will
+tell you what you are. Tell me what things you love, what things you
+fear, and what makes you angry and I will describe with a fair degree
+of accuracy your character, your conduct, and a good deal about the
+state of your physical health."
+
+Since this test of emotion is fundamentally sound, it is not
+surprising that the nervous man is in a state of distress.
+Indigestion, fatigue, over-sensibility, sound like problems in
+physiology, but we cannot go far in the discussion of any of them
+without coming face to face with the emotions as the real factors in
+the case. When we turn to the mental characteristics of nervous folk,
+we even more quickly find ourselves in the midst of an emotional
+disturbance. Worried, fearful, anxious, self-pitying, excitable, or
+melancholy, the nervous person proves that whatever else a neurosis
+may be, it is, in essence, a riot of the emotions.
+
+There is small wonder that a riot at the heart of the empire should
+lead to insurrection in every province of the personality. It is only
+for the purpose of discussion that we can separate feeling from
+thinking and doing. Every thought and every act has in it something of
+all three elements. An emotion is not an isolated phenomenon; it is
+bound up on the one hand with ideas and on the other with bodily
+states and conduct. Whoever runs amuck in his emotions runs amuck in
+his whole being. The nervous invalid with his exhausted and sensitive
+body, his upset mind and irrational conduct is a living illustration
+of the central place of the emotions in the realm of the personality.
+
+But it is not the nervous person only who needs a better understanding
+of his emotional life. The well man also gets angry for childish
+reasons; he is prejudiced and envious, unhappy and suspicious for the
+very same reason as is the nervous man. Since the working-capital of
+energy is limited to a definite amount, the control of the emotions
+becomes a central problem in any life,--a deciding factor in the
+output and the outcome, as well as in comfort and happiness by the
+way.
+
+Nothing is harder for the average man to believe than this fact that
+he really has the power to choose his emotions. He has been
+dissatisfied with himself in his past reactions, and yet he has not
+known how to change them. His anger or his depression has appeared so
+undesirable to his best judgment and to his conscious reason that it
+has seemed to be not a part of himself at all but an invasion from
+without which has swept over him without his consent and quite beyond
+control.
+
+
+A HOUSE DIVIDED AGAINST ITSELF
+
+Most of the confusion comes from the fact that we know only a part of
+ourselves. What we do not consciously enjoy we believe we do not enjoy
+at all. What we do not consciously choose we believe to be beyond our
+power of choice,--the work of the evil one, or the natural depravity
+of human nature, perhaps; but certainly not anything of our choosing.
+
+The point is that a human being is so constituted that he can, without
+knowing it, entertain at the same time two diametrically opposite
+desires. The average person is not so unified as he believes, but is,
+in fact, "a house divided against itself."
+
+The words of the apostle Paul express for most of us the truth about
+ourselves: "For what I would, that I do not; but what I hate that I
+do." What Paul calls the law of his members warring against the law of
+his mind is simply what we call to-day the instinctive desires coming
+into conflict with our conscious ideal.
+
+=Hidden Desires.= Although we choose our emotions, we choose in many
+cases in response to a buried part of ourselves of which we are wholly
+unaware, or only half-aware. When we do not like what we have chosen,
+it is because the conscious part of us is out of harmony with another
+part and that part is doing the choosing. If the emotions which we
+choose are not those that the whole of us--or at least the
+conscious--would desire, it is because we are choosing in response to
+hidden desires, and giving satisfaction to cravings which we have not
+recognized. Repeated indulgence of such desires is responsible for the
+emotional habits which we are too likely to consider an inevitable
+part of our personality, inherited from ancestors who are not on hand
+to defend themselves. When we form the habit of being afraid of things
+that other people do not fear, or of being irritated or depressed, or
+of giving way to fits of temper, it is because these habit-reactions
+satisfy the inner cravings that in the circumstances can get
+satisfaction in no better way.
+
+These hidden desires are of several different kinds, when squarely
+looked at. Some of the cravings are found to be childish, and so out
+of keeping with our real characters that we could not possibly hold on
+to them as conscious desires. Others turn out to be so natural and so
+inevitable that we wonder how we could ever have imagined that they
+ought to be repressed. Still others, legitimate in themselves, but
+denied because of outer circumstances, are found to be easily
+satisfied in indirect ways which bear no resemblance to their old
+unfortunate forms of outlet.
+
+
+WHEN KNOWLEDGE HELPS
+
+The way to get rid of an undesirable emotion is not by working at the
+emotion itself, but by realizing that this is merely an offshoot of a
+deeper root, hidden below the surface. The great point is to recognize
+this deeper root.
+
+=Childish Anger.= It helps to know that uncalled-for anger is a
+defense reaction--a sort of camouflage or smoke cloud which we throw
+out to hide from ourselves and others the fact that we are being
+worsted in an argument, or being shown up in an undesirable light.
+Better than any amount of weeping over a hot temper is an
+understanding of the fact that when we fly into unseemly rage we are
+usually giving indulgence to a childhood desire to run away from
+unpleasant facts and to cover up our own faults.
+
+=Enjoying the Blues.= It helps to know that the easiest way to fight
+the blues is by realizing that they are a deliberate, if unconscious,
+attempt to gain the pity of ourselves and others. There seems to be in
+undeveloped human nature something that really enjoys being pitied,
+and if we cannot get the commiseration of other people, we can,
+without much trouble, work up a case of self-pity. Most of us would
+have to acknowledge that we seldom find tears in our eyes except when
+our own woes are under consideration. "Whatever else the blues
+accomplish, they certainly afford us a chance to submerge ourselves
+in a sea of self-engrossment."[63]
+
+[Footnote 63: Putnam: _Human Motives_.]
+
+=The Chip on the Shoulder.= It helps to know that irritability and
+over-sensitiveness are usually the result of tension from unsatisfied
+desires which must find some kind of outlet. If a person is secretly
+restive under the fact that he cannot have the kind of clothes he
+wants, cannot shine in society, or secure a college education or a
+large fortune,--all of which minister to our insistent and rarely
+satisfied instinct of self-assertion,--or if he is secretly yearning
+for the satisfaction of the marriage relation, or for the sense of
+completion in parenthood; then the tension from these unsatisfied
+desires shows itself in a hundred little everyday instances of lack of
+self-control. These mystify him and his friends, but they are
+understandable when the whole truth is known.
+
+=Anxiety and Fear.= Nowhere is understanding more valuable than when
+we approach the subject of anxiety and fear. Whenever a person falls
+into a state of abnormal fear, his friends and his physician spend a
+good deal of time in attempting to prove to him that there is no cause
+for apprehension, and in exhorting him to use his reason and give up
+his fear. But how can a person help himself when he is fighting in the
+dark? How can he free himself when the thing he thinks he fears is
+merely a symbol of what he really fears? The woman who was afraid she
+would choke her child had been several months in the hands of
+Christian Scientists, and had earnestly tried to replace fear with
+courage. But in the circumstances, and without further knowledge, this
+was as impossible as it is for a man to lift himself by his own
+boot-straps. She had no point of contact with her real fear, as the
+man has no leverage contact with the earth from which he wishes to
+lift himself.
+
+To be sure there are many cases in which an assumed cheerfulness and
+courage do have a mighty effect on the inner man. The forces of the
+personality are not set, but plastic, and are constantly acting and
+interacting upon one another. Surface habits do influence the forces
+below the surface. William James's advice, "Square your shoulders,
+speak in a major key, smile, and turn a compliment," is good for most
+occasions, but sometimes even a little understanding of the cause is
+far more effective.
+
+It helps to know that persistent anxiety, lacking obvious cause, is
+found to be the anxiety of the thwarted instinct of reproduction. When
+the sex-instinct is repeatedly stimulated and then checked it sets in
+motion some of the same glands that are activated in fear. What comes
+up into consciousness is therefore very naturally a fear or dread of
+impending disaster, very like the poignant anxiety that one feels
+when stepping up in the dark to a step that is not there.
+
+Simultaneous with the fear lest these repressed desires should not be
+satisfied, there is an intense fear lest they should. The more
+insistent the repressed desire, and the more it seems likely to break
+through into consciousness, the keener the anguish of the ethical
+impulses. Abnormal fear, however it may seem to be externalized,
+always implies at the bottom a fear of something within. There is no
+truth which is harder to believe on first hearing but which grows more
+compelling with further knowledge, than this truth that an exaggerated
+fear always implies a desire which somehow offends the total
+personality. When we observe the various distressing phobias, such as
+the common fear of contamination, a woman's fear to undress at night,
+a fear that the gas was not turned off, or that one's clothing is out
+of order; fear lest the exact truth has not been told, or that the
+uttermost farthing of one's obligations has not been met,--then we may
+know that there is something in the fear situation which either
+directly or symbolically refers to some hidden desire; a desire which
+the individual would not for the world acknowledge to himself, but
+which is too keen to be altogether repressed.
+
+The close connection between fear and desire is often shown in the
+unfounded fear of having committed a crime. Both doctors and lawyers
+in their professional work occasionally come upon individuals who
+believe that they have committed some heinous crime of which they are
+really innocent, and who insist upon their guilt despite all evidence
+to the contrary. A quiet, gentle youth who at the age of twenty was
+under my medical care, is still not sure in his own whether he, at
+twelve years of age, was the burglar who broke into the village store
+and killed the owner. It is difficult for the normally self-satisfied
+individual to understand the appeal of heroics to a person whose
+starved instinct of self-assertion makes him choose to be known as a
+villain rather than not to be known at all.
+
+=Breaking the Spell.= When once we bring up into consciousness these
+hidden desires that manifest themselves in such troublesome ways, we
+find that we have robbed them of much of their power over our lives.
+Sometimes, it is true, a detailed and thorough exploration by
+psycho-analysis is necessary, but in many cases it is sufficient just
+to know that there are underlying causes. To know these things is far
+from excusing ourselves because of them. Even though emotions are
+determined by forces that are deep in the subconscious, we may still
+choose in opposition to those forces, if we but know that we can do
+so. The fact that some of the roots of our bad habits reach down into
+the subconscious is no excuse for not digging them up. As Dr. Putnam
+says, "It is the whole of us that acts, and we are as responsible for
+the supervision of the unseen as for the obvious factors that are at
+work. The moon may be only half illumined and half visible, but the
+invisible half goes on, none the less, exerting its full share of
+influence on the motion of the tides and earth."[64]
+
+[Footnote 64: Putnam: _Freud's Psychoanalytic Method and Its
+Evolution_, p. 34.]
+
+
+THE HIGHEST KIND OF CHOICE
+
+There is no easier way to enliven any conversation than by dropping
+the remark that a human being always does what he wants to do. Simple
+as the statement seems, it is quite enough to quicken the dullest
+table-talk and loosen the most reticent tongue.
+
+"I don't do what I want to do," says the college student. "I want to
+play tennis every afternoon; but what I do is to sit in a stuffy room
+and study."
+
+"I don't do what I want to do," says the mother of a family. "At night
+I want to sit down and read the latest magazine, but what I do is to
+darn stockings by the hour."
+
+Nevertheless we shall see that, even in cases like these, each of us
+is acting in accordance with his strongest desire. There may be--there
+often is--a bitter conflict, but in the end the desire that is really
+stronger always conquers and works itself out into action.
+
+It is possible to imagine a situation in which a man would be
+physically unable to do what he wanted to do. Bound by physical cords,
+held by prison walls, or weakened by illness, he might be actually
+unable to carry out his desires. But apart from physical restraint, it
+is hard to imagine a situation in real life in which a person does not
+actually do what he wants to do; that is, what _in the circumstances
+he wants to do_. This is simply saying in another way that we act in
+accordance with the emotion which is at the moment strongest.
+
+=Will Is Choice.= Just here we can imagine an earnest protest: "But
+why do you ignore the human will? Why do you try to make man the
+creature of feeling? A high-grade man does--not what he wants to do
+but what he thinks he ought to do. In any person worthy of the
+adjective 'civilized' it is conscience, not desire, which is the
+motive power of his life."
+
+It is true: in the better kind of man the will is of central
+importance; but what is "will"? Let us imagine a raw soldier in the
+trenches just before a charge into No-Man's Land. He is afraid, but
+the word of command comes, and instantly he is a new creature. His
+fear drops away and, energized by the lust of battle, he rushes
+forward, obviously driven by the stronger emotion. He goes ahead
+because he really wants to, and we say that he does not have to use
+his will.
+
+Imagine another soldier in the same situation; with him fear seems
+uppermost. His knees shake and his legs want to carry him in the wrong
+direction, but he still goes forward. And he goes forward, not so much
+because there is no other possibility as because, in the
+circumstances, he really wants to. All his life, and especially during
+his military training, he has been filled with ideals of loyalty and
+courage. More than he fears the guns of the enemy or of his
+firing-squad does he fear the loss of his own self-respect and the
+respect of his comrades. Greater than his "will to live" is his desire
+to play the man. There is conflict, and the desire which seems at the
+moment weaker is given the victory because it is reinforced by that
+other permanent desire to be a worthy man, brave, and dependable in a
+crisis. He goes forward, because in the circumstances, he really wants
+to, but in this case we say that he had to use his will.
+
+Is it not apparent that will itself is choice,--the selection by the
+whole personality of the emotion and the action which best fit into
+its ideals? Will is choice by the part of us which has ideals.
+McDougall points out that will is the reinforcement of the weaker
+desire by the master desire to be a certain kind of a character.[65]
+
+[Footnote 65: "The essential mark of volition is that the personality
+as a whole, or the central feature or nucleus of the personality, the
+man himself, is thrown upon the side of the weaker
+motive."--McDougall: _Introduction to Social Psychology_, p. 240.]
+
+Each human being as he goes through life acquires a number of moral
+ideals and sentiments which he adopts as his own. They become linked
+with the instinct of self-assertion, which henceforth acts as the
+motive power behind them, and attempts to drive from the field any
+emotion which happens to conflict.
+
+Men, like the lower animals, are ruled by desire, but, as G.A. Coe
+says, "Men mold themselves. They form desires not merely to have this
+or that object, but to be this or that kind of a man."[66]
+
+[Footnote 66: Coe: _Psychology of Religion_.]
+
+If a man be worthy of the name, he is not swayed by the emotion which
+happens for the moment to be strongest. He has the power to reinforce
+and make dominant those impulses which fit into the ideal he has built
+for himself. In other words, he has the power to choose between his
+desires, and this power depends largely upon the ideals which he has
+incorporated into his life by the complexes and sentiments which
+compose his personality.
+
+_Ideas and Ideals_. If emotion is the heart of humanity, ideas are its
+head. In our emphasis on emotion, we must not forget that as emotion
+controls action, so ideas control emotion. But ideas, of themselves,
+are not enough. Everybody has seen weaklings who were full of pious
+platitudes. Ideas do control life, but only when linked up with some
+strong emotion. No moral sentiment is strong enough to withstand an
+intense instinctive desire. If ideas are to be dynamic factors in a
+life, they must become ideals and be really desired. They must be
+backed up by the impulse of self-assertion, incorporated with the
+sentiment of self-regard, and so made a permanent part of the central
+personality.
+
+Parents and teachers who try to "break a child's will" and to punish
+every evidence of independence and self-assertion little know that
+they are undermining the foundations of morality itself, and doing
+their utmost to leave the child at the mercy of his chance whims and
+emotions. There can be no strength of character without self-regard,
+and self-regard is built on the instinctive desire of self-assertion.
+
+=Education and Religion.= It is easy to see how important education is
+in this process of giving the right content to the self-regarding
+sentiment. The child trained to regard "temper" as a disgrace,
+self-pity as a vice, over-sensitiveness as a sign of selfishness, and
+all forms of exaggerated emotionalism as a token of weakness, has
+acquired a powerful weapon against temptation in later life.
+Indulgence in any of these forms of gratification he will regard as
+unworthy and out of keeping with his personality.
+
+It is easy, too, to see how central a place a vital religious faith
+has in enriching and ennobling the ego-ideal, and in giving it
+driving-power. A force which makes a high ideal seem both imperative
+and possible of achievement could hardly fail to be a deciding factor.
+Every student of human nature knows in how many countless lives the
+Christian religion has made all the difference between mere good
+intentions and the power to realize those intentions; how many times
+it has furnished the motive power which nothing else seemed able to
+supply. Moral sentiments which have been merely sentiments become,
+through the magic of a new faith, incorporated into conscience and
+endowed with new power.
+
+Just here lies the value of any great love, or any intense devotion to
+a cause. As Royce says: "To have a conscience, then, is to have a
+cause; to unify your life by means of an ideal determined by this
+cause, and to compare this ideal and the life."[67]
+
+[Footnote 67: Royce: _Philosophy of Loyalty_, p. 175.]
+
+=Avoiding the Strain.= It seems that a human being is to a large
+extent controlled by will, and that will is in itself the highest kind
+of choice. But too often will is crippled because it does not speak
+for the whole personality. Knowledge helps a person to relate
+conscience with hitherto hidden parts of himself, to assert his will,
+and to choose only those emotions and outlets which the connected-up,
+the unified personality wants. Sometimes, indeed, a little knowledge
+makes the exercise of the will power unnecessary. Using will power
+is, after all, likely to be a strenuous business. It implies the
+presence of conflict, and the strain of defeating the desire which has
+to be denied.[68] Why struggle to subdue emotional bad habits when a
+little insight dispels the desire back of them, and makes them melt
+away as if by magic? For example, why use our will to keep down fear
+or anger when a little understanding dissipates these emotions without
+effort?
+
+[Footnote 68: Freud: _Introduction to Psychoanalysis_, p. 42.]
+
+Whatever we do with difficulty we are not doing well. When it requires
+effort to do our duty this means that a great part of us does not want
+to do it. When we get rid of our hidden resistances we work with ease.
+As a strong wind, applied in the right way, drives the ship without
+effort, just so the forces in our lives, if they are adjusted to one
+another, will without strain or stress easily and naturally work
+together to carry us in the direction we have chosen. When we get rid
+of blind conflicts, even the business of ruling our spirits becomes
+feasible.
+
+
+SUMMARY
+
+=Various "Sprees."= The human animal has a constitutional dislike for
+dullness and will seize upon almost any device which promises to lift
+him out of what he considers the monotony of daily grind. An elaborate
+essay might be written on the means which human beings have taken to
+create the sense of _aliveness_ which they so much crave. Some of
+them--we call them savages--have found satisfactory certain wild
+orgies in primitive war-dances; others--we shall soon call them "out
+of date"--have found simpler a bottle of whisky or a glass of
+champagne; still others find a cold shower more invigorating, or a
+brisk walk or a good stiff job which sets them aglow with the sense of
+accomplishment. But there are always those who, for one reason or
+another, find most satisfactory of all a chronic emotional tippling,
+or a good old-fashioned emotional spree. Persons who would be shocked
+at the idea of whisky or champagne allow themselves this other kind of
+indulgence without in the least knowing why.
+
+Nor is the connection between alcoholism and emotionalism so
+far-fetched as it seems. Psycho-analytic investigations have
+repeatedly revealed the fact that both are indulged in because they
+remove inhibitions, give vent to repressed desires, and bring a sense
+of life and power which has somehow been lost in the normal living.
+Both kinds of spree are followed by the inevitable "morning after"
+with its proverbial headache, remorse, and vows of repentance but
+despite all this, both are clung to because the satisfaction they
+bring is too deep to be easily relinquished.
+
+Whenever an emotion quite out of keeping with conscious desire is
+allowed to become habitual, we may know that it is being chosen by a
+part of the personality which needs to be uncovered and squarely
+faced. Nervous symptoms and exaggerated emotionalism are alike
+evidence of the fact that the wrong part of us is doing the choosing
+and that the will needs to be enlightened on what is taking place in
+the outer edge of its domain. In the choice between emotionalism and
+equanimity, the selection of the former can only be in response to
+unrecognized desire.
+
+A nervous person is invariably an emotional person, and as a rule lays
+the blame for his condition upon past experiences. But experience is
+what happens to us _plus_ the way we take it. We cannot always ward
+off the blow, but we can decide upon our reaction. "Even if the
+conduct of others has been the cause of our emotion, it is really we
+ourselves who have created it by the way in which we have
+reacted."[69]
+
+[Footnote 69: DuBois: _Psychic Treatment of Nervous Disorders_, p.
+155.]
+
+    One ship drives east, another drives west,
+    While the self-same breezes blow;
+    'Tis the set of the sail, and not the gale
+    That bids them where to go.
+    Like the winds of the sea are the ways of fate,
+    As we journey along through life;
+    'Tis the set of the soul that decides the goal,
+    And not the calm or the strife.
+    REBECCA R. WILLIAMS.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+_In which we find new use for our steam_
+
+FINDING VENT IN SUBLIMATION
+
+THE RE-DIRECTION OF ENERGY
+
+
+A child pent up on a rainy day is a troublesome child. His energy
+keeps piling up, but there is no opportunity for him to expend it. The
+nervous person is just such a pent-up child. A portion of his
+personality is developing steam which goes astray in its search for
+vent; this portion is found to be the psychic side of his sex-life.
+Something has blocked the satisfactory achievement of instinctive ends
+and turned his interest in on himself.
+
+Perhaps he does not come into complete psychic satisfaction of his
+love-life because his wife is out of sympathy or is held back by her
+own childish repressions. Perhaps his love-instinct is baffled by
+finding itself thwarted in its purpose of creating children,
+restrained by the social ban and the desire for a luxurious standard
+of living. Perhaps he is jealous of his chief, or of an older
+relative whose business stride he cannot equal.
+
+Jung has pointed out how frequently introversion or turning in of the
+life-force is brought about by the painfulness of present reality and
+by the lack of the power of adaptation to things as they are. But this
+lack always has its roots in childhood. The woman who is shocked at
+the thought of sex is the little girl who reacted too strongly to
+early impressions. The man of forty who is disgruntled because he is
+not made manager of a business created by others is the little boy who
+was jealous of his father and wanted to usurp his place of power. The
+man who suffers from a sense of inferiority because his friend has a
+handsomer or more intellectual wife is the same little boy who strove
+with his father for possession of the mother, the most desired object
+in his childish environment. The measure of escape from these childish
+attitudes means the measure of success in life.
+
+Fortunately for society, the average person achieves this success. The
+normal person in his childhood learned how to switch the energy of his
+primitive desires into channels approved by society. Stored away in
+his subconscious, this acquired faculty carries him without conscious
+effort through all the necessary adjustments in maturity. The nervous
+person, less well equipped in childhood, may fortunately acquire the
+faculty in all its completeness, although at the cost of genuine
+effort and patient self-study.
+
+=Sublimation the Key Word.= In the prevention and in the cure of
+nervous disorders there is one factor of central importance, and that
+factor is sublimation--or the freeing of sex-energy for socially
+useful, non-sexual ends. To sublimate is to find vent for oneself and
+to serve society as well; for sublimation opens up new channels for
+pent-up energy, utilizing all the surplus of the sex-instinct in
+substitute activities. When the dynamic of this impulse is turned
+outward, not inward, it proves to be one of man's greatest
+possessions, a valuable contribution of energy to creative activities
+and personal relationships of every kind.
+
+=The Failure to Sublimate.= A neurosis is nonconstructive use of one's
+surplus steam. The trouble with a nervous person is that his
+love-force is turned in on himself instead of out into the world of
+reality. This is what his friends mean when they say that he is
+self-absorbed; and this is what the psychologists mean when they say
+that a neurotic is introverted. A person, in so far as he is nervous,
+does not see other people at all--that is, he does not see them as
+real persons, but only as auditors who may be made to listen to the
+tale of his woes. His own problems loom so large that he becomes
+especially afflicted with what Cabot calls "the sin of impersonality";
+or to use President King's words, he lacks that "reverence for
+personality" which enables one to see people vividly as real persons
+and not as street-car conductors or servants or merely as members of
+one's family. To be sure, many a so-called normal individual is
+afflicted with this same kind of blindness; here as elsewhere the
+neurotic simply exaggerates. Engrossed in his own mental conflicts and
+physical symptoms, he is likely to find his interest withdrawing more
+and more from other people and centering upon himself.
+
+=Sublimation and Religion.= We do not need psychology to tell us that
+engrossment in self is a disastrous condition. When the psycho-analyst
+says that the life-force must be turned out, not in, he is approaching
+from a new angle the truth as it is found in the gospel,--"Thou shalt
+love the Lord thy God with all thy heart," and "thy neighbor as
+thyself." Religion provides the love-object in the Creator; altruism
+provides it in the "neighbor." Christianity and psychology agree that
+as soon as love ceases to be an outgoing force, just so soon does the
+individual become an incomplete and disrupted personality.[70]
+
+[Footnote 70: For emphasis on religion as a means to sublimation, see
+Freud, Putnam, Pfister, James, and DuBois.]
+
+=Carlyle's Doctrine of Work.= "Produce! produce! produce!" Life for a
+social being involves not only rich personal relationships, but
+absorbing, creative work. No nervous person is cured until he is
+willing to take and to keep a "man-size job." A good piece of work is
+not only the sign of a cure; it is the final step without which no
+cure is complete.
+
+=Along Nature's Lines.= If the psychologist is asked what kind of task
+this is to be, he answers that each person must decide for himself his
+own life-work. An individual may not know why, but he does know that
+there are certain things which he most likes to do. Sublimation is
+more readily accomplished if his energy is directed toward self-chosen
+interests. Parents or teachers or physicians who try to force another
+person into any definite plan of action are making a grievous blunder.
+Help may be given toward self-knowledge and the understanding of
+general principles, but advice should never be specific.
+
+Taken in the large, it is found that men and women choose different
+ways of sublimation. Man and woman differ in the psychic components of
+the sex-life even as they differ in the physical. Sublimation to be
+successful must follow the lines laid down by nature. The urge of the
+average man is toward construction, domination, mastery. The urge of
+the average woman is toward mothering, protection, nurture. The
+masculine characteristics find ready sublimation in a career; the man
+builds bridges, digs canals, harnesses mountain streams, conquers
+pests, overcomes gravity, brings the ends of the earth together by
+"wireless" or by rail; he provides for the weak and the helpless--his
+own progeny--or, incarnated in the body of a Hoover, he gives life to
+the children of the world.
+
+In woman, the dominant force is the nurturing instinct. Child and man
+of her own come first, but when these are lacking, to paraphrase
+Kipling, in default of closer ties, she is wedded to convictions;
+Heaven help him who denies! Only as a career opens up full vent for
+this nurturing instinct, will it provide satisfactory substitute in
+sublimation. Its natural trend can be seen in the recent tidal wave of
+social legislation--for prohibition, child-labor laws, sanitation,
+recognition and control of venereal disease, acknowledgment of
+paternity to the illegitimate child.
+
+Since the women of the day, in numbers up to the million, have been
+compelled to sacrifice both man and unformed babe to the grim
+Juggernaut of war, this nurturing urge may press hard against many of
+the social and business barriers now impeding its flow. But if society
+understands and readjusts these barriers, making it possible for its
+citizens--women as well as men--to approximate the natural instinctive
+bent, it will not only save itself much unrest but will also go far
+toward preventing the spread of nervous invalidism.
+
+
+SUMMARY
+
+That which a nervous invalid most needs is a redirection of energy.
+Since, in spite of appearances, there is never any real lack of
+energy, no time is needed for the making of strength, and a cure can
+take place just as soon as the inner forces allow the energy to flow
+out in the right direction. Sometimes, indeed, an outer change may
+start the inner process. Often the "work cure" does cure; occasionally
+the sudden necessity to earn one's living or to mother a little child
+frees the life-force from its old preoccupation and forces it into
+other channels. In most cases, however, the nervous invalid is
+suffering not from lack of opportunities for outside interest but from
+an inner inability to meet the opportunities which present themselves.
+The great change that has to be made is not in external conditions and
+habits but in the hidden corners of the mind; a change that can be
+accomplished only by self-knowledge and re-education.
+
+But if self-knowledge is the first step in any cure, so self-giving
+must be the final step. Sooner or later in the life of every nervous
+invalid there comes a time when nothing will serve to unify his
+disorganized forces but steady and unswerving responsibility for a
+good stiff piece of work. Happy for him that this is so and that he is
+living in a day when science no longer tells him to fold his hands and
+wait.
+
+
+
+
+GLOSSARY
+
+
+_Autonomic nervous system:_ The vegetative nervous system which
+controls vital functions,--as digestion, respiration, circulation.
+
+_Censor:_ A hypothetical faculty of the fore-conscious mind which
+resists the emergence into consciousness of questionable desires.
+
+_Common path:_ In physiology, the final route over which response is
+made to physical stimulation; similarly in psychology, the one outlet
+for the finally dominant impulse.
+
+_Compensation:_ Exaggerated manifestation of one character-trend as a
+defense against its opposite which is painfully repressed; relief in
+substitute symptom formation.
+
+_Complex:_ A group of ideas held together by emotion (usually
+referring to a group which is wholly or in part unconscious).
+
+_Compulsion:_ A persistent compelling impulse to perform some
+seemingly unreasonable (but really substitute or symbolic) act, or to
+hold some irrational fear or idea; an emotional force which has been
+separated from the original idea.
+
+_Conflict:_ (Special) Struggle between instincts (unconscious).
+
+_Conversion:_ (Special) The process by which a repressed mental
+complex expresses itself through a physical symptom.
+
+_Displacement:_ 1. Transposition of an emotion from its original idea
+to one more acceptable to the personality. 2. The shifting of
+emphasis, in dreams, from essential to less significant elements.
+
+_Dissociation:_ 1. The state of being shut out from taking active part
+(applied to a group of ideas), as in normal forgetfulness. 2.
+(Abnormal) An exaggerated degree of separation of groups of ideas,
+with loss to the personality of the forces or memories which these
+groups contain, as in double personality.
+
+_Fixation:_ Establishment in childhood of over-strong habit-reactions.
+
+_Free Association:_ A device for uncovering buried complexes by
+letting the mind wander without conscious direction.
+
+_Homo-sexual:_ The quality of being more attracted by an individual of
+the same sex (abnormal) than by one of the opposite sex
+(hetero-sexual, normal).
+
+_Hysteria:_ That form of functional nervous disorder which manifests
+itself in physical symptoms; an attempt to dramatize unconscious
+repressed desires.
+
+_Inhibition:_ Restraint (Special) limitation of function, physical or
+ideational, due to unconscious emotional attitudes.
+
+_Libido:_ Life-force, élan vital, or (restricted) the energy of the
+sex-instinct.
+
+_Neurosis:_ Used loosely for psycho-neurosis or nervous disorder.
+
+_Obsession:_ A compulsive idea inaccessible to reason.
+
+_Oedipus Complex:_ Over-strong bond between mother and son, or (more
+loosely) between father and daughter.
+
+_Over-determined:_ Used of an impulse made over-strong by lack of
+discharge, with accumulation of emotional tension from added factors.
+
+_Phobia:_ A persistent, unreasoning fear of some object or situation.
+
+_Psycho-neurosis:_ "A perversion of normal (psychic) reactions,"
+(Prince); a general term for functional dissociation of the
+personality, resulting in: psychasthenia--disturbed ideation;
+neurasthenia--disturbed emotions; hysteria--disturbed motor or sensory
+activity.
+
+_Psychotherapy:_ Treatment by psychic or mental measures.
+
+_Rationalization:_ The process of substituting a plausible, false
+explanation for a repressed, unconscious desire.
+
+_Repression:_ Expulsion from consciousness of a pain-provoking mental
+process.
+
+_Resistance:_ The force which impedes the return of a repressed
+complex to consciousness.
+
+_Subconscious:_ That part of the mind of which one is unaware; the
+storehouse of memories ancestral and personal.
+
+_Sublimation:_ The act of freeing sex-energy from definitely sexual
+aims; utilization of sex-energy for nonsexual ends.
+
+_Suggestion:_ The process by which any idea, true or false, takes hold
+of one; the idea may enter the mind consciously or unconsciously,
+through reason or through impulse.
+
+_Symbol:_ An object or an attitude which stands for an ides or a
+quality; (Special) that which stands for or represents some
+unconscious mental process.
+
+_Threshold_ (door-sill): A figure which represents the level of the
+barrier erected by the mind against the perception of an idea or
+sensation.
+
+_Transference:_ Unconscious identification of a present personal
+relationship with an earlier one, with conveyance of the earlier
+emotional attitudes (hostile or affectionate) to the present
+relationship.
+
+
+
+
+BIBLIOGRAPHY
+
+
+BOOKS ON THE GENERAL LAWS OF BODY AND MIND
+
+Cannon, Walter B: Bodily Changes in Pain, Hunger,
+Fear and Rage.
+
+Crile, George W.: The Origin and Nature of the Emotions.
+
+Coe, George Albert: The Psychology of Religion.
+
+Hudson, Thomas Jay: The Law of Psychic Phenomena.
+
+Janet, Pierre: The Major Symptoms of Hysteria; The
+Mental State of Hystericals.
+
+James, William: Psychology; Talks to Teachers on Psychology;
+Varieties of Religious Experience.
+
+Jastrow, Joseph: The Subconscious.
+
+Kempf, Edward J.: The Tonus of Autonomic Segments
+in Psychopathology.
+
+Long, Constance: Psychology of Fantasy.
+
+McDougall, William: Social Psychology.
+
+Mosher, Clelia Duel: Health and the Woman Movement.
+
+Phillips, D. E.: Elementary Psychology.
+
+Prince, Morton: The Unconscious; The Dissociation of
+a Personality; My Life as a Dissociated Personality.
+
+Sherrington, Charles L.: The Integrative Action of the
+Nervous System.
+
+Sidis, Boris: The Foundations of Normal and Abnormal
+Psychology; Psychopathological Researches.
+
+Tansley, A. G.: The New Psychology.
+
+Thomson, William Hanna: Brain and Personality.
+
+White, William A.: Principles of Mental Hygiene;
+  The Mental Hygiene of Childhood.
+
+Proceedings of the International Conference of Women Physicians.
+(National Board, Y.W.C.A., 600 Lexington Avenue, New York City.)
+
+
+BOOKS ON MENTAL HYGIENE
+
+Brown, Charles R.: Faith and Health.
+
+Bruce, H. Addington: Scientific Mental Healing.
+
+Cabot, Richard: What Men Live By;
+  Social Service and the Art of Healing.
+
+DuBois, Paul: The Psychic Treatment of Nervous Disorders.
+
+Huckel, Oliver: Mental Medicine.
+
+James, William: Vital Reserves.
+
+Prince, Morton, and others: Psychotherapeutics.
+
+Sadler, William S.: The Physiology of Faith and Fear.
+
+Worcester, Elwood    }
+McComb, Samuel       }  Religion and Medicine.
+Coriat, Isador H.    }
+
+
+BOOKS ON PSYCHO-ANALYSIS
+
+Brill, A. A.: Fundamentals of Psychoanalysis.
+
+Emerson, L. E.: Nervousness.
+
+Freud, Sigmund: The Interpretation of Dreams;
+  The Psychopathology of Everyday Life;
+  Wit and the Unconscious;
+  Selected Papers and Sexual Theory;
+  A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis.
+
+Frink, H. W.: Morbid Fears and Compulsions.
+
+Hitschmann, E.: Freud's Theories of the Neuroses.
+
+Holt, E. B.: The Freudian Wish.
+
+Jung, Carl G.: The Psychology of the Unconscious; Analytical
+Psychology.
+
+Jones, Ernest: Psycho-analysis; Treatment of the Neuroses, Including
+Psychoneuroses--in Modern Treatment of Nervous and Mental
+Diseases--White and Jelliffe.
+
+Pfister, Oskar: The Psychoanalytic Method.
+
+Putnam, James Jackson: Addresses on Psychoanalysis--Human
+Motives.
+
+Tridon, André: Psychoanalysis.
+
+White, William A.: The Mechanisms of Character
+Formation.
+
+
+JOURNALS DEVOTED TO THE SUBJECT OF NERVOUS DISORDERS
+
+Journal of Abnormal Psychology, published in Boston.
+
+Psychoanalytic Review, published in Washington, D.C.
+
+International Journal of Psychoanalysis, published in
+London.
+
+
+
+
+INDEX
+
+
+A
+
+Acid and Milk, 21, 257
+
+Acidosis, 285
+
+Adjustment
+  a neurosis an effort at, 169
+  to new conditions causes consciousness, 82
+  of the race, in subconscious, 78
+  to the social whole, 164, 216, 380
+
+Adolescence, 59
+
+Adrenal Secretion, 42, 48, 133, 229, 270
+
+Alcoholism, relation to unconscious desires, 377
+
+Alvarez, W.D., 284
+
+Ames, Thaddeus Hoyt, 170
+
+Amnesia, 113
+
+Anaemia, buttermilk in, 282
+
+Anger, 47 ff.
+
+Anxiety and Fear, 366, 367, 368
+
+Anxiety Neurosis, 7, 109
+
+Anxious thought in conversion hysteria, 277
+
+Appetite, symbolic loss of, 276
+
+Association
+  accidental, 341
+  a chain of, 191
+  free, 101, 191
+  making new, 329, 330
+  of ideas, 106
+  subconscious, 346
+  word test, 197, 198
+
+Audience, secured in a neurosis, 169
+
+Auto-eroticism, 57
+
+Auto-intoxication, 279, 282
+
+Automatic writing, 96, 97
+
+Autonomic nervous system, 86, 126, 319
+
+Auto-suggestion, 129, 210
+
+
+B
+
+Bacteria, in anaemia, sciatica, rheumatism, 281
+
+Bashfulness, 46
+
+Bergson, 90
+
+Biliousness, 268
+
+Birth-Theories, 158, 160, 161
+
+Blocking, in word association, 198
+
+Bodily Response to Emotional States, 134
+
+Brain,
+  diseased in insanity, sound in neurosis, 13
+  fag, 125, 241
+  records, 89
+
+Bran fad, 291
+
+Breuer, Joseph, 142
+
+Brill, A.A., 58, 69, 201, 202
+
+Bruce, H. Addington, 200, 201
+
+Burrow, Trigant, 173, 203
+
+Buttermilk in anaemia, 282
+
+
+C
+
+Cabot, Richard, 27, 381
+
+Canfield, Dorothy, 231
+
+Cannon, Walter B., 49, 134
+
+Capitalizing an Illness, 170
+
+Catechism, 247
+
+Cathartics, 283
+  and acidosis, 286
+  and bacterial infection, 282
+  and child birth, 285, 286
+  and operations, 284
+
+Causes of Nerves, 146, 164
+
+Censor, psychic, 104, 195
+
+Change of life, 314
+
+Character and health, 24, 25, 362
+
+Chemistry, 61, 190, 224, 225, 230, 247, 306, 315, 317, 324
+
+Child,
+  birth-theories of, 158
+  father to the man, 90
+  habit-fixation of, 150
+  love-life, four periods 54, 55
+  questions, 158
+  too much bossing of, 154
+  too much petting of, 57
+  training, 160
+
+Childhood,
+  bonds too strong, 72
+  determines future character, 91, 148
+  experiences, 149
+  reactions, 148
+
+Choosing our Emotions, 360
+  a neurosis, 122, 169, 216
+  our Sensations, 339
+
+Christian religion, 74, 374
+
+Coe, George A., 71, 373
+
+Colon, function of, 279, 280
+
+Common Path, 52
+
+Compensation, 168, 340
+
+Complex,
+  against marriage, 204
+  and conditioned reflex, 108
+  and personality, 105
+  breaking up of, 109, 186
+  buried, 187, 192, 197, 201, 202, 215
+  chance signs of, 198
+  definition, 107
+  dissociated, 111
+  emotional, 198, 345
+  father-mother, 152
+  feeling-tone of, 130
+  formation of, 129
+  forming a resistance, 159
+  making over, 187, 190
+  mother-son, 185
+  physiological, 108
+  repressed, 112, 157, 190
+  unconscious, 108
+
+Compromise, 163, 164, 165
+
+Compulsion neuroses, 7, 109, 156
+
+Conditioned reflex, 108
+
+Conduct, kind of, 168, 191, 360
+
+Conflict, 59, 64, 112, 145, 154, 164, 178, 200, 218, 313, 372, 376
+
+Conscience, 164, 173, 177, 196, 376
+
+Consciousness,
+  displaced threshold of, 91
+relation to the subconscious, 82
+  rise of, 82
+
+Constipation, 277 ff.
+  and food, 289, 290
+  cure of, 294
+  due to suggestion, 294
+  purpose of, 288
+
+Conversion-hysteria, 174, 236, 237, 238, 245, 277, 302
+
+Crile, George W., 41, 44
+
+Curiosity,
+  child's concerning sex, 58
+  displacement over to scientific investigation, 45
+
+
+D
+
+Day-dreaming, 162, 325, 326
+
+Defence-reaction, 365
+
+Desire
+  energy of, 78
+  in dreams, 194
+  in emotional habits, 364
+  in nervous disorders, 167
+  instinctive, 38
+  instinctive and ideals, 363
+  tensions of, 196
+
+Diarrhoea, bacterial, 281
+
+Dietetics, essence of, 254
+
+Digestion, 86, 133, 250, 251
+
+Disease,
+  of the ego, 15
+  physical, 12, 13, 28
+  psychic, 12, 13, 14, 28
+
+Disorders, functional and organic, 13
+
+Displacement, 109, 110, 165, 174
+
+Dissociation, 111
+  abnormal, 189
+  an example of, 92, 347
+  in hypnosis, 123
+  in hysteria, 111, 123
+  in neurasthenia, 111
+  increases suggestibility, 122
+  normal, 111
+  of a "Personality," 113
+  of memory picture of walking, 125
+  of power of sight, 170
+
+Dreams, 193 ff.
+  Freud's dictum, 193
+  latent content, 195
+  manifest content, 195
+  purpose of, 195
+  work of, 196
+
+DuBois, Paul, 4, 127, 246, 327, 382
+
+
+E
+
+Education, 202, 218
+  in Emotional Control, 374
+
+Emotion, 35, 360 ff.
+  and complexes, 108
+  and fatigue, 229, 247
+  and instincts, 40 ff.
+  and muscle tone, 137
+  blood-pressure in, 136
+  bodily response to, 133
+  feeling tones in, 130
+  precocious, 150
+  repressed (see repression)
+  secretions in, 132
+  the strongest cement, 107
+  tonic and poisonous, 131
+  unrecognized desire in, 364
+
+Energy,
+  adaptable, 67
+  creative, 34, 69, 71
+  inhibited, 235
+  libido, 36, 252
+  misdirected, 28, 379
+  new level of, 221
+  physiological reserve, 117
+  redirection of, 385
+  releasers of, 245
+  three uses of, 23
+  utilization of, 68, 165
+
+"Energies of Men", 221
+
+Environment, 33, 96, 149, 334
+
+Evolution, 73
+
+Exhaustion, nervous, 216, 224, 243, 246
+
+Explanation vs Suggestion, 206 ff.
+
+
+F
+
+Fads-dynamogenic, 252
+
+Faith, 118
+
+Family complex, 153
+
+Fatigue, 219 ff.
+  a Matter of Chemistry, 225
+  and insomnia, 326, 327
+  and moral tension, 166
+  and sex-repression, 235, 244
+  true and false, 223
+
+Fear, 40 ff.
+  exaggerated, 368
+  externalized, 368
+  of cold, 348
+  of fatigue, 219, 354
+  of food, 133, 251
+  of heat, 237
+  of noise, 355
+  physical effects of, 41
+  purpose of, 41
+  symbolic of desire, 368
+
+Feeling our Feelings, 333 ff.
+
+Feeling-tones, 130, 206, 213, 229
+
+Fermentation, 264
+
+Finding New Vents, 379
+
+Fixation of Habits, 150, 151, 162
+
+Flat-foot, 138
+
+Food, 254 ff.
+  and constipation, 289, 290
+  for the children, 256
+  idiosyncrasies, 258
+  mixtures, 255
+  variety essential, 255
+
+Foreconscious, 79
+
+Free Association, 101, 191, 195
+
+Freud, Sigmund, 69, 74, 83, 84, 104, 142, 149, 153, 163, 185, 188, 193,
+  210, 342, 376, 382
+
+Freudian principles, 143, 144, 147
+  misconceptions concerning, 184, 185
+
+Frink, H.W., 89, 107, 158, 162, 171, 195, 218
+
+
+G
+
+Gall-stones, 269
+
+Gas on the stomach, 264
+
+Gastric juice, 86, 134
+
+Gastritis, 266
+
+Genius, 116
+
+Girard-Mangin, Dr., 231
+
+Goitre, 239
+
+
+H
+
+Habit,
+  defined, 150
+  dissociation, 189
+  dreaming, 162
+  fixation of, 150, 152
+  of insomnia, 322
+  of loving, 150, 164
+  of rebelling, 150, 164
+  of repressing normal instincts, 151
+  reactions, 364
+
+Heredity, 148
+
+Hidden desires, 363, 368
+
+Hinkle, Bertha M., 154
+
+Holt, E.B., 213
+
+Homosexuality, 184
+
+Hoover, Herbert A., 384
+
+Hormone, 305, 319
+
+Hudson, J.W., 91, 95
+
+Hydrochloric Acid, 267
+
+Hygiene,
+  laws of, 127
+  moral, 206
+
+Hygienic conditions, 222, 230
+
+Hypersensitiveness, 342
+
+Hypnosis, 84 ff.
+  aid to diagnosis, 187
+  its drawbacks, 188
+  suggestibility in, 189
+
+Hysteria, 7, 111
+
+Hysterical pains, 353
+
+Hysterical pregnancy, (case), 127
+
+
+I
+
+Ideas,
+  and emotions, 23
+  ascetic, 253
+  contagion of, 120
+  dynamogenic, 253
+  not surgical, 262
+
+Idiosyncrasies, physical, 258
+
+Identification, 110
+
+Imagination, 162
+
+Incantation, 211
+
+Indigestion; 211, 250
+
+Inferiority complex, 340, 380
+
+Inhibition, 188, 245, 293, 306, 330, 377
+
+Insomnia, 322 ff.
+
+Instincts and their Emotions, 33 ff., 51 ff.
+
+Instincts,
+  beneficent, 85
+  energy releasers, 233
+  race-inheritance, 85
+  repressed, 28, 103, 147, 169, 172
+  sex (see under sex)
+  thwarted, 235, 244, 340, 356, 367, 379
+
+Internal Secretion,
+  of ovary, 316, 317
+  (see Adrenal)
+  (see Thyroid)
+
+Introspection, 26
+
+Introversion, 380, 381
+
+
+J
+
+James, William, 49, 221, 227, 243, 253, 347, 382
+
+Janet, Pierre, 188
+
+Jealousy, 154, 380
+
+Jelliffe, Smith Ely, 98, 114, 153, 163
+
+Jones, Ernest, 69
+
+Judicious neglect, 127
+
+Jung, C.G., 8, 64, 69, 163, 197, 380
+
+
+K
+
+Kempf, Edward J., 86
+
+Kinaesthetic sensations, 336
+
+
+L
+
+Latency period, 60
+
+Libido, 36, 147, 252
+
+Liver trouble, 268
+
+
+M
+
+Masturbation, 184
+
+McDougall, Wm., 49, 122, 372
+
+Memories, 84 ff.
+
+Menopause, 314
+
+Menstruation, 306
+
+Mind (see Consciousness and Subconscious)
+
+Misconceptions,
+  about the body, 21, 22
+  about theory of sex, 184
+
+Mixtures, fear of, 257
+
+Monogamy, 63
+
+Moral hygiene, 206
+
+Mosher, Clelia Duel, 308
+
+Muscle-tone, 137, 244
+
+Myth, 146
+
+
+N
+
+Narcissus, 55, 152, 340
+
+Nausea, 101, 177, 275
+  of pregnancy, 319
+
+Nerves,
+  attitude toward, 3
+  causes of, 28, 148
+  drama of, 10, 29
+  medical schools and, 16
+  not physical, 14
+  prevention of, 385
+
+Neurasthenia, 111, 246
+
+Neuritis, 14, 244
+
+Neurosis,
+  a compromise, 167
+  a confidence game, 179
+  a failure of sublimation, 381
+  a flight from reality, 170
+  an ethical struggle, 177
+  an introversion, 381
+  and shell-shock, 147
+  and suggestion, 129
+  anxiety, 7, 109
+  awkwardness of, 213
+  compulsion, 109
+  caused by buried complexes, 108, 190
+  definition 112
+  origin in childhood, 149, 157, 217
+  purpose of, 167
+  root-complex of, 153
+
+
+O
+
+Obsession, 7, 204
+
+Oedipus Complex, 154
+
+Organic trouble, 11, 12, 251
+
+Ouija Board, 97
+
+Over-awareness, 352
+
+Over-compensation, 67
+
+Over-determined, 148
+
+
+P
+
+Pain,
+  at base of the brain, 351
+  chronic hysterical, 341
+  menstrual, 306
+
+Personality,
+  alterations of, 7, 15, 20
+  and emotions, 362, 369
+  and will, 372
+  choice by, 216
+  complexes and, 107
+  disrupted, 382
+  multiple, 111, 131
+  nervousness a disorder of, 15
+  reverence for, 383
+  unified, 375
+
+Persuasion, 206
+
+Pfister, Oskar, 153, 166, 382
+
+Phantasy, 153, 163
+
+Phobia, 7, 368
+
+Plagiarism, 98
+
+Popular Misconceptions, 21
+
+Prince, Morton, 79, 84, 89, 95, 97, 112, 132, 188, 347
+
+Psycho-analysis, 189 ff.
+
+Psychological explanation, 208
+
+Psychology, 25, 27, 94
+
+Psycho-neurosis, 144, 147, 163, 169 (see also neurosis)
+
+Psycho-therapy, 74, 187, 216
+
+Ptosis, 139, 251
+
+Putnam, James J., 3, 34, 69, 215, 366, 370, 382
+
+
+R
+
+Race-memories, 84
+
+Rationalization, 90, 155, 168, 317
+
+Reaction and over-reaction, 149, 198, 202, 238, 335
+
+Reality, flight from, 164, 379
+
+Re-education, 183 ff.
+
+Reflex,
+  conditioned, 108
+  physiological, 349
+
+Regression to infantile state, 163, 164
+  case of, 92
+
+Religion, 74, 89, 374, 382
+
+Reminiscences, hysteric suffers from, 7
+
+Repression, 104, 156, 160, 162, 235, 245, 304
+
+Resistance, 160, 188, 192, 202, 211
+
+Rest-cure, 246
+
+Rheumatism, buttermilk treatment of, 282
+
+Rixford, Emmet L., 283
+
+Royce, Josiah, 375
+
+
+S
+
+Sadler, Wm., 126, 136
+
+School, four grade, 54
+
+Second wind, 221
+
+Self-abuse, 184, 238
+
+Self-pity, 365
+
+Self-regard, 45, 103, 157, 374
+
+Sensations, lowered threshold to, 333 ff.
+
+Sensitiveness, 333, 340
+
+Sex,
+  and artistic creation, 379
+  and "Nerves," 141 ff.
+  glands, secretion of, 305, 314, 316
+instinct organically aroused, 65
+  instinct thwarted, 161, 367, 379
+  instruction, 160
+  license, 184
+  life, 143, 146, 157
+  perversion, 152
+  phantasy, 163
+  psychic component of, 185, 356, 379, 383
+  repressed, 104
+  sublimation of, 233, 379
+
+Shell-shock, (see foreword)
+  also 145, 147
+
+Sherrington, Chas., 39
+
+Sick-headache, 270
+
+Sidis, Boris, 24, 84, 188, 222, 337, 341
+
+Slips of tongue, etc., 199
+
+Slogan,
+  of psychoanalytic school, 215
+  woman's, 314
+
+Social code, 184
+
+Soda, misuse of, 266
+
+"Sour-stomach," 260, 266
+
+Sprees, 376
+
+Stammering, 200
+
+Standard,
+  double, 66
+  single, 62
+
+Stomach, 133
+  and conversion hysteria, 250 ff.
+  fads, 252
+  gas on, 252
+
+Subconscious mind, 77 ff.
+  amenable to control by suggestion, emotion, 119
+  functions of, 85, 335, 337
+  habits of, 105, 259
+  physical expression of, 245
+  playing confidence game, 311
+  store-house of memories, 84, 89
+  tireless, 325
+
+Sublimation, 379 ff.
+  a synthesis, 164
+  and religion, 74, 382
+  definition (Freud), 69, 70
+  failure of, 71, 147, 381
+  in a career, 385
+  in artistic creation, 68
+  natural trends of, 383
+  of energy, 178, 238, 309
+
+Success, measure of, 380
+
+Sugar in urine, 133
+
+Suggestion,
+  a method of psychotherapy, 208
+  constipation the result of, 289, 298
+  definition, 121
+  false, 302
+  in child training, 121
+  in hypnosis, 99, 188
+  in sleep, 99
+  inconvenient forms of, 296
+  power of, 45
+  unhealthy, 310
+
+Suggestibility, 122, 189, 206
+
+Superman, 339
+
+Symbolism, 171, 176, 275, 342
+
+Symptoms, purpose of, 168
+
+
+T
+
+Taboos,
+  dietary, 250 ff.
+  interest in, 289
+
+Tensions, psychic, 69, 85, 353, 366
+
+Thresholds, psychic, 337 ff.
+
+Thyroid secretion, 42, 133, 185, 270
+
+Transference, 109, 193, 264
+
+Trotter, W., 46
+
+
+U
+
+Unconscious, (see subconscious)
+
+
+V
+
+Venereal disease, 304, 317
+
+Vitamins, 255
+
+
+W
+
+White, Wm. A., 69, 82, 83, 98
+
+Will, 371
+
+Williams, Tom A., 21, 213
+
+Wish fulfilment, 171, 194, 200, 214
+
+Word-association test, 197
+
+Work-cure, 385
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS FROM CASES
+
+
+A
+
+Adolescence and depression, 312, 313
+
+Anger and circulation, 136
+
+Angina pectoris, false, 129
+
+Anxiety-neurosis, 175
+
+
+B
+
+Bearing children, 318
+
+Brain fag, 241
+
+Bran crackers and prunes, 258
+
+
+C
+
+Cathartics, abuse of, 284
+
+Childhood sex-reactions, 203
+
+Constipation and lacerations in labor, 296
+
+Constipation and Mineral Oil, 295
+
+Constipation, recovery from, (some cases), 294
+
+Contamination, fear of, 159
+
+Conversion of moral distress to physical, 348
+
+
+D
+
+Danger-signals and the railroad man, 344
+
+Dissociated state, memories in, 92
+
+
+E
+
+Emotion and sick-headache, 273
+
+"Enjoying" poor health, 213, 345
+
+"Exhaustion," 243
+
+Eye-strain, twenty-five years, 274
+
+
+F
+
+Fatigue, 228, 234, (two cases), 239
+
+Fatigue and emotion, (three cases), 354
+
+Fear, 237,
+  of heat, 237
+
+Fear of air, 348, 349
+
+Fear of cold, (three cases), 348, 349
+
+Fear of light, (two cases), 350
+
+Fear complicating labor, 320
+
+"Flat-foot," 137
+
+Forgetting and repressed wish, 200
+
+Free-love, chemical cause of, 317
+
+
+G
+
+Gall-stones, 269
+
+
+I
+
+Idiosyncrasy for eggs, 212
+
+Insomnia and attention, 329
+
+Insomnia and point of view, 328
+
+Insomnia and wrong associations, 330
+
+Insomnia, chronic, 328
+
+
+L
+
+Library, child fear of, 100
+
+Locomotor Ataxia, exaggeration of symptoms, 128
+
+
+M
+
+Menstrual pain, unnecessary, 220
+
+Muscle-tumors, phantom, 127, 128
+
+
+N
+
+Nausea, in sex-repression, 101, 177
+
+Nervous indigestion, 211
+
+"Neuritis," 174,
+  false, 244
+
+Noise, fear of, 355
+
+
+O
+
+Obsession against marriage, 204
+
+
+P
+
+Paralysis, fear of, 345, 346
+
+Physical illness mistaken for functional, 252
+
+Plagiarism, 98
+
+
+R
+
+Recovering lost word, 80
+
+Repression and disgust, 199
+
+
+S
+
+Sick-headache, 271, 274
+
+Skim-milk diet, 262
+
+"Sour stomach" and two Tyrolese, 260
+
+T
+
+Temper, an indulgence, 359
+
+The "Repeater" gains in weight, 263
+
+Thyroid disturbance, fatigue in, 239, 240
+
+
+U
+
+Unconscious Association and symptoms, 346
+
+
+W
+
+Walking, lost power of, 124
+
+Word Association test, 198
+
+
+Transcriber's Notes
+
+The following typographical errors were noted and corrected:
+
+On page 146 of the book: Heading changed from "A Searching Queston"
+  to "A Searching Question".
+On page 152, "Narcisstic" changed to "Narcissistic".
+On page 276, "..the nausea disappearaed." changed to "disappeared".
+On page 294, "...Nature's functions re reëstablished" changed to "be".
+On page 302, "...nor even of man's infringment..." changed to
+  "infringement".
+On page 330, "I put my mouth up close to to her ear...", removed the
+  duplicate "to".
+On page 346, for the paragraph starting "But these symptoms...",
+  "disappeaared" changed to "disappeared".
+In the Index, page 401, "Thesholds" changed to "Thresholds".
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Outwitting Our Nerves
+by Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury
+
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Outwitting Our Nerves
+by Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Outwitting Our Nerves
+       A Primer of Psychotherapy
+
+Author: Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury
+
+Release Date: February 8, 2005 [EBook #14980]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OUTWITTING OUR NERVES ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Rick Niles, Ronald Holder and the PG Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+
+
+<h1>OUTWITTING OUR</h1>
+<h1>NERVES</h1>
+
+<h3>A PRIMER OF PSYCHOTHERAPY</h3>
+
+<h3>BY</h3>
+
+<h2>JOSEPHINE A. JACKSON, M.D.</h2>
+<h2>HELEN M. SALISBURY</h2>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h3>NEW YORK</h3>
+<h3>THE CENTURY CO.</h3>
+<h3>1922</h3>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+
+<h6>1921, by</h6>
+<h6>THE CENTURY CO.</h6>
+<h6>PRINTED IN U.S.A.</h6>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h3>TO</h3>
+
+<h3>MARY PATTERSON MANLY</h3>
+
+<h3>A LOVER OF TRUTH</h3>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h2>FOREWORD</h2>
+
+
+<p>&quot;Your trouble is nervous. There is nothing we can cut out and there is
+nothing we can give medicine for.&quot; With these words a young college
+student was dismissed from one of our great diagnostic clinics.</p>
+
+<p>The physician was right. In a nervous disorder there is nothing to cut
+out and there is nothing to give medicine for. Nevertheless there is
+something to be done,&mdash;something which is as definite and scientific
+as a prescription or a surgical operation.</p>
+
+<p>Psychotherapy, which is treatment by the mental measures of
+psycho-analysis and re-education, is an established procedure in the
+scientific world to-day. Nervous disorders are now curable, as has
+been proved by the clinical results in scores of cases from civil
+life, under treatment by Freud, Janet, Prince, Sidis, DuBois, and
+others; and in thousands of cases of war neuroses as reported by Smith
+and Pear, Eder, MacCurdy, and other military observers. These army
+experts have shown that shell-shock in war is the same as nervousness
+in civil life and that both may be cured by psycho-analysis and
+re-education.</p>
+
+<p>For more than a decade, in handling nervous cases, I have made use of
+the findings of recognized authorities on psychopathology. Truths have
+been applied in a special way, with the features of re-education so
+emphasized that my home has been called a psychological
+boarding-school. As the alumni have gone back to the game of life
+with no haunting memories of usual sanatorium methods, but with the
+equipment of a fuller self-knowledge and sense of power, they have
+sent back a call for some word that shall extend this helpful message
+to a larger circle.</p>
+
+<p>There has come, too, a demand for a book which shall give accurate and
+up-to-date information to those physicians who are eager for light on
+the subject of nervous disorders, and especially for knowledge of the
+significant contributions of Sigmund Freud, but who are too busy to
+devote time to highly technical volumes outside their own specialties.</p>
+
+<p>This need for a simple, comprehensive presentation of the Freudian
+principles I have attempted to meet in this primer of psychotherapy,
+providing enough of biological and psychological background to make
+them intelligible, and enough application and illustration to make
+them useful to the general practitioner or the average layman.</p>
+
+<p class="textrite">JOSEPHINE A. JACKSON.</p>
+
+<p>Pasadena, California, 1921.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h2>CONTENTS</h2>
+
+
+<table cellspacing="0" cellpadding="7" border="0" summary="Table of Contents">
+<tr>
+	<td colspan="2" align="center">PART I: THE STRANGE WAYS OF NERVES</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+	<td>CHAPTER I</td>
+	<td align="right">PAGE</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+	<td colspan="2" align="center">In which most of us plead guilty to the charge of &quot;nerves.&quot;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+	<td><span class="smcap"><a href="#CHAPTER_I">Nervous Folk</a></span></td>
+	<td align="right">3</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+	<td>&nbsp;<br />CHAPTER II</td>
+	<td>&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+	<td colspan="2" align="center">In which we learn what &quot;nerves&quot; are not and get a hint of
+what they are.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+	<td><span class="smcap"><a href="#CHAPTER_II">The Drama of Nerves</a></span></td>
+	<td align="right">10</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+	<td colspan="2" align="center">&nbsp;<br />PART II: &quot;HOW THE WHEELS GO ROUND&quot;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+	<td>CHAPTER III</td>
+	<td>&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+	<td colspan="2" align="center">In which we find a goodly inheritance.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+	<td><span class="smcap"><a href="#CHAPTER_III">The Story of the Instincts</a></span></td>
+	<td align="right">33</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+	<td>&nbsp;<br />CHAPTER IV</td>
+	<td>&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+	<td colspan="2" align="center">In which we learn more about ourselves.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+	<td><span class="smcap"><a href="#CHAPTER_IV">The Story of the Instincts</a></span> (Continued)</td>
+	<td align="right">51</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+	<td>&nbsp;<br />CHAPTER V</td>
+	<td>&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+	<td colspan="2" align="center">In which we look below the surface and discover a veritable wonderland.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+	<td><span class="smcap"><a href="#CHAPTER_V">The Subconscious Mind</a></span></td>
+	<td align="right">77</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+	<td>&nbsp;<br />CHAPTER VI</td>
+	<td>&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+	<td colspan="2" align="center">In which we learn why it pays to be cheerful.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+	<td><span class="smcap"><a href="#CHAPTER_VI">Body and Mind</a></span></td>
+	<td align="right">118</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+	<td>&nbsp;<br />CHAPTER VII</td>
+	<td>&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+	<td colspan="2" align="center">In which we go to the root of the matter.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+	<td><span class="smcap"><a href="#CHAPTER_VII">The Real Trouble</a></span></td>
+	<td align="right">141</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+	<td colspan="2" align="center">&nbsp;<br />PART III: THE MASTERY OF &quot;NERVES&quot;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+	<td>CHAPTER VIII</td>
+	<td>&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+	<td colspan="2" align="center">In which we pick up the clue.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+	<td><span class="smcap"><a href="#CHAPTER_VIII">The Way Out</a></span></td>
+	<td align="right">183</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+	<td>&nbsp;<br />CHAPTER IX</td>
+	<td>&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+	<td colspan="2" align="center">In which we discover new stores of energy and relearn the
+truth about fatigue.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+	<td><span class="smcap"><a href="#CHAPTER_IX">That Tired Feeling</a></span></td>
+	<td align="right">219</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+	<td>&nbsp;<br />CHAPTER X</td>
+	<td>&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+	<td colspan="2" align="center">In which the ban is lifted.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+	<td><span class="smcap"><a href="#CHAPTER_X">Dietary Taboos</a></span></td>
+	<td align="right">250</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+	<td>&nbsp;<br />CHAPTER XI</td>
+	<td>&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+	<td colspan="2" align="center">In which we learn an old trick.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+	<td><span class="smcap"><a href="#CHAPTER_XI">The Bugaboo of Constipation</a></span></td>
+	<td align="right">278</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+	<td>&nbsp;<br />CHAPTER XII</td>
+	<td>&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+	<td colspan="2" align="center">In which handicaps are dropped.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+	<td><span class="smcap"><a href="#CHAPTER_XII">A Woman's Ills</a></span></td>
+	<td align="right">300</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+	<td>&nbsp;<br />CHAPTER XIII</td>
+	<td>&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+	<td colspan="2" align="center">In which we lose our dread of night.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+	<td><span class="smcap"><a href="#CHAPTER_XIII">That Interesting Insomnia</a></span></td>
+	<td align="right">322</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+	<td>&nbsp;<br />CHAPTER XIV</td>
+	<td>&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+	<td colspan="2" align="center">In which we raise our thresholds.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+	<td><span class="smcap"><a href="#CHAPTER_XIV">Feeling Our Feelings</a></span></td>
+	<td align="right">333</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+	<td>&nbsp;<br />CHAPTER XV</td>
+	<td>&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+	<td colspan="2" align="center">In which we learn discrimination.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+	<td><span class="smcap"><a href="#CHAPTER_XV">Choosing Our Emotions</a></span></td>
+	<td align="right">359</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+	<td>&nbsp;<br />CHAPTER XVI</td>
+	<td>&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+	<td colspan="2" align="center">In which we find new use for our steam.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+	<td><span class="smcap"><a href="#CHAPTER_XVI">Finding Vent in Sublimation</a></span></td>
+	<td align="right">379</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+	<td>&nbsp;<br /><span class="smcap"><a href="#GLOSSARY">Glossary</a></span></td>
+	<td align="right">386</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+	<td>&nbsp;<br /><span class="smcap"><a href="#BIBLIOGRAPHY">Bibliography</a></span></td>
+	<td align="right">390</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+	<td>&nbsp;<br /><span class="smcap"><a href="#INDEX">Index</a></span></td>
+	<td align="right">393</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+
+<p>
+<br /><!-- Page 1 --><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1" />
+<br /><!-- Page 2 --><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2" />
+</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h2><!-- Page 3 --><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3" />OUTWITTING OUR NERVES</h2>
+
+<p class="heading"><a name="CHAPTER_I" id="CHAPTER_I">CHAPTER I</a></p>
+
+<p class="heading"><i>In Which Most of Us Plead Guilty to the Charge of &quot;Nerves.&quot;</i></p>
+
+<p class="heading">NERVOUS FOLK</p>
+
+<p class="scheading">Who's Who</p>
+
+
+<p>Whenever the subject of &quot;nerves&quot; is mentioned most people begin trying
+to prove an alibi. The man who is nervous and knows that he is
+nervous, realizes that he needs help, but the man who has as yet felt
+no lack of stability in himself is quite likely to be impatient with
+that whole class of people who are liable to nervous breakdown. It is
+therefore well to remind ourselves at once that the line between the
+so-called &quot;normal&quot; and the nervous is an exceedingly fine one.
+&quot;Nervous invalids and well people are indistinguishable both in theory
+and in practice,&quot;<a name="FNanchor_1" id="FNanchor_1"></a>
+<a href="#Footnote_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> and &quot;after all
+we are most of us more or less <!-- Page 4 --><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4" />
+neurasthenic.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_2" id="FNanchor_2"></a>
+<a href="#Footnote_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> The
+fact is that everybody is a possible neurotic.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1" id="Footnote_1"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_1"><span class="label">[1]</span>
+</a> Putnam: <i>Human Motives</i>, p. 117.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2" id="Footnote_2"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_2"><span class="label">[2]</span>
+</a> DuBois: <i>Physic Treatment of Nervous Disorders</i>, p. 172.</p></div>
+
+<p>So, as we think about nervous folk and begin to recognize our friends
+and relatives in this class, it may be that some of us will
+unexpectedly find ourselves looking in the mirror. Some of our
+lifelong habits may turn out to be nervous tricks. At any rate, it
+behooves us to be careful about throwing stones, for most of us live
+in houses that are at least part glass.</p>
+
+
+<p class="scheading">The Earmarks</p>
+
+<p><b>Am I &quot;Like Folks&quot;?</b> Before we begin to talk about the real sufferer
+from &quot;nerves,&quot; the nervous invalid, let us look for some of the
+earmarks that are often found on the supposedly well person. All of
+these signs are deviations from the normal and are sure indications of
+nervousness. The test question for each individual is this: &quot;Am I
+'like folks'?&quot; To be normal and to be well is to be &quot;like folks.&quot; Can
+the average man stand this or that? If he can, then you are not normal
+if you cannot. Do the people around you eat the thing that upsets you?
+If they do, ten chances to one your trouble is not a physical
+idiosyncrasy, but a nervous habit. In bodily matters, at least, it is
+a good thing to be one of the crowd.</p>
+
+<p>Many people who would resent being called anything <!-- Page 5 -->
+<a name="Page_5" id="Page_5" />but normal&mdash;in
+general&mdash;are not at all loth to be thought &quot;different,&quot; when it comes
+to particulars. Are there not many of us who are at small pains to
+hide the fact that we &quot;didn't sleep a wink last night,&quot; or that we
+&quot;can't stand&quot; a ticking clock or a crowing rooster? We sometimes
+consider it a mark of distinction to have a delicate appetite and to
+have to choose our food with care. If we are frank with ourselves,
+some of us will have to admit that our own ailments seem interesting,
+while the other person's ills are &quot;merely nervous&quot; or imaginary or
+abnormal. After all, a good many of us will have to plead guilty to
+the charge of nervousness.</p>
+
+<p>We have only to read the endless advertisements of cathartics and
+&quot;internal baths,&quot; or to check up the quantity of laxatives sold at any
+drug store, to realize the wide-spread bondage to that great bugaboo
+constipation. He who is constipated can hardly prove an alibi to
+&quot;nerves.&quot; Then there are the school-teachers and others who are worn
+out at the end of each year's work, hardly able to hold on until
+vacation; and the people who can't manage their tempers; and those who
+are upset over trifles; and those who are dissatisfied with life. To a
+certain degree, at least, all of these are nervous persons. The list
+grows.</p>
+
+<p><b>Half-Power Engines.</b> These people are all supposed to be well. They
+keep going&mdash;by fits and <!-- Page 6 --><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6" />
+starts&mdash;and as they are used to running on
+three cylinders, with frequent stops for repairs, they accept this
+rate of living as a matter of course, never realizing that they might
+be sixty horse-power engines, instead of their little thirty or forty.
+For this large and neglected class of people psychotherapy has a
+stimulating message, and for them many of the following pages have
+been written.</p>
+
+<p><b>The Real Sufferers.</b> These so-called normal people are merely on the
+fringe of nervousness, on the border line between normality and
+disease. Beyond them there exists a great company of those whose lives
+have been literally wrecked by &quot;nerves.&quot; Their work interrupted or
+given up for good, their minds harassed by doubts and fears, their
+bodies incapacitated, they crowd the sanatoria and the health resorts
+in a vain search for health. From New England to Florida they seek,
+and on to Colorado and California, and perhaps to Hawaii and the
+Orient, thinking by rest and change to pull themselves together and
+become whole again. There are thousands of these people&mdash;lawyers,
+preachers, teachers, mothers, social workers, business and
+professional folk of all sorts, the kind of persons the world needs
+most&mdash;laid off for months or years of treatment, on account of some
+kind of nervous disorder.</p>
+
+<p><b>Various Types of Nervousness.</b> The psychoneuroses
+<!-- Page 7 --><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7" />are of many
+forms.<a name="FNanchor_3" id="FNanchor_3"></a>
+<a href="#Footnote_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> To some
+people &quot;nerves&quot; means nervous prostration,
+breakdown, fatigue, weakness, insomnia, the blues, upset stomach, or
+unsteady heart,&mdash;all signs of so-called neurasthenia or
+nerve-weakness. To others the word &quot;nerves&quot; calls up memories of
+strange, emotional storms that seem to rise out of nowhere, to sweep
+the sky clear of everything else, and to pass as they came, leaving
+the victim and the family equally mystified as to their meaning. These
+strange alterations of personality are but one manifestation of
+hysteria, that myriad-faced disorder which is able to mimic so
+successfully the symptoms of almost every known disease, from tumors
+and fevers to paralysis and blindness.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3" id="Footnote_3"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_3"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> The technical term for nervousness is
+<i>psycho-neurosis</i>&mdash;disease of the psyche. There are certain &quot;real
+neuroses&quot; such as paralysis and spinal-cord disease, which involve an
+organic impairment of nerve-tissue. However, as this book deals only
+with psychic disturbance, we shall, throughout, use the term
+<i>neuroses</i> and <i>psycho-neuroses</i> indiscriminately, to denote nervous
+or functional disorders.</p></div>
+
+<p>To still other people nervous trouble means fear,&mdash;just terrible fear
+without object or meaning or reason (anxiety neuroses); or a definite
+fear of some harmless object (phobia); or a strange, persistent,
+recurrent idea, quite foreign to the personality and beyond the reach
+of reason (obsession); or an insistent desire to perform some absurd
+act (compulsion); or perhaps, a deadly and pall-like depression (the
+blues).</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 8 --><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8" />
+As a matter of fact, the neuroses include all these varieties, and
+various shades and combinations of each. There are, however, certain
+mental characteristics which recur with surprising regularity in most
+of the various phases&mdash;dissatisfaction, lack of confidence, a sense of
+being alone and shut in to oneself, doubt, anxiety, fear, worry,
+self-depreciation, lack of interest in outside affairs, pessimism,
+fixed belief in one's powerlessness, along whatever line it may be.</p>
+
+<p>Underneath all these differing forms of nervousness are the same
+mechanisms and the same kind of difficulty. To understand one is to
+understand all, and to understand normal people as well; for in the
+last analysis we are one and all built on the same lines and governed
+by the same laws. The only difference is, that, as Jung says, &quot;the
+nervous person falls ill of the conflicts with which the well person
+battles successfully.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="scheading">Summary</p>
+
+<p>Since at least seventy-five per cent. of all the people who apply to
+physicians for help are nervous patients; and since these thousands of
+patients are not among the mental incompetents, but are as a rule
+among the highly organized, conscientious folk who have most to
+contribute to the leadership of the world, it is obviously of vital
+importance to society that its citizens should be taught how to solve
+their inner conflicts and <!-- Page 9 --><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9" />keep
+well. In this strategic period of
+reconstruction, the world that is being remodeled cannot afford to
+lose one leader because of an unnecessary breakdown.</p>
+
+<p>There is greater need than ever for people who can keep at their tasks
+without long enforced rests; people who can think deeply and
+continuously without brain-fag; people who can concentrate all their
+powers on the work in hand without wasting time or energy on
+unnecessary aches and pains; people whose bodies are kept up to the
+top notch of vitality by well-digested food, well-slept sleep,
+well-forgotten fatigue, and well-used reserve energy. That such a
+state of affairs is no Utopian dream, but is merely a matter of
+knowing how, will appear more clearly in later chapters.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<!-- Page 10 --><div><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10"></a></div>
+
+<p class="heading"><a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II">CHAPTER II</a></p>
+
+<p class="heading"><i>In which we learn what &quot;nerves&quot; are not, and get a hint of what they
+are</i></p>
+
+<p class="heading">THE DRAMA OF NERVES</p>
+
+<p class="scheading">An Exploded Theory</p>
+
+
+<p><b>&quot;Nerves&quot; not Nerves.</b> Pick up any newspaper, turn over a few pages,
+and you will be sure to come to an advertisement something like this:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span>Tired man, your nerves are sick!<br /></span>
+<span>They need rest and a tonic to restore<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">their worn-out depleted cells!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>No wonder people have believed this kind of thing. It has been dinned
+into their ears for many years. They have read it with their breakfast
+coffee and gazed at it in the street cars and even heard it from their
+family physicians, until it has become part and parcel of their
+thinking; yet all the time the fundamental idea has been false, and
+now, at last, the theory is exploded.</p>
+
+<p>So far as the modern laboratory can discover, the
+<!-- Page 11 --><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11" />nerves of the most
+confirmed neurotic are perfectly healthy. They are not starved, nor
+depleted, nor exhausted; the fat-sheath is not wanting, there is no
+inflammation, there is nothing lacking in the cell itself, and there
+is no accumulation of fatigue products. Paradoxical as it may sound,
+there is nothing the matter with a nervous person's nerves. The
+faithful messengers have borne the blame for so long that their name
+has gotten itself woven into the very language as symbolic of disease.
+When we speak of nervous prostration, neurasthenia, neuroses,
+nervousness, and &quot;nerves&quot; we mean that body and mind are behaving
+badly because of functional disorder. These terms are good enough as
+figures of speech, so long as we are not fooled by them; but accepting
+them in their literal sense has been a costly procedure.</p>
+
+<p>Thanks to the investigations of physiologist and psychologist, usually
+combined in the person of a physician, &quot;nervousness&quot; has been found to
+be not an organic disease but a functional one. This is a very
+important distinction, for an organic disease implies impairment of
+the tissues of the organ, while a functional disorder means only a
+disturbance of its action. In a purely nervous disorder there seems to
+be no trouble with what the nerves and organs are, but only with what
+they do; it is behavior and not tissue that is at fault. Of course, in
+real life, things are seldom as <!-- Page 12 --><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12" />
+clear-cut as they are in books, and
+so it happens that often there is a combination of organic and
+functional disease that is puzzling even to a skilled diagnostician.
+The first essential is a diagnosis as to whether it be an organic
+disease, with accompanying nervous symptoms, or a functional
+disturbance complicated by some minor organic trouble. If the main
+cause is organic, only physical means can cure it, but if the trouble
+is functional, no amount of medicine or surgery, diet or rest, will
+touch it; yet the symptoms are so similar and the dividing line is so
+elusive, that great skill is sometimes required to determine whether a
+given symptom points to a disturbance of physical tissue or only to
+behavior.</p>
+
+<p>If the physician is sometimes fooled, how much more the sufferer
+himself! Nausea from a healthy stomach is just as sickening as nausea
+from a diseased one. A fainting-spell is equally uncomfortable,
+whether it come from an impaired heart or simply from one that is
+behaving badly for the moment. It must be remembered that in
+functional nervousness the trouble is very real. The organs are really
+&quot;acting up.&quot; Sometimes it is the brain that misbehaves instead of the
+stomach or heart. In that case it often reports all kinds of pains
+that have no origin outside of the brain. Pain, of course, is
+perceived only by the brain. Cut the telegraph wire, the nerve, and no
+amount of injury to the finger can cause pain. It is equally true that
+a <!-- Page 13 --><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13" />misbehaving
+brain can report sensations that have no external
+cause, that have not come in through the regular channel along the
+nerve. The pain feels just the same, is every bit as uncomfortable as
+though its cause were external.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes, instead of reporting false pains, the brain misbehaves in
+other ways. It seems to lose its power to decide, to concentrate, or
+to remember. Then the patient is almost sure to fancy himself going
+insane. But insanity is a physical disease, implying changes or toxins
+in the brain cells. Functional disorders tell another story. Their
+cause is different, even though the picture they present is often a
+close copy of an organic disease.</p>
+
+<p><b>Distorted Pictures.</b> It should not be thought, however, that the
+symptoms of functional and organic troubles are identical. Hysteria
+and neurasthenia closely simulate every imaginable physical disease,
+but they do not exactly parallel any one of them. It may take a
+skilled eye to discover the differences, but differences there are.
+Functional troubles usually show a near-picture of organic disease,
+with just enough contradictory or inconsistent features to furnish a
+clue as to their real nature. For this reason it is important that the
+treatment of the disease be solely the province of the physician; for
+only the carefully trained in all the requirements of diagnosis can
+differentiate the <!-- Page 14 --><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14" />pseudo
+from the real, the innocuous from the disastrous.</p>
+
+<p>False or nervous neuritis may feel like real neuritis (the result of
+poisons in the blood), but it gives itself away when it localizes
+itself in parts of the body where there is no nerve trunk. The
+exhaustion of neurasthenia sometimes seems extreme enough to be the
+result of a dangerous physical condition; but when this exhaustion
+disappears as if by magic under the proper kind of treatment, we know
+that the trouble cannot be in the body. Let it be said, then, with all
+the emphasis we can command, &quot;nerves&quot; are not physical. Laboratory
+investigation, contradictory symptoms, and response to treatment all
+bear witness to this fact. Whatever symptoms of disturbance there may
+be in pure nervousness, the nerves and organs can in no way be shown
+to be diseased.</p>
+
+
+<p class="scheading">The Positive Side</p>
+
+
+<p><b>&quot;Nerves&quot; not Imaginary.</b> &quot;But,&quot; some one says, &quot;how can healthy
+organs misbehave in this way? Something must be wrong. There must be
+some cause. If 'nerves' are not physical, what are they? They surely
+can't be imaginary.&quot; Most emphatically, they are real; nothing could
+be more maddening than to have some one suggest that our troubles are
+&quot;mere imagination.&quot; No wonder such theories have been
+<!-- Page 15 --><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15" />more popular
+with the patient's family than with the patient himself. Many years
+ago a physician put the whole truth into a few words: &quot;The patient
+says, 'I cannot'; his friends say, 'He will not'; the doctor says, 'He
+cannot will.'&quot; He tries, but in the circumstances he really cannot.</p>
+
+<p><b>The Man behind the Body.</b> The trouble is real; the organs do &quot;act
+up&quot;; the nerves do carry the wrong messages. But the nerves are merely
+telegraph wires. They are not responsible for the messages that are
+given them to carry. Behind the wires is the operator, the man higher
+up, and upon him the responsibility falls. In functional troubles the
+body is working in a perfectly normal way, considering the perverted
+conditions. It is doing its work well, doing just what it is told,
+obeying its master. The troubles are not with the bodily machine but
+with the master. The man behind the body is in trouble and he really
+has no way of showing his pain except through his body. The trouble in
+nervous disorders is in the personality, the soul, the realm of ideas,
+and that is not your body, but <i>you</i>. Loss of appetite may mean either
+that the powers of the physical organism are busily engaged in
+combating some poison circulating in the blood, or that the ego is &quot;up
+against&quot; conditions for which it has &quot;no stomach.&quot; Paralysis may be
+due to a hemorrhage into the brain tissues from a diseased blood
+vessel, or <!-- Page 16 --><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16" />it
+may symbolize a sense of inadequacy and defeat.
+Exaggerated exhaustion, halting feet, stammering tongue, may give
+evidence of a disturbed ego rather than of a diseased brain.</p>
+
+<p><b>All Body and no Mind.</b> At last we have begun to realize what we ought
+to have known all along,&mdash;that the body is not the whole man. The
+medical world for a long time has been in danger of forgetting or
+ignoring psychic suffering, while it has devoted itself to the
+treatment of physical disease.</p>
+
+<p>By way of condoning this fault it must be recognized that the five
+years of medical school have been all too short to learn what is
+needed of physiology and anatomy, histology, bacteriology, and the
+various other physical sciences. But at last the medical schools are
+realizing that they have been sending their graduates out only
+half-prepared&mdash;conversant with only one half of a patient, leaving
+them to fend for themselves in discovering the ways of the other half.
+Many an M.D. has gone a long way in this exploration. Native common
+sense, intuition, and careful study have enabled him to go beyond what
+he had learned in his text-books. But in the best universities the
+present-day student of medicine is now being given an insight into the
+ways of man as a whole&mdash;mind as well as body. The movement can hardly
+proceed too rapidly, and when it has had time to reach its goal, the
+day of the <!-- Page 17 --><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17" />long-term
+sentence to nervousness will be past.</p>
+
+<p>In the meanwhile most physicians, lacking such knowledge and with the
+eye fixed largely on the body, have been pumping out the stomach,
+prescribing lengthy rest-cures, trying massage, diet, electricity, and
+surgical operations, in a vain attempt to cure a disease of the
+personality. Physical measures have been given a good trial, but few
+would contend that they have succeeded. Sometimes the patient has
+recovered&mdash;in time&mdash;but often, apparently, despite the treatment
+rather than because of it. Sometimes, in the hands of a man like Dr.
+S. Weir Mitchell, results seem good, until we realize that the same
+measures are ineffective when tried by other men, and that, after all,
+what has counted most has been the personality of the physician rather
+than his physical treatment.</p>
+
+<p>No wonder that most doctors have disliked nervous cases. To a man
+trained in all the exactness of the physical sciences, the apparent
+lawlessness and irresponsibility of the psychic side of the
+personality is especially repugnant. He is impatient of what he fails
+to comprehend.</p>
+
+<p><b>All Mind and no Body.</b> This unsympathetic attitude, often only half
+conscious on the part of the regular practitioners, has led many
+thousands of people to follow will-o'-the-wisp cults, which pay no
+attention to the findings of science, but which emphasize a
+<!-- Page 18 --><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18" />realization of
+man's spiritual nature. Many of these cults, founded
+largely on untruth or half-falsehood, have succeeded in cases where
+careful science has failed. Despite fearful blunders and execrable
+lack of discrimination in attempting to cure all the ills that flesh
+is heir to by methods that apply only to functional troubles, ignorant
+enthusiasts and quacks have sometimes cured nervous troubles where the
+conscientious medical man has had to acknowledge defeat.</p>
+
+<p><b>The Whole Man.</b> But thinking people are not willing to desert science
+for cults that ignore the existence of these physical bodies. If they
+have found it unsatisfactory to be treated as if they were all body,
+they have also been unwilling to be treated as if they were all mind.
+They have been in a dilemma between two half-truths, even if they have
+not realized the dilemma. It has remained for modern psychotherapy to
+strike the balance&mdash;to treat the whole man. Solidly planted on the
+rock of the physical sciences, with its laboratories, physiological
+and psychological, and with a long record of investigation and
+treatment of pathological cases, it resembles the mind cure of earlier
+days or the assertions of Christian Science about as much as modern
+medicine resembles the old bloodletting, leeching practices of our
+forefathers.</p>
+
+<p>For the last quarter-century there have been scattered groups of
+physicians,&mdash;brilliant, patient pioneers,&mdash;who,
+<!-- Page 19 --><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19" />recognizing man as
+spirit inhabiting body, have explored the realm of man's mind and
+charted its paths. These pioneers, beginning with Charcot, have been
+men of acknowledged scientific training and spirit, whose word must be
+respected and whose success in treating functional troubles stands out
+in sharp contrast to the fumblings of the average practitioner in this
+field. The results of their work have been positive, not negative.
+They have not merely asserted that nervous disorders are not physical;
+they have discovered what the trouble is and have found it to be
+discoverable and removable in almost every case, provided only that
+the right method is used.</p>
+
+<p><b>Ourselves and Our Bodies.</b> If the statement that &quot;nervous troubles
+are neither physical nor imaginary but a disease of the personality,&quot;
+sounds rather mystifying to the average person, it is only because the
+average person is not very conversant with his own inner life. We
+shall hope, later on, to find some definite guide-posts and landmarks
+which will help us feel more at home in this fascinating realm. At
+present, we are not attempting anything more than a suggestion of the
+itinerary which we shall follow. A book on physical hygiene can
+presuppose at least a rudimentary knowledge of heart and lungs and
+circulation, but a book on mental hygiene must begin at the beginning,
+and even before the beginning must clear away misconceptions
+<!-- Page 20 --><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20" />and make
+clear certain fundamental principles. But the gist of the whole matter
+is this: in a neurosis, certain forces of the personality&mdash;instincts
+and their accompanying emotions&mdash;which ought to work harmoniously,
+having become tangled up with some erroneous ideas, have lost their
+power of co&ouml;peration and are working at cross purposes, leaving the
+individual mis-adapted to his environment, the prey of all sorts of
+mental and physical disturbances.</p>
+
+<p>The fact that the cause is mental while the result is often physical,
+should cause no surprise. In the physiological realm we are used to
+the idea that cause and effect are often widely separated. A headache
+may be caused by faulty eyes, or it may result from trouble in the
+intestines. In the same way, we should not be too much surprised if
+the cause of nervous troubles is found to be even more remote,
+provided there is some connecting link between cause and effect. The
+difficulty in this case is the apparent gulf between the realm of the
+spirit and the realm of the body. It is hard to see how an intangible
+thing like a thought can produce a pain in the arm or nausea in the
+stomach. Philosophers are still arguing concerning the nature of the
+relation between mind and body, but no one denies that the closest
+relation does exist. Every year science is learning that ideas count
+and that they count physically, as well as spiritually.</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 21 --><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21" /><b>Such
+Stuff as &quot;Nerves&quot; are Made Of.</b> Dr. Tom A. Williams in the
+little composite volume &quot;Psychotherapeutics&quot; says that the neuroses
+are based not on inherently weak nervous constitutions but on
+ignorance and on false ideas. What, then, are some of these erroneous
+ideas, these misconceptions, that cause so much trouble? We shall want
+to examine them more carefully in later chapters, but we might glance
+now at a few examples of these popular bugaboos that need to be slain
+by the sword of cold, hard fact.</p>
+
+<p><b>Popular Misconceptions about the Body.</b></p>
+
+<p>1 &quot;Eight hours' sleep is essential to health. All insomnia is
+dangerous and is incompatible with health. Nervous insomnia leads to
+shattered nerves and ultimately to insanity.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>2 &quot;Overwork leads to nervous breakdown. Fatigue accumulates from day
+to day and necessitates a long rest for recuperation.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>3 &quot;A carefully planned diet is essential to health, especially for the
+nervous person. A variety of food, eaten at the same time, is harmful.
+Acid and milk&mdash;for example, oranges and milk&mdash;are difficult to digest.
+Sour stomach is a sign of indigestion.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>4 &quot;Modern life is so strenuous that our nerves cannot stand the
+strain.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>5 &quot;Brain work is very fatiguing. It causes brain-fag and exhaustion.&quot;</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 22 --><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22" />6 &quot;Constipation
+is at the root of most physical ailments and is
+caused by eating the wrong kind of food.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Some of these misconceptions are household words and are so all but
+universally believed that the thought that they can be challenged is
+enough to bewilder one. However, it is ideas like this that furnish
+the material out of which many a nervous trouble is made. Based on a
+half-knowledge of the human body, on logical conclusions from faulty
+premises, on hastily swallowed notions passed on from one person to
+another, they tend by the very power of an idea to work themselves out
+to fulfilment.</p>
+
+
+<p class="scheading">The Power Behind Ideas</p>
+
+<p><b>Ideas Count.</b> Ideas are not the lifeless things they may appear. They
+are not merely intellectual property that can be locked up and ignored
+at will, nor are they playthings that can be taken up or discarded
+according to the caprice of the moment. Ideas work themselves into the
+very fiber of our being. They are part of us and they <i>do</i> things. If
+they are true, in line with things as they are, they do things that
+are for our good, but if they are false, we often discover that they
+have an altogether unsuspected power for harm and are capable of
+astonishing results, results which have no apparent relation to the
+ideas responsible for them and which are, therefore, laid to physical
+causes. Thinking <!-- Page 23 --><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23" />straight,
+then, becomes a hygienic as well as a moral duty.</p>
+
+<p><b>Ideas and Emotions.</b> Ideas do not depend upon themselves for their
+driving-power. Life is not a cold intellectual process; it is a vivid
+experience, vibrant with feeling and emotion. It therefore happens
+that the experiences of life tend to bring ideas and emotions together
+and when an idea and an emotion get linked up together, they tend to
+stay together, especially if the emotion be intense or the experience
+is often repeated.</p>
+
+<p>The word emotion means outgoing motion, discharging force. This force
+is like live steam. An emotion is the driving part of an instinct. It
+is the dynamic force, the electric current which supplies the power
+for every thought and every action of a human life.</p>
+
+<p>Man is not a passive creature. The words that describe him are not
+passive words. Indeed, it is almost impossible to think about man at
+all except in terms of desire, impulse, purpose, action, energy. There
+are three things that may be done with energy: First, it may be
+frittered away, allowed to leak, to escape. Secondly, it may be locked
+up; this results usually in an explosion, a finding of destructive
+outlets. Finally, it may be harnessed, controlled, used in beneficent
+ways. Health and happiness depend upon which one of the three courses
+is taken.</p>
+
+<p class="scheading"><!-- Page 24 --><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24" />Character and Health</p>
+
+<p>Evidently, it is highly important to have a working knowledge of these
+emotions and instincts; important to know enough about them and their
+purpose to handle them rightly if they do not spontaneously work
+together for our best character and health. The problems of character
+and the problems of health so overlap that it is impossible to write a
+book about nervous disorders which does not at the same time deal with
+the principles of character-formation. The laws and mechanisms which
+govern the everyday life of the normal person are the same laws and
+mechanisms which make the nervous person ill. As Boris Sidis puts it,
+&quot;The pathological is the normal out of place.&quot; The person who is
+master of himself, working together as a harmonious whole, is stronger
+in every way than the person whose forces are divided. Given a little
+self-knowledge, the nervous invalid often becomes one of the most
+successful members of society,&mdash;to use the word successful in the best
+sense.</p>
+
+<p><b>It Pays to Know.</b> To be educated is to have the right idea and the
+right emotion in the right place. To be sure, some people have so well
+learned the secret of poise that they do not have to study the why nor
+the how. Intuition often far outruns knowledge. It would be foolish
+indeed to suggest that only the person versed in psychological lore is
+skilled in the art of living. <!-- Page 25 --><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25" />
+Psychology is not life; it can make no
+claim to furnish the motive nor the power for successful living, for
+it is not faith, nor hope, nor love; but it tries to point the way and
+to help us fulfil conditions. There is no more reason why the average
+man should be unaware of the instincts or the subconscious mind, than
+that he should be ignorant of germs or of the need of fresh air.</p>
+
+<p>If it be argued that character and health are both inherently
+by-products of self-forgetful service, rather than of painstaking
+thought, we answer that this is true, but that there can be no
+self-forgetting when things have gone too far wrong. At such times it
+pays to look in, if we can do it intelligently, in order that we may
+the sooner get our eyes off ourselves and look out. The pursuit of
+self-knowledge is not a pleasurable pastime but simply a valuable
+means to an end.</p>
+
+
+<p class="scheading">Knowing Our Machine</p>
+
+<p><b>Counting on Ourselves.</b> Knowing our machine makes us better able to
+handle it. For, after all, each of us is, in many ways, very like a
+piece of marvelous and complicated machinery. For one thing, our
+minds, as well as our bodies, are subject to uniform laws upon which
+we can depend. We are not creatures of chaos; under certain conditions
+we can count on ourselves. Freedom does not mean freedom from the
+<!-- Page 26 --><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26" />reign of law.
+It means that, to a certain extent, we can make use of
+the laws. Psychic laws are as susceptible to investigation,
+verification, and use as are any laws in the physical world. Each
+person is so much the center of his own life that it is very easy for
+him to fall into the way of thinking that he is different from all the
+rest of the world. It is a healthful experience for him to realize
+that every person he meets is made on the same principles, impelled by
+the same forces, and fighting much the same fight. Since the laws of
+the mental world are uniform, we can count on them as aids toward
+understanding other people and understanding ourselves.</p>
+
+<p><b>&quot;Intelligent Scrutiny versus Morbid Introspection.&quot;</b> It helps
+wonderfully to be able to look at ourselves in an objective,
+impersonal way. We are likely to be overcome by emotion, or swept by
+vague longings which seem to have no meaning and which, just because
+they are bound up so closely with our own ego, are not looked at but
+are merely felt. Unknown forces are within us, pulling us this way and
+that, until sometimes we who should be masters are helpless slaves.
+One great help toward mastery and one long step toward serenity is a
+working-knowledge of the causes and an impersonal interest in the
+phenomena going on within. Introspection is a morbid, emotional
+fixation on self, until it takes on this quality of objectivity. What
+<!-- Page 27 --><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27" />Cabot calls the
+&quot;sin of impersonality&quot; is a grievous sin when
+directed toward another person, but most of us could stand a good deal
+of ingrowing impersonality without any harm.</p>
+
+<p>The fact that the human machine can run itself without a hitch in the
+majority of cases is witness to its inherent tendency toward health.
+People were living and living well through all the centuries before
+the science of psychology was formulated. But not with all people do
+things run so smoothly. There were demoniacs in Bible times and
+neurotics in the Middle Ages, as there are nervous invalids and
+half-well people to-day. Psychology has a real contribution to make,
+and in recent years its lessons have been put into language which the
+average man can understand.</p>
+
+<p>Psychology is not merely interested in abstract terms with long names.
+It is no longer absorbed merely in states of consciousness taken
+separately and analyzed abstractly. The newer functional psychology is
+increasingly interested in the study of real persons, their purposes
+and interests, what they feel and value, and how they may learn to
+realize their highest aspirations. It is about ordinary people, as
+they think and act, in the kitchen, on the street cars, at the
+bargain-counter, people in crowds and alone, mothers and their babies,
+little children at play, young girls with their lovers, and all the
+rest of human life. It is the science of <i>you</i>, and <!-- Page 28 -->
+<a name="Page_28" id="Page_28" />as such it can
+hardly help being interesting.</p>
+
+<p>While psychology deals with such topics as the subconscious mind, the
+instincts, the laws of habit, and association of ideas and suggestion,
+it is after all not so much an academic as a practical question. These
+forces govern the thought you are thinking at this moment, the way you
+will feel a half-hour from now, the mood you will be in to-morrow, the
+friends you will make and the profession you will choose, besides
+having a large share in the health or ill-health of your body in the
+meantime.</p>
+
+
+<p class="scheading">Summary</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps it would be well before going farther to summarize what we
+have been saying. Here in a nutshell is the kernel of the subject:</p>
+
+<p>Disease may be caused by physical or by psychic forces. A &quot;nervous&quot;
+disorder is not a physical but a psychic disease. It is caused not by
+lack of energy but by misdirected energy; not by overwork or
+nerve-depletion, but by misconception, emotional conflict, repressed
+instincts, and buried memories. Seventy-five per cent. of all cases of
+ill-health are due to psychic causes, to disjointed thinking rather
+than to a disjointed spine. Wherefore, let us learn to think right.</p>
+
+<p>In outline form, the trouble in a neurosis may be stated something
+like this:</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 29 --><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29" />&nbsp;<br />
+Lack of adaptation to the social environment&mdash;caused by<br />
+<span class="ind1">Lack of harmony within the personality&mdash;caused by</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Misdirected energy&mdash;caused by</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Inappropriate emotions&mdash;caused by</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Wrong ideas or ignorance.</span><br />&nbsp;
+</p>
+
+<p>Working backward, the cure naturally would be:</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;<br />
+Right ideas&mdash;resulting in<br />
+<span class="ind1">Appropriate emotions&mdash;resulting in</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Redirected energy&mdash;resulting in</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Harmony&mdash;resulting in</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Readjustment to the environment.</span><br />&nbsp;
+</p>
+
+<p>If the reader is beginning to feel somewhat bewildered by these
+general statements, let him take heart. So far we have tried merely to
+suggest the outline of the whole problem, but we shall in the future
+be more specific. Nervous troubles, which seem so simple, are really
+involved with the whole mechanism of mental life and can in no way be
+understood except as these mechanisms are understood. We have hinted
+at some of the causes of &quot;nerves,&quot; but we cannot give a real
+explanation until we explain the forces behind them. These forces may
+at first seem a bit abstract, or a bit remote from the main theme, but
+each is essential to the story of nerves and to the understanding of
+the more practical chapters in Part III.</p>
+
+<p>As in a Bernard Shaw play, the preface may be the most important part
+of this &quot;drama of nerves.&quot; Nor <!-- Page 30 -->
+<a name="Page_30" id="Page_30" />is the figure too far-fetched,
+because, strange as it may seem, every neurosis is in essence a drama.
+It has its conflict, its villain, and its victim, its love-story, its
+practical joke, its climax, and its denouement. Sometimes the play
+goes on forever with no solution, but sometimes psychotherapy steps in
+as the fairy god-mother, to release the victim, outwit the villain,
+and bring about the live-happily-ever-after ending.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr />
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<!-- Page 31 --><div><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31"></a></div>
+
+<p class="heading">PART II: &quot;HOW THE WHEELS GO ROUND&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr />
+
+<div><!-- Page 32 --><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32" />
+<!-- Page 33 --><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33" /></div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="heading"><a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III">CHAPTER III</a></p>
+
+<p class="heading"><i>In which we find a goodly inheritance</i></p>
+
+<p class="heading">THE STORY OF THE INSTINCTS</p>
+
+<p class="scheading">Each in His Own Tongue</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span>A fire mist and a planet,<br /></span>
+<span>A crystal and a cell,<br /></span>
+<span>A jelly-fish and a saurian,<br /></span>
+<span>And caves where cavemen dwell;<br /></span>
+<span>Then a sense of law and beauty,<br /></span>
+<span>And a face turned from the clod;<br /></span>
+<span>Some call it evolution<br /></span>
+<span>And others call it God.<a name="FNanchor_4" id="FNanchor_4"></a>
+<a href="#Footnote_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<p>If we begin at the beginning, we have to go back a long way to get our
+start, for the roots of our family tree reach back over millions of
+years. &quot;In the beginning&mdash;God.&quot; These first words of the book of
+Genesis must be, in spirit at least, the first words of any discussion
+of life. We know now, however, that when God made man, He did not
+complete His masterpiece at one sitting, but instead devised a plan by
+which the onward urge within and the environment without should act
+and interact until from countless adaptations a human being was made.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_4" id="Footnote_4"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_4"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> William Herbert Carruth.</p></div>
+
+<p><!-- Page 34 --><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34" />As the late
+Dr. Putnam of Harvard University says, &quot;We stand as the
+representative of a Creative Energy that expressed itself first in far
+simpler forms of life and finally in the form of human
+instincts.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_5" id="FNanchor_5"></a>
+<a href="#Footnote_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a>
+And again: &quot;The choices and decisions of the organisms whose lives
+prepared the way through eons of time for ours, present themselves to
+us as instincts.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_6" id="FNanchor_6"></a>
+<a href="#Footnote_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_5" id="Footnote_5"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_5"><span class="label">[5]</span>
+</a> Putnam: <i>Human Motives</i>, p. 32.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_6" id="Footnote_6"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_6"><span class="label">[6]</span>
+</a> Putnam: <i>Human Motives</i>, p. 18.</p></div>
+
+
+<p class="scheading">Introducing the Instincts</p>
+
+<p><b>Back of Our Dispositions.</b> What is it that makes the baby jump at a
+noise? What energizes a man when you tell him he is a liar? What makes
+a young girl blush when you look at her, or a youth begin to take
+pains with his necktie? What makes men go to war or build tunnels or
+found hospitals or make love or save for a home? What makes a woman
+slave for her children, or give her life for them if need be?
+&quot;Instinct&quot; you say, and rightly. Back of every one of these well-known
+human tendencies is a specific instinct or group of instincts. The
+story of the life of man and the story of the mind of man must begin
+with the instincts. Indeed, any intelligent approach to human life,
+whether it be that of the mother, the teacher, the preacher, the
+social worker or the neurologist, leads back inevitably to the
+instincts as the starting-point of understanding. But what is
+instinct?</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 35 --><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35" />We are apt
+to be a bit hazy on that point, as we are on any
+fundamental thing with which we intimately live. We reckon on these
+instinctive tendencies every hour of the day, but as we are not used
+to labeling them, it may help in the very beginning of our discussion
+to have a list before our eyes. Here, then, is a list of the
+fundamental tendencies of the human race and the emotions which drive
+them to fulfilment.</p>
+
+<p class="center">&nbsp;<br />THE SPECIFIC INSTINCTS AND THEIR EMOTIONS (AFTER MCDOUGALL)</p>
+
+<table cellspacing="0" cellpadding="4" border="0"
+summary="Instincts and Emotions (after McDougall)">
+<tr>
+	<td><i>Instinct</i><br />&nbsp;</td>
+	<td><i>Emotion</i><br />&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+	<td>Nutritive Instinct </td>
+	<td>Hunger</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+	<td>Flight </td>
+	<td>Fear</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+	<td>Repulsion</td>
+	<td>Disgust</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+	<td>Curiosity</td>
+	<td>Wonder</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+	<td>Self-assertion</td>
+	<td>Positive Self-feeling (Elation)</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+	<td>Self-abasement</td>
+	<td>Negative Self-feeling (Subjection)</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+	<td>Gregariousness</td>
+	<td>Emotion unnamed</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+	<td>Acquisition</td>
+	<td>Love of Possession</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+	<td>Construction</td>
+	<td>Emotion unnamed</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+	<td>Pugnacity</td>
+	<td>Anger</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+	<td>Reproductive Instinct &nbsp; </td>
+	<td>Emotion unnamed</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+	<td>Parental Instinct<br />&nbsp;</td>
+	<td>Tender Emotion<br />&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>These are the fundamental tendencies or dispositions with which every
+human being is endowed as he comes into the world. Differing in degree
+in different individuals, they unite in varying proportions to form
+various kinds of dispositions, but are in greater or less degree the
+common property of us all.</p>
+
+<p>There flows through the life of every creature a <!-- Page 36 -->
+<a name="Page_36" id="Page_36" />steady stream of
+energy. Scientists have not been able to decide on a descriptive term
+for this all-important life-force. It has been variously called
+&quot;libido,&quot; &quot;vital impulse&quot; or &quot;&eacute;lan vital,&quot; &quot;the spirit of life,&quot;
+&quot;horm&eacute;,&quot; and &quot;creative energy.&quot; The chief business of this life-force
+seems to be the preservation and development of the individual and the
+preservation and development of the race. In the service of these two
+needs have grown up these habit-reactions which we call instincts. The
+first ten of our list belong under the heading of self-preservation
+and the last two under that of race-preservation. As hunger is the
+most urgent representative of the self-preservative group, and as
+reproduction and parental care make up the race-preservative group,
+some scientists refer all impulses to the two great instincts of
+nutrition and sex, using these words in the widest sense. However, it
+will be useful for our purpose to follow McDougall's classification
+and to examine individually the various tendencies of the two groups.</p>
+
+<p><b>In Debt to Our Ancestors.</b> An instinct is the result of the
+experience of the race, laid in brain and nerve-cells ready for use.
+It is a gift from our ancestors, an inheritance from the education of
+the age-long line of beings who have gone before. In the struggle for
+existence, it has been necessary for the members of the race to feed
+themselves, to run away from danger, to <!-- Page 37 -->
+<a name="Page_37" id="Page_37" />fight, to herd together, to
+reproduce themselves, to care for their young, and to do various other
+things which make for the well-being or preservation of the race. The
+individuals that did these things at the right time survived and
+passed on to their offspring an inherited tendency to this kind of
+reaction. McDougall defines an instinct as &quot;an inherited or innate
+psycho-physical disposition which determines its possessor to perceive
+or pay attention to objects of a certain class, to experience an
+emotional excitement of a particular quality upon perceiving such an
+object, and to act in regard to it in a particular manner, or at least
+to experience an impulse to such action.&quot; This is just what an
+instinct is,&mdash;an inherited disposition to notice, to feel, and to want
+to act in certain ways in certain situations. It is the something
+which makes us act when we cannot explain why, the something that goes
+deeper than reason, and that links us to all other human
+beings,&mdash;those who live to-day and those who have gone before.</p>
+
+<p>It is true that East is East and West is West, but the two do meet in
+the common foundation of our human nature. The likeness between men
+and between races is far greater and far more fundamental than the
+differences can ever be.</p>
+
+<p><b>Firing Up the Engine.</b> Purpose is writ large across the face of an
+instinct, and that purpose is always toward action. Whenever a
+situation arises which <!-- Page 38 --><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38" />
+demands instantaneous action, the instinct is
+the means of securing it. Planted within the creature is a tendency
+which makes it perceive and feel and act in the appropriate way. It
+will be noticed that there are three distinct parts to the process,
+corresponding to intellect, emotion, will. The initial intellectual
+part makes us sensitive to certain situations, makes us recognize an
+object as meaningful and significant, and waves the flag for the
+emotion; the emotion fires up the engine, pulls the levers all over
+the body that release its energy and get it ready for action, and
+pushes the button that calls into the mind an intense, almost
+irresistible desire or impulse to act. Once aroused, the emotion and
+the impulse are not to be changed. In man or beast, in savage or
+savant, the intense feeling, the marked bodily changes, and the
+yearning for action are identical and unchangeable. The brakes can be
+put on and the action suppressed, but in that case the end of the
+whole process is defeated. Could anything be plainer than that an
+instinct and its emotion were never intended to be aroused except in
+situations in which their characteristic action is to be desired? An
+emotion is the hot part of an instinct and exists solely for securing
+action. If all signs of the emotion are to be suppressed, all
+expression denied, why the emotion?</p>
+
+<p>But although the emotion and the impulse, once aroused, are beyond
+control, there is yet one part of <!-- Page 39 --><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39" />
+the instinct that is meant to be controlled. The initial or receptive portion,
+that which notices a situation, recognizes it as significant, and sends in the signal for
+action, can be trained to discrimination. This is where reason comes
+in. If the situation calls for flight, fear is in order; if it calls
+for fight, anger is in order; if it calls for examination, wonder is
+in order; but if it calls for none of these things, reason should show
+some discrimination and refuse to call up the emotion.</p>
+
+<p><b>The Right of Way.</b> There is a law that comes to the aid of reason in
+this dilemma and that is the &quot;law of the common
+path.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_7" id="FNanchor_7"></a>
+<a href="#Footnote_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a> By this is
+meant that man is capable of but one intense emotion at a time. No one
+can imagine himself strenuously making love while he is shaken by an
+agony of fear, or ravenously eating while he is in a passion of rage.
+The stronger emotion gets the right of way, obtains control of mental
+and bodily machinery, and leaves no room for opposite states. If the
+two emotions are not antagonistic, they may blend together to form a
+compound emotion, but if in the nature of the case such a blending is
+impossible, the weaker is for the time being forgotten in the
+intensity of the stronger. &quot;The expulsive power of a new affection&quot; is
+not merely a happy phrase; it is a fact in every day life. The
+problem, then, resolves itself into ways of making the desirable
+emotion the <!-- Page 40 --><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40" />stronger,
+of learning how to form the habit of giving it
+the head start and the right of way. In our chapter on &quot;Choosing the
+Emotions,&quot; we shall find that much depends on building up the right
+kind of sentiments, or the permanent organization of instincts around
+ideas. However, we must first look more closely at the separate
+instincts to acquaint ourselves with the purpose and the ways of each,
+and to discover the nature of the forces with which we have to deal.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_7" id="Footnote_7"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_7"><span class="label">[7]</span>
+</a> Sherrington: <i>Integrative Action of the Nervous System</i>.</p></div>
+
+<p class="scheading">I &nbsp; &nbsp; The Self-Preservative Instincts</p>
+
+<p><b>Hunger.</b> Hunger is the most pressing desire of the egoistic or
+self-preserving impulse. The yearning for food and the impulse to seek
+and eat it are aroused organically within the body and are behind much
+of the activity of every type of life. As the impulse is so familiar,
+and its promptings are so little subject to psychic control, it seems
+unnecessary to do more than mention its importance.</p>
+
+<p><b>Flight and Fear.</b> All through the ages the race has been subject to
+injury. Species has been pitted against species, individual against
+individual. He who could fight hardest or run fastest has survived and
+passed his abilities on to his offspring. Not all could be strongest
+for fight, and many species have owed their existence to their ability
+to run and to know when to run. Thus it is that one of the strongest
+and most <!-- Page 41 --><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41" />universal
+tendencies is the instinct for flight, and its
+emotion, fear. &quot;Fear is the representation of injury and is born of
+the innumerable injuries which have been inflicted in the course of
+evolution.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_8" id="FNanchor_8"></a>
+<a href="#Footnote_8" class="fnanchor">[8]</a> Some babies are frightened if they are held too
+loosely, even though they have never known a fall. Some persons have
+an instinctive fear of cats, a left-over from the time when the race
+needed to flee from the tiger and others of the cat family. Almost
+every one, no matter in what state of culture, fears the unknown
+because the race before him has had to be afraid of that which was not
+familiar.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_8" id="Footnote_8"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_8"><span class="label">[8]</span>
+</a> Crile: <i>Origin and Nature of the Emotions</i>.</p></div>
+
+<p>The emotion of fear is well known, but its purpose is not so often
+recognized. An emotion brings about internal changes, visceral changes
+they are called, which enable the organism to act on the emotion,&mdash;to
+accomplish its object. There is only so much energy available at a
+given moment, stored up in the brain cells, ready for use. In such an
+emergency as flight every ounce of energy is needed. The large muscles
+used in running must have a great supply of extra energy. The heart
+and lungs must be speeded up in order to provide oxygen and take care
+of extra waste products. The special senses of sight and hearing must
+be sensitized. Digestion and intestinal peristalsis must be stopped in
+order to save energy. No person could by <!-- Page 42 -->
+<a name="Page_42" id="Page_42" />conscious thought accomplish
+all these things. How, then, are they brought about?</p>
+
+<p><b>Internal Laboratories.</b> In the wonderful internal laboratory of the
+body there are little glands whose business it is to secrete chemicals
+for just these emergencies. When an object is sighted which arouses
+fear, the brain cells flash instantaneous messages over the body,
+among others to the supra-renal glands or adrenals, just over the
+kidneys, and to the thyroid gland in the neck. Instantly these glands
+pour forth adrenalin and thyroid secretion into the blood, and the
+body responds. Blood pressure rises; brain cells speed up; the liver
+pours forth glycogen, its ready-to-burn fuel; sweat-glands send forth
+cold perspiration in order to regulate temperature; blood is pumped
+out from stomach and intestines to the external muscles. As we have
+seen, the body as a whole can respond to just one stimulus at a time.
+The response to this stimulus has the right of way. The whole body is
+integrated, set for this one thing. When fear holds the switchboard no
+other messages are allowed on the line, and the creature is ready for
+flight.</p>
+
+<p>But after flight comes concealment with the opposite bodily need, the
+need for absolute silence. This is why we sometimes get the opposite
+result. The heart seems to stop beating, the breath ceases, the limbs
+refuse to move, all because our ancestors needed to <!-- Page 43 -->
+<a name="Page_43" id="Page_43" />hide after they
+had run, and because we are in a very real way a part of them.</p>
+
+<p><b>Old-Fashioned Fear.</b> There is one passage from Dr. Crile's book which
+so admirably sums up these points that it seems worth while to insert
+it at length.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>We fear not in our hearts alone, not in our brains alone, not in
+     our viscera alone&mdash;fear influences every organ and tissue. Each
+     organ or tissue is stimulated or inhibited according to its use
+     or hindrance in the physical struggle for existence. By thus
+     concentrating all or most of the nerve force on the
+     nerve-muscular mechanism for defense, a greater physical power is
+     developed. Hence it is that under the stimulus of fear animals
+     are able to perform preternatural feats of strength. For the same
+     reason, the exhaustion following fear will be increased as the
+     powerful stimulus of fear drains the cup of nervous energy even
+     though no visible action may result.... Perhaps the most striking
+     difference between man and animals lies in the greater control
+     which man has gained over his primitive instinctive reactions. As
+     compared with the entire duration of organic evolution, man came
+     down from his arboreal abode and assumed his new r&ocirc;le of
+     increased domination over the physical world but a moment ago.
+     And now, though sitting at his desk in command of the complicated
+     machinery of civilization, when he fears a business catastrophe
+     his fear is manifested in the terms of his ancestral physical
+     battle in the struggle for existence. He cannot fear
+     intellectually, he cannot fear dispassionately, he fears with all
+     his organs, and the same<!-- Page 44 --><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44" />
+     organs are stimulated and inhibited as if, instead of its being a
+     battle of credit, or position, or of honor, it were a physical
+     battle with teeth and claws.... Nature has but one means of
+     response to fear, and whatever its cause the phenomena are always
+     the same&mdash;always
+	 physical.<a name="FNanchor_9" id="FNanchor_9"></a>
+	 <a href="#Footnote_9" class="fnanchor">[9]</a></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_9" id="Footnote_9"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_9"><span class="label">[9]</span>
+</a> Crile: <i>Origin and Nature of the Emotions</i>, p. 60 ff.</p></div>
+
+<p>The moral is as plain as day: Learn to call up fear only when speedy
+legs are needed, not a cool head or a comfortable digestion. Fear is a
+costly proceeding, an emergency measure like a fire-alarm, to be used
+only when the occasion is urgent enough to demand it. How often it is
+misused and how large a part it plays in nervous symptoms, both mental
+and physical, will appear more clearly in later chapters.</p>
+
+<p><b>Repulsion and Disgust.</b> Akin to the instinct of flight is that of
+repulsion, which impels us, instead of fleeing, to thrust the object
+away. It leads us to reject from the mouth noxious and disgusting
+objects and to shrink from slimy, creepy creatures, and has of course
+been highly useful in protecting the race from poisons and snakes. It
+still operates in the tendency to put away from us those things,
+mental or physical, toward which we feel aversion or disgust. Recent
+psychological discoveries have revealed how largely a neurosis
+consists in putting away from us&mdash;out of consciousness,&mdash;whatever we
+do not wish to recognize, <!-- Page 45 --><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45" />
+and so it happens that disgust plays an unexpected part in nervous disorders.</p>
+
+<p><b>Curiosity and Wonder.</b> Fortunately for the race, it has not had to
+wait until different features of the environment prove to be helpful
+or harmful. There is an instinct which urges forward to exploration
+and discovery and which enables the creature not only to adapt itself
+to the environment but to learn how to adapt the environment to
+itself. This is the instinct of curiosity. It is the impulse back of
+all advance in science, religion, and intellectual achievement of
+every kind, and is sometimes called &quot;intellectual feeling.&quot;</p>
+
+<p><b>Self-Assertion.</b> It goes almost without saying that one of the
+strongest and most important impulses of mankind is the instinct of
+self-assertion; it often gets us into trouble, but it is also behind
+every effort toward developed character. At its lowest level
+self-assertion manifests itself in the strutting of the peacock, the
+prancing of the horse, and the &quot;See how big I am,&quot; of the small boy.
+At its highest level, when combined with self-consciousness and the
+moral sentiments acquired from society and developed into the
+self-regarding sentiment, it is responsible for most of our ideas of
+right, our conception of what is and what is not compatible with our
+self-respect.</p>
+
+<p><b>Self-Abasement.</b> Self-assertion is aroused primarily by the presence
+of others and especially of those to <!-- Page 46 --><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46" />whom we feel in any way
+superior, but when the presence of others makes us feel small, when we
+want to hide or keep in the background, we are being moved by the
+opposite instinct of self-abasement and negative self-feeling. It may
+be either the real or the fancied superiority of the spectators that
+arouses this feeling,&mdash;their wisdom or strength, beauty or good
+clothes. Sometimes, as in stage-fright, it is their numerical
+superiority. Bashfulness is the struggle between the two
+self-instincts, assertion and abasement. Our impulse for self-display
+urges us on to make a good impression, while our feeling of
+inferiority impels us to get away unnoticed. Hence the struggle and
+the painful emotion.</p>
+
+<p><b>Gregariousness.</b> Man has been called a gregarious animal. That is,
+like the animals, he likes to run with his kind, and feels a
+pronounced aversion to prolonged isolation. It is this
+&quot;herd-instinct,&quot; too, which makes man so extremely sensitive to the
+opinions of the society in which he lives. Because of this impulse to
+go with the crowd, ideas received through education are accepted as
+imperative and are backed up by all the force of the instinct of
+self-regard. When the teachings of society happen to run counter to
+the laws of our being, the possibilities of conflict are indeed
+great.<a name="FNanchor_10" id="FNanchor_10"></a>
+<a href="#Footnote_10" class="fnanchor">[10]</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_10" id="Footnote_10"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_10"><span class="label">[10]</span>
+</a> For a thorough discussion of the importance of this
+instinct, see Trotter's <i>Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War</i>.</p></div>
+
+<p><!-- Page 47 --><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47" />
+<b>Acquisition.</b> Another fundamental disposition in both animals and
+men is the instinct for possession, the instinct whose function it is
+to provide for future needs. Squirrels and birds lay up nuts for the
+winter; the dog hides his bone where only he can find it. Children
+love to have things for their &quot;very own,&quot; and almost invariably go
+through the hoarding stage in which stamps or samples or bits of
+string are hoarded for the sake of possession, quite apart from their
+usefulness or value. Much of the training of children consists in
+learning what is &quot;mine&quot; and what is &quot;thine,&quot; and respect for the
+property of others can develop only out of a sense of one's own
+property rights.</p>
+
+<p><b>Construction.</b> There is an innate satisfaction in making
+something,&mdash;from a doll-dress to a poem,&mdash;and this satisfaction rests
+on the impulse to construct, to fashion something with our own hands
+or our own brain. The emotion accompanying this instinct is too
+indefinite to have a name but it is nevertheless a real one and plays
+a large part in the sense of power which results from the satisfaction
+of good work well done. Later it will be seen how closely related is
+this impulse to the creative instinct of reproduction and how useful
+it can be in drawing off the surplus energy of that much denied
+instinct.</p>
+
+<p><b>Pugnacity and Anger.</b> What is it that makes us
+<!-- Page 48 --><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48" />angry? A little
+thought will convince us that the thing which arouses our fury is not
+the sight of any special object, but the blocking of any one of the
+other instincts. Watch any animal at bay when its chance for flight
+has gone. The timidest one will turn and fight with every sign of
+fury. Watch a mother when her young are threatened,&mdash;bear, or cat or
+lion or human. Fear has no place then. It is entirely displaced by
+anger over the balking of the maternal instinct of protection.
+Strictly speaking, pugnacity belongs among the instincts neither of
+self-preservation nor of race-preservation, but is a special device
+for reinforcing both groups.</p>
+
+<p>As fear supplies the energy for running, so anger fits us for
+fight,&mdash;and for nothing but fight. The mechanism is almost identical
+with that of fear. Brain and liver, adrenals and thyroid are the
+means, but the emotion presses the button and releases the energy,
+stopping all digestion and energizing all combat-muscles. The blood is
+flooded with fuel and with substances which, if not used, are harmful
+to the body. We were never meant to be angry without fighting. The
+habit of self-control has its distinct advantages, but it is hard on
+the body, which was patterned before self-control came into fashion.
+The wise man, once he is aroused, lets off steam at the woodpile or on
+a long, vigorous walk. He probably does not say to himself that he is
+<!-- Page 49 --><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49" />a motor animal
+integrated for fight and that he must get rid of
+glycogen and adrenalin and thyroid secretion. He only knows that he
+feels better &quot;on the move.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The wiser man does not let himself get angry in the first place unless
+the situation calls for fight. However, the fight need not be a
+hand-to-hand combat with one's fellow man. William James has pointed
+out that there is a &quot;moral equivalent for war,&quot; and that the energy of
+this instinct may be used to reinforce other impulses and help
+overcome obstacles of all sorts. A good deal of the business man's
+zest, the engineer's determination, and the reformer's zeal spring
+from the fight-instinct used in the right way. As James, Cannon, and
+others have pointed out, the way to end war may be to employ man's
+instinct of pugnacity in fighting the universal enemies of the
+race&mdash;fire, flood, famine, disease, and the various social
+evils&mdash;rather than let it spend its force in war between nations. Even
+our sports may be offshoots of the fight-instinct, for McDougall holds
+that the play-tendency has its root in the instinct of rivalry, a
+modified form of pugnacity. Evidently fighting-blood is a useful
+inheritance, even to-day, and rightly directed is a necessary part of
+a complete and forceful personality.</p>
+
+<p>This, then, completes the list of self-preservative instincts, those
+which are commonly called egoistic <!-- Page 50 -->
+<a name="Page_50" id="Page_50" />and which have been given us for
+the maintenance of our own individual personal lives. But our
+endowment includes another set of impulses which are no less important
+and which must be reckoned with if human conduct is to be understood.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<!-- Page 51 --><div><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51"></a></div>
+
+<p class="heading"><a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV">CHAPTER IV</a></p>
+
+<p class="heading"><i>In which we learn more about ourselves</i></p>
+
+<p class="heading">THE STORY OF THE INSTINCTS (Continued)</p>
+
+<p class="scheading">II. The Race-Preservative Instincts</p>
+
+
+<p><b>Looking beyond Ourselves.</b> We sometimes speak of self-preservation as
+though it were the only law of life, while as a matter of fact it is
+but half the story. Nature has seen to it that there shall be planted
+in every living creature an innate urge toward the larger life of the
+race. Although the creature may never give a conscious thought to the
+welfare of the race, he still bears within himself a set of instincts
+which have as their end and aim, not the individual at all, but
+society as a whole, and the life of generations that are to come. He
+is bigger than he knows. Although he may have no notion why he feels
+and acts as he does, and although he may pervert the purpose for his
+own selfish end, he is continually being moved by the mighty impulse
+of the race-life, an impulse which often outrivals the desire I or his
+own personal existence. The craving to reproduce ourselves and the
+craving to cherish and protect
+<!-- Page 52 --><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52" />our young are among the most dynamic
+forces in life. The two desires are so closely bound together that
+they are often spoken of as one under the name of the sex-instinct, or
+the family instincts. Let us look first at that part of the yearning
+which urges toward perpetuating our own life in offspring.</p>
+
+<p><b>Watching Nature Work.</b> It is wonderful, indeed, to watch Nature in
+the long process of Evolution, as she adapts her methods to the
+growing complexity of the organism. With a variety and ingenuity of
+means, but always with the same steady purpose, she works from the
+lowest levels,&mdash;where there is no true reproduction, only
+multiplication by division,&mdash;on through the beginning of reproduction
+proper, where a single parent produces the offspring; then on to the
+level where it takes two parents of different structure to produce a
+new organism, and sex-life begins. At first Nature does not even
+demand that father and mother shall come near each other. In the
+water, the female of this type lays an egg, and the male, guided by
+his instinct, swims to it and deposits his fertilizing fluid. In plant
+life, bird and bee, attracted by wonderfully planned perfumes and
+color and honey, are called in to carry the pollen from male to female
+cell.</p>
+
+<p>But it is when we come to the highest level that we find even more
+subtle ways planned to accomplish the desired end. Here we enter the
+realm of individual <!-- Page 53 --><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53" />initiative,
+for it is not now enough to leave to
+external forces the joining of the two life-elements. In order to make
+a new individual, father and mother must be drawn together, and so
+there enters into the situation a personal relationship with all that
+that implies. Because Nature has had to provide ways of drawing
+individuals to one another, she has put into the higher types of life
+the power of mutual attraction,&mdash;a power which in man, the highest of
+all types, is responsible for many outgrowths that seem far removed
+from the original purpose.</p>
+
+<p><b>The Love-Motif.</b> On the one hand, there is the persistent desire to
+be attractive, which manifests itself in the subtlest ways. How many
+of the yearnings and activities of human life have their roots in this
+ancient and honorable desire! The love of pretty clothes,&mdash;however it
+may seem to be motivated and however it may be complicated by other
+motives,-draws its energy, fundamentally, from the same need that
+provides the gay plumage and limpid song of the bird or the painted
+wings of the butterfly.</p>
+
+<p>On the other hand, there is the capability of being attracted, with
+all the personal relationships which spring from the power of admiring
+and loving another person. The interest in others does not expend its
+whole force on its primary objects,&mdash;mate and children. It flows out
+into all human relationships, developing
+<!-- Page 54 --><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54" />all the possibilities of
+loving which mean so much in human life; the love of man for man and
+woman for woman, as well as mutual love of man and woman. A force like
+this, once planted, especially in the higher types of life, does not
+spend all its energies in its main trunk. It sends out branches in
+many directions, bearing by-products which are rich in value for all
+of life.</p>
+
+<p>Many of our richest relationships, our best impulses, and our most
+firmly fixed social habits spring from the family instincts of
+reproduction and parental care. The social life of our young people,
+so well calculated to bring young men and women together; all the
+beauty of family life and, as we shall later see, all the broader
+benevolent activities for society in general, are energized by the
+same love-instincts which form so large a part of human nature.</p>
+
+
+<p class="scheading">Learning to Love</p>
+
+<p><b>A Four-Grade School.</b> It is impossible to watch the growth of the
+love-life of a human being, to trace its development from babyhood up
+to its culmination in mating and parenthood, without a sense of wonder
+at the steady purpose behind it all. We used to believe that the love
+for the young girl that suddenly blooms forth in the callow youth was
+an entirely new affair, something suddenly planted in him as he
+developed into manhood; but now we know, thanks to the uncovering
+<!-- Page 55 --><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55" />of
+human nature by the painstaking investigations of the psycho-analytic
+school of psychologists, that the seeds of the love-life are planted,
+not in puberty, but with the beginning of life itself. Looked at in
+one way, all infancy and childhood are a preparation, a training of
+the love-instinct which is to be ready at the proper time to find its
+mate and play its part in the perpetuation of the race. Nature begins
+early. As she plants in the tiny baby all the organs that shall be
+needed during its lifetime, so she plants the rudiments of all the
+impulses and tendencies that shall later be developed into the
+full-grown instincts. There have been found to be four periods in the
+love-life of the growing child, three of them preparatory steps
+leading up to maturity; periods in which the main current of love is
+directed respectively toward self, parents, comrades, and finally
+toward lover or mate.</p>
+
+<p><b>Like Narcissus.</b> In the first stage, the baby's interest is in his
+own body. He is getting acquainted with himself, and he soon finds
+that his body contains possibilities of pleasurable sensations which
+may be repeated by the proper stimulation. Besides the
+hunger-satisfaction that it brings, the act of sucking is pleasurable
+in itself, and so the baby begins to suck his thumb or his quilts or
+his rattle. Later, this impulse to stimulate the nerves about the
+mouth finds its satisfaction in kissing, and still later it plays a
+definite part in the <!-- Page 56 --><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56" />
+wooing process; but at first the child is
+self-sufficient and finds his pleasure entirely within himself. Other
+regions of the body yield similar pleasure. We often find a tiny child
+rubbing his genital organs or his thighs or taking exaggerated
+pleasure in riding on someone's foot in order to stimulate these
+nerves, which he has discovered at first merely by chance. When he
+begins to run around, he loves to exhibit his own body, to go about
+naked. None of this is naughtiness or perversion; it is only Nature's
+preparation of trends that she will later need to use. The child is
+normally and naturally in love with
+himself.<a name="FNanchor_11" id="FNanchor_11"></a>
+<a href="#Footnote_11" class="fnanchor">[11]</a> But he must not
+linger too long in this stage. None of the channels which his
+life-force is cutting must be dug too deep, else in later life they
+will offer lines of least resistance which may, on occasion, invite
+illness or perversion.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_11" id="Footnote_11"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_11"><span class="label">[11]</span>
+</a> This is the stage which is technically known as
+auto-eroticism or self-love.</p></div>
+
+<p><b>In Love with His Family.</b> Presently Nature pries the child loose from
+love of himself and directs part of his interests to people outside
+himself. Before he is a year old, part of his love is turned to
+others. In this stage it is natural that at first his affection should
+center on those who make up his home circle,&mdash;his parents and other
+members of the household. Even in this early choice we see a
+foreshadowing of his future need. The normal little boy is especially
+fond of his <!-- Page 57 --><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57" />mother,
+and the normal little girl of her father. Not all
+the love goes to the parent of the opposite sex, but if the child be
+normal, a noticeably larger part finds its way in that direction.
+Observing parents can often see unmistakable signs of jealousy: toward
+the parent of the same sex, or the brother or sister of the same sex.
+The little boy who sleeps with his mother while his father is away, or
+who on these occasions gets all the attention and all the petting he
+craves, is naturally eager to perpetuate this state of affairs. Many a
+small boy has been heard to say that he wished his father would go
+away and stay all the time,&mdash;to the horror of the parents who do not
+understand. All this is natural enough, but it is not to be
+encouraged. The pattern of the father or the mother must not be
+stamped too deep in the impressionable child-mind. Too little love and
+sympathy are bad, leading to repression and a morbid turning in of the
+love-force; but too much petting, too many caresses are just as bad.
+Sentimental self-indulgence on the part of the parents has been
+repeatedly proved to be the cause of many a later illness for the
+child. As the right kind of family love and comradeship, the kind that
+leads to freedom and self-dependence, is among the highest forces in
+life, so the wrong kind is among the worst. Parents and their
+substitutes&mdash;nurses, sisters, and brothers&mdash;are but temporary
+stopping-places for the growing love, stepping-stones
+<!-- Page 58 --><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58" />to later
+attachments which are biologically more necessary. The small boy who
+lets himself be coddled and petted too long by his adoring relatives,
+who does not shake off their caresses and run away to the other boys,
+is doomed to failure, and, as we shall later see, probably to
+illness.<a name="FNanchor_12" id="FNanchor_12"></a>
+<a href="#Footnote_12" class="fnanchor">[12]</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_12" id="Footnote_12"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_12"><span class="label">[12]</span>
+</a> One of the best discussions of this theme is found in
+the chapter &quot;The Only or Favorite Child,&quot; by A.A. Brill, in
+<i>Psychoanalysis</i>.</p></div>
+
+<p>In the later infantile period, the child, besides wanting to exhibit
+his own body, shows marked interest in looking at the bodies of
+others, and marked curiosity on sex-questions in general. He
+particularly wants to know &quot;where babies come from.&quot; If his questions
+are unfortunately met by embarrassment or laughing evasion, or by
+obvious lying about the stork or the doctor or the angels, his
+curiosity is only whetted, and he comes to the very natural conclusion
+that all matters of sex are sinful, disgusting, and indecent, and to
+be investigated only on the sly. This conception cannot be brought
+into harmony with the unconscious mental processes arising from his
+race-instincts nor with his instinctive sense that &quot;whatever is is
+right.&quot; The resulting conflict in some four-year-old children is
+surprisingly intense. Astonished indeed would many parents be if they
+knew what was going on inside the heads of their &quot;innocent&quot; little
+children; not &quot;bad&quot; <!-- Page 59 -->
+<a name="Page_59" id="Page_59" />things, but pathetic things which a little candor
+would have avoided.</p>
+
+<p>Alongside the rudimentary impulses of showing and looking, there is
+developed another set of trends which Nature needs to use later on,
+the so-called sadistic and masochistic impulses, the desire to
+dominate and master and even to inflict pain, and its opposite impulse
+which takes pleasure in yielding and submitting to mastery. These
+traits, harking back to the time when the male needed to capture by
+force, are of course much more evident in adolescence and especially
+in love-making, but have their beginning in childhood, as many a
+mother of cruel children knows to her sorrow. In adolescence, when
+sex-differentiation is much more marked, the dominating impulse is
+stronger in the boy and the yielding impulse in the girl; but in
+little children the differentiation has not yet begun.</p>
+
+<p><b>Gang and Chum.</b> At about four or five years the child leaves the
+infantile stage of development, with its self-love and its intense
+devotion to parents and their substitutes. He begins to be especially
+interested in playmates of his own sex, to care more for the opinions
+of the gang&mdash;or if it be a little girl, of the chum&mdash;than for those of
+the parents. The life-force is leading him on to the next step in his
+education, freeing him little by little from a too-hampering
+attachment to his family. This does not mean that he
+does <!-- Page 60 --><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60" />not love
+his father and mother. It means only that some of his love is being
+turned toward the rest of the world, that he may be an independent,
+socially useful man.</p>
+
+<p>This period between infancy and puberty is known as the latency
+period. All interest in sex disappears, repressed by the spontaneously
+developing sense of shame and modesty and by the impact of education
+and social disapproval. The child forgets that he was ever curious on
+sex-matters and lets his curiosity turn into other, more acceptable
+channels.</p>
+
+<p><b>The Mating-Time.</b> We are familiar with the changes that take place at
+puberty. We laugh at the girl who, throwing off her tom-boy ways,
+suddenly wants her skirts let down and her hair done up. We laugh at
+the boy who suddenly leaves off being a rowdy, and turns into a
+would-be dandy. We scold because this same boy and girl who have
+always been so &quot;sweet and tractable&quot; become, almost overnight, surly
+and cantankerous, restive under authority and impatient of family
+restraint. We should neither laugh nor scold, if we understood. Nature
+is succeeding in her purpose. She has led the young life on from self
+to parents, from parents to gang or chum, and now she is trying to
+lead it away from all its earlier attachments, to set it free for its
+final adventure in loving. The process is painful, so painful that it
+sometimes fails of accomplishment. In any case, the strain is
+tremendous, needing <!-- Page 61 --><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61" />all
+the wisdom and understanding which the family
+has to offer. It is no easy task for any person to free himself from
+the sense of dependence and protection, and the shielding love that
+have always been his; to weigh anchors that are holding him to the
+past and to start out on the voyage alone.</p>
+
+<p>At this time of change, the chemistry of the body plays an important
+part in the development of the mental traits; all half-developed
+tendencies are given power through the maturing of the sex-glands,
+which bind them into an organization ready for their ultimate purpose.
+The current is now turned on, and the machinery, which has been
+furnished from the beginning, is ready for its task. After a few false
+starts in the shape of &quot;puppy love,&quot; the mature instinct, if it be
+successful, seeks until from among the crowd it finds its mate. It has
+graduated from the training-school and is ready for life.</p>
+
+
+<p class="scheading">Civilization's Problem</p>
+
+<p><b>When Nature's Plans Fall Through.</b> We have been describing the normal
+course of affairs. We know that all too often the normal is not
+achieved. Inner forces or outer circumstances too often conspire to
+keep the young man or the young woman from the culmination toward
+which everything has been moving. If the life-force cannot liberate
+itself from the old family <!-- Page 62 --><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62" />grooves
+to forge ahead into new channels,
+or if economic demands or other conditions make postponement
+necessary, then marriage is not possible. All the glandular secretions
+and internal stimuli have been urging on to the final consummation,
+developing physical and emotional life for an end that does not come;
+or if it does come, is not sufficient to satisfy the demands of the
+age-old instinct which for millions of years knew no restraint. In any
+case, man finds himself, and woman herself, face to face with a
+pressing problem, none the less pressing because it is in most cases
+entirely unrecognized.</p>
+
+<p><b>Blundering Instincts.</b> The older a person is, the more fixed are his
+habits. Now, an instinct is a race-habit and represents the
+crystallized reactions of a past that is old. Whatever has been done
+over and over again, millions of times, naturally becomes fixed,
+automatic, tending to conserve itself in its old ways, to resist any
+change and to act as it has always acted. This conserves energy and
+works well so long as conditions remain the same. But if for any
+reason there comes a change, things are likely to go wrong. By just so
+far as things are different, an automatic habit becomes a handicap
+instead of a help.</p>
+
+<p>This having to act under changed conditions is exactly the trouble
+with the reproductive instinct. Under civilization, conditions have
+changed but the instinct <!-- Page 63 --><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63" />has
+not. It is trying to act as it always
+has acted, but civilized man wills otherwise. The change that has come
+is not in the physical, external environment, but in man himself and
+in the social environment which he has created. There is in man an
+onward urge toward new and better things. Side by side with the desire
+to live as he always has lived, there is a desire to make new
+adaptations which are for the advancement of the whole race-life.
+Besides the natural wish to take his desires as he finds them, there
+is also the wish to modify them and use them for higher and more
+socially useful ends.</p>
+
+<p>As the race has found through long experience that monogamy is to be
+preferred to promiscuous mating; that the highest interests of life
+are fostered by loyalty to the institution of the family; that the
+careful rearing of several children rather than the mere production of
+many is in the long run to be desired; and that a single standard of
+morality is practicable; so society has established for its members a
+standard which is in direct opposition to the immeasurable urge of the
+past. To make matters worse, there have at the same time grown up in
+many communities a standard of living and an economic competition
+which still further limit the size of the family and the satisfaction
+of the reproductive impulse.</p>
+
+<p><b>The Perpetual Feud.</b> There thus arises the strategic
+<!-- Page 64 --><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64" />struggle
+between that which the race has found good in the past and that which
+the race finds good in the present. As the older race-experience is
+laid in they body and built into the very fiber of the individual,
+inherited as an innate impulse, it has become an integral part of
+himself, an individual need rather than a social one. On the other
+hand, man has, as another innate part of his being, the desire to go
+with the herd, to conform to the standards of his fellows, to be what
+he has learned society wants him to be. Hence the struggle, insistent,
+ever more pressing, between two sets of desires within the man
+himself; the feud between the past and the present, between the
+natural and the social, between the selfish and the ideal. On one
+side, there is the demand for instinctive satisfaction; on the other,
+for moral control; on one side the demand for pleasure; on the other,
+the demands of reality.<a name="FNanchor_13" id="FNanchor_13"></a>
+<a href="#Footnote_13" class="fnanchor">[13]</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_13" id="Footnote_13" />
+<a href="#FNanchor_13"><span class="label">[13]</span>
+</a> &quot;All the burdens of men or society are caused by the
+inadequacies in the association of primal animal emotions with those
+mental powers which have been so rapidly developed in
+man-kind.&quot;&mdash;Shaler quoted by Hinkle: Introduction to Jung's
+<i>Psychology of the Unconscious</i>.</p></div>
+
+<p>Two factors intensify the conflict. In the first place, the older
+habits have the head start. Compared with the almost limitless extent
+of our past history, our desire for the control of the instincts is
+very new indeed. It requires the long look and the right perspective
+<!-- Page 65 --><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65" />
+to understand how very lately we have entered into our new conditions
+and how old a habit we are trying to break. In the second place, the
+larger part of the stimulus comes from within the body itself. When
+studying the other instincts, we saw that the best way to control was
+to refuse to stimulate when the situation was not suitable for
+discharge. But with the organically aroused sex-instinct there is no
+such power of choice. We may fan the flame by the thoughts we think or
+the environment we seek, or we may smother the flame until it is out
+of sight, but we cannot extinguish it by any act of ours. The issue
+has always been too important to be left to the individual. The
+stimulation comes, primarily, not by way of the mind but by way of the
+body. With this instinct we cannot &quot;stop before we begin,&quot; because
+Nature has taken the matter out of our hands and begins for us.</p>
+
+
+<p class="scheading">The Bulwark We Have Built</p>
+
+<p>With the competing forces so strong and the issues so great, it is not
+to be wondered at that society has had to build up a massive bulwark
+of public opinion, to establish regulations and fix penalties that are
+more stringent than those imposed in any other direction. Nor is it
+remarkable that in its effort to protect itself, society has sometimes
+made mistakes.</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 66 --><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66" />These
+blunders seem to lie in two directions. Assuming that it is
+nearly impossible for the male to control his instincts, and that,
+after all, it does not matter so much whether he does or not, society
+has blinked at license in men, and thus has fostered a demoralizing,
+anti-social double standard which has broken up countless homes, has
+been responsible for the spread of venereal diseases, and has been
+among the greatest curses of modern civilization. At the same time
+society, in its efforts to maintain its standards for woman, has
+taught its children, especially its girls, that anything savoring of
+the word &quot;sexual&quot; is sinful, disgusting, and impure. To be sure, very
+many women have modified their childish views, but an astonishingly
+large number conserve, even in maturity, their warped ideas about the
+whole subject of sex. Many a mature woman secretly believes that she,
+at least, is not guilty of harboring anything so &quot;vulgar&quot; as a
+reproductive instinct, not realizing that if this were so, she would
+be, in very truth, a freak of nature.</p>
+
+<p>Of course, woman is by nature as fully endowed with sex instincts as
+is man. Kipling portrays the female of the species as &quot;deadlier than
+the male&quot; in that the very framework of her constitution outlines the
+one issue for which it was launched,&mdash;stanch against any attack which
+might endanger the carrying on of life. Feeling the force of this
+instinctive urge, she <!-- Page 67 --><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67" />braces
+herself against precipitancy in response by what seems almost a negation.</p>
+
+<p>Just as we lean well in when riding around a corner, in order to keep
+ourselves from falling out, so by an &quot;over-compensation&quot; for what is
+unconsciously felt to be danger woman increases her feeling of safety
+by setting up a taboo on the whole subject of sex. It is time that we
+freed our minds from the artificial and perverted attitude toward this
+dominant impulse; time to rescue the word &quot;sex&quot; from its implications
+of grossness and sensuousness, and to recognize the instinct in its
+true light as one of the necessary and holy forces of life, a force
+capable of causing great damage, but also holding infinite
+possibilities for good if wisely directed.</p>
+
+<p>Society only gets its members into trouble when, even by implication,
+it attempts to deny its natural make-up, and allows little children to
+grow up with the false idea that one of their strongest impulses is to
+be shunned by them as a thing of shame. We cannot dam back the flood
+by building a bulwark of untruth, and then expect the bulwark to hold.</p>
+
+<p><b>Adaptable Energy.</b> We neither have to give in to our over-insistent
+desires nor to deny that they exist. Man has a power of adaptation.
+Just when we seem to run up against a dead wall, to face an
+irreconcilable conflict, we find a wonderful power of indirect
+<!-- Page 68 --><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68" />
+expression that affords satisfaction to all the innate forces without
+doing violence to the ethical standards which have proved so necessary
+for the development of character.</p>
+
+<p>Hunger, which, like the reproductive instinct, is stimulated by the
+changing chemistry of the body, can be satisfied only by achieving its
+primary purpose, the taking of material food; but the creative impulse
+to reproduce oneself possesses a unique ability to spiritualize itself
+and expend its energy in other lines of creative endeavor. There seems
+to be some sort of close connection between the especially intense
+energy of the reproductive instinct and the modes of expression of the
+instinct for construction; a connection which makes possible the
+utilization of threatening destructive energy by directing it toward
+socially valuable work. Just as we harness the mountain stream and use
+its wild force to light our cities, or catch the lightning to run our
+trolley cars, so we find man and woman&mdash;under the right
+conditions&mdash;easily and naturally switching over the power of their
+surplus sex-energy to ends which seem at first only slightly related
+to its original aim, but which resemble it in that they too are
+self-expressive and creative. If a person is able to express himself
+in some real way, to give himself to socially needed work; if he can
+reproduce himself intellectually and spiritually in artistic
+production, in <!-- Page 69 --><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69" />invention,
+in literature, in social betterment, he is
+drawing on an age-old reservoir of creative energy, and by so doing is
+relieving himself of inner tension which would otherwise seek less
+beneficent ways of expression.</p>
+
+<p>The world knew all this intuitively for a long time before it knew it
+theoretically. The novelists, who are unconsciously among the best
+psychologists, have thoroughly worked the vein. The average man knows
+it. &quot;He was disappointed in love,&quot; we say, &quot;and we thought he would go
+to pieces, but now he has found himself in his work&quot;; or, &quot;She will go
+mad if she doesn't find some one who needs her.&quot; It is only lately
+that science has caught up with intuition, but now the physicians and
+psychologists who have had the most intimate and first-hand
+acquaintance with the human heart are recognizing, to a man, this
+unique power of the love-instinct and its possibilities for creative
+work of every sort.<a name="FNanchor_14" id="FNanchor_14"></a>
+<a href="#Footnote_14" class="fnanchor">[14]</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_14" id="Footnote_14" />
+<a href="#FNanchor_14"><span class="label">[14]</span>
+</a> Among those who have shown this connection between the
+love-force and creative work are Freud, Jung, Jelliffe, White, Brill,
+Jones, Wright, Frink, and the late Dr. Putnam of Harvard University,
+who writes: &quot;Freud has never asserted it as his opinion and it
+certainly is not mine, that this is the only root from which artistic
+expression springs. On the other hand, it is probable that all
+artistic productions are partly referable to this source. A close
+examination of many of them would enable any one to justify the
+opinion that it is a source largely drawn
+upon.&quot;&mdash;<i>Human Motives</i>. p. 87.</p></div>
+
+
+<p><b>Higher Levels.</b> Freud has called this spiritualization
+<!-- Page 70 --><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70" />of natural
+forces by a term borrowed from chemistry. As a solid is &quot;sublimated&quot;
+when transformed into a gas, so a primal impulse is said to be
+&quot;sublimated&quot; when it is diverted from its original object and made to
+serve other ends. By this power of sublimation the little
+exhibitionist, who loved to show himself, may become an actor; the
+&quot;cruel&quot; boy who loved to dissect animals may become a surgeon; the
+sexually curious child may turn his curiosity to other things and
+become a scholar; the &quot;born mother,&quot; if denied children of her own or
+having finished with their upbringing, may take to herself the
+children of the city, working for better laws and better care for
+needy little ones; the man or woman whose sex-instinct is too strong
+to find expression in legitimate, direct ways, may find it a valuable
+resource, an increment of energy for creative work, along whatever
+line his talent may lie.</p>
+
+<p>There is no more marvelous provision in all life than this power of
+sublimation of one form of energy into another, a provision shadowing
+forth almost limitless possibilities for higher adaptations and for
+growth in character. As we think of the distance we have already
+traveled and the endless possibilities of ever higher excursions of
+the life-force, we feel like echoing Paul's words: &quot;He who began a
+good work in you will perfect it unto the end.&quot; The history
+<!-- Page 71 --><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71" />of the
+past holds great promise for the future.</p>
+
+<p><b>When Sublimation Fails.</b> But in the meantime we cannot congratulate
+ourselves too heartily. Sublimation too often fails. There are too
+many nervous wrecks by the way, too many weak indulgers of original
+desires, too many repressed, starved lives with no outlet for their
+misunderstood yearnings; and, as we shall see, too many people who, in
+spite of a big lifework, fail to find satisfaction because of
+unnecessary handicaps carried over from their childhood days.
+&quot;Society's great task is, therefore, the understanding of the
+life-force, its manifold efforts at expression and the way of
+attaining this, and to provide as free and expansive ways as possible
+for the creative energy which is to work marvelous things for the
+future.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>If &quot;the understanding of the life force&quot; is to be available for use,
+it must be the property of the average man and woman, the fathers and
+mothers of our children, the teachers and physicians who act as their
+advisers and friends.<a name="FNanchor_15" id="FNanchor_15"></a>
+<a href="#Footnote_15" class="fnanchor">[15]</a> This chapter
+is intended to do its bit toward such a general understanding.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_15" id="Footnote_15"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_15"><span class="label">[15]</span></a> &quot;Appropriate
+educational processes might perhaps guide
+this enormous impulsive energy toward the maintenance instead of the
+destruction of marriage and the family. But up to the present time,
+education with respect to this moral issue has commonly lacked any
+such constructive method. The social standard and the individual
+impulse have simply collided, and the individual has been left to
+resolve the conflict, for the most part by his own resources.&quot;&mdash;G.A.
+Coe: <i>Psychology of Religion</i>, p. 150.</p></div>
+
+<p class="scheading"><!-- Page 72 --><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72" />Parental Instinct and Tender Emotion</p>
+
+<p><b>Until They Can Fly.</b> Only half of Nature's need is met by the
+reproductive instinct. Her carefulness in this direction would be
+largely wasted without that other impulse which she has planted, the
+impulse to protect the new lives until they are old enough to fend for
+themselves. The higher the type of life and the greater the future
+demands, the longer is the period of preparation and consequent period
+of parental care. This fact, coupled with man's power for lasting
+relationships through the organization of permanent sentiments, has
+made the, bond between parent and child an enduring one. Needless to
+say, this relationship is among the most beautiful on earth, the
+source of an incalculable amount of joy and gain. However, as we have
+already suggested, there lurks here, as in every beneficent force, a
+danger. If parents forget what they are for, and try to foster a more
+than ordinary tie, they make themselves a menace to those whom they
+most love. Any exaggeration is abnormal. If the childhood bond is
+over-strong, or the childhood dependence too long cultivated, then the
+relationship has overstepped its purpose, and, as we shall later see,
+has laid the foundation for a future neurosis.</p>
+
+<p><b>Mothering the World.</b> Probably no instinct has so many ways of
+indirect expression as this mothering <!-- Page 73 -->
+<a name="Page_73" id="Page_73" />impulse of protection. Aroused
+by the cry of a child in distress, or by the thought of the weakness,
+or need, or ill-treatment of any defenseless creature, this
+mother-father impulse is at the root of altruism, gratitude, love,
+pity, benevolence, and all unselfish actions.</p>
+
+<p>There is still a great difference of opinion as to how man's spiritual
+nature came into being; still discussion as to whether it developed
+out of crude beginnings as the rest of his physical and mental
+endowment has developed, or whether it was added from the outside as
+something entirely new. Be that as it may, the fact remains that man
+has as an innate part of his being an altruistic tendency, an
+unselfish care for the welfare of others, a relationship to society as
+a whole,&mdash;a relationship which is the only foundation of health and
+happiness and which brings sure disaster if ignored. The egoistic
+tendencies are only a part of human nature. Part of us is naturally
+socially minded, unselfish, spiritual, capable of responding to the
+call to lose our lives in order that others may find theirs.</p>
+
+
+<p class="scheading">Summary</p>
+
+<p>Civilized man as he is to-day is a product of the past and can be
+understood only as that past is understood. The conflicts with which
+he is confronted are the direct outcome of the evolutional history of
+the race and of its attempt to adapt its primitive instincts to
+present-day ideals.</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 74 --><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74" />Character
+is what we do with our instincts. According to Freud, all
+of a man's traits are the result of his unchanged original impulses,
+or of his reactions against those impulses, or of his sublimation of
+them. In other words, there are three things we may do with our
+instincts. We may follow our primal desires, we may deny their
+existence, or we may use them for ends which are in harmony with our
+lives as we want them to be. As the first course leads to degeneracy,
+the second to nervous illness, and the third to happy usefulness, it
+is obviously important to learn the way of sublimation. Sometimes this
+is accomplished unconsciously by the life-force, but sometimes
+sublimation fails, and is reestablished only when the conscious mind
+gains an understanding of the great forces of life. This method of
+reeducation of the personality as a means of treatment in nervousness
+is called psycho-therapy.</p>
+
+<p><b>Religion's Contribution.</b> If it be asked why, amid all this
+discussion of instincts and motives we have made no mention of that
+great energizer religion, we answer that we have by no means forgotten
+it, but that we have been dealing solely with those primary tendencies
+out of which all of the compound emotions are made. Man has been
+described as instinctively and incurably religious, but there seems no
+doubt that religion is a compound reaction, made up of
+love,&mdash;<!-- Page 75 --><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75" />sympathetic
+response to the parental love of God,&mdash;fear,
+negative self-feeling, and positive self-feeling in the shape of
+aspiration for the desired ideal of character; all woven into several
+compound emotions such as awe, gratitude, and reverence.</p>
+
+<p>It goes almost without saying that religion, if it be vital, is one of
+the greatest sources of moral energy and spiritual dynamic, and that
+it is and always has been one of the greatest aids to sublimation that
+man has found. A force like the Christian religion, which sets the
+highest ideal of character and makes man want to live up to it, and
+which at the same time says, &quot;You can. Here is strength to help you&quot;;
+which unifies life and fills it with purpose; which furnishes the
+highest love-object and turns the thought outward to the good of
+mankind&mdash;such a force could hardly fail to be a dynamic factor in the
+effort toward sublimation. This book, however, deals primarily with
+those cases for which religion has had, to call science to her aid in
+order to find the cause of failure, to flood the whole subject with
+light, and to help cut the cords which, binding us to the past, make
+it impossible to utilize the great resources that are at hand for all
+the children of men.</p>
+
+<p><b>Where We Keep Our Instincts.</b> It must have been impossible to read
+through these two chapters on instinct without feeling that, after
+all, we are not very well acquainted with ourselves. The more we look
+<!-- Page 76 --><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76" />into human
+nature, the more evident it becomes that there is much in
+each one of us of which we are only dimly aware. It is now time for us
+to look a little deeper,&mdash;to find where we keep these instinctive
+tendencies with which it is possible to live so intimately without
+even suspecting their existence. We shall find that they occupy a
+realm of their own, and that this realm, while quite out of sight, is
+yet open to exploration.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<!-- Page 77 --><div><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77"></a></div>
+
+<p class="heading"><a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V">CHAPTER V</a></p>
+
+<p class="heading"><i>In which we look below the surface and discover a veritable
+wonderland</i></p>
+
+<p class="heading">THE SUBCONSCIOUS MIND</p>
+
+<p class="scheading">Strangers to Ourselves</p>
+
+
+<p><b>Hidden Strings.</b> A collie dog lies on the hearthrug. A small boy with
+mischievous intent ties a fine thread to a bone, hides himself behind
+a chair, and pulls the bone slowly across the floor. The dog is thrown
+into a fit of terror because he does not know about the hidden string.</p>
+
+<p>A Chinese in the early days of San Francisco stands spell-bound at the
+sight of a cable car. &quot;No pushee. No pullee. Go allee samee like
+hellee!&quot; He does not know about the hidden string.</p>
+
+<p>A woman of refinement and culture thinks a thought that horrifies her
+sensitive soul. It is entirely out of keeping with her character as
+she knows it. In her misunderstanding she considers it wicked and
+thrusts it from her, wondering how it ever could have been hers. She
+does not know about the hidden string.</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 78 --><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78" />In the last
+two chapters we thought together about some of these
+strings, examining the fibers of which they are made and learning in
+what directions they pull. We found them to be more powerful than we
+should have supposed, more insistent and less visible. We found that
+instinctive desire is the string, the cable that energizes our every
+act, but that our desires are neither single nor simple, and are but
+rarely on the surface. Many of us live with them a long time, feeling
+the tug, but not recognizing the string.</p>
+
+<p><b>There's a Reason.</b> We take our thoughts and feelings and actions for
+granted, without stopping very often to wonder where they come from.
+But there is always a reason. When the law of cause and effect reaches
+the doorsill of our minds, it does not stop short to give way to the
+law of chance. We wake up in the morning with a certain thought on
+top. We say it &quot;just happens.&quot; But nothing ever just happens. No
+thought that ever comes into our heads has been without its
+history,&mdash;its ancestors and its determining causes. But what about
+dreams? They, at least, you say, have no connections, no past and no
+future, only a weird, fantastic present. Strange to say, dreams have
+been found to be as closely related to our real selves, as interwoven
+with the warp and woof of our lives as are any of our waking thoughts.
+Even dreams have a reason.</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 79 --><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79" />We find ourselves
+holding certain beliefs and prejudices, interested
+in certain things and indifferent to others, liking some foods, some
+colors and disliking others. Search our minds as we will, we find no
+clue to many of these inner trends. Why?</p>
+
+<p>The answer is simple. The cause is hidden below the surface. If we try
+to explain ourselves on the basis of the open-to-inspection part of
+our minds, we must come to the conclusion that we are queer creatures
+indeed. Only by assuming that there is more to us than we know, can we
+find any rational basis for the way we think and feel and act.</p>
+
+<p><b>A Real Mind.</b> We learn of our internal machinery by what it does. We
+must infer a part of our minds which introspection does not reveal, a
+mind within the mind, able to work for us even while we are unaware of
+its existence. This inner mind is usually known as the subconscious,
+the mind under the level of consciousness.<a name="FNanchor_16" id="FNanchor_16"></a>
+<a href="#Footnote_16" class="fnanchor">[16]</a> We forget a name, but
+we know that it will come to us if we think about something else.
+Presently, out of somewhere, there flashes the word we want. Where was
+it in the meanwhile, and what <!-- Page 80 --><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80" />hunted
+it out from among all our other memories and sent it up into consciousness?
+The something which did that must be capable of conserving memories, of recognizing
+the right one and of communicating it,&mdash;surely a real mind.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_16" id="Footnote_16"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_16"><span class="label">[16]</span>
+</a> Writers of the psycho-analytic school use the word
+&quot;unconscious&quot; to denote the lower layers of this region, and
+&quot;fore-conscious&quot; to denote its upper layers. Morton Prince uses the
+terms &quot;unconscious&quot; and &quot;conscious&quot; to denote the different strata.
+As there is still a good deal of confusion in the use of terms, it has
+seemed to us simpler to use throughout only the general term
+&quot;subconscious.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>One evening my collaborator fumbled unsuccessfully for the name of a
+certain well-known journalist and educator. It was on the tip of her
+tongue, but it simply would not come, not even the initial letter. In
+a whimsical mood she said to herself just as she went to sleep,
+&quot;Little subconscious mind, you find that name to-night.&quot; In the middle
+of the night she awoke, saying, &quot;Williams&mdash;Talcott Williams.&quot; The
+subconscious, which has charge of her memories, had been at work while
+she slept.</p>
+
+<p>The history of literature abounds in stories of under-the-surface
+work. The man of genius usually waits until the mood is on, until the
+muse speaks; then all his lifeless material is lighted by new
+radiance. He feels that some one outside himself is dictating. Often
+he merely holds the pen while the finished work pours itself out
+spontaneously as if from a higher source.</p>
+
+<p>But it is not only the man of genius who makes use of these unseen
+powers. He may have readier access to his subconscious than the rest
+of us, but he has no monopoly. The most matter-of-fact man often says
+that he will &quot;sleep over&quot; a knotty problem. He puts
+<!-- Page 81 --><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81" />it into his mind
+and then goes about his business, or goes to sleep while this unseen
+judge weighs and balances, collects related facts, looks first at one
+side of the question and then at the other, and finally sends up into
+consciousness a decision full of conviction, a decision that has been
+formulated so far from the focus of attention that it seems to be
+something altogether new, a veritable inspiration.</p>
+
+<p>We must infer the subconscious from what it does. Things
+happen,&mdash;there must be a cause. Some of the things that happen
+presuppose imagination, reason, intelligence, will, emotion, desire,
+all the elements of mind. We cannot see this mind, but we can see its
+products. To deny the subconscious is to deny the artist while looking
+at his picture, to disbelieve in the poet while reading his poem, and
+to doubt the existence of the explosive while listening to the report.
+The subconscious is an artist, a poet, and an explosive by turns. If
+we deny its existence, a good portion of man's doings are
+unintelligible. If we admit it, many of his actions and his
+afflictions which have seemed absurd stand out in a new light as
+purposeful efforts with a real and adequate cause.</p>
+
+<p><b>The Submerged Nine Tenths.</b> The more deeply psychologists and
+physicians have studied into these things, the more certainly have
+they been forced to the conclusion that the conscious mind of man, the
+part that <!-- Page 82 --><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82" />he can
+explore at will, is by far the smaller part of his
+personality. Since this is to some people a rather startling
+proposition, we can do no better than quote the following statement
+from White on the relation of consciousness to the rest of the psychic life:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>Consciousness includes only that of which we are <i>aware</i>, while
+     outside of this somewhat restricted area there lies a much wider
+     area in which lie the deeper motives for conduct, and which not
+     only operates to control conduct, but also dictates what may and
+     what may not become conscious. Stanley Hall has very forcibly put
+     the matter by using the illustration of the iceberg. Only
+     one-tenth of the iceberg is visible above water; nine-tenths is
+     beneath the surface. It may appear in a given instance that the
+     iceberg is being carried along by the prevailing winds and
+     surface currents, but if we keep our eyes open we shall sooner or
+     later see a berg going in the face of the wind, and, so,
+     apparently putting to naught all the laws of aerodynamics. We can
+     understand this only when we come to realize that much the
+     greater portion of the berg is beneath the surface and that it is
+     moving in response to invisible forces addressed against this
+     submerged portion.</p>
+
+<p>     Consciousness only arises late in the course of evolution and
+     only in connection with adjustments that are relatively complex.
+     When the same or similar conditions in the environment are
+     repeatedly presented to the organism so that it is called upon to
+     react in a similar and almost
+<!-- Page 83 --><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83" />
+     identical way each time, there tends to be organized a mechanism
+     of reaction which becomes more and more automatic and is
+     accompanied by a state of mind of less and less
+	 awareness.<a name="FNanchor_17" id="FNanchor_17"></a>
+	 <a href="#Footnote_17" class="fnanchor">[17]</a></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_17" id="Footnote_17"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_17"><span class="label">[17]</span>
+</a> White: <i>Mechanisms of Character Formation</i>.</p></div>
+
+<p>It is easy to see the economy of this arrangement which provides
+ready-made patterns of reaction for habitual situations and leaves
+consciousness free for new decisions. Since an automatic action,
+traveling along well-worn brain paths, consumes little energy and
+causes the minimum of fatigue, the plan not only frees consciousness
+from a confusing number of details, but also works for the
+conservation of energy. While consciousness is busy lighting up the
+special problems of the moment, the vast mass of life's demands are
+taken care of by the subconscious, which constitutes the bulk of the
+mind. &quot;Properly speaking, the unconscious is the real
+psyche.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_18" id="FNanchor_18"></a>
+<a href="#Footnote_18" class="fnanchor">[18]</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_18" id="Footnote_18"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_18"><span class="label">[18]</span>
+</a> Freud: <i>Interpretation of Dreams</i>, p. 486.</p></div>
+
+<p><b>The Heart of Psychology.</b> In the face of all this, it is not to be
+wondered at that the problem of the subconscious has been called not
+one problem of psychology but the problem. It cannot be denied that
+the discoveries which have already been made as to its activities have
+been of immense practical importance in the understanding of normal
+conduct and in the treatment of the psycho-neuroses.</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 84 --><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84" />If some
+of the methods&mdash;such as hypnosis, automatic writing, and
+interpretation of dreams&mdash;which are used to investigate its activities
+seem to savor of the charlatan and the mountebank, it is because they
+have occasionally been appropriated by the ignorant and the
+unscrupulous. Their real setting is the psychological laboratory and
+the physician's office. In the hands of men like Sigmund Freud, Boris
+Sidis, and Morton Prince, they are as scientific as the apparatus of
+any other laboratory and their findings are as susceptible of proof.
+We may, then, go forward with the conviction that we are walking on
+solid ground and that the main paths, at least, will turn into beaten
+highways.</p>
+
+
+<p class="scheading">Ancestral Memories</p>
+
+<p><b>Race-Memories.</b> An individual as he stands at any moment is the
+product of his past,&mdash;the past which he has inherited and the past
+which he has lived. In other words, he is a bundle of memories
+accumulated through the experience of the race, and through his own
+experience as a person. Some of these memories are conscious, and
+these he calls his, while others fail to reach consciousness and are
+not recognized as part of his assets.</p>
+
+<p>The instincts form the starting-point of mind, conscious and
+subconscious, and are the foundation <!-- Page 85 -->
+<a name="Page_85" id="Page_85" />upon which the rest is built.
+They often show themselves as part of our conscious lives, but their
+roots are laid deep in the subconscious from which they can never be
+eradicated. This deepest-laid instinctive layer of the subconscious is
+little subject to change. It represents the earlier adjustments of the
+race, crystallized into habit. It takes no account of the differences
+between the present and the past. It knows no culture, no reason, no
+lately acquired prudence. It is all energy and can only wish, or urge
+toward action. But since only those race-memories became instincts
+which had proved needful to the race in the long run, they are on the
+whole beneficent forces, working for the good of the race and the good
+of the individual, if he learns how to handle them aright and to adapt
+them to present conditions.</p>
+
+<p>This instinctive urge toward action arouses in the individual an
+organic response that is felt as a tension or craving and is mainly
+dependent upon its own chemical constitution at the moment. Hunger is
+the sensation caused by the little muscular contractions in the
+stomach when the body is low in its food supply. Sudden fright is felt
+as an all-gone sensation &quot;at the pit of the stomach.&quot; What really
+happens is a tightening up of the circular muscles of the
+blood-vessels lying in the network of the solar plexus, and a spasm of
+the muscles of the digestive tract. The hungry stomach <!-- Page 86 -->
+<a name="Page_86" id="Page_86" />impels to
+action until satisfied; the physical discomfort in fear impels toward
+measures of safety. The apparatus that is made use of by the
+subconscious in carrying out this instinctive urge is called the
+autonomic nervous system.<a name="FNanchor_19" id="FNanchor_19"></a>
+<a href="#Footnote_19" class="fnanchor">[19]</a> It regulates all the functions of
+living, not only under the stress of emotion, but during every moment
+of waking or sleeping.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_19" id="Footnote_19"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_19"><span class="label">[19]</span>
+</a> Kempf: &quot;The Tonus of Automatic Segments as a Cause of
+Abnormal Behavior,&quot; <i>Journal of Nervous and Mental Diseases</i>, January,
+1921.</p></div>
+
+<p><b>A Capable Manager.</b> The conscious mind could not possibly send
+messages to the numerous glands that fit the body for action, nor
+attend to all the delicate adjustments that enter into the process.
+The conscious mind in most of us does not even know of the existence
+of the organs and secretions involved, but something sends the
+messages and it is something that has a remarkable likeness to mind as
+we usually think of mind,&mdash;something which takes advantage of the past
+and gages means to an end with a nicety that excites our wonder.</p>
+
+<p><b>Take no Anxious Thought.</b> We take food into our stomachs and forget
+about it, if we are wise; and this subconscious overseer who through
+millions of years of experience has learned how to digest food does
+the rest. As with digestion, so with our heart-action; we lie down at
+night fairly sure that there will be no break in the regular rhythm of
+its beat. The subconscious
+<!-- Page 87 --><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87" />overseer is
+&quot;on the job&quot; and he never
+rests. No matter how hard we sleep, he never lets us forget to take a
+breath; and if we trust him, he is very likely to wake us up at the
+appointed time in the morning. Also, if we trust him, he carries us
+off to sleep as though we were babies. Has he not had long practice in
+the days before insomnia was invented?</p>
+
+<p><b>First Aid to the Injured.</b> In times of infection or injury, this
+subconscious manager is better than any doctor. The doctors say with
+truth that they only assist nature. If the infection is internal,
+antitoxins are produced within the body. If the injury is external,
+like a cut, the messages fly, and white blood-corpuscles are marshaled
+to take care of poisons and build up the tissue. If the injury is of
+the kind that needs rest, the subconscious doctor knows it. He
+therefore causes pain and rigidity, in order to induce us to hold the
+injured part still until it is restored.</p>
+
+<p>Crile reminds us of a fact that is often noticed by surgeons. If
+patients under ether are handled roughly, especially in the intestinal
+region, respiration quickens and there are tremors and even convulsive
+efforts which interfere with the surgeon's work. The conscious mind
+cannot feel. It is asleep. But the subconscious mind, whose business
+it is to protect the body, is trying to get away from injury. The body
+uses up as much energy as though it had run for miles,
+<!-- Page 88 --><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88" />and when the
+patient wakes up, we say that he is suffering from shock. The
+subconscious mind which is not affected by ether, has been exhausting
+itself in a vain attempt to get the body away from harm.</p>
+
+<p><b>A Tireless Servant.</b> When the conscious mind undertakes a job, it is
+always more or less subject to fatigue. But the subconscious after its
+long practice seems never to tire. We say that its activities have
+become automatic. With all its inherited skill, the subconscious, if
+left to itself, can be depended upon to run the bodily machinery
+without effort and without hitch. The only things that can interfere
+with its work are the wrong kind of emotions and the wrong kind of
+suggestions from the conscious mind. Barring these, it goes its way
+like a trusty servant, looking after details and leaving its master's
+mind free for other things. Having been &quot;in the family&quot; for
+generations, it knows its business and resents any interference with
+its duties or any infringement of its rights.</p>
+
+<p>No man, then, comes into this world without inheritance: he receives
+from his ancestors two goodly sets of heirlooms, the instincts and the
+mechanism which carries on bodily functions. This is the capital with
+which man starts life; but immediately he begins increasing this
+capital, adding memories from his own experience to the accumulated
+race-records.</p>
+
+<p class="scheading"><!-- Page 89 -->
+<a name="Page_89" id="Page_89" />Personal Memories</p>
+
+<p>No more startling secret has been unearthed by science than the
+discovery of the length and minuteness of our memories. No matter how
+much one may think he has forgotten, the tablets of his mind are
+closely written with records of infinitesimal experiences, shadowy
+sensations, old happenings which the conscious self has lost entirely
+and would scarcely recognize as its own. Many of these brain records,
+or neurograms, as Prince calls them, are never aroused from their
+dormant conditions. But others, aroused by emotion or association of
+ideas, may after years of inactivity, come forth again either as
+conscious memories or as subconscious forces, or even as physiological
+memories,&mdash;bodily repetitions of the pains, palpitations, and tremors
+of old emotional experiences.</p>
+
+<p><b>Irresistible Childhood.</b> An experience that is forgotten is not
+necessarily lost. Although the first few years of childhood are lost
+to conscious memory, these years outweigh all others in their
+influence on character. The Jesuit priest was right when he said,
+&quot;Give me a child until he is six years old, and he will be a Catholic
+all his life.&quot; As Frink has so ably shown, the determining factors
+that enter into any adult choice, such as the choice of the Catholic
+or the Protestant faith, are in a large measure made up of
+subconscious memories from early childhood, forgotten memories of
+<!-- Page 90 --><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90" />Sunday-school
+and church, of lessons at home or passages in
+books,&mdash;experiences which no voluntary effort could recall, but which
+still live unrecognized in our mature judgments and beliefs. Naturally
+we do not acknowledge these subconscious motives. We like to believe
+that all our decisions are based on reason, and so we invent plausible
+arguments for our attitudes and our actions, arguments which we
+ourselves implicitly believe. This process of substituting a plausible
+reason for a subconscious one is known as rationalization, a process
+which every one of us engages in many times a day.</p>
+
+<p>It is indeed true that the child is father to the man. Those first
+impressionable years, when we believed implicitly whatever any one
+told us and when through ignorance we reacted emotionally to ordinary
+experiences, are molding us still, making us the men and women we are
+to-day, coloring with childish ideas many of the attitudes of our
+supposedly reasoning life. Bergson says:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>The unconscious is our historical past. In reality the past is
+     preserved automatically. In its entirety probably it follows us
+     at every instant; all that we have felt, thought and willed from
+     our earliest infancy is there, leaning over the present which is
+     about to join it, pressing against the portals of consciousness
+     that would fain leave it outside.</p></div>
+
+<p><!-- Page 91 --><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91" /><b>Spontaneous
+Outbursts.</b> &quot;How do we know all this?&quot; some one says.
+&quot;What is the evidence for these sweeping statements? If we cannot
+remember, how can we discover these strange memories that are so
+powerful but so elusive? If they are below the level of consciousness,
+are they not, in the very nature of the case, forever hidden from
+view, in the sphere of the occult rather than that of science?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The answer to these questions is determined by one important fact; the
+line between the conscious and subconscious minds does not always
+remain in the same place; the &quot;threshold of consciousness&quot; is
+sometimes displaced, automatically allowing these buried memories to
+come to the surface. In sleep and delirium, in trance and
+hallucination, in hysteria and intoxication, the tables are turned;
+the restraining hand of the conscious mind is loosened and the
+submerged self comes forth with all its ancient memories.</p>
+
+<p>It is a common experience to have a patient in delirium repeat
+long-forgotten verses or descriptions of events that the &quot;real man&quot;
+has lost entirely. The renowned servant-girl, quoted by Hudson, who in
+delirium recited passage after passage of Hebrew, Latin, and Greek,
+which she had heard her one-time master repeat in his study, is
+typical of many such instances.<a name="FNanchor_20" id="FNanchor_20"></a>
+<a href="#Footnote_20" class="fnanchor">[20]</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_20" id="Footnote_20"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_20"><span class="label">[20]</span></a> Hudson:
+<i>The Law of Psychic Phenomena</i>, p. 44. Quoted
+from <i>Coleridge's Biographia Literaria</i>, Vol. I, p. 117 (edit. 1847).</p></div>
+
+<p><!-- Page 92 --><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92" />A young girl
+of nineteen, a patient of mine, lapsed for several weeks
+into a dissociated state in which she forgot all the memories and
+ideas of her adult life, and returned to the period of her childhood.
+She used to say that she saw things inside her head and would
+accurately describe events that took place before she was two years of
+age,&mdash;scenes which she had completely forgotten in her normal life.
+One day when I asked her to tell me what she was seeing, she began to
+talk about &quot;little sister&quot; (herself) and &quot;little brother.&quot; &quot;Little
+sister and brother were the two little folks that lived with their
+mother and their daddy and they were playing on the sand-pile. You
+know there was only one sand-pile, not like all the ones they have
+down here (at the seaside), and they had a bucket that they would put
+sand in and they would dump it out again and they would make nice
+things, you know; they would play with their little dog Ponto and he
+was white with black and brown spots on him. Little brother had white
+hair and he was bigger than little sister and he had a little waist
+with ruffles down the front and around the collar and a black coat
+that came down to his knees and it had two little white bands around
+it. Some of the waists he wore had blue specks and some had red and
+black specks in it.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Little sister had yellow curls and she had a blue coat with jiggly
+streaks of white in it, and she had a <!-- Page 93 -->
+<a name="Page_93" id="Page_93" />little white bonnet that was
+crocheted, and she had little blue mittens on that were tied to a
+string that went around her neck and down the other arm. It got pretty
+cold where they lived. Little sister and little brother would go out
+to the pile of leaves and jump on them and bounce and they would
+crackle. The leaves came down from the trees all of a sudden when they
+got tired, and they were different colors, brown and red. Little
+sister could walk then but she could not walk one other time before
+then; she could stand up by holding to a chair, but she could not go
+herself. One morning Big Tom said 'Run to Daddy' and she went to her
+daddy, and after that she always walked; they were glad and she was
+glad. She walked all day long. Big Tom was a man who used to help
+Daddy and little sister always liked him. He was a nice man.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The mother verified this scene of the first walking, saying that it
+had occurred on her own wedding-anniversary when the child was
+twenty-three months old.</p>
+
+<p>One night I heard the same patient talk in her sleep in the slow and
+hesitating manner of a child reading phonetically from a printed page.
+I soon recognized the words as those of a poem of Tagore's, called &quot;My
+Prayer,&quot; and remembered that a magazine containing the poem had been
+lying on the bed during the day. When she had finished I wakened her,
+saying, &quot;Now tell me what you have been dreaming.&quot;
+She answered <!-- Page 94 --><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94" />in
+her childish way, &quot;I think I do not dream.&quot; She went to sleep
+immediately and again repeated the poem, word for word, without a
+single mistake. Again I awakened her with the words, &quot;Now tell me what
+you have been dreaming.&quot; And again she answered, &quot;I think I do not
+dream.&quot; I said: &quot;But yes; don't you remember you were just saying,
+'When the time comes for me to go'?&quot; (the last line of the poem). &quot;Oh,
+yes,&quot; she said, &quot;I was seeing it, and I think I'll not go to sleep
+again. It tires me so to see it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>While she was awake she had no recollection of having seen the poem
+and was indeed in her dissociated state quite incapable of
+understanding its meaning. Asleep, she saw every word as plainly as if
+the page had been before her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>The distorted pictures of dreams are always made of the material which
+past experiences have furnished and which have in many cases been
+dropped out of consciousness for years only to rise out of their long
+oblivion when the conscious mind has been put to sleep.</p>
+
+<p><b>Unearthing Old Experiences.</b> However, psychology does not have to
+wait for buried memories to come forth of their own free will. It has
+a number of successful ways of summoning them from their hiding-place
+and helping them across the line into consciousness. In the hands of
+skilled investigators and therapeutists, hypnosis, hypnoidization,
+automatic writing, <!-- Page 95 --><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95" />crystal-gazing,
+abstraction, free association, word-association, and interpretation of dreams
+have all been repeatedly successful in bringing to light memories which apparently
+have been for many years completely blotted out of mind. As we become
+better acquainted with these technical devices we shall find that
+there are four kinds of experiences whose records are carefully stored
+away in our minds. Some were always so far from the center of our
+attention that we could swear they never had been ours; others,
+although once present in consciousness, were so trivial and
+unimportant that it seems ridiculous to suppose them conserved; others
+never came into our waking minds at all and entered our lives only in
+special states, such as sleep or delirium or dreams. All these we
+should expect to forget; the astonishing thing is that they ever were
+conserved. But there is a fourth class that is different. It is made
+up of experiences that were so vital, so emotional, so closely woven
+into the fiber of our being that it seems impossible that they ever
+could be forgotten. Let us look at a few examples of records of all
+these four kinds of experiences, examples chosen from hundreds of
+their kind as illustrations of the all-embracing character of buried
+memories.<a name="FNanchor_21" id="FNanchor_21"></a>
+<a href="#Footnote_21" class="fnanchor">[21]</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_21" id="Footnote_21"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_21"><span class="label">[21]</span>
+</a> For further examples see Prince, <i>The Unconscious</i>;
+Prince, <i>The Dissociation of a Personality</i>, and Hudson, <i>The Law of
+Psychic Phenomena</i>.</p></div>
+
+<p><!-- Page 96 --><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96" /><b>Out of the
+Corners of Our Eyes.</b> In the first place, we are much
+more observing than we imagine. We may be so interested in our own
+thoughts that details of our environment are entirely lost on the
+conscious mind, but the subconscious has its eyes open, and its ears.
+People in hypnosis have been known to repeat verbatim whole passages
+from newspapers which they had never consciously read. While they were
+busy with one column, their wide-awake subconscious was devouring the
+next one, and remembering it. Prince relates the story of a young
+woman who unconsciously &quot;took in&quot; the details of a friend's
+appearance:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>I asked B.C.A. (without warning and after having covered her
+     eyes) to describe the dress of a friend who was present and with
+     whom she had been conversing perhaps some twenty minutes. She was
+     unable to do so beyond saying that he wore dark clothes. I then
+     found that I myself was unable to give a more detailed
+     description of his dress, although we had lunched and been
+     together about two hours. B.C.A. was then asked to write a
+     description automatically. Her hand wrote as follows (she was
+     unaware that her hand was writing):</p>
+
+<p>     &quot;He has on a dark greenish gray suit, a stripe in it&mdash;little
+     rough stripe; black bow cravat; shirt with three little stripes
+     in it; black laced shoes; false teeth; one finger gone; three
+     buttons on his coat.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>     The written description was absolutely correct. The stripes in
+     the coat were almost invisible. I had not noticed
+	<!-- Page 97 --><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97" />
+     his teeth or the loss of a finger and we had to count the buttons
+     to make sure of their number owing to their partial concealment
+     by the folds of the unbuttoned coat. The shoe-strings I am sure
+     under the conditions would have escaped nearly every one's
+     notice.<a name="FNanchor_22" id="FNanchor_22"></a>
+	 <a href="#Footnote_22" class="fnanchor">[22]</a></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_22" id="Footnote_22"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_22"><span class="label">[22]</span>
+</a> Prince: <i>The Unconscious</i>, p. 53.</p></div>
+
+<p>Automatic writing, the method used to uncover this subconscious
+perception, is a favorite method with some investigators and is often
+used by Morton Prince. The hand writes without the direction of the
+personal consciousness and usually without the person's being aware
+that it is writing. A dissociated person does this very easily; other
+people can cultivate the ability, and perhaps most of us approach it
+when we are at the telephone, busily writing or drawing remarkable
+pictures while the rest of us is engaged in conversation.</p>
+
+<p>The present epidemic of the Ouija board shows how many persons there
+are who are able to switch off the conscious mind and let the
+subconscious control the muscles that are used in writing. The fact
+that the writer has no understanding of what he is doing and believes
+himself directed by some outside power, in no way interferes with the
+subconscious phenomenon.</p>
+
+<p><b>Everyday Doings.</b> Besides perceptions which were originally so far
+from the focus of attention that the conscious mind never caught them
+at all, there are the little experiences of everyday life, fleeting
+thoughts and <!-- Page 98 --><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98" />impressions
+which occupy us for a minute and then
+disappear. Every experience is a dynamic fact and no matter how
+trivial the experience may be or how completely forgotten, it still
+exists as a part of the personality.</p>
+
+<p>An amusing example of the everyday kind of forgotten experience
+occurred during the writing of this chapter. I wrote a sentence which
+pleased me very well. This is the sentence: &quot;In the esthetic processes
+of evolution they [man's desires] have sunk below the surface as soon
+as formed, and have been covered over by an elastic and snug-fitting
+consciousness as the skin covers in the tissues and organs of the
+body.&quot; After showing this passage to my collaborator and remarking
+that this figure had never been used before, I was partly chagrined
+and partly amused to have her bring me the following sentence from
+White and Jelliffe: &quot;Consciousness covered over and obscured the inner
+organs of the psyche just as the skin hides the inner organs of the
+body from vision.&quot; My originality had vanished and I was close to
+plagiarism. Indeed, if a history of plagiarism could be written, it
+would probably abound in just such stories. I had read the article
+containing this sentence only once, about three years before, and had
+never quoted it or consciously thought of it. It had lain buried for
+three years, only to come forth as an original idea of my
+<!-- Page 99 --><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99" />own. Who
+knows how many times we all do just this thing without catching
+ourselves in the trick?</p>
+
+<p><b>Back-Door Memories.</b> There are other kinds of memories which hide in
+the subconscious, memories of experiences which have not come in by
+the front door, but have entered the mind during special states, such
+as sleep, delirium, intoxication, or hypnosis. What is known as
+post-hypnotic suggestion is the functioning of a suggestion received
+during hypnosis and emerging later as an impulse without being
+recognized as a memory. A man in a hypnotic state is told that at five
+o'clock he will take off his clothes and go to bed, without
+remembering that such a suggestion has been given him. He awakens with
+no recollection of the suggestion, but at five o'clock he suddenly
+feels impelled to go to bed, even though his unreasonable desire puts
+him into a highly embarrassing position. The suggestion, to be thus
+effective, must have been conserved somewhere in his mind outside of
+consciousness.</p>
+
+<p>Suggestions that enter the mind during the normal sleep are also
+recorded,&mdash;a fact that carries a warning to people who are in the
+habit of talking of all sorts of matters while in the room with
+sleeping children. I have sometimes suggested to sleeping patients
+that on waking they will remember and tell me the cause of their
+symptoms. The following example shows not only the conservation of
+impressions gained in sleep, <!-- Page 100 --><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100" />
+but also the sway of forgotten ideas of
+childhood, still strong in mature years. This young woman, a trained
+nurse, with many marked symptoms of hysteria, had been asked casually
+to bring a book from the Public Library. She cried out in
+consternation, &quot;Oh, no, I am afraid!&quot; After a good deal of urging she
+finally brought the book, although at the cost of considerable effort.
+Later, while she was taking a nap, I said to her, &quot;You will not
+remember that I have talked to you. You will stay asleep while I am
+talking and while you are asleep there will come to your mind the
+reasons why you are afraid to go to the Public Library. When you
+waken, you will tell me all about it.&quot; Upon awakening, she said: &quot;Oh,
+do you know, I can tell you why I have always been afraid to go to the
+Public Library. While I was in Parochial School, Father &mdash;&mdash; used to
+come in and tell us children to use the books out of the school
+library and never to go to the Public Library.&quot; I questioned her
+concerning her idea of the reason for such an injunction and what she
+thought was in the books which she was told not to read. She
+hesitatingly stated that it was her idea, even in childhood, that the
+books dealt with topics concerning the tabooed subject of the birth of
+children and kindred matters.</p>
+
+<p><b>Smoldering Volcanoes.</b> Let us now consider those emotional
+experiences which seem far too compelling to be forgotten, but which
+may live within us for years <!-- Page 101 --><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101" />
+without giving any evidence of their
+existence. Memories like these are apt to be anything but a dead past.</p>
+
+<p>Many of my own patients have uncovered emotional memories through
+simply talking out to me whatever came into their minds, laying aside
+their critical faculty and letting their minds wander on into whatever
+paths association led them. This is known as the free-association
+method, and simple as it seems, is one of the most effective in
+uncovering memories which have been forgotten for years. One of my
+patients, a refined, highly educated woman of middle age, had suffered
+for two years with almost constant nausea. One day, after a long talk,
+with no suggestion on my part, only an occasional, &quot;What does that
+remind you of?&quot; she told with great emotion an experience which she
+had had at eighteen years of age, in which she had for a moment been
+sexually attracted to a boy friend, but had recoiled as soon as she
+realized where her impulse was leading her. She had been so horrified
+at the idea of her degradation, so nauseated at what she considered
+her sin, that she had put it out of her mind, denied that such a
+thought had ever been hers, repressed the desire into the
+subconscious, where it had continued to function unsatisfied,
+unassimilated with her mature judgments. Her nausea was the symbol of
+a moral disgust. Physical nausea she was willing to acknowledge, but
+not this other thing. Upon reciting this old experience,
+<!-- Page 102 --><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102" />with every
+sign of the original shame, she cried: &quot;Oh, Doctor! why did you bring
+this up? I had forgotten it. I haven't thought of it in thirty years.&quot;
+I reminded her that I couldn't bring it up,&mdash;I had never known
+anything about it. With the emotional incoming of this memory and the
+saner attitude toward it which the mature woman's mind was able to
+take, the nausea disappeared for good. This case is typical of the
+psycho-neuroses and we shall have occasion to refer to it again. The
+present emphasis is on the fact that an emotional memory may be buried
+for many years while it still retains the power of reappearing in more
+or less disguised manifestation.</p>
+
+<p><b>Repressed Memories.</b> If we ask how so burning a memory could escape
+from the consciousness of a grown woman, we are driven to the
+conclusion that this forgetting can be the result of no mere quiet
+fading away, but that there must have been some active force at work
+which kept the memory from coming into awareness. It was not lost. It
+was not passive. Out of sight was not out of mind. There must have
+been a reason for its expulsion from the personal consciousness. In
+fact, we find that there is a reason. We find that whenever a vital
+emotional experience disappears from view, it is because it is too
+painful to be endured in consciousness. Nor is it ever the pain of an
+impersonal experience or even the thought of what some <!-- Page 103 -->
+<a name="Page_103" id="Page_103" />one else has
+done to us that drives a memory out of mind. As a matter of fact, we
+never expel a memory except when it bears directly on ourselves and on
+our own opinion of ourselves. We can stand almost anything else, but
+we cannot stand an idea that does not fit in with our ideal for
+ourselves. This is not the pious ideal that we should like to live up
+to and that we hope to attain some day, not the ideal that we think we
+ought to have&mdash;like never speaking ill of others or never being
+selfish&mdash;but the secret picture that each of us has, locked away
+within him, the specifications of ourselves reduced to their lowest
+terms, below which we cannot go. Energized by the instinct of positive
+self-feeling, and organized with the moral sentiments which we have
+acquired from education and the ideals of society, especially those
+acquired in early childhood, this ideal of ourselves becomes
+incorporated into our conscience and is an absolute necessity for our
+happiness.</p>
+
+<p>We have found that when two emotions clash, one drives out the other.
+So in this case, the woman's positive self-feeling of self-respect,
+combined with disgust, drove from the field that other emotion of the
+reproductive instinct which was trying to get expression. Speaking
+technically, one repressed the other. The woman said to herself, &quot;No,
+I never could have had such a thought,&quot; and promptly forgot it.
+Needless to say, this kind of handling did not kill the
+<!-- Page 104 --><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104" />impulse.
+Buried in the depths of her soul, it continued to live like a live
+coal, until in later years, fanned by the wind of some new experience,
+it burst into flame.</p>
+
+<p>In this case the wish had originally flashed into awareness for an
+instant, but very often the impulse never gets into consciousness at
+all. The upper layers of the subconscious, where the acquired ideals
+live, automatically work to keep down any desires which are thought to
+be out of keeping with the person as he knows himself. He then would
+emphatically deny that such desires had ever had any place in his
+life.</p>
+
+<p>Freud has called this repressing force the psychic censor. To get into
+consciousness, any idea from the subconscious must be able to pass
+this censor. This force seems to be a combination of the
+self-regarding and herd-instincts, which dispute with the instinct for
+reproduction the right to &quot;the common path&quot; for expression.</p>
+
+<p>A considerable part of any person's subconscious is made up of
+memories, wishes, impulses, which are repressed in this way. Of course
+any instinctive desire may be repressed, but it is easy to understand
+why the most frequently denied impulse, the instinct of reproduction,
+against whose urgency society has cultivated so strong a feeling,
+should be repressed more frequently than any
+other.<a name="FNanchor_23" id="FNanchor_23"></a>
+<a href="#Footnote_23" class="fnanchor">[23]</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_23" id="Footnote_23"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_23"><span class="label">[23]</span>
+</a> See foot-note, p. 145, Chap. VII.</p></div>
+
+<p><!-- Page 105 --><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105" />
+<b>Past and Present.</b> It matters not, then, in what state experiences
+come to us, whether in sleep or delirium, intoxication or hypnosis, or
+in the normal waking condition. They are conserved and may exert great
+influence on our normal lives. It matters not whether the experiences
+be full of meaning and emotion or whether they be so slight as to pass
+unnoticed, they are conserved. It matters not whether these
+experiences be mere sense-impressions, or inner thoughts, whether they
+be unacknowledged hopes or fears, undesirable moods and unworthy
+desires or fine aspirations and lofty ideals. They are conserved and
+they may at a later day rise up to bless or to curse us long after we
+had thought them buried in the past. The present is the product of the
+past. It is the past plus an element of choice which keeps us from
+settling down in the despair of fatalism and enables us to do
+something toward making the present that is, a help and not a
+stumbling-block to the present that is to be.</p>
+
+<p class="scheading">Some Habits of the Subconscious</p>
+
+<p><b>The Association of Ideas.</b> It is only by something akin to poetic
+license that we can speak of lower and higher strata of mind. When we
+carry over the language of material things into the less easily
+pictured psychic realm, it is sometimes well to remind ourselves that
+figures of speech, if taken too literally, are more
+<!-- Page 106 --><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106" />misleading than
+illuminating. When we speak of the deep-laid instinctive lower levels
+of mind and the higher acquired levels, we must not imagine that these
+strata are really laid in neat, mutually exclusive layers, one on top
+of the other in the chambers of the mind. Nor must we imagine the
+mental elements of instinct, idea, and memory as jumbled together in
+chaotic confusion, or in scattered isolated units. As a matter of
+fact, the best word to picture the inside of our minds is the word
+&quot;group.&quot; We do not know just how ideas and instincts can group
+themselves together, but we do know that by some arrangement of brain
+paths and nerve-connections, the laws of association of ideas and of
+habit take our mental experiences and organize them into more or less
+permanent systems. Instinctive emotions tend to organize themselves
+around ideas to form sentiments; ideas or sentiments, which through
+repetition or emotion are associated together, tend to stay together
+in groups or complexes which act as a whole; complexes which pertain
+to the same interests tend to bind themselves into larger systems or
+constellations, forming moods, or sides to one's character. It is not
+highly important to differentiate in every case a sentiment from a
+complex, or a complex from a constellation, especially as many writers
+use &quot;complex&quot; as the generic term for all sorts of groups; but a
+general understanding of the much-used word &quot;complex&quot; is
+<!-- Page 107 --><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107" />necessary
+for a comprehension of modern literature on psychology, psychotherapy
+or general education.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<b>What Is a Complex</b>?&quot; Reduced to its lowest terms, a complex is a
+group. It may be simply a group of associated movements, like lacing
+one's shoes or knitting; it may be a group of movements and ideas,
+like typewriting or piano-playing, which through repetition have
+become automatic or subconscious; it may be merely a group of ideas,
+such as the days of the week, the alphabet or the multiplication
+table. In all these types it is repetition working through the law of
+habit that ties the ideas and movements together into an organic
+whole. Usually, however, the word complex is reserved for psychic
+elements that are bound together by emotion. In this sense, a complex
+is an emotional thought-habit. Frink's definition, which is one of the
+simplest, recognizes only this emotional type: &quot;A complex is a system
+of connected ideas, having a strong emotional tone, and displaying a
+tendency to produce or influence conscious thought and action in a definite and
+predetermined direction.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_24" id="FNanchor_24"></a>
+<a href="#Footnote_24" class="fnanchor">[24]</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_24" id="Footnote_24"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_24"><span class="label">[24]</span>
+</a> Frink: &quot;What Is a Complex?&quot; <i>Journal American Medical
+Assoc</i>., Vol. LXII, No. 12, Mar. 21, 1914.</p></div>
+
+<p>Emotion and repetition are the great welders of complexes. Emotion is
+the strongest cement in the world. A single emotional experience
+suffices to bind together ideas that were originally as far apart as
+the poles.</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 108 --><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108" />Sometimes
+a complex includes not only ideas, movements, and emotions,
+but physiological disturbances and sensations. Some people cannot go
+aboard a stationary ship without vomiting, nor see a rose, even though
+it prove to be a wax one, without the sneezing and watery eyes of
+hay-fever. This is what is known as a &quot;conditioned reflex.&quot; Past
+associations plus fear have so welded together idea and bodily
+manifestation that one follows the other as a matter of course, long
+after the real cause is removed. In such ways innumerable nervous
+symptoms arise. The same laws which form healthy complexes, and,
+indeed, which make all education possible, may thus be responsible for
+the unhealthy mal-adaptive association-habits which lie back of a
+neurosis. Fortunately, a knowledge of this fact furnishes the clue to
+the re-education that brings recovery.</p>
+
+<p>A complex may be either conscious or unconscious, but as it usually
+happens that either all or part of its elements are below the surface,
+the word is oftenest used to mean those buried systems of the
+subconscious mind that influence thought or behavior without
+themselves being open to scrutiny. It is these buried complexes,
+memory groups, gathered through the years of experience, that
+determine action in uniform and easily prophesied directions. Every
+individual has a definite complex about religion, about politics,
+about patriotism, <!-- Page 109 --><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109" />about
+business, and it is the sum of these buried
+complexes which makes up his total personality.</p>
+
+<p><b>Displacement.</b> Association or grouping is, then, an intrinsic power
+of mind; but as all life seems to be built on opposites&mdash;light and
+darkness, heat and cold, love and hate&mdash;so mind, which is capable of
+association, is capable also of displacement or the splitting apart of
+elements which belong together. There is such a thing as the simple
+breaking up of complexes, when education or experience or neglect
+separate ideas and emotions which had been previously welded together;
+but displacement is another matter. Here there is still a path between
+idea and emotion; they still belong to the same complex, but the
+connection is lost sight of. The impulse or emotion attaches itself to
+another substitute idea which is related to the first but which is
+more acceptable to the personality. Sometimes the original idea is
+forgotten; repressed, or dissociated into the subconscious, as in
+anxiety neurosis; and sometimes it is merely shorn of its emotional
+interest and remembered as an unrelated or insignificant idea, as in
+compulsion neurosis.</p>
+
+<p><b>Transference.</b> Another kind of displacement which seems hard to
+believe possible until it is repeatedly encountered in intelligent
+human beings is the process called transference, by which everybody at
+some time or other acts toward the people he meets, not according
+<!-- Page 110 --><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110" />to
+rational standards but according to old unconscious attitudes toward
+other people. Each of us carries, within, subconscious pictures of the
+people who surrounded us when we were children; and now when we meet a
+new person we are likely unconsciously to say to ourselves&mdash;not, &quot;This
+person has eyebrows like my mother, or a voice like my nurse,&quot; or,
+&quot;This person bosses me around as my father used to do,&quot; but, &quot;This is
+my mother, this is my nurse, this is my father.&quot; Whereupon we may
+proceed to act toward that person very much as we did toward the
+original person in childhood.</p>
+
+<p>Transference is subconsciously identifying one person with another and
+behaving toward the one as if he were that other. Analysis has
+discovered that many a man's hostile attitude toward the state or
+religion or authority in general, is nothing more than this kind of
+displacement of his childhood's attitude toward authority in the
+person of his perhaps too-domineering father. Many a woman has married
+a husband, not for what he was in himself, but because she
+unconsciously identified him with her childish image of her father.</p>
+
+<p>Students of human nature have always recognized the kind of
+displacement which transfers the sense of guilt from some major act or
+attitude to a minor one which is more easily faced, just as <i>Lady
+Macbeth</i> felt <!-- Page 111 --><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111" />that
+by washing her hands she might free herself from
+her deeper stain. This is a frequent mechanism in the
+psychoneuroses&mdash;not that neurotics are likely to have committed any
+great crime, but that they feel subconsciously that some of their
+wishes or thoughts are wicked.</p>
+
+<p><b>The Phenomena of Dissociation.</b> When an idea or a complex, a
+perception or a memory is either temporarily or permanently shoved out
+of consciousness into the subconscious, it is said to be dissociated.
+When we are asleep, the part of us that is usually conscious is
+dissociated and the submerged part takes the stage. When we forget our
+surroundings in concentration or absent-mindedness, a part of us is
+dissociated and our friends say that we are &quot;not all there,&quot; or as
+popular slang has it, &quot;Nobody home.&quot; When a mood or system of
+complexes drives out all other moods, one becomes &quot;a different
+person.&quot; But if this normal dissociation is carried a step farther, we
+may lose the power to put ourselves together again, and then we may
+truly be said to be dissociated. Almost any part of us is subject to
+this kind of apparent loss. In neurasthenia the happy, healthy
+complexes which have hitherto dominated our lives may be split off and
+left lying dormant in the subconscious; or the power of will or
+concentration may seem to be gone. In hysteria we may seem to lose the
+ability to see or feel or walk, or we <!-- Page 112 -->
+<a name="Page_112" id="Page_112" />may lose for the time all
+recollection of certain past events, or of whole periods of our lives,
+or of everything but one system of ideas which monopolizes the field
+of attention. Sometimes great systems of memories, instincts, and
+complexes are alternately shifted in and out of gear, leaving first
+one kind of person on top and then
+another.<a name="FNanchor_25" id="FNanchor_25"></a>
+<a href="#Footnote_25" class="fnanchor">[25]</a> Stevenson's <i>Dr.
+Jekyll</i> and <i>Mr. Hyde</i> is not so fantastic a character as he seems.
+Any one who doubts the ability of the mind to split itself up into two
+or more distinct personalities, entertaining totally different
+conceptions of life, disliking each other, playing tricks on each
+other, writing notes to each other, and carrying on a perpetual feud
+as each tries to get the upper hand, should read Morton Prince's
+&quot;Dissociation of a Personality,&quot; a fascinating account of his famous
+case, Miss Beauchamp.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_25" id="Footnote_25">
+</a><a href="#FNanchor_25"><span class="label">[25]</span>
+</a> When a memory or system of memories is suddenly lost
+from consciousness the person is said to be suffering from amnesia or
+pathological loss of memory.</p></div>
+
+<p><b>Internal Warfare.</b> Conflict, often accentuated by shock or fatigue,
+represses or drives down certain ideas, perceptions, wishes, memories,
+or complexes into the subconscious, where they remain, sometimes
+dormant and passive but often dynamic, emotional, carrying on an
+over-excited, automatic activity, freed from the control of reason and
+the modifying influence of other ideas, and able to cause almost any
+kind of disturbance. So long as there is team-work between the
+<!-- Page 113 --><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113" />various
+parts of our personality we are able to act as a unit; but
+just as soon as we break up into factions with no communication
+between the warring camps, so soon do we become quite incapable of
+co&ouml;rdination or adjustment, like a nation torn by civil war. Many of
+the seemingly fantastic and bizarre mental phenomena of which a human
+being is capable are the result of this kind of disintegration.</p>
+
+<p>However, nature has a remarkable power for righting herself, and it is
+only under an accumulation of unfortunate circumstances that there
+appears a neurosis, which is nothing more than a functioning of
+certain parts of the personality with all the rest dissociated. We
+shall later inquire more fully into the causes that lead up to such a
+result and shall find that the mechanisms involved are these processes
+of organization and disorganization by which mind is wont to group
+together or separate the various elements within its borders.</p>
+
+
+<p class="scheading">Summary</p>
+
+<p>Gathering up our impressions, we find a number of outstanding
+qualities which we may summarize in the following way:</p>
+
+<p>The Subconscious is:</p>
+
+<p class="center"><i>1 &nbsp; Vast yet Explorable</i></p>
+
+<p>The fraction that could accurately show the relation <!-- Page 114 -->
+<a name="Page_114" id="Page_114" />of the conscious
+to the unconscious part of ourselves would have such a small numerator
+and such a huge denominator that we might well wonder where
+consciousness came in at all.<a name="FNanchor_26" id="FNanchor_26"></a>
+<a href="#Footnote_26" class="fnanchor">[26]</a> Some one has likened the
+subconscious to the great far-reaching depths of the Mammoth Cave, and
+consciousness to the tiny, flickering lamp which we carry to light our
+way in the darkness. However, ever the subconscious mind is becoming
+explorable, and it may be that science is giving the tiny lamp the
+revealing power of a great searchlight.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_26" id="Footnote_26"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_26"><span class="label">[26]</span>
+</a> &quot;The entire active life of the individual may be
+represented by a fraction, the numerator of which is any particular
+moment, the denominator is the rich inheritance of the
+past.&quot;&mdash;Jelliffe: &quot;The Technique of Psychoanalysis,&quot;
+<i>Psychoanalytic Review,</i> Vol. III, No. 2, p. 164.</p></div>
+
+<p class="center"><i>2 &nbsp; Ancient yet Modern</i></p>
+
+<p>The lowest layers of the subconscious, represented by the instincts,
+are as old as life itself, with their lineage reaching back in direct
+and unbroken line to the first living things on the ooze of the ocean
+floor. The higher strata are more modern, full, and accurate records
+of our own lifetime, beginning with our first cry and ending with
+to-day's thoughts.</p>
+
+<p class="center"><i>3 &nbsp; Primitive yet Refined</i></p>
+
+<p>The lowest level, representing the past of the race, is primitive like
+a savage, and infantile, like a child; it is instinctive, unalterable,
+and universal; it knows no restraint, no culture, and no prudence. The
+higher <!-- Page 115 --><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115" />level,
+the storehouse of individual experience, bears the
+marks of acquired ideals, of cultivated refinement, and represents
+among other things the precepts and prudence of civilized society.</p>
+
+
+<p class="center"><i>4 &nbsp; Emotional yet Intellectual</i></p>
+
+<p>Our records of the past are not dead archives, but living
+forces&mdash;persistent, urging, dynamic and emotional. They give meaning
+to new experiences, color our judgments, shape our beliefs, determine
+our interests, and, if wrongly handled, make their way into
+consciousness as neurotic symptoms.</p>
+
+<p>However, the subconscious is not all emotion. It is a mind capable of
+elaborate thought, able to calculate, to scheme, to answer doubts, to
+solve problems, to fabricate the purposeful, fantastic allegories of
+dreams and to create from mere knowledge the inspired works of genius.</p>
+
+<p>But the subconscious has one great limitation, it cannot reason
+inductively. Given a premise, this mind can reason as unerringly as
+the most skilful logician; that is, it can reason deductively, but it
+cannot arrive at a general conclusion from a number of particular
+facts. However, except for inductive reasoning and awareness, the
+subconscious seems to possess all the attributes of conscious mind and
+is in fact an intellectual force to be reckoned with.</p>
+
+<p class="center"><!-- Page 116 --><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116" />
+<i>5 &nbsp; Organized yet Disorganizable</i></p>
+
+<p>The subconscious mind is a highly organized institution, but like all
+such institutions it is liable to disorganization when rent by
+internal dissension. Ordinarily it keeps its ideas and emotions, its
+complexes and moods in fairly accurate order, but when upset by
+emotional warfare, it gets its records confused and falls into a
+chaotic state which makes regular business impossible.</p>
+
+
+<p class="center"><i>6 &nbsp; Masterful yet Obedient</i></p>
+
+<p>The subconscious, which is master of the body, is in normal life the
+servant of consciousness. One of its outstanding qualities is
+suggestibility. Since it cannot reason from particulars to a general
+conclusion it takes any statement given it by consciousness, believes
+it implicitly and acts accordingly.</p>
+
+<p>The pilot wheel of the ship is, after all, the conscious mind,
+insignificant in size when compared with the great mass of the vessel,
+but all-powerful in its ability to direct the course of the voyage.</p>
+
+<p>Nervous persons are people who are too much under the sway of the
+subconscious; so, too, are some geniuses, who narrowly escape a
+neurosis by finding a more useful outlet for their subconscious
+energies. While the poet, the inventor, and the neurotic are likely to
+be too largely controlled by the subconscious, the average man is to a
+greater extent ruled by the conscious
+<!-- Page 117 --><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117" />mind; and the highest type of
+genius is the man whose conscious and subconscious minds work together
+in perfect harmony, each up to its full power.</p>
+
+<p>If, as many believe, the next great strides of science are to be in
+this direction, it may pay some of us to be pioneers in learning how
+to make use of these undeveloped riches of memory, organization, and
+surplus energy. The subconscious, which can on occasion behave like a
+very devil within us, is, when rightly used, our greatest asset, the
+source of powers whose appearance in the occasional individual has
+been considered almost superhuman, but which prove to be
+characteristically human, the common inheritance of the race of man.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<!-- Page 118 --><div><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118"></a></div>
+<p class="heading"><a name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI">CHAPTER VI</a></p>
+
+<p class="heading"><i>In which we learn why it pays to be cheerful</i></p>
+
+<p class="heading">BODY AND MIND</p>
+
+<p class="scheading">The Missing Link</p>
+
+
+<p><b>Ancient Knowledge.</b> People have always known that mind in some
+strange way carries its moods over into the body. The writer of the
+Book of Proverbs tells us, from that far-off day, that &quot;A merry heart
+doeth good like a medicine, but a broken spirit drieth the bones.&quot;
+Jesus in His healing ministry always emphasized the place of faith in
+the cure of the body. &quot;Thy faith hath made thee whole,&quot; is a frequent
+word on His lips, and ever since His day people have been
+rediscovering the truth that faith, even in the absence of a worthy
+object, does often make whole. Faith in the doctor, the medicine, the
+charm, the mineral waters, the shrine, and in the good God, has
+brought health to many thousands of sufferers. People have always
+reckoned on this bodily result from a mental state. They have
+intuitively known better than to tell a sick person that he is looking
+worse, but they have not always <!-- Page 119 -->
+<a name="Page_119" id="Page_119" />known why. They have known that a fit
+of anger is apt to bring on a headache, but they have not stopped to
+look for the reason, or if they have, they have often gotten
+themselves into a tangle. This is because there has always been, until
+recently, a missing link. Now the link has been found. After the last
+chapter, it will not be hard to understand that this connecting link,
+this go-between of body and mind, is nothing else than the
+subconscious mind. When we remember that it has the double power of
+knowing our thoughts and of controlling our bodies, it is not hard to
+see how an idea can translate itself into a pain, nor to realize with
+new vividness the truth of the statement that healthy mental states
+make for health, and unhealthy mental states for illness.</p>
+
+<p><b>Suggestion and Emotion.</b> There are still many gaps in our knowledge
+of the ways of the subconscious, but investigation has thrown a good
+deal of light on the problem. Two of the principles already discussed
+are sufficient to explain most of the phenomena. These are, first,
+that the subconscious is amenable to control by suggestion, and
+secondly, that it is greatly influenced by emotion. Tracing back the
+principles behind any example of the power of mind over body, one
+finds at the root of the matter either a suggestion or an emotion, or
+both. If, then, the stimulating and depressing effects of mental
+states are to be understood, the first <!-- Page 120 -->
+<a name="Page_120" id="Page_120" />Step must be a fuller
+understanding of the laws governing suggestion and emotion.</p>
+
+
+<p class="scheading">The Contagion of Ideas</p>
+
+<p>One of the most important points about the subconscious mind is its
+openness to suggestion. It likes to believe what it is told and to act
+accordingly. The conscious mind, too,&mdash;proud seat of reason though it
+may be,&mdash;shares this habit of accepting ideas without demanding too
+much proof of their truth. Even at his best, man is extremely
+susceptible to the contagion of ideas. Most of us are even less immune
+to this mental contagion than we are to colds or influenza; for ideas
+are catching. They are such subtle, insinuating things that they creep
+into our minds without our knowing it at all; and once there, they are
+as powerful as most germs.</p>
+
+<p>Let a person faint in a crowded room, and a good per cent. of the
+women present will begin to fan themselves. The room has suddenly
+become insufferably close. After we have read half a hundred times
+that Ivory soap floats, a fair proportion of the population is likely
+to be seized with desire for a soap that floats,&mdash;not because they
+have any good reason for doing so, but simply because the suggestion
+has &quot;taken.&quot; As for the harbingers of spring, they are neither the
+birds nor the wild flowers, but the blooming windows <!-- Page 121 --><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121" />of the
+milliners, which successfully suggest in wintry February that summer
+is coming, and that felt and fur are out of season. It is evident that
+all advertising is suggestion.</p>
+
+<p>The training of children, also, if it is done in the right way, is
+largely a matter of suggestion. The little child who falls down and
+bumps his head is very likely to cry if met with a sympathetic show of
+concern, while the same child will often take his mishaps as a joke if
+his elders meet them with a laugh or a diverting remark. Unlucky is
+the child whose mother does not know, either consciously or
+intuitively, that example and contagion are more powerful&mdash;and more
+pleasant&mdash;than command and prohibition.</p>
+
+<p><b>Everything Suggestive.</b> Human beings are constantly communicating,
+one to another. Sometimes they &quot;get over&quot; an idea by means of words,
+but often they do it in more subtle ways,&mdash;by the elevation of an
+eyelid, the gesture of a hand, composure of manner in a crisis, or a
+laugh in a delicate situation. A suggestion is merely an idea passed
+from one person to another, an idea that is accepted with conviction
+and acted upon, even though there may be no logic, no reason, no proof
+of its truth. It is an influence that takes hold of the mind and works
+itself out to fulfilment, quite apart from its worth or
+reasonableness. Of course, logical persuasion and argument have their
+place <!-- Page 122 --><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122" />in
+the communication of ideas; an idea may be conveyed by other
+ways than suggestion. But while suggestion is not everything, it is
+equally true that there is suggestion in everything. The doctor may
+give a patient a very rational explanation of his case, but the
+doubtful shake of the head or the encouraging look of his eye is quite
+likely to color the patient's general impression. The eyes of our
+subconscious are always open, and they are constantly getting
+impressions, subtle suggestions that are implied rather than
+expressed.</p>
+
+<p><b>Abnormal Suggestibility.</b> While everybody is suggestible, nervous
+people are abnormally so. It may be, as McDougall suggests, that they
+have so large an amount of submission or negative self-feeling in
+their make-up that they believe anything, just because some one else
+says it is true. Sometimes it is lack of knowledge that makes us
+gullible, and at other times the cause of our suggestibility is
+failure to use the knowledge that we have. Sometimes our ideas are
+locked away in air-tight compartments with no interaction between
+them. The psychologists tell us that suggestion is greatly favored by
+a narrowing of the attention, a &quot;contraction of the field of
+consciousness,&quot; a dissociation of other ideas through concentration.
+This all simply means that we forget to let our common sense bring to
+bear counter ideas that might challenge a false one; or that worry&mdash;a
+veritable &quot;spasm of the <!-- Page 123 --><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123" />
+attention&quot;&mdash;has fixed upon an idea to the
+exclusion of all others; or that through fatigue or the dissociation
+of sleep or hypnosis or hysteria, our reasoning powers have been
+locked out and for the time being are unable to act.</p>
+
+<p>It was through experiments on hypnotized subjects that scientists
+first learned of the suggestibility of the subconscious mind. In
+hypnosis a person can be made to believe almost anything and to do
+almost anything compatible with the safety and the moral sense of the
+individual. The instinct of self-preservation will not allow the most
+deeply hypnotized person to do anything dangerous to himself; and the
+moral complexes, laid in the subconscious, never permit a person to
+perform in earnest an act of which the waking moral sense would
+disapprove. Within these limits, a person in the dissociated hypnotic
+state can be made to accept almost any suggestion. We found in the
+last chapter how open to suggestion is a person in normal sleep. Of
+the dissociation of hysteria we shall have occasion to speak in later
+chapters. Although all these special states heighten suggestibility,
+we must not forget how susceptible each of us is in his normal waking
+state.</p>
+
+<p><b>Living Its Faith.</b> All this gathers meaning only when we realize that
+ideas are dynamic. They always tend to work themselves out to
+fulfilment. The subconscious no sooner gets a conviction than it tries
+<!-- Page 124 --><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124" />to act it out.
+Of course it can succeed only up to a certain limit.
+If it believes the stomach to have cancer, it cannot make cancer, but
+it can make the stomach misbehave. One of my patients, on hearing of a
+case of brain-tumor immediately imagined this to be her trouble, and
+developed a pain in her head. She could not manufacture a tumor, but
+she could manufacture what she believed to be the symptoms.</p>
+
+<p>There was another patient who was supposed to have brain-tumor. This
+young woman seemed to have lost almost entirely the power to keep her
+equilibrium in walking. Her center of gravity was never over her feet,
+but away out in space, so that she was continually banging from one
+side of the room to the other, only saving herself from injury by
+catching at the wall or the furniture with her hands. Several
+physicians who had been interested in the case had found the symptoms
+strongly suggestive of brain-tumor. There were, however, certain
+unmistakable earmarks of hysteria, such as childlike bland
+indifference to the awkwardness of the gait which was a grotesque
+caricature of several brain and spinal-cord diseases, with no accurate
+picture of any single one. This was evidently a case, not of actual
+loss of power but a dissociation of the memory-picture of walking. The
+patient was a trained nurse and knew in a general way the symptoms of
+brain-tumor. When the suggestion <!-- Page 125 -->
+<a name="Page_125" id="Page_125" />of brain-tumor had fixed itself in
+her mind she was able subconsciously to manufacture what she believed
+to be the symptoms of that disease.</p>
+
+<p>By injecting a keen sense of disapprobation and skepticism into the
+hitherto placidly accepted state of disability, by flashing a mirror
+on the physical and moral attitudes which she was assuming, I was able
+to rob the pathological complex of its (altogether unconscious)
+pleasurable feeling-tone, and to restore to its former strength and
+poise a personality of exceptional native worth and beauty. After a
+few weeks at my house she was able to walk like a normal person and
+went back to her work, for good.</p>
+
+<p>We have already learned enough about the inner self to see in a faint
+way how it works out its ideas. Since the subconscious mind runs the
+bodily machinery, since it regulates digestion, the building up of
+tissue, circulation, respiration, glandular secretion, muscular tonus,
+and every other process pertaining to nutrition and growth, it is not
+difficult to see how an idea about any of these matters can work
+itself out into a fact. A thought can furnish the mental machinery
+needed to fulfil the thought. Some one catches the suggestion:
+&quot;Concentration is hard on the brain. It soon brings on brain-fag and
+headache.&quot; Not knowing facts to the contrary, the suggestible mind
+accepts the proposition. Then one day, after a little concentration,
+<!-- Page 126 --><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126" />the idea
+begins to work. Whereupon the autonomic nervous system
+tightens up the blood-vessels that regulate the local blood supply,
+too much blood stays in the head, and lo, it aches! The next time, the
+suggestion comes with greater force, and soon the habit is
+formed,&mdash;all the result of an idea. It is a good thing to remember
+that constant thought about any part of the body never fails to send
+an over-supply of blood to that part; of course that means congestion
+and pain.</p>
+
+<p><b>Hands Off</b>! By sending messages directly to an organ through the
+nerve-centers or by changing circulation, the subconscious director of
+our bodies can make any part of us misbehave in a number of ways. All
+it needs is a suggestion of an interfering thought about an organ. As
+we have insisted before, the subconscious cannot stand interference.
+Sadler well says: &quot;Man can live at the equator or exist at the poles.
+He can eat almost anything and everything, but he cannot long stand
+self-contemplation. The human mind can accomplish wonders in the way
+of work, but it is soon wrecked when directed into the channels of
+worry.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_27" id="FNanchor_27"></a>
+<a href="#Footnote_27" class="fnanchor">[27]</a> In other
+words, hands off!&mdash;or rather, minds off! Don't
+get ideas that make you think about your body. The surest way to
+disarrange any function is to think about it. It is a stout heart that
+will not change its beat with a frequent finger on the pulse,
+<!-- Page 127 --><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127" />and a
+hearty stomach that will not &quot;act up&quot; under attention. &quot;Judicious
+neglect&quot; is a good motto for most occasions. Take no anxious thought
+if you would be well. Know enough about your body to counteract false
+suggestions; fulfil the common-sense laws of hygiene,&mdash;eight hours in
+bed, plenty of exercise and fresh air, and three square meals a day.
+Then forget all about it. &quot;A mental representation is already a
+sensation,&quot;<a name="FNanchor_28" id="FNanchor_28"></a>
+<a href="#Footnote_28" class="fnanchor">[28]</a> and we
+have enough legitimate sensations without manufacturing others.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_27" id="Footnote_27"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_27"><span class="label">[27]</span>
+</a> Sadler: <i>Physiology of Faith and Fear</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_28" id="Footnote_28"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_28"><span class="label">[28]</span>
+</a> DuBois: <i>Psychic Treatment of Nervous Disorders</i>.</p></div>
+
+<p><b>From Real Life.</b> Startling indeed are the tricks that we can play on
+ourselves by disregarding these laws. A patient who was unnecessarily
+concerned about his stomach once came to me in great alarm, exhibiting
+a distinct, well-defined swelling about the size of a match-box in the
+region of his stomach. I looked at it, laughed, and told him to forget
+it. Whereupon it promptly disappeared. The first segment of the rectus
+muscle had tied itself up into a knot, under the stimulus of anxious
+attention.</p>
+
+<p>Another patient appeared at my door one day saying, &quot;Look here!&quot;
+Examination showed that her abdomen was swollen to the size of more
+than a six-months pregnancy. As it happened, this woman had a friend
+who a short time before had developed a pseudo, or hysterical
+pregnancy which continued for several months. My patient, accepting
+the suggestion, was <!-- Page 128 --><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128" />
+prepared to imitate her. I gave her a punch or
+two and told her to go and dress for luncheon. In the afternoon she
+had returned to her normal size.</p>
+
+<p>Another woman, suffering from chronic constipation, was firmly
+convinced that her bowels could not move without a cathartic, which I
+refused to give. However, I did give her some strychnine pills,
+carefully explaining that they were not for her intestines and that
+they would have no effect there. She did not believe me, and promptly
+began to have an evacuation every day. It seems that sometimes two
+wrong ideas are equal to a right one.</p>
+
+<p>If doctors fully realized the power of suggestion, they would be more
+careful than they sometimes are about suggesting symptoms by the
+questions they ask their patients.</p>
+
+<p>A patient of mine with locomotor-ataxia suffered from the usual train
+of symptoms incident to that disease. It turned out, however, that
+many of the symptoms had been suggested by the questions of former
+physicians who had asked him whether he had certain symptoms and
+certain disabilities. The patient had answered in the negative and
+then promptly developed the suggested symptoms. When I told him what
+had happened, these false symptoms disappeared leaving only those
+which had a real physical foundation.</p>
+
+<p>Another patient, a young girl, complained of a definite
+<!-- Page 129 --><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129" />localized
+pain in her arm, and told me that she was suffering from angina
+pectoris. As we do not expect to find this disease in a young person,
+I asked her where she got such an idea. &quot;Dr. &mdash;&mdash; told me so last
+May.&quot; &quot;Did you feel the pain in this same place before that time?&quot; I
+asked. She thought a minute and then answered: &quot;Why no, I had a pain
+around my heart but I did not notice it in my arm until after that
+consultation.&quot; The wise physician lets his patients describe their own
+symptoms without suggesting others by the implication of his
+questions.</p>
+
+<p><b>Autosuggestion.</b> Of course we must remember that an idea cannot
+always work itself out immediately. Conditions are not always ripe. It
+often lies fallow a long time, buried in the subconscious, only to
+come up again as an autosuggestion, a suggestion from the self to the
+self. If some one tells us that nervous insomnia is disastrous, and we
+believe it, we shall probably store up the idea until the next time
+that chance conditions keep us awake. Then the autosuggestion &quot;bobs
+up,&quot; common sense is side-tracked, we toss and worry&mdash;and of course
+stay awake. An autosuggestion often repeated becomes the strongest of
+suggestions, successfully opposing most outside ideas that would
+counteract it,&mdash;reason enough for seeing to it that our
+autosuggestions are of the healthful variety.</p>
+
+<p>At the base of every psycho-neurosis is an unhealthful
+<!-- Page 130 --><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130" />suggestion.
+This is never the ultimate cause. There are other forces at work. But
+the suggestion is the material out of which those other forces weave
+the neurosis. Suggestibility is one of the earmarks of nervousness. A
+sensible and sturdy spirit, stable enough to maintain its equilibrium,
+is a fairly good antidote to attack. &quot;As a man thinketh in his heart,
+so is he.&quot;</p>
+
+
+<p class="scheading">Why Feelings Count</p>
+
+<p><b>The Emotions Again.</b> It seems impossible to discuss any psychological
+principle without finally coming back to the subject of emotions. It
+truly seems that all roads lead to the instincts and to the emotions
+which drive them. And so, as we follow the trail of suggestion, we
+suddenly turn a corner and find ourselves back at our
+starting-point&mdash;the emotional life. Like all other ideas, suggestions
+get tied up with emotions to form complexes, of which the
+driving-power is the emotion.</p>
+
+<p>If we look into our emotional life, we find, besides the true
+emotions, with which we have become familiar in Chapter III, a great
+number of feelings or feeling-tones which color either pleasurably or
+painfully our emotions and our ideas. On the one hand there are
+pleasure, joy, exaltation, courage, cheer, confidence, satisfaction;
+and on the other, pain, sorrow, depression, apprehension, gloom,
+distrust, and dissatisfaction. <!-- Page 131 -->
+<a name="Page_131" id="Page_131" />Every complex which is laid away in
+our subconscious is tinted, either slightly or intensely, with its
+specific feeling-tone.</p>
+
+<p><b>Emotions&mdash;Tonic and Poisonous.</b> All this is most important because of
+one vital fact; joyful emotions invigorate, and sorrowful emotions
+depress; pleasurable emotions stimulate, and painful emotions burden;
+satisfying emotions revitalize, and unsatisfying emotions sap the
+strength. In other words, our bodies are made for courage, confidence,
+and cheer. Any other atmosphere puts them out of their element,
+handicapped by abnormal conditions for which they were never
+fashioned. We were written in a major key, and when we try to change
+over into minor tones we get sadly out of tune.</p>
+
+<p>There is another factor; painful emotions make us fall to pieces,
+while pleasant emotions bind us together. We can see why this is so
+when we remember that powerful emotions like fear and anger tend to
+dissociate all but themselves, to split up the mind into separate
+parts and to force out of consciousness everything but their own
+impulse. Morton Prince in his elaborate studies of the cases of
+multiple personality, Miss Beauchamp and B.C.A., found repeatedly that
+he had only to hypnotize the patient and replace painful, depressing
+complexes by healthy, happy ones to change her from a weak, worn-out
+person, complaining of <!-- Page 132 --><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132" />fatigue,
+insomnia, and innumerable aches and pains, into a vigorous woman,
+for the time being completely well. On this point he says:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>Exalting emotions have an intense synthesizing effect, while
+     depressing emotions have a disintegrating effect. With the
+     inrushing of depressive memories or ideas ... there is suddenly
+     developed a condition of fatigue, ill-being and disintegration,
+     followed after waking by a return or accentuation of all the
+     neurasthenic symptoms. If on the other hand, exalting ideas and
+     memories are introduced and brought into the limelight of
+     attention, there is almost a magical reversal of processes. The
+     patient feels strong and energetic, the neurasthenic symptoms
+     disappear and he exhibits a capacity for sustained effort. He
+     becomes re-vitalized, so to speak.<a name="FNanchor_29" id="FNanchor_29"></a>
+	 <a href="#Footnote_29" class="fnanchor">[29]</a></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_29" id="Footnote_29"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_29"><span class="label">[29]</span>
+</a> Prince: <i>Psycho-therapeutics</i>, Chap. I.</p></div>
+
+<p>In cases like this the needed strength and energy are not lost; they
+are merely side-tracked, but the person feels as weak as though he
+were physically ill.</p>
+
+
+<p class="scheading">Bodily Response to Emotional States</p>
+
+<p><b>Secretions.</b> Let us look more carefully into some of the
+physiological processes involved in emotional changes. Among the most
+apparent of bodily responses are the various external secretions.
+Tears, the secretion of the lachrymal glands in response to an
+emotion, are too common a phenomenon to arouse comment. It is common
+knowledge that clammy hands and <!-- Page 133 -->
+<a name="Page_133" id="Page_133" />a dry mouth betray emotion. Every
+nursing mother knows that she dares not become too disturbed lest her
+milk should dry up or change in character. Most people have
+experienced an increase in urine in times of excitement; recently
+physiologists have discovered the presence of sugar in the urine of
+students at the time of athletic contests and difficult
+examinations.<a name="FNanchor_30" id="FNanchor_30"></a>
+<a href="#Footnote_30" class="fnanchor">[30]</a> We
+have seen what an important role the various
+internal secretions, such as the adrenal and thyroid secretions play
+in fitting the body for flight and combat, and how large a part fear
+and anger have in their production. Constant over-production of these
+secretions through chronic states of worry is responsible for many a
+distressing symptom.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_30" id="Footnote_30"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_30"><span class="label">[30]</span></a> Cannon.</p></div>
+
+<p>Most graphic evidence of the disturbance of secretions by emotion is
+found in the response of the salivary and gastric glands to painful or
+pleasurable thinking. As these are the secretions which play the
+largest part in the digestive processes, they lead us naturally to our
+next heading.</p>
+
+<p><b>Digestion.</b> Everybody knows that appetizing food makes the mouth
+water, but not everybody realizes that it makes the stomach water
+also. Nor do we often realize the vital place that this watering has
+in taking care of our food. &quot;Well begun is half-done,&quot; is literally
+true of digestion. A good flow of saliva brings <!-- Page 134 -->
+<a name="Page_134" id="Page_134" />the food into contact
+with the taste-buds in the tongue. Taste sends messages to the
+nerve-centers in the medulla oblongata; these centers in turn flash
+signals to the stomach glands, which immediately &quot;get busy&quot; preparing
+the all-important gastric juice. It takes about five minutes for this
+juice to be made ready, and so it happens that in five minutes after
+the first taste, or even in some cases after the first smell, the
+stomach is pouring forth its &quot;appetite juice&quot; which determines all the
+rest of the digestive process, in intestines as well as in stomach.
+Experiments on dogs and cats by Pawlow, Cannon, and others have shown
+what fear and anger and even mildly unpleasant emotions do to the
+whole digestive process. Cannon tells of a dog who produced 66.7 cubic
+centimeters of pure gastric juice in the twenty minutes following five
+minutes of sham feeding (feeding in which food is swallowed and then
+dropped out of an opening in the esophagus into a bucket instead of
+into the stomach). Although there was no food in the stomach, the
+juice was produced by the enjoyment of the taste and the thought of
+it. On another day, after this dog had been infuriated by a cat, and
+then pacified, the sham feeding was given again. This time, although
+the dog ate eagerly, he produced only 9 cubic centimeters of gastric
+juice, and this rich in mucus. Evidently a good appetite and
+attractively served food are not more important than <!-- Page 135 -->
+<a name="Page_135" id="Page_135" />a cheerful mind.
+Spicy table talk, well mixed with laughter, is better than all the
+digestive tablets in the world. What is true of stomach secretions is
+equally true of stomach contractions. &quot;The pleasurable taking of food&quot;
+is a necessity if the required contractions of stomach and intestines
+are to go forward on schedule time. A little extra dose of adrenalin
+from a mild case of depression or worry is enough to stop all
+movements for many minutes. What a revelation on many a case of
+nervous dyspepsia! The person who dubbed it &quot;Emotional Dyspepsia&quot; had
+facts on his side.</p>
+
+<p><b>Circulation.</b> It is not the heart only that pumps the blood through
+the body. The tiny muscles of the smallest blood-vessels, by their
+elasticity are of the greatest importance in maintaining an even flow,
+and this is especially influenced by fear and depression. Blushing,
+pallor, cold hands and feet, are circulatory disturbances based
+largely on emotions. Better than a hot-water bottle or electric pads
+are courage and optimism. A patient of mine laughingly tells of an
+incident which she says happened a number of years ago, but which I
+have forgotten. She says that she asked me one night as she carried
+her hot-water bottle to bed, &quot;Doctor, what makes cold feet?&quot; and that
+I lightly answered &quot;Cowardice!&quot; Whereupon she threw away her beloved
+water-bag and has never needed it since.</p>
+
+<p>There is a disturbance of the circulation which <!-- Page 136 -->
+<a name="Page_136" id="Page_136" />results in very
+marked swelling and redness of the affected part. This is known as
+angio-neurotic edema, or nervous swelling. I do not have to go farther
+than my own person for an example of this phenomenon. When I was a
+young woman I taught school and went home every day for luncheon. One
+day at luncheon, some one of the family criticized me severely. I went
+back to school very angry. Before I entered the school-room, the
+principal handed me some books which she had ordered for me. They were
+not at all the books I wanted, and that upset me still more. As I went
+into the schoolroom, I found that my face was swollen until my eyes
+were almost shut; it was a bright red and covered with purplish
+blotches. My fingers were swollen so that I could not bend the joints
+in the slightest degree. It was a day or two before the disturbance
+disappeared, and the whole of it was the result of anger.</p>
+
+<p>We hear much to-day about high blood pressure. They say that a man is
+as old as his arteries, and now it is known that the health of the
+arteries depends largely on blood pressure. Since this is a matter
+that can be definitely measured at any minute, we have an easy way of
+noting the remarkable effect of shifting emotions. Sadler tells of an
+ex-convict with a blood pressure of 190 millimeters. It seems that he
+was worrying over possible rearrest. On being reassured <!-- Page 137 -->
+<a name="Page_137" id="Page_137" />on this
+point, his blood pressure began to drop within a few minutes, falling
+20 mm. in three hours, and 35 mm. by the following day.</p>
+
+<p><b>Muscular Tone.</b> A force that affects circulation, blood pressure,
+respiration, nutrition of cells, secretion, and digestion, can hardly
+fail to have a marked effect on the tone of the muscles, internal as
+well as external. When we remember that heart, stomach, and intestines
+are made of muscular tissue, to say nothing of the skeletal muscles,
+we begin to realize how important is muscular tone for bodily health.
+Over and over again have I demonstrated that a courageous mind is the
+best tonic. Perhaps an example from my &quot;flat-footed&quot; patients will be
+to the point. One woman, the young mother of a family, came to me for
+a nervous trouble. Besides this, she had suffered for seven or eight
+years from severe pains in her feet and had been compelled to wear
+specially made shoes prescribed by a Chicago orthopedist. The shoes,
+however, did not seem to lessen the pain. After an ordinary day's
+occupation, she could not even walk across the floor at dinner-time. A
+walk of two blocks would incapacitate her for many days. She was
+convinced that her feet could never be cured and came to me only on
+account of nervous trouble. On the day of her arrival she flung
+herself down on the couch, saying that she would like to go away from
+everybody, where the children would <!-- Page 138 -->
+<a name="Page_138" id="Page_138" />never bother her again. She was
+sure nobody loved her and she wanted to die. Within three weeks, in
+ordinary shoes, this woman tramped nine miles up Mount Wilson and the
+next day tramped down again. Her attitude had changed from that of
+irritable fretfulness to one of buoyant joy, and with the moral change
+had come new strength in the muscles. The death of her husband has
+since made it necessary for her to support the family, and she is now
+on her feet from eight to fourteen hours a day, a constant source of
+inspiration to all about her, and no more weary than the average
+person.</p>
+
+<p>Flabbiness in the muscles often causes this trouble with the feet.
+&quot;The arches of the foot are maintained by ligaments between the bones,
+supported by muscle tendons which prevent undue stretching of the
+ligaments and are a protection against
+flat-foot.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_31" id="FNanchor_31"></a>
+<a href="#Footnote_31" class="fnanchor">[31]</a> Muscle tissue
+has an abundant blood supply, while ligaments have very little and
+soon lose their resiliency if unsupported. Any lack of tone in the
+calf-muscles throws the weight on the less resistant ligaments and on
+the cartilages placed as cushions between the bony structures of the arch.
+This is what causes the pain.<a name="FNanchor_32" id="FNanchor_32"></a>
+<a href="#Footnote_32" class="fnanchor">[32]</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_31" id="Footnote_31"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_31"><span class="label">[31]</span>
+</a> Grey's Anatomy&mdash;&quot;The Articulations.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_32" id="Footnote_32"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_32"><span class="label">[32]</span>
+</a> Actual loss of the arch by downward displacement of the
+bones cannot be overcome by restoring muscle-tone. The majority of
+so-called cases of flatfoot are, however, in the stage amenable to
+psychic measures.</p></div>
+
+<p><!-- Page 139 --><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139" />
+Flat-footedness is only one result of weak muscles. Eye-strain is
+another; ptosis, or falling of the organs, is another. In a majority
+of cases the best treatment for any of these troubles is an
+understanding attempt to go to the root of the matter by bracing up
+the whole mental tone. The most scientific oculists do not try to
+correct eye trouble due to muscular insufficiency by any special
+prisms or glasses. They know that the eyes will right themselves when
+the general health and the general spirits improve. I have found by
+repeated experience with nervous patients that it takes only a short
+time for people who have been unable to read for months or years to
+regain their old faculty. So remarkable is the power of mind.</p>
+
+<p class="scheading">Summary</p>
+
+<p>We have found that the gap between the body and the mind is not so
+wide as it seems, and that it is bridged by the subconscious mind,
+which is at once the master of the body and the servant of
+consciousness. In recording the physical effects of suggestion and
+emotion, we have not taken time to describe the galvanometers, the
+weighing-machines and all the other apparatus used in the various
+laboratory tests; but enough has been said to show that when doctors
+and psychologists speak of the effect of mind on body, they are
+<!-- Page 140 --><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140" />dealing
+with definite facts and with laws capable of scientific proof.</p>
+
+<p>We have emphasized the fact that downcast and fearful moods have an
+immediate effect on the body; but after all, most people know this
+already. What they do not know is the real cause of the mood. When a
+nervous person finds out why he worries, he is well on the way toward
+recovery. An understanding of the cause is among the most vital
+discoveries of modern science.</p>
+
+<p>The discussion, so far, has merely prepared us to plunge into the
+heart of the question: What is it that in the last analysis makes a
+person nervous, and how may he find his way out? This question the
+next two chapters will try to answer.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div><!-- Page 141 --><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141" /></div>
+
+<p class="heading"><a name="CHAPTER_VII" id="CHAPTER_VII">CHAPTER VII</a></p>
+
+<p class="heading"><i>In which we go to the root of the matter</i></p>
+
+<p class="heading">THE REAL TROUBLE</p>
+
+<p class="scheading">Pioneers</p>
+
+<p><b>Following the Gleam.</b> Kipling's Elephant-child with the &quot;'satiable
+curiosity&quot; finally asked a question which seemed simple enough but
+which sent him on a long journey into unknown parts. In the same way
+man's modest and simple question, &quot;What makes people nervous?&quot; has
+sent him far-adventuring to find the answer. For centuries he has
+followed false trails, ending in blind alleys, and only lately does he
+seem to have found the road that shall lead him to his journey's end.</p>
+
+<p>We may be thankful that we are following a band of pioneers whose
+fearless courage and passion for truth would not let them turn back
+even when the trail led through fields hitherto forbidden. The leader
+of this band of pioneers was a young doctor named Freud.</p>
+
+
+<p class="scheading">The Search for Truth</p>
+
+<p><b>Early Beginnings.</b> In 1882, when Freud was the <!-- Page 142 -->
+<a name="Page_142" id="Page_142" />assistant to Dr.
+Breuer of Vienna, there was brought to them for treatment a young
+woman afflicted with various hysterical pains and paralyses. This
+young woman's case marked an epoch in medical history; for out of the
+effort to cure her came some surprising discoveries of great
+significance to the open-minded young student.</p>
+
+<p>It was found that each of this girl's symptoms was related to some
+forgotten experience, and that in every case the forgetting seemed to
+be the result of the painfulness of the experience. In other words,
+the symptoms were not visitations from without, but expressions from
+within; they were a part of the mental life of the patient; they had a
+history and a meaning, and the meaning seemed in some way to be
+connected with the patient's previous attitude of mind which made the
+experience too painful to be tolerated in consciousness. These
+previous ideas were largely subconscious and had been acquired during
+early childhood. When by means of hypnosis a great mass of forgotten
+material was brought to the surface and later made plain to her
+consciousness, the symptoms disappeared as if by magic.</p>
+
+<p><b>A Startling Discovery.</b> For a time Breuer and Freud worked together,
+finding that their investigations with other patients served to
+corroborate their former conclusions. When it became apparent that in
+<!-- Page 143 --><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143" />every case
+the painful experience bore some relation to the love-life
+of the patient, both doctors were startled. Along with most of the
+rest of the world, they had been taught to look askance at the
+reproductive instinct and to shrink from realizing the vital place
+which sex holds in human life.</p>
+
+<p>Breuer dropped the work, and after an interval Freud went on alone. He
+was resolved to know the truth, and to tell what he saw. When he
+reported to the world that out of all his hundreds of patients, he had
+been unable, after the most careful analysis, to find one whose
+illness did not grow from some lack of adjustment of the sex-life, he
+was met by a storm of protest from all quarters. No amount of evidence
+seemed to make any difference. People were determined that no such
+libel should be heaped on human nature. Sex-urge was not respectable
+and nervous people were to be respected.</p>
+
+<p>Despite public disapproval, the scorn of other scientists, and the
+resistance of his own inner prejudices, Freud kept on. He was forced
+to acknowledge the validity of the facts which invariably presented
+themselves to view. Like Luther under equal duress, he cried: &quot;Here I
+stand. I can do no other.&quot;</p>
+
+<p><b>Freudian Principles.</b> Gradually, as he worked, he gathered together a
+number of outstanding facts about <!-- Page 144 --><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144" />man's
+mental life and about the psycho-neuroses. These facts he formulated into certain principles,
+which may be summed up in the following way.</p>
+
+<p>1 There is no <i>chance</i> in mental life; every mental phenomenon&mdash;hence
+every nervous phenomenon&mdash;has a cause and meaning.</p>
+
+<p>2 Infantile mental life is of tremendous importance in the direction
+of adult processes.</p>
+
+<p>3 Much of what is called forgetting is rather a repression into the
+subconscious, of impulses which were painful to the personality as a
+whole.</p>
+
+<p>4 Mental processes are dynamic, insisting on discharge, either in
+reality or in phantasy.</p>
+
+<p>5 An emotion may become detached from the idea to which it belongs and
+be displaced on other ideas.</p>
+
+<p>6 Sex-interests dominate much of the mental life where their influence
+is unrecognized. The disturbance in a psycho-neurosis is always in
+this domain of sex-life. &quot;In a normal sexual life, no neurosis.&quot; If a
+shock is the precipitating cause of the trouble, it is only because
+the ground was already prepared by the sex-disturbance.</p>
+
+<p>Freud was perhaps unfortunate in his choice of the word &quot;sex,&quot; which
+has so many evil connotations; but as he found no other word to cover
+the field, he chose the old one and stretched its meaning to include
+all the psychic and physical phenomena which spring <!-- Page 145 -->
+<a name="Page_145" id="Page_145" />directly and
+indirectly from the great processes of reproduction and parental care,
+and which ultimately include all and more than our word
+&quot;love.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_33" id="FNanchor_33"></a>
+<a href="#Footnote_33" class="fnanchor">[33]</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_33" id="Footnote_33">
+</a><a href="#FNanchor_33"><span class="label">[33]</span>
+</a> Freud and his followers have always said that they saw
+no theoretical reason why any other repressed instinct should not form
+the basis of a neurosis, but that, as a matter of fact, they never had
+found this to be the case, probably because no other instinct comes
+into such bitter and persistent conflict with the dictates of society.
+Now, however, the Great War seems to have changed conditions. Under
+the strain and danger of life at the front there has developed a kind
+of nervous breakdown called shellshock or war-neurosis, which seems in
+some cases to be based not on the repression of the instinct of
+race-preservation but on the unusual necessity for repression of the
+instinct of self-preservation. Army surgeons report that wounded men
+almost never suffer from shell-shock. The wound is enough to secure
+the unconsciously desired removal to the rear. But in the absence of
+wounds, a desire for safety may at the same time be so intense and so
+severely repressed that it seizes upon the neurosis as the only
+possible means of escape from the unbearable situation. In time of
+peace, however, the instinct of reproduction seems to be the only
+impulse which is severely enough repressed to be responsible for a
+nervous breakdown.</p></div>
+
+<p><b>Later Developments.</b> Little by little, the scientific world came to
+see that this wild theorizer had facts on his side; that not only had
+he formulated a theory, but he had discovered a cure, and that he was
+able to free people from obsessions, fears, and physical symptoms
+before which other methods were powerless. One by one the open-minded
+men of science were converted by the overpowering logic of the
+evidence, until to-day we find not only a &quot;Freudian school,&quot; counting
+among its members many of the eminent scientists of <!-- Page 146 -->
+<a name="Page_146" id="Page_146" />the day, but we
+find in medical schools and universities courses based on Freudian
+principles, with text-books by acknowledged authorities in medicine
+and psychology. We find magazines devoted entirely to psycho-analytic
+subjects,<a name="FNanchor_34" id="FNanchor_34"></a>
+<a href="#Footnote_34" class="fnanchor">[34]</a> besides
+articles in medical journals and even numerous
+articles in popular magazines. Not only is the treatment of nervous
+disorders revolutionized by these principles but floods of light are
+thrown on such widely different fields of study as ancient myths and
+folk lore, the theory of wit, methods of child training, and the
+little slips of the tongue and everyday &quot;breaks&quot; that have until
+recently been considered the meaningless results of chance.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_34" id="Footnote_34">
+</a><a href="#FNanchor_34"><span class="label">[34]</span>
+</a> <i>The Psychoanalytic Review</i> and the <i>International
+Journal of Psychoanalysis.</i></p></div>
+
+<p><b>A Searching <span title="Corrected typo: was 'Queston'" class="hov">Question</span>.</b>
+ We find, then, that when we ask, &quot;What makes
+people nervous?&quot; we are really asking: &quot;What is man like, inside and
+out, up and down? What makes him think, feel, and act as he does every
+hour of every day?&quot; We are asking for the source of human motives, the
+science of human behavior, the charting of the human mind. It is hard
+to-day to understand how so much reproach and ridicule could have been
+aroused by the statement that the ultimate cause of nervousness is a
+disturbance of the sex-life. There has already been a change in the
+public attitude toward things sexual.</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 147 --><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147" />Training-courses
+for mothers and teachers, elementary teaching in the
+schools, lectures and magazine articles have done much to show the
+fallacy of our old hypersensitive attitude. Since the war, some of us
+know, too, with what success the army has used the Freudian principles
+in treating war-neurosis, which was mistakenly called shell-shock by
+the first observers. We know, too, more about the constitution of
+man's mind than the public knew ten years ago. When we remember the
+insistent character of the instincts and the repressive method used by
+society in restraining the most obstreperous impulse, when we remember
+the pain of such conflict and the depressing physical effects of
+painful emotions, we cannot wonder that this most sharply repressed
+instinct should cause mental and physical trouble.</p>
+
+<p><b>What about Sublimation?</b> On the other hand, it has been stated in
+Chapter IV that although this universal urge cannot be repressed, it
+can be sublimated or diverted to useful ends which bring happiness,
+not disaster, to the individual. We have a right, then, to ask why
+this happy issue is not always attained, why sublimation ever fails.
+If a psycho-neurosis is caused by a failure of an insistent instinct
+to find adequate expression, by a blocking of the libido or the
+love-force, what are the conditions which bring about this blocking?
+The sex-instinct of every respectable person<!-- Page 148 -->
+<a name="Page_148" id="Page_148" /> is subject to restraint.
+Some people are able to adjust themselves; why not all? The question,
+&quot;What makes people nervous?&quot; then turns out to mean: What keeps people
+from a satisfactory outlet for their love-instincts? What is it that
+holds them back from satisfaction in direct expression, and prevents
+indirect outlet in sublimation? Whatever does this must be the real
+cause of &quot;nerves.&quot;</p>
+
+
+<p class="scheading">The Causes of &quot;Nerves&quot;</p>
+
+<p><b>Plural, not Singular.</b> The first thing to learn about the cause is
+that it is not a cause at all, but several causes. We are so well made
+that it takes a combination of circumstances to upset our equilibrium.
+In other words, a neurosis must be &quot;over-determined.&quot; Heredity, faulty
+education, emotional shock, physical fatigue, have each at various
+times been blamed for a breakdown. As a matter of fact, it seems to
+take a number of ingredients to make a neurosis,&mdash;a little unstable
+inheritance plus a considerable amount of faulty upbringing, plus a
+later series of emotional experiences bearing just the right
+relationship to the earlier factors. Heredity, childhood reactions,
+and later experiences, are the three legs on which a neurosis usually
+stands. An occasional breakdown seems to stand on the single leg of
+childhood experiences but in the majority of cases each of the three
+<!-- Page 149 --><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149" />factors
+contributes its quota to the final disaster.</p>
+
+<p><b>Born or Made?</b> It used to be thought that neurotics, like poets, were
+born, not made. Heredity was considered wholly responsible, and there
+seemed very little to do about it. But to-day the emphasis on heredity
+is steadily giving way to stress on early environment. There are, no
+doubt, such factors as a certain innate sensitiveness, a natural
+suggestibility, an intensity of emotion, a little tendency to nervous
+instability, which predispose a person to nerves, but unless the
+inborn tendency is reinforced by the reactions and training of early
+childhood, it is likely to die a natural death.</p>
+
+
+<p class="scheading">Childhood Experiences</p>
+
+<p><b>Early Reactions.</b> Freud found that a neurotic is made before he is
+six years old. When by repeated explorations into the minds of his
+patients, he made this important discovery, he at first believed that
+the disturbing factor was always some single emotional experience or
+shock in childhood,&mdash;usually of a sexual nature. But Freud and later
+investigators have since found that the trouble is not so often a
+single experience as a long series of exaggerated emotional reactions,
+a too intense emotional life, a precocity in feeling tending toward
+fixation of childhood habits, which are thus carried over into adult life.</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 150 --><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150" /><b>Fixation
+of Habits.</b> Fixation is the word that expresses all
+this,&mdash;fixation of childish habits. A neurotic is a person who made
+such strong habits in childhood that he cannot abandon them in
+maturity. He is too much ruled by the past. His unconscious emotional
+thought-habits are the complexes which were made in childhood and
+therefore lack the power of adaptation to mature life.</p>
+
+<p>We saw in Chapter IV that Nature takes great pains to develop in the
+child the psychic and physical trends which he will need later on in
+his mature love-life, and that this training is accomplished in a
+number of well-defined periods which lead from one to the other. If,
+however, the child reacts too intensely, lingers too long in any one
+of these phases, he lays for himself action lines of least resistance
+which he may never leave or to which he may return during the strain
+and stress of adult life.</p>
+
+<p>In either case, the neurotic is a grown-up child. He may be a very
+learned, very charming person, but he is nevertheless dragging behind
+him a part of his childhood which he should have outgrown long ago.
+Part of him is suffering from an arrest of development,&mdash;not a leg or
+an arm but an impulse.</p>
+
+<p><b>Precocious Emotions.</b> The habits which tend to become fixed too soon
+seem to be of four kinds; the habit of loving, the habit of rebelling,
+the habit of repressing <!-- Page 151 --><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151" />
+normal instincts, and the habit of dreaming.
+In each case it is the excess of feeling which causes the
+trouble,&mdash;too much love, too much hate, too much disgust, or too much
+pleasure in imagination. Exaggeration is always a danger-signal. An
+overdeveloped child is likely to be an underdeveloped man. Especially
+in the emotions is precocity to be deplored. A premature alphabet or
+multiplication table is not nearly so serious as premature intensity
+of feeling, nor so likely to lead later to trouble. Of course fixation
+in these emotional habits does not always lead to a serious breakdown.
+If the fixation is not too extreme, and if later events do not happen
+to accentuate the trouble, the arrest of development may merely show
+itself in certain weaknesses of character or in isolated symptoms
+without developing a real neurosis.</p>
+
+<p>Let us examine each of these arrested habits and the excess emotion
+which sets the mold before it is ready for maturity.</p>
+
+<p><b>Too Much Self-Love.</b> In the chapter on the reproductive instinct, we
+found that the natural way to learn to love is by successively loving
+oneself, one's parents and family, one's fellows, and one's mate. If
+the love-force gets too much pleasure in any one of these phases, it
+finds it hard to give up its old love and to pass on to the next
+phase. Thus some children take too much pleasure in their own bodies
+or, a little later, in their <!-- Page 152 -->
+<a name="Page_152" id="Page_152" />own personalities. If they are too much
+interested in their own physical sensations and the pleasure they get
+by stimulating certain zones of the body, then in later life they
+cannot free themselves from the desire for this kind of satisfaction.
+Try as they may, they cannot be satisfied with normal adult relations,
+but sink back into some form of so-called sex-perversion.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps it is another phase of self-love which holds the child too
+much. If, like Narcissus, he becomes too fond of looking at himself,
+is too eager to show off, too desirous of winning praise, then forever
+after he is likely to be self-conscious, self-centered, thinking
+always of the impression he is making, unable ever to be at leisure
+from himself. He is fixed in
+the <span title="Corrected typo: was 'Narcisstic'" class="hov">Narcissistic</span> stage
+of his life, and is unadapted to the world of social relations.</p>
+
+<p><b>Too Much Family-love.</b> We have already spoken of the danger of
+fixation in the second period, that of object-love&mdash;the period of
+family relationships. The danger is here again one of degree and may
+be avoided by a little knowledge and self-control on the part of the
+parents. The little girl who is permitted to lavish too much love on
+her father, who does not see anybody else, who cannot learn to like
+the boys is a misfit. The wise mother will see that her love for her
+boy does not express itself too much by means of hugs and kisses. The
+mother who shows very plainly that she loves her <!-- Page 153 -->
+<a name="Page_153" id="Page_153" />little boy better
+than she loves her husband and the mother who boasts that her
+adolescent boy tells her all his secrets and takes her out in
+preference to any girl&mdash;that deluded mother is trying to take
+something that is not hers, and is thereby courting trouble. When her
+son grows up, he may not know why, but no girl will suit him, and he
+will either remain a bachelor or marry some older woman who reminds
+him subconsciously of his mother. His love-requirements will be too
+strict; he will be forever trying either in phantasy or in real life
+to duplicate his earlier love-experiences. This, of course, cannot
+satisfy the demands of a mature man. He will be torn between
+conflicting desires, unhappy without knowing why, unable either to
+remain a child or to become a man, and impelled to gain
+self-expression in indirect and unsatisfactory ways.</p>
+
+<p>Since it is not possible in this space to recite specific cases which
+show how often a nervous trouble points back to the father-mother
+complex,<a name="FNanchor_35" id="FNanchor_35"></a>
+<a href="#Footnote_35" class="fnanchor">[35]</a> it may
+help to cite the opinions of a few of our best
+authorities. Freud says of the family complex, &quot;This is the root
+complex of the neurosis.&quot; Jelliffe: &quot;It is the foot-rule of
+measurement of success in life&quot;: by which he means that just so far as
+we are able at the right time to free ourselves from dependence on
+parents are we able to adjust ourselves to the world at large.
+Pfister: &quot;The <!-- Page 154 --><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154" />attitude
+toward parents very often determines for a
+life-time the attitude toward people in general and toward life
+itself.&quot; Hinkle: &quot;The entire direction of lives is determined by
+parental relationships.&quot;</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_35" id="Footnote_35">
+</a><a href="#FNanchor_35"><span class="label">[35]</span>
+</a> This is technically known as the Oedipus Complex.</p></div>
+
+<p><b>Too Much Hate.</b> Besides loving too hard, there is the danger of
+hating too hard. If it sounds strange to talk of the hatreds of
+childhood, we must remember that we are thinking of real life as it is
+when the conventions of adult life are removed and the subconscious
+gives up its secrets.</p>
+
+<p>Several references have been made to the jealousy of the small child
+when he has to share his love with the parent of the same sex. For
+every little boy the father gets in the way. For every little girl the
+mother gets in the way. At one time or other there is likely to be a
+period when this is resented with all the violence of a child's
+emotions. It is likely to be very soon repressed and succeeded by a
+real affection which lasts through life. But underneath, unmodified by
+time, there may exist simultaneously the old childish image and the
+old unconscious reaction to it, unconscious but still active in
+indirect ways.</p>
+
+<p>Jealousy is very often united with the natural rebellion of a child
+against authority. The rebellion may, of course, be directed against
+either parent who is final in authority in the home. In most cases
+this is the father. As the impulse of self-assertion is usually
+<!-- Page 155 --><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155" />stronger
+in boys than in girls, and as the boy's impulse in this
+direction is reinforced by any existing jealousy toward his father, we
+find a strong spirit of rebellion more often playing a subconscious
+part in the life of men than of women. The novelist's favorite theme
+of the conflict between the young man and &quot;the old man&quot; represents the
+conscious, unrepressed complex. More often, however, there is true
+affection for the father, while the rebellion which really belongs to
+the childish father-image is displaced or transferred to other symbols
+of authority,&mdash;the state, the law, the king, the school, the teacher,
+the church, or perhaps to religion and authority in general.
+Anarchists and atheists naturally rationalize their reasons for
+dissent, but, for all that, they are not so much intellectual pioneers
+as rebellious little boys who have forgotten to grow up.</p>
+
+<p><b>Liking to be &quot;Bossed.&quot;</b> There is a worse danger, however, than too
+much rebellion, and that is too little rebellion. Sometimes this
+yielding spirit is the result of an overdose of negative self-feeling
+and an under-dose of positive self-feeling; but sometimes it is
+over-compensation for the repressed spirit of rebellion which the
+child considers wicked. Consciously he becomes over-meek, because he
+has to summon all his powers to fight his subconscious insurrection.
+Whether he be meek by nature or by training, he is likely to be a
+<!-- Page 156 --><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156" />
+failure. Everybody knows that the child who is too good never amounts
+to anything. He who has never disobeyed is a weakling. Naturally
+resenting all authority, the normal individual, if he be well trained,
+soon learns that some authority is necessary. He rebels, but he learns
+to acquiesce, to a certain degree. If he acquiesces too easily,
+represses too severely his rebellious spirit, swings to the other
+extreme of wanting to be &quot;bossed,&quot; he is very likely to end as a
+nervous invalid, unfitted for the battles of life. The neurotic in the
+majority of cases likes authority, clings to it too long, wants the
+teacher to tell him what to do, wants the doctor to order him around,
+is generally over-conscientious, and afraid he will offend the &quot;boss&quot;
+or some one else who reminds him of the father-image. All this carries
+a warning to parents who cannot manage their children without
+dominating their lives, even when the domination is a kindly one.
+Perhaps the modern child is in more danger of being spoiled than
+bullied, but analysis of nervous patients shows that both kinds of
+danger still exist.</p>
+
+<p><b>Too Much Disgust.</b> The third form of excessive emotion is disgust.
+The love-force, besides being blocked by a fixation of childish love
+and of childish reactions toward authority, is very often kept from
+free mature self-expression by a perpetuation of a childish reaction
+against sex. We hardly need dwell longer on <!-- Page 157 -->
+<a name="Page_157" id="Page_157" />the folly of teaching
+children to be ashamed of so inevitable a part of their own nature.
+Disgust is a very strong emotion, and when it is turned against a part
+of ourselves, united with that other strong impulse of self-regard and
+incorporated into the conscience, it makes a Chinese wall of exclusion
+against the baffled, misunderstood reproductive instinct, which is
+thrust aside as alien.</p>
+
+<p><b>Restraint versus Denial.</b> Repression is not merely restraint. It is
+restraint plus denial. To the clamoring instinct we say not merely,
+&quot;No, you <i>may</i> not,&quot; but &quot;No, you <i>are</i> not. You do not exist. Nothing
+like you could belong to me.&quot; The woman with nausea (Chapter V) did
+not say to herself: &quot;You are a normal, healthy woman, possessed of a
+normal woman's desires. But wait a while until the proper time comes.&quot;
+Controlled by an immature feeling of disgust, she had said: &quot;I never
+thought it. It cannot be.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The difference is just this. When an ungratifiable desire is honestly
+faced and squarely answered, it is modified by other desires, chooses
+another way of discharge, and ceases to be desire. When a desire is
+repressed, it is still desire, unsatisfied, insistent, unmodifiable by
+mature points of view, untouched by time, automatic, and capable of
+almost any subterfuge in order to get satisfaction. A repressed desire
+is buried, shut away from the disintegrating effects of sunlight
+<!-- Page 158 --><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158" />and
+air. While the rest of the personality is constantly changing under
+the influence of new ideas, the buried complex lives on in its
+immaturity, absolutely untouched by time.</p>
+
+<p><b>Childish Birth-theories.</b> When a child's questions about where babies
+come from are met by evasions, he is forced to manufacture his own
+theories. His elders would laugh if they knew some of these theories,
+but they would not laugh if they knew how often the childish ideas,
+wide of the truth, furnish the material for future neuroses. Frink
+tells the story of a young woman who had a compulsion for taking
+drugs. Although not a drug-fiend in the usual sense, she was
+constantly impelled to take any kind of drug she could obtain. It was
+finally revealed that during her childhood she had tried hard to
+discover how babies were made, and had at last concluded that they
+grew in the mother as a result of some medicine furnished by the
+doctor. The idea had long been forgotten, only to reappear as a
+compulsion. The natural desire for a child was strong in her, but was
+repressed as unholy in an unmarried woman. The associated childish
+idea of drug-taking was not repellent to her moral sense and was used
+as a substitute for the real desire to bear a child.</p>
+
+<p>Many of my patients have suffered from the effect of some such
+birth-theories. One young girl, twenty <!-- Page 159 -->
+<a name="Page_159" id="Page_159" />years old, was greatly
+afflicted with myso-phobia, or the fear of contamination. She spent
+most of her time in washing her hands and keeping her hands and
+clothing free from contamination by contact with innumerable harmless
+objects. When cleaning her shoes on the grass, she would kneel so that
+the hem of her skirt would touch the grass, lest some dust should fly
+up under her clothes. After eating luncheon in the park with a girl
+who had tuberculosis, she said that she was not afraid of tuberculosis
+in the lungs, but asked if something like tuberculosis might not get
+in and begin to grow somewhere else. Her life was full to overflowing
+of such compulsive fears.</p>
+
+<p>As opportunity offered itself from day to day, I would catch her
+compulsive ideas in the very act of expressing themselves, and would
+pin her down as to the association and the source of her fear, always
+taking care not to make suggestions or ask leading questions. She was
+finally convinced out of her own mouth that her real fear was the idea
+of something getting into her body and growing there. Then she told
+how she had questioned her mother about the reproductive life and had
+been put off with signs of embarrassment. For a long time she had been
+afraid to walk or talk with a boy, because, not knowing how conception
+might occur, she feared grave consequences.</p>
+
+<p>Very soon after the beginning of her conversations <!-- Page 160 -->
+<a name="Page_160" id="Page_160" />with me, the girl
+realized that her fear was really a disguised desire that something
+might be planted within and grow. With her new understanding of
+herself, her compulsions promptly slipped away. She began to eat and
+sleep, and to live a happy, natural life.</p>
+
+<p><b>Chronic Repression.</b> It takes first-hand acquaintance with nervous
+patients to realize how common are stories like these. Unnecessary
+repressions based on false training are the cause of many a physical
+symptom and mental distress which a little parental frankness might
+have forestalled.<a name="FNanchor_36" id="FNanchor_36">
+</a><a href="#Footnote_36" class="fnanchor">[36]</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_36" id="Footnote_36">
+</a><a href="#FNanchor_36"><span class="label">[36]</span>
+</a> Parents who are eager to handle this subject in the
+right way are often sincerely puzzled as to how to go about it. No
+matter how complete their education, it is very likely to fail them at
+this critical point. For the benefit of such parents, let it be said
+with all possible emphasis that the first and most important step must
+be a change in their own mental attitude. If there is left within them
+the shadow of embarrassment on the subject of sex, their children will
+not fail to sense the situation at once. A feeling of hesitation or a
+tendency to apologize for nature makes a far deeper impression on the
+child-mind than do the most beautiful of half-believed words on the
+subject. And this impression, subtle and elusive as it may seem, is a
+real and vital experience which is quite likely to color the whole of
+the child's life. If you would give your children a fair start, you
+must first get rid of your own inner resistances. After that, all will
+be clear sailing.
+</p><p>
+In the second place, take the earliest opportunity to bring up the
+subject in a natural way. A young father told me recently that his
+little daughter had asked her mother why she didn't have any lap any
+more. &quot;And of course your wife took that chance to tell her about the
+baby that is coming,&quot; I said. &quot;Oh, no,&quot; he answered, &quot;she did nothing
+of the kind. Mary is far too young to know about such things.&quot; There
+are always chances if we are on the look out for them&mdash;and the earlier
+the better. It has been noticed that children are never repelled by
+the idea of any natural process unless the new idea runs counter to
+some notion which has already been formed. The wise parent is the one
+who gets in the right impression before some other child has had a
+chance to plant the wrong one.
+</p><p>
+Then, too, we elders are judged quite as much by what we do not say as
+by what we do. Happy is the child who is not left to draw his own
+conclusions from the silence and evasiveness of his parents. The
+sex-instruction which children are getting in the schools is often
+good, but it usually comes too late&mdash;the damage is always done before
+the sixth year.
+</p><p>
+When it comes to the exact words in which to explain the phenomena of
+generation and birth each parent must naturally find his own way. The
+main point is that we must tell the truth and not try to improve on
+nature. If we say that the baby grows under the mother's heart and
+later the child learns that this is not true, he inevitably gets the
+idea that there is something not nice about the part of the body in
+which the baby does grow. What could be wrong with the simple truth
+that the father plants a tiny seed in the mother's body and that this
+seed joins with another little seed already there and grows until it
+is a real baby ready to come into the world? The question as to how
+the father plants the seed need cause no alarm. If brothers and
+sisters are brought up together with no artificial sense of false
+modesty, they very early learn the difference between the male and the
+female body. It is simple enough to tell the little child the function
+of the male structure. And it is easy to explain that the seeds do not
+grow until the little boy and girl have grown to be man and woman and
+that the way to be well and to have fine strong children is to leave
+the generative organs alone until that time. A sense of the dignity
+and high purpose of these organs is far more likely to prevent
+perversions&mdash;to say nothing of nervousness&mdash;than is an attitude of
+taboo and silence.</p></div>
+
+<p><!-- Page 161 --><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161" />A
+certain amount of repression is inevitable and useful, but a
+neurotic is merely an exaggerated represser. He represses so much of
+himself that it will not stay <!-- Page 162 --><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162" />
+down.<a name="FNanchor_37" id="FNanchor_37"></a>
+<a href="#Footnote_37" class="fnanchor">[37]</a> He builds up a permanent
+resistance which automatically acts as a dam to his normal sex
+instinct and forces it into undesirable outlets.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_37" id="Footnote_37">
+</a><a href="#FNanchor_37"><span class="label">[37]</span>
+</a> &quot;A neurosis is a partial failure of repression.&quot; Frink:
+<i>Morbid Fears and Compulsions</i>.</p></div>
+
+<p>A resistance is a chronic repression, repression that has become fixed
+and subconscious, a habit that has lost its flexibility and outlives
+its usefulness. It is a fixation of repression, and is built out of an
+over-strong complex or emotional thought habit, acquired during
+childhood, incorporated into the conscience and carried over into
+maturity, where it warps judgment and interferes with normal
+development because it is fundamentally untrue and at variance with
+the laws of nature.</p>
+
+<p><b>Too Much Day-Dreaming.</b> The fourth habit which holds back the adult
+from maturity and predisposes toward &quot;nerves&quot; is the habit of
+imagination. It need hardly be said that a certain kind of imagination
+is a good thing and one of man's greatest assets. But the essence of
+day-dreaming is the exact opposite; it is the desire to see things as
+they are not, but as we should like them to be,&mdash;not in order that we
+may bring them to pass, but for the mere pleasure of dreaming. Instead
+of turning a microscope or a telescope on the world of reality, as
+positive imagination does, this negative variety refuses even to look
+with the naked eye. To dream is easier than to do; to build up
+phantasies<!-- Page 163 --><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163" />
+ is easier than to build up a reputation or a fortune; to
+think a forbidden pleasure is easier than to sublimate.
+&quot;Pleasure-thinking&quot; is not only easier than &quot;reality-thinking,&quot;&mdash;it is
+the <i>older</i> way.</p>
+
+<p>Children gratify many of their desires simply by imagining them
+gratified. Much of the difficulty of later life might be avoided if
+the little child could be taught to work for the accomplishment of his
+pleasures rather than to dream of them. The normal child gradually
+abandons this &quot;pleasure-thinking&quot; for the more purposeful thinking of
+the actual world, but the child who loiters too long in the realm of
+fancy may ever after find it hard to keep away from its borders. His
+natural interest in sex, if artificially repressed, is especially
+prone to satisfy itself by way of phantasy.</p>
+
+<p><b>Turning back to Phantasy.</b> In later life, when the love-force for one
+reason or another becomes too strong to be handled either directly or
+indirectly in the real world, there comes the almost irresistible
+impulse to regress to the infantile way and to find expression by
+means of phantasy. After long experience Freud concluded that phantasy
+lies at the root of every neurosis. Jung says that a sex-phantasy is
+always at least one determiner of a nervous illness, and Jelliffe
+writes that the essence of the neurosis is a special activity of the
+imagination.</p>
+
+<p>Such a statement need not shock the most sensitive <!-- Page 164 -->
+<a name="Page_164" id="Page_164" />conscience. The
+very fact that a neurosis breaks out is proof that the phantasies are
+repellent to the owners of them and are thrust down into the
+subconscious as unworthy. In fact, every neurosis is witness to the
+strength of the human conscience. No phantasy could cause illness. It
+is the phantasy plus the repression of it that makes the trouble, or
+rather it is the conflict between the forces back of the phantasy and
+the repression. The neurosis, then, turns out to be a &quot;flight from the
+real,&quot; the result of a desire to run away from a difficulty. When a
+problem presses or a disagreeable situation is to be faced, it is
+easier to give up and fall ill than to see the thing through to the
+end. Here again, we find that nervousness is a regression to the
+irresponsible reactions of childhood.</p>
+
+<p><b>Maturity versus Immaturity.</b> We have been thinking of the main causes
+of &quot;nerves&quot; and have found them to be infantile habits of loving,
+rebelling, repressing, and dreaming. We have tried to show that these
+habits are able to cause trouble because of their bearing on that
+inevitable conflict between the ancient urge of the reproductive
+instinct and the later ideals which society has acquired. If this
+conflict be met in the light of the present, free from the backward
+pull, of outgrown habits, an adjustment is possible which satisfies
+both the individual and society. We call this adjustment sublimation.
+This is rather a synthesis than a <!-- Page 165 -->
+<a name="Page_165" id="Page_165" />compromise, a union of the opposing
+forces, a happy utilization of energy by displacement on more useful
+ideas. But if the conflict has to be met with the mind hampered by
+immature thinking and immature feeling; if the demands of the
+here-and-now are met as if it were long ago; if unhealthy and untrue
+complexes, old loves and hates complicate the situation; if to the
+necessary conflict is added an unnecessary one; then something else
+happens. Compromise of some kind must be made, but instead of a happy
+union of the two forces a poor compromise is effected, gaining a
+partial satisfaction for both sides, but a real one for neither. The
+neurosis is this compromise.</p>
+
+
+<p class="scheading">Later Experiences</p>
+
+<p><b>The Last Straw.</b> The precipitating cause may be one of a number of
+things. It may be entirely within, or it may be external. Perhaps it
+is only a quickening of the maturing instincts at the time of
+adolescence, making the love-force too strong to be held by the old
+repressions. Perhaps the husband, wife, or lover dies, or the
+life-work is taken away, depriving the vital energy of its usual
+outlets. Perhaps the trigger is pulled by an emotional shock which
+bears a faint resemblance to old emotional experiences, and which
+stimulates both the repressing and repressed trends and makes the
+person at the same time say both &quot;Yes,&quot; <!-- Page 166 -->
+<a name="Page_166" id="Page_166" />and
+&quot;No.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_38" id="FNanchor_38"></a>
+<a href="#Footnote_38" class="fnanchor">[38]</a> Perhaps
+physical fatigue lets down the mental and moral tension and makes the
+conflict too strong to be controlled. Perhaps an external problem
+presses and arouses the old habit of fleeing from disagreeable
+reality. Any or all these factors may cooperate, but not one of them
+is anything more than a last straw on an overburdened back. No
+calamity, deprivation, fatigue, or emotion has been able to bring
+about a neurosis unless the ground was prepared for it by the earlier
+reactions of childhood.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_38" id="Footnote_38">
+</a><a href="#FNanchor_38"><span class="label">[38]</span>
+</a> &quot;The external world can only cause repression when there
+was already present beforehand a strong initial tension reaching back
+even to childhood.&quot;&mdash;Pfister: <i>Psychoanalytic Method</i>, p. 94.</p></div>
+
+
+<p class="scheading">The Breakdown Itself</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<b>Two Persons under One Hat.</b>&quot; We can understand now why a neurotic
+can be described in so many ways. We often hear him called an
+especially moral, especially ethical person, with a very active
+conscience; an intensely social being, unable to be satisfied with
+anything but a social standard; a person with &quot;finer intellectual
+insight and greater sensitiveness than the rest of mankind.&quot; At the
+same time we are told that a neurosis is a partial triumph of
+anti-social, non-moral factors, and that it is a cowardly flight from
+reality; we hear a nervous invalid called selfish, unsocial, shut in,
+primitive, childish, self-deceived. Both these descriptions are true
+to life. A neurosis is an ethical struggle
+<!-- Page 167 --><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167" />between these two sets of
+forces. If the lower set had triumphed, the man would have been merely
+weak; if the higher set had been victorious, he would have been
+strong. As it is, he is neither one nor the other,&mdash;only nervous. The
+neurosis is the only solution of the struggle which he is able to find,
+and serves the purpose of a sort of armed armistice between the two camps.</p>
+
+
+<p class="scheading">Serving a Purpose</p>
+
+<p>If a neurosis is a compromise, if it is the easiest way out, if it
+serves a purpose, it must be that the individual himself has a hand in
+shaping that purpose. Can it be that a breakdown which seems such an
+unmitigated disaster is really welcomed by a part of our own selves?
+Nothing is more intensely resented by the nervous invalid than the
+accusation that he likes his symptoms,&mdash;and no wonder. The conscious
+part of him hates the pain, the inconvenience, and the disability with
+a real hatred. It is not pleasant to be ill. And yet, as it turns out,
+it is pleasanter to be ill than it is to bear the tension of
+unsatisfied desire or to be undeceived about oneself. Every symptom is
+a means of expression for repressed and forgotten impulses and is a
+relief to the personality. It tends to the preservation of the
+individual, rather than to his destruction. The nervous invalid is not
+short-lived, but his family may be! It <!-- Page 168 -->
+<a name="Page_168" id="Page_168" />has been said that a neurosis
+is not so much a disease as a dilemma. Rather might it be said that
+the neurosis is a way out of the dilemma. It is a harbor after a
+stormy sea, not always a quiet harbor, but at least a usable one.
+Unpleasant as it is, every nervous symptom is a form of compensation
+which has been deliberately though unconsciously chosen by its owner.</p>
+
+<p><b>Rationalizing Our Distress.</b> Among other things, a nervous symptom
+furnishes a seemingly reasonable excuse for the sense of distress
+which is behind every breakdown. Something troubles us. We are not
+willing to acknowledge what it is. On the other hand, we must appear
+reasonable to ourselves, so we manufacture a reason. Perhaps at the
+time when the person first feels distress, he is on a railroad train.
+So he says to himself, &quot;It is the train. I must not go near the
+railway&quot;; and he develops a phobia for cars. Perhaps at the onset of
+the fear he happens to have a slight pain in the arm. He makes use of
+the pain to explain his distress. He thinks about it and holds on to
+it. It serves a purpose, and is on the whole less painful than the
+feeling of unexplained impending disaster which is attached to no
+particular idea. Perhaps he happens to be tired when the conflict
+first gets beyond control. So he seizes the idea of fatigue to explain
+his illness. He develops chronic fatigue and talks proudly of
+overwork. In every case the symptom serves a real
+<!-- Page 169 --><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169" />purpose, and is,
+despite its discomfort, a relief to the distressed personality.</p>
+
+<p>A neurosis is a subconscious effort at adjustment. Like a physical
+symptom, it is Nature's way of trying to cure herself. It is an
+attempt to get equilibrium, but it is an awkward attempt and hardly
+the kind that we would choose when we see what we are doing.</p>
+
+<p><b>Securing an Audience.</b> Besides furnishing relief from too intense
+strain, a nervous breakdown brings secondary advantages that are at
+most only dimly recognized by the individual. One of the most intense
+cravings of the primitive part of the subconscious is for an audience;
+a nervous symptom always secures that audience. The invalid is the
+object of the solicitous care of the family, friends, physician, and
+specialist. Pomp and ceremony, so dear to the child-mind, make their
+appeal to the dissociated part of the personality. The repressed
+instincts, hungry for love and attention, delight in the petting and
+special care which an illness is sure to bring. Secretly and
+unconsciously, the neurotic takes a certain pleasure in all the
+various changes that are made for his benefit,&mdash;the dismantling of
+striking clocks, the muffling of household noises, the banishing of
+crowing roosters, and the changes in menu which must be carefully
+planned for his stomach.</p>
+
+<p>This characteristic of finding pleasure in personal <!-- Page 170 -->
+<a name="Page_170" id="Page_170" />ministrations is
+plainly a regression to the infantile phase of life. The baby demands
+and obtains the center of the stage. Later he has to learn to give it
+up, but the neurotic gets the center again and is often very loth to
+leave it for a more inconspicuous place.</p>
+
+<p><b>Capitalizing an Illness.</b> Then, too, a neurosis provides a way of
+escape from all sorts of disagreeable duties. It can be capitalized in
+innumerable ways,&mdash;ways that would horrify the invalid if he realized
+the truth. Much of the resentment manifested against the suggestion
+that the neurosis is psychic in origin is simply a resistance against
+giving up the unconsciously enjoyed advantages of the illness. An
+honest desire to get well is a long step toward cure.</p>
+
+<p>The purposive character of a nervous illness is well illustrated by
+two cases reported by Thaddeus Hoyt
+Ames.<a name="FNanchor_39" id="FNanchor_39"></a>
+<a href="#Footnote_39" class="fnanchor">[39]</a> A young woman, the
+drudge of the family, suddenly became hysterically blind, that is, she
+became blind despite the fact that her eyes and optic nerves proved to
+be unimpaired. She remained blind until it was proved to her that a
+part of her welcomed the blindness and had really produced it for the
+purpose of getting away from the monotony of her unappreciated life at
+home. She naturally resented the charge but finally accepted it and
+&quot;turned on&quot; her eyesight in an instant. The other patient, a man,
+became blind in <!-- Page 171 --><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171" />order
+to avoid seeing his wife who had turned out to
+be not at all what he had hoped. When he realized what he was doing,
+he decided that there might be better ways of adjusting himself to his
+wife. He then switched on his seeing power, which had never been
+really lost, but only disconnected and dissociated from the rest of
+his mind.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_39" id="Footnote_39">
+</a><a href="#FNanchor_39"><span class="label">[39]</span>
+</a> Thaddeus Hoyt Ames: <i>Archives of Ophthalmology</i>, Vol.
+XLIII, No. 4, 1914.</p></div>
+
+<p>That the conscious mind has no part in the subterfuge is shown by the
+fact that both patients gave up their artificial haven as soon as they
+saw how they had been fooling themselves. The fact remains that every
+neurosis is the fulfilment of a wish,&mdash;a distorted, unrecognized,
+unsatisfactory fulfilment to be sure, but still an effort to satisfy
+desire. As Frink remarks, &quot;A neurosis is a kind of behaviour.&quot; We
+always choose the conduct we like. It is a matter of choice. Does not
+this answer our question as to why some people always take unhealthy
+suggestions? If we take the bad one, it is because it serves the need
+of a part of our being.</p>
+
+
+<p class="scheading">Sign Language</p>
+
+<p><b>Talking in Symbols.</b> We have several times suggested that a nervous
+symptom is a disguised, indirect expression of subconscious impulses.
+It is the completeness of the disguise which makes it so hard for us
+to realize its true meaning. It takes a stretch of the imagination to
+believe that a pain in the body can <!-- Page 172 -->
+<a name="Page_172" id="Page_172" />mean a pain in the soul, or that
+a fear of contamination can signify a desire to bear a child. But in
+all this we must not forget the primitive, childlike nature of the
+instinctive life.</p>
+
+<p>The savage and the child do not think as civilized man thinks. Savage
+or child thinks in pictures; he acts his feelings; he groups things
+according to superficial resemblances, he expresses an idea by its
+opposite; he talks in symbols. We still use these devices in poetic
+speech and in everyday thought. A wedding-ring stands for the marriage
+bond; the flag for a nation; a greyhound for fleetness; a wild beast
+for ferocity; sunrise for youth; and sunset for old age. &quot;The essence
+of language consists in the statement of resemblance. The expression
+of human thought is an expression of
+association.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_40" id="FNanchor_40">
+</a><a href="#Footnote_40" class="fnanchor">[40]</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_40" id="Footnote_40">
+</a><a href="#FNanchor_40"><span class="label">[40]</span>
+</a> Trigant Burrow: <i>Journal of American Medical
+Association</i>, Vol. LXVI, No. II, 1916.</p></div>
+
+<p>The association may be so accidental and superficial as to seem absurd
+to another person, or it may be so fundamental as to express the
+universal thought of man from the beginning of time. Many of the signs
+and symbols which crop out in neurotic symptoms and in normal dreams
+are the same as those which appear in myths, fairy tales and folk-lore
+and in the art of the earlier races.</p>
+
+<p><b>A Secret Code.</b> When the denied instincts of a man's repressed life
+insist on expression, and when the <!-- Page 173 -->
+<a name="Page_173" id="Page_173" />shocked proprieties of his
+repressing life demand conformity to social standards, the
+subconscious, held back from free speech, strikes a compromise by
+making use of figurative language. As Trigant Burrow says, if the
+moral repugnance is very strong, the disguise must be more elaborate,
+the symbols more far-fetched. The symbols of nervous symptoms and of
+dreams are a &quot;secret code,&quot; understood by the sender but meaningless
+to the censoring conscience, which passes them as harmless.</p>
+
+<p><b>The Right Kind of Symbolism.</b> Sublimation itself is merely a symbolic
+expression of basic impulses. It follows the line of our make-up,
+which naturally and fundamentally is wont to let one thing stand for
+another and to express itself in indirect ways. Sublimation says: &quot;If
+I cannot recreate myself in the person of a child, I will recreate
+myself in making a bridge, or a picture, or a social settlement,&mdash;or a
+pudding.&quot; It says: &quot;If I cannot have my own child to love, I will
+adopt an orphan-asylum, or I will work for a child-labor law.&quot; It
+merely lets one thing stand for another and transfers all the passions
+that belong to the one on to the other, which is the same thing as
+saying that it gives vent to its original desire by means of symbolic
+expression.</p>
+
+<p><b>The Wrong Kind of Symbolism.</b> A nervous disorder is an unfortunate
+choice of symbols. Instead of <!-- Page 174 -->
+<a name="Page_174" id="Page_174" />spiritualizing an innate impulse, it
+merely disguises it. The disguise takes a number of forms. One of the
+commonest ways is to act out in the body what is taking place in the
+soul. The woman with nausea converted her moral disgust into a
+physical nausea, which expressed her distress while it hid its
+meaning. The girl who was tired of seeing her work, and the man who
+wanted to avoid seeing his wife chose a way out which physically
+symbolized their real desire. A dentist once came to me with a
+paralyzed right arm. He had given up his office and believed that he
+would never work again. It turned out that his only son had just died
+and that he was dramatizing his soul-pain by means of his body. His
+subconscious mind was saying, &quot;My good right arm is gone,&quot; and saying
+it in its own way. Within a week the arm was playing tennis, and ever
+since it has been busy filling teeth. There were, of course, other
+factors leading up to the trouble, but the factor which determined its
+form was the sense of loss which acted itself out through the body.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes, as we have seen, the disguise takes another form. Instead
+of conversion into a physical symptom, it lets one idea stand for
+another and displaces the impulse or the emotion to the substitute
+idea. The girl with the impulse to take drugs fooled her conscience by
+letting the drug-taking idea stand for the idea of conception. The
+girl with the fear of contamination
+<!-- Page 175 --><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175" />carried the disguise still
+farther by changing the desire into fear,&mdash;a very common subterfuge.</p>
+
+<p><b>The Case of Mrs. Y.</b> There came to me a short time ago a little woman
+whose face showed intense fright. For several months she had spent
+much of the time walking the floor and wringing her hands in an agony
+of terror. In the night she would waken from her sleep, shaking with
+fear; soon she would be retching and vomiting, although she herself
+recognized the fact that there was nothing the matter with her
+stomach.</p>
+
+<p>Part of the time her fear was a general terror of some unknown thing,
+and part of the time it was a specialized fear of great intensity. She
+was afraid she would choke her son, to whom she was passionately
+devoted. During the course of the treatment, which followed the lines
+of psycho-analysis to be described in the next chapter, I found that
+this fear had arisen one evening when she was lying reading by the
+side of her sleeping child. Suddenly, without warning, she had a sort
+of mental picture of her own hands reaching out and choking the boy.
+Naturally she was terrified. She jumped out of bed, decided that she
+was losing her mind and went into a hysterical state which her husband
+had great trouble in dispelling. After that she was afraid to be left
+alone with her children lest she should kill them.</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 176 --><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176" />During
+the analysis it was discovered that what she had been reading
+on that first night was the thirteenth verse of the ninety-first
+Psalm. &quot;Thou shalt tread upon the lion and the adder. The young lion
+and the dragon thou shalt trample under foot.&quot; To her the adder meant
+the snake, the tempter in the Garden of Eden, and hence sex. What she
+wanted to choke was her own insistent sex urge of which the child was
+the symbol and the result. On later occasions she had the same sort of
+hallucinations in connection with another child and on sight of a
+brutish kind of man who symbolized to the subconscious mind the
+sex-urge, of which she was afraid. Not so much by what her mother had
+said as by what she had avoided saying, and by her expression whenever
+the subject was mentioned, had she given her little daughter a
+fundamentally wrong idea of the reproductive instinct. Later when the
+girl was woman grown she still clung to the old conception, deploring
+the sex-part of the marriage relation and feeling herself too refined
+to be moved by any such sensual urge. But the strong sex-instinct
+within her would not be downed. It was so insistent as to be an object
+of terror to her repressing instinct, which could not bring itself to
+acknowledge its presence. The fear that came to the surface was merely
+a disguised and symbolic representation of this real fear which was
+turning her life into a nightmare.</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 177 --><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177" />The
+nausea and vomiting in this woman seemed to be symbolic of the
+disgust which she felt subconsciously at the thought of her own
+sex-desires, but sometimes the physical disturbances which accompany
+such phobias are the natural physical reactions to the constant fear
+state. Indigestion, palpitation, and tremors are not in themselves
+symbolic of the inner trouble but may be the result of an overdose of
+the adrenal and thyroid secretions and the other accompaniments of
+fear. In such cases the real symptom is the fear, and the physical
+disturbance an incidental by-product of the emotional state. In any
+case a nervous symptom is always the sign of something else&mdash;a
+hieroglyph which must be deciphered before its real meaning can be
+discovered.</p>
+
+
+<p class="scheading">Summary</p>
+
+<p><b>Three Kinds of People.</b> Absurd as it sounds, &quot;nerves&quot; turn out to be
+a question of morals; a neurosis, an affair of conscience; a nervous
+symptom an unsettled ethical struggle. The ethical struggle is not
+unusual; it is a normal part of man's life, the natural result of his
+desire to change into a more civilized being. The people in the world
+may be divided into three classes, according to the way they decide
+the conflict.</p>
+
+<p><b>The Primitive.</b> The first class merely capitulate to <!-- Page 178 -->
+<a name="Page_178" id="Page_178" />their primitive
+desires. They may not be nervous, but it is safe to say that they are
+rarely happy. The voice of conscience is hard to drown, even when it
+is not strong enough to control conduct. Happily it often succeeds in
+making us miserable, when we desert the ways that have proved best for
+our kind. The &quot;immoral&quot; person has not yet &quot;arrived&quot;; he simply
+disregards the collective wisdom of society and gives the victory to
+the primitive forces which try to keep man back on his old level. We
+cannot break the ideals by which man lives, and still be happy.</p>
+
+<p><b>The Salt of the Earth.</b> The second class of people decide the
+conflict in a way that satisfies both themselves and society. They
+give the victory to the higher trends and at the same time make a
+lasting peace by winning over the energy of the undesirable impulses.
+By sublimation they divert the threatening force to useful work and
+turn it out into real life, using its steam to make the world's wheels
+go round. Their love-force, unhampered by childish habits, is free to
+give itself to adult relationships or to express itself symbolically
+in socially helpful ways.</p>
+
+<p><b>Nervous People.</b> To the third class belong the people who have not
+finished the fight. These are the folk with &quot;nerves,&quot; the people in
+whom the conflict is fiercest because both sides are too strong. The
+victory goes to neither side; the tug of war ends in a tie. <!-- Page 179 -->
+<a name="Page_179" id="Page_179" />Since the
+energy of the nervous person is divided between the effort to repress
+and the effort to gain expression, there is little left for the
+external world. There is plenty of energy wasted on emotion, physical
+symptoms, phantasy, or useless acts symbolizing the struggle.</p>
+
+<p>A neurotic is a normal person, &quot;only more so.&quot; His impulses are the
+same impulses as those of every other person; his complexes are the
+same kind of complexes, only more intense. He is an exaggerated human
+being. He may be only slightly exaggerated, showing merely a little
+character-weakness or a slight physical symptom, or he may be so
+intensified as to make life miserable for himself and everybody near
+him. It is quantity, not quality, that ails him, for he differs from
+his steady-going neighbor not in kind but in degree. More of him is
+repressed and a larger part of him is fixed in a childish mold.</p>
+
+<p><b>Tricking Ourselves.</b> A neurosis is a confidence game that we play on
+ourselves. It is an attempt to get stolen fruit and to look pious at
+the same time,&mdash;not in order to fool somebody else but to fool
+ourselves.</p>
+
+<p>No nervous symptom is what it seems to be. It is an arch pretender. It
+pretends to be afraid of something it does not fear at all, or to
+ignore something that interests it intensely. It pretends to be a
+physical disease, when primarily it has nothing to do with the
+<!-- Page 180 --><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180" />body;
+and the person most deluded is the one who &quot;owns&quot; the symptom. Its
+purpose is to avoid the pain of disillusionment and to furnish relief
+to a distracted soul which dares not face itself.</p>
+
+<p>Although the true meaning of a symptom is hidden, there is fortunately
+a clue by which it can be traced. Sometimes it takes the art of a
+psychic detective to follow the clues down, down through the different
+layers of the subconscious mind, until the troublesome impulses and
+complexes are found and dragged forth,&mdash;not to be punished for
+breaking the peace but to be led toward reconciliation. But &quot;that is
+another story,&quot; and belongs to another chapter. We are approaching THE
+WAY OUT.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr />
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<div><!-- Page 181 --><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181" /></div>
+<p class="heading">PART III&mdash;THE MASTERY OF &quot;NERVES&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr />
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<div><!-- Page 182 --><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182" />
+<!-- Page 183 --><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183" /></div>
+
+<p class="heading"><a name="CHAPTER_VIII" id="CHAPTER_VIII">CHAPTER VIII</a></p>
+
+<p class="heading"><i>In which we pick up the clue</i></p>
+
+<p class="heading">THE WAY OUT</p>
+
+<p class="scheading">The Science of Re-education</p>
+
+
+<p>There is a story of an Irishman at the World's Fair in Chicago.
+Although his funds were getting low, he made up his mind that he would
+not go home without a ride on a camel. For several minutes he stood
+before a sign reading: &quot;First ride 25&cent;, second ride 15&cent;, third ride
+10&cent;.&quot; Then, scratching his head, he exclaimed, &quot;Faith, and I'll take
+the third ride!&quot; Should there by any chance be a reader who, eager to
+find the way out without paying the price of knowledge, is tempted to
+say to himself &quot;Faith, and I'll begin with Part III,&quot; we give him fair
+warning that if he does so, he will in all probability end by putting
+down the book in a confused and skeptical frame of mind.</p>
+
+<p>It is difficult to find our way out of a maze without some faint idea
+of the path by which we got in. He who brings to this chapter the
+popular notion that nervousness
+<!-- Page 184 --><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184" />is the result of worn-out
+nerve-cells, can hardly be expected to understand how it can be cured
+by a process of mental adjustment. Suggestion to that effect can
+scarcely fail to appear to him faddish and unpractical. But once a
+person has grasped the idea that &quot;nerves&quot; are merely a slip in the cog
+of hidden mental machinery, and has acquired at least a
+working-knowledge of &quot;the way the wheels go round,&quot; he can scarcely
+fail to understand that the only logical cure must consist in some
+kind of readjustment of this underground machinery. If &quot;nerves&quot; were
+physical, then only physical measures could cure, but as they are
+psychic, the only effective measures must be psychic.</p>
+
+<p><b>Gross Misconceptions.</b> Nervousness is caused by a lack of adjustment
+to the world as it is; therefore the only possible cure must be some
+sort of readjustment between the person's inner forces and the demands
+of the social world. As this lack of adjustment is concerned chiefly
+with the repressed instinct of reproduction, it is only natural that
+there should be people who believe that &quot;the way out&quot; lies in some
+form of physical satisfaction of the sex-impulse&mdash;in marriage, in
+changing or ignoring the social code, in homo-sexual relations or in
+the practice of masturbation. But we have only to look about us to see
+that this prescription does not cure. Freud na&iuml;vely asks whether he
+would <!-- Page 185 --><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185" />be
+likely to take three years to uncover and loosen the psychic
+resistances of his patients, if the simple prescription of sex-license
+would give relief.</p>
+
+<p>Since there are as many married neurotics as single, it is evident
+that even marriage is not a sure preventive of nervousness. License,
+on the other hand, can satisfy only a part of the individual's
+craving. Freud insists that the sex-instinct has a psychic component
+as well as a physical one, and that it is this psychic part which is
+most often repressed. He maintains that for complete satisfaction
+there must be psychic union between mates, and that gratification of
+the physical component of sex when dissociated from psychic
+satisfaction, results in an accumulation of tension that reacts badly
+on the whole organism.</p>
+
+<p>The psychic tension accumulating in adult sex-relations has its
+inception in the mistaken attitude on the part of the wife, who
+remains true to her childhood training that any pleasure in sex is
+vulgar; or on the part of the man, who reacts to the mood of the wife,
+or is held by his own unbroken mother-son complex; or on the part of
+both the tension piles up because of society's taboo upon rearing
+large families. As the first two factors in this lack of adjustment
+grew largely out of some kind of faulty education or from faulty
+reaction to early experiences, the only effective way to secure a
+better adaptation must be through a re-education
+<!-- Page 186 --><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186" />which reaches down
+to that part of the personality that bears the stamp of the unfortunate early factors.</p>
+
+<p><b>Remaking Ourselves.</b> As a matter of fact, the science of
+psychotherapy or mental treatment is simply the science of
+re-education,&mdash;a process designed to break up old unhealthy complexes
+which disrupt the forces of the individual, and to build up healthy
+complexes which adjust him to the social world and enable him to use
+his energy in useful ways.</p>
+
+<p>Fortunately, minds can be changed. It is easier to make over an
+unhealthy complex than to make over a weak heart, to straighten out a
+warped idea than to straighten a bent back. Remarkable indeed have
+been some of the transformations in people who are supposed to have
+passed the plastic period in life. While it is true that some persons
+become &quot;set&quot; in middle life, and almost impervious to new ideas, it is
+also true that a person at fifty has more richness of experience upon
+which to draw, more appreciation of the value of the good, than has a
+person at twenty. If he really wants to change himself, he can do
+wonderful things by re-education.</p>
+
+<p>The first step in this re-education is a grasp of the facts. If you
+want to pull yourself out of a nervous disorder, first of all learn as
+much as you can about the causes of &quot;nerves,&quot; about the general laws
+of mind and body, and about your own mental quirks. If this
+<!-- Page 187 --><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187" />is not
+sufficient, go to a specialist trained in psychotherapy and let him
+help you uncover those trouble-making parts of your personality which
+you cannot find for yourself. It is the purpose of this book to
+summarize the facts which most need to be known. Let us now consider
+those methods which the psychopathologist finds most useful in helping
+his patients to self-knowledge and readjustment.</p>
+
+<p><b>Various Methods.</b> As there are a number of schools of medicine, so
+there are a number of distinct methods of psychotherapy, each with its
+own theories and methods of procedure, and each with its ardent
+supporters. These methods may be classified into two groups. The first
+group includes those methods, hypnosis and psycho-analysis, which make
+a thorough search through the subconscious mind for the buried
+complexes causing the trouble, and might, therefore, be called
+&quot;re-education with subconscious exploration.&quot; The other group,
+includes so-called explanation and suggestion, or methods of
+&quot;re-education without subconscious exploration,&quot; which content
+themselves with making a general survey and building up new complexes
+without going to the trouble of uncovering the buried past. Although
+the theory and the technique vary greatly, the aim of all these
+methods is the same,&mdash;the readjustment of the individual to life.</p>
+
+<p class="scheading"><!-- Page 188 --><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188" />Re-education
+with Subconscious Exploration</p>
+
+<p><b>Hypnosis.</b> The method by which most of the important early
+discoveries were made is hypnosis, or artificial sleep, a method by
+which the conscious mind is dissociated and the subconscious brought
+to the fore. It was through hypnosis that Freud, Janet, Prince, and
+Sidis made their first investigations into the nature of nervousness
+and worked their first cures. With the conscious mind asleep and its
+inhibitions out of the way, a hypnotized patient is often able to
+remember and to disclose to the physician hidden complexes of which he
+is unaware when awake. Hypnosis may thus be a valuable aid to
+diagnosis, enabling the physician to determine the cause of
+troublesome symptoms. He may then begin to make suggestions calculated
+to break up the old complexes and to build new ones, made up of more
+healthful ideas, desirable emotions and happy feeling-tones. As we
+have seen, a hypnotized subject is highly suggestible. His
+counter-suggestions inactivated, he believes almost anything told him
+and is extremely susceptible to the doctor's influence.</p>
+
+<p>The dangers of hypnosis have been much exaggerated. Indeed, as an
+instrument in the hands of a competent physician, it is not to be
+feared at all. It has, however, its limitations. Many times the very
+memories which need to be unearthed refuse to come to the surface.
+Stubborn resistances are more likely to be <!-- Page 189 -->
+<a name="Page_189" id="Page_189" />subconscious than
+conscious, and may prove too strong to be overcome in this way.
+Moreover, the road to superficial success is very inviting. It is easy
+to cure the symptom, leaving the ultimate cause untouched and ready to
+break out in new manifestations. The drug and drink habits may be
+broken up without making any attempt to discover the unsatisfied
+longings which were responsible for the habit. A pain may be cured
+without finding the mental cause of the pain or initiating any
+measures to guard against its return, and without giving the patient
+any insight into the inner forces with which he still has to deal.</p>
+
+<p>Since nervousness is a state of exaggerated suggestibility and
+abnormal dissociation, many psychologists believe that it is unwise to
+employ a method which heightens the state of suggestibility and
+encourages the habit of dissociation. They feel that it is wiser to
+use less artificial methods which rest on the rational control of the
+conscious mind and make the patient better acquainted with his own
+inner forces and more permanently able to cope with new manifestations
+of those forces. They believe that the character of the patient is
+strengthened and his morale raised by methods which increase the
+sovereignty of reason and decrease the role of unreasoning
+suggestibility.</p>
+
+<p><b>Psycho-Analysis.</b> Freud's contribution has been not only a discovery
+of the general causes of nervousness, but a special means of locating
+the cause in any particular
+<!-- Page 190 --><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190" />case. Abandoning hypnosis,
+he developed another method which he called psycho-analysis. What chemical analysis
+is to chemistry, psycho-analysis is to the science of the mind. It
+splits up the mental content into its component parts, the better to
+be examined and modified by the conscious mind. Psycho-analysis is
+merely a technical process for discovering repressed complexes and
+bringing them into consciousness, where they may be recognized for
+what they are and altered to meet the demands of real life. It is a
+device for finding and removing the cause of nervousness,&mdash;for
+bringing to light hidden desires which may be honestly faced and
+efficiently directed instead of being left to seethe in dangerous
+insurrection. In order permanently to break up a real neurosis, a man
+must first know himself and then change himself. He must gain insight
+into his own mental processes and then systematically set to work to
+change those processes that unfit him for life.</p>
+
+<p>We shall later find that a detailed self-discovery through
+psycho-analysis is not always necessary, and that a more general
+understanding of oneself is sufficient for the milder kinds of
+nervousness. But because of the promise which psycho-analysis holds
+out to those stubborn cases before which other methods are powerless;
+because of the invaluable understanding of human nature which it
+places at the disposal of all <!-- Page 191 -->
+<a name="Page_191" id="Page_191" />nervous people, who may profit by its
+findings without undergoing an analysis; and because of the flood of
+light which it sheds on the motives, conduct, and character of every
+human being, no educated person can afford to be without a general
+knowledge of psycho-analysis.<a name="FNanchor_41" id="FNanchor_41">
+</a><a href="#Footnote_41" class="fnanchor">[41]</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_41" id="Footnote_41">
+</a><a href="#FNanchor_41"><span class="label">[41]</span>
+</a> It is unfortunate that the records of an analysis are
+too voluminous for use in so brief an account as this. Since the
+report of one case would fill a book, and a condensed summary would
+require a chapter, we must refer to some of the volumes which deal
+exclusively with the psychoanalytic principles. For a list of these
+books, see Bibliography.</p></div>
+
+<p><b>A Chain of Associations.</b> Psycho-analysis is not, like hypnosis,
+based on dissociation; it is based on the association of ideas. Its
+main feature is a process of uncritical thinking called &quot;free
+association.&quot; To understand it, one must realize how intricately woven
+together are the thoughts of a human being and how trivial are the
+bonds of association between these ideas. One person reminds us of
+another because his hair is the same color or because he handles his
+fork in the same way. Two words are associated because they sound
+alike. Two ideas are connected because they once occurred to us at the
+same time. A subtle odor or a stray breeze serves to remind us of some
+old experience. Connections that seem far-fetched to other people may
+be quite strong enough to bind together in our minds ideas and
+emotions which have once been <!-- Page 192 -->
+<a name="Page_192" id="Page_192" />associated, even unconsciously,
+in past experience.</p>
+
+<p>In this way, thoughts in consciousness and in the upper layers of the
+subconscious are connected by a series of associations, forming links
+in invisible chains that lead to the deepest, most repressed ideas.
+Even a dissociated complex has some connection with the rest of the
+mind, if we only have the patience to discover it. Therefore, by
+adopting a passive attitude, by simply letting his thoughts wander, by
+talking out to the physician everything that comes to his mind without
+criticizing or calling any thought irrelevant or far-fetched, and
+without rejecting any thought because of its painful character, the
+patient is helped to trace down and unearth the troublesome complex
+which may have been absolutely forgotten for many years. He is helped
+to relive the childhood experiences back of the over-strong habits
+which lasted into maturity.</p>
+
+<p><b>Resisting the Probe.</b> Naturally, it is not all fair sailing. The
+subconscious impulses which repressed the painful complex in the first
+place still shrink from uncovering it. In many cases the resistance is
+very strong. It, therefore, often happens that after a time the
+patient becomes restive; he begins to criticize the doctor and to
+ridicule the method. His mind goes blank and no thought will come; or
+he refuses to tell what does come. The nearer the probe comes to the
+sore spot, the greater the pain of the repressing impulses
+<!-- Page 193 --><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193" />and the
+stronger the resistance. Usually a strange thing happens; the patient,
+instead of consciously remembering the forgotten experiences, begins
+to relive them with his original emotions transferred on to the
+doctor. Depending upon what person of his childhood he identifies with
+him, the patient develops either a strong affection or an intense
+antagonism to the physician, attitudes called in technical terms
+positive and negative transference. If the analyst is skilful, he is
+able to circumvent all the subterfuges of the resisting forces and to
+uncover and modify the troublesome complexes. Sometimes this can be
+accomplished at one sitting, but more often it requires long hours of
+conversation. Freud has spent three years on a single difficult case,
+and very frequently the analysis drags out through weeks or months.
+The amount of mental material is so great, especially in a person who
+is no longer young, that every analysis would probably be an
+interminable affair if it were not for three valuable ways of finding
+the clue and picking up the scent somewhere near the end of the trail.
+The first of these clues is nothing else than so despised a phenomenon
+as the patient's own night-dreams, which turn out to be not
+meaningless jargon, as we have supposed, but significant utterances of
+the inner man.</p>
+
+<p><b>The Message of the Dream.</b> When Freud rescued dreams from the mental
+scrap-basket and learned how <!-- Page 194 --><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194" />
+to piece them together so that their
+message to man about himself became for the first time intelligible,
+he furnished the human race with what will probably be considered its
+most valuable key to the hidden mysteries of the mind. Freeing the
+dream from the superstition of olden times and from the neglect of
+later days, Freud was the first to discover that it is part and parcel
+of man's mental life, that it has a purpose and a meaning and that the
+meaning may be scientifically deciphered. It then invariably reveals
+itself to be not a prophecy for the future but an interpretation of
+the present and of the past, an invaluable synopsis of the drama which
+is being staged within the personality of the dreamer.</p>
+
+<p>As modern man has swung away from the idea of the dream as a warning
+or a prophecy, he has accepted the even more untrue conception of
+dreaming as the mere sport of sleep,&mdash;the &quot;babble of the mind,&quot; the
+fantastic and insignificant freak-play of undirected mental processes,
+or the result of physical sensations without relation to the rest of
+mental life. No wonder, then, that Freud's startling dictum, &quot;A dream
+is a disguised fulfilment of a repressed wish,&quot; should be met with
+astonishment and incredulity. When a person is confronted for the
+first time with this statement, he invariably begins to cite dreams in
+which he is pursued by wild beasts, or in which his loved ones are
+seen <!-- Page 195 --><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195" />lying
+dead. He then triumphantly asserts that no such dream
+could be the fulfilment of a wish.</p>
+
+<p>The trouble is that he has overlooked the word &quot;disguised.&quot; Like wit
+and some figures of speech, a dream says something different from what
+it means. It deals in symbols. Its &quot;manifest content&quot; may be merely a
+fantastic and impossible scene without apparent rhyme or reason, but
+the &quot;latent content,&quot; the hidden meaning, always expresses some urgent
+personal problem. Although the dream may seem to be impersonal and
+unemotional, it nevertheless deals in every case with some matter of
+vital concern to the dreamer himself. It is a condensed and composite
+picture of some present problem and of some related childish repressed
+wish which the experiences of the preceding day have aroused.</p>
+
+<p>As Frink says, a dream is like a cartoon with the labels
+omitted&mdash;absolutely unintelligible until its symbols are interpreted.
+Although some dreams whose symbolism is that which man has always
+used, can be easily understood by a person who knows, many dreams are
+meaningless, even to an experienced analyst, until the patient himself
+furnishes the labels by telling what each bit of the picture brings to
+his mind. The dream, as a rule, merely furnishes the starting-point
+for free association.</p>
+
+<p>Each symbol is an arrow pointing the way to <!-- Page 196 -->
+<a name="Page_196" id="Page_196" />forbidden impulses which
+are repressed in waking life but which find partial expression during
+sleep. The subconscious part of the conscience is still on the job, so
+the repressed desires can express themselves only in distorted ways
+which will not arouse the censor and disturb sleep. The purpose of the
+dream is thus two-fold,&mdash;to relieve the tensions of unsatisfied
+desire, and to do this in such a subtle way as to keep the dreamer
+asleep. Sometimes it fails of its purpose, but when there is danger of
+our discovering too much about ourselves, we immediately wake up,
+saying that we have had a bad dream.</p>
+
+<p>It is at first difficult to believe that we are capable of this
+elaborate mental work while we are fast asleep. However, a little
+investigation shows us to be more clever than we realize. The
+subconscious mind, in its effort to satisfy both the repressing and
+the repressed impulses, carries on very complicated processes,
+disguises material by allowing one person to stand for another, two
+persons to stand for one, or one person to stand for two; it shifts
+emotion from important to trivial matters, dramatizes, condenses, and
+elaborates, with a skill that is amazing. We are all of us very clever
+playwrights and makers of allegories&mdash;in our sleep. Also, we are all
+very clever at getting what we want, and the dream secures for us, in
+a way, something which we want very much indeed and which the world
+<!-- Page 197 --><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197" />of social restraint
+or our own warped childish notion denies us.</p>
+
+<p>Not every one can become an interpreter of dreams. It takes a skilled
+and patient specialist thoroughly to understand the process. But it is
+fortunate indeed that we possess such a valuable means of diagnosis
+when extraordinary conditions make it necessary to explore the
+subconscious in the search for trouble-making
+complexes.<a name="FNanchor_42" id="FNanchor_42"></a>
+<a href="#Footnote_42" class="fnanchor">[42]</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_42" id="Footnote_42"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_42"><span class="label">[42]</span></a> For f
+urther study of the dream, see Freud: <i>Interpretation of Dreams</i>;
+and <i>General Introduction to Psycho-Analysis</i>.</p></div>
+
+<p><b>The Word-Test.</b> Although dreams furnish the main clues to buried
+complexes, they are by no means the only instrument of the
+psycho-analyst. Another device, called the association word-test, has
+been developed by Dr. Carl Jung of Switzerland. The analyst prepares a
+list of perhaps one hundred words, which he reads one by one to the
+patient, hoping in this way to strike some of the emotional reactions
+of which the patient himself is unaware. The latter responds with the
+first word that comes into his mind, no matter how absurd it may seem.
+The responses themselves are often significant, but the time that
+elapses is even more so. It usually happens that it takes very much
+longer for some responses than for others. If a patient's average time
+is one or two seconds, some responses may take five or ten or twenty
+seconds. Sometimes<!-- Page 198 --><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198" />
+ no word comes at all and the patient says that his
+mind is a blank. He coughs or blushes, grows pale or trembles, showing
+all the signs of emotion even when he himself has no notion of the
+cause. The significant word has hit upon a subconscious association
+with some emotional complex. The blocking of the mind is an effort of
+the resistance to keep the painful ideas out of consciousness. The
+telltale word then furnishes a starting point for further
+associations.</p>
+
+<p>One of my patients blocked on the word &quot;long.&quot; Instead of saying
+&quot;short&quot; or &quot;pencil&quot; or &quot;road&quot; or &quot;day&quot; or any other word which might
+naturally be associated with &quot;long,&quot; she laughed and said that no word
+would come. Finally an emotional memory came to light. It seems that
+this woman had been courted by a man whom she unconsciously loved, but
+whom she had &quot;turned down&quot; because she was ambitious for a career.
+After the man had moved to another town, my patient heard that he was
+engaged to another girl. She then realized that she loved him and
+began to long for him with her whole heart. The meaningful word &quot;long&quot;
+thus led us to one of the emotional memories for which we were
+seeking.</p>
+
+<p><b>&quot;Chance&quot; Signs.</b> There are other clues to hidden inner processes,
+other sign-posts pointing to the cause of a neurosis. Not only through
+dreams and through emotional reactions to certain words does the
+<!-- Page 199 --><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199" />
+subconscious reveal its desires, but also through the little slips of
+the tongue and of the pen, the &quot;chance&quot; acts and unconscious
+mannerisms which are usually ignored as entirely insignificant. When
+we &quot;make a break&quot; and say what we secretly mean but wish to hide from
+ourselves or others; when we forget an appointment which part of us
+really wishes to avoid, or forget a name with which we are perfectly
+familiar; when we lose the pen so that we cannot write or the desk key
+so that we cannot work; when we blunder and drop things and do what we
+did not mean to do; then we may know&mdash;the normal as well as the
+nervous person&mdash;that our subconscious minds with their repressed
+desires are trying to get the reins and are partially succeeding.</p>
+
+<p>An example from my own life may illustrate the point. In building a
+number of houses, I had occasion often to use the word studding, but
+on every occasion, I forgot the word and always had to end lamely by
+saying &quot;those pieces of timber that go up and down.&quot; Each time the
+builder supplied the word, but the next time it was no more
+accessible. Finally, the reason came to me. One day when I was a
+little child I looked out of the window and cried, &quot;Oh, see that great
+big beautiful horse.&quot; My grandmother exclaimed, &quot;Sh! sh! that is a
+stud horse.&quot; Over-reaction to that impression repressed the word stud
+so successfully that as a grown woman I could not recall another word
+<!-- Page 200 --><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200" />which happened to contain the same syllable.</p>
+
+<p>During an analysis a patient of mine who had a mother-in-law situation
+on her hands told me a dream of the night before. &quot;I dreamed that my
+mother-in-law, who has really been very ill, was taken with a
+sinking-spell. I rushed to the telephone to call the doctor, but found
+to my terror that I could not remember his number.&quot; &quot;What is his
+number?&quot; I asked, knowing that she ought to know it perfectly.
+&quot;Two-eight-nine-six,&quot; she answered at once. The number really was
+2876. Asleep and awake, her repressed desire for release from the
+mother-in-law's querulous presence was attempting to have its way. In
+the dream, she avoided calling the doctor by forgetting his number
+entirely. Awake, she evaded the issue by remembering a wrong number.
+In the dream she thinly disguised her desire by displacing the anxious
+emotion from the sense of her own guilty wishes to the idea of the
+mother-in-law's death. When confronted with this interpretation, the
+woman readily acknowledged its truth.</p>
+
+<p>Even stammering, which has always been considered a physical disorder,
+has been proved, by psycho-analysis, to be the sign of an emotional
+disturbance. H. Addington Bruce reports the case of one of Dr. Brill's
+patients, a young man who had been stammering for several years.
+Observation revealed the fact <!-- Page 201 --><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201" />that
+his chief difficulty was with words beginning with K and although at first he firmly
+denied any significance to the letter, he later confessed that his sweetheart
+whose name began with K had eloped with his best friend and that he
+had vowed never to mention her name again. Upon Dr. Brill's suggestion
+he tried to think of the unfaithful lover as Miss W., but soon
+returned, saying that he was stammering worse than ever. Investigation
+showed that the additional unpronounceable words contained the letter
+W. When he was induced to renounce his oath never to call the girl's
+name again, he found that he had no more difficulty with his
+speech.<a name="FNanchor_43" id="FNanchor_43">
+</a><a href="#Footnote_43" class="fnanchor">[43]</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_43" id="Footnote_43">
+</a><a href="#FNanchor_43"><span class="label">[43]</span>
+</a> H. Addington Bruce; &quot;Stammering and Its Cure,&quot;
+<i>McClure's</i>, February, 1913.</p></div>
+
+<p>Thus we see that even the halting tongue of a stammerer may point the
+way to the buried complex for which search is being made.</p>
+
+<p>Since there is no accident in mental life, and since there is behind
+every action a force or group of forces, no smallest action is
+insignificant to the person trained to understand.</p>
+
+<p>If this at first seems disturbing, it is only because we do not
+realize that there is nothing within of which we need be ashamed.
+People are very much alike, especially in the deeper layers of their
+being. What belongs to the whole human race does not need to be
+<!-- Page 202 --><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202" />hidden away
+in darkness. There is nothing to lose and everything to
+gain by an increasing understanding of the chance signals which reveal
+the forces at work within the depths of the mind. To the analyst every
+little unconscious act is a valuable clue pointing toward the end of
+his quest.<a name="FNanchor_44" id="FNanchor_44">
+</a><a href="#Footnote_44" class="fnanchor">[44]</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_44" id="Footnote_44">
+</a><a href="#FNanchor_44"><span class="label">[44]</span>
+</a> For further discussion of this subject, see Freud's
+<i>Psycho-pathology of Everyday Life</i>, translated by A.A. Brill.</p></div>
+
+<p><b>The Aim of Psycho-Analysis.</b> As we have seen, the object of all this
+technique is the discovery and the removal of the resistances which
+have been keeping the emotional conflicts in the dark. It is a long
+step just to learn that there are resistances; and by reliving, bit by
+bit, the earlier experiences responsible for unfortunate habits, we
+find that the habits themselves lose much of their old power. They can
+be seen for what they are, and changed to suit present conditions. A
+wish is incomparably stronger when unconscious than when conscious;
+and the old stereotyped, automatic reactions tend to cease when once
+they have been seen for what they are. They become assimilated with
+the rest of the personality and modified by the mature attitudes of
+the conscious mind. The person then re-educates himself by the very
+act of discovering himself. In other cases, the uncovering is merely
+the first step in the process of re-education. The analyst then
+assumes the r&ocirc;le of educator, cutting away old shackles, breaking down
+<!-- Page 203 --><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203" />false standards,
+building up new complexes, showing the patient the
+naturalness of his desires, inducing him to look at them as biologic
+facts, and showing him how to sublimate those which may not find
+direct expression; in fact, leading him out into the self-expression
+of a free, unhampered life.<a name="FNanchor_45" id="FNanchor_45">
+</a><a href="#Footnote_45" class="fnanchor">[45]</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_45" id="Footnote_45">
+</a><a href="#FNanchor_45"><span class="label">[45]</span>
+</a> &quot;It will be readily understood that in the
+reconstruction of the shattered purposes, the frustrated hopes and the
+outraged instincts which are found to lie at the source of those human
+woes we call 'nervous disorders,' there takes place a gradual
+transposition of values, a total recasting of ideas, and that through
+the whole process, education in the deepest meaning of the word,
+enters at last into its full sovereign rights.&quot;&mdash;Trigant Burrow.</p></div>
+
+<p>Among my patients at one time was a woman subject to terrible fits of
+despondency. She was happily married and enjoyed the marriage
+relationship, but could not free herself from a terrible sense of
+guilt and degradation, a sense which was so acute that she wanted to
+end her life. Although she was an active member of a church, she was
+starving for the real message of the church, continually bound by a
+feeling of aloofness which made her a stranger in the midst of
+friends. Psycho-analysis revealed an experience of her childhood which
+she had kept a secret all these years. It seems that when she was
+seven years of age an old minister had driven her into town and had
+made some sort of sex-approach on the way. Although ignorant of its
+significance, the child was badly frightened and overcome with a sense
+of guilt. She had already inferred
+<!-- Page 204 --><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204" />that such subjects were
+not to be mentioned and she hesitated long before telling even her mother.
+Smoldering within her through the years had been this emotional
+complex about the sex-life and about people connected with a church,
+so that even as a grown woman the relationships of her mature years
+were completely ruined by her old childish reaction. With insight as
+to the cause of her trouble, she was able to modify her attitudes and
+to live a free and happy life.</p>
+
+<p>Several years ago there came to me a man of exceptional intellectual
+ability, who for years had been totally incapacitated because of blind
+resistances built up in childhood. Although married to a woman whom he
+thoroughly liked and admired, he was absolutely miserable in his
+married life. He had, in fact, a deep-rooted complex against marriage,
+and had only allowed himself to be captured because the woman, with
+whom he had been good friends, had cried when he refused to marry her.
+During analysis it transpired that as a little boy of four he had
+often seen his silly young mother cry because she could not have a new
+dress. He had taken her side and bitterly felt that she was abused by
+his father. Later, at six, he had heard some coarse stories about sex
+to which he had over-reacted. Still later he had heard the workmen on
+the farm say that they could not go to the gold-fields because they
+had wives and were held back by marriage.
+<!-- Page 205 --><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205" />&quot;There are no idle words
+where children are,&quot; and this little boy had built up such a strong
+complex against marriage that he could not possibly be happy as a
+grown man. He was as much crippled by the old scar as is an arm which
+is bent and stunted from a deep scar in the flesh. After the analysis
+had broken up the adhesions, he found himself free, able to give
+mature expression to his repressed and dissatisfied love-instincts.</p>
+
+<p>Psycho-analysis is not a process of addition, but one of subtraction.
+Like a surgical operation, it undoes the results of old injuries,
+removes foreign material, and gives nature a chance to develop freely
+in her own satisfactory way.</p>
+
+<p class="scheading">Re-education without Subconscious Exploration</p>
+
+<p><b>Simple Explanation.</b> So far, &quot;the way out&quot; sounds rather involved. It
+seems to require a special kind of doctor and a complicated, lengthy
+process before the exact trouble can be determined. But, fortunately
+for the average nervous patient, this lengthy process of analysis is
+by no means always necessary. People with troublesome nervous
+symptoms, and even those who have had a serious breakdown, are
+constantly being cured by a kind of re-education which breaks up
+subconscious complexes without trying to bring them to the surface. If
+the dead past can be let alone, so much <!-- Page 206 -->
+<a name="Page_206" id="Page_206" />the better. Sometimes a
+bullet buried in the flesh sends up a constant stream of discomfort
+until it is dug out and removed; but if it has carried in no infection
+and the body can adjust itself, it is usually considered better to let it remain.</p>
+
+<p>The subconscious makes its own deductions. If resistances are not too
+strong it is often possible to introduce healthy ideas by way of the
+conscious reason, to break up old habits, and make over the mentality
+without going to the trouble of uncovering some of the reactions which
+are responsible for the difficulty.</p>
+
+<p><b>Moral Hygiene.</b> Because this is true, there has grown up a kind of
+psychotherapy which is known as simple explanation, or persuasion. As
+usually practised, this kind of re-education pays very little
+attention to the ultimate cause of &quot;nerves.&quot; It has little to say
+about repressed instincts or the real reasons for fearful emotions and
+physical symptoms. Instead, it attacks the symptom itself, contenting
+itself with teaching the patient that his trouble is psychic in
+origin; that it is based on exaggerated suggestibility and
+uncontrolled emotionalism; that it is made out of false ideas about
+the body, illogical conclusions, and unhealthy feeling-tones; and that
+it may be cured by a kind of moral hygiene, which breaks up these old
+habits and replaces them with new and better ones. It tries to
+inculcate the cheerful attitude of mind; to give <!-- Page 207 -->
+<a name="Page_207" id="Page_207" />the patient the
+conviction of power; to correct his false ideas about his stomach, his
+heart, or his head; to train him out of his emotionalism; to lead him
+into a state of mind more largely controlled by reason; and to make
+him find some useful and absorbing work.</p>
+
+<p>This kind of mental and moral treatment has been sufficient to cure
+many neuroses of long standing. In cases that are helped by this
+method, the patient's love-force, robbed of the material out of which
+it has woven its disguise, and trained out of its bad habits by
+re-education, automatically makes its own readjustments and forces new
+channels for itself out into more useful activities. Very many nervous
+persons seem to need nothing more than this simple kind of help.</p>
+
+<p><b>When Simple Explanation Does not Explain.</b> For very many cases,
+however, this procedure, good as it is, does not go deep enough.
+Although it gives a sound objective education about the facts of one's
+body, it furnishes only the most superficial subjective knowledge of
+one's inner life. If the inner struggle be bitter, the competing
+forces will hold on to their poor refuge in the symptom, despite any
+number of explanations that the symptom can have no physical cause.
+Sometimes it is enough for a person to be shown that he is too
+suggestible, but often it is far more helpful for him to get an
+inkling as to why he likes unhealthy suggestions, and to understand
+something <!-- Page 208 --><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208" />
+of his starved instincts which he may learn to satisfy in better ways.</p>
+
+<p class="scheading">Psychological Explanation</p>
+
+<p>Between the two extremes of the cases which need a real analysis and
+those which are cured by simple explanation, I have found the great
+bulk of nervous cases. To simple explanation with its highly useful
+information, I therefore add what might be called psychological
+explanation, a re-education which makes use of all that illuminating
+material unearthed by the explorations of hypnosis and especially of
+psycho-analysis. Along with correct ideas about such matters as
+digestion, sleep, and fatigue, I give, so far as the patient is able
+to understand, a comprehension of the rights of the denied instincts,
+the ways of the subconscious, the fettering hold of unfortunate
+childish habits, the various mental mechanisms by which we fool
+ourselves, and the ways by which we may make better adaptations.</p>
+
+<p><b>According to the Patient.</b> The treatment varies according to the
+nature of the trouble, and is somewhat dependent on the mentality of
+the patient. There are many people who would only be confused by being
+forced into a study of mental phenomena. Not being students, they
+would be more bewildered than helped by the details of their inner
+mechanisms. Others, of studious habits and inquiring minds, are
+encouraged to <!-- Page 209 --><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209" />
+browse at will in a library of psychotherapy and to
+learn all that they can from the best authorities.</p>
+
+<p>In any case, I give the patients as much as they are able to take of
+my own understanding of the subject. There are no secrets in this
+method. The patient is treated as a rational human being who has
+nothing to lose and everything to gain by the fullest knowledge that
+he is able to acquire. Without forcing him to plunge in over his
+depth, I encourage him to understand himself to the fullest possible
+extent. Besides individual private conferences, we have twice a day an
+informal gathering of all the patients in my household&mdash;&quot;the family&quot;
+as we like to call ourselves&mdash;for a reading or talk on the various
+ways of the body and the mind, which need to be understood for normal
+living and for the cure of nerves. Very often people of only average
+education, long without the opportunity of study, gain in a
+surprisingly short time enough insight to make new adaptations and
+cure themselves. For this, a college education is not nearly so
+important as an open mind. It is because of the success of this method
+that I have been encouraged to reach a larger number of people by
+means of a book, based on the same plan of re-education.</p>
+
+<p><b>Explanation vs. Suggestion.</b> Re-education through this kind of
+explanation is simply a matter of learning the truth and acting upon
+it. It is a process of real enlightenment,
+<!-- Page 210 --><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210" />and is very different
+from suggestion which trades upon the patient's credulity, increasing his
+already exaggerated suggestibility.</p>
+
+<p>Freud illustrates the difference between suggestion and
+psycho-analysis by saying that suggestion is like painting and
+psycho-analysis like sculpture. Painting adds something from the
+outside, plastering over the canvas with extraneous matter, while
+sculpture cuts away the unnecessary material and reveals the angel in
+the marble. So suggestion covers over the real trouble by crying,
+&quot;Peace, peace, when there is no peace.&quot; Without attempting to remove
+the cause, it says to the patient: &quot;You have no pain. You are not
+tired. You will sleep to-night. You will be cheerful.&quot; Sometimes the
+suggestion works and sometimes it does not, but at best the relief is
+likely to be a mere temporary makeshift. The symptom may be relieved,
+but the character is not changed and therefore no permanent relief is
+assured. It is far better for a nervous person to say to himself,
+&quot;There is something wrong and I am going to find it,&quot; than to keep
+repeating over and over, &quot;There is nothing wrong,&quot; and so on through a
+list of half-believed autosuggestions.</p>
+
+<p>On the other hand, psycho-analysis, and this kind of re-education
+based on psycho-analytic principles, do not pay a great deal of
+attention to the individual symptom. Instead of adding from without
+they try to take <!-- Page 211 --><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211" />
+away whatever has proved a hindrance to normal
+growth and development, and to remove unnecessary resistances which
+are responsible for the symptom, and which have been holding the
+patient back from the fullest self-expression.</p>
+
+<p><b>Incantation vs. Knowledge.</b> There came to me one day a well-known
+public woman who had suffered from nervous indigestion for many years.
+As she was able to be with me for only one night, we had time for just
+one conversation, but in that time she discovered what she was doing
+and lost her indigestion. In the course of the conversation she turned
+to me, saying: &quot;Doctor, I know what a force suggestion is. I believe
+in its power. Will you tell me why I have not been able to cure myself
+of this trouble? Every night after I go to bed I repeat over and over
+these Bible verses,&quot; naming a number of passages relating to God's
+goodness and care for His children. My answer was something like this:
+&quot;You are too intelligent a woman to be cured by an incantation. When
+you feel surging up within you the sense of God's goodness, or when
+you actually want to realize His loving kindness, then by all means
+repeat the verses. But don't prostitute those wonderful words by
+making them into a charm and then expect them to cure your
+indigestion. It is a desecration of the words and a denial of your own
+intelligence. Autosuggestion is a powerful force, but real
+<!-- Page 212 --><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212" />psychotherapy
+is based not on the mechanical repetition of any set of
+words, but on a knowledge of the truth.&quot;</p>
+
+<p><b>The &quot;Bullying Method.&quot;</b> Sometimes, to be sure, explanation is not
+enough. The brain paths between the associated ideas are so deeply
+worn that no amount of persuasion avails. It is easy for the doubter
+to say: &quot;Well, that sounds very well, but my case is different. I have
+tried over and over again and I know.&quot; With people of this sort, an
+ounce of demonstration is worth a pound of argument.</p>
+
+<p>By way of illustration we might mention the man who couldn't eat eggs.
+To be sure, he had tried many times but always had suffered the most
+intense cramps in his stomach, and no amount of talk could make him
+believe that an egg was not poison to him. I took the straight road of
+simply proving to him that he was mistaken, and had him eat an egg.
+After a time of apprehension and retching, he vomited the egg,
+thinking, of course, that he had proved his point. To his
+astonishment, I said, &quot;Now, let's go and eat another.&quot; With great
+consternation, he finally complied, evidently expecting to die on the
+spot; but as I immediately prescribed a game of tennis, he scarcely
+had time to think of the pain, which in fact failed to appear.
+However, as he thereafter insisted on eating four eggs a day,&mdash;with
+eggs at top-notch price I decided that the joke was on the doctor!</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 213 --><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213" /><b>Enjoying
+the Right Things.</b> In substituting healthful complexes for
+unhealthful ones, psychotherapy not only changes ideas and emotions,
+but alters the feelings of pleasure or pain that are bound up with the
+ideas. Dr. Tom A. Williams writes: &quot;The essence of psychotherapy and
+education is to associate useful activities with agreeable
+feeling-tones and to dissociate from injurious acts the agreeable
+feeling-tones that may have been acquired.&quot; Right character consists
+not so much in enjoying things as in enjoying the right things.</p>
+
+<p>Some people enjoy being martyrs. They love to tell about the terrible
+strain they have been under, the amount of work they have done, or the
+number of times they have collapsed. One of my patients gave every
+evidence of satisfaction as he told about his various breakdowns. &quot;The
+last time I was ill,&quot; or &quot;That time when I was in the sanatorium,&quot;
+were frequent phrases on his lips. Finally, after I had asked him if
+he would boast about the number of times he had awkwardly fallen down
+in the street, and had shown him that a neurosis is not really a
+matter to be proud of, he saw the point and stopped taking pleasure in
+his mistakes.</p>
+
+<p>Such signs of pleasure in the wrong things are evidence of suppressed
+wishes which we do not acknowledge but try to gratify in indirect
+ways.<a name="FNanchor_46" id="FNanchor_46"></a>
+<a href="#Footnote_46" class="fnanchor">[46]</a> The pleasure
+<!-- Page 214 --><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214" />
+which ought to be associated with the idea of
+good work well done has somehow been switched over to the idea of
+being an invalid. The satisfaction which ought to go with a sense of
+power and ability to do things has attached itself to the idea of
+weakness and inability. The pleasurable feeling-tone which normally
+belongs to ministering to others, regresses in the nervous invalid to
+the infantile satisfaction of being ministered unto.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_46" id="Footnote_46"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_46"><span class="label">[46]</span>
+</a> For a further elaboration of this theme, see Holt: <i>The
+Freudian Wish</i>.</p></div>
+
+<p>But these things are only a habit. A good look in the mirror soon
+makes one right about face and start in the other direction. Once
+started, a good habit is built up with surprising ease. It is really
+much more satisfying to cook a good dinner for the family's comfort
+than to think about one's ills; much pleasanter to enjoy a good meal
+than to insist on hot water and toast. Once we have satisfied our
+suppressed longings in more desirable ways, or by a process of
+self-training have initiated a new set of habits, we feel again the
+old zest in normal affairs, the old interest and pleasure in
+activities which add to the joy of life. Thus does re-education fit a
+man to take his place in the world's work as a socially useful being,
+no longer a burden, but a contributor to the sum total of human
+happiness.</p>
+
+
+<p class="scheading">Summary</p>
+
+<p><b>Knowing and Doing.</b> Having set out to learn how
+<!-- Page 215 --><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215" />to outwit our
+nerves, we are now ready to sum up conclusions and in the following
+chapters to apply them to the more common nervous symptoms. It has
+been shown that a nervous person is in great need of change,&mdash;not,
+indeed, a change in climate or in scene, in work or in diet, but a
+change in the hidden recesses of his own being. Outwitting nerves
+means first and foremost changing one's mind, an inner and spiritual
+process very different from the kind of change which used to be
+prescribed for the nervous invalid.</p>
+
+<p>As Putnam says, the slogan of the suggestion-school of psychotherapy
+has always been, &quot;You can do better if you try&quot;; while that of the
+psycho-analytic school is, &quot;You can do better when you know.&quot; Refuting
+the old adage, &quot;Where ignorance is bliss 'tis folly to be wise,&quot; the
+best methods of psychotherapy insist that the first step in any
+thorough-going attempt to change oneself must be the great step of
+self-knowledge. As the conflicts which result in &quot;nerves&quot; are always
+far beyond those mental regions which are open to scrutiny, a real
+self-knowledge requires an examination of the half-conscious or wholly
+unconscious longings which are usually ignored. A real understanding
+of self comes only when one is willing, to analyze his motives until
+he sees the connection between them and his nervous symptoms, which
+are but the symbolic gratification of desires he dares not
+acknowledge.</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 216 --><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216" />Although
+these deeply buried complexes are the real force behind a
+nervous illness, the material out of which the symptoms are
+manufactured is taken largely from superficial misconceptions
+concerning the bodily functions. It is therefore a great help, also,
+to possess a fund of information,&mdash;not technical nor detailed but
+accurate as far as it goes,&mdash;about the more important workings of the
+bodily machinery. A little knowledge about the actual chemistry of
+fatigue and the way it is automatically cared for by the body is
+likely to do away with the idea of nervous exhaustion as resulting
+from accumulation of fatigue. A simple understanding of the biological
+and physiological facts concerning the assimilation of food and the
+elimination of waste material leaves the intelligent person less ready
+to convert his psychic discomfort into indigestion and constipation.
+Chapters IX to XIII in this book, which at first glance may seem to
+belong to a work on physiology rather than on psychology are designed
+to give just such needed insight.</p>
+
+<p>But knowing the truth is only the first half of the way out. Every
+neurosis is a deliberate choice by a part of the personality.
+Self-discovery is helpful only when it leads to better ways of
+self-expression. The final aim of psychotherapy is the happy
+adjustment of the individual to the demands of society and the
+establishment of useful outlets for his energy. This phase of
+<!-- Page 217 --><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217" />the
+subject will be discussed more fully in Chapter XVI.</p>
+
+<p><b>The Future Hope.</b> Much has been said about the cure of a neurosis.
+There are enough people already in the maze of nervousness to warrant
+the setting up of numerous signs reading, &quot;This way out.&quot; But after
+all, is not a blocking of the way in of vastly more importance? As it
+is always easier to prevent than to cure, so it is easier to train
+than to reform. If re-education is the cure, why is not education the
+ounce of prevention which shall settle the problem for all time?</p>
+
+<p>If the general public understood what &quot;nerves&quot; are, it is hardly
+conceivable that there could be so many breakdowns as there are at
+present. If a man's family and friends, to say nothing of himself,
+understood what he is doing when he suddenly collapses and has to quit
+work, it is not likely that he would choose that way out of his
+difficulties.</p>
+
+<p>Most important of all, when parents know that the foundation of
+nervousness is laid in childhood, they will see to it that their
+children are started right on the road to health. When fathers and
+mothers realize that an over-strong bond between parents and children
+is responsible for a large proportion of nervous troubles, most of
+them will make sure that such exaggeration is not allowed to develop.</p>
+
+<p>And, finally, when parents are freed from their &quot;conspiracy
+<!-- Page 218 --><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218" />of
+silence&quot; by a reverent attitude toward the whole of life, their very
+saneness will impart to their children a wholesome respect for the
+reproductive instinct. There will then be found in the next generation
+fewer half-starved men and women carrying the burden of unnecessary
+repressions and the pain of unsatisfied yearnings.</p>
+
+<p>Not that such a day will usher in the millennium. We are not
+suggesting a panacea for all the social ills. There is an inevitable
+conflict between the instinctive urge of the life-force and the
+demands of society, a conflict which makes men and women either finer
+or baser, according to the way they handle it. What is claimed is that
+the right kind of education&mdash;using the word in its largest, deepest
+sense&mdash;will remove the most fruitful cause of nervousness by taking
+away the extra burden of misconception and making it easier for people
+to be &quot;content with being
+moral.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_47" id="FNanchor_47"></a>
+<a href="#Footnote_47" class="fnanchor">[47]</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_47" id="Footnote_47">
+</a><a href="#FNanchor_47"><span class="label">[47]</span>
+</a> Frink: <i>Morbid Fears and Compulsions.</i></p></div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<div><!-- Page 219 --><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219" /></div>
+<p class="heading"><a name="CHAPTER_IX" id="CHAPTER_IX">CHAPTER IX</a></p>
+
+<p class="heading"><i>In which we discover new stores of energy and learn the truth about fatigue</i></p>
+
+<p class="heading">THAT TIRED FEELING</p>
+
+<p class="scheading">Unfailing Resources</p>
+
+
+<p>&quot;They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall
+mount up with wings as eagles. They shall run and not be weary. They
+shall walk and not faint.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It is safe to say that many a person loves this promise of the prophet
+Isaiah without taking it in anything like a literal sense. The words
+are considered to be so figurative and so highly spiritualized that
+they seem scarcely to relate at all to this earthly life, much less to
+the possibilities of these physical bodies.</p>
+
+<p>Besides the nervous folk who feel themselves so weary that they
+scarcely have strength to live, there are thousands upon thousands of
+men and women who are called normal but who have lost much of the joy
+of life because they feel their bodies inadequate to meet the demands
+of everyday living.</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 220 --><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220" />To such men
+and women the Biblical promise, &quot;As thy day, so shall thy
+strength be,&quot; comes now as the message of modern science. Nature is
+not stingy. She has not given the human race a meager inheritance. She
+did not blunder when she made the human body, nor did she allow the
+spirit of man to develop a civilization to whose demand his body is
+not equal. After its long process of development through the survival
+of the fittest, the human body, unless definitely diseased, is a
+perfectly adequate instrument, as abundantly able to cope with the
+complex demands of modern society as with the simpler but more
+strenuous life of the stone age. The body has stored within its cells
+enough energy in the shape of protein, carbohydrate and fat to meet
+and more than meet any drains that are likely to be made upon it,
+either through the monotony of the daily grind or the excitement of
+sudden emergency. Nature never runs on a narrow margin. Her motto
+seems everywhere to be, &quot;Provide for the emergency, enough and to
+spare, good measure, pressed down, running over.&quot; She does not start
+her engines out with insufficient steam to complete the journey. On
+the contrary, she has in most instances reserve boilers which are
+almost never touched. As a rule the trouble is not so much a lack of
+steam as the ignorance of the engineer who is unacquainted with his
+engine and afraid to &quot;let her out.&quot;</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 221 --><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221" />
+<b>&quot;The Energies of Men.&quot;</b> Perhaps nothing has done so much to reveal
+the hidden powers of mankind as that remarkable essay of Professor
+William James, &quot;The Energies of Men.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_48" id="FNanchor_48">
+</a><a href="#Footnote_48" class="fnanchor">[48]</a> Listen to his introductory
+paragraph as he opens up to us new &quot;levels of energy&quot; which are
+usually &quot;untapped&quot;:</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_48" id="Footnote_48"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_48"><span class="label">[48]</span>
+</a> James: <i>On Vital Reserves</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>Every one knows what it is to start a piece of work, either
+     intellectual or muscular, feeling stale&mdash;or <i>cold</i>, as an
+     Adirondack guide once put it to me. And everybody knows what it
+     is to &quot;warm up to his job.&quot; The process of warming up gets
+     particularly striking in the phenomenon known as the &quot;second
+     wind.&quot; On usual occasions we make a practice of stopping an
+     occupation as soon as we meet the first effective layer (so to
+     call it) of fatigue. We have then walked, played or worked
+     &quot;enough,&quot; so we desist. That amount of fatigue is an efficacious
+     obstruction on this side of which our usual life is cast. But if
+     an unusual necessity forces us to press onward, a surprising
+     thing occurs. The fatigue gets worse up to a certain critical
+     point, when gradually or suddenly it passes away, and we are
+     fresher than before. We have evidently tapped a level of new
+     energy, masked until then by the fatigue-obstacle usually obeyed.
+     There may be layer after layer of this experience. A third and
+     fourth &quot;wind&quot; may supervene. Mental activity shows the phenomenon
+     as well as physical, and in exceptional cases we
+	 <!-- Page 222 --><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222" />
+     may find, beyond the very extremity of fatigue-distress, amounts
+     of ease and power that we never dreamed ourselves to own, sources
+     of strength habitually not taxed at all, because habitually we
+     never push through the obstruction, never pass those early
+     critical points.</p></div>
+
+<p>Again Professor James says:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>Of course there are limits; the trees don't grow into the sky.
+     But the plain fact remains that men the world over possess
+     amounts of resource which only very exceptional individuals push
+     to their extremes of use. But the very same individual, pushing
+     his energies to their extreme, may in a vast number of cases keep
+     the pace up day after day, and find no &quot;reaction&quot; of a bad sort,
+     so long as decent hygienic conditions are preserved. His more
+     active rate of energizing does not wreck him; for the organism
+     adapts itself, and as the rate of waste augments, augments
+     correspondingly the rate of repair.<a name="FNanchor_49" id="FNanchor_49"></a>
+	 <a href="#Footnote_49" class="fnanchor">[49]</a></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_49" id="Footnote_49"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_49"><span class="label">[49]</span></a> Ibid., pp. 6-7.</p></div>
+
+<p>Another psychologist, Boris Sidis, writes: &quot;But a very small fraction
+of the total amount of energy possessed by the organism is used in its
+relation with the ordinary stimuli of its
+environment.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_50" id="FNanchor_50"></a>
+<a href="#Footnote_50" class="fnanchor">[50]</a> These
+men&mdash;Professor James and Dr. Sidis&mdash;represent not young enthusiasts
+who ignorantly fancy that every one shares their own abundant
+strength, but careful men of science who have repeatedly been able to
+unearth <!-- Page 223 --><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223" />
+unsuspected supplies of energy in &quot;worn out&quot; men and women,
+supposed to be at the end of their resources. Every successful
+physician and every leader of men knows the truth of these statements.
+What would have happened in the great war if Marshal Foch had not
+known that his men possessed powers far beyond their ken, and had not
+had sublime faith in the &quot;second wind&quot;?</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_50" id="Footnote_50"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_50"><span class="label">[50]</span></a> Sidis:
+P. 112 of the composite volume <i>Pychotherapeutics</i>.</p></div>
+
+<p><b>What about Being Tired?</b> If all these things are true, why do people
+need to be told? If man's equipment is so adequate and his reserves
+are so ample, why after all these centuries of living does the human
+race need to learn from science the truth about its own powers? The
+average man is very likely to say that it is all very well for a
+scientist sitting in his laboratory to tell him about hidden
+resources, but that he knows what it is to be tired. Is not the crux
+of the whole question summed up in that word &quot;tired&quot;? If we do not
+need to rest, why should fatigue exist? If the purpose of fatigue
+seems to be to slow down our efforts, why should we disregard it or
+seek to evade its warnings? The whole question resolves itself into
+this: What is fatigue? In view of the hampering effect of
+misconception on this point, it is evident that the question is not
+academic, but intensely practical. We shall find that fatigue is of
+two kinds,&mdash;true and false, or physical and moral, or physiological
+<!-- Page 224 --><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224" />
+and nervous,&mdash;and that while the two kinds feel very much alike,
+their origin and behavior are quite different.</p>
+
+
+<p class="scheading">Physiological Fatigue</p>
+
+<p><b>Fatigue, not Exhaustion.</b> In the first place, then, fatigue very
+seldom means a lack of strength or an exhaustion of energy. The
+average man in the course of a lifetime probably never knows what it
+is to be truly exhausted. If he should become so tired that he could
+in no circumstances run for his life, no matter how many wild beasts
+were after him, then it might seem that he had drained himself of all
+his store of energy. But even in that case, a large part of his
+fatigue would be the result of another cause.</p>
+
+<p><b>A Matter of Chemistry.</b> True fatigue is a chemical affair. It is the
+result of recent effort,&mdash;physical, mental, or emotional,&mdash;and is the
+sum of sensations arising from the presence of waste material in the
+muscles and the blood. The whole picture becomes clear if we think of
+the body as a factory whose fires continuously burn, yielding heat and
+energy, together with certain waste material,&mdash;carbon dioxide and ash.
+Within man's body the fuel, instead of being the carbon of coal is the
+carbon of glycogen or animal starch, taken in as food and stored away
+within the cells of the muscles and the liver. The oxygen for
+combustion is continuously supplied by the lungs. So
+<!-- Page 225 --><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225" />far the factory
+is well equipped to maintain its fires. Nor does it fail when it comes
+to carrying away waste products. Like all factories, the body has its
+endless chain arrangement, the blood stream, which automatically picks
+up the debris in its tiny buckets&mdash;the blood-cells and serum&mdash;and
+carries it away to the several dumping-grounds in lungs, kidneys,
+intestines, and skin.</p>
+
+<p>Besides the products of combustion, there are always to be washed away
+some broken-down particles from the tissues themselves, which, like
+all machinery, are being continuously worn out and repaired. By
+chemical tests in the laboratory, the physiologist finds that a muscle
+which has recently been in violent exercise contains among other
+things carbon dioxid, urea, creatin, and sarco-lactic acid, none of
+which are found in a rested muscle. Since all this debris is acid in
+reaction and since we are &quot;marine animals,&quot; at home only in salt water
+or alkaline solution, the cells must be quickly washed of the fatigue
+products, which, if allowed to accumulate, would very soon poison the
+body and put out the fires.</p>
+
+<p><b>No Back Debts.</b> The human machine is regulated to carry away its
+fatigue products as fast as they are made, with but slight lagging
+behind that is made good in the hours of sleep, when bodily activities
+are lessened and time is allowed for repair. Unless the body is
+definitely diseased, it virtually never carries over its <!-- Page 226 -->
+<a name="Page_226" id="Page_226" />fatigue from
+one day to another. In the matter of fatigue, there are no old debts
+to pay. Nature renews herself in cycles, and her cycle is twenty-four
+hours,&mdash;not nine or ten months as many school-teachers seem to
+imagine, or eleven months as some business men suppose. In order to
+make assurance doubly sure, many set apart every seventh day for a
+rest day, for change of occupation and thought, and for catching up
+any slight arrears which might exist. But the point is that a healthy
+body never gets far behind.</p>
+
+<p>If through some flaw in the machine, waste products do pile up, they
+destroy the machine. If the heart leaks or the blood-cells fail in
+their carrying-power, or if lungs, kidneys or skin are out of repair,
+there is sometimes an accumulation of fatigue products which poisons
+the whole system and ends in death. But the person with tuberculosis
+or heart trouble does not usually allow this to happen. The body
+incapacitated by disease limits its activities as closely as possible
+within the range of its power to take care of waste matter. Even the
+sick body does not carry about its old toxins. The man who had not
+eliminated the poisons of a month-old effort would not be a tired man.
+He would be a dead man.</p>
+
+<p><b>A Sliding Scale.</b> If all this be true, real fatigue can only be the
+result of recent effort. If one is still alive, the results of earlier
+effort must long since have <!-- Page 227 -->
+<a name="Page_227" id="Page_227" />disappeared. The tissue-cells retain not
+the slightest trace of its effects. Fatigue cannot possibly last,
+because it either kills us or cures itself. Up to a certain point, far
+beyond our usual high-water mark, the more a person does the more he
+can do. As Professor James has pointed out, the rate of repair
+increases with the rate of combustion. Under unusual stress, the rate
+of the whole machine is increased: the heart-pump speeds up,
+respirations deepen and quicken, the blood flows faster, the endless
+chain of filling and emptying buckets hurries the interchange of
+oxygen and carbon dioxid, until the extreme capacity is reached and
+the organism refuses to do more without a period of rest.</p>
+
+<p>The whole arrangement illustrates the wonderful provisions of Nature.
+Although each individual is continuously manufacturing enough
+carbonic-acid gas to kill himself in a very few minutes, he need not
+be alarmed for fear that he may forget to expel his own poisons.
+Nobody can hold his breath for more than a few minutes. The naughty
+baby sometimes tries, but when he begins to get black in the face, he
+takes a breath in spite of himself. The presence of carbonic-acid gas
+in the circulation automatically regulates breathing, and the greater
+the amount of gas the deeper the breath. The faster we burn the faster
+we blow. As with breathing, so with all the rest of elimination and
+repair. The body dares not get behind.</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 228 --><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228" />
+<b>&quot;Second Wind.&quot;</b> A city man frequently sets out on a mountain tramp
+without any muscular preparation for the trip. He walks ten or fifteen
+miles when his average is not over one or two. Sometimes after a few
+hours he feels himself exhausted, but a glorious view opens out before
+him and he goes on with new zest. He has merely increased his rate of
+repair and drawn on a new stock of energy. That night he is tired, and
+the next day he is likely to be stiff and sore. There is a little
+fatigue left in him, but it takes only a day or two for the body to be
+wholly refreshed, especially if he hastens the process by another good
+walk. Up to a certain point, far beyond our usual limit, the more we
+do, the more we can do.</p>
+
+<p>One day after a long walk my little daughter said that she could go no
+farther and waited to be carried. But she soon spied a dog on ahead
+and ran off after him with new zest. She followed the dog back and
+forth, running more than a mile before she reached home, and then in
+the exuberance of her spirits, ran around the house three times.</p>
+
+<p><b>The Emotions Again.</b> What is the key that unlocks new stores of
+energy and drives away fatigue? What is it in the amateur
+mountain-climbers that helps the body maintain its new standard? What
+keeps indefatigable workers on the job long after the ordinary man has
+tired? Is it not always an invigorating<!-- Page 229 -->
+<a name="Page_229" id="Page_229" /> emotion,&mdash;the zest of
+pursuit, the joy of battle, intense interest in work, or a new
+enthusiasm? All great military commanders know the importance of
+morale. They know that troops can stand more while they are going
+forward than while running away, that the more contented and hopeful
+they are, the better fighters they make; discouragement, lack of
+interest, the fighting of a losing game, dearth of appreciation,
+futility of effort, monotony of task, all conspire in soldier or
+civilian to use up and to lock up energy which might have been
+available for real work. Approaching the matter from a new angle, we
+find once more that the difference between strength and weakness is in
+many cases merely a difference in the emotions and feeling-tones which
+habitually control.</p>
+
+<p>Fatigue is a safety-device of nature to keep us within safe limits,
+but it is a device toward which we must not become too sensitive. As a
+rule it makes us stop long before the danger point is reached. If we
+fall into the habit of watching its first signals, they may easily
+become so insistent that they monopolize attention. Attention
+increases any sensation, especially if colored by fear. Fear adds to
+the waste matter of fatigue little driblets of adrenalin and other
+secretions which must somehow be eliminated before equilibrium is
+reestablished. This creates a vicious circle. We are tired, hence we
+are discouraged. We are discouraged, <!-- Page 230 -->
+<a name="Page_230" id="Page_230" />hence we are more tired. This
+kind of &quot;tire&quot; is a chemical condition, but it is produced not by work
+but by an emotion. He who learns to take his fatigue philosophically,
+as a natural and harmless phenomenon which will soon disappear if
+ignored, is likely to find himself possessed of exceptional strength.
+We can stand almost any amount of work, provided we do not multiply it
+by worry. We can even stand a good deal of real anxiety provided it is
+not turned in on ourselves and directed toward our own health.</p>
+
+<p><b>&quot;Decent Hygienic Conditions.&quot;</b> If fatigue products cannot pile up,
+why is extra rest ever needed? Because there is a limit to the supply
+of fuel. If the fat-supply stored away for such emergencies finally
+becomes low, we may need an extra dose of sleeping and eating in order
+to let the reservoirs fill again. But this never takes very long. The
+body soon fills in its reserves if it has anything like common-sense
+care. The doctrine of reserve energy does not warrant a careless
+burning of the candle at both ends. It presupposes &quot;decent hygienic
+conditions,&quot;&mdash;eight hours in bed, three square meals a day, and a fair
+amount of fresh air and exercise.</p>
+
+<p><b>&quot;Over There.&quot;</b> On the other hand, the stories that floated back to us
+from the war zone illustrate in the most powerful way what the human
+body can do when necessity forbids the slightest attention to its
+needs. <!-- Page 231 --><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231" />One
+of the best of these stories is Dorothy Canfield's account
+of Dr. Girard-Mangin, &quot;France's Fighting Woman Doctor.&quot; Better than
+any abstract discussion of human endurance is this vibrant narrative
+of that little woman, &quot;not very strong, slightly built, with some
+serious constitutional weakness,&quot; who lived through hardships and
+accomplished feats of daring which would have been considered beyond
+the range of possibility&mdash;before the war.</p>
+
+<p>Think of her out there in her leaky makeshift hospital with her twenty
+crude helpers and her hundreds of mortally sick typhoid patients; four
+hundred and seventy days of continuous service with no place to
+sleep&mdash;when there was a chance&mdash;except a freezing, wind-swept attic in
+a deserted village. Think of her in the midst of that terrible Battle
+of Verdun, during four black nights without a light, among those
+delirious men, and then during the long, long ride with her dying
+patients over the shell-swept roads. Listen to her as she speaks of
+herself at the end of that ride, without a place to lay her head: &quot;Oh,
+then I did feel tired! That morning for the first time I knew how
+tired I was, as I went dragging myself from door to door begging for a
+room and a bed. It was because I was no longer working, you see. As
+long as you have work to do you can go on.&quot; Then listen to her as she
+receives her orders to rush to a new post, before she has had time
+<!-- Page 232 --><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232" />to
+lay herself on the bed she has finally found. &quot;Then at once my
+tiredness went away. It only lasted while I thought of getting to bed.
+When I knew we were going into action once more, I was myself again.&quot;
+Watch her as she rides on through the afternoon and the long dangerous
+night; as she swallows her coffee and plum-cake, and operates for five
+hours without stopping; as she sleeps in the only place there is&mdash;a
+&quot;quite comfortable chair&quot; in a corner; and as she keeps up this life
+for twenty days before she is sent&mdash;not on a vacation, mind you, but
+to another strenuous post.<a name="FNanchor_51" id="FNanchor_51"></a>
+<a href="#Footnote_51" class="fnanchor">[51]</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_51" id="Footnote_51"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_51"><span class="label">[51]</span>
+</a> Dorothy Canfield: <i>The Day of Glory.</i></p></div>
+
+<p>This brave little woman is not an isolated example of extraordinary
+powers. The human race in the great war tapped new reservoirs of power
+and discovered itself to be greater than it knew. Professor James's
+assertions are completely proved,&mdash;that &quot;as a rule men habitually use
+only a small part of the powers which they actually possess,&quot; and that
+&quot;most of us may learn to push the barrier (of fatigue) further off,
+and to live in perfect comfort on much higher levels of power.&quot;</p>
+
+<p><b>How?</b> The practical question is: how may we&mdash;the men and women of
+ordinary powers, away from the extraordinary stimulus of a crisis like
+the great war&mdash;attain our maximum and drop off the dreary mantle of
+fatigue which so often holds us back from our best <!-- Page 233 -->
+<a name="Page_233" id="Page_233" />efforts? It may be
+that the first step is simply getting a true conception of physical
+fatigue as something which needs to be feared only in case of a
+diseased body, and which is quite likely to disappear under a little
+judicious neglect.</p>
+
+<p>In the second place, fatigue shows itself to be closely bound up with
+emotions and instincts. The great releasers of energy are the
+instincts. What but the mothering instinct and the love of country
+could uncover all those unsuspected reserves of Dr. Girard-Mangin and
+others of her kind? What is it but the enthusiasm for work which
+explains the indefatigable energy of Edison and Roosevelt? If the
+wrong kind of emotion locks up energy, the right kind just as surely
+unlocks great stores which have hitherto lain dormant. If most people
+live below their possibilities, it is either because they have not
+learned how to utilize the energy of their instinctive emotions in the
+work they find to do, or because some of their strongest instincts
+which are meant to supply motive power to the rest of life are locked
+away by false ideas and unnecessary repressions, and so fail to feed
+in the energy which they control. In such a case, the &quot;spring tonic&quot;
+that is needed is a self-knowledge which shall release us from
+hampering inhibitions and set us free for enthusiastic
+self-expression.</p>
+
+<p class="scheading"><!-- Page 234 -->
+<a name="Page_234" id="Page_234" />Nervous Fatigue</p>
+
+<p><i>What of the Nervous Invalid?</i> If the normal man lives constantly
+below his maximum, what shall we say of the nervous invalid?
+Fatigability is the very earmark of his condition. In many instances
+he seems scarcely able to raise his hand to his head. Sometimes he can
+scarcely speak for weariness. Frequently to walk a block sends him to
+bed for a week. I once had a patient who felt that she had to raise
+her eyelids very slowly for fear of over-exertion. She could speak
+only about two or three words a day, the rest of the time talking in
+whispers. She could not raise a glass to her lips if it were full of
+water, but could manage it if only half full. A person nearly dead
+with some fatal disease does not appear more powerless than a typical
+neurasthenic.</p>
+
+<p>If it he true that accumulation of fatigue is promptly fatal, what
+shall we say of the woman who says that she is still exhausted from
+the labor of a year ago,&mdash;or of ten years ago? What of the business
+man who travels from sanatorium to sanatorium because five years ago
+he went through a strenuous year? What of the college student who is
+broken down because he studied too hard, or the teacher who is worn
+out because of ten hard years of teaching? There can be but one
+answer. No matter what their feelings, they can be suffering from no
+true physiological fatigue. Something <!-- Page 235 -->
+<a name="Page_235" id="Page_235" />very real has happened to them,
+but only through ignorance and the power of suggestion can it be
+called fatigue and attributed to overwork.</p>
+
+<p><b>Stories of Real People.</b> Perhaps if we look over the stories of a few
+people who have been members of my household, we may work our way to
+an understanding of the truth. We give only the barest outline of the
+facts, thinking that the cumulative effect of a number of cases will
+outweigh a more detailed description of one or two. The most casual
+survey shows that whatever it was that burdened these fine men and
+women, it was not lack of energy. No matter how extreme had been their
+exhaustion, they were able at once, without rest or any other physical
+treatment, to summon strength for exertions quite up to those of a
+normal person.</p>
+
+<p>The second point that stands out clearly to any one acquainted with
+these inner histories is the conviction that in each case the trouble
+was related in some way to the unsatisfied love-life, to the insistent
+and thwarted instinct of reproduction. In some cases no search was
+made for the cause. The simple explanation that there was no lack of
+power was sufficient to release inhibited energy. But in every case
+where the cause was sought, it was found to be some outer lack of
+satisfaction, or some inner repression of the love-force.</p>
+
+<p><b>From Prostration to Tennis.</b> One young woman,
+<!-- Page 236 --><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236" />Miss A., had suffered
+for ten years from the extremest kind of fatigue. She could not walk a
+block without support and without the feeling of great exhaustion.
+Before her illness she had had a sweetheart. Not understanding her
+normal physical sensations when he was near, she had felt them
+extremely wicked and had repressed them with all her strength. Later,
+she broke off the engagement, and a little while after developed the
+neurosis. Within a week after coming to my house, she was playing
+tennis, walking three miles to church, and generally living the life
+of a normal person.</p>
+
+<p><b>Making Her Own Discoveries.</b> Then there was Miss B. who for four
+years had been &quot;exhausted.&quot; She had such severe pains in her legs that
+she was almost helpless. If she sewed for half an hour on the sewing
+machine, she would be in bed for two weeks. Although she was engaged
+to be married, she could not possibly shop for her trousseau. Two
+years before, a very able surgeon had been of the opinion that the
+pain in the legs was caused by an ovarian tumor. He removed the tumor,
+assuring the patient that she would be cured. However, despite the
+operation and the force of the suggestion, the pains persisted.</p>
+
+<p>After she had been with me for a few days, she sewed for an hour on
+the machine. In a day or so she took a four-mile walk in a ca&ntilde;on near
+the house and, on returning in the afternoon, walked two and a half
+<!-- Page 237 --><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237" />miles
+down town to do some shopping. I did not make an analysis in
+her case because she recovered so quickly,&mdash;going home well within two
+weeks. But she declared that she had found the cause while reading in
+one of the books on psychology. I had my suspicions that the
+long-drawn-out engagement had something to do with the trouble, but I
+did not confirm my opinion. A long engagement, by continually
+stimulating desire without satisfying it, only too often leads to
+nervous illness.</p>
+
+<p><b>Afraid of Heat.</b> Professor X., of a large Eastern college, had been
+incapacitated for four years with a severe fatigue neurosis and an
+intense fear of heat. Constantly watching the weather reports, he was
+in the habit of fleeing to the Maine coast whenever the
+weather-prophet predicted warm weather. After a short re.&euml;ducation, he
+discovered that his fatigue was symbolic of an inner feeling of
+inadequacy, and that it bore no relation to his body. Discarding his
+weariness and throwing all his energies into the Liberty Loan
+Campaign, he found himself speaking almost continuously throughout one
+of the hottest days in the history of California, with the thermometer
+standing at 107 degrees. After that he had no doubt as to his cure.</p>
+
+<p><b>In Bed from Fear.</b> Miss C. was carried into my house rolled in a
+blanket. She had been confined to her bed except for fifteen minutes a
+day, during which <!-- Page 238 --><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238" />time
+she was able to lie in a hammock! It seems
+that her illness was the result of fear, an over-reaction to early
+teaching about self-abuse. Her mother had frightened her terribly by
+giving her the false idea that this practice often leads to insanity.
+Having indulged in self-abuse, she believed herself going insane, and
+very naturally succumbed to the effects of such a fear. After a few
+days of re-education, she was as strong as any average person. Having
+no clothing but for a sick-room, she borrowed hat, skirt, and shoes,
+and walked to church, a three-mile walk.</p>
+
+<p><b>Empty Hands.</b> Miss Y., a fine woman of middle age, suffering from
+extreme fatigue could neither sleep nor eat. She could only weep. She
+had spent her life taking care of an invalid girl who had recently
+died. Now her hands were empty. Like many a mother whose family has
+grown up, she had no outlet for her mothering instinct, and her sense
+of impotency expressed itself in the only way it knew how,&mdash;through
+her body. As there is never any lack of unselfish work to be done, or
+of people who need mothering, she soon found herself and learned how
+to sublimate her energy in useful activities.</p>
+
+<p><b>Defying Nature.</b> One young man from Wyoming had felt himself obliged
+to give up his business because he could neither work nor eat. It soon
+cropped out that he and his wife had decided that they must not
+<!-- Page 239 --><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239" />have
+any children. With a better understanding of the great forces which
+they were defying, his strength and his appetite came back and he went
+back to work, rejoicing.</p>
+
+<p><b>Left-over Habits.</b> Often a state of fatigue is the result of a
+carried-over habit. One of my patients, a young girl, had several
+years before been operated on for exophthalmic goiter. This is a
+disease of the thyroid gland, and is characterized by rapid heart,
+extreme fatigue, and numerous other symptoms. Although this girl's
+goiter had been removed, the symptoms still persisted. She could not
+walk nor do even a little work, like wiping a few dishes. I took her
+down on the beach, let her feel her own pulse and mine and then ran
+with her on the sand. Again I let her feel our pulses and discover for
+herself that hers had quickened no more than was normal and had slowed
+down as soon as mine. After a few such lessons, she was convinced that
+her symptoms were reverberations for which there was no longer any
+physical cause.</p>
+
+<p>Another young girl, Miss L., had had a similar operation for goiter
+six years before. Since that time she had been virtually bedridden.
+During the first meal she had at my house her sister sat by her couch
+because she must not be left alone. By the second meal the sister had
+gone, and Miss L. ate at the table with the other guests. That night
+she managed to crawl upstairs, <!-- Page 240 -->
+<a name="Page_240" id="Page_240" />with a good deal of assistance and
+with great terror at the probable results of such an effort. After
+that, she walked up-stairs alone whenever she had occasion to go to
+her room. Her heart will always be a little rapid and her body will
+never be very strong, but she now lives a helpful happy life at home
+and among her friends.</p>
+
+<p>In cases like this the exaggeration proves the counterfeit. Nobody
+could have been so down and out <i>physically</i> without dying. The
+exaggeration secures attention and gives the little satisfaction to
+the natural desires which are denied expression, and which gain an
+outlet through habit along the lines previously worn by the real
+disease. Many a person is still suffering from an old pain or an old
+disability whose cause has long since disappeared, but which is
+stamped on the mind and believed in as a present reality. Since the
+sensation is as real as ever, it is sometimes very hard to believe
+that it is not legitimate, but if the person is intelligent, a little
+explanation and re-education usually suffices.</p>
+
+<p><b>Twenty Years an Invalid.</b> Mr. S., from Ohio, had spent much of his
+time for twenty years going from one sanatorium to another. There was
+scarcely a health resort in the country with which he was not
+familiar. The day he came to me he felt himself completely exhausted
+by the two-block walk from the car. <!-- Page 241 -->
+<a name="Page_241" id="Page_241" />He explained that he could
+scarcely listen to what I was saying because his brain was so fagged
+that concentration was impossible. When asked to read a book, he
+dramatically exclaimed, &quot;Books and I have parted company!&quot; I set him
+to work reading &quot;Dear Enemy&quot; but it was not a week before he was
+devouring the deeper books on psychology, in complete forgetfulness of
+the pains in his head. Playing golf and walking at least six miles
+every day, he rejoiced in a new sense of strength in his body, which
+for twenty years he had considered &quot;used up.&quot; He is now doing a
+man-sized job in the business and philanthropic life of his home city.</p>
+
+<p><b>Brain-fag.</b> This feeling of brain-fag is one of the commonest nervous
+symptoms; and almost always it is supposed to be the result of
+intellectual overwork. Some people who easily accept the idea that
+physical work cannot cause nervous breakdown can scarcely give up the
+deep-rooted notion that intense mental work is harmful. Intellectual
+effort does give rise to fatigue in exactly the same way as does
+physical exertion, but the body takes care of the waste products of
+the one just as it does those of the other. Du Bois says that out of
+all his nervous cases he has not found one which can be traced to
+intellectual overwork. I can say the same thing, and I know no case in
+all the literature of the subject whose symptoms I can believe to
+<!-- Page 242 --><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242" />be
+the result of mental labor.</p>
+
+<p>The college students who break down are not wrecked by intellectual
+work. In some cases, one strong factor in their undoing is the strain
+and readjustment necessary because of the discrepancies between some
+of their deepest religious beliefs and the truth as they learn it in
+the class-room. The other factors are merely those which play their
+part in any neurosis.</p>
+
+<p><b>Re-educating the Teacher.</b> School-teachers are prone to believe
+themselves worn out from the mental work and the strain of the
+strenuous life of teaching. Many a fine, conscientious teacher has
+come to me with this story of overwork. But the school-teacher is as
+easily re-educated as is any one else. I usually begin the process by
+stating that I taught school myself for ten years and can speak from
+experience. After I explain that there is no physical reason why the
+teachers of some cities are fagged out at the end of nine months while
+those in other cities whose session is longer can hold on for ten
+months, and stenographers who lead just as strenuous a life manage to
+exist with only a two-weeks' vacation, they begin to see that perhaps
+after all they have been fooling themselves by a suggestion, &quot;setting&quot;
+themselves for just so long and expecting to be done up at the end of
+the term. Many of these same teachers have gone back to their work
+<!-- Page 243 --><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243" />with a new sense
+of &quot;enough and to spare&quot; and some of them have
+written back that they have passed triumphantly through especially
+trying years with no sense of depletion.</p>
+
+<p>In any work, it is the feeling of strain which tells, the emotionalism
+and feeling sorry for oneself because one has a hard job. It is
+wonderful what a sense of power comes from the simple idea that we are
+equal to our tasks.</p>
+
+<p><b>Sudden Relief.</b> The story of Mr. V. illustrates Professor James's
+statement that often the fatigue gets worse up to a certain critical
+point, and then suddenly passes away. Mr. V. was another patient who
+was &quot;physically exhausted.&quot; When the rest of &quot;the family&quot; went
+clamming on the beach, he felt himself too weak for such exertions, so
+I left him on the sand to hold the bag while the rest of us dug for
+clams. The minute I turned my back he disappeared. I found him lying
+flat on his back, resting, behind the bulk-head. I decided that he
+needed the two-mile walk home and we all set out to walk. &quot;Doctor,
+this is cruel. It is dangerous. My knees can never stand this. I shall
+be ill!&quot; ran the constant refrain for the first mile. Then things went
+a bit better. Toward the last he found, to his absolute astonishment,
+that the fatigue had entirely rolled away. The last half-mile he
+accomplished with perfect ease. Needless to say, he <!-- Page 244 -->
+<a name="Page_244" id="Page_244" />never again
+complained of physical exhaustion.</p>
+
+<p><b>False Neuritis.</b> Miss T. was suffering from fatigue and very severe
+pains in her arms, pains which were supposed to be the result of real
+neuritis, but which did not correspond to the physiological picture of
+that disease. A consultation revealed the fact that her love-instinct
+had been repeatedly stimulated, and then at the last, when it had
+expected satisfaction, had been disappointed. A discussion of her
+life, its inner forces, and her future aims helped to pull her
+together again and give her instinct new outlets. The pains and the
+fatigue disappeared at once.</p>
+
+<p><b>Something Wrong.</b> These cases are chosen at random and are typical of
+scores of others. In no single case was the trouble feigned or
+imaginary or unreal. But in every case it was a mistake. <i>The sense of
+loss of muscular power was really a sense of loss of power on the part
+of the soul.</i> Some inner force was reaching out, reaching out after
+something which it could never quite attain. As it happened, in every
+case that I analyzed, the force which felt itself defeated and
+inadequate was the thwarted instinct of reproduction. Like a man
+pinned to the ground by a stronger force, it felt itself most helpless
+while struggling the hardest. Just as we feel a thrill of fright when
+we step up in the dark and find no step there, so this instinct had
+gotten itself ready for a step which was not there. Inner repressions
+<!-- Page 245 --><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245" />
+or outer circumstances had denied satisfaction and left only an
+undefined sense that something was wrong. The life-force, feeling
+itself helpless, limp, tired, had no way of expressing itself except
+in terms of the body. Since expression is itself a relief and an
+outlet for feeling, the denied desire had seized on suggestions of
+overwork to explain its sense of weariness, and had symbolized its
+soul-pain by converting it into a physical pain. The feeling of
+inadequacy was very real, but it was simply displaced from one part of
+the personality to another,&mdash;from an unknown, inarticulate part to one
+which was more familiar and which had its own means of expression.</p>
+
+<p><b>Locked-up Energy.</b> We do not know just how the soul can make its pain
+so intensely real to the body, but we do know that any conviction on
+the part of the subconscious mind is quickly expressed in the physical
+machine. A conviction of pain or of powerlessness is very soon
+converted into a feeling which can scarcely be denied. The mere
+suggestion that the body is overworked is enough to make it tired.</p>
+
+<p>We know, too, that the instincts are the great releasers of energy. So
+it happens that when our most dynamic instinct&mdash;that for the
+reproduction of the race&mdash;is repressed, we lack one of the greatest
+sources of usable energy. The energy is there, but it is not
+accessible. Inhibited and locked away, it is not fed <!-- Page 246 -->
+<a name="Page_246" id="Page_246" />into the engine,
+and we feel exactly as though it were <i>nil</i>. Despite its name, the
+disease neurasthenia does not signify a real asthenia or weakness.
+Rather, it is a disorder in which there is plenty of energy that has
+somehow been temporarily misplaced. Then, too, we must remember that
+under the depressing influence of chronic fear, not quite so much
+energy is stored away as would otherwise be. All the bodily functions
+are slowed down; food is not so completely assimilated, the heart-beat
+is weakened, the breathing is more shallow, and fatigue products are
+more slowly eliminated. As Du Bois says, &quot;An emotion tires the
+organism more than the most intense physical or intellectual work.&quot;</p>
+
+<p><b>Avoid the Rest-Cure.</b> It is a healthful sign that the rest-cure is
+fast going out of style. Wherever it has helped a nervous patient, the
+real curative agent has been the personality of the doctor and the
+patient's faith in him. The whole theory was based on ignorance of the
+cause of nerves. People suffering from &quot;nervous exhaustion&quot; are likely
+to be just as &quot;tired&quot; after a month in bed as they were before. Why
+not? Physical fatigue is quickly remedied, and what can rest do after
+that? What possible effect can rest have on the fatigue of a
+discouraged instinct? Since the best releaser of energy is enthusiasm,
+don't try to get that by lying around in bed or playing checkers at a
+health resort.</p>
+
+<p class="scheading"><!-- Page 247 --><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247" />Summary</p>
+
+<p>If you are chronically and perpetually fatigued, or if you tire more
+easily than the other people you know, consult a competent physician
+and let him look you over. If he tells you that you have neither
+tuberculosis, heart trouble, Bright's disease, nor any other
+demonstrable disease, that you are physically fit and &quot;merely
+nervous,&quot; give yourself a good shake and commit the following
+paragraphs to memory.</p>
+
+
+<p class="center">A CATECHISM FOR THE WEARY ONE</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p>&nbsp;<br /> WHAT?</p>
+
+<p>Q. What is fatigue?</p>
+
+<p>A. It is a chemical condition resulting from effort that is very
+     recent.</p>
+
+<p>Q. What else creates fatigue?</p>
+
+<p>A. Worry, fear, resentment, discontent, and other depressing
+     emotions.</p>
+
+<p>Q. What magnifies fatigue?</p>
+
+<p>A. Attention to the feeling.</p>
+
+<p>Q. What makes us weary long after the cause is removed?</p>
+
+<p>A. Habit.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;<br />WHY?</p>
+
+<p>Q. Why do many people believe themselves over-worked?</p>
+
+<p>A. Because of the power of suggestion.</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 248 --><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248" />Q. Why do they take the suggestion?</p>
+
+<p>A. Because it serves their need and expresses their inner feelings.</p>
+
+<p>Q. Why are they willing to choose such an uncomfortable mode of
+expression?</p>
+
+<p>A. Because they don't know what they are doing, and the subconscious
+is very insistent.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;<br />WHO?</p>
+
+<p>Q. Who gets up tired every morning?</p>
+
+<p>A. The neurotic.</p>
+
+<p>Q. Who fancies his brain so exhausted that a little concentration is
+impossible?</p>
+
+<p>A. The neurotic.</p>
+
+<p>Q. Who still believes himself exhausted as the result of work that is
+now ancient history?</p>
+
+<p>A. The neurotic.</p>
+
+<p>Q. Who lays all his woes to overwork?</p>
+
+<p>A. The neurotic.</p>
+
+<p>Q. Who complains of fatigue before he has well begun?</p>
+
+<p>A. The neurotic.</p>
+
+<p>Q. Who may drop his fatigue as soon as he &quot;gets the idea?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>A. The neurotic.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;<br />HOW?</p>
+
+<p>Q. How can he get the idea?</p>
+
+<p>A. By understanding himself.</p>
+
+<p>Q. How may he express his inner feelings?<!-- Page 249 --><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249" /></p>
+
+<p>A. By choosing a better way.</p>
+
+<p>Q. How can he forget his fatigue?</p>
+
+<p>A. By ignoring it.</p>
+
+<p>Q. How can he ignore it?</p>
+
+<p>A. By finding a good stiff job.</p>
+
+<p>If he wants advice in a nutshell, here it is: <br />Get understanding!
+     Get courage! Get busy!</p></div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<div><!-- Page 250 --><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250" /></div>
+<p class="heading"><a name="CHAPTER_X" id="CHAPTER_X">CHAPTER X</a></p>
+
+<p class="heading"><i>In which the ban is lifted</i></p>
+
+<p class="heading">DIETARY TABOOS</p>
+
+<p class="scheading">Misunderstood Stomachs</p>
+
+
+<p><b>Modern Improvements.</b> Most people have heard the story of the little
+girl who wanted to know what made her hair snap. After she had been
+informed that there was probably electricity in her hair, she sat
+quiet for a few minutes and then exclaimed: &quot;Our family has all the
+modern improvements! I have electricity in my hair and Grandma has gas
+on her stomach!&quot; Judged by this standard many American families are
+well abreast of the times; and if we include among the modern
+improvements not only gas on the stomach but also nervous dyspepsia,
+acid stomach, indigestion, sick-headache, and biliousness, we must
+conclude that a good proportion of the population is both modern and
+improved.</p>
+
+<p>Despite all this the stomach is one of the best-equipped mechanisms in
+the world. It, at least, is not modern. After their age-long
+development the organs <!-- Page 251 --><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251" />
+of the body are remarkably standardized and
+adapted to the work required of them. It is safe to say that ninety
+per cent. of all so-called &quot;stomach trouble&quot; is due not to any
+inherent weakness of the organ itself but to a misunderstanding
+between the stomach and its owner.</p>
+
+<p><b>Organic Trouble.</b> Unfortunately, there are a few real organic causes
+for trouble. There are a few cancers of the stomach and a certain
+number of ulcers. But if the patients whom I have seen are in any way
+typical, the ulcers that really are cannot compare in number with the
+ulcers that are supposed to be. Patients go to physicians with so many
+tales of digestive distress that even the best doctors are fooled
+unless they are especially alert to the ways of &quot;nerves.&quot; They must
+find some explanation for all the various functional disturbances
+which the patients report, and as they are in the habit of taking only
+the body into account, they find the diagnosis of stomach ulcer as
+satisfactory as any.</p>
+
+<p>There is, of course, such a thing as an enlarged or sagging stomach.
+But it is only in the rarest of cases that such a condition leads to
+any functional disturbances unless complicated by suggestion. In most
+cases a person can go about his business as happily as ever unless he
+gets the idea that ptosis must inevitably lead to pain and discomfort.</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 252 --><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252" />Confusion
+sometimes arises when the stomach is blamed for
+disturbances which originate elsewhere. One day a very sick-looking
+girl came to me with eager expectation written all over her face. Her
+stomach was misbehaving and she had heard that I could cure nervous
+indigestion. It needed little more than a glance to know that she was
+suffering from organic heart trouble. A boy of sixteen had been taking
+a stomach-tonic for three months, but the thin, wiry pulse pointed to
+a different ailment. His digestive disturbances were merely the echo
+of an organic disease of the kidneys. When the body is burdened by
+disease, it may have little energy left for digesting food, but in
+that case the trouble must be sought in other quarters than the
+stomach.</p>
+
+<p>Aside from a few organic difficulties, there is almost no real disease
+of the stomach. Its misdoings are not matters of food and chemistry,
+muscle-power and nerve supply, but are the end results of slips in the
+mental and emotional life of its owner.</p>
+
+<p><b>Fads Dynamogenic.</b> What is it that gives the impetus to fads about
+eating, or about religious belief? Are they advocated by the
+individual whose libido is finding abundant expression in the natural
+channels of business and family life, or by his less fortunate brother
+who can gain a sense of power only by means of some unaccustomed idea?
+William James says:<!-- Page 253 --><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253" /></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>This leads me to say a word about ideas considered as dynamogenic
+     agents or stimuli for unlocking what would otherwise be unused
+     reservoirs of individual power.... In general, whether a given
+     idea shall be a live idea depends more on the person into whose
+     mind it is injected than on the idea itself. Which is the
+     suggestive idea for this person and which for that one? Mr.
+     Fletcher's disciples regenerate themselves by the idea (and the
+     fact) that they are chewing and re-chewing and super-chewing
+     their food. Dr. Dewey's pupils regenerate themselves by going
+     without their breakfast&mdash;a fact, but also an ascetic idea. Not
+     every one can use these ideas with the same success.</p></div>
+
+<p>Because it is so adaptable and sturdy, the stomach lends itself
+readily to these devices for gaining self-expression; but the danger
+lies in bringing the process of digestion into conscious attention
+which interferes with automatic functioning. Still further, the
+disregard of physiological chemistry is likely to deprive the body of
+food-stuffs which it requires.</p>
+
+<p>The average person is too sensible to be carried off his feet by the
+enthusiasm of the health-crank, but as most of us are likely to pick
+up a few false notions, it may be well to be armed with the simple
+principles of food chemistry in order to combat the fads which so
+easily beset us and to know why we are right when we insist on eating
+three regular meals of the mixed and <!-- Page 254 -->
+<a name="Page_254" id="Page_254" />varied diet which has proved
+best for the race through so many years of trial and experience.</p>
+
+
+<p class="scheading">What We Need to Eat</p>
+
+<p><b>The Essence of Dietetics.</b> To the layman the average discussion of
+food principles is, to say the least, confusing. Dealing largely, as
+it does, with unfamiliar terms like carbohydrate and hydrocarbon and
+calories, it is hard to translate into the terms of the potatoes left
+over from dinner and the vegetables we can afford to buy. But the
+practical deductions are not at all difficult to understand. Boiled
+down to their simplest terms, the essential principles may be stated
+in a few sentences. The body must secure from the food that we eat,
+tissue for its cells, energy for immediate use or to be stored for
+emergency, mineral salts, vitamins, water and a certain bulk from
+fruits and vegetables,&mdash;this latter to aid in the elimination of waste
+matter.</p>
+
+<p>Food for repairing bodily tissue is called protein and is secured from
+meat, eggs, milk, and certain vegetables, notably peas. Fuel for heat
+and energy is in two forms&mdash;carbohydrate (starch and sugar) and fat.
+We get sugar from sugar-cane and beets, and from syrups, fruit, and
+honey. Starch is furnished from flour products&mdash;mainly bread&mdash;from
+rice, potatoes, macaroni, tapioca, and many vegetables. Fats come from
+milk and butter, from nuts, from meat-fat&mdash;bacon, lard and suet&mdash;and
+from vegetable oils. The mineral <!-- Page 255 --><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255" />
+salts are obtained mainly from fruit
+and vegetables, which also provide certain mysterious vitamins
+necessary for health, but as yet not well understood.</p>
+
+<p><b>What the Market Affords.</b> The moral from all this is plain. The human
+body needs all the foods which are ordinarily served on the table.
+Whenever, through fad or through fear, we leave out of our diet any
+standard food, we are running a risk of cutting the body down on some
+element which it needs. They say that variety is the spice of life. In
+the matter of food it is more than that, it is the essence of life.
+Eat everything that the market affords and you will be sure to be well
+nourished. If you leave out meat you will make your body work overtime
+to secure enough tissue material from other foods. If you leave out
+white bread, you will lose one of the greatest sources of energy. If
+you leave out tomatoes and cucumbers and strawberries, you deprive
+your body of the salts and vitamins which are essential.</p>
+
+<p><b>A Simple Rule.</b> There is one point that is good to remember. The
+average person needs twice as much starch as he needs of protein and
+fat together. That is, if he needs four parts of protein and three of
+fat, he ought to eat about fourteen parts of starch. This does not
+mean that we need to bother ourselves with troublesome tables of what
+to eat, but only to keep in mind in a general way that we need more
+bread and <!-- Page 256 --><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256" />
+potatoes than we do meat and eggs. The body does not have
+to rebuild itself every day. It is probable that a good many people
+eat too much protein food. If a man is doing hearty work he must have
+a good supply of meat, but the average person needs only a moderate
+amount. Here again, the habits of the more intelligent families are
+likely to come pretty near the dictates of science.</p>
+
+<p><b>For the Children.</b> The mother of a family ought to know that the
+children need plenty of bread, butter, and milk. Despite all the
+notions to the contrary, good well-baked white bread is neither
+indigestible nor constipating. It is indeed the staff of life. Two
+large slices should form the background of every meal, unless there is
+an extraordinary amount of other starchy food or unless the person is
+too fat. Milk-fat (from whole milk, cream, and butter) is by far the
+best fat for children. Besides fat, it furnishes a certain
+growth-principle necessary for development. As the dairyman cannot
+raise good calves on skimmed milk, so we cannot raise robust children
+without plenty of butter and milk. The pity of it is that poor people
+are forced to try! Milk is also the best protein for children, whose
+kidneys may be overstrained by trying to care for the waste matter
+from an excessive quantity of eggs and meat. Bread and butter, milk,
+fruit, vegetables, and sugar in ample quantities and meat and eggs in
+<!-- Page 257 --><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257" />
+moderate quantities are pretty sure to make the kind of children we
+want. Above all things, let us train them not to be afraid of normal
+amounts of any regular food or of any combination of foods.</p>
+
+<p><b>The Fear of Mixtures.</b> There are many people who can without
+flinching face almost any single food, but who quail before mixtures.
+Perhaps there is no notion which is more firmly entrenched in the
+popular mind than this fear of certain food-combinations, acquired
+largely from the advertisements of certain so-called &quot;food
+specialists.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The most persistent idea is the fear of acid and milk. It is
+interesting to watch the new people when they first come to my table.
+Confronted with grape-fruit and cream at the same meal, or oranges and
+milk, or cucumbers and milk, they eat under protest, in consternation
+over the disastrous results that are sure to follow. Out of all these
+scores of people, many of whom are supposed to have weak stomachs, I
+have never had one case of indigestion from such a combination. When a
+person knows that the stomach juices themselves include hydrochloric
+acid which is far more acid than any orange or grapefruit, that the
+milk curdles as soon as it reaches the stomach, and that it must
+curdle if it is to be digested, he has to be very &quot;set&quot; indeed if he
+is to cling to any remnant of fear.</p>
+
+<p>Of course to say that the stomach is well prepared <!-- Page 258 -->
+<a name="Page_258" id="Page_258" />chemically,
+muscularly, and by its nerve supply to handle any combination of
+ordinary food in ordinary amounts is not the same thing as saying that
+we may devour with impunity any amount of anything. It is a good thing
+for every one to know when he has reached his limit, and a person with
+organic heart disease should avoid eating large quantities at one
+time, or when he is extraordinarily fatigued or emotionally disturbed,
+lest at such a time he may put a fatal strain on the pneumogastric
+nerve that controls both stomach and heart.</p>
+
+
+<p class="scheading">The Fear of Certain Foods</p>
+
+<p><b>Physical Idiosyncrasies.</b> Most of our false fears on food subjects
+come from some tradition&mdash;either a social tradition or a little
+private, pet tradition of one's own. Some one once was ill after
+eating strawberries and cream. What more natural than to look back to
+those little curdles in the dish and to start the tradition that such
+mixtures are dangerous? The worst of it is that the taboo habit is
+very likely to grow. One after another, innocent foods are thrown out
+until one wonders what is left. A patient of mine, Mr. G., told me
+that he had a short time before gone to a physician with a tale of woe
+about his sour stomach. &quot;What are you eating?&quot; asked the doctor. &quot;Bran
+crackers and prunes.&quot; &quot;Then,&quot; said the learned doctor,
+&quot;you will <!-- Page 259 --><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259" />have
+to cut out the prunes!&quot; Needless to say, this man ate everything at my
+table, and flourished accordingly.</p>
+
+<p>There may be such a thing as physical idiosyncrasies for certain
+foods. I have often heard of them, but I have never seen one. I have
+often challenged my patients to show me some of the &quot;spells&quot; which
+they say invariably follow the eating of certain foods, but I have
+almost never been given an exhibition. The man who couldn't eat eggs
+did throw up once, but he couldn't do it a second time. Many people
+have threatened to break out with hives after strawberries. One woman
+triumphantly brought me what looked like a nice eruption, but which
+proved to be the after-results of a hungry flea! After that she ate
+strawberries,&mdash;without the flea and without the hives.</p>
+
+<p><b>Not Miracles but Ideas.</b> Conversions on food subjects are so common
+at my table that I should have difficulty in remembering the
+individual stories. Scores of them run together in my mind and make a
+sort of composite narrative something like this: &quot;Oh, no, thank you, I
+don't eat this. You really must excuse me. I have tried many times and
+it is invariably disastrous.&quot; Then a reluctant yielding and a day or
+two later some talk about miracles. &quot;It really is wonderful. I don't
+understand,&quot; etc. Experiences like these only go to show the power of
+the subconscious mind, both in <!-- Page 260 --><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260" />
+building up wrong habit-reactions and
+in quickly substituting healthy ones, once the false idea is removed.</p>
+
+<p>Among my stomach-patients there were two men, brothers-in-law,
+immigrants from the Austrian Tyrol, and now resident in one of the
+cow-boy states. Leonardo spoke little English, and though Giovanni
+understood a very little, he spoke only Italian.</p>
+
+<p>Several years before I knew them, Giovanni had developed a severe case
+of stomach trouble and had finally gone to a medical center for
+operation. The disturbance, however, was not relieved by the operation
+and before long his brother-in-law fell into the same kind of trouble.
+For several years the two had spent much of their time dieting,
+vomiting, and worrying over their sour stomachs. Giovanni finally
+became so ill that his sick-benefit society had actually assessed its
+members to pay for his funeral expenses. About this time a business
+man of their town, impressed by the cure of a former patient who had
+made a quick recovery after seven years of invalidism, persuaded the
+two men to take their little savings and come to California to be
+under my care. The evening meal and breakfast went smoothly enough,
+although the menu included articles which they had been taught to
+avoid. However, as I left the house on a necessary absence soon after
+breakfast, I saw Leonardo weeping in the garden and Giovanni spitting
+up his breakfast, out at <!-- Page 261 --><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261" />
+the entrance gate. On my return, I found one
+of &quot;the family&quot; literally sitting on the coat-tails of Leonardo, while
+Giovanni hovered at a distance, safe from capture. Leonardo upbraided
+me bitterly for having undone all the gain they had made in the long
+months of rigid dieting, for now the vomiting had returned, because
+they had eaten sugar on their oatmeal at breakfast! I made Leonardo
+drink an egg-nog, took him into the consultation-room and held my hand
+on his knee to keep him in his chair, while explaining to him as best
+I could the physiologic action of the hydrochloric acid on the
+digestive juice, which he feared as a sour stomach, the sign of
+indigestion.</p>
+
+<p>During the conversation I said, &quot;I suppose Giovanni imitated you in
+this mistaken fear about your health.&quot; The reply was, &quot;No, I got it
+off him!&quot; Nearly two hours later he exclaimed in astonishment: &quot;Why,
+that milk hasn't come up! Maybe I am cured!&quot; &quot;Of course you are
+cured,&quot; I answered; &quot;there never was anything really the matter with
+your stomach, so you are cured as soon as you think you are.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Later Giovanni was inveigled into the house by the promise that he
+would have to eat nothing more than milk soup. All was smooth sailing
+after this. For my own part I feared for the permanency of the cure,
+for they were returning to the old environment. But more than three
+years have passed, and grateful <!-- Page 262 -->
+<a name="Page_262" id="Page_262" />letters still come telling of their
+continued health.</p>
+
+<p>Another patient, a teacher of domestic science in a big Eastern
+university, had lived on skimmed milk and lime-water from Easter to
+Thanksgiving. Several attempts to enlarge the dietary by adding cream
+or white of egg had only served to increase the sense of discomfort.
+Finding nothing in the history of the case to warrant a diagnosis of
+organic disease of the stomach, I served her plate with the regular
+dinner, bidding her have no hesitancy even over the pork chops and
+potato chips. She gained nine pounds in weight the first week, and in
+two and a half months was forty pounds to the good.</p>
+
+<p><b>When Re-education Failed.</b> But there is one patient who has had to
+have his lesson repeated at intervals. This man laughingly calls
+himself a disgrace to his doctor because he is a &quot;repeater.&quot; His story
+illustrates the power of an autosuggestion and the disastrous effect
+of attention to a physiological function. When Mr. T. came first to me
+he weighed only 120 pounds, although he is over six feet tall and of
+large frame. From the age of sixteen he had followed fads in eating
+and thought he had a weak stomach. I treated his &quot;weak stomach&quot; to
+everything there was in the market, including mince-pies, cabbage,
+cheese, and all the other so-called indigestibles. He gained 16-1/2
+pounds the first week and 31 pounds in five weeks. <!-- Page 263 -->
+<a name="Page_263" id="Page_263" />One would think
+that the idea about the weak stomach would have died a natural death,
+but it did not. Again and again he came back to me like a living
+skeleton, the last time weighing only 105 pounds, and again and again
+he has gone back to his home in the Middle West plump and well. Twice
+while he was at home he underwent unnecessary operations, once for an
+ulcer that was not there and once for supposed chronic spasm of the
+pylorus. Needless to say, the operations did not help. You cannot cut
+out an idea with a knife. Neither can you wash it out with a
+stomach-pump; else would Mr. T. long ago have been cured! This
+particular idea of his seems to be proof against all my best efforts
+at re-education. Psycho-analysis is impracticable, partly because of
+the duration of the habit of repression, but the history, and certain
+symbolic symptoms, indicate the Freudian mechanisms at work. All I can
+do is to feed him up, bully him along, and keep him from starving to
+death. Just now he is doing very well at home, although he has moved
+to California so as not to be too far away from &quot;the miracle-worker.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>If Mr. T.'s case had been typical, I should long ago have lost my
+faith in psychotherapy. Keeping people from starving is worth while,
+but is less satisfactory than curing them of what ails them. The
+nervous patient who has a relapse is no credit to his <!-- Page 264 -->
+<a name="Page_264" id="Page_264" />doctor. It is
+only when the origin of his trouble is not removed that the bond of
+transference tends to become permanent. The neurotic who is well only
+while under the influence of his physician is still a neurotic.
+However, as most people's complexes are neither so deeply buried nor
+so obstinate as this, a simple explanation or a single demonstration
+is usually enough to loose the fettering hold of old misconceptions.</p>
+
+
+<p class="scheading">Common Ailments</p>
+
+<p><b>&quot;Gas on the Stomach.&quot;</b> We all know people who suffer from &quot;gas.&quot;
+Indeed, very few of us escape an occasional desire to belch after a
+hearty meal. But the person with nervous indigestion rolls out the
+&quot;gas&quot; with such force that the noise can sometimes be heard all over
+the house. He may keep this up for hours at a time, under the
+conviction that he is freeing himself from the products of fermenting
+food. He may exhibit a well-bloated stomach as proof of the disastrous
+effect of certain articles of diet. The gas and the bloating are
+supposed to be the sign and the seal of indigestion, a positive
+evidence that undigested food is fermenting in the stomach.</p>
+
+<p>But what is fermentation? It is, necessarily, a question of the growth
+of bacteria and is a process which we may easily watch in our own
+kitchens. Bread rises when the yeast-cells have multiplied and acted
+on the <!-- Page 265 --><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265" />starch
+of the flour, producing enough gas to raise the whole
+mass. Potatoes ferment because bacteria have multiplied within them.
+Canned fruit blows up because enough bacteria have developed inside to
+produce sufficient gas to blow open the can. Every housewife knows
+that it takes time for each of these processes. Bread has to stand
+several hours before it will rise; potatoes do not ferment under
+twelve hours, and canned fruit is not considered safe from the
+fermenting process under three days. Evidently there is some mistake
+when a person begins to belch forth &quot;gas&quot; within an hour or two after
+a meal. As a matter of fact, it is not gas at all but merely air that
+is swallowed with the food or that was present in the empty stomach.</p>
+
+<p>When the food enters the stomach it necessarily displaces air, which
+normally comes out automatically and noiselessly. But if, through fear
+or attention, a certain set of muscles contract, the pent-up air may
+come forth awkwardly and noisily or it may stay imprisoned until we
+take measures to let it out. A hearty laugh is as good as anything,
+but if that cannot be managed, we may have to resort to a cup of hot
+water which gives the stomach a slap and makes it let go. Two belches
+are enough to relieve the pressure. After that we merely go on
+swallowing air and letting it out again, a habit both awkward and
+useless.</p>
+
+<p>If the emotion which ties the muscle-knot is very <!-- Page 266 -->
+<a name="Page_266" id="Page_266" />intense, and the
+stomach refuses to let go under ordinary measures, the pain may be
+severe. But a quantity of hot water or a dose of ipecac is sure to
+relieve the situation. If the person is able to give himself a good
+moral slap and relax his unruly muscles, he reaches the same end by a
+much pleasanter road.</p>
+
+<p>Some people are fond of the popular remedy of hot water and soda.
+Their faith in its efficacy is likely to be increased by the good
+display of gas which is sure to follow. As any cook knows, soda and
+acid always fizz. The soda is broken up by the hydrochloric acid of
+the stomach and forms salt and carbon dioxid, a gas. However, as the
+avowed aim of the remedy is the relief of gas rather than its
+manufacture, and as the soda uses up the hydrochloric acid needed in
+digestion, the practice cannot be recommended as reasonable.</p>
+
+<p><b>Gastritis.</b> I once knew a woman who went to a big city to consult a
+fashionable doctor. When she returned she told with great satisfaction
+that the doctor had pronounced her case gastritis. &quot;It must be true,&quot;
+she added, &quot;because I have so much gas on my stomach!&quot; The diagnosis
+of gastritis used to be very common. The ending <i>itis</i> means
+inflammation,&mdash;gastritis, enteritis, colitis, each meaning
+inflammation of the corresponding organ. An inflammation implies an
+irritant. There can be no kind of <i>itis</i> without the presence of
+something which irritates the membrane of the <!-- Page 267 -->
+<a name="Page_267" id="Page_267" />affected part. If we
+get unusual and irritating bacteria in some spoiled food, we are
+likely to have an acute inflammation until the offending bacteria are
+expelled. But an inflammation of this kind never lasts. People who
+have had ptomaine poisoning sometimes assert that they are afterwards
+susceptible to poisoning by the kind of food which first made them
+ill. Such a susceptibility is not so much a hold-over effect from the
+poison as a hold-over fear which tends to repeat the physical reaction
+whenever that food is eaten. I, myself, have had ptomaine poisoning
+from canned salmon, but I have never since had any trouble about
+eating salmon.</p>
+
+<p><b>Sour Stomach.</b> Sometimes when a person lies down an hour or so after
+a meal, some of the contents of his stomach comes up in his throat.
+Then if he be ignorant of physiology, he may be very much alarmed
+because his stomach is &quot;sour.&quot; Not knowing that he would have far
+greater cause for alarm if his stomach were <i>not</i> sour, he may, if the
+idea is interesting to him, begin to restrict his diet, to take
+digestive tablets, and to develop a regular case of nervous dyspepsia.
+Sometimes when the specialists measure the amount of hydrochloric acid
+in the stomach, they do find too much or too little acid; but this
+merely means that an emotion has made the glands work overtime or has
+stopped their action for a little while. The functions
+<!-- Page 268 --><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268" />of the body
+are so very, very old that there is little likelihood of permanent disturbance.</p>
+
+<p><b>Biliousness.</b> The stomach is not the only part of the body concerning
+which we lack proper confidence. Next to it the liver is the most
+maligned organ in the whole body. Although the liver is about as
+likely to be upset in its process of secreting bile as the ocean is
+likely to be lacking in salt, many an intelligent person labels every
+little disturbance &quot;biliousness&quot; and lays it at the door of his
+faithful, dependable liver.</p>
+
+<p>As a matter of fact, the liver is liable to injury from virtually but
+three sources&mdash;alcohol, bacterial infection, and cancer&mdash;and even a
+liver hardened by alcohol goes on secreting bile as usual. The patient
+dies of dropsy but not of &quot;liver complaint.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Some people act as if they thought bile were a poison. On the
+contrary, it is a very useful digestant; it aids in keeping down the
+number of harmful bacteria and helps to carry the food from intestines
+to blood. Every day the liver manufactures at least a pint of this
+important fluid. The body uses what it needs and stores the surplus
+for reserve in the gall-bladder. The flow is continuous and, despite
+all appearances to the contrary, there is no such thing as a torpid or
+an over-active liver.</p>
+
+<p>It is true that after a &quot;bilious&quot; person has vomited for a few minutes
+he is likely to throw up a certain <!-- Page 269 --><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269" />
+amount of bile, which is supposed
+to have been lying in his stomach and causing the nausea. In fact,
+however, this bile is merely a part of the usual supply stored away in
+the gall-bladder. By the very act of retching, the bile is forced out
+of the bile channels into the stomach and thence up into the mouth.
+Anybody can throw up bile at any time if he only tries hard enough.</p>
+
+<p>One of the favorite habits of certain people is the taking of calomel
+and salts. After such a dose they view with satisfaction the green
+character of the stools and conclude that they have rid themselves of
+a great amount of harmful matter. As a matter of fact, the greater
+part of the coloring in the stools is from the calomel itself, changed
+in the intestines from one salt of mercury to another. Any excess bile
+is the result of the irritating action of the calomel on the
+intestinal wall, an irritation which makes the bowel hurry to cast out
+this foreign substance without waiting for the bile to be absorbed as
+usual.</p>
+
+<p>A patient once told me that he had bought medicine from a street fakir
+and by his direction had followed it with a dose of salts. He saved
+the bowel movement, washed it in a sieve, and discovered a great
+number of &quot;gall-stones,&quot; which the medicine had so effectively washed
+from his system. He was much astonished when I told him that his
+gall-stones were merely pieces <!-- Page 270 -->
+<a name="Page_270" id="Page_270" />of soap. He did not know that
+everybody manufactures soap in his body every day, and that by taking
+an extra quantity of oil in the shape of the fakir's medicine and an
+extra quantity of potash in the salts, he had merely augmented a
+normal physiological process. The supposed action of calomel belongs
+to the same class of phenomena, and has no slightest effect on the
+liver or on real gall-stones, which are the precipitate of bile-salts
+in the gall-bladder, and which cannot be reached by any medicine.</p>
+
+<p>If the popular notions about biliousness are ill founded, what then
+causes the disturbances which undoubtedly do occur and which show
+themselves in attacks of nausea or sick headache? The answer can be
+given in a word of four letters; a coated tongue, a bilious attack and
+a sick headache are all the outcome of a mood. Stocks have gone down
+or the wife is cranky or the neighbors are hateful. Adrenalin and
+thyroid secretions are poured out as the result of emotion; digestion
+is stopped, circulation disturbed, and the whole apparatus thrown out
+of gear.</p>
+
+<p><b>Sick-Headache.</b> Sick-headache is primarily a circulatory disturbance;
+and although the disturbance may have been inaugurated by some
+chemical unbalance, the sum total of the force that makes a
+sick-headache is emotional. The emotion, of course, need not be
+conscious in order to be effective. If we picture the <!-- Page 271 -->
+<a name="Page_271" id="Page_271" />arteries all
+over the body as being supplied with, among other things, a wall of
+circular muscles, and then imagine messages of emotion being flashed
+to the nerves controlling this muscle wall, we may get an idea of what
+happens just before a sick-headache. Some parts of the arteries
+contract too much and other parts relax. The arteries to the head
+tighten up at the extremities and become loose lower down. The force
+of the blood-stream against the constricted portion can hardly fail to
+cause pain. The sick part of the headache is merely a sympathetic
+strike of the nerves which control circulation and stomach.</p>
+
+<p>The moral of all this is plain. If a sick-headache is the result of an
+emotional spasm of the blood-vessels, the obvious cure is a change of
+the emotion. Some people manage it by going to a party or a picnic,
+others by ignoring the symptoms and keeping on with their work. A
+woman physician whom I know was in the midst of a violent headache
+when called out on an obstetrical case. She felt sorry for herself,
+but went on the case. In the strenuous work which followed, she quite
+forgot the headache, which disappeared as if by magic.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes it happens that a headache recurs periodically or at regular
+intervals. It is easy to see that in such cases the exciting cause is
+fear and expectation. At some time in the past, headaches have
+occurred at <!-- Page 272 --><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272" />
+an interval of, say, fourteen days; as the next
+fourteenth day approaches the sufferer says to himself: &quot;It is about
+time for another headache. I am afraid it will come to-morrow,&quot; and of
+course it comes. One man told me that if he ate Sunday-night supper he
+inevitably had a headache on Monday morning. We were about to sit down
+to a simple Sunday supper and he refused very positively to join us. I
+told him he could stay all night and that I would take care of him if
+the Monday sickness appeared. He accepted my challenge but was unable
+to produce a headache. In fact, he felt so unusually flourishing the
+next morning that he insisted on frying the bacon for my entire
+family. That was the end of the Monday headaches.</p>
+
+<p><b>A Few Examples.</b> As sick-headache has always been considered a rather
+stubborn difficulty, not amenable to most forms of treatment, it may
+be well to cite a few cases which were helped by educational methods.
+A patient came home from a walk one day and announced that he was
+going to bed. When questioned, be said: &quot;I am tired and I have a
+sick-headache. Isn't it logical to go to bed?&quot; To which I answered
+that it would be far more logical to put some food into his stomach
+and change the circulation than to lie in bed and think about his
+pain. This man was completely cured. I have had patients throw up one
+meal, and very rarely two, but I have never had to supply <!-- Page 273 -->
+<a name="Page_273" id="Page_273" />more than
+three meals at a time. The waste of food I consider amply justified by
+the benefit to the patient.</p>
+
+<p>There once came to me an elderly woman, the wife of a poor minister.
+She was suffering from attacks of nausea, which recurred every five to
+ten days with intense pain through the eyes, and with photo-phobia or
+fear of light. I found that she had by dint of heroic efforts raised a
+large and promising family on the salary of an itinerant
+minister&mdash;from four hundred to six hundred a year! All the time she
+had been feeling sorry for herself because her husband did not
+appreciate her. One day, after reading one of his letters which seemed
+to show an utter lack of appreciation of all that she was doing, she
+fell down in the field beside her plow, paralyzed. From that time on
+she had been more or less of an invalid, continually nursing her
+grudge and complaining that she ought not to have been made to bear so
+many children.</p>
+
+<p>After I had heard this plaint over and over for about a week, I said:
+&quot;Perhaps you ought not to have had that little daughter, the little
+ewe-lamb. Maybe she was one too many.&quot; &quot;Oh, no,&quot; came the quick
+response. &quot;I couldn't have spared <i>her</i>.&quot; Then I went down the line of
+the fine stalwart sons. Perhaps she could have spared John or Tom or
+Fred? Finally she saw the whole matter in a different light,&mdash;saw
+herself as a queen among women, the mother of such a family.</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 274 --><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274" />As to
+the husband, I tried to show her that she was not very clever
+to live with a man all those years without discovering that he was not
+likely to change. &quot;You can't change him but you can change your
+reaction to him. If something keeps hurting your hand, you don't keep
+on being sore. You grow callous. Isn't it about time you grew a moral
+callous, too?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I put her on the roof to sleep, on account of her fear of light. Only
+once did she start a headache, which I quickly nipped in the bud by
+making her get up and dress. She had come to stay &quot;three months or
+four,&mdash;if I get along well.&quot; At the end of four weeks she left, an
+apparently well woman. The last I heard of her she was stumping the
+state for temperance, the oldest of an automobile party of speakers,
+and the sturdiest physically. With the emotional grievance,
+disappeared also the physical effects in stomach and head.</p>
+
+<p>Miss S., a very brilliant woman, ambitious to make the most of her
+life, had been shelved for twenty-five years because of violent
+sick-headaches which made it impossible for her to undertake any kind
+of work. She had not been able to read a half-hour a day without
+bringing on a terrible headache. I insisted on her reading, and very
+soon she was so deep in psychological literature that I had difficulty
+in making her go to bed at all. After learning the cause of her
+headaches and gaining greater emotional control, she succeeded
+<!-- Page 275 --><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275" />so
+well in freeing herself from the old habit, that she now leads the
+busiest kind of useful life with only an occasional headache, perhaps
+once in six months.</p>
+
+<p>A certain minister suffered constantly from a dull pain in his head,
+besides having violent headaches every few days. He started in to have
+a bad spell the day after his arrival at my house. As I was going out
+of the door, he caught my sleeve. &quot;Doctor,&quot; he said, &quot;would it be bad
+manners to run away?&quot; &quot;Manners?&quot; I answered. &quot;They don't count, but
+morals, yes.&quot; He stayed&mdash;and that was his last bad headache. Both
+chronic and periodic pains disappeared for good.</p>
+
+<p>One woman who had suffered from bad headaches for eighteen years lost
+them completely under a process of re-education. On the other hand, I
+have had patients who were not helped at all. The principles held good
+in their cases, but they were simply not able to lose the old habit of
+tightening up the body under emotion.</p>
+
+<p><b>Hysterical Nausea.</b> Sometimes nausea is merely the physical symbol of
+a subconscious moral disgust. We have already told the stories of &quot;the
+woman with the nausea&quot; (Chapter V) and of Mrs. Y. (Chapter VII). These
+cases are typical of many others. Their bodies were perfectly normal,
+and when, through <!-- Page 276 --><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276" />
+psycho-analysis and re-education, they were helped to make over their childish
+attitudes toward the sex-life, the nausea
+<span title="Corrected typo: was 'disappearaed'" class="hov">disappeared</span>.</p>
+
+<p><b>Loss of Appetite.</b> A nervous patient with a good appetite is &quot;the
+exception that proves the rule.&quot; The neurotic is usually under weight
+and often complains that he feels satiated almost as soon as he begins
+to eat. Loss of appetite may, of course, mean that the body is busy
+combating toxins in the blood, but in a nervous person it usually
+means a symbolic loss of appetite for something in life, a struggle of
+the personality against something for which he has &quot;no stomach.&quot;
+Psycho-analysis often reveals the source of the trouble, and a little
+bullying helps along the good work. By simply taking away a harmful
+means of expression, we may often force the subconscious mind to find
+a better language.</p>
+
+
+<p class="scheading">Summary</p>
+
+<p>Since the stomach seems to be an organ which is much better fitted to
+care for food than to care for a depressing emotion or a false idea,
+it seems far more sensible to change our minds than to keep enlarging
+our list of eatables which are taboo.</p>
+
+<p>And since most indigestion is in very truth nothing more nor less than
+an emotional disturbance, worked up by fear, anger, discontent, worry,
+ignorance, suggestion, <!-- Page 277 --><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277" />
+attention to bodily functions which are meant
+to be ignored, love of notice and the conversion of moral distress
+into physical distress, the best diet list which can be furnished to
+Mr. Everyman in search of health must read something like this:</p>
+
+
+<p class="heading">MENU</p>
+
+<p class="center">Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday</p>
+
+<p class="center">A Calm Spirit &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Plenty of Good Cheer<br />
+A Varied Diet &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Commonsense<br />
+Good Cooking<br />
+Judicious Neglect of Symptoms<br />
+Forgetfulness of the Digestive Process<br />
+A Little Accurate Knowledge<br />
+A Determination to<br />
+BE LIKE FOLKS</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<div><!-- Page 278 --><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278" /></div>
+
+<p class="heading"><a name="CHAPTER_XI" id="CHAPTER_XI">CHAPTER XI</a></p>
+
+<p class="heading"><i>In which we relearn an old trick</i></p>
+
+<p class="heading">THE BUGABOO OF CONSTIPATION</p>
+
+<p class="scheading">Popular Superstitions</p>
+
+
+<p>In line with the taboos connected with the taking of food are the
+ceremonials attendant upon its elimination. Taking anxious thought
+about functions well established by nature is a feature of
+conversion-hysteria, the displacement of emotional desire from its
+psychic realm into symbolic physical expression. Whatever other
+symptoms nervous people may manifest, they are almost sure to be
+troubled with chronic constipation. It is true that there are many
+constipated people who do not seem to be nervous and who resent being
+classed among the neurotics. Everybody knows that the occasional
+individual who has difficulty in swallowing his food is nervous and
+that the, trouble lies not in the muscles of his throat but in the
+ideas of his mind. But very few people seem to realize that the more
+common individual who makes hard work of that other simple
+process&mdash;elimination of his intestinal <!-- Page 279 -->
+<a name="Page_279" id="Page_279" />waste matter&mdash;is suffering
+from the same kind of disturbance and giving way to a nervous trick.
+When all the facts are in, the constipated person will have hard work
+to clear himself of at least one count on the charge of nerves.</p>
+
+<p><b>An Oft-told Tale.</b> Sooner or later, then, the neurotic, whether he
+calls himself a neurotic or not, is very likely to begin worrying over
+his diet or his sedentary occupation. He imagines himself the victim
+of autointoxication, afflicted with paralysis of the colon or dearth
+of intestinal secretions. He leaves off eating white bread, berries,
+cheese, chocolate, and many another innocent food, and insists on a
+diet of bran-biscuit, flaxseed breakfast-foods, prunes, spinach,
+cream, and olive-oil with doses of mineral oil between meals. In all
+probability, he begins a course of massage or he starts to take extra
+long walks and to exercise night and morning, pulling his knees up to
+his chin and touching his fingers to his toes. When all these measures
+fail, he gives in to the morning enema or the nightly pill, in
+imminent danger of succumbing to a life-long habit.</p>
+
+<p class="scheading">The Truth About Constipation</p>
+
+<p><b>What the Colon Is For.</b> It is well, then to have a fair understanding
+of the structure and purpose of our intestinal machinery. Contrary to
+general opinion, the <!-- Page 280 --><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280" />
+intestines are not a dumping-ground but a
+digestive organ. After the food is partly digested in the stomach, it
+passes through a twenty-two foot tube (the small intestine) into a
+five-foot tube (the large intestine or colon) where digestion is
+completed, the nutriment is absorbed, and the waste matter is passed
+on and out through the rectum. As the food passes along the colon,
+pushed slowly ahead by the peristaltic wave, or rhythmic muscular
+contractions of the intestinal wall, it is seized upon by the four
+hundred varieties of friendly bacteria which inhabit the intestines of
+every healthy person, and is changed into a form which the body can
+assimilate. Digestion in the stomach and small intestine is carried on
+by means of certain digestive juices, but in the large intestine it is
+the bacteria which do the work. Without them we could not live.</p>
+
+<p>Around the colon is a thick network of little blood vessels, all of
+which lead straight to the liver, the storehouse of the body. After
+the food is fully digested, it is passed through the thin intestinal
+wall into these tiny vessels and carried away to liver and muscles for
+storage or for immediate use.</p>
+
+<p>This process of absorption is carried on throughout the whole length
+of the colon. Not until the very end of the intestine is reached is
+all the nutrition abstracted. The bowel-content can properly be called
+waste matter only after it has reached the rectum or <!-- Page 281 -->
+<a name="Page_281" id="Page_281" />pouch at the
+lower end of the colon. Even then, this waste matter is not poison,
+but merely indigestible material which the body cannot handle.</p>
+
+<p><b>Food, not Poison.</b> The colon is not a cesspool but a digestive and
+assimilating organ. Its content is not poison but food. Active
+elimination is important not so much because delay causes
+autointoxication or poisoning as because too large a mass is hard to
+manage and irritates the intestinal wall. The problem is not so much
+one of toxicology as of simple mechanics. If Nature had put within the
+body five feet of tubing which could easily become a cesspool and a
+breeder of poison, it is not at all likely that she would have laid
+alongside an elaborate system of blood vessels leading not out to the
+kidneys but into the storehouse of the liver; and if civilized man's
+changed manner of living had so upset Nature's plans as easily to
+transform his internal machinery into a chronic source of danger, we
+may be sure that he would long ago have gone the way of the unfit and
+succumbed to his own poisons.</p>
+
+<p><b>Possible Invasions.</b> It is true that the intestinal tract, like the
+rest of the body, is open to attack by harmful bacteria. But in a
+great majority of cases, these enemy bacteria are either quickly
+destroyed by the beneficent microbes within or are immediately cast
+out as unfit. Any germs irritating to the intestinal wall cause the
+mucous membrane to produce an unusual flow <!-- Page 282 -->
+<a name="Page_282" id="Page_282" />of mucus which washes away
+the offending bacteria in what we call a
+diarrhea.<a name="FNanchor_52" id="FNanchor_52"></a>
+<a href="#Footnote_52" class="fnanchor">[52]</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_52" id="Footnote_52"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_52"><span class="label">[52]</span>
+</a> If the invading army proves obstinate and the diarrhea
+continues a day or so, it is wise to assist Nature by a dose of
+castor-oil, which gives an additional insult to the intestinal wall,
+spurs it on to a desperate effort, and hastens the cleansing process.
+In severe cases the more promptly the castor-oil is administered the
+better. Such emergency measures are very different from the habitual
+use of insulting drugs.</p></div>
+
+<p>Sometimes the wrong kind of bacteria do persist, causing anemia,
+rheumatism, sciatica, or neuritis. When these disorders are not the
+result of infection from teeth, tonsils, or other sources of poison,
+but are really caused by intestinal bacteria, I have found that a diet
+of buttermilk (lactic acid bacteria), with turnip-tops or spinach to
+supply the necessary mineral salts, often succeeds in planting the
+right bacteria and driving out the disturbing ones. These disorders
+are invasions from without, like tuberculosis or malaria, and are as
+likely to attack the person with easy bowel movements as the one with
+the most chronic constipation.</p>
+
+<p><b>Autointoxication.</b> A good deal of the talk about autointoxication is
+just talk. It sounds well and affords an easy explanation for all
+sorts of ills, but in a large majority of cases the diagnosis can
+hardly be substantiated. Uninformed writers of newspaper articles on
+the care of the body, or purveyors of purgatives or apparatus for
+internal baths are fond of dilating on <!-- Page 283 -->
+<a name="Page_283" id="Page_283" />the &quot;foulness of the colon&quot; as
+a leading cause of disease. As a rule, they advise either a strict
+diet, some kind of cathartic, or an elaborate process of washing out
+the colon to clear the body of its terrible accumulation of poisons.</p>
+
+<p><b>Cathartics and Enemas.</b> He who makes a practice of flushing out his
+intestinal tract with high enemas and internal baths is like a person
+who eats a good dinner and then proceeds to wash out his stomach. In
+the mistaken idea that he is making himself clean, he is washing what
+was never intended to be washed and robbing the body of the nutrition
+which it needs. And the man who persists in the pill habit is making a
+worse mistake, adding insult to injury and forcing the mucous membrane
+to toughen itself against such malicious attacks.</p>
+
+<p><b>Cathartics and Operations.</b> Even in emergencies, the use of
+purgatives as a routine measure is happily decreasing year by year.
+For many years I have deplored the use of purgatives before and after
+operations. That other practitioners are coming to the same conclusion
+is witnessed by a number of papers recently read in medical societies
+condemning purgation at the time of operation.</p>
+
+<p>Among the most favorably received papers of the California Medical
+Societies have been one by Emmet L. Rixford, surgeon of the Stanford
+University <!-- Page 284 --><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284" />
+Medical College, read before the Southern California
+Medical Society at Los Angeles December 8, 1916, and one by W.D.
+Alvarez at the California Medical Society, Del Monte, 1918,&mdash;both
+condemning the use of purgatives as a routine measure before
+operations. An article entitled the &quot;Use and Abuse of Cathartics&quot; in
+the &quot;Journal of the American Medical Association&quot; admirably summarizes
+the disadvantages of purgation at such a
+time.<a name="FNanchor_53" id="FNanchor_53"></a>
+<a href="#Footnote_53" class="fnanchor">[53]</a></p>
+
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_53" id="Footnote_53">
+</a><a href="#FNanchor_53"><span class="label">[53]</span>
+</a> &quot;1 Danger of dissemination of infection throughout the
+peritoneal cavity, in case localized infection exists.
+</p><p>
+&quot;2 Increased absorption of toxins and greater bacterial activity by
+reason of the fact that undigested food has been carried down into the
+colon to serve as pabulum for bacteria, and that liquid feces form a
+better culture medium than solid feces.
+</p><p>
+&quot;3 Increased distention of the intestine with gas and fluid, when it
+should be empty....
+</p><p>
+&quot;4 Psychic and physical weakness produced by dehydration of the body,
+disturbance in the salt balance of the system, and the loss of sleep
+occasioned by the frequent purging during the night preceding the
+operation. As Oliver Wendell Holmes says: 'If it were known that a
+prize fighter were to have a drastic purgative administered two or
+three days before a contest, no one will question that it would affect
+the betting on his side unfavorably. If this be true for a powerful
+man in perfect health, how much more true must it be of the sick man
+battling for life.'
+</p><p>
+&quot;5 Increase in postoperative distress and danger: thirst, gas pains,
+and even ileus....&quot;&mdash;<i>Journal of American Medical Association</i>, Vol.
+73, No. 17, p. 1285, Oct. 25. 1919.</p></div>
+
+<p>Four years ago I was called to a near-by city to see a former patient
+who two days before had had a minor operation,&mdash;removal of a cyst of
+the breast. She was dazed, almost in a state of surgical shock and
+very near <!-- Page 285 --><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285" />collapse.
+I found that she had been put through the usual
+course of purgation before operation and starvation afterward, and I
+diagnosed her condition as a state bordering on acidosis, or lowering
+of the alkaline salts of the body. I ordered food at once. She rallied
+and recovered.</p>
+
+<p>A few months later this same woman had to undergo a much more serious
+operation for multiple fibroids of the uterus and removal of the
+appendix. This time I advised the surgeon against the use of any
+purgative, and he took my remarks so seriously that he did not even
+allow an enema to be given. This time the patient showed no signs of
+exhaustion and had very few gas pains. I firmly believe that the day
+will soon come when a patient under operation, or a patient after
+childbirth, will no longer be depleted by a weakening and dehydrating
+cathartic and by a period of starvation, at a time when he needs all
+the energy he can summon.</p>
+
+<p><b>Cathartics and Childbirth.</b> The article referred to in the &quot;Journal
+of the American Medical Association&quot; cites the experiences of Dr. R.
+McPherson of the Lying-in Hospital of New York, &quot;who showed that the
+routine purgation after confinement is not only useless but harmful.
+Of 322 women who were not purged, only three had fever (and one of
+them a mammary abscess); most of them had normal bowel movements and
+those who did not were given an enema <!-- Page 286 -->
+<a name="Page_286" id="Page_286" />every third day. Of 322 women
+who were delivered by the same technique and the same operators but
+were purged in the usual routine manner, twenty-eight had some fever.&quot;
+This experience of one physician is corroborated by that of others who
+find that the more we tamper with the natural functions in time of
+stress the harder do we make the recuperative process. There are
+certainly times when catharsis is necessary but &quot;one thing is certain,
+the day for routine purgation is
+past.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_54" id="FNanchor_54"></a>
+<a href="#Footnote_54" class="fnanchor">[54]</a> Even in emergencies we
+need to know why we administer cathartics and in chronic cases we may
+be sure that they are always a mistake.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_54" id="Footnote_54"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_54"><span class="label">[54]</span></a> Ibid, p. 1286.</p></div>
+
+<p><b>&quot;An Old Trick.&quot;</b> Before we make a practice of interfering with
+Nature's processes, it is well to remember how old and stable those
+processes are. As long as there has been the taking in of food, there
+has been also the casting out of waste matter. The sea-anemone closes
+in on the little mollusk that floats against its waving petals,
+assimilates what it can and rejects the rest. In the long line from
+sea-anemone to man, this automatic process of elimination has gone on
+without a hitch, adapting itself with perfect success to the changing
+habits of the varying types of life. So old a process is not easily
+upset. And, be it noted, in the human body this automatic, involuntary
+process still <!-- Page 287 --><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287" />
+goes on with very little trouble until it reaches a point in the body where man,
+the thinking animal, tries to control it by conscious thought.</p>
+
+<p><b>A Question of Evacuation.</b> Much of the misconception about
+constipation arises from the mistaken idea that this is a disorder of
+the whole intestine or at least of the whole colon. As a matter of
+fact, the trouble is almost wholly in the rectum. There is no trouble
+with the general traffic movement, but only with the unloading at the
+terminus. In my experience, the patient reports that he feels the
+fecal mass in the lower part of the rectum, but that he is unable to
+expel it. Examination by finger or by X-ray reveals a mass in the
+rectal pouch. If there is a piling up of freight further back on the
+line, it is only because the unloading process has been delayed at the
+terminus.</p>
+
+<p>So long as the bowel-content is in the region of automatic control,
+there is very little likelihood of trouble. An occasional case of
+organic trouble&mdash;appendicitis, lead-colic, mechanical obstruction, new
+growths or spinal-cord disease&mdash;may cause a real blockade, but in
+ninety-nine cases out of every hundred there is little trouble so long
+as the involuntary muscles, working automatically under the direction
+of the subconscious mind, are in control. By slow or rapid stages, on
+time or behind time, the bowel-content reaches the upper <!-- Page 288 -->
+<a name="Page_288" id="Page_288" />part of the
+rectum and passes through a little valve into the lower pouch. Here is
+where the trouble begins.</p>
+
+<p><b>Meddlesome Interference.</b> In the natural state the little human, like
+the other animals, empties his bowel whenever the fecal mass enters
+the lower portion of the rectum. The presence of the mass in the
+rectum constitutes a call to stool which is responded to as
+unthinkingly as is the desire for air in the taking of a breath. But
+the tiny child soon has to learn to control some of his natural
+functions. At the lower end of the rectum there is a purse-string
+muscle called the <i>Sphincter-ani</i>, an involuntary muscle which may
+with training be brought partly under voluntary control. Under the
+demands of civilization, the baby learns to tighten up this muscle
+until the proper time for evacuation. Then, if he be normal, he lets
+go, the muscles higher up contract and the bowel empties itself
+automatically, as it always did before civilization began.</p>
+
+<p>There is, however, a possibility of trouble whenever the conscious
+mind tries to assume control of functions which are meant to be
+automatic. Under certain conditions necessary control becomes
+meddlesome interference. If the child for one reason or another takes
+too much interest in the function of elimination; if he likes too much
+the sense-gratification from stimulation of the rectal nerves and
+learns to increase this gratification <!-- Page 289 -->
+<a name="Page_289" id="Page_289" />by holding back the fecal mass;
+if he gets the idea that the function is &quot;not nice&quot; and takes the
+interest that one naturally feels in subjects that are taboo; or if he
+catches from his elders the suggestion that the bowel movement is a
+highly important process and that something disastrous is likely to
+happen unless it is successfully performed every day; then his very
+interest in the matter tends to interfere with automatic regulation,
+and to cause trouble.</p>
+
+<p>Just as people often find it hard to let go the bladder muscle and
+urinate when in a hurry or under observation, and just as an
+apprehensive woman in childbirth tightens up the purse-string muscle
+of the womb, so the little child, or the grown up who catches the
+suggestion of difficulty in the bowel movement, loses the trick of
+letting go. Instead of merely exercising control by temporarily
+inhibiting the function, he tries to carry through the process itself
+by voluntary control&mdash;and fails. Constipation is a perfect example of
+the power of suggestion, and of the troublesome effect of a fear-idea
+in the realm of automatic functions.</p>
+
+
+<p class="scheading">Food and Constipation</p>
+
+<p>Since the waste matter from all foods finally reaches the rectum, and
+since constipation is merely a difficulty in the forces of expulsion,
+it is hard to see how any normal food in the quantities usually eaten
+could have <!-- Page 290 --><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290" />the
+slightest effect on the problem. When we remember that
+it takes food from twelve to twenty-four hours to reach the rectum,
+and that it has during all that time been subjected to the action of
+the powerful chemicals of the digestive tract, it is hard to imagine a
+piece of cheese, of whatever variety, strong enough to stop the
+contraction of the muscles of the upper rectum or to tie the
+sphincter-muscle into a knot. It would be difficult to find a food
+which could pass without effect through twenty-seven feet of
+intestinal tubing only to become suddenly effective on the wall of the
+rectum. If the wrong kind of food is the cause of constipation, why
+does the rectum prove to be the most refractory portion of the tube?
+On what principle could a piece of chocolate inhibit the call to stool
+or contract the sphincter muscle? On the other hand, even if it should
+be conceded that constipation were the result of lack of lubricating
+secretions in the colon, how could two tablespoonfuls of mineral oil
+be a sufficient lubricant after being mixed with liquid and solid food
+through many feet of the intestinal tract?</p>
+
+<p><b>An Adaptable Apparatus.</b> The lining of the intestines has plenty of
+secretions to take care of its function. It is as well adapted to the
+vicissitudes of life as are the other parts of the body. The muscular
+coat is no more liable to paralysis or spasm than are the voluntary
+muscles. As the skin adapts itself to all <!-- Page 291 -->
+<a name="Page_291" id="Page_291" />waters and all weathers,
+and as the lungs adjust themselves to varying air-pressures, so the
+intestinal wall makes ready adaptation to any common-sense demands,
+adjusting itself with ease to an athletic or a sedentary life, and to
+the normal variations of diet. What man has eaten throughout the
+centuries man may eat to-day. If you will but believe it, your
+intestines will make no more objection to white bread, blackberries,
+and cheese, along with all other ordinary articles of food, than the
+skin makes to varying kinds of water. Naturally, the suggested idea
+that a food will constipate tends to carry itself out to fulfilment
+and to prevent the call to stool from rising to the level of
+consciousness; but the real force lies not in the food but in the
+suggestion.</p>
+
+<p><b>The Bran Fad.</b> It is when we try to improve on the normal human diet
+that we really insult the body. He who leaves off eating nourishing
+white bread and takes to bran muffins is simply cheating his body.
+Bran has a small food value, but the human body is not made to extract
+it. Not only does bran fail to give us any nourishment itself, but it
+lessens the power of the intestines to care for other
+food.<a name="FNanchor_55" id="FNanchor_55"></a>
+<a href="#Footnote_55" class="fnanchor">[55]</a> The
+fad for bran is based on the well-known fact that we need a certain
+quantity of bulk in order to stimulate the intestinal wall to normal
+peristalsis. We do need bulk, but not more than we naturally get from
+a normal and varied <!-- Page 292 --><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292" />
+diet including a reasonable amount of fruit and vegetables.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_55" id="Footnote_55"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_55"><span class="label">[55]</span>
+</a> See an article entitled &quot;Bread and Bran,&quot; <i>Journal of
+American Medical Association</i>, July 5, 1919, p. 36.</p></div>
+
+<p>It is true that the suggestion of the efficacy of bran, dates,
+spinach, or any other food is frequently quite sufficient to give
+relief, temporarily, just as massage, manipulation of the vertebrae,
+the surgeon's knife, or mineral oil may be enough to carry the
+conviction of power to a suggestible individual. But who wants to take
+his suggestions in such inconvenient forms as these?</p>
+
+<p><b>Change of Water.</b> Another popular superstition centers around
+drinking-waters. There are people who cannot move from one town to
+another, much less take an extensive trip, without a fit of
+constipation&mdash;or a box of pills. If they only knew it, there is no
+water on earth which could make a person constipated. A new water,
+full of unusual minerals, might hasten the bowel movement, but on what
+possible principle could it retard it? Constipation has nothing to do
+with food or with water, but solicitous care about either can hardly
+fail to create the trouble which it tries to avoid.</p>
+
+
+<p class="scheading">The Cure</p>
+
+<p><b>Taking off the Brakes.</b> Since constipation is wholly due to the
+acceptance of a false suggestion, the only logical cure must be
+release from the power of <!-- Page 293 --><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293" />
+that suggestion. &quot;He is able as soon as he
+thinks he is able&quot;; not that thought gives the power, but that the
+right thought releases the inhibition of the mistaken thought. As soon
+as the brakes are taken off, the internal machinery is quite able to
+make the wheels go round. The bowel will empty itself if we let it.
+The function of elimination is not a new trick learned with difficulty
+by the aged, but a trick as old and as elemental as life itself. Like
+balancing on a bicycle, it may not be done by any voluntary muscular
+effort, but it just does itself when one learns how.</p>
+
+<p>Once the sense of power comes, once the mind forgets to be doubtful or
+afraid, then the old automatic habit invariably reasserts itself.
+Meddlesome interference may throw the mechanism out of gear, but
+fortunately it cannot strip the gears. Constipation is an inhibition
+or restraint of function, but is never a loss of function. No one is
+too old, no one is too fixed in the bad habit to relearn the old
+trick. I have had a good many patients with chronic constipation, but
+I have never had one who failed to learn. Real conviction speedily
+brings success, and in many cases success seems to outrun conviction.
+So efficient is Nature if she has only half a chance!</p>
+
+<p><b>Some People Who Learned.</b> Unless you are over ninety-two, do not
+despair. One old lady of that age, a sort of patient by proxy, was
+able to cure herself <!-- Page 294 --><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294" />
+without even one consultation. Her daughter had
+been a patient of mine and had been cured of the constipation with
+which she had been busy for many years. The mother, who believed her
+own bowel paralyzed, had been in the habit of lying on the bed and
+taking a copious enema every second day of her life. When, however,
+she heard of her daughter's cure, the bright old woman gave up her
+enemas and let her bowels do their own functioning. She stayed cured
+until her death at ninety-five.</p>
+
+<p><b>A Fifty-year Habit.</b> Another old lady was not quite so easily
+convinced. She ridiculed the idea that her son of fifty, who had been
+&quot;constipated in his cradle&quot; could be cured of his lifelong habit, but
+he was cured. As long as there is life and the light of reason, so long may Nature's functions
+<span title="Corrected typo: was 're'" class="hov">be</span> re&euml;stablished.</p>
+
+<p><b>The Whole Family.</b> Nor is any one too young to learn. A tiny baby is
+easily taught. There came to me for two consultations a mother and her
+two babies, all three constipated. The four-year-old child, mentally
+deficient, had been fed on milk of magnesia from his infancy, and the
+four-months-old baby had been started on the same path. I explained to
+the mother the mechanism of elimination, told her to give up
+cathartics, and to set a regular time for herself and the baby, but
+was a little dubious about the mentally <!-- Page 295 -->
+<a name="Page_295" id="Page_295" />deficient four-year-old.
+However she soon reported that they had all three promptly acquired
+the new habit. Four years later she told me that they had never had
+any more trouble.</p>
+
+<p><b>A Record History.</b> When Miss H. first came to my house, she told a
+story that was almost incredible. She said that for many months she
+had been taking eight tablespoonfuls of mineral oil three times a day
+besides a cathartic at night, and an enema in the morning. No wonder
+she was a little dubious over such mild treatment as mine seemed to be!</p>
+
+<p>Constipation was only one of this young woman's troubles. She could
+not sleep and was so fatigued that she believed herself at the end of
+her physical capital. When she first came to me she had tears in her
+eyes most of the time and used to confide to various people that she
+was sure she was a patient that I could not cure,&mdash;a very common
+belief among nervous invalids! She was sure that I did not understand
+her case, and that she could not get anything out of this kind of treatment.</p>
+
+<p>It was only a very short time, however, before her bowels were
+functioning like those of a normal person. She lost her insomnia and
+her fatigue and went away as well as ever. When she got back to her
+office, she found that her old position, which she had believed secure
+to her, had been given to another. She had to <!-- Page 296 -->
+<a name="Page_296" id="Page_296" />go out and hunt a new
+job and face conditions harder than she had had before, but she came
+through with flying colors. A short time ago Miss H. came back to see
+me,&mdash;a happy, robust young woman, very different from the person I had
+first known. She assured me that she had never had any return of her
+old symptoms and that she was as well as a person could be.</p>
+
+<p><b>Living up to a Suggestion.</b> Mrs. T. had not had a natural movement of
+the bowels in twenty-five years. After the birth of a child,
+twenty-five years before, her physician had told her that her muscles
+had been so badly torn in labor that they could not carry through a
+natural movement. After that she had never gone a day without a pill
+or an enema. I explained to her that when any muscle of the rectum is
+injured in childbirth, it is the sphincter-ani, and that since this is
+the muscle whose contraction holds back the bowel content, its injury
+would tend to over-free evacuation rather than to constipation. She
+saw the point and within two or three days regained her old power of
+spontaneous evacuation.</p>
+
+<p><b>Practical Steps.</b> The first step, then, in acquiring normal habits is
+the conviction of the integrity of our physical machines and a
+determination not to interfere by thought, or by physical meddling,
+with the elemental functions of our bodies. After this all-important
+step, there are a few practical suggestions which it is well to
+<!-- Page 297 --><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297" />follow. Most of
+them are nothing more than the common-sense habits of
+personal hygiene which are so obvious as to be almost axiomatic, but
+which are nevertheless often neglected:</p>
+
+<p>1 Eat three square meals a day.</p>
+
+<p>2 Drink when thirsty, having conveniently at hand the facilities for
+drinking.</p>
+
+<p>3 Heed the call to stool as you heed the call of hunger. When the
+stool passes the little valve between the upper and lower portions of
+the rectum, it gives the signal that the time for evacuation has come.
+If this signal is always heeded, it will automatically start the
+machinery that leads to evacuation. If it is persistently ignored
+because one is too busy, or because the mind is filled with the idea
+of disability, the call very soon fails to rise to the level of consciousness.
+The feces remain in the rectum, and the bad habit is begun.</p>
+
+<p>4 Choose a regular time and keep that appointment with yourself as
+regularly as possible. In all the activities of Nature, there is a
+rhythm which it is well to observe.</p>
+
+<p>5 Take time to acquire the habit. Do not be in a hurry. Do not strain.
+No amount of effort will start the movement. Just let it come of itself.</p>
+
+<p>6 Finally, should the unconscious suggestion of lack of power
+stubbornly remain in force, take a small enema on the third day. If
+the waste matter <!-- Page 298 --><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298" />
+accumulates for three or more days, the bulk becomes
+so great that the circular muscles of the rectum are unable to handle
+it, just as the fingers cannot squeeze down to expel water from too
+large a mass of wet blankets. Take only a small enema&mdash;never over a
+quart at a time&mdash;and expel the water immediately. One or two such
+measures will bring away the mass in the rectum. The material farther
+up still contains food elements and is not yet ready for expulsion.
+Lessen the amount of water each time until no outside help is needed.
+Once you get the right idea, all enemas will be superfluous.</p>
+
+<p class="scheading">Summary</p>
+
+<p>If you would have in a nutshell an epitome of the truth about
+constipation, indigestion, insomnia, and the other functional
+disturbances common to nervous folk, you can do, no better than to
+commit to memory and store away for future reference that choice
+limerick of the centipede, which so admirably sums up the whole matter
+of meddlesome interference:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span>A centipede was happy quite<br /></span>
+<span>Until a frog in fun<br /></span>
+<span>Said, &quot;Pray, which leg comes after which?&quot;<br /></span>
+<span>This raised her mind to such a pitch,<br /></span>
+<span>She lay distracted in the ditch,<br /></span>
+<span>Considering how to run.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><!-- Page 299 --><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299" />Whoever
+tries to consider &quot;which leg comes after which&quot; in any line
+of physiological activity, is pretty sure to find himself in the ditch
+considering how to run. Wherefore, remember the centipede!</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<div><!-- Page 300 --><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300" /></div>
+<p class="heading"><a name="CHAPTER_XII" id="CHAPTER_XII">CHAPTER XII</a></p>
+
+<p class="heading"><i>In which handicaps are dropped</i></p>
+
+<p class="heading">A WOMAN'S ILLS</p>
+
+<p class="scheading">&quot;The Female of the Species&quot;</p>
+
+
+<p>If ever there was a man who wished himself a woman, he has hidden away
+the desire within the recesses of his own heart. But one does not have
+to wait long to hear a member of the female sex exclaim with evident
+emotion, &quot;Oh, dear, I wish I had been born a man!&quot; It is probable that
+if these same women were given the chance to transform themselves
+overnight, they would hesitate long when it actually came to the
+point. The joys of being a woman are real joys. However, in too many
+cases these joys seem hardly to compensate for the discomforts of the
+feminine organism. It is the body that drags. Painful menstrual
+periods, the dreaded &quot;change of life,&quot; various &quot;female troubles&quot; with
+a number of pregnancies scattered along between, make some of the
+daughters of Eve feel that they spend a good deal of their lives
+paying a penalty merely for being women. Brought <!-- Page 301 -->
+<a name="Page_301" id="Page_301" />up to believe
+themselves heirs to a curse laid on the first woman, they accept their
+discomforts with resignation and try to make the best of a bad business.</p>
+
+<p><b>&quot;Since the War.&quot;</b> Nothing is quite the same since the war. Among
+other things we have learned that many of our so-called handicaps were
+nothing but illusions,&mdash;base libels on the female body. Under the
+stern necessity of war the women of the world discovered that they
+could stand up under jobs which have until now been considered quite
+beyond their powers. Society girls, who were used to coddling
+themselves, found a new joy in hard and continuous work; middle-aged
+women, who were supposed to be at the time of life when little could
+be expected of them, quite forgot themselves in service. Ambulance
+drivers, nurses, welfare workers, farmerettes, Red-Cross workers,
+street-car conductors and &quot;bell-boys,&quot; revealed to themselves and to
+the world unsuspected powers of endurance in a woman's body. Although
+some of the heavier occupations still seem to be &quot;man's work,&quot; better
+fitted for a man's sturdier body, we know now that many of these
+disabilities were merely a matter of tradition and of faulty training.</p>
+
+<p>There still remains, however, a goodly number of women who are
+continuously or periodically below par because of some form of
+feminine disability. Some of these women are suffering from real
+physical <!-- Page 302 --><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302" />
+handicaps, but many of them need to be told that they are disabled not
+by reason of being women but by reason of being nervous women.</p>
+
+<p><b>&quot;Nerves&quot; Again.</b> Despite the organic disturbances which may beset the
+reproductive organs, and despite the havoc wrought by venereal diseases,
+it may be said with absolute assurance that the majority of feminine ills are the result
+neither of the natural frailty of the female body, nor even of man's
+<span title="Corrected typo: was 'infringment'" class="hov">infringement</span> of the social law,
+but are the direct result of false suggestion and of false attitudes toward
+the facts of the reproductive life. The trouble is less a difficulty
+with the reproductive organs than a difficulty with the reproductive
+instinct. &quot;Something wrong&quot; with the instinct is translated by the
+subconscious mind into &quot;something wrong&quot; with the related generative
+organs, and converted into a physical pain.</p>
+
+<p>That this relation has always been dimly felt is shown by the fact
+that the early Greeks called nervous disorders <i>hysteria</i>, from the
+Greek word for womb. It is only lately, however, that the blame has
+been put in the right place and the trouble traced to the <i>instinct</i>
+rather than to the <i>organs</i> of reproduction.</p>
+
+<p><b>Why Women Are Nervous.</b> Although women hold no monopoly, it must be
+conceded that they are particularly prone to &quot;nerves.&quot; The reason is
+not hard to find. Since the leading factor in a neurosis is a
+<!-- Page 303 --><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303" />disturbance
+of the insistent instinct of reproduction, a disturbance
+usually based on repression, then any class of persons in whom the
+instinct is particularly repressed would, in the very nature of the
+case, be particularly liable to nervousness.</p>
+
+<p>No one who thoroughly knows human nature would attempt to deny that
+woman is as strongly endowed as man with the great urge toward the
+perpetuation of the race, or that she has had to repress the instinct
+more severely than has man. The man insists on knowing that the
+children he provides for are his own children. Whatever the degree of
+his own fidelity, he must be sure that his wife is true to him. Thus
+has grown up the insistence that, no matter what man does, woman, if
+she is to be counted respectable, shall control the urge of the
+instinct and live up to the requirements of continence set for her by
+society.</p>
+
+<p>Unfortunately, however, there is more often blind repression than
+rational control. The measures taken to prevent a girl's becoming a
+tom-boy are measures of sex-repression quite as much as of
+sex-differentiation. Over-reaction of sensitive little souls to
+lessons in modesty often causes distortion of normal sex-development.
+Ignorance concerning the phenomena of life is commended as innocence,
+while it really implies a sex-curiosity which has been too severely
+repressed. The young woman blushes at thoughts of love, while the
+<!-- Page 304 --><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304" />young
+man is filled with a sense of dignity. We smile at the picture
+of &quot;Miss Philura's&quot; confusion as she hesitatingly sends up to her
+Creator a petition for the much-desired boon of a husband. But really,
+why shouldn't she want one? Many a young woman, in order to deaden her
+senses to the unsuspected lure of the reproductive instinct by what is
+really an awkward attempt at <i>sublimation</i>, makes a fetish of dress
+and social position and considers only the marriage of convenience;
+or, on the other hand, she scorns men altogether and throws herself
+into a &quot;career.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Young men are not so often taught to repress, but neither are they
+taught to swing their vital energies into altruistic channels through
+sublimation. Since the woman of his class will not marry him until he
+has money, the young man too often satisfies his undirected instincts
+in a commercial way. The statistics of venereal diseases prove that
+here, as elsewhere, goods subject to barter are subject to
+contamination. In a late marriage, too often a contaminated body
+accompanies the material possessions which the standards of society
+have demanded of a husband.</p>
+
+<p>But the woman pays in still other coin for the repressions arising
+from faulty childhood training. Unable to find expression for herself
+either in marriage or in devotion to work, because some old childish
+repression is still denying all outlet to her legitimate desire,
+<!-- Page 305 --><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305" />she
+frequently falls into a neurosis; or if she escapes a real breakdown,
+she gives expression to unsatisfied longings in some isolated nervous
+symptoms which in many cases center about the organs of generation.
+There then results any one of the various functional disturbances
+which are only too often mistaken for organic disease. What is needed
+in cases like this is not a gynecologist nor a surgeon, but a
+psycho-pathologist&mdash;or perhaps only a grasp of the facts. Let us look
+at the more common of these disturbances in order to gain an
+understanding of the situation.</p>
+
+
+<p class="scheading">The Menstrual Period</p>
+
+<p><b>Potential Motherhood.</b> Among the normal phenomena of a woman's life
+is the recurring cycle of potential motherhood. Every three or four
+weeks a new ovum or egg matures in the ovary and undergoes certain
+chemical changes, which send into the blood a substance called a
+hormone. This hormone is a messenger, stimulating the mucous membrane
+of the womb into making its velvet pile longer and softer, and its
+nutrient juices more abundant in readiness for the ovum.</p>
+
+<p>The same stimulus causes the whole organism to make ready for a new
+life. As in hunger, the chemistry of the body produces the
+muscle-tension that is felt as a craving for food, so this recurring
+chemical <!-- Page 306 --><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306" />
+stimulus produces a definite craving in body and mind. This
+craving brings about an increased irritability or sensitiveness to
+stimuli which may result either in a joyous or a fretful mood.</p>
+
+<p>During sleep the social inhibitions are felt less distinctly and the
+sleeper dreams love-dreams woven from messages coming up from all the
+minute nerve-endings in the expectant reproductive organs. But if no
+germ-cell travels up the womb-canal and tube to meet and impregnate
+the ovum, the womb-lining rejects the egg as chemically unfit. All the
+furbishings are loosened from the walls and slowly cast out,
+constituting the menstrual flow. The phenomenon as a whole is a
+physiological function and should be accompanied by a sense of
+well-being and comfort as is the exercise of any other function, such
+as digestion or muscular activity. Only too often, however, it is
+dreaded as an unmitigated disaster, a time for giving up work or fun
+and going to bed with a hot-water bottle until &quot;the worst is over.&quot;
+Let us see how this perversion comes about.</p>
+
+<p><b>Why Menstruation Is Painful.</b> What sort of atmosphere is created for
+the young girl as she attains puberty? Most girls get their first
+inkling of the menstrual period from the periodic &quot;sick spells&quot; of
+mother or sister. This knowledge comes without conscious thought and
+is a direct observation of the
+<!-- Page 307 --><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307" />subconscious mind,
+which records impressions with the accuracy and completeness of a photographic
+plate. Hearing the talk about a &quot;sick-time&quot; and observing the signs of
+&quot;cramps&quot; among older friends, the young girl's subconscious mind plays
+up to the suggestion and recoils with fear from the newly experienced
+sensations in the maturing organs of reproduction.</p>
+
+<p>This recoil of fear interferes with the circulation in the functioning
+organs, just as fear blanches the face or hinders digestion. There is
+several times as much blood in the stomach when it is full of food as
+there is between meals, but we do not for this reason fancy that we
+have a pain after each meal. There is more blood in the generative
+organs during their functioning, but this means pain only when fear
+ties up the circulation and causes undue congestion. Fear acts further
+on the sturdy muscle of the womb, tying it up into just such knots as
+we feel in the esophagus when we say that we have a lump in the
+throat. It is safe to say that ninety-five cases of painful
+menstruation out of every hundred are caused by fear and by the
+expectation of pain. The cysts and tumors responsible for pain are so
+rare as to be fairly negligible, when compared with these other
+causes.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Clelia Duel Mosher of Stanford University has for many years
+carried on careful investigations among the students of the
+university. After describing in <!-- Page 308 -->
+<a name="Page_308" id="Page_308" />detail certain physical exercises
+which she has found of value, she continues:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>But more important even than this is an alteration of the morbid
+     attitude of women themselves toward this function; and almost
+     equally essential is a fundamental change in the habit of mind on
+     our part as physicians; for do we not tend to translate too much,
+     the whole of a woman's life into terms of menstruation? If every
+     young girl were taught that menstruation is not normally a &quot;bad
+     time&quot; and that pain or incapacity at that period is as
+     discreditable and unnecessary as bad breath due to decaying
+     teeth, we might almost look for a revolution in the physical life
+     of women.... In my experience the traditional treatment of rest
+     in bed, directing the attention solely to the sex-zone of the
+     body, and the accepted theory that it is an inevitable illness
+     while at the same time the mind is without occupation, produces a
+     morbid attitude and favors the development and exaggeration of
+     whatever symptoms there may
+	 be.<a name="FNanchor_56" id="FNanchor_56"></a>
+	 <a href="#Footnote_56" class="fnanchor">[56]</a></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_56" id="Footnote_56">
+</a><a href="#FNanchor_56"><span class="label">[56]</span>
+</a> Clelia Duel Mosher: <i>Health and the Woman Movement</i>, pp.
+25, 26, 19.</p></div>
+
+<p><b>Pre-Menstrual Discomfort.</b> If it be objected that women often feel
+badly for a day or two before the period begins, before they know that
+it is due, and that this feeling of discomfort could not be caused by
+fear and expectation, it is easy to reply that the subconscious mind
+knows perfectly what is happening within the body. The emotion of
+fear, working within the <!-- Page 309 --><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309" />
+subconscious, is able to translate all the
+varying bodily sensations into feelings of distress without any
+knowledge on the part of the conscious mind.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes before the period begins, a girl feels blue and upset for a
+day or two, a sign that the instinct is getting discouraged. The whole
+body is saying, &quot;Get ready, get ready,&quot; but it has gotten ready many
+times before, and to no purpose. Unsatisfied striving brings
+discouragement. What reaches consciousness is a feeling of pessimism
+and a general dissatisfaction with life as a whole. If, instead of
+giving in to the blues or going to bed and predicting a pain, the girl
+finds other outlets for her energy, she finds that after all, her
+instinct may be satisfied in indirect ways and that she has strangely
+come into a new supply of <i>vim</i>.</p>
+
+<p><b>The Purpose of the Pain.</b> Although suggestion is behind all nervous
+symptoms, there is a deeper reason for the disturbance. When an
+unhealthy suggestion is seized and acted upon, it is because some
+unsatisfied part of the personality sees in it a chance for
+accomplishing its own ends. The pre-menstrual period is the
+blooming-time, the mating-time, the springtime of the organism. That
+means eminently a time for coming into notice, that one's charms may
+attract the desired complement. But if the rightfully insistent
+instinctive desires are held in check by unnatural repressions and
+misapplied social restrictions, the starved <!-- Page 310 -->
+<a name="Page_310" id="Page_310" />instinct can obtain
+expression only by a concealment of purpose. The disguise assumed is
+often one of indifference or positive distaste for the allurements of
+the other sex. But, as we know, an instinctive desire will not be
+denied. In this case, the misguided instinct which has been given the
+suggestion that menstruation means illness, fits this conception into
+the scheme of things and obtains notice in a roundabout way by the
+attention given to the invalid.</p>
+
+<p><b>The Treatment.</b> To find that the symptom has a purpose rather than a
+cause gives the indication for the treatment. Judicious neglect causes
+the symptom to cease by defeating its very purpose,&mdash;that of drawing
+attention to itself. The person who never mentions her discomfort,
+thinks about it as little as possible, and goes about her business as
+usual, is likely to find her trouble gone before she realizes it.
+<a name="FNanchor_57" id="FNanchor_57"></a>
+<a href="#Footnote_57" class="fnanchor">[57]</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_57" id="Footnote_57"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_57"><span class="label">[57]</span>
+</a> Violent exercise at this time is unwise, but continuing
+one's usual activity helps the circulation and keeps the mind from
+centering on the affected part. The physiological congestion is unduly
+intensified by standing; therefore all employments should afford
+facilities for the woman to sit at least part of the time while
+continuing work.</p></div>
+
+<p>A little explanation gives the patient insight into the workings of
+her own mind, and usually causes the pain to disappear in short order.
+Astonished, indeed, and filled with gratitude have been some of my
+young-women patients who had all their lives been unable to
+<!-- Page 311 --><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311" />plan any
+work or social engagements for the time of this functioning. Many of
+them were the worst kind of doubters when they were told that to go to
+bed and center their attention on the generative organs only made the
+muscles tighten up and the circulation congest. They could not
+conceive themselves up and around, pursuing their normal life during
+such a time. However, as they have found by experience that this point
+of view is not an optimistic dream, they have broken up the
+confidence-game which their subconscious had been playing on them, and
+have gone on their way rejoicing.</p>
+
+<p>There was one young girl, a doctor's daughter, who suffered
+continuously from pain in the abdomen, and from back-pain which
+increased so greatly at the time of the menses that she was in the
+habit of going to bed for several days, to be waited on with
+solicitous care by her family. In an attempt to cure the trouble she
+had undergone an operation to suspend the uterus, but the pain had
+continued as before. When she came to me, I explained to her that
+there was no physical difficulty and that her trouble was wholly
+nervous. I made her play tennis every day and she had just finished a
+game when her period came on. She stayed up for luncheon, went for a
+walk in the afternoon, ate her dinner with the family, and behaved
+like other people. Her mother telephoned that evening and when I told
+her what her <!-- Page 312 --><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312" />
+daughter had been doing, she gasped in astonishment. She
+had difficulty in believing that the new order was not miracle but
+simply the working out of natural law. Since that time her daughter
+has had no more trouble.</p>
+
+<p><b>The Ounce of Prevention.</b> If young girls had wiser counselors in
+their mothers and physicians, the misconception would never occur, and
+such an indirect outlet would not be needed; the organic sensations
+incident to puberty and the recurring menstrual period would have
+something of the significance of the annunciation to Mary, bringing
+wonder and a sense of well-being.</p>
+
+<p>When your little daughter arrives at maturity, give her a joyous
+initiation into the noble order of women. She will welcome the new
+function as a badge of womanhood and as a harbinger of wonderful
+things to come.</p>
+
+<p>A girl of fifteen came under my care to be helped out of a mood of
+increasing depression and uneasiness. Her glance was furtive, yet
+anxiously expectant. Tears came unbidden as she sat alone or fingered
+the keys of the piano. Tactful questioning elicited no response as to
+reasons for her unhappiness. Opportunities for giving confidence were
+not accepted. At a chance moment our talk drifted to the subject of
+menstruation. &quot;Your periods are regular and easy; and do you know what
+they are for?&quot; Then I painted <!-- Page 313 -->
+<a name="Page_313" id="Page_313" />for her a picture of the preparations
+that are made throughout the whole organism, for the germ-cell that
+comes each month and has in it all the possibilities of a new little life.</p>
+
+<p>The result of this confidential talk may seem fanciful to any one but
+an eye-witness. We had only a week's association, but the depression
+ceased, the furtive look and deprecatory manner were replaced by a
+joyous buoyancy. In a few weeks the thin neck and awkward body rounded
+out into the symmetry which usually precedes the establishment of
+puberty, but which was delayed in this case until the unconscious
+conflict resolved itself.</p>
+
+<p><b>In the Large.</b> Looked at from any angle, this subject is an important
+one. There are involved not only the physical comfort and convenience
+of the sufferers themselves, but also the economic prospects of women
+as a whole. If women are to demand equal opportunity and equal pay,
+they must be able to do equal work without periodic times of illness.
+When employers of women tell us that they regularly have to hire extra
+help because some of their workers lose time each month, we realize
+how great is the aggregate of economic waste, a waste which would
+assuredly be justified if the health of the country's womanhood were
+really involved, but which is inefficient and unnecessary when caused
+merely by ignorant tradition. &quot;Up to <!-- Page 314 -->
+<a name="Page_314" id="Page_314" />standard every day of every
+week,&quot; is a slogan quite within the range of possibility for all but
+the seriously ill. When reduced to their lowest terms, the
+inconveniences of this function are not great and are not too dear a
+price to pay for the possibilities of motherhood.</p>
+
+
+<p class="scheading">The &quot;Change of Life&quot;</p>
+
+<p><b>Another Phantom Peril.</b> As the young girl is taught to fear the
+menstrual period, so the older woman is taught to dread the time when
+the periods shall cease. Despite the general enlightenment of this day
+and age, the menopause or &quot;change of life&quot; is all too frequently
+feared as a &quot;critical period&quot; in a woman's life, a time of distressing
+physical sensations and even of danger to mental balance.</p>
+
+<p>As a matter of fact, the menopause is a physiological process which
+should be accomplished with as little mental and physical disturbance
+as accompanies the establishment of puberty. The same internal
+secretion is concerned in both. When the function of ovulation ceases
+the body has to find a new way to dispose of the internal secretion of
+the ovary. Its presence in the blood is the cause of the sudden
+dilatation of the blood-vessels that is known as the &quot;hot flash.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The matter is altogether a problem of chemistry, with the necessity
+for a new adjustment among the glands of internal secretion. The body
+easily manages <!-- Page 315 --><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315" />
+this if left to itself, but is greatly interfered with
+by the wrong suggestion and emotion. We have already seen how quickly
+emotion affects all secretions and how easily the adrenal and thyroid
+glands are influenced by fear. This is the root of the trouble in many
+cases of difficult &quot;change.&quot; If an occasional body is not quite able
+to regulate the chemical readjustment, we may have to administer the
+glands of some other animal, but in the majority of cases, the body,
+unhampered by an extra burden of fear, is quite able to make its own
+adjustments. The hot flash passes in a moment, if not prolonged by
+emotion or if not converted into a habit by attention.</p>
+
+<p>One source of trouble in the menopause is that it comes at a time in a
+woman's life when she is likely to have too much leisure. In no way
+can a woman so easily handicap her body at this time as by stopping
+work and being afraid. Those women who have to go on as usual find
+themselves past the change almost before they know it,&mdash;unless they
+consider themselves abused, and worry over the necessity for working
+through such a &quot;critical time.&quot;</p>
+
+<p><b>Three Rules.</b> Here are a few pointers which have have been of help to
+a number of women:</p>
+
+<p>1 Remember that this is a physiological process and therefore
+abundantly safeguarded by Nature. If you don't expect trouble you will
+not be likely to find it.</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 316 --><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316" />2 Remember
+that the sweating and flushing are made worse by notice.</p>
+
+<p>3 Do everything in your power to keep from the public the knowledge
+that you are no longer a potential mother. If you are past forty, do
+not mop your face or gasp for breath or carry a fan to the theater!
+Shun attention and fear, and you will be surprised at the ease with
+which the &quot;change&quot; is effected.</p>
+
+<p><b>Nature's Last Chance.</b> While we are on the subject of the middle-aged
+woman, it may be well to mention a phenomenon sometimes noticed in the
+early forties. Often an &quot;old maid&quot; who has considered herself settled
+for life in her bachelor estate, suddenly takes to herself a husband.
+(I use the verb advisedly!) Mothers who have thought their
+child-bearing days long past sometimes find themselves pregnant. &quot;The
+child of her old age&quot; is not an uncommon occurrence. Unmarried women
+who have &quot;kept straight&quot; all their lives sometimes go down before
+temptation at this late time. There is a reason. It is as though
+Nature were making a last desperate attempt to produce another life
+before it is too late, speeding up all the internal secretions and
+flashing insistent messages throughout the whole organism.</p>
+
+<p>It may help some woman who feels herself inexplicably impelled toward
+the male sex to know that she is not being &quot;tempted by the devil&quot; but
+merely driven <!-- Page 317 --><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317" />by
+the insistent chemicals within her body. She is
+likely to rationalize and tell herself that it is too bad for a
+worth-while person like herself to leave no progeny behind her; or she
+may say, as one of my patients did when contemplating running away
+with another woman's husband,&mdash;that she could make that man so much
+happier than his wife did, and that she really owed it to him as well
+as to herself. When a woman knows what is the matter with her, it
+makes it easier to bide her time and wait for the demands of Nature to
+subside. Chemicals may not be so romantic as love, but neither are
+they so melodramatic!</p>
+
+
+<p class="scheading">Other Troubles</p>
+
+<p><b>&quot;Speaking of Operations.&quot;</b> Physicians are often called upon to
+diagnose some such vague symptom as pain in the abdomen, back and
+head; ache in the legs; constipation, or loss of appetite. Since the
+patient is very insistent that something shall be done, the physician
+may be driven to operate, even when he has an uneasy feeling that the
+trouble is &quot;merely nervous.&quot; Sixty per cent. of the operations on
+women are necessitated by the results of gonorrheal infection. Next in
+frequency up to recent date, have been operations for nervous symptoms
+which could in no way be reached by the knife. Only too often a
+nerve-specialist hears the tale of an operation which was supposed to
+cure <!-- Page 318 --><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318" />a certain
+pain but which left it worse rather than better. It is
+a pleasure to see some of these pains disappear under a little
+re-education, but one cannot help wishing that the re-education had
+come before the knife instead of after it.</p>
+
+<p>A skilled surgeon can cut almost anything out of a person's body, but
+he cannot cut out an instinct. It sometimes takes great skill to
+determine whether the trouble is an organic affection or a functional
+disturbance caused by the misdirected instinct of reproduction. Often,
+however, the clinical pictures are so different as to leave no room
+for doubt, provided the diagnostician has his eyes open and is not
+over-persuaded by the importunity of the poor neurotic, who insists
+that the surgeon shall remove her appendix, her gall-bladder, her
+genital organs, and her tonsils, and who finally comes back that he
+may have a whack at the operation scar.</p>
+
+<p><b>The Bearing of Children.</b> A number of years ago I became acquainted
+with a charming young married woman who had all her life recoiled with
+fear from the phenomena of sex. She had been afraid of menstruation
+and of marriage, and had at this time almost a phobia for pregnancy
+and childbirth. Before long she came to me in terror, telling me that
+she had become pregnant. I explained to her that pregnancy is the time
+when most women are at their best, that the <!-- Page 319 -->
+<a name="Page_319" id="Page_319" />nausea which is often
+troublesome in the beginning is caused merely by a mixing of messages
+from the autonomic nerves, which refer new sensations in the womb to
+the more usual center of activity in the stomach; and that after the
+body has become accustomed to these sensations, most women experience
+a greater sense of well-being and peace than at any other time in
+life. We had a conversation or two on the subject and everything
+seemed to go well for a while.</p>
+
+<p>As it happened, this young woman and her husband came to call on me
+one afternoon just before the baby was expected. During the visit she
+began to show signs of being in labor. Again she was in terror. Again
+I explained the phenomena of labor, telling her that the
+womb-contractions are caused by the presence in the blood of a
+chemical secretion (hormone) which continues its good work as long as
+there is a state of confidence, but which sometimes stops under fear
+or apprehension. I explained that these womb-efforts are a peristaltic
+movement, a contraction of the upper muscles and a letting go of the
+purse-string muscle at the mouth of the womb, and that fear only tends
+to tie up this purse-string muscle, making a difficult process out of
+one which was intended by Nature to be much more simple. She seemed to
+understand and to lose a good deal of her fright.</p>
+
+<p>About six o'clock the couple went home on the street <!-- Page 320 -->
+<a name="Page_320" id="Page_320" />car from the
+upper end of Pasadena to the far end of Los Angeles. The next morning
+I had a jubilant telephone message from the happy father, announcing
+that the boy-baby had arrived at midnight and that, wonderful to
+relate, he had come without the mother's experiencing any pain
+whatever.</p>
+
+<p>I give this account for what it is worth, without of course contending
+that labor could always be as easy as this. It happened that this girl
+was a normal, healthy woman and that there were no complications of
+any kind in the process of childbirth. A right attitude of mind could
+not have corrected any physical difficulty, but it did seem to help
+her let go of her fear, which would of itself have caused long and
+painful labor.</p>
+
+<p>A patient once told me that when her first baby came, she happened to
+be out in the country where she had to call in a doctor whom she did
+not know. He was an uncouth sort of fellow who inspired fear rather
+than confidence. She soon found that labor stopped whenever he came
+into the room, and started again when he went out. She had the good
+sense to send him out and complete her labor with only the help of her
+mother. Unfortunate is the obstetrician who does not know how to
+inspire a feeling of confidence in his patients. Even childbirth may
+be mightily helped or hindered by the mother's state of mind.</p>
+
+<p class="scheading"><!-- Page 321 --><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321" />Summary</p>
+
+<p>A woman's body has more stability than she knows. It is sometimes out
+of order, but it is more often misunderstood; usually it is an
+unobtrusive and satisfactory instrument, quite fit for its daily
+tasks. The average woman is really well put together. We hear about
+the ones who have difficulty, but not about the great majority who do
+not. We notice the few who are upset during the menopause, and forget
+all the others. To be comfortable and efficient most of the time is,
+after all, merely to be &quot;like folks.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The special functions which Nature has been perfecting in a woman's
+body are as a rule, easily carried through unless complicated by false
+ideas or by fear.</p>
+
+<p>If the woman who has no organic difficulty but who still finds herself
+handicapped by her body, will cease being either resigned to her
+languishing lot or envious of her stalwart brothers; if instead she
+will set out to learn how to be efficient as a woman, she will find
+that many of her ills are not the blunders of an inefficient Creator,
+but are home-made products, which quickly vanish in the light of
+understanding.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<div><!-- Page 322 --><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322" /></div>
+
+<p class="heading"><a name="CHAPTER_XIII" id="CHAPTER_XIII">CHAPTER XIII</a></p>
+
+<p class="heading"><i>In which we lose our dread of night.</i></p>
+
+<p class="heading">THAT INTERESTING INSOMNIA</p>
+
+<p class="scheading">The Fear of Staying Awake</p>
+
+
+<p>To sleep or not to sleep! That is the question. In all the world there
+is nothing to equal it in importance,&mdash;to the man with insomnia. His
+days are mere interludes between troubled nights spent in restless
+tossing to and fro and feverish worry over the weary day to come. His
+mind filled with ideas about the disastrous effects of insomnia, he
+imagines himself fast sliding down hill toward the grave or the
+insane-asylum. It is true that his conversation very often politely
+begins something like this: &quot;Good morning. Did you sleep well last
+night?&quot; but if we fail to respond by an equally polite &quot;and I hope you
+had a good night?&quot; he seems restless until he has somehow
+disillusioned us by stating the exact number of hours and minutes
+during which he was able to lose himself in slumber.</p>
+
+<p>We must not ridicule the man who doesn't sleep. <!-- Page 323 -->
+<a name="Page_323" id="Page_323" />We are all very much
+alike. If any one of us happens to lie awake for a night or two, he is
+likely to get into a panic, and if the spell should last a week, he
+begins looking up steamship agents and talking of voyages to Southern
+seas. The fact is that most people are dreadfully afraid of insomnia.
+Knowing the effects of a few nights of enforced wakefulness, and
+having had a little experience with the fagged feeling after a
+restless night, they believe themselves only logical when they fall
+into a panic over the prospect of persistent insomnia.</p>
+
+<p><b>Two Kinds of Wakefulness.</b> As a matter of fact, insomnia is a phantom
+peril. There is not the slightest danger from lying awake nights,
+provided one is not kept awake by some irritating physical stimulus.
+All fear of insomnia is based on ignorance of the difference between
+enforced wakefulness and deliberate wakefulness, or insomnia. The man
+who has acquired the habit may stay awake almost indefinitely without
+appreciable harm, but the one who is kept awake for a week by a pain,
+by a chemical poison from infection, or by the necessity for staying
+up on his job, may easily be in a state of exhaustion. Even in cases
+of prolonged pain or over-exertion, the body tends to maintain its
+equilibrium by hastening its rate of repair and by falling asleep
+before the danger point is reached. It is almost impossible to impair
+permanently the tissue <!-- Page 324 -->
+<a name="Page_324" id="Page_324" />of the brain except in the presence of a
+chemical irritant. In case of infection we often have to give medicine
+to neutralize the effect of the poison or to resort to narcotics which
+make the brain cells less susceptible to irritation. But nervous
+insomnia is another story.</p>
+
+
+<p class="scheading">A Harmless Habit</p>
+
+<p><b>Long-Lived Insomniacs.</b> A man of my acquaintance once said in all
+seriousness and with evident alarm: &quot;I am following in the footsteps
+of my mother. She lived to be seventy years old and she had insomnia
+all her life.&quot; If this man had been preaching a sermon on the
+harmlessness of chronic insomnia, he could not have chosen a better
+text, but he seemed just as much concerned about himself as if his
+mother had died from the effects of three months' wakefulness. People
+can live healthy lives during twenty or thirty years of insomnia
+because chronic insomnia is nothing more or less than a habit, and
+&quot;habit spells ease.&quot; The brain cells are not irritated by either
+internal or external stimuli; there is no effort to keep awake;
+virtually no energy is expended,&mdash;except in restless tossing and
+worry. If the body is kept still and emotion eliminated, fatigue
+products are washed away and the reserves are filled in with perfect
+ease.</p>
+
+<p><b>Thinking in Circles.</b> Habit means automatic,
+<!-- Page 325 --><a name="Page_325" id="Page_325" />subconscious activity,
+with the least expenditure of energy and the least amount of fatigue.
+We have already noted the ease with which heart and diaphragm muscles
+carry on their work from the beginning of life to its end. Anything
+relegated to the subconscious mind can be kept up almost indefinitely
+without tire, and to this subconscious type of activity belong the
+thoughts of a chronic insomniac. Despite all assertions to the
+contrary, his conscious mind is not really awake. If he is questioned
+about the happenings of the night, he is likely to have been unaware
+of the most audible noises. The thoughts that run through his brain
+are not new, constructive, energy-consuming thoughts, but the same old
+thoughts that have been going around in circles for days and weeks at
+a time.</p>
+
+<p>It is true that a person sometimes chooses to wake up and do his
+constructive planning in the night. This kind of thought does bring
+fatigue, up to a certain point. After that the body hastens its rate
+of repair or automatically goes to sleep. Activity of this kind is
+always a matter of choice. He who really prefers sleep will shut the
+drawers containing the day's business and leave them shut until
+morning.</p>
+
+<p><b>Day-Dreaming at Night.</b> However, the man who makes a practice of
+staying awake rarely does much real thinking. He lets the thoughts run
+through his mind as they will, builds air-castles of things he would
+<!-- Page 326 --><a name="Page_326" id="Page_326" />like
+to do and can't, or other kinds of air-castles about the
+disastrous effects of his insomnia on the day that is to come; he
+worries over his health, or his finances, and grieves over his
+sorrows. He is really indulging himself, thinking the thoughts he
+likes most to think, and these consume but little energy. Like a horse
+that knows the rounds, they can go jogging on indefinitely without
+guidance from the driver.</p>
+
+
+<p class="scheading">What Causes the Fatigue</p>
+
+<p><b>Tossing and Fretting.</b> The thing that tires is not the insomnia but
+the emotion over the insomnia. If people who fail to sleep are
+perpetually fagged out, it is not from loss of sleep, but from worry
+and tossing. Often they spend a good deal of the night feeling sorry
+for themselves. They turn and toss, exclaiming with each turn: &quot;Why
+don't I sleep? How badly I shall feel to-morrow! What a night! What a
+night!&quot; Such a spree of emotionalism can hardly fail to tire, but it
+is not fair to blame the insomnia.</p>
+
+<p>He who makes up his mind to it can rest almost as well without sleep
+as with it, provided he keeps his mind calm and his body relaxed.
+&quot;Decent hygienic conditions&quot; demand not necessarily eight hours of
+sleep but eight hours of quiet rest in bed. Tossing about drives away
+sleep and uses up energy. I make it a rule that my patients shall not
+turn over more than four <!-- Page 327 -->
+<a name="Page_327" id="Page_327" />times during the night. This is more
+important than that they should sleep. To be sure, I do not stay awake
+to enforce the rule, but most people catch the idea very quickly and
+before they know it they are sleeping.</p>
+
+
+<p class="scheading">How to Go to Sleep</p>
+
+<p><b>Ceasing to Care.</b> The best way to learn to sleep is not to care
+whether you do or not. Nothing could be better than DuBois's advice:
+&quot;Don't look for sleep; it flies away like a pigeon when one pursues
+it.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_58" id="FNanchor_58"></a>
+<a href="#Footnote_58" class="fnanchor">[58]</a>
+Attention to anything keeps the mind awake, and most of all,
+attention to sleep. More than one person has waked up to see whether
+or not he was going to sleep. We cannot, however, fool ourselves by
+merely pretending indifference. The only sensible way is to get the
+facts firmly fixed in our minds so that we actually realize that we do
+not need more sleep than our bodies take. As soon as it is realized
+that insomnia is really of no importance, it tends to disappear.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_58" id="Footnote_58"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_58"><span class="label">[58]</span>
+</a> DuBois: <i>Psychic Treatment of Nervous Disorders</i>, p.
+339.</p></div>
+
+<p><b>Catching the Idea.</b> There came one day for consultation a very
+healthy-looking woman, a deaconess of the Lutheran Church. &quot;Doctor,&quot;
+she said, &quot;I came to get relief from insomnia. For twenty years I have
+not slept more than one or two hours a night.&quot; &quot;Why do you want more?&quot;
+I asked. &quot;Why, isn't it <!-- Page 328 --><a name="Page_328" id="Page_328" />
+very unhealthy not to sleep?&quot; she exclaimed
+in astonishment. &quot;Evidently not,&quot; I answered.</p>
+
+<p>This woman had tried every doctor she could think of, including the
+splendid S. Weir Mitchell. Her insomnia had become a preoccupation
+with her, her chief thought in life. All I did was to explain to her
+that her body had been getting all the sleep it needed, and that
+neither body nor mind was in the least run down after twenty years of
+sleeplessness. &quot;When you cease being interested in your insomnia, it
+will go away, although from a health standpoint it matters very little
+whether it does or not.&quot; We had two conversations on the subject, and
+a week later she came back to tell me that she was sleeping eight
+hours a night.</p>
+
+<p>One woman had had insomnia for thirty years. After I had explained to
+her that her body had adjusted itself to this way of living and that
+she need not try to get more sleep, she snored so loud all night and
+every night that the rest of the family began to complain!</p>
+
+<p>A certain banker proved very quick at catching the idea. He had been
+so troubled with insomnia and intense weakness that his doctors
+prescribed a six-months voyage in Southern waters. Knowing that my
+prescriptions involved a change in point of view rather than in scene,
+he came to me. Although he had been getting only about half an hour's
+sleep a night, he went <!-- Page 329 --><a name="Page_329" id="Page_329" />
+to sleep in his chair the first evening, and
+then went upstairs and slept all night. He resumed his duties at the
+bank, walking a mile and a half the first day and three miles the
+second. During the months following, he reported, &quot;No more insomnia.&quot;</p>
+
+<p><b>Keeping Account.</b> A bright young college graduate came to me for a
+number of ailments, chief among them being sleeplessness. She was also
+overcome by fatigue, having spent four months in bed. A four-mile walk
+in the ca&ntilde;on and a few other such outings soon dispelled the fatigue,
+but the insomnia proved more obstinate. After she had been with me for
+a week or two, I took her aside one day for a little talk. &quot;Well?&quot; I
+said as we sat down. Then she began: &quot;Sunday night I was awake from
+half-past one to four, Monday from twelve to one, Tuesday from one to
+three, Wednesday from two to four, Thursday&mdash;&quot; By this time she became
+aware of the quizzical expression on my face and began to be
+embarrassed. Then she stopped and laughed. &quot;Well,&quot; she said, &quot;I did
+not know that I was paying so much attention to my sleep.&quot; She was
+bright enough to see the point at once, gave up her preoccupation in
+the all-absorbing topic and promptly forgot to have any trouble with
+so natural a function as sleep.</p>
+
+<p><b>Making New Associations.</b> Examples like this show how natural is
+childlike slumber when once we <!-- Page 330 -->
+<a name="Page_330" id="Page_330" />take away the inhibitions of a
+hampering idea. Age-old habits like sleep are not lost, but they may
+easily be interfered with by a little too much attention. When a
+person who can scarcely keep his eyes open all the evening is
+instantly wide awake as soon as his head touches the pillow, we may be
+sure that a part of his trouble comes from the wrong associations
+which he has built up with the thought of night. When a dear little
+old lady told me of her constant state of apprehension about going to
+bed, I said to her: &quot;When I go to my room, the darkness says sleep.
+When I take off my clothes, the very act says sleep. When I put my
+head on the pillow, the pillow says sleep.&quot; She liked that and found
+herself able to sleep all night. The next evening she wanted another
+&quot;sleeping-potion&quot; but as I did not want her to become dependent on
+anybody's suggestion, I put my mouth up close
+<span title="Corrected typo: was 'to to'" class="hov">to</span> her ear and
+whispered, &quot;Abra ca dabra, dum, dum, dum.&quot; She laughed, but saw the
+point. After that she slept very well. She merely broke the habit by
+making a new kind of association with the thought of bed. Nature did the rest.</p>
+
+<p>It seems hardly necessary to remark that drug-taking is the most
+inefficient way of handling the situation. Everybody knows that
+narcotics are harmful to the delicate cells of the brain and that the
+dose has to be continuously increased in cases of chronic insomnia.
+<!-- Page 331 --><a name="Page_331" id="Page_331" />If a
+person realizes that the drug is far more harmful than the
+insomnia itself, he is weak indeed to yield to temptation for the sake
+of a few nights of sleep. As the cause of insomnia is psychic, so the
+only logical cure is a new idea and a new attitude of mind.</p>
+
+
+<p class="scheading">The Purpose of Insomnia</p>
+
+<p>Like all nervous symptoms, insomnia is not an affliction but an
+indulgence. Somehow, and in ways unknown to the conscious mind, it
+brings a certain amount of satisfaction to a part of the personality.
+No matter how unpleasant it may be, no matter how much we consciously
+fear it, something inside chooses to stay awake.</p>
+
+<p>Started, as a rule, through suggestion or imitation, insomnia is
+sometimes kept up as a means of making ourselves seem important,&mdash;to
+ourselves and to others. It at least provides an excuse for thinking
+and talking about ourselves, and furnishes a certain feeling of
+distinction. If something within us craves attention, even staying
+awake may not be too dear a price to pay for that attention. Strange
+to say, there are other times when the insomnia is chosen by the
+primitive subconscious mind with the idea of doing penance for
+supposed sins whose evil effects might possibly be avoided by this
+kind of expiation. Analysis shows that motives like this are not so
+uncommon as might be supposed. <!-- Page 332 -->
+<a name="Page_332" id="Page_332" />In other cases insomnia is chosen for
+the chance it gives for phantasy-building. A person denied the right
+kind of outlet for his instincts may so enjoy the day-dreaming habit
+that he prolongs it into the night, really preferring it to sleep.
+Such a state of affairs is not at all incompatible with an intense
+conscious desire to sleep and a real fear of insomnia. So strange may
+be the motives hidden away within the depths of the most prosaic
+individual!</p>
+
+
+<p class="scheading">Summary</p>
+
+<p>Nervous insomnia is something which a part of us makes use of and
+another part fears. It is a mistake on both sides. Although not in the
+least dangerous, the habit can hardly be considered a satisfactory
+form of amusement. Nature has provided a better way to spend the
+night, a way to which she speedily brings us when we choose to let her
+do it.</p>
+
+<p>We do not have to ask for sleep as for a special boon which may be
+denied. We simply have to lie down in trust, expecting to be carried
+away like a child. If our expectation is not at once realized we can
+still trust, as with relaxed mind and body we lie in calm content,
+knowing that Nature is, minute by minute, restoring us for another
+day.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<div><!-- Page 333 --><a name="Page_333" id="Page_333" /></div>
+
+<p class="heading"><a name="CHAPTER_XIV" id="CHAPTER_XIV">CHAPTER XIV</a></p>
+
+<p class="heading"><i>In which we raise our thresholds</i></p>
+
+<p class="heading">FEELING OUR FEELINGS</p>
+
+<p class="scheading">Finely Strung Violins</p>
+
+
+<p>The young girl had been telling me about her symptoms. &quot;You know,
+Doctor,&quot; she said. &quot;I am a very sensitive person. In fact, I have
+always been told that I am like a finely strung violin.&quot; There was
+pride in every tone of her voice,&mdash;pride and satisfaction over
+possessing an organization so superior to the common clay of the
+average person. It was a typical remark, and showed clearly that this
+girl belonged among the nervous folk. For the nervous person is not
+only over-sensitive, but he accepts his condition with a secret and
+half-conscious pride as a token of superiority.</p>
+
+<p>It seems that there are a good many kinds of sensitiveness. Whether it
+is a good or bad possession depends entirely on what kind of things a
+person is sensitive to. If he is quick to take in a situation, easily
+impressed with the needs of others, open-doored to beauty and to the
+appeal of the spiritual, keenly alive <!-- Page 334 -->
+<a name="Page_334" id="Page_334" />to the humorous, even when the
+joke is on himself and the situation uncomfortable, then surely he has
+a right to be glad of his sensitiveness. But too often the word means
+something else. It means feeling, intensely, physical sensations of
+which most people are unaware, or reacting emotionally to situations
+which call for no such response. It means, in short, feeling our
+feelings and liking to feel them. There seems to be nothing
+particularly praiseworthy or desirable about this kind of
+sensitiveness. If this is what it means to be a &quot;finely-wrought
+violin,&quot; it might even be better to be a bass drum which can stand a
+few poundings without ruin to its constitution.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But,&quot; says the sensitive person, &quot;are we not born either violins or
+drums? Is not heredity rather than choice to blame? And what can a
+person do about it?&quot; These questions are so closely bound up with the
+problems of nervous symptoms of indigestion, fatigue, a woman's ills,
+hysterical pains and sensations, and with all the problems of
+emotional control, that we shall do well to look more carefully into
+this question of sensibility, which is really the question of the
+relation of the individual to his environment.</p>
+
+
+<p class="scheading">Selecting Our Sensations</p>
+
+<p><b>Reaction and Over-Reaction.</b> Every organism, if it is to live, must
+be normally sensitive to its environment. <!-- Page 335 -->
+<a name="Page_335" id="Page_335" />It must possess the power
+of response to stimuli. As the sea-anemone curls up at touch, and as
+the tiny baby blinks at the light, so must every living thing be able
+to sense and to react to the presence of a dangerous or a friendly
+force. Only by a certain degree of irritability can it survive in the
+struggle for existence. The five senses are simply different phases of
+the apparatus for receiving communications from the outside world.
+Other parts of the machinery catch the manifold messages continually
+pouring into the brain from within our bodies themselves. These
+communications cannot be stopped nor can we prevent their impress on
+the cells of the brain and spinal cord, but we do have a good deal to
+say as to which ones shall be brought into the focus of attention and
+receive enough notice to become real, conscious sensations.</p>
+
+<p><b>Paying Attention.</b> If a human being had to give conscious attention
+to every stimulus from the outer world and from his own body, to every
+signal which flashes itself along his sensory nerves to his brain, he
+would need a different kind of mind from his present efficient but
+limited apparatus. As it is, there is an admirable provision for
+taking care of the messages without overburdening consciousness. The
+stream of messages never stops, not even in sleep. But the conscious
+mind has its private secretary, the subconscious, to receive the
+messages and to answer them.</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 336 --><a name="Page_336" id="Page_336" />
+During any five minutes of a walk down a city street a man has
+hundreds of visual images flashed upon the retina of the eye. His eye
+sees every little line in the faces of the passers-by, every detail of
+their clothing, the decorations on the buildings, the street signs
+overhead, the articles in the shop-windows, the paving of the
+sidewalks, the curbings and tracks which he crosses, and scores of
+other objects to most of which the man himself is oblivious. His ear
+hears every sound within hearing distance,&mdash;the honk of every horn,
+the clang of every bell, the voices of the people and the shuffle of
+feet. Some part of his mind feels the press of his foot on the
+pavement, the rubbing of his heel on his stocking, the touch of his
+clothing all over his body, and all those so-called kinesthetic
+sensations,&mdash;sensations of motion and balance which keep him in
+equilibrium and on the move, to say nothing of the never-ending stream
+of messages from every cell of every muscle and tissue of his body.</p>
+
+<p>Out of this constant rush of stimuli our man gives attention to only
+the smallest fraction. Whatever is interesting to him, that he sees
+and hears and feels. All other sensations he passes by as indifferent.
+Unless they come with extraordinary intensity, they do not get over
+into his consciousness at all.</p>
+
+<p><b>&quot;Listening-in&quot; on the Subconscious.</b> The
+subconscious mind knows and needs to know what is happening
+<!-- Page 337 --><a name="Page_337" id="Page_337" />in the farthermost cell of the body.
+It needs to know at any moment where the knees are, and the feet;
+otherwise the individual would fall in a heap whenever he forgot to
+watch his step. It needs to know just how much light is entering the
+eye, and how much blood is in the stomach. To this end it has a system
+of communication from every point in the body and this system is in
+constant operation. Its messages never cease. But these messages were
+never meant to be in the focus of attention. They are meant only for
+the subconscious mind and are generally so low-toned as to be easily
+ignored unless one falls into the habit of listening for them. Unless
+they are invested with a significance which does not belong to them,
+they will not emerge into consciousness as real sensations.</p>
+
+<p><b>Psychic Thresholds.</b> Boris Sidis has given us a word which has proved
+very useful in this connection. The limit of sensitivity of a
+cell&mdash;the degree of irritability&mdash;he calls the
+stimulus-threshold.<a name="FNanchor_59" id="FNanchor_59"></a>
+<a href="#Footnote_59" class="fnanchor">[59]</a>
+As the wind must come in gusts to drive the rain in over a high
+doorsill, so must any stimulus&mdash;an idea or a sensation&mdash;come with
+sufficient force to get over the obstructions at the doorway of
+consciousness. These psychic thresholds do not maintain a constant
+level. They are raised or lowered at will by a hidden and automatic
+<!-- Page 338 --><a name="Page_338" id="Page_338" />machinery,
+which is dependent entirely on the ideas already in
+consciousness, by the interest bestowed upon the newcomer. The
+intensity of the stimuli cannot be controlled, but the interest we
+feel in them and the welcome given them are very largely a matter of choice.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_59" id="Footnote_59"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_59"><span class="label">[59]</span>
+</a> Sidis: <i>Foundations of Normal and Abnormal Psychology</i>,
+Chap. XXX.</p></div>
+
+<p>Each organism has a wide field of choice as to which ideas and which
+physical stimuli it shall welcome and which it shall shut out. We may
+raise our thresholds, build up a bulwark of indifference to a whole
+class of excitations, shut our mental doors, and pull down the shades;
+or we may lower the thresholds so that the slightest flicker of an
+idea or the smallest pin-prick of a sensation finds ready access to
+the center of attention.</p>
+
+<p><b>Thresholds and Character.</b> There are certain thresholds made to shift
+frequently and easily. When one is hungry any food tastes good, for
+the threshold is low; but the food must be most tempting to be
+acceptable just after a hearty meal. On the other hand, a fairly
+constant threshold is maintained for many different kinds of stimuli.
+These stimuli are always bound together in groups, and make appeal
+depending upon the predominating interest. As anything pertaining to
+agriculture is noticed by a farmer, or any article of dress by a
+fashionable woman, so any stimulus coming from a &quot;warm&quot; group is
+welcomed, while any from a &quot;cold&quot; group is met by a high threshold.
+The kind <!-- Page 339 --><a name="Page_339" id="Page_339" />of person
+one is depends on what kind of things are &quot;warm&quot;
+to him and what kind are &quot;cold.&quot; The superman is one who has gained
+such conscious control of his psychic thresholds that he can raise and
+lower them at will in the interests of the social good.</p>
+
+<p><b>Thresholds and Sensations.</b> The importance of these principles is
+obvious. The next chapter will show more of their influence on ideas
+and emotions; but for the present we will consider their lessons in
+the sphere of the physical. Psychology speaks here in no uncertain
+terms to physiology. Whoever becomes fascinated by the processes of
+his own body is bound to magnify the sensations from those processes,
+until the most 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.</p>
+
+<p><b>The Motives for Sensitiveness.</b> 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
+<!-- Page 340 --><a name="Page_340" id="Page_340" />his
+thresholds only to himself? What makes a person too interested in his
+own sensations and feelings? As usual there is a cause.</p>
+
+<p>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 &quot;inferiority
+complex.&quot; 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.</p>
+
+<p>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
+<!-- Page 341 --><a name="Page_341" id="Page_341" />feelings, and
+at the same time secure the coveted attention through physical
+disability, with its necessity for special ministration?</p>
+
+<p>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 &quot;feels his feelings&quot;
+unless, despite all discomfort, he really enjoys them. A hard
+statement to accept perhaps, but one that is repeatedly proved by a
+specialist in &quot;nerves&quot;!</p>
+
+
+<p class="scheading">Determining Causes</p>
+
+<p><b>Accidental Association.</b> In many cases, the form which the
+sensitiveness takes is merely a matter of accident. Often it is based
+on some small physical disability, as when a slight tendency to take
+cold is magnified into an intense fear of fresh air.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes a past fleeting pain which has become associated with the
+stream of thought of an emotional moment&mdash;what Boris Sidis calls the
+moment-consciousness&mdash;is perpetuated in consciousness in place of the
+repressed emotion. &quot;In the determination of the pathology of hysteria,
+the accidental moment plays a much greater part than is generally
+recognized; if a painful affect&mdash;emotion&mdash;originates while eating but
+is repressed, it may produce nausea and vomiting and <!-- Page 342 -->
+<a name="Page_342" id="Page_342" />continue for months as an hysterical
+symptom.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_60" id="FNanchor_60"></a>
+<a href="#Footnote_60" class="fnanchor">[60]</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_60" id="Footnote_60"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_60"><span class="label">[60]</span>
+</a> Freud: <i>Selected Papers</i>, p. 2.</p></div>
+
+<p>One of Freud's patients, Miss Rosalie H&mdash;&mdash;, found while taking
+singing-lessons that she often choked over notes of the middle
+register, although she took with ease notes higher and lower in the
+scale. It was revealed that this girl, who had a most unhappy home
+life, had, during a former period, often experienced this choking
+sensation from a painful emotion just before she went for her music
+lesson. Some of the left-over sensations had remained during the
+singing, and as the middle notes happen to involve the same muscles as
+does a lump in one's throat, she had often found herself choking over
+these notes. Later on, while living in a different city and in a
+wholly different environment, the physical sensations from her throat
+muscles, as they took these middle notes, brought back the associated
+sensations of choking,&mdash;without, however, uncovering the buried
+emotion.<a name="FNanchor_61" id="FNanchor_61"></a>
+<a href="#Footnote_61" class="fnanchor">[61]</a> Many a
+painful hysterical affliction is based on just such mechanisms as these.
+As Freud remarks, &quot;The hysteric suffers mostly from
+reminiscences.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_62" id="FNanchor_62"></a>
+<a href="#Footnote_62" class="fnanchor">[62]</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_61" id="Footnote_61"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_61"><span class="label">[61]</span></a> Ibid, p. 43.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_62" id="Footnote_62"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_62"><span class="label">[62]</span></a> Ibid, p. 5.</p></div>
+
+<p><!-- Page 343 --><a name="Page_343" id="Page_343" /><b>Subconscious
+Symbolism.</b> Sometimes, as we have seen, the form which
+a hypersensitiveness assumes is not determined by any physical sensation,
+either past or symbolism which acts out in the body the drama of the soul.</p>
+
+<p><b>Facing the Facts.</b> Whatever the motives and whatever the determining
+causes, hypersensibility is in any case a feeling of feelings which is
+not warranted by the present situation. Hypersensitiveness is never
+anything but a makeshift kind of satisfaction. Despite certain
+subconscious reasoning, it does not make one more important nor more
+beloved. Neither does it furnish a real expression for that great
+creative love-instinct whose outlet, if it is to bring satisfaction,
+must be a real outlet into the external world. An understanding of the
+motives is helpful only when it makes clear that they are
+short-sighted motives and that the real desires back of them may be
+satisfied in better ways.</p>
+
+
+<p class="scheading">Some Lowered Thresholds</p>
+
+<p>As the public appetite for specific cases appears to be insatiable, we
+will give from real life some examples of low thresholds which were
+raised through re-education. One hesitates to write down these
+examples because when they are on paper they sound like advertisements
+of patent medicines. However, there is no magic in any of these cures,
+but only the working out of definite laws which may be used by other
+sufferers, if they only <!-- Page 344 -->
+<a name="Page_344" id="Page_344" />know. Re-education through a knowledge of
+oneself and the laws at work really does remarkable things when it has
+a chance.</p>
+
+<p><b>&quot;Danger-Signals&quot; without the Danger.</b> There was the man who had queer
+feelings all over his body, especially in his head and stomach, and
+who considered these sensations as danger-signals warning him to stop.
+This man had worked up from messenger boy to a position next to the
+president in one of the transcontinental railroad systems. On the
+appearance of these &quot;danger-signals&quot; he had tried to resign but had
+been given a year's leave of absence instead. Half the year had gone
+in rest-cure, but he was still afraid to eat or work, and believed
+himself &quot;done for.&quot; After three weeks of re-education he saw that
+instead of having overdrawn his capital, he had in another sense
+overdrawn his sensations. He went away as fit as ever, finished his
+leave of absence doing hard labor on his farm, and then went back to
+even harder tasks, working for the Government in the administration of
+the railroads during the war. He is still at work.</p>
+
+<p><b>Enjoying Poor Health.</b> There was the woman who had been an invalid
+for twenty years, doing little else during all that time than to feel
+her own feelings. Because of the distressing sensations in her
+stomach, she had for a year taken nothing but liquid nourishment. She
+had queer feelings in her solar-plexus and <!-- Page 345 -->
+<a name="Page_345" id="Page_345" />indeed a general luxury of
+over-feeling. She could not leave her room nor have any visitors. She
+was the star invalid of the family, waited on by her two hard-working
+sisters who earned the living for them all.</p>
+
+<p>Her sisters had inveigled her to my house under false pretenses,
+calling it a boarding-house and omitting to mention that I was a
+doctor, because &quot;she guessed she knew more about her case than any
+doctor.&quot; For the first week I got in only one sentence a day,&mdash;just
+before I slipped out of the door after taking in her &quot;liquid
+nourishment.&quot; But at the end of the week I announced that thereafter
+her meals would be served in the dining-room. When she found that
+there was to be no more liquid nourishment, she had to appear at the
+family table. After that it was only a short time before she was at
+home, cooking for her sisters. When she saw the role she had been
+unconsciously playing, she could hardly wish to go on with it.</p>
+
+<p><b>Feeling His Legs.</b> Mr. R. suffered from such severe and distressing
+pains in his legs that he believed himself on the verge of paralysis.
+He was also bothered by a chronic emotional state which made him look
+like a &quot;weepy&quot; woman. His eyes were always full of tears and his chin
+a-quiver, and he had, as he said, a perpetual lump in his throat.
+Under re-education both lump and paralysis disappeared completely and
+Mr. R. took his wife across the continent, <!-- Page 346 -->
+<a name="Page_346" id="Page_346" />driving his machine with his
+own hands&mdash;and feet.</p>
+
+<p><b>A Subconscious Association.</b> Mr. D.'s case admirably illustrates the
+return of symptoms through an unconscious association. He was a
+lawyer, prominent in public affairs of the Middle West, who had been
+my patient for several weeks and who had gone home cured of many
+striking disabilities. Before he came to me, he had given up his
+public work and was believed by all his associates to be afflicted
+with softening of the brain, and &quot;out of the game&quot; for good. From
+being one of the ablest men of his State, he had fallen into such a
+condition that he could neither read a letter nor write one. He could
+not stand the least sunshine on his head, and to walk half a mile was
+an impossibility. He was completely &quot;down and out&quot; and expected to be
+an invalid for the rest of his life.</p>
+
+<p>But these symptoms had one by one
+<span title="Corrected typo: was 'disappeaared'" class="hov">disappeared</span>
+during his five-weeks stay with me. He had done good stiff work in the garden, carried a
+heavy sack of grapefruit a mile in the hot sun, and was generally his
+old self again. Now he was back in the harness, hard at work as of
+old. Suddenly, as he sat reading in his home one evening, all his old
+symptoms swept over him,&mdash;the pains in his head and legs, the pounding
+of the heart, the &quot;all-gone&quot; sensations as though he were going to die
+on the spot. He became almost completely dissociated, but through it
+all he clung to the idea which <!-- Page 347 -->
+<a name="Page_347" id="Page_347" />he had learned,&mdash;namely that this
+experience was not really physical as it seemed but was the result of
+some idea, and would pass. He did not tell any one of the attack,
+ignored it as much as possible, and waited. In a few minutes he was
+himself again. Then he looked for the cause and realized that the
+article he was reading was one he had read several months previous,
+when suffering most severely from the whole train of symptoms. When
+the familiar words had again gone into his mind, they had pressed the
+button for the whole physiological experience which had once before
+been associated with them. This is the same mechanism as that involved
+in Prince's case, Miss Beauchamp, who became completely dissociated at
+one time when a breeze swept across her face. When Dr. Prince looked
+for the cause, he found that once before she had experienced certain
+distressing emotions while a breeze was fanning her cheek. The
+recurrence of the physical stimulation had been sufficient to bring
+back in its entirety the former emotional complex.</p>
+
+<p><b>Another Kind of Association.</b> One of my women patients illustrates
+another kind of association-mechanism, based not on proximity in time
+but proximity of position in the body. This woman had complained for
+years of &quot;bladder trouble&quot; although no physical examination had been
+able to reveal any organic difficulty. She referred to a constant
+distress in the region of the <!-- Page 348 -->
+<a name="Page_348" id="Page_348" />bladder and was never without a certain
+red blanket which she wrapped around her every time she sat down.
+During psycho-analysis she recounted an experience of years before
+which she had never mentioned to anybody. During a professional
+consultation her physician, a married man, had suddenly seized her and
+exclaimed, &quot;I love you! I love you!&quot; In spite of herself, the woman
+felt a certain appeal, followed by a great sense of guilt. In the
+conflict between the physiological reflex and her moral repugnance,
+she had shunted out of consciousness the real sex-sensation and had
+replaced it with a sensation which had become associated in her
+subconscious mind with the original temptation. Since the nerves from
+the genital region and from the bladder connect with the same segment
+of the spinal cord, she had unconsciously chosen to mix her messages,
+and to cling to the substitute sensation without being in the least
+Conscious of the cause. As soon as she had described the scene to me
+and had discerned its connection with her symptoms, the bladder
+trouble disappeared.</p>
+
+<p><b>Afraid of the Cold.</b> Patients who are sensitive to cold are very
+numerous. Mr. G.&mdash;he of the prunes and bran biscuits&mdash;was so afraid of
+a draft that he could detect the air current if a window was opened a
+few inches anywhere in a two-story house. He always wore two suits of
+underwear, but despite his precautions <!-- Page 349 --><a name="Page_349" id="Page_349" />
+he had a swollen red throat
+much of the time. His prescription was a cold bath every morning, a
+source of delight to the other men patients, who made him stay in the
+water while they counted five. He was required to dress and live like
+other folks and of course his sensitiveness and his sore throat disappeared.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. B&mdash;&mdash;, when he came to me, was the most wrapped-up man I had ever
+met. He had on two suits of underwear, a sweater, a vest and suit
+coat, an overcoat, a bear-skin coat and a Jaeger scarf&mdash;all in
+Pasadena in May!</p>
+
+<p>Besides this fear of cold, he was suffering from a hypersensitiveness
+of several other varieties. So sensitive was his skin that he had his
+clothes all made several sizes too big for him so that they would not
+make pressure. He was so aware of the muscles of the neck that he
+believed himself unable to hold up his head, and either propped it
+with his hands or leaned it against the back of a chair.</p>
+
+<p>He had been working on the eighth edition of his book, a scientific
+treatise of nation-wide importance, but his eyes were so sensitive
+that he could not possibly use them and had to keep them shaded from
+the glare. He was so conscious of the messages of fatigue that he was
+unable to walk at all, and he suffered from the usual trouble with
+constipation. All these symptoms of course belonged together and were
+the direct result of <!-- Page 350 --><a name="Page_350" id="Page_350" />
+a wrong state of mind. When he had changed his
+mind, he took off his extra clothes, walked a mile and a half at the
+first try, gave up his constipation, and went back to work. Later on I
+had a letter from him saying that his favorite seat was an overturned
+nail-keg in the garden and that he was thinking of sawing the backs
+off his chairs.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Y&mdash;&mdash; had worn cotton in her ears for a year or two because she
+had once had an inflammation of the middle ear, and believed the
+membrane still sensitive to cold. There was Miss E&mdash;&mdash;, whose
+underwear always reached to her throat and wrists and who spent her
+time following the sun; and Dr. I&mdash;&mdash;, who never forgot her heavy
+sweater or her shawl over her knees, even in front of the fire. The
+procession of &quot;cold ones&quot; is almost endless, but always they find that
+their sensitiveness is of their own making and that it disappears when
+they choose to ignore it.</p>
+
+<p><b>Fear of Light.</b> Fear of cold is no more common than fear of light.
+Nervous folk with half-shut eyes are very frequent indeed. From one
+woman I took at least seven pairs of dark glasses before she learned
+that her eye was made for light. A good example is furnished by a
+woman who was not a patient of mine at all, but merely the sister of a
+patient. After my patient had been cured of a number of distressing
+symptoms&mdash;pain in the spine, sore heels, a severe nervous
+<!-- Page 351 --><a name="Page_351" id="Page_351" />cough,
+indigestion and other typical complaints,&mdash;she began to scheme to get
+her sister to come to me.</p>
+
+<p>This sister, the wife of a minister in the Middle West, had a constant
+pain in her eyes, compelling her to hold them half-shut all the time.
+When she was approached about coming to me, she said indignantly, &quot;If
+that doctor thinks that my trouble is nervous, she is much mistaken,&quot;
+and then proceeded to get well. Once the subconscious mind gets the
+idea that its game is recognized, it is very apt to give it up, and it
+can do this without loss of time if it really wants to.</p>
+
+<p><b>Pain at the Base of the Brain.</b> Of all nervous pains, that in the
+back of the neck is by all odds the most common. It is rare indeed to
+find a nervous patient without this complaint, and among supposedly
+well folk it is only too frequent. Indeed, it almost seems that in
+some quarters such a pain stands as a badge of the fervor and zeal of
+one's work.</p>
+
+<p>But work is never responsible for this sense of discomfort. Only an
+over-sensitiveness to feelings or a false emotionalism can produce a
+pain of this kind, unless it should happen to be caused by some poison
+circulating in the blood. The trouble is not with the nerves or with
+the spine, despite the fad about misplaced vertebr&aelig;. When a doctor
+examines a sensitive spine, marking the sore spots with a blue pencil,
+and a few minutes later repeats the process, he finds almost
+<!-- Page 352 --><a name="Page_352" id="Page_352" />invariably
+that the spots have shifted. They are not true physical
+pains and they rarely remain long in the same place.</p>
+
+<p>Pain in the spine and neck is an example of exaggerated sensibility or
+over-awareness. Since all messages from every part of trunk and limb
+must go through the spinal cord, and since very many of them enter the
+cord in the region of the neck and shoulder blades, it is only natural
+that an over-feeling of these messages should be especially noticed in
+this zone.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes a false emotionalism adds to the discomfort by tensing the
+whole muscular system and making the messages more intense. When a
+social worker or a business man gets tense over his work or ties
+himself into knots over a committee meeting, he not only foolishly
+wastes his energy but makes his nerves carry messages that are more
+urgent than usual. Then if he is on the look-out for sensations, he
+all the more easily becomes aware of the central station in the spine
+where the messages are received. By centering his attention on this
+station and tightening up his back-muscles, he increases this
+over-awareness and easily gets himself into the clutch of a vicious
+habit.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes a tenseness of the body is the result, not of a false
+attitude toward one's work, but of a lack of satisfaction in other
+directions. If the love-force is not getting what it wants, it may
+keep the body in a <!-- Page 353 --><a name="Page_353" id="Page_353" />
+state of tension, with all the undesirable results
+of such tension. The person who keeps himself tense, whether because
+of his work or because of tension in other directions, has not really
+learned how to throw himself into his job and to forget himself, his
+emotions, and his body.</p>
+
+<p><b>Various Pains.</b> Tender spots may appear in almost any part of the
+body. There was the girl with the sore scalp, who was frequently so
+sensitive that she could not bear to have a single hair touched at its
+farthermost end, and who could not think of brushing her hair at such
+a time. There was the man whose wrists and ankles were so painful that
+the slightest touch was excruciating; the woman with the false
+sciatica; the man with the so-called appendicitis pains; and the man
+with the false neuritis, who always wore jersey coats several sizes
+too large. Each one of these false pains was removed by the process of
+re-education.</p>
+
+<p><b>Low Thresholds to Fatigue.</b> Mr. H. was habitually so overcome by
+fatigue that he could not make himself carry through the slightest
+piece of work, even when necessity demanded it. On Sunday night, when
+there was no one else to milk the cow, he had had to stop in the
+middle of the process and go into the house to lie down. To carry the
+milk was impossible, so low were his thresholds to the slightest
+message of fatigue. It turned out that things were not going right
+<!-- Page 354 --><a name="Page_354" id="Page_354" />in
+the reproductive life. His threshold was low in this direction, and it
+carried down with it all other thresholds. After a general revaluation
+of values, he found himself able to keep his thresholds at the normal
+level.</p>
+
+<p>A fine, efficient missionary from the Orient had been so overcome with
+fatigue that he was forced to give up all work and return to this
+country. He had been with me for a while and was again ready to go to
+work. He came one day with a radiant face to bid me good-by. &quot;Why are
+you so joyous?&quot; I asked. &quot;Because,&quot; he answered, &quot;before I came home I
+was so fatigued that it used me up completely just to see the native
+servants pack our luggage. Now we are taking back twice as much, and I
+not only packed it all myself but made the boxes with my own hands. No
+more fatigue for me!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>A charming young girl who in many ways was an inspiration to all her
+associates fell into the habit of over-feeling her fatigue. &quot;You know,
+Doctor,&quot; she said, &quot;that I give out too much of myself; everybody
+tells me so.&quot; That was just the trouble. Everybody had told her so,
+and the suggestion had worked. It did not take her long to learn that
+in scattering abroad she was enriching herself, and that her &quot;giving
+out&quot; was not exhausting to her but rather the truest kind of
+self-expression. It is only when a &quot;giving out&quot; is accompanied by a
+&quot;looking in&quot; that it can ever <!-- Page 355 -->
+<a name="Page_355" id="Page_355" />deplete. The &quot;See how much I am
+giving,&quot; and &quot;How tired I shall be,&quot; attitude could hardly fail to
+exhaust, but a real self-expression and the fulfilment of a real
+desire to give are never anything else than exhilarating. There is
+something wrong with the minister who is used up after his Sunday
+sermons. If his message and not himself is his real concern, he will
+have only a normal amount of fatigue, accompanied by a general sense
+of accomplishment and well-being, after he has fed his flock. To be
+sure, I have never been a minister, but I have had a goodly number
+among my patients and I speak from a fairly close acquaintance with
+their problems.</p>
+
+<p><b>Stopping Our Ears.</b> Roosters seem to be a perpetual source of
+annoyance to the folk whose thresholds are not under proper control.
+But as roosters seem to be necessary to an egg-eating nation, it seems
+simpler to change the threshold than to abolish the roosters. There
+was one woman who complained especially about being disturbed by
+early-morning Chanticleers. I explained that the crowing called for no
+action on her part, and that therefore she should not allow it to come
+into consciousness. &quot;Do you mean,&quot; she said, &quot;that I could keep from
+hearing them?&quot; As it happened, she was sitting under the clock, which
+had just struck seven. &quot;Did you hear the clock strike?&quot; I asked. &quot;No,&quot;
+she said; &quot;did it strike?&quot;</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 356 --><a name="Page_356" id="Page_356" />
+This poor little woman, who suffered from a very painful back and
+other distressing symptoms, had been married at sixteen to a rou&eacute; of
+forty; and, without experiencing any of the psychic feelings of sex,
+had been immediately plunged into the physical sex-relations. Since
+sex is psycho-physical and since any attempt to separate the two
+elements is both desecrating and unsatisfactory; it is not surprising
+that misery, and finally divorce, had been her portion. Another
+equally unpleasant experience had followed, and the poor woman in the
+strain and disappointment of her love-life, and in the lowering of the
+thresholds pertaining to this thwarted instinct, had unconsciously
+lowered the thresholds to all physical stimuli, until she was no
+longer master of herself in any line. When she saw the reason for her
+exaggerated reactions, she was able to gain control of herself, and to
+find outlet in other ways.</p>
+
+<p>Too many persons fall into the way of being disturbed by noises which
+are no concern of theirs. As nurses learn to sleep through all sounds
+but the call of their own patients, so any one may learn to ignore all
+sounds but those which he needs to hear. Connection with the outside
+world can be severed by a mental attitude in much the same way as this
+is accomplished by the physical effect of an anaesthetic. Then the
+usual noises, those which the subconscious recognizes as without
+<!-- Page 357 --><a name="Page_357" id="Page_357" />
+significance, will be without power to disturb. The well-known New
+York publisher who spent his last days on his private yacht, on which
+everything was rubber-heeled and velvet-cushioned, thought that he
+couldn't stand noises; but how much more fun he would have had, if
+some one had only told him about thresholds!</p>
+
+
+<p class="scheading">Summary</p>
+
+<p>There are two kinds of people in the world,&mdash;masters and puppets.
+There is the man in control of his thresholds, at leisure from himself
+and master of circumstance, free to use his energy in fruitful ways;
+and there is the over-sensitive soul, wondering where the barometer
+stands and whether people are going to be quiet, feeling his feelings
+and worrying because no one else feels them, forever wasting his
+energy in exaggerated reactions to normal situations.</p>
+
+<p>This &quot;ticklish&quot; person is not better equipped than his neighbor, but
+more poorly equipped. True adjustment to the environment requires the
+faculty of putting out from consciousness all stimuli that do not
+require conscious attention. The nervous person is lacking in this
+faculty, but he usually fails to realize that this lack places him in
+the class of defectives. A paralyzed man is a cripple because he
+cannot run with the crowd; a nervous individual is a cripple, but only
+because he <!-- Page 358 --><a name="Page_358" id="Page_358" />
+thinks that to run with the crowd lacks distinction.
+Something depends on the accident of birth, but far more depends on
+his own choice. Understanding, judicious neglect of symptoms,
+whole-souled absorption in other interests, and a good look in the
+mirror, are sure to put him back in the running with a wholesome
+delight in being once more &quot;like folks.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<div><!-- Page 359 --><a name="Page_359" id="Page_359" /></div>
+<p class="heading"><a name="CHAPTER_XV" id="CHAPTER_XV">CHAPTER XV</a></p>
+
+<p class="heading"><i>In which we learn discrimination</i></p>
+
+<p class="heading">CHOOSING OUR EMOTIONS</p>
+
+<p class="scheading">Liking the Taste</p>
+
+
+<p>It was a summer evening by the seaside, and a group of us were sitting
+on the porch, having a sort of heart-to-heart talk about
+psychology,&mdash;which means, of course, that we were talking about
+ourselves. One by one the different members of the family spoke out
+the questions that had been troubling them, or brought up their
+various problems of character or of health. At length a splendid Red
+Cross nurse who had won medals for distinguished service in the early
+days of the war, broke out with the question: &quot;Doctor, how can I get
+rid of my terrible temper? Sometimes it is very bad, and always it has
+been one of the trials of my life.&quot; She spoke earnestly and sincerely,
+but this was my answer: &quot;You like your temper. Something in you enjoys
+it, else you would give it up.&quot; Her face was a study in astonishment.
+&quot;I don't like it,&quot; she <!-- Page 360 -->
+<a name="Page_360" id="Page_360" />stammered; &quot;always after I have had an
+outburst of anger I am in the depths of remorse. Many a time I have
+cried my eyes out over this very thing.&quot; &quot;And you like that, too,&quot; I
+answered. &quot;You are having an emotional spree, indulging yourself first
+in one kind of emotion and then in another. If you really hated it as
+much as you say you do, you would never allow yourself the indulgence,
+much less speak of it afterward.&quot; Her astonishment was still further
+increased when several of the group said they, too, had sensed her
+satisfaction with her moods.</p>
+
+<p>Hard as it is to believe, we do choose our emotions. We like emotion
+as we do salt in our food, and too often we choose it because
+something in us likes the savor, and not because it leads to the
+character or the conduct that we know to be good.</p>
+
+
+<p class="scheading">The Power of Choice</p>
+
+<p>Whether we believe it or not, and whether we like it or not, the fact
+remains that we ourselves decide which of all the possible emotions we
+shall choose, or we decide not to press the button for any emotion at
+all.</p>
+
+<p>To a very large extent man, if he knows how and really wishes, may
+select the emotion which is suitable in that it leads to the right
+conduct, has a beneficial effect on the body, adapts him to his social
+<!-- Page 361 --><a name="Page_361" id="Page_361" />
+environment, and makes him the kind of man he wants to be.</p>
+
+<p><b>The Test of Feeling.</b> The psychologist to-day has a sure test of
+character. He says in substance: &quot;Tell me what you feel and I will
+tell you what you are. Tell me what things you love, what things you
+fear, and what makes you angry and I will describe with a fair degree
+of accuracy your character, your conduct, and a good deal about the
+state of your physical health.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Since this test of emotion is fundamentally sound, it is not
+surprising that the nervous man is in a state of distress.
+Indigestion, fatigue, over-sensibility, sound like problems in
+physiology, but we cannot go far in the discussion of any of them
+without coming face to face with the emotions as the real factors in
+the case. When we turn to the mental characteristics of nervous folk,
+we even more quickly find ourselves in the midst of an emotional
+disturbance. Worried, fearful, anxious, self-pitying, excitable, or
+melancholy, the nervous person proves that whatever else a neurosis
+may be, it is, in essence, a riot of the emotions.</p>
+
+<p>There is small wonder that a riot at the heart of the empire should
+lead to insurrection in every province of the personality. It is only
+for the purpose of discussion that we can separate feeling from
+thinking and doing. Every thought and every act has in it something of
+all three elements. An emotion is not an isolated phenomenon; it is
+bound up on the one hand <!-- Page 362 --><a name="Page_362" id="Page_362" />
+with ideas and on the other with bodily
+states and conduct. Whoever runs amuck in his emotions runs amuck in
+his whole being. The nervous invalid with his exhausted and sensitive
+body, his upset mind and irrational conduct is a living illustration
+of the central place of the emotions in the realm of the personality.</p>
+
+<p>But it is not the nervous person only who needs a better understanding
+of his emotional life. The well man also gets angry for childish
+reasons; he is prejudiced and envious, unhappy and suspicious for the
+very same reason as is the nervous man. Since the working-capital of
+energy is limited to a definite amount, the control of the emotions
+becomes a central problem in any life,&mdash;a deciding factor in the
+output and the outcome, as well as in comfort and happiness by the way.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing is harder for the average man to believe than this fact that
+he really has the power to choose his emotions. He has been
+dissatisfied with himself in his past reactions, and yet he has not
+known how to change them. His anger or his depression has appeared so
+undesirable to his best judgment and to his conscious reason that it
+has seemed to be not a part of himself at all but an invasion from without
+which has swept over him without his consent and quite beyond control.</p>
+
+ <p class="scheading"><!-- Page 363 -->
+ <a name="Page_363" id="Page_363" />A House Divided Against Itself</p>
+
+<p>Most of the confusion comes from the fact that we know only a part of
+ourselves. What we do not consciously enjoy we believe we do not enjoy
+at all. What we do not consciously choose we believe to be beyond our
+power of choice,&mdash;the work of the evil one, or the natural depravity
+of human nature, perhaps; but certainly not anything of our choosing.</p>
+
+<p>The point is that a human being is so constituted that he can, without
+knowing it, entertain at the same time two diametrically opposite
+desires. The average person is not so unified as he believes, but is,
+in fact, &quot;a house divided against itself.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The words of the apostle Paul express for most of us the truth about
+ourselves: &quot;For what I would, that I do not; but what I hate that I
+do.&quot; What Paul calls the law of his members warring against the law of
+his mind is simply what we call to-day the instinctive desires coming
+into conflict with our conscious ideal.</p>
+
+<p><b>Hidden Desires.</b> Although we choose our emotions, we choose in many
+cases in response to a buried part of ourselves of which we are wholly
+unaware, or only half-aware. When we do not like what we have chosen,
+it is because the conscious part of us is out of harmony with another
+part and that part is doing the choosing. If the emotions which we
+choose are not <!-- Page 364 --><a name="Page_364" id="Page_364" />those
+that the whole of us&mdash;or at least the
+conscious&mdash;would desire, it is because we are choosing in response to
+hidden desires, and giving satisfaction to cravings which we have not
+recognized. Repeated indulgence of such desires is responsible for the
+emotional habits which we are too likely to consider an inevitable
+part of our personality, inherited from ancestors who are not on hand
+to defend themselves. When we form the habit of being afraid of things
+that other people do not fear, or of being irritated or depressed, or
+of giving way to fits of temper, it is because these habit-reactions
+satisfy the inner cravings that in the circumstances can get
+satisfaction in no better way.</p>
+
+<p>These hidden desires are of several different kinds, when squarely
+looked at. Some of the cravings are found to be childish, and so out
+of keeping with our real characters that we could not possibly hold on
+to them as conscious desires. Others turn out to be so natural and so
+inevitable that we wonder how we could ever have imagined that they
+ought to be repressed. Still others, legitimate in themselves, but
+denied because of outer circumstances, are found to be easily
+satisfied in indirect ways which bear no resemblance to their old
+unfortunate forms of outlet.</p>
+
+<p class="scheading"><!-- Page 365 -->
+<a name="Page_365" id="Page_365" />When Knowledge Helps</p>
+
+<p>The way to get rid of an undesirable emotion is not by working at the
+emotion itself, but by realizing that this is merely an offshoot of a
+deeper root, hidden below the surface. The great point is to recognize
+this deeper root.</p>
+
+<p><b>Childish Anger.</b> It helps to know that uncalled-for anger is a
+defense reaction&mdash;a sort of camouflage or smoke cloud which we throw
+out to hide from ourselves and others the fact that we are being
+worsted in an argument, or being shown up in an undesirable light.
+Better than any amount of weeping over a hot temper is an
+understanding of the fact that when we fly into unseemly rage we are
+usually giving indulgence to a childhood desire to run away from
+unpleasant facts and to cover up our own faults.</p>
+
+<p><b>Enjoying the Blues.</b> It helps to know that the easiest way to fight
+the blues is by realizing that they are a deliberate, if unconscious,
+attempt to gain the pity of ourselves and others. There seems to be in
+undeveloped human nature something that really enjoys being pitied,
+and if we cannot get the commiseration of other people, we can,
+without much trouble, work up a case of self-pity. Most of us would
+have to acknowledge that we seldom find tears in our eyes except when
+our own woes are under consideration. &quot;Whatever else the blues
+accomplish, they certainly afford us a <!-- Page 366 -->
+<a name="Page_366" id="Page_366" />chance to submerge ourselves
+in a sea of self-engrossment.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_63" id="FNanchor_63"></a>
+<a href="#Footnote_63" class="fnanchor">[63]</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_63" id="Footnote_63"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_63"><span class="label">[63]</span>
+</a> Putnam: <i>Human Motives</i>.</p></div>
+
+<p><b>The Chip on the Shoulder.</b> It helps to know that irritability and
+over-sensitiveness are usually the result of tension from unsatisfied
+desires which must find some kind of outlet. If a person is secretly
+restive under the fact that he cannot have the kind of clothes he
+wants, cannot shine in society, or secure a college education or a
+large fortune,&mdash;all of which minister to our insistent and rarely
+satisfied instinct of self-assertion,&mdash;or if he is secretly yearning
+for the satisfaction of the marriage relation, or for the sense of
+completion in parenthood; then the tension from these unsatisfied
+desires shows itself in a hundred little everyday instances of lack of
+self-control. These mystify him and his friends, but they are
+understandable when the whole truth is known.</p>
+
+<p><b>Anxiety and Fear.</b> Nowhere is understanding more valuable than when
+we approach the subject of anxiety and fear. Whenever a person falls
+into a state of abnormal fear, his friends and his physician spend a
+good deal of time in attempting to prove to him that there is no cause
+for apprehension, and in exhorting him to use his reason and give up
+his fear. But how can a person help himself when he is fighting in the
+dark? How can he free himself when the thing he <!-- Page 367 -->
+<a name="Page_367" id="Page_367" />thinks he fears is
+merely a symbol of what he really fears? The woman who was afraid she
+would choke her child had been several months in the hands of
+Christian Scientists, and had earnestly tried to replace fear with
+courage. But in the circumstances, and without further knowledge, this
+was as impossible as it is for a man to lift himself by his own
+boot-straps. She had no point of contact with her real fear, as the
+man has no leverage contact with the earth from which he wishes to
+lift himself.</p>
+
+<p>To be sure there are many cases in which an assumed cheerfulness and
+courage do have a mighty effect on the inner man. The forces of the
+personality are not set, but plastic, and are constantly acting and
+interacting upon one another. Surface habits do influence the forces
+below the surface. William James's advice, &quot;Square your shoulders,
+speak in a major key, smile, and turn a compliment,&quot; is good for most
+occasions, but sometimes even a little understanding of the cause is
+far more effective.</p>
+
+<p>It helps to know that persistent anxiety, lacking obvious cause, is
+found to be the anxiety of the thwarted instinct of reproduction. When
+the sex-instinct is repeatedly stimulated and then checked it sets in
+motion some of the same glands that are activated in fear. What comes
+up into consciousness is therefore very naturally a fear or dread of
+impending disaster, very <!-- Page 368 -->
+<a name="Page_368" id="Page_368" />like the poignant anxiety that one feels
+when stepping up in the dark to a step that is not there.</p>
+
+<p>Simultaneous with the fear lest these repressed desires should not be
+satisfied, there is an intense fear lest they should. The more
+insistent the repressed desire, and the more it seems likely to break
+through into consciousness, the keener the anguish of the ethical
+impulses. Abnormal fear, however it may seem to be externalized,
+always implies at the bottom a fear of something within. There is no
+truth which is harder to believe on first hearing but which grows more
+compelling with further knowledge, than this truth that an exaggerated
+fear always implies a desire which somehow offends the total
+personality. When we observe the various distressing phobias, such as
+the common fear of contamination, a woman's fear to undress at night,
+a fear that the gas was not turned off, or that one's clothing is out
+of order; fear lest the exact truth has not been told, or that the
+uttermost farthing of one's obligations has not been met,&mdash;then we may
+know that there is something in the fear situation which either
+directly or symbolically refers to some hidden desire; a desire which
+the individual would not for the world acknowledge to himself, but
+which is too keen to be altogether repressed.</p>
+
+<p>The close connection between fear and desire is often shown in the
+unfounded fear of having committed<!-- Page 369 -->
+<a name="Page_369" id="Page_369" /> a crime. Both doctors and lawyers
+in their professional work occasionally come upon individuals who
+believe that they have committed some heinous crime of which they are
+really innocent, and who insist upon their guilt despite all evidence
+to the contrary. A quiet, gentle youth who at the age of twenty was
+under my medical care, is still not sure in his own whether he, at
+twelve years of age, was the burglar who broke into the village store
+and killed the owner. It is difficult for the normally self-satisfied
+individual to understand the appeal of heroics to a person whose
+starved instinct of self-assertion makes him choose to be known as a
+villain rather than not to be known at all.</p>
+
+<p><b>Breaking the Spell.</b> When once we bring up into consciousness these
+hidden desires that manifest themselves in such troublesome ways, we
+find that we have robbed them of much of their power over our lives.
+Sometimes, it is true, a detailed and thorough exploration by
+psycho-analysis is necessary, but in many cases it is sufficient just
+to know that there are underlying causes. To know these things is far
+from excusing ourselves because of them. Even though emotions are
+determined by forces that are deep in the subconscious, we may still
+choose in opposition to those forces, if we but know that we can do
+so. The fact that some of the roots of our bad habits reach down into
+the <!-- Page 370 --><a name="Page_370" id="Page_370" />
+subconscious is no excuse for not digging them up. As Dr. Putnam
+says, &quot;It is the whole of us that acts, and we are as responsible for
+the supervision of the unseen as for the obvious factors that are at
+work. The moon may be only half illumined and half visible, but the
+invisible half goes on, none the less, exerting its full share of
+influence on the motion of the tides and
+earth.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_64" id="FNanchor_64"></a>
+<a href="#Footnote_64" class="fnanchor">[64]</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_64" id="Footnote_64"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_64"><span class="label">[64]</span>
+</a> Putnam: <i>Freud's Psychoanalytic Method and Its Evolution</i>, p. 34.</p></div>
+
+
+<p class="scheading">The Highest Kind of Choice</p>
+
+<p>There is no easier way to enliven any conversation than by dropping
+the remark that a human being always does what he wants to do. Simple
+as the statement seems, it is quite enough to quicken the dullest
+table-talk and loosen the most reticent tongue.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I don't do what I want to do,&quot; says the college student. &quot;I want to
+play tennis every afternoon; but what I do is to sit in a stuffy room
+and study.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I don't do what I want to do,&quot; says the mother of a family. &quot;At night
+I want to sit down and read the latest magazine, but what I do is to
+darn stockings by the hour.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless we shall see that, even in cases like these, each of us
+is acting in accordance with his strongest desire. There may be&mdash;there
+often is&mdash;a bitter <!-- Page 371 --><a name="Page_371" id="Page_371" />
+conflict, but in the end the desire that is really
+stronger always conquers and works itself out into action.</p>
+
+<p>It is possible to imagine a situation in which a man would be
+physically unable to do what he wanted to do. Bound by physical cords,
+held by prison walls, or weakened by illness, he might be actually
+unable to carry out his desires. But apart from physical restraint, it
+is hard to imagine a situation in real life in which a person does not
+actually do what he wants to do; that is, what <i>in the circumstances
+he wants to do</i>. This is simply saying in another way that we act in
+accordance with the emotion which is at the moment strongest.</p>
+
+<p><b>Will Is Choice.</b> Just here we can imagine an earnest protest: &quot;But
+why do you ignore the human will? Why do you try to make man the
+creature of feeling? A high-grade man does&mdash;not what he wants to do
+but what he thinks he ought to do. In any person worthy of the
+adjective 'civilized' it is conscience, not desire, which is the
+motive power of his life.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It is true: in the better kind of man the will is of central
+importance; but what is &quot;will&quot;? Let us imagine a raw soldier in the
+trenches just before a charge into No-Man's Land. He is afraid, but
+the word of command comes, and instantly he is a new creature. His
+fear drops away and, energized by the lust of battle, he rushes
+forward, obviously driven by the stronger emotion. He goes ahead
+because he really wants to, <!-- Page 372 --><a name="Page_372" id="Page_372" />
+and we say that he does not have to use his will.</p>
+
+<p>Imagine another soldier in the same situation; with him fear seems
+uppermost. His knees shake and his legs want to carry him in the wrong
+direction, but he still goes forward. And he goes forward, not so much
+because there is no other possibility as because, in the
+circumstances, he really wants to. All his life, and especially during
+his military training, he has been filled with ideals of loyalty and
+courage. More than he fears the guns of the enemy or of his
+firing-squad does he fear the loss of his own self-respect and the
+respect of his comrades. Greater than his &quot;will to live&quot; is his desire
+to play the man. There is conflict, and the desire which seems at the
+moment weaker is given the victory because it is reinforced by that
+other permanent desire to be a worthy man, brave, and dependable in a
+crisis. He goes forward, because in the circumstances, he really wants
+to, but in this case we say that he had to use his will.</p>
+
+<p>Is it not apparent that will itself is choice,&mdash;the selection by the
+whole personality of the emotion and the action which best fit into
+its ideals? Will is choice by the part of us which has ideals.
+McDougall points out that will is the reinforcement of the weaker
+desire by the master desire to be a certain kind of a
+character.<a name="FNanchor_65" id="FNanchor_65"></a>
+<a href="#Footnote_65" class="fnanchor">[65]</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_65" id="Footnote_65"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_65"><span class="label">[65]</span>
+</a> &quot;The essential mark of volition is that the personality
+as a whole, or the central feature or nucleus of the personality, the
+man himself, is thrown upon the side of the weaker
+motive.&quot;&mdash;McDougall: <i>Introduction to Social Psychology</i>, p. 240.</p></div>
+
+<p><!-- Page 373 --><a name="Page_373" id="Page_373" />Each human
+being as he goes through life acquires a number of moral
+ideals and sentiments which he adopts as his own. They become linked
+with the instinct of self-assertion, which henceforth acts as the
+motive power behind them, and attempts to drive from the field any
+emotion which happens to conflict.</p>
+
+<p>Men, like the lower animals, are ruled by desire, but, as G.A. Coe
+says, &quot;Men mold themselves. They form desires not merely to have this
+or that object, but to be this or that kind of a
+man.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_66" id="FNanchor_66"></a>
+<a href="#Footnote_66" class="fnanchor">[66]</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_66" id="Footnote_66"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_66"><span class="label">[66]</span>
+</a> Coe: <i>Psychology of Religion</i>.</p></div>
+
+<p>If a man be worthy of the name, he is not swayed by the emotion which
+happens for the moment to be strongest. He has the power to reinforce
+and make dominant those impulses which fit into the ideal he has built
+for himself. In other words, he has the power to choose between his
+desires, and this power depends largely upon the ideals which he has
+incorporated into his life by the complexes and sentiments which
+compose his personality.</p>
+
+<p><i>Ideas and Ideals</i>. If emotion is the heart of humanity, ideas are its
+head. In our emphasis on emotion, we must not forget that as emotion
+controls action, so ideas control emotion. But ideas, of themselves,
+are not enough. Everybody has seen weaklings who were full of pious
+platitudes. Ideas do control life, but only when linked up with some
+strong emotion. <!-- Page 374 --><a name="Page_374" id="Page_374" />
+No moral sentiment is strong enough to withstand an
+intense instinctive desire. If ideas are to be dynamic factors in a
+life, they must become ideals and be really desired. They must be
+backed up by the impulse of self-assertion, incorporated with the
+sentiment of self-regard, and so made a permanent part of the central
+personality.</p>
+
+<p>Parents and teachers who try to &quot;break a child's will&quot; and to punish
+every evidence of independence and self-assertion little know that
+they are undermining the foundations of morality itself, and doing
+their utmost to leave the child at the mercy of his chance whims and
+emotions. There can be no strength of character without self-regard,
+and self-regard is built on the instinctive desire of self-assertion.</p>
+
+<p><b>Education and Religion.</b> It is easy to see how important education is
+in this process of giving the right content to the self-regarding
+sentiment. The child trained to regard &quot;temper&quot; as a disgrace,
+self-pity as a vice, over-sensitiveness as a sign of selfishness, and
+all forms of exaggerated emotionalism as a token of weakness, has
+acquired a powerful weapon against temptation in later life.
+Indulgence in any of these forms of gratification he will regard as
+unworthy and out of keeping with his personality.</p>
+
+<p>It is easy, too, to see how central a place a vital religious faith
+has in enriching and ennobling the ego-<!-- Page 375 -->
+<a name="Page_375" id="Page_375" />ideal, and in giving it
+driving-power. A force which makes a high ideal seem both imperative
+and possible of achievement could hardly fail to be a deciding factor.
+Every student of human nature knows in how many countless lives the
+Christian religion has made all the difference between mere good
+intentions and the power to realize those intentions; how many times
+it has furnished the motive power which nothing else seemed able to
+supply. Moral sentiments which have been merely sentiments become,
+through the magic of a new faith, incorporated into conscience and
+endowed with new power.</p>
+
+<p>Just here lies the value of any great love, or any intense devotion to
+a cause. As Royce says: &quot;To have a conscience, then, is to have a
+cause; to unify your life by means of an ideal determined by this
+cause, and to compare this ideal and the
+life.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_67" id="FNanchor_67"></a>
+<a href="#Footnote_67" class="fnanchor">[67]</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_67" id="Footnote_67"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_67"><span class="label">[67]</span>
+</a> Royce: <i>Philosophy of Loyalty</i>, p. 175.</p></div>
+
+<p><b>Avoiding the Strain.</b> It seems that a human being is to a large
+extent controlled by will, and that will is in itself the highest kind
+of choice. But too often will is crippled because it does not speak
+for the whole personality. Knowledge helps a person to relate
+conscience with hitherto hidden parts of himself, to assert his will,
+and to choose only those emotions and outlets which the connected-up,
+the unified personality wants. Sometimes, indeed, a little knowledge
+makes the exercise <!-- Page 376 --><a name="Page_376" id="Page_376" />
+of the will power unnecessary. Using will power
+is, after all, likely to be a strenuous business. It implies the
+presence of conflict, and the strain of defeating the desire which has
+to be denied.<a name="FNanchor_68" id="FNanchor_68"></a>
+<a href="#Footnote_68" class="fnanchor">[68]</a> Why
+struggle to subdue emotional bad habits when a
+little insight dispels the desire back of them, and makes them melt
+away as if by magic? For example, why use our will to keep down fear
+or anger when a little understanding dissipates these emotions without effort?</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_68" id="Footnote_68"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_68"><span class="label">[68]</span>
+</a> Freud: <i>Introduction to Psychoanalysis</i>, p. 42.</p></div>
+
+<p>Whatever we do with difficulty we are not doing well. When it requires
+effort to do our duty this means that a great part of us does not want
+to do it. When we get rid of our hidden resistances we work with ease.
+As a strong wind, applied in the right way, drives the ship without
+effort, just so the forces in our lives, if they are adjusted to one
+another, will without strain or stress easily and naturally work
+together to carry us in the direction we have chosen. When we get rid
+of blind conflicts, even the business of ruling our spirits becomes
+feasible.</p>
+
+
+<p class="scheading">Summary</p>
+
+<p><b>Various &quot;Sprees.&quot;</b> The human animal has a constitutional dislike for
+dullness and will seize upon almost any device which promises to lift
+him out of what he considers the monotony of daily grind. An elaborate
+<!-- Page 377 --><a name="Page_377" id="Page_377" />essay
+might be written on the means which human beings have taken to
+create the sense of <i>aliveness</i> which they so much crave. Some of
+them&mdash;we call them savages&mdash;have found satisfactory certain wild
+orgies in primitive war-dances; others&mdash;we shall soon call them &quot;out
+of date&quot;&mdash;have found simpler a bottle of whisky or a glass of
+champagne; still others find a cold shower more invigorating, or a
+brisk walk or a good stiff job which sets them aglow with the sense of
+accomplishment. But there are always those who, for one reason or
+another, find most satisfactory of all a chronic emotional tippling,
+or a good old-fashioned emotional spree. Persons who would be shocked
+at the idea of whisky or champagne allow themselves this other kind of
+indulgence without in the least knowing why.</p>
+
+<p>Nor is the connection between alcoholism and emotionalism so
+far-fetched as it seems. Psycho-analytic investigations have
+repeatedly revealed the fact that both are indulged in because they
+remove inhibitions, give vent to repressed desires, and bring a sense
+of life and power which has somehow been lost in the normal living.
+Both kinds of spree are followed by the inevitable &quot;morning after&quot;
+with its proverbial headache, remorse, and vows of repentance but
+despite all this, both are clung to because the satisfaction they
+bring is too deep to be easily relinquished.</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 378 --><a name="Page_378" id="Page_378" />Whenever
+an emotion quite out of keeping with conscious desire is
+allowed to become habitual, we may know that it is being chosen by a
+part of the personality which needs to be uncovered and squarely
+faced. Nervous symptoms and exaggerated emotionalism are alike
+evidence of the fact that the wrong part of us is doing the choosing
+and that the will needs to be enlightened on what is taking place in
+the outer edge of its domain. In the choice between emotionalism and
+equanimity, the selection of the former can only be in response to
+unrecognized desire.</p>
+
+<p>A nervous person is invariably an emotional person, and as a rule lays
+the blame for his condition upon past experiences. But experience is
+what happens to us <i>plus</i> the way we take it. We cannot always ward
+off the blow, but we can decide upon our reaction. &quot;Even if the
+conduct of others has been the cause of our emotion, it is really we
+ourselves who have created it by the way in which we have
+reacted.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_69" id="FNanchor_69"></a>
+<a href="#Footnote_69" class="fnanchor">[69]</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_69" id="Footnote_69"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_69"><span class="label">[69]</span>
+</a> DuBois: <i>Psychic Treatment of Nervous Disorders</i>, p. 155.</p></div>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span>One ship drives east, another drives west,<br /></span>
+<span>While the self-same breezes blow;<br /></span>
+<span>'Tis the set of the sail, and not the gale<br /></span>
+<span>That bids them where to go.<br /></span>
+<span>Like the winds of the sea are the ways of fate,<br /></span>
+<span>As we journey along through life;<br /></span>
+<span>'Tis the set of the soul that decides the goal,<br /></span>
+<span>And not the calm or the strife.<br /></span>
+<span>REBECCA R. WILLIAMS.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<div><!-- Page 379 --><a name="Page_379" id="Page_379" /></div>
+<p class="heading"><a name="CHAPTER_XVI" id="CHAPTER_XVI">CHAPTER XVI</a></p>
+
+<p class="heading"><i>In which we find new use for our steam</i></p>
+
+<p class="heading">FINDING VENT IN SUBLIMATION</p>
+
+<p class="scheading">The Re-direction of Energy</p>
+
+
+<p>A child pent up on a rainy day is a troublesome child. His energy
+keeps piling up, but there is no opportunity for him to expend it. The
+nervous person is just such a pent-up child. A portion of his
+personality is developing steam which goes astray in its search for
+vent; this portion is found to be the psychic side of his sex-life.
+Something has blocked the satisfactory achievement of instinctive ends
+and turned his interest in on himself.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps he does not come into complete psychic satisfaction of his
+love-life because his wife is out of sympathy or is held back by her
+own childish repressions. Perhaps his love-instinct is baffled by
+finding itself thwarted in its purpose of creating children,
+restrained by the social ban and the desire for a luxurious standard
+of living. Perhaps he is jealous of his chief, <!-- Page 380 -->
+<a name="Page_380" id="Page_380" />or of an older
+relative whose business stride he cannot equal.</p>
+
+<p>Jung has pointed out how frequently introversion or turning in of the
+life-force is brought about by the painfulness of present reality and
+by the lack of the power of adaptation to things as they are. But this
+lack always has its roots in childhood. The woman who is shocked at
+the thought of sex is the little girl who reacted too strongly to
+early impressions. The man of forty who is disgruntled because he is
+not made manager of a business created by others is the little boy who
+was jealous of his father and wanted to usurp his place of power. The
+man who suffers from a sense of inferiority because his friend has a
+handsomer or more intellectual wife is the same little boy who strove
+with his father for possession of the mother, the most desired object
+in his childish environment. The measure of escape from these childish
+attitudes means the measure of success in life.</p>
+
+<p>Fortunately for society, the average person achieves this success. The
+normal person in his childhood learned how to switch the energy of his
+primitive desires into channels approved by society. Stored away in
+his subconscious, this acquired faculty carries him without conscious
+effort through all the necessary adjustments in maturity. The nervous
+person, less well equipped in childhood, may fortunately acquire the
+<!-- Page 381 --><a name="Page_381" id="Page_381" />
+faculty in all its completeness, although at the cost of genuine
+effort and patient self-study.</p>
+
+<p><b>Sublimation the Key Word.</b> In the prevention and in the cure of
+nervous disorders there is one factor of central importance, and that
+factor is sublimation&mdash;or the freeing of sex-energy for socially
+useful, non-sexual ends. To sublimate is to find vent for oneself and
+to serve society as well; for sublimation opens up new channels for
+pent-up energy, utilizing all the surplus of the sex-instinct in
+substitute activities. When the dynamic of this impulse is turned
+outward, not inward, it proves to be one of man's greatest
+possessions, a valuable contribution of energy to creative activities
+and personal relationships of every kind.</p>
+
+<p><b>The Failure to Sublimate.</b> A neurosis is nonconstructive use of one's
+surplus steam. The trouble with a nervous person is that his
+love-force is turned in on himself instead of out into the world of
+reality. This is what his friends mean when they say that he is
+self-absorbed; and this is what the psychologists mean when they say
+that a neurotic is introverted. A person, in so far as he is nervous,
+does not see other people at all&mdash;that is, he does not see them as
+real persons, but only as auditors who may be made to listen to the
+tale of his woes. His own problems loom so large that he becomes
+especially afflicted with what Cabot calls &quot;the sin of impersonality&quot;;
+or to use <!-- Page 382 --><a name="Page_382" id="Page_382" />President
+King's words, he lacks that &quot;reverence for
+personality&quot; which enables one to see people vividly as real persons
+and not as street-car conductors or servants or merely as members of
+one's family. To be sure, many a so-called normal individual is
+afflicted with this same kind of blindness; here as elsewhere the
+neurotic simply exaggerates. Engrossed in his own mental conflicts and
+physical symptoms, he is likely to find his interest withdrawing more
+and more from other people and centering upon himself.</p>
+
+<p><b>Sublimation and Religion.</b> We do not need psychology to tell us that
+engrossment in self is a disastrous condition. When the psycho-analyst
+says that the life-force must be turned out, not in, he is approaching
+from a new angle the truth as it is found in the gospel,&mdash;&quot;Thou shalt
+love the Lord thy God with all thy heart,&quot; and &quot;thy neighbor as
+thyself.&quot; Religion provides the love-object in the Creator; altruism
+provides it in the &quot;neighbor.&quot; Christianity and psychology agree that
+as soon as love ceases to be an outgoing force, just so soon does the
+individual become an incomplete and disrupted
+personality.<a name="FNanchor_70" id="FNanchor_70"></a>
+<a href="#Footnote_70" class="fnanchor">[70]</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_70" id="Footnote_70"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_70"><span class="label">[70]</span>
+</a> For emphasis on religion as a means to sublimation, see
+Freud, Putnam, Pfister, James, and DuBois.</p></div>
+
+<p><b>Carlyle's Doctrine of Work.</b> &quot;Produce! produce! produce!&quot; Life for a
+social being involves not only rich personal relationships, but
+absorbing, creative <!-- Page 383 --><a name="Page_383" id="Page_383" />work.
+No nervous person is cured until he is
+willing to take and to keep a &quot;man-size job.&quot; A good piece of work is
+not only the sign of a cure; it is the final step without which no
+cure is complete.</p>
+
+<p><b>Along Nature's Lines.</b> If the psychologist is asked what kind of task
+this is to be, he answers that each person must decide for himself his
+own life-work. An individual may not know why, but he does know that
+there are certain things which he most likes to do. Sublimation is
+more readily accomplished if his energy is directed toward self-chosen
+interests. Parents or teachers or physicians who try to force another
+person into any definite plan of action are making a grievous blunder.
+Help may be given toward self-knowledge and the understanding of
+general principles, but advice should never be specific.</p>
+
+<p>Taken in the large, it is found that men and women choose different
+ways of sublimation. Man and woman differ in the psychic components of
+the sex-life even as they differ in the physical. Sublimation to be
+successful must follow the lines laid down by nature. The urge of the
+average man is toward construction, domination, mastery. The urge of
+the average woman is toward mothering, protection, nurture. The
+masculine characteristics find ready sublimation in a career; the man
+builds bridges, digs canals, harnesses mountain streams, conquers
+pests, overcomes <!-- Page 384 --><a name="Page_384" id="Page_384" />gravity,
+brings the ends of the earth together by &quot;wireless&quot; or by rail;
+he provides for the weak and the helpless&mdash;his
+own progeny&mdash;or, incarnated in the body of a Hoover, he gives life to
+the children of the world.</p>
+
+<p>In woman, the dominant force is the nurturing instinct. Child and man
+of her own come first, but when these are lacking, to paraphrase
+Kipling, in default of closer ties, she is wedded to convictions;
+Heaven help him who denies! Only as a career opens up full vent for
+this nurturing instinct, will it provide satisfactory substitute in
+sublimation. Its natural trend can be seen in the recent tidal wave of
+social legislation&mdash;for prohibition, child-labor laws, sanitation,
+recognition and control of venereal disease, acknowledgment of
+paternity to the illegitimate child.</p>
+
+<p>Since the women of the day, in numbers up to the million, have been
+compelled to sacrifice both man and unformed babe to the grim
+Juggernaut of war, this nurturing urge may press hard against many of
+the social and business barriers now impeding its flow. But if society
+understands and readjusts these barriers, making it possible for its
+citizens&mdash;women as well as men&mdash;to approximate the natural instinctive
+bent, it will not only save itself much unrest but will also go far
+toward preventing the spread of nervous invalidism.</p>
+
+<p class="scheading"><!-- Page 385 -->
+<a name="Page_385" id="Page_385" />Summary</p>
+
+<p>That which a nervous invalid most needs is a redirection of energy.
+Since, in spite of appearances, there is never any real lack of
+energy, no time is needed for the making of strength, and a cure can
+take place just as soon as the inner forces allow the energy to flow
+out in the right direction. Sometimes, indeed, an outer change may
+start the inner process. Often the &quot;work cure&quot; does cure; occasionally
+the sudden necessity to earn one's living or to mother a little child
+frees the life-force from its old preoccupation and forces it into
+other channels. In most cases, however, the nervous invalid is
+suffering not from lack of opportunities for outside interest but from
+an inner inability to meet the opportunities which present themselves.
+The great change that has to be made is not in external conditions and
+habits but in the hidden corners of the mind; a change that can be
+accomplished only by self-knowledge and re-education.</p>
+
+<p>But if self-knowledge is the first step in any cure, so self-giving
+must be the final step. Sooner or later in the life of every nervous
+invalid there comes a time when nothing will serve to unify his
+disorganized forces but steady and unswerving responsibility for a
+good stiff piece of work. Happy for him that this is so and that he is
+living in a day when science no longer tells him to fold his hands and
+wait.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<div><!-- Page 386 --><a name="Page_386" id="Page_386" /></div>
+<p class="heading"><a name="GLOSSARY" id="GLOSSARY" />GLOSSARY</p>
+
+
+<p><i>Autonomic nervous system:</i> The vegetative nervous system which
+controls vital functions,&mdash;as digestion, respiration, circulation.</p>
+
+<p><i>Censor:</i> A hypothetical faculty of the fore-conscious mind which
+resists the emergence into consciousness of questionable desires.</p>
+
+<p><i>Common path:</i> In physiology, the final route over which response is
+made to physical stimulation; similarly in psychology, the one outlet
+for the finally dominant impulse.</p>
+
+<p><i>Compensation:</i> Exaggerated manifestation of one character-trend as a
+defense against its opposite which is painfully repressed; relief in
+substitute symptom formation.</p>
+
+<p><i>Complex:</i> A group of ideas held together by emotion (usually
+referring to a group which is wholly or in part unconscious).</p>
+
+<p><i>Compulsion:</i> A persistent compelling impulse to perform some
+seemingly unreasonable (but really substitute or symbolic) act, or to
+hold some irrational fear or idea; an emotional force which has been
+separated from the original idea.</p>
+
+<p><i>Conflict:</i> (Special) Struggle between instincts (unconscious).</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 387 --><a name="Page_387" id="Page_387" />
+<i>Conversion:</i> (Special) The process by which a repressed mental
+complex expresses itself through a physical symptom.</p>
+
+<p><i>Displacement:</i> 1. Transposition of an emotion from its original idea
+to one more acceptable to the personality. 2. The shifting of
+emphasis, in dreams, from essential to less significant elements.</p>
+
+<p><i>Dissociation:</i> 1. The state of being shut out from taking active part
+(applied to a group of ideas), as in normal forgetfulness. 2.
+(Abnormal) An exaggerated degree of separation of groups of ideas,
+with loss to the personality of the forces or memories which these
+groups contain, as in double personality.</p>
+
+<p><i>Fixation:</i> Establishment in childhood of over-strong habit-reactions.</p>
+
+<p><i>Free Association:</i> A device for uncovering buried complexes by
+letting the mind wander without conscious direction.</p>
+
+<p><i>Homo-sexual:</i> The quality of being more attracted by an individual of
+the same sex (abnormal) than by one of the opposite sex
+(hetero-sexual, normal).</p>
+
+<p><i>Hysteria:</i> That form of functional nervous disorder which manifests
+itself in physical symptoms; an attempt to dramatize unconscious
+repressed desires.</p>
+
+<p><i>Inhibition:</i> Restraint (Special) limitation of function, physical or
+ideational, due to unconscious emotional attitudes.</p>
+
+<p><i>Libido:</i> Life-force, &eacute;lan vital, or (restricted) the energy of the
+sex-instinct.</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 388 --><a name="Page_388" id="Page_388" />
+<i>Neurosis:</i> Used loosely for psycho-neurosis or nervous disorder.</p>
+
+<p><i>Obsession:</i> A compulsive idea inaccessible to reason.</p>
+
+<p><i>Oedipus Complex:</i> Over-strong bond between mother and son, or (more
+loosely) between father and daughter.</p>
+
+<p><i>Over-determined:</i> Used of an impulse made over-strong by lack of
+discharge, with accumulation of emotional tension from added factors.</p>
+
+<p><i>Phobia:</i> A persistent, unreasoning fear of some object or situation.</p>
+
+<p><i>Psycho-neurosis:</i> &quot;A perversion of normal (psychic) reactions,&quot;
+(Prince); a general term for functional dissociation of the
+personality, resulting in: psychasthenia&mdash;disturbed ideation;
+neurasthenia&mdash;disturbed emotions; hysteria&mdash;disturbed motor or sensory
+activity.</p>
+
+<p><i>Psychotherapy:</i> Treatment by psychic or mental measures.</p>
+
+<p><i>Rationalization:</i> The process of substituting a plausible, false
+explanation for a repressed, unconscious desire.</p>
+
+<p><i>Repression:</i> Expulsion from consciousness of a pain-provoking mental
+process.</p>
+
+<p><i>Resistance:</i> The force which impedes the return of a repressed
+complex to consciousness.</p>
+
+<p><i>Subconscious:</i> That part of the mind of which one is unaware; the
+storehouse of memories ancestral and personal.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sublimation:</i> The act of freeing sex-energy from
+<!-- Page 389 --><a name="Page_389" id="Page_389" />definitely
+sexual aims; utilization of sex-energy for nonsexual ends.</p>
+
+<p><i>Suggestion:</i> The process by which any idea, true or false, takes hold
+of one; the idea may enter the mind consciously or unconsciously,
+through reason or through impulse.</p>
+
+<p><i>Symbol:</i> An object or an attitude which stands for an ides or a
+quality; (Special) that which stands for or represents some
+unconscious mental process.</p>
+
+<p><i>Threshold</i> (door-sill): A figure which represents the level of the
+barrier erected by the mind against the perception of an idea or
+sensation.</p>
+
+<p><i>Transference:</i> Unconscious identification of a present personal
+relationship with an earlier one, with conveyance of the earlier
+emotional attitudes (hostile or affectionate) to the present
+relationship.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<div><!-- Page 390 --><a name="Page_390" id="Page_390" /></div>
+<p class="heading"><a name="BIBLIOGRAPHY" id="BIBLIOGRAPHY" />BIBLIOGRAPHY</p>
+
+<p class="scheading">Books on the General Laws of Body and Mind</p>
+
+<p class="hangind">Cannon, Walter B: Bodily Changes in Pain, Hunger, Fear and Rage.</p>
+
+<p class="hangind">Crile, George W.: The Origin and Nature of the Emotions.</p>
+
+<p class="hangind">Coe, George Albert: The Psychology of Religion.</p>
+
+<p class="hangind">Hudson, Thomas Jay: The Law of Psychic Phenomena.</p>
+
+<p class="hangind">Janet, Pierre: The Major Symptoms of Hysteria; The Mental State of Hystericals.</p>
+
+<p class="hangind">James, William: Psychology; Talks to Teachers on Psychology;
+Varieties of Religious Experience.</p>
+
+<p class="hangind">Jastrow, Joseph: The Subconscious.</p>
+
+<p class="hangind">Kempf, Edward J.: The Tonus of Autonomic Segments in Psychopathology.</p>
+
+<p class="hangind">Long, Constance: Psychology of Fantasy.</p>
+
+<p class="hangind">McDougall, William: Social Psychology.</p>
+
+<p class="hangind">Mosher, Clelia Duel: Health and the Woman Movement.</p>
+
+<p class="hangind">Phillips, D.E.: Elementary Psychology.</p>
+
+<p class="hangind">Prince, Morton: The Unconscious; The Dissociation of a Personality; My Life as a Dissociated Personality.</p>
+
+<p class="hangind">Sherrington, Charles L.: The Integrative Action of the Nervous System.</p>
+
+<p class="hangind">Sidis, Boris: The Foundations of Normal and Abnormal Psychology; Psychopathological Researches.</p>
+
+<p class="hangind">Tansley, A.G.: The New Psychology.</p>
+
+<p class="hangind">Thomson, William Hanna: Brain and Personality.</p>
+
+<p class="hangind"><!-- Page 391 --><a name="Page_391" id="Page_391" />
+White, William A.: Principles of Mental Hygiene;
+The Mental Hygiene of Childhood.</p>
+
+<p class="hangind">Proceedings of the International Conference of Women Physicians.
+(National Board, Y.W.C.A., 600 Lexington Avenue, New York City.)</p>
+
+
+<p class="scheading">Books on Mental Hygiene</p>
+
+<p class="hangind">Brown, Charles R.: Faith and Health.</p>
+
+<p class="hangind">Bruce, H. Addington: Scientific Mental Healing.</p>
+
+<p class="hangind">Cabot, Richard: What Men Live By;
+Social Service and the Art of Healing.</p>
+
+<p class="hangind">DuBois, Paul: The Psychic Treatment of Nervous Disorders.</p>
+
+<p class="hangind">Huckel, Oliver: Mental Medicine.</p>
+
+<p class="hangind">James, William: Vital Reserves.</p>
+
+<p class="hangind">Prince, Morton, and others: Psychotherapeutics.</p>
+
+<p class="hangind">Sadler, William S.: The Physiology of Faith and Fear.</p>
+
+<table class="la" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="4" border="0" summary="Religion and Medicine">
+<tr>
+	<td>Worcester, Elwood</td>
+	<td valign="middle" rowspan="3" style="white-space: nowrap; font-size: 300%">}</td>
+	<td>&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+	<td>McComb, Samuel</td>
+	<td>Religion and Medicine.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+	<td>Coriat, Isador H.</td>
+	<td>&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p class="scheading">Books on Psycho-Analysis</p>
+
+<p class="hangind">Brill, A.A.: Fundamentals of Psychoanalysis.</p>
+
+<p class="hangind">Emerson, L.E.: Nervousness.</p>
+
+<p class="hangind">Freud, Sigmund: The Interpretation of Dreams;
+The Psychopathology of Everyday Life;
+Wit and the Unconscious;
+Selected Papers and Sexual Theory;
+A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis.</p>
+
+<p class="hangind">Frink, H.W.: Morbid Fears and Compulsions.</p>
+
+<p class="hangind">Hitschmann, E.: Freud's Theories of the Neuroses.</p>
+
+<p class="hangind"><!-- Page 392 --><a name="Page_392" id="Page_392" />
+Holt, E.B.: The Freudian Wish.</p>
+
+<p class="hangind">Jung, Carl G.: The Psychology of the Unconscious; Analytical Psychology.</p>
+
+<p class="hangind">Jones, Ernest: Psycho-analysis; Treatment of the Neuroses, Including
+Psychoneuroses&mdash;in Modern Treatment of Nervous and Mental
+Diseases&mdash;White and Jelliffe.</p>
+
+<p class="hangind">Pfister, Oskar: The Psychoanalytic Method.</p>
+
+<p class="hangind">Putnam, James Jackson: Addresses on Psychoanalysis&mdash;Human
+Motives.</p>
+
+<p class="hangind">Tridon, Andr&eacute;: Psychoanalysis.</p>
+
+<p class="hangind">White, William A.: The Mechanisms of Character Formation.</p>
+
+
+<p class="scheading">Journals Devoted to the Subject of Nervous Disorders</p>
+
+<p class="hangind">Journal of Abnormal Psychology, published in Boston.</p>
+
+<p class="hangind">Psychoanalytic Review, published in Washington, D.C.</p>
+
+<p class="hangind">International Journal of Psychoanalysis, published in London.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h2><a name="INDEX" id="INDEX" /><!-- Page 393 --><a name="Page_393" id="Page_393" />INDEX</h2>
+
+<p class="heading">A</p>
+
+<p class="noind">
+Acid and Milk, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>, <a href="#Page_257">257</a><br />
+<br />
+Acidosis, <a href="#Page_285">285</a><br />
+<br />
+Adjustment<br />
+<span class="ind1">a neurosis an effort at, <a href="#Page_169">169</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">to new conditions causes consciousness, <a href="#Page_82">82</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">of the race, in subconscious, <a href="#Page_78">78</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">to the social whole, <a href="#Page_164">164</a>, <a href="#Page_216">216</a>,
+<a href="#Page_380">380</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Adolescence, <a href="#Page_59">59</a><br />
+<br />
+Adrenal Secretion, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>, <a href="#Page_133">133</a>,
+ <a href="#Page_229">229</a>, <a href="#Page_270">270</a><br />
+<br />
+Alcoholism, relation to unconscious desires, <a href="#Page_377">377</a><br />
+<br />
+Alvarez, W.D., <a href="#Page_284">284</a><br />
+<br />
+Ames, Thaddeus Hoyt, <a href="#Page_170">170</a><br />
+<br />
+Amnesia, <a href="#Page_113">113</a><br />
+<br />
+Anaemia, buttermilk in, <a href="#Page_282">282</a><br />
+<br />
+Anger, <a href="#Page_47">47</a> ff.<br />
+<br />
+Anxiety and Fear, <a href="#Page_366">366</a>, <a href="#Page_367">367</a>, <a href="#Page_368">368</a><br />
+<br />
+Anxiety Neurosis, <a href="#Page_7">7</a>, <a href="#Page_109">109</a><br />
+<br />
+Anxious thought in conversion hysteria, <a href="#Page_277">277</a><br />
+<br />
+Appetite, symbolic loss of, <a href="#Page_276">276</a><br />
+<br />
+Association<br />
+<span class="ind1">accidental, <a href="#Page_341">341</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">a chain of, <a href="#Page_191">191</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">free, <a href="#Page_101">101</a>, <a href="#Page_191">191</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">making new, <a href="#Page_329">329</a>, <a href="#Page_330">330</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">of ideas, <a href="#Page_106">106</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">subconscious, <a href="#Page_346">346</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">word test, <a href="#Page_197">197</a>, <a href="#Page_198">198</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Audience, secured in a neurosis, <a href="#Page_169">169</a><br />
+<br />
+Auto-eroticism, <a href="#Page_57">57</a><br />
+<br />
+Auto-intoxication, <a href="#Page_279">279</a>, <a href="#Page_282">282</a><br />
+<br />
+Automatic writing, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>, <a href="#Page_97">97</a><br />
+<br />
+Autonomic nervous system, <a href="#Page_86">86</a>,
+<a href="#Page_126">126</a>, <a href="#Page_319">319</a><br />
+<br />
+Auto-suggestion, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>, <a href="#Page_210">210</a><br />
+&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="heading">B</p>
+
+<p class="noind">
+Bacteria, in anaemia, sciatica, rheumatism, <a href="#Page_281">281</a><br />
+<br />
+Bashfulness, <a href="#Page_46">46</a><br />
+<br />
+Bergson, <a href="#Page_90">90</a><br />
+<br />
+Biliousness, <a href="#Page_268">268</a><br />
+<br />
+Birth-Theories, <a href="#Page_158">158</a>, <a href="#Page_160">160</a>, <a href="#Page_161">161</a><br />
+<br />
+Blocking, in word association, <a href="#Page_198">198</a><br />
+<br />
+Bodily Response to Emotional States, <a href="#Page_134">134</a><br />
+<br />
+Brain,<br />
+<span class="ind1">diseased in insanity, sound in neurosis, <a href="#Page_13">13</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">fag, <a href="#Page_125">125</a>, <a href="#Page_241">241</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">records, <a href="#Page_89">89</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Bran fad, <a href="#Page_291">291</a><br />
+<br />
+Breuer, Joseph, <a href="#Page_142">142</a><br />
+<br />
+Brill, A.A., <a href="#Page_58">58</a>, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>, <a href="#Page_201">201</a>,
+ <a href="#Page_202">202</a><br /><!-- Page 394 --><a name="Page_394" id="Page_394" />
+<br />
+Bruce, H. Addington, <a href="#Page_200">200</a>, <a href="#Page_201">201</a><br />
+<br />
+Burrow, Trigant, <a href="#Page_173">173</a>, <a href="#Page_203">203</a><br />
+<br />
+Buttermilk in anaemia, <a href="#Page_282">282</a><br />
+&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="heading">C</p>
+
+<p class="noind">
+Cabot, Richard, <a href="#Page_27">27</a>, <a href="#Page_381">381</a><br />
+<br />
+Canfield, Dorothy, <a href="#Page_231">231</a><br />
+<br />
+Cannon, Walter B., <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_134">134</a><br />
+<br />
+Capitalizing an Illness, <a href="#Page_170">170</a><br />
+<br />
+Catechism, <a href="#Page_247">247</a><br />
+<br />
+Cathartics, <a href="#Page_283">283</a><br />
+<span class="ind1">and acidosis, <a href="#Page_286">286</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">and bacterial infection, <a href="#Page_282">282</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">and child birth, <a href="#Page_285">285</a>, <a href="#Page_286">286</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">and operations, <a href="#Page_284">284</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Causes of Nerves, <a href="#Page_146">146</a>, <a href="#Page_164">164</a><br />
+<br />
+Censor, psychic, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>, <a href="#Page_195">195</a><br />
+<br />
+Change of life, <a href="#Page_314">314</a><br />
+<br />
+Character and health, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>, <a href="#Page_25">25</a>, <a href="#Page_362">362</a><br />
+<br />
+Chemistry, <a href="#Page_61">61</a>, <a href="#Page_190">190</a>,
+<a href="#Page_224">224</a>, <a href="#Page_225">225</a>, <a href="#Page_230">230</a>,
+<a href="#Page_247">247</a>, <a href="#Page_306">306</a>, <a href="#Page_315">315</a>,
+<a href="#Page_317">317</a>, <a href="#Page_324">324</a><br />
+<br />
+Child,<br />
+<span class="ind1">birth-theories of, <a href="#Page_158">158</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">father to the man, <a href="#Page_90">90</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">habit-fixation of, <a href="#Page_150">150</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">love-life, four periods <a href="#Page_54">54</a>, <a href="#Page_55">55</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">questions, <a href="#Page_158">158</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">too much bossing of, <a href="#Page_154">154</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">too much petting of, <a href="#Page_57">57</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">training, <a href="#Page_160">160</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Childhood,<br />
+<span class="ind1">bonds too strong, <a href="#Page_72">72</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">determines future character, <a href="#Page_91">91</a>,
+<a href="#Page_148">148</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">experiences, <a href="#Page_149">149</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">reactions, <a href="#Page_148">148</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Choosing our Emotions, <a href="#Page_360">360</a><br />
+<span class="ind1">a neurosis, <a href="#Page_122">122</a>, <a href="#Page_169">169</a>,
+<a href="#Page_216">216</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">our Sensations, <a href="#Page_339">339</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Christian religion, <a href="#Page_74">74</a>, <a href="#Page_374">374</a><br />
+<br />
+Coe, George A., <a href="#Page_71">71</a>, <a href="#Page_373">373</a><br />
+<br />
+Colon, function of, <a href="#Page_279">279</a>, <a href="#Page_280">280</a><br />
+<br />
+Common Path, <a href="#Page_52">52</a><br />
+<br />
+Compensation, <a href="#Page_168">168</a>, <a href="#Page_340">340</a><br />
+<br />
+Complex,<br />
+<span class="ind1">against marriage, <a href="#Page_204">204</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">and conditioned reflex, <a href="#Page_108">108</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">and personality, <a href="#Page_105">105</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">breaking up of, <a href="#Page_109">109</a>, <a href="#Page_186">186</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">buried, <a href="#Page_187">187</a>, <a href="#Page_192">192</a>,
+ <a href="#Page_197">197</a>, <a href="#Page_201">201</a>,
+<a href="#Page_202">202</a>, <a href="#Page_215">215</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">chance signs of, <a href="#Page_198">198</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">definition, <a href="#Page_107">107</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">dissociated, <a href="#Page_111">111</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">emotional, <a href="#Page_198">198</a>, <a href="#Page_345">345</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">father-mother, <a href="#Page_152">152</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">feeling-tone of, <a href="#Page_130">130</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">formation of, <a href="#Page_129">129</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">forming a resistance, <a href="#Page_159">159</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">making over, <a href="#Page_187">187</a>, <a href="#Page_190">190</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">mother-son, <a href="#Page_185">185</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">physiological, <a href="#Page_108">108</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">repressed, <a href="#Page_112">112</a>, <a href="#Page_157">157</a>,
+ <a href="#Page_190">190</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">unconscious, <a href="#Page_108">108</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Compromise, <a href="#Page_163">163</a>, <a href="#Page_164">164</a>, <a href="#Page_165">165</a><br />
+<br />
+Compulsion neuroses, <a href="#Page_7">7</a>, <a href="#Page_109">109</a>, <a href="#Page_156">156</a><br />
+<br />
+Conditioned reflex, <a href="#Page_108">108</a><br />
+<br />
+Conduct, kind of, <a href="#Page_168">168</a>, <a href="#Page_191">191</a>, <a href="#Page_360">360</a><br />
+<br />
+Conflict, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>, <a href="#Page_112">112</a>,
+<a href="#Page_145">145</a>, <a href="#Page_154">154</a>, <a href="#Page_164">164</a>,
+<a href="#Page_178">178</a>, <a href="#Page_200">200</a>, <a href="#Page_218">218</a>,
+<a href="#Page_313">313</a>, <a href="#Page_372">372</a>, <a href="#Page_376">376</a><br />
+<br />
+Conscience, <a href="#Page_164">164</a>, <a href="#Page_173">173</a>, <a href="#Page_177">177</a>,
+ <a href="#Page_196">196</a>, <a href="#Page_376">376</a><br />
+<br />
+Consciousness,<br />
+<span class="ind1">displaced threshold of, <a href="#Page_91">91</a></span><br />
+relation to the subconscious, <a href="#Page_82">82</a><br />
+<!-- Page 395 --><a name="Page_395" id="Page_395" />
+<span class="ind1">rise of, <a href="#Page_82">82</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Constipation, <a href="#Page_277">277</a> ff.<br />
+<span class="ind1">and food, <a href="#Page_289">289</a>, <a href="#Page_290">290</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">cure of, <a href="#Page_294">294</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">due to suggestion, <a href="#Page_294">294</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">purpose of, <a href="#Page_288">288</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Conversion-hysteria, <a href="#Page_174">174</a>, <a href="#Page_236">236</a>,
+<a href="#Page_237">237</a>, <a href="#Page_238">238</a>, <a href="#Page_245">245</a>,
+<a href="#Page_277">277</a>, <a href="#Page_302">302</a><br />
+<br />
+Crile, George W., <a href="#Page_41">41</a>, <a href="#Page_44">44</a><br />
+<br />
+Curiosity,<br />
+<span class="ind1">child's concerning sex, <a href="#Page_58">58</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">displacement over to scientific investigation, <a href="#Page_45">45</a></span><br />
+&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="heading">D</p>
+
+<p class="noind">
+Day-dreaming, <a href="#Page_162">162</a>, <a href="#Page_325">325</a>, <a href="#Page_326">326</a><br />
+<br />
+Defence-reaction, <a href="#Page_365">365</a><br />
+<br />
+Desire<br />
+<span class="ind1">energy of, <a href="#Page_78">78</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">in dreams, <a href="#Page_194">194</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">in emotional habits, <a href="#Page_364">364</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">in nervous disorders, <a href="#Page_167">167</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">instinctive, <a href="#Page_38">38</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">instinctive and ideals, <a href="#Page_363">363</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">tensions of, <a href="#Page_196">196</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Diarrhoea, bacterial, <a href="#Page_281">281</a><br />
+<br />
+Dietetics, essence of, <a href="#Page_254">254</a><br />
+<br />
+Digestion, <a href="#Page_86">86</a>, <a href="#Page_133">133</a>,
+<a href="#Page_250">250</a>, <a href="#Page_251">251</a><br />
+<br />
+Disease,<br />
+<span class="ind1">of the ego, <a href="#Page_15">15</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">physical, <a href="#Page_12">12</a>, <a href="#Page_13">13</a>, <a href="#Page_28">28</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">psychic, <a href="#Page_12">12</a>, <a href="#Page_13">13</a>,
+<a href="#Page_14">14</a>, <a href="#Page_28">28</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Disorders, functional and organic, <a href="#Page_13">13</a><br />
+<br />
+Displacement, <a href="#Page_109">109</a>, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>,
+<a href="#Page_165">165</a>, <a href="#Page_174">174</a><br />
+<br />
+Dissociation, <a href="#Page_111">111</a><br />
+<span class="ind1">abnormal, <a href="#Page_189">189</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">an example of, <a href="#Page_92">92</a>, <a href="#Page_347">347</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">in hypnosis, <a href="#Page_123">123</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">in hysteria, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>, <a href="#Page_123">123</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">in neurasthenia, <a href="#Page_111">111</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">increases suggestibility, <a href="#Page_122">122</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">normal, <a href="#Page_111">111</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">of a &quot;Personality,&quot; <a href="#Page_113">113</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">of memory picture of walking, <a href="#Page_125">125</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">of power of sight, <a href="#Page_170">170</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Dreams, <a href="#Page_193">193</a> ff.<br />
+<span class="ind1">Freud's dictum, <a href="#Page_193">193</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">latent content, <a href="#Page_195">195</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">manifest content, <a href="#Page_195">195</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">purpose of, <a href="#Page_195">195</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">work of, <a href="#Page_196">196</a></span><br />
+<br />
+DuBois, Paul, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>, <a href="#Page_127">127</a>,
+<a href="#Page_246">246</a>, <a href="#Page_327">327</a>, <a href="#Page_382">382</a><br />
+&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="heading">E</p>
+
+<p class="noind">
+Education, <a href="#Page_202">202</a>, <a href="#Page_218">218</a><br />
+<span class="ind1">in Emotional Control, <a href="#Page_374">374</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Emotion, <a href="#Page_35">35</a>, <a href="#Page_360">360</a> ff.<br />
+<span class="ind1">and complexes, <a href="#Page_108">108</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">and fatigue, <a href="#Page_229">229</a>, <a href="#Page_247">247</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">and instincts, <a href="#Page_40">40</a> ff.</span><br />
+<span class="ind1">and muscle tone, <a href="#Page_137">137</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">blood-pressure in, <a href="#Page_136">136</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">bodily response to, <a href="#Page_133">133</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">feeling tones in, <a href="#Page_130">130</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">precocious, <a href="#Page_150">150</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">repressed (see repression)</span><br />
+<span class="ind1">secretions in, <a href="#Page_132">132</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">the strongest cement, <a href="#Page_107">107</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">tonic and poisonous, <a href="#Page_131">131</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">unrecognized desire in, <a href="#Page_364">364</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Energy,<br /><!-- Page 396 --><a name="Page_396" id="Page_396" />
+<span class="ind1">adaptable, <a href="#Page_67">67</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">creative, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>,
+ <a href="#Page_71">71</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">inhibited, <a href="#Page_235">235</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">libido, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>, <a href="#Page_252">252</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">misdirected, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>, <a href="#Page_379">379</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">new level of, <a href="#Page_221">221</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">physiological reserve, <a href="#Page_117">117</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">redirection of, <a href="#Page_385">385</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">releasers of, <a href="#Page_245">245</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">three uses of, <a href="#Page_23">23</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">utilization of, <a href="#Page_68">68</a>, <a href="#Page_165">165</a></span><br />
+<br />
+&quot;Energies of Men&quot;, <a href="#Page_221">221</a><br />
+<br />
+Environment, <a href="#Page_33">33</a>, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>,
+<a href="#Page_149">149</a>, <a href="#Page_334">334</a><br />
+<br />
+Evolution, <a href="#Page_73">73</a><br />
+<br />
+Exhaustion, nervous, <a href="#Page_216">216</a>, <a href="#Page_224">224</a>,
+<a href="#Page_243">243</a>, <a href="#Page_246">246</a><br />
+<br />
+Explanation vs Suggestion, <a href="#Page_206">206</a> ff.<br />
+&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="heading">F</p>
+
+<p class="noind">
+Fads-dynamogenic, <a href="#Page_252">252</a><br />
+<br />
+Faith, <a href="#Page_118">118</a><br />
+<br />
+Family complex, <a href="#Page_153">153</a><br />
+<br />
+Fatigue, <a href="#Page_219">219</a> ff.<br />
+<span class="ind1">a Matter of Chemistry, <a href="#Page_225">225</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">and insomnia, <a href="#Page_326">326</a>, <a href="#Page_327">327</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">and moral tension, <a href="#Page_166">166</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">and sex-repression, <a href="#Page_235">235</a>, <a href="#Page_244">244</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">true and false, <a href="#Page_223">223</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Fear, <a href="#Page_40">40</a> ff.<br />
+<span class="ind1">exaggerated, <a href="#Page_368">368</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">externalized, <a href="#Page_368">368</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">of cold, <a href="#Page_348">348</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">of fatigue, <a href="#Page_219">219</a>, <a href="#Page_354">354</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">of food, <a href="#Page_133">133</a>, <a href="#Page_251">251</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">of heat, <a href="#Page_237">237</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">of noise, <a href="#Page_355">355</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">physical effects of, <a href="#Page_41">41</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">purpose of, <a href="#Page_41">41</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">symbolic of desire, <a href="#Page_368">368</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Feeling our Feelings, <a href="#Page_333">333</a> ff.<br />
+<br />
+Feeling-tones, <a href="#Page_130">130</a>, <a href="#Page_206">206</a>,
+<a href="#Page_213">213</a>, <a href="#Page_229">229</a><br />
+<br />
+Fermentation, <a href="#Page_264">264</a><br />
+<br />
+Finding New Vents, <a href="#Page_379">379</a><br />
+<br />
+Fixation of Habits, <a href="#Page_150">150</a>, <a href="#Page_151">151</a>, <a href="#Page_162">162</a><br />
+<br />
+Flat-foot, <a href="#Page_138">138</a><br />
+<br />
+Food, <a href="#Page_254">254</a> ff.<br />
+<span class="ind1">and constipation, <a href="#Page_289">289</a>, <a href="#Page_290">290</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">for the children, <a href="#Page_256">256</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">idiosyncrasies, <a href="#Page_258">258</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">mixtures, <a href="#Page_255">255</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">variety essential, <a href="#Page_255">255</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Foreconscious, <a href="#Page_79">79</a><br />
+<br />
+Free Association, <a href="#Page_101">101</a>, <a href="#Page_191">191</a>, <a href="#Page_195">195</a><br />
+<br />
+Freud, Sigmund, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>, <a href="#Page_74">74</a>, <a href="#Page_83">83</a>,
+<a href="#Page_84">84</a>, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>, <a href="#Page_142">142</a>,
+<a href="#Page_149">149</a>, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>, <a href="#Page_163">163</a>,
+<a href="#Page_185">185</a>, <a href="#Page_188">188</a>, <a href="#Page_193">193</a>,
+<a href="#Page_210">210</a>, <a href="#Page_342">342</a>, <a href="#Page_376">376</a>, <a href="#Page_382">382</a><br />
+<br />
+Freudian principles, <a href="#Page_143">143</a>, <a href="#Page_144">144</a>, <a href="#Page_147">147</a><br />
+<span class="ind1">misconceptions concerning, <a href="#Page_184">184</a>, <a href="#Page_185">185</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Frink, H.W., <a href="#Page_89">89</a>, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>,
+<a href="#Page_158">158</a>, <a href="#Page_162">162</a>, <a href="#Page_171">171</a>,
+<a href="#Page_195">195</a>, <a href="#Page_218">218</a><br />
+&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="heading">G</p>
+
+<p class="noind">
+Gall-stones, <a href="#Page_269">269</a><br />
+<br />
+Gas on the stomach, <a href="#Page_264">264</a><br />
+<br />
+Gastric juice, <a href="#Page_86">86</a>, <a href="#Page_134">134</a><br />
+<br />
+Gastritis, <a href="#Page_266">266</a><br />
+<br />
+Genius, <a href="#Page_116">116</a><br />
+<br />
+Girard-Mangin, Dr., <a href="#Page_231">231</a><br />
+<br />
+Goitre, <a href="#Page_239">239</a><br />
+&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="heading"><!-- Page 397 --><a name="Page_397" id="Page_397" />H</p>
+
+<p class="noind">
+Habit,<br />
+<span class="ind1">defined, <a href="#Page_150">150</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">dissociation, <a href="#Page_189">189</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">dreaming, <a href="#Page_162">162</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">fixation of, <a href="#Page_150">150</a>, <a href="#Page_152">152</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">of insomnia, <a href="#Page_322">322</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">of loving, <a href="#Page_150">150</a>, <a href="#Page_164">164</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">of rebelling, <a href="#Page_150">150</a>, <a href="#Page_164">164</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">of repressing normal instincts, <a href="#Page_151">151</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">reactions, <a href="#Page_364">364</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Heredity, <a href="#Page_148">148</a><br />
+<br />
+Hidden desires, <a href="#Page_363">363</a>, <a href="#Page_368">368</a><br />
+<br />
+Hinkle, Bertha M., <a href="#Page_154">154</a><br />
+<br />
+Holt, E.B., <a href="#Page_213">213</a><br />
+<br />
+Homosexuality, <a href="#Page_184">184</a><br />
+<br />
+Hoover, Herbert A., <a href="#Page_384">384</a><br />
+<br />
+Hormone, <a href="#Page_305">305</a>, <a href="#Page_319">319</a><br />
+<br />
+Hudson, J.W., <a href="#Page_91">91</a>, <a href="#Page_95">95</a><br />
+<br />
+Hydrochloric Acid, <a href="#Page_267">267</a><br />
+<br />
+Hygiene,<br />
+<span class="ind1">laws of, <a href="#Page_127">127</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">moral, <a href="#Page_206">206</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Hygienic conditions, <a href="#Page_222">222</a>, <a href="#Page_230">230</a><br />
+<br />
+Hypersensitiveness, <a href="#Page_342">342</a><br />
+<br />
+Hypnosis, <a href="#Page_84">84</a> ff.<br />
+<span class="ind1">aid to diagnosis, <a href="#Page_187">187</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">its drawbacks, <a href="#Page_188">188</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">suggestibility in, <a href="#Page_189">189</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Hysteria, <a href="#Page_7">7</a>, <a href="#Page_111">111</a><br />
+<br />
+Hysterical pains, <a href="#Page_353">353</a><br />
+<br />
+Hysterical pregnancy, (case), <a href="#Page_127">127</a><br />
+&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="heading">I</p>
+
+<p class="noind">
+Ideas,<br />
+<span class="ind1">and emotions, <a href="#Page_23">23</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">ascetic, <a href="#Page_253">253</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">contagion of, <a href="#Page_120">120</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">dynamogenic, <a href="#Page_253">253</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">not surgical, <a href="#Page_262">262</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Idiosyncrasies, physical, <a href="#Page_258">258</a><br />
+<br />
+Identification, <a href="#Page_110">110</a><br />
+<br />
+Imagination, <a href="#Page_162">162</a><br />
+<br />
+Incantation, <a href="#Page_211">211</a><br />
+<br />
+Indigestion; <a href="#Page_211">211</a>, <a href="#Page_250">250</a><br />
+<br />
+Inferiority complex, <a href="#Page_340">340</a>, <a href="#Page_380">380</a><br />
+<br />
+Inhibition, <a href="#Page_188">188</a>, <a href="#Page_245">245</a>,
+<a href="#Page_293">293</a>, <a href="#Page_306">306</a>, <a href="#Page_330">330</a>, <a href="#Page_377">377</a><br />
+<br />
+Insomnia, <a href="#Page_322">322</a> ff.<br />
+<br />
+Instincts and their Emotions, <a href="#Page_33">33</a> ff., <a href="#Page_51">51</a> ff.<br />
+<br />
+Instincts,<br />
+<span class="ind1">beneficent, <a href="#Page_85">85</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">energy releasers, <a href="#Page_233">233</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">race-inheritance, <a href="#Page_85">85</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">repressed, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>,
+<a href="#Page_147">147</a>, <a href="#Page_169">169</a>, <a href="#Page_172">172</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">sex (see under sex)</span><br />
+<span class="ind1">thwarted, <a href="#Page_235">235</a>, <a href="#Page_244">244</a>, <a href="#Page_340">340</a>,
+<a href="#Page_356">356</a>, <a href="#Page_367">367</a>, <a href="#Page_379">379</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Internal Secretion,<br />
+<span class="ind1">of ovary, <a href="#Page_316">316</a>, <a href="#Page_317">317</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">(see Adrenal)</span><br />
+<span class="ind1">(see Thyroid)</span><br />
+<br />
+Introspection, <a href="#Page_26">26</a><br />
+<br />
+Introversion, <a href="#Page_380">380</a>, <a href="#Page_381">381</a><br />
+&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="heading">J</p>
+
+<p class="noind">
+James, William, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_221">221</a>,
+<a href="#Page_227">227</a>, <a href="#Page_243">243</a>, <a href="#Page_253">253</a>,
+<a href="#Page_347">347</a>, <a href="#Page_382">382</a><br />
+<br />
+Janet, Pierre, <a href="#Page_188">188</a><br />
+<br />
+Jealousy, <a href="#Page_154">154</a>, <a href="#Page_380">380</a><br />
+<br />
+Jelliffe, Smith Ely, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>, <a href="#Page_114">114</a>,
+<a href="#Page_153">153</a>, <a href="#Page_163">163</a><br />
+<br />
+Jones, Ernest, <a href="#Page_69">69</a><br /><!-- Page 398 --><a name="Page_398" id="Page_398" />
+<br />
+Judicious neglect, <a href="#Page_127">127</a><br />
+<br />
+Jung, C.G., <a href="#Page_8">8</a>, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>,
+<a href="#Page_163">163</a>, <a href="#Page_197">197</a>, <a href="#Page_380">380</a><br />
+&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="heading">K</p>
+
+<p class="noind">
+Kempf, Edward J., <a href="#Page_86">86</a><br />
+<br />
+Kinaesthetic sensations, <a href="#Page_336">336</a><br />
+&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="heading">L</p>
+
+<p class="noind">
+Latency period, <a href="#Page_60">60</a><br />
+<br />
+Libido, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>, <a href="#Page_147">147</a>, <a href="#Page_252">252</a><br />
+<br />
+Liver trouble, <a href="#Page_268">268</a><br />
+&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="heading">M</p>
+
+<p class="noind">
+Masturbation, <a href="#Page_184">184</a><br />
+<br />
+McDougall, Wm., <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_122">122</a>, <a href="#Page_372">372</a><br />
+<br />
+Memories, <a href="#Page_84">84</a> ff.<br />
+<br />
+Menopause, <a href="#Page_314">314</a><br />
+<br />
+Menstruation, <a href="#Page_306">306</a><br />
+<br />
+Mind (see Consciousness and Subconscious)<br />
+<br />
+Misconceptions,<br />
+<span class="ind1">about the body, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>, <a href="#Page_22">22</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">about theory of sex, <a href="#Page_184">184</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Mixtures, fear of, <a href="#Page_257">257</a><br />
+<br />
+Monogamy, <a href="#Page_63">63</a><br />
+<br />
+Moral hygiene, <a href="#Page_206">206</a><br />
+<br />
+Mosher, Clelia Duel, <a href="#Page_308">308</a><br />
+<br />
+Muscle-tone, <a href="#Page_137">137</a>, <a href="#Page_244">244</a><br />
+<br />
+Myth, <a href="#Page_146">146</a><br />
+&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="heading">N</p>
+
+<p class="noind">
+Narcissus, <a href="#Page_55">55</a>, <a href="#Page_152">152</a>, <a href="#Page_340">340</a><br />
+<br />
+Nausea, <a href="#Page_101">101</a>, <a href="#Page_177">177</a>, <a href="#Page_275">275</a><br />
+<span class="ind1">of pregnancy, <a href="#Page_319">319</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Nerves,<br />
+<span class="ind1">attitude toward, <a href="#Page_3">3</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">causes of, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>, <a href="#Page_148">148</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">drama of, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>, <a href="#Page_29">29</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">medical schools and, <a href="#Page_16">16</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">not physical, <a href="#Page_14">14</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">prevention of, <a href="#Page_385">385</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Neurasthenia, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>, <a href="#Page_246">246</a><br />
+<br />
+Neuritis, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>, <a href="#Page_244">244</a><br />
+<br />
+Neurosis,<br />
+<span class="ind1">a compromise, <a href="#Page_167">167</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">a confidence game, <a href="#Page_179">179</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">a failure of sublimation, <a href="#Page_381">381</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">a flight from reality, <a href="#Page_170">170</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">an ethical struggle, <a href="#Page_177">177</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">an introversion, <a href="#Page_381">381</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">and shell-shock, <a href="#Page_147">147</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">and suggestion, <a href="#Page_129">129</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">anxiety, <a href="#Page_7">7</a>, <a href="#Page_109">109</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">awkwardness of, <a href="#Page_213">213</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">compulsion, <a href="#Page_109">109</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">caused by buried complexes, <a href="#Page_108">108</a>, <a href="#Page_190">190</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">definition <a href="#Page_112">112</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">origin in childhood, <a href="#Page_149">149</a>, <a href="#Page_157">157</a>, <a href="#Page_217">217</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">purpose of, <a href="#Page_167">167</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">root-complex of, <a href="#Page_153">153</a></span><br />
+&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="heading">O</p>
+
+<p class="noind">
+Obsession, <a href="#Page_7">7</a>, <a href="#Page_204">204</a><br />
+<br />
+Oedipus Complex, <a href="#Page_154">154</a><br />
+<br />
+Organic trouble, <a href="#Page_11">11</a>, <a href="#Page_12">12</a>, <a href="#Page_251">251</a><br />
+<br />
+Ouija Board, <a href="#Page_97">97</a><br />
+<br />
+Over-awareness, <a href="#Page_352">352</a><br />
+<br />
+Over-compensation, <a href="#Page_67">67</a><br />
+<br />
+Over-determined, <a href="#Page_148">148</a><br />
+&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="heading"><!-- Page 399 --><a name="Page_399" id="Page_399" />P</p>
+
+<p class="noind">
+Pain,<br />
+<span class="ind1">at base of the brain, <a href="#Page_351">351</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">chronic hysterical, <a href="#Page_341">341</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">menstrual, <a href="#Page_306">306</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Personality,<br />
+<span class="ind1">alterations of, <a href="#Page_7">7</a>, <a href="#Page_15">15</a>, <a href="#Page_20">20</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">and emotions, <a href="#Page_362">362</a>, <a href="#Page_369">369</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">and will, <a href="#Page_372">372</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">choice by, <a href="#Page_216">216</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">complexes and, <a href="#Page_107">107</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">disrupted, <a href="#Page_382">382</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">multiple, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>, <a href="#Page_131">131</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">nervousness a disorder of, <a href="#Page_15">15</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">reverence for, <a href="#Page_383">383</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">unified, <a href="#Page_375">375</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Persuasion, <a href="#Page_206">206</a><br />
+<br />
+Pfister, Oskar, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>, <a href="#Page_166">166</a>, <a href="#Page_382">382</a><br />
+<br />
+Phantasy, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>, <a href="#Page_163">163</a><br />
+<br />
+Phobia, <a href="#Page_7">7</a>, <a href="#Page_368">368</a><br />
+<br />
+Plagiarism, <a href="#Page_98">98</a><br />
+<br />
+Popular Misconceptions, <a href="#Page_21">21</a><br />
+<br />
+Prince, Morton, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>, <a href="#Page_84">84</a>,
+<a href="#Page_89">89</a>, <a href="#Page_95">95</a>, <a href="#Page_97">97</a>, <a href="#Page_112">112</a>,
+<a href="#Page_132">132</a>, <a href="#Page_188">188</a>, <a href="#Page_347">347</a><br />
+<br />
+Psycho-analysis, <a href="#Page_189">189</a> ff.<br />
+<br />
+Psychological explanation, <a href="#Page_208">208</a><br />
+<br />
+Psychology, <a href="#Page_25">25</a>, <a href="#Page_27">27</a>, <a href="#Page_94">94</a><br />
+<br />
+Psycho-neurosis, <a href="#Page_144">144</a>, <a href="#Page_147">147</a>,
+<a href="#Page_163">163</a>, <a href="#Page_169">169</a> (see also neurosis)<br />
+<br />
+Psycho-therapy, <a href="#Page_74">74</a>, <a href="#Page_187">187</a>, <a href="#Page_216">216</a><br />
+<br />
+Ptosis, <a href="#Page_139">139</a>, <a href="#Page_251">251</a><br />
+<br />
+Putnam, James J., <a href="#Page_3">3</a>, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>,
+<a href="#Page_69">69</a>, <a href="#Page_215">215</a>, <a href="#Page_366">366</a>,
+<a href="#Page_370">370</a>, <a href="#Page_382">382</a><br />
+&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="heading">R</p>
+
+<p class="noind">
+Race-memories, <a href="#Page_84">84</a><br />
+<br />
+Rationalization, <a href="#Page_90">90</a>, <a href="#Page_155">155</a>, <a href="#Page_168">168</a>,
+<a href="#Page_317">317</a><br />
+<br />
+Reaction and over-reaction, <a href="#Page_149">149</a>, <a href="#Page_198">198</a>,
+<a href="#Page_202">202</a>, <a href="#Page_238">238</a>, <a href="#Page_335">335</a><br />
+<br />
+Reality, flight from, <a href="#Page_164">164</a>, <a href="#Page_379">379</a><br />
+<br />
+Re-education, <a href="#Page_183">183</a> ff.<br />
+<br />
+Reflex,<br />
+<span class="ind1">conditioned, <a href="#Page_108">108</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">physiological, <a href="#Page_349">349</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Regression to infantile state, <a href="#Page_163">163</a>, <a href="#Page_164">164</a><br />
+<span class="ind1">case of, <a href="#Page_92">92</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Religion, <a href="#Page_74">74</a>, <a href="#Page_89">89</a>,
+<a href="#Page_374">374</a>, <a href="#Page_382">382</a><br />
+<br />
+Reminiscences, hysteric suffers from, <a href="#Page_7">7</a><br />
+<br />
+Repression, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>,
+<a href="#Page_160">160</a>, <a href="#Page_162">162</a>, <a href="#Page_235">235</a>,
+<a href="#Page_245">245</a>, <a href="#Page_304">304</a><br />
+<br />
+Resistance, <a href="#Page_160">160</a>, <a href="#Page_188">188</a>,
+<a href="#Page_192">192</a>, <a href="#Page_202">202</a>, <a href="#Page_211">211</a><br />
+<br />
+Rest-cure, <a href="#Page_246">246</a><br />
+<br />
+Rheumatism, buttermilk treatment of, <a href="#Page_282">282</a><br />
+<br />
+Rixford, Emmet L., <a href="#Page_283">283</a><br />
+<br />
+Royce, Josiah, <a href="#Page_375">375</a><br />
+&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="heading">S</p>
+
+<p class="noind">
+Sadler, Wm., <a href="#Page_126">126</a>, <a href="#Page_136">136</a><br />
+<br />
+School, four grade, <a href="#Page_54">54</a><br />
+<br />
+Second wind, <a href="#Page_221">221</a><br />
+<br />
+Self-abuse, <a href="#Page_184">184</a>, <a href="#Page_238">238</a><br />
+<br />
+Self-pity, <a href="#Page_365">365</a><br />
+<br />
+Self-regard, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>,
+<a href="#Page_157">157</a>, <a href="#Page_374">374</a><br />
+<br />
+Sensations, lowered threshold to, <a href="#Page_333">333</a> ff.<br />
+<br />
+Sensitiveness, <a href="#Page_333">333</a>, <a href="#Page_340">340</a><br />
+<br />
+Sex,<br />
+<span class="ind1">and artistic creation, <a href="#Page_379">379</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">and &quot;Nerves,&quot; <a href="#Page_141">141</a> ff.</span><br />
+<span class="ind1">glands, secretion of, <a href="#Page_305">305</a>, <a href="#Page_314">314</a>, <a href="#Page_316">316</a></span><br />
+instinct organically aroused, <a href="#Page_65">65</a><br /><!-- Page 400 --><a name="Page_400" id="Page_400" />
+<span class="ind1">instinct thwarted, <a href="#Page_161">161</a>,
+<a href="#Page_367">367</a>, <a href="#Page_379">379</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">instruction, <a href="#Page_160">160</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">license, <a href="#Page_184">184</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">life, <a href="#Page_143">143</a>,
+<a href="#Page_146">146</a>, <a href="#Page_157">157</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">perversion, <a href="#Page_152">152</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">phantasy, <a href="#Page_163">163</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">psychic component of, <a href="#Page_185">185</a>, <a href="#Page_356">356</a>,
+<a href="#Page_379">379</a>, <a href="#Page_383">383</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">repressed, <a href="#Page_104">104</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">sublimation of, <a href="#Page_233">233</a>, <a href="#Page_379">379</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Shell-shock, (see foreword)<br />
+<span class="ind1">also <a href="#Page_145">145</a>, <a href="#Page_147">147</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Sherrington, Chas., <a href="#Page_39">39</a><br />
+<br />
+Sick-headache, <a href="#Page_270">270</a><br />
+<br />
+Sidis, Boris, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>, <a href="#Page_84">84</a>, <a href="#Page_188">188</a>,
+<a href="#Page_222">222</a>, <a href="#Page_337">337</a>, <a href="#Page_341">341</a><br />
+<br />
+Slips of tongue, etc., <a href="#Page_199">199</a><br />
+<br />
+Slogan,<br />
+<span class="ind1">of psychoanalytic school, <a href="#Page_215">215</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">woman's, <a href="#Page_314">314</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Social code, <a href="#Page_184">184</a><br />
+<br />
+Soda, misuse of, <a href="#Page_266">266</a><br />
+<br />
+&quot;Sour-stomach,&quot; <a href="#Page_260">260</a>, <a href="#Page_266">266</a><br />
+<br />
+Sprees, <a href="#Page_376">376</a><br />
+<br />
+Stammering, <a href="#Page_200">200</a><br />
+<br />
+Standard,<br />
+<span class="ind1">double, <a href="#Page_66">66</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">single, <a href="#Page_62">62</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Stomach, <a href="#Page_133">133</a><br />
+<span class="ind1">and conversion hysteria, <a href="#Page_250">250</a> ff.</span><br />
+<span class="ind1">fads, <a href="#Page_252">252</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">gas on, <a href="#Page_252">252</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Subconscious mind, <a href="#Page_77">77</a> ff.<br />
+<span class="ind1">amenable to control by suggestion, emotion, <a href="#Page_119">119</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">functions of, <a href="#Page_85">85</a>,
+<a href="#Page_335">335</a>, <a href="#Page_337">337</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">habits of, <a href="#Page_105">105</a>, <a href="#Page_259">259</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">physical expression of, <a href="#Page_245">245</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">playing confidence game, <a href="#Page_311">311</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">store-house of memories, <a href="#Page_84">84</a>, <a href="#Page_89">89</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">tireless, <a href="#Page_325">325</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Sublimation, <a href="#Page_379">379</a> ff.<br />
+<span class="ind1">a synthesis, <a href="#Page_164">164</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">and religion, <a href="#Page_74">74</a>, <a href="#Page_382">382</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">definition (Freud), <a href="#Page_69">69</a>, <a href="#Page_70">70</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">failure of, <a href="#Page_71">71</a>, <a href="#Page_147">147</a>,
+<a href="#Page_381">381</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">in a career, <a href="#Page_385">385</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">in artistic creation, <a href="#Page_68">68</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">natural trends of, <a href="#Page_383">383</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">of energy, <a href="#Page_178">178</a>, <a href="#Page_238">238</a>,
+<a href="#Page_309">309</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Success, measure of, <a href="#Page_380">380</a><br />
+<br />
+Sugar in urine, <a href="#Page_133">133</a><br />
+<br />
+Suggestion,<br />
+<span class="ind1">a method of psychotherapy, <a href="#Page_208">208</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">constipation the result of, <a href="#Page_289">289</a>, <a href="#Page_298">298</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">definition, <a href="#Page_121">121</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">false, <a href="#Page_302">302</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">in child training, <a href="#Page_121">121</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">in hypnosis, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>, <a href="#Page_188">188</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">in sleep, <a href="#Page_99">99</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">inconvenient forms of, <a href="#Page_296">296</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">power of, <a href="#Page_45">45</a></span><br />
+<span class="ind1">unhealthy, <a href="#Page_310">310</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Suggestibility, <a href="#Page_122">122</a>, <a href="#Page_189">189</a>, <a href="#Page_206">206</a><br />
+<br />
+Superman, <a href="#Page_339">339</a><br />
+<br />
+Symbolism, <a href="#Page_171">171</a>, <a href="#Page_176">176</a>,
+<a href="#Page_275">275</a>, <a href="#Page_342">342</a><br />
+<br />
+Symptoms, purpose of, <a href="#Page_168">168</a><br />
+&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="heading">T</p>
+
+<p class="noind">
+Taboos,<br />
+<span class="ind1">dietary, <a href="#Page_250">250</a> ff.</span><br />
+<span class="ind1">interest in, <a href="#Page_289">289</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Tensions, psychic, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>, <a href="#Page_85">85</a>, <a href="#Page_353">353</a>,
+<a href="#Page_366">366</a><br /><!-- Page 401 --><a name="Page_401" id="Page_401" />
+<br />
+<span title="Corrected typo: was 'Thesholds'" class="hov">Thresholds</span>, psychic, <a href="#Page_337">337</a> ff.<br />
+<br />
+Thyroid secretion, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>, <a href="#Page_133">133</a>,
+<a href="#Page_185">185</a>, <a href="#Page_270">270</a><br />
+<br />
+Transference, <a href="#Page_109">109</a>, <a href="#Page_193">193</a>, <a href="#Page_264">264</a><br />
+<br />
+Trotter, W., <a href="#Page_46">46</a><br />
+&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="heading">U</p>
+
+<p class="noind">
+Unconscious, (see subconscious)<br />
+&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="heading">V</p>
+
+<p class="noind">
+Venereal disease, <a href="#Page_304">304</a>, <a href="#Page_317">317</a><br />
+<br />
+Vitamins, <a href="#Page_255">255</a><br />
+&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="heading">W</p>
+
+<p class="noind">
+White, Wm. A., <a href="#Page_69">69</a>, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>,
+<a href="#Page_83">83</a>, <a href="#Page_98">98</a><br />
+<br />
+Will, <a href="#Page_371">371</a><br />
+<br />
+Williams, Tom A., <a href="#Page_21">21</a>, <a href="#Page_213">213</a><br />
+<br />
+Wish fulfilment, <a href="#Page_171">171</a>, <a href="#Page_194">194</a>,
+<a href="#Page_200">200</a>, <a href="#Page_214">214</a><br />
+<br />
+Word-association test, <a href="#Page_197">197</a><br />
+<br />
+Work-cure, <a href="#Page_385">385</a><br />
+&nbsp;</p>
+
+
+
+<p class="heading">ILLUSTRATIONS FROM CASES</p>
+
+
+<p class="heading">A</p>
+
+<p class="noind">
+Adolescence and depression, <a href="#Page_312">312</a>, <a href="#Page_313">313</a><br />
+<br />
+Anger and circulation, <a href="#Page_136">136</a><br />
+<br />
+Angina pectoris, false, <a href="#Page_129">129</a><br />
+<br />
+Anxiety-neurosis, <a href="#Page_175">175</a><br />
+&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="heading">B</p>
+
+<p class="noind">
+Bearing children, <a href="#Page_318">318</a><br />
+<br />
+Brain fag, <a href="#Page_241">241</a><br />
+<br />
+Bran crackers and prunes, <a href="#Page_258">258</a><br />
+&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="heading">C</p>
+
+<p class="noind">
+Cathartics, abuse of, <a href="#Page_284">284</a><br />
+<br />
+Childhood sex-reactions, <a href="#Page_203">203</a><br />
+<br />
+Constipation and lacerations in labor, <a href="#Page_296">296</a><br />
+<br />
+Constipation and Mineral Oil, <a href="#Page_295">295</a><br />
+<br />
+Constipation, recovery from, (some cases), <a href="#Page_294">294</a><br />
+<br />
+Contamination, fear of, <a href="#Page_159">159</a><br />
+<br />
+Conversion of moral distress to physical, <a href="#Page_348">348</a><br />
+&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="heading">D</p>
+
+<p class="noind">
+Danger-signals and the railroad man, <a href="#Page_344">344</a><br />
+<br />
+Dissociated state, memories in, <a href="#Page_92">92</a><br />
+&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="heading">E</p>
+
+<p class="noind">
+Emotion and sick-headache, <a href="#Page_273">273</a><br />
+<br />
+&quot;Enjoying&quot; poor health, <a href="#Page_213">213</a>, <a href="#Page_345">345</a><br />
+<br />
+&quot;Exhaustion,&quot; <a href="#Page_243">243</a><br />
+<br />
+Eye-strain, twenty-five years, <a href="#Page_274">274</a><br />
+&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="heading"><!-- Page 402 --><a name="Page_402" id="Page_402" />F</p>
+
+<p class="noind">
+Fatigue, <a href="#Page_228">228</a>, <a href="#Page_234">234</a>, (two cases), <a href="#Page_239">239</a><br />
+<br />
+Fatigue and emotion, (three cases), <a href="#Page_354">354</a><br />
+<br />
+Fear, <a href="#Page_237">237</a>,<br />
+<span class="ind1">of heat, <a href="#Page_237">237</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Fear of air, <a href="#Page_348">348</a>, <a href="#Page_349">349</a><br />
+<br />
+Fear of cold, (three cases), <a href="#Page_348">348</a>, <a href="#Page_349">349</a><br />
+<br />
+Fear of light, (two cases), <a href="#Page_350">350</a><br />
+<br />
+Fear complicating labor, <a href="#Page_320">320</a><br />
+<br />
+&quot;Flat-foot,&quot; <a href="#Page_137">137</a><br />
+<br />
+Forgetting and repressed wish, <a href="#Page_200">200</a><br />
+<br />
+Free-love, chemical cause of, <a href="#Page_317">317</a><br />
+&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="heading">G</p>
+
+<p class="noind">
+Gall-stones, <a href="#Page_269">269</a><br />
+&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="heading">I</p>
+
+<p class="noind">
+Idiosyncrasy for eggs, <a href="#Page_212">212</a><br />
+<br />
+Insomnia and attention, <a href="#Page_329">329</a><br />
+<br />
+Insomnia and point of view, <a href="#Page_328">328</a><br />
+<br />
+Insomnia and wrong associations, <a href="#Page_330">330</a><br />
+<br />
+Insomnia, chronic, <a href="#Page_328">328</a><br />
+&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="heading">L</p>
+
+<p class="noind">
+Library, child fear of, <a href="#Page_100">100</a><br />
+<br />
+Locomotor Ataxia, exaggeration of symptoms, <a href="#Page_128">128</a><br />
+&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="heading">M</p>
+
+<p class="noind">
+Menstrual pain, unnecessary, <a href="#Page_220">220</a><br />
+<br />
+Muscle-tumors, phantom, <a href="#Page_127">127</a>, <a href="#Page_128">128</a><br />
+&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="heading">N</p>
+
+<p class="noind">
+Nausea, in sex-repression, <a href="#Page_101">101</a>, <a href="#Page_177">177</a><br />
+<br />
+Nervous indigestion, <a href="#Page_211">211</a><br />
+<br />
+&quot;Neuritis,&quot; <a href="#Page_174">174</a>,<br />
+<span class="ind1">false, <a href="#Page_244">244</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Noise, fear of, <a href="#Page_355">355</a><br />
+&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="heading">O</p>
+
+<p class="noind">
+Obsession against marriage, <a href="#Page_204">204</a><br />
+&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="heading">P</p>
+
+<p class="noind">
+Paralysis, fear of, <a href="#Page_345">345</a>, <a href="#Page_346">346</a><br />
+<br />
+Physical illness mistaken for functional, <a href="#Page_252">252</a><br />
+<br />
+Plagiarism, <a href="#Page_98">98</a><br />
+&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="heading">R</p>
+
+<p class="noind">
+Recovering lost word, <a href="#Page_80">80</a><br />
+<br />
+Repression and disgust, <a href="#Page_199">199</a><br />
+&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="heading">S</p>
+
+<p class="noind">
+Sick-headache, <a href="#Page_271">271</a>, <a href="#Page_274">274</a><br />
+<br />
+Skim-milk diet, <a href="#Page_262">262</a><br />
+<br />
+&quot;Sour stomach&quot; and two Tyrolese, <a href="#Page_260">260</a><br />
+&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="heading"><!-- Page 403 --><a name="Page_403" id="Page_403" />T</p>
+
+<p class="noind">
+Temper, an indulgence, <a href="#Page_359">359</a><br />
+<br />
+The &quot;Repeater&quot; gains in weight, <a href="#Page_263">263</a><br />
+<br />
+Thyroid disturbance, fatigue in, <a href="#Page_239">239</a>, <a href="#Page_240">240</a><br />
+&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="heading">U</p>
+
+<p class="noind">
+Unconscious Association and symptoms, <a href="#Page_346">346</a><br />
+&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="heading">W</p>
+
+<p class="noind">
+Walking, lost power of, <a href="#Page_124">124</a><br />
+<br />
+Word Association test, <a href="#Page_198">198</a><br />
+&nbsp;</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Outwitting Our Nerves
+by Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury
+
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Outwitting Our Nerves
+by Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Outwitting Our Nerves
+       A Primer of Psychotherapy
+
+Author: Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury
+
+Release Date: February 8, 2005 [EBook #14980]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OUTWITTING OUR NERVES ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Rick Niles, Ronald Holder and the PG Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+OUTWITTING OUR
+NERVES
+
+A PRIMER OF PSYCHOTHERAPY
+
+BY
+
+JOSEPHINE A. JACKSON, M.D.
+HELEN M. SALISBURY
+
+[Illustration]
+
+NEW YORK
+THE CENTURY CO.
+1922
+
+1921, by
+THE CENTURY CO.
+
+PRINTED IN U.S.A.
+
+
+
+
+TO
+
+MARY PATTERSON MANLY
+
+A LOVER OF TRUTH
+
+
+
+
+FOREWORD
+
+
+"Your trouble is nervous. There is nothing we can cut out and there is
+nothing we can give medicine for." With these words a young college
+student was dismissed from one of our great diagnostic clinics.
+
+The physician was right. In a nervous disorder there is nothing to cut
+out and there is nothing to give medicine for. Nevertheless there is
+something to be done,--something which is as definite and scientific
+as a prescription or a surgical operation.
+
+Psychotherapy, which is treatment by the mental measures of
+psycho-analysis and re-education, is an established procedure in the
+scientific world to-day. Nervous disorders are now curable, as has
+been proved by the clinical results in scores of cases from civil
+life, under treatment by Freud, Janet, Prince, Sidis, DuBois, and
+others; and in thousands of cases of war neuroses as reported by Smith
+and Pear, Eder, MacCurdy, and other military observers. These army
+experts have shown that shell-shock in war is the same as nervousness
+in civil life and that both may be cured by psycho-analysis and
+re-education.
+
+For more than a decade, in handling nervous cases, I have made use of
+the findings of recognized authorities on psychopathology. Truths have
+been applied in a special way, with the features of re-education so
+emphasized that my home has been called a psychological
+boarding-school. As the alumni have gone back to the game of life
+with no haunting memories of usual sanatorium methods, but with the
+equipment of a fuller self-knowledge and sense of power, they have
+sent back a call for some word that shall extend this helpful message
+to a larger circle.
+
+There has come, too, a demand for a book which shall give accurate and
+up-to-date information to those physicians who are eager for light on
+the subject of nervous disorders, and especially for knowledge of the
+significant contributions of Sigmund Freud, but who are too busy to
+devote time to highly technical volumes outside their own specialties.
+
+This need for a simple, comprehensive presentation of the Freudian
+principles I have attempted to meet in this primer of psychotherapy,
+providing enough of biological and psychological background to make
+them intelligible, and enough application and illustration to make
+them useful to the general practitioner or the average layman.
+
+JOSEPHINE A. JACKSON.
+
+Pasadena, California, 1921.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+PART I: THE STRANGE WAYS OF NERVES
+
+CHAPTER I
+                                                     PAGE
+
+In which most of us plead guilty to the charge of "nerves."
+
+NERVOUS FOLK      3
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+In which we learn what "nerves" are not and get a hint of
+what they are.
+
+THE DRAMA OF NERVES      10
+
+
+PART II: "HOW THE WHEELS GO ROUND"
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+In which we find a goodly inheritance.
+
+THE STORY OF THE INSTINCTS      33
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+In which we learn more about ourselves.
+
+THE STORY OF THE INSTINCTS (Continued)      51
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+In which we look below the surface and discover a veritable
+wonderland.
+
+THE SUBCONSCIOUS MIND      77
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+In which we learn why it pays to be cheerful.
+
+BODY AND MIND     118
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+In which we go to the root of the matter.
+
+THE REAL TROUBLE      141
+
+
+PART III: THE MASTERY OF "NERVES"
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+In which we pick up the clue.
+
+THE WAY OUT      183
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+In which we discover new stores of energy and relearn the
+truth about fatigue.
+
+THAT TIRED FEELING      219
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+In which the ban is lifted.
+
+DIETARY TABOOS      250
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+In which we learn an old trick.
+
+THE BUGABOO OF CONSTIPATION      278
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+In which handicaps are dropped.
+
+A WOMAN'S ILLS      300
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+In which we lose our dread of night.
+
+THAT INTERESTING INSOMNIA      322
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+In which we raise our thresholds.
+
+FEELING OUR FEELINGS      333
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+In which we learn discrimination.
+
+CHOOSING OUR EMOTIONS      359
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+In which we find new use for our steam.
+
+FINDING VENT IN SUBLIMATION      379
+
+GLOSSARY      386
+
+BIBLIOGRAPHY      390
+
+INDEX      393
+
+
+
+
+OUTWITTING OUR NERVES
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+_In Which Most of Us Plead Guilty to the Charge of "Nerves."_
+
+NERVOUS FOLK
+
+WHO'S WHO
+
+
+Whenever the subject of "nerves" is mentioned most people begin trying
+to prove an alibi. The man who is nervous and knows that he is
+nervous, realizes that he needs help, but the man who has as yet felt
+no lack of stability in himself is quite likely to be impatient with
+that whole class of people who are liable to nervous breakdown. It is
+therefore well to remind ourselves at once that the line between the
+so-called "normal" and the nervous is an exceedingly fine one.
+"Nervous invalids and well people are indistinguishable both in theory
+and in practice,"[1] and "after all we are most of us more or less
+neurasthenic."[2] The fact is that everybody is a possible neurotic.
+
+[Footnote 1: Putnam: _Human Motives_, p. 117.]
+
+[Footnote 2: DuBois: _Physic Treatment of Nervous Disorders_, p. 172.]
+
+So, as we think about nervous folk and begin to recognize our friends
+and relatives in this class, it may be that some of us will
+unexpectedly find ourselves looking in the mirror. Some of our
+lifelong habits may turn out to be nervous tricks. At any rate, it
+behooves us to be careful about throwing stones, for most of us live
+in houses that are at least part glass.
+
+
+THE EARMARKS
+
+=Am I "Like Folks"?= Before we begin to talk about the real sufferer
+from "nerves," the nervous invalid, let us look for some of the
+earmarks that are often found on the supposedly well person. All of
+these signs are deviations from the normal and are sure indications of
+nervousness. The test question for each individual is this: "Am I
+'like folks'?" To be normal and to be well is to be "like folks." Can
+the average man stand this or that? If he can, then you are not normal
+if you cannot. Do the people around you eat the thing that upsets you?
+If they do, ten chances to one your trouble is not a physical
+idiosyncrasy, but a nervous habit. In bodily matters, at least, it is
+a good thing to be one of the crowd.
+
+Many people who would resent being called anything but normal--in
+general--are not at all loth to be thought "different," when it comes
+to particulars. Are there not many of us who are at small pains to
+hide the fact that we "didn't sleep a wink last night," or that we
+"can't stand" a ticking clock or a crowing rooster? We sometimes
+consider it a mark of distinction to have a delicate appetite and to
+have to choose our food with care. If we are frank with ourselves,
+some of us will have to admit that our own ailments seem interesting,
+while the other person's ills are "merely nervous" or imaginary or
+abnormal. After all, a good many of us will have to plead guilty to
+the charge of nervousness.
+
+We have only to read the endless advertisements of cathartics and
+"internal baths," or to check up the quantity of laxatives sold at any
+drug store, to realize the wide-spread bondage to that great bugaboo
+constipation. He who is constipated can hardly prove an alibi to
+"nerves." Then there are the school-teachers and others who are worn
+out at the end of each year's work, hardly able to hold on until
+vacation; and the people who can't manage their tempers; and those who
+are upset over trifles; and those who are dissatisfied with life. To a
+certain degree, at least, all of these are nervous persons. The list
+grows.
+
+=Half-Power Engines.= These people are all supposed to be well. They
+keep going--by fits and starts--and as they are used to running on
+three cylinders, with frequent stops for repairs, they accept this
+rate of living as a matter of course, never realizing that they might
+be sixty horse-power engines, instead of their little thirty or forty.
+For this large and neglected class of people psychotherapy has a
+stimulating message, and for them many of the following pages have
+been written.
+
+=The Real Sufferers.= These so-called normal people are merely on the
+fringe of nervousness, on the border line between normality and
+disease. Beyond them there exists a great company of those whose lives
+have been literally wrecked by "nerves." Their work interrupted or
+given up for good, their minds harassed by doubts and fears, their
+bodies incapacitated, they crowd the sanatoria and the health resorts
+in a vain search for health. From New England to Florida they seek,
+and on to Colorado and California, and perhaps to Hawaii and the
+Orient, thinking by rest and change to pull themselves together and
+become whole again. There are thousands of these people--lawyers,
+preachers, teachers, mothers, social workers, business and
+professional folk of all sorts, the kind of persons the world needs
+most--laid off for months or years of treatment, on account of some
+kind of nervous disorder.
+
+=Various Types of Nervousness.= The psychoneuroses are of many
+forms.[3] To some people "nerves" means nervous prostration,
+breakdown, fatigue, weakness, insomnia, the blues, upset stomach, or
+unsteady heart,--all signs of so-called neurasthenia or
+nerve-weakness. To others the word "nerves" calls up memories of
+strange, emotional storms that seem to rise out of nowhere, to sweep
+the sky clear of everything else, and to pass as they came, leaving
+the victim and the family equally mystified as to their meaning. These
+strange alterations of personality are but one manifestation of
+hysteria, that myriad-faced disorder which is able to mimic so
+successfully the symptoms of almost every known disease, from tumors
+and fevers to paralysis and blindness.
+
+[Footnote 3: The technical term for nervousness is
+_psycho-neurosis_--disease of the psyche. There are certain "real
+neuroses" such as paralysis and spinal-cord disease, which involve an
+organic impairment of nerve-tissue. However, as this book deals only
+with psychic disturbance, we shall, throughout, use the term
+_neuroses_ and _psycho-neuroses_ indiscriminately, to denote nervous
+or functional disorders.]
+
+To still other people nervous trouble means fear,--just terrible fear
+without object or meaning or reason (anxiety neuroses); or a definite
+fear of some harmless object (phobia); or a strange, persistent,
+recurrent idea, quite foreign to the personality and beyond the reach
+of reason (obsession); or an insistent desire to perform some absurd
+act (compulsion); or perhaps, a deadly and pall-like depression (the
+blues).
+
+As a matter of fact, the neuroses include all these varieties, and
+various shades and combinations of each. There are, however, certain
+mental characteristics which recur with surprising regularity in most
+of the various phases--dissatisfaction, lack of confidence, a sense of
+being alone and shut in to oneself, doubt, anxiety, fear, worry,
+self-depreciation, lack of interest in outside affairs, pessimism,
+fixed belief in one's powerlessness, along whatever line it may be.
+
+Underneath all these differing forms of nervousness are the same
+mechanisms and the same kind of difficulty. To understand one is to
+understand all, and to understand normal people as well; for in the
+last analysis we are one and all built on the same lines and governed
+by the same laws. The only difference is, that, as Jung says, "the
+nervous person falls ill of the conflicts with which the well person
+battles successfully."
+
+
+SUMMARY
+
+Since at least seventy-five per cent. of all the people who apply to
+physicians for help are nervous patients; and since these thousands of
+patients are not among the mental incompetents, but are as a rule
+among the highly organized, conscientious folk who have most to
+contribute to the leadership of the world, it is obviously of vital
+importance to society that its citizens should be taught how to solve
+their inner conflicts and keep well. In this strategic period of
+reconstruction, the world that is being remodeled cannot afford to
+lose one leader because of an unnecessary breakdown.
+
+There is greater need than ever for people who can keep at their tasks
+without long enforced rests; people who can think deeply and
+continuously without brain-fag; people who can concentrate all their
+powers on the work in hand without wasting time or energy on
+unnecessary aches and pains; people whose bodies are kept up to the
+top notch of vitality by well-digested food, well-slept sleep,
+well-forgotten fatigue, and well-used reserve energy. That such a
+state of affairs is no Utopian dream, but is merely a matter of
+knowing how, will appear more clearly in later chapters.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+_In which we learn what "nerves" are not, and get a hint of what they
+are_
+
+THE DRAMA OF NERVES
+
+AN EXPLODED THEORY
+
+
+="Nerves" not Nerves.= Pick up any newspaper, turn over a few pages,
+and you will be sure to come to an advertisement something like this:
+
+    Tired man, your nerves are sick!
+    They need rest and a tonic to restore
+      their worn-out depleted cells!
+
+No wonder people have believed this kind of thing. It has been dinned
+into their ears for many years. They have read it with their breakfast
+coffee and gazed at it in the street cars and even heard it from their
+family physicians, until it has become part and parcel of their
+thinking; yet all the time the fundamental idea has been false, and
+now, at last, the theory is exploded.
+
+So far as the modern laboratory can discover, the nerves of the most
+confirmed neurotic are perfectly healthy. They are not starved, nor
+depleted, nor exhausted; the fat-sheath is not wanting, there is no
+inflammation, there is nothing lacking in the cell itself, and there
+is no accumulation of fatigue products. Paradoxical as it may sound,
+there is nothing the matter with a nervous person's nerves. The
+faithful messengers have borne the blame for so long that their name
+has gotten itself woven into the very language as symbolic of disease.
+When we speak of nervous prostration, neurasthenia, neuroses,
+nervousness, and "nerves" we mean that body and mind are behaving
+badly because of functional disorder. These terms are good enough as
+figures of speech, so long as we are not fooled by them; but accepting
+them in their literal sense has been a costly procedure.
+
+Thanks to the investigations of physiologist and psychologist, usually
+combined in the person of a physician, "nervousness" has been found to
+be not an organic disease but a functional one. This is a very
+important distinction, for an organic disease implies impairment of
+the tissues of the organ, while a functional disorder means only a
+disturbance of its action. In a purely nervous disorder there seems to
+be no trouble with what the nerves and organs are, but only with what
+they do; it is behavior and not tissue that is at fault. Of course, in
+real life, things are seldom as clear-cut as they are in books, and
+so it happens that often there is a combination of organic and
+functional disease that is puzzling even to a skilled diagnostician.
+The first essential is a diagnosis as to whether it be an organic
+disease, with accompanying nervous symptoms, or a functional
+disturbance complicated by some minor organic trouble. If the main
+cause is organic, only physical means can cure it, but if the trouble
+is functional, no amount of medicine or surgery, diet or rest, will
+touch it; yet the symptoms are so similar and the dividing line is so
+elusive, that great skill is sometimes required to determine whether a
+given symptom points to a disturbance of physical tissue or only to
+behavior.
+
+If the physician is sometimes fooled, how much more the sufferer
+himself! Nausea from a healthy stomach is just as sickening as nausea
+from a diseased one. A fainting-spell is equally uncomfortable,
+whether it come from an impaired heart or simply from one that is
+behaving badly for the moment. It must be remembered that in
+functional nervousness the trouble is very real. The organs are really
+"acting up." Sometimes it is the brain that misbehaves instead of the
+stomach or heart. In that case it often reports all kinds of pains
+that have no origin outside of the brain. Pain, of course, is
+perceived only by the brain. Cut the telegraph wire, the nerve, and no
+amount of injury to the finger can cause pain. It is equally true that
+a misbehaving brain can report sensations that have no external
+cause, that have not come in through the regular channel along the
+nerve. The pain feels just the same, is every bit as uncomfortable as
+though its cause were external.
+
+Sometimes, instead of reporting false pains, the brain misbehaves in
+other ways. It seems to lose its power to decide, to concentrate, or
+to remember. Then the patient is almost sure to fancy himself going
+insane. But insanity is a physical disease, implying changes or toxins
+in the brain cells. Functional disorders tell another story. Their
+cause is different, even though the picture they present is often a
+close copy of an organic disease.
+
+=Distorted Pictures.= It should not be thought, however, that the
+symptoms of functional and organic troubles are identical. Hysteria
+and neurasthenia closely simulate every imaginable physical disease,
+but they do not exactly parallel any one of them. It may take a
+skilled eye to discover the differences, but differences there are.
+Functional troubles usually show a near-picture of organic disease,
+with just enough contradictory or inconsistent features to furnish a
+clue as to their real nature. For this reason it is important that the
+treatment of the disease be solely the province of the physician; for
+only the carefully trained in all the requirements of diagnosis can
+differentiate the pseudo from the real, the innocuous from the
+disastrous.
+
+False or nervous neuritis may feel like real neuritis (the result of
+poisons in the blood), but it gives itself away when it localizes
+itself in parts of the body where there is no nerve trunk. The
+exhaustion of neurasthenia sometimes seems extreme enough to be the
+result of a dangerous physical condition; but when this exhaustion
+disappears as if by magic under the proper kind of treatment, we know
+that the trouble cannot be in the body. Let it be said, then, with all
+the emphasis we can command, "nerves" are not physical. Laboratory
+investigation, contradictory symptoms, and response to treatment all
+bear witness to this fact. Whatever symptoms of disturbance there may
+be in pure nervousness, the nerves and organs can in no way be shown
+to be diseased.
+
+
+THE POSITIVE SIDE
+
+="Nerves" not Imaginary.= "But," some one says, "how can healthy
+organs misbehave in this way? Something must be wrong. There must be
+some cause. If 'nerves' are not physical, what are they? They surely
+can't be imaginary." Most emphatically, they are real; nothing could
+be more maddening than to have some one suggest that our troubles are
+"mere imagination." No wonder such theories have been more popular
+with the patient's family than with the patient himself. Many years
+ago a physician put the whole truth into a few words: "The patient
+says, 'I cannot'; his friends say, 'He will not'; the doctor says, 'He
+cannot will.'" He tries, but in the circumstances he really cannot.
+
+=The Man behind the Body.= The trouble is real; the organs do "act
+up"; the nerves do carry the wrong messages. But the nerves are merely
+telegraph wires. They are not responsible for the messages that are
+given them to carry. Behind the wires is the operator, the man higher
+up, and upon him the responsibility falls. In functional troubles the
+body is working in a perfectly normal way, considering the perverted
+conditions. It is doing its work well, doing just what it is told,
+obeying its master. The troubles are not with the bodily machine but
+with the master. The man behind the body is in trouble and he really
+has no way of showing his pain except through his body. The trouble in
+nervous disorders is in the personality, the soul, the realm of ideas,
+and that is not your body, but _you_. Loss of appetite may mean either
+that the powers of the physical organism are busily engaged in
+combating some poison circulating in the blood, or that the ego is "up
+against" conditions for which it has "no stomach." Paralysis may be
+due to a hemorrhage into the brain tissues from a diseased blood
+vessel, or it may symbolize a sense of inadequacy and defeat.
+Exaggerated exhaustion, halting feet, stammering tongue, may give
+evidence of a disturbed ego rather than of a diseased brain.
+
+=All Body and no Mind.= At last we have begun to realize what we ought
+to have known all along,--that the body is not the whole man. The
+medical world for a long time has been in danger of forgetting or
+ignoring psychic suffering, while it has devoted itself to the
+treatment of physical disease.
+
+By way of condoning this fault it must be recognized that the five
+years of medical school have been all too short to learn what is
+needed of physiology and anatomy, histology, bacteriology, and the
+various other physical sciences. But at last the medical schools are
+realizing that they have been sending their graduates out only
+half-prepared--conversant with only one half of a patient, leaving
+them to fend for themselves in discovering the ways of the other half.
+Many an M.D. has gone a long way in this exploration. Native common
+sense, intuition, and careful study have enabled him to go beyond what
+he had learned in his text-books. But in the best universities the
+present-day student of medicine is now being given an insight into the
+ways of man as a whole--mind as well as body. The movement can hardly
+proceed too rapidly, and when it has had time to reach its goal, the
+day of the long-term sentence to nervousness will be past.
+
+In the meanwhile most physicians, lacking such knowledge and with the
+eye fixed largely on the body, have been pumping out the stomach,
+prescribing lengthy rest-cures, trying massage, diet, electricity, and
+surgical operations, in a vain attempt to cure a disease of the
+personality. Physical measures have been given a good trial, but few
+would contend that they have succeeded. Sometimes the patient has
+recovered--in time--but often, apparently, despite the treatment
+rather than because of it. Sometimes, in the hands of a man like Dr.
+S. Weir Mitchell, results seem good, until we realize that the same
+measures are ineffective when tried by other men, and that, after all,
+what has counted most has been the personality of the physician rather
+than his physical treatment.
+
+No wonder that most doctors have disliked nervous cases. To a man
+trained in all the exactness of the physical sciences, the apparent
+lawlessness and irresponsibility of the psychic side of the
+personality is especially repugnant. He is impatient of what he fails
+to comprehend.
+
+=All Mind and no Body.= This unsympathetic attitude, often only half
+conscious on the part of the regular practitioners, has led many
+thousands of people to follow will-o'-the-wisp cults, which pay no
+attention to the findings of science, but which emphasize a
+realization of man's spiritual nature. Many of these cults, founded
+largely on untruth or half-falsehood, have succeeded in cases where
+careful science has failed. Despite fearful blunders and execrable
+lack of discrimination in attempting to cure all the ills that flesh
+is heir to by methods that apply only to functional troubles, ignorant
+enthusiasts and quacks have sometimes cured nervous troubles where the
+conscientious medical man has had to acknowledge defeat.
+
+=The Whole Man.= But thinking people are not willing to desert science
+for cults that ignore the existence of these physical bodies. If they
+have found it unsatisfactory to be treated as if they were all body,
+they have also been unwilling to be treated as if they were all mind.
+They have been in a dilemma between two half-truths, even if they have
+not realized the dilemma. It has remained for modern psychotherapy to
+strike the balance--to treat the whole man. Solidly planted on the
+rock of the physical sciences, with its laboratories, physiological
+and psychological, and with a long record of investigation and
+treatment of pathological cases, it resembles the mind cure of earlier
+days or the assertions of Christian Science about as much as modern
+medicine resembles the old bloodletting, leeching practices of our
+forefathers.
+
+For the last quarter-century there have been scattered groups of
+physicians,--brilliant, patient pioneers,--who, recognizing man as
+spirit inhabiting body, have explored the realm of man's mind and
+charted its paths. These pioneers, beginning with Charcot, have been
+men of acknowledged scientific training and spirit, whose word must be
+respected and whose success in treating functional troubles stands out
+in sharp contrast to the fumblings of the average practitioner in this
+field. The results of their work have been positive, not negative.
+They have not merely asserted that nervous disorders are not physical;
+they have discovered what the trouble is and have found it to be
+discoverable and removable in almost every case, provided only that
+the right method is used.
+
+=Ourselves and Our Bodies.= If the statement that "nervous troubles
+are neither physical nor imaginary but a disease of the personality,"
+sounds rather mystifying to the average person, it is only because the
+average person is not very conversant with his own inner life. We
+shall hope, later on, to find some definite guide-posts and landmarks
+which will help us feel more at home in this fascinating realm. At
+present, we are not attempting anything more than a suggestion of the
+itinerary which we shall follow. A book on physical hygiene can
+presuppose at least a rudimentary knowledge of heart and lungs and
+circulation, but a book on mental hygiene must begin at the beginning,
+and even before the beginning must clear away misconceptions and make
+clear certain fundamental principles. But the gist of the whole matter
+is this: in a neurosis, certain forces of the personality--instincts
+and their accompanying emotions--which ought to work harmoniously,
+having become tangled up with some erroneous ideas, have lost their
+power of cooeperation and are working at cross purposes, leaving the
+individual mis-adapted to his environment, the prey of all sorts of
+mental and physical disturbances.
+
+The fact that the cause is mental while the result is often physical,
+should cause no surprise. In the physiological realm we are used to
+the idea that cause and effect are often widely separated. A headache
+may be caused by faulty eyes, or it may result from trouble in the
+intestines. In the same way, we should not be too much surprised if
+the cause of nervous troubles is found to be even more remote,
+provided there is some connecting link between cause and effect. The
+difficulty in this case is the apparent gulf between the realm of the
+spirit and the realm of the body. It is hard to see how an intangible
+thing like a thought can produce a pain in the arm or nausea in the
+stomach. Philosophers are still arguing concerning the nature of the
+relation between mind and body, but no one denies that the closest
+relation does exist. Every year science is learning that ideas count
+and that they count physically, as well as spiritually.
+
+=Such Stuff as "Nerves" are Made Of.= Dr. Tom A. Williams in the
+little composite volume "Psychotherapeutics" says that the neuroses
+are based not on inherently weak nervous constitutions but on
+ignorance and on false ideas. What, then, are some of these erroneous
+ideas, these misconceptions, that cause so much trouble? We shall want
+to examine them more carefully in later chapters, but we might glance
+now at a few examples of these popular bugaboos that need to be slain
+by the sword of cold, hard fact.
+
+=Popular Misconceptions about the Body.=
+
+1 "Eight hours' sleep is essential to health. All insomnia is
+dangerous and is incompatible with health. Nervous insomnia leads to
+shattered nerves and ultimately to insanity."
+
+2 "Overwork leads to nervous breakdown. Fatigue accumulates from day
+to day and necessitates a long rest for recuperation."
+
+3 "A carefully planned diet is essential to health, especially for the
+nervous person. A variety of food, eaten at the same time, is harmful.
+Acid and milk--for example, oranges and milk--are difficult to digest.
+Sour stomach is a sign of indigestion."
+
+4 "Modern life is so strenuous that our nerves cannot stand the
+strain."
+
+5 "Brain work is very fatiguing. It causes brain-fag and exhaustion."
+
+6 "Constipation is at the root of most physical ailments and is
+caused by eating the wrong kind of food."
+
+Some of these misconceptions are household words and are so all but
+universally believed that the thought that they can be challenged is
+enough to bewilder one. However, it is ideas like this that furnish
+the material out of which many a nervous trouble is made. Based on a
+half-knowledge of the human body, on logical conclusions from faulty
+premises, on hastily swallowed notions passed on from one person to
+another, they tend by the very power of an idea to work themselves out
+to fulfilment.
+
+
+THE POWER BEHIND IDEAS
+
+=Ideas Count.= Ideas are not the lifeless things they may appear. They
+are not merely intellectual property that can be locked up and ignored
+at will, nor are they playthings that can be taken up or discarded
+according to the caprice of the moment. Ideas work themselves into the
+very fiber of our being. They are part of us and they _do_ things. If
+they are true, in line with things as they are, they do things that
+are for our good, but if they are false, we often discover that they
+have an altogether unsuspected power for harm and are capable of
+astonishing results, results which have no apparent relation to the
+ideas responsible for them and which are, therefore, laid to physical
+causes. Thinking straight, then, becomes a hygienic as well as a
+moral duty.
+
+=Ideas and Emotions.= Ideas do not depend upon themselves for their
+driving-power. Life is not a cold intellectual process; it is a vivid
+experience, vibrant with feeling and emotion. It therefore happens
+that the experiences of life tend to bring ideas and emotions together
+and when an idea and an emotion get linked up together, they tend to
+stay together, especially if the emotion be intense or the experience
+is often repeated.
+
+The word emotion means outgoing motion, discharging force. This force
+is like live steam. An emotion is the driving part of an instinct. It
+is the dynamic force, the electric current which supplies the power
+for every thought and every action of a human life.
+
+Man is not a passive creature. The words that describe him are not
+passive words. Indeed, it is almost impossible to think about man at
+all except in terms of desire, impulse, purpose, action, energy. There
+are three things that may be done with energy: First, it may be
+frittered away, allowed to leak, to escape. Secondly, it may be locked
+up; this results usually in an explosion, a finding of destructive
+outlets. Finally, it may be harnessed, controlled, used in beneficent
+ways. Health and happiness depend upon which one of the three courses
+is taken.
+
+
+CHARACTER AND HEALTH
+
+Evidently, it is highly important to have a working knowledge of these
+emotions and instincts; important to know enough about them and their
+purpose to handle them rightly if they do not spontaneously work
+together for our best character and health. The problems of character
+and the problems of health so overlap that it is impossible to write a
+book about nervous disorders which does not at the same time deal with
+the principles of character-formation. The laws and mechanisms which
+govern the everyday life of the normal person are the same laws and
+mechanisms which make the nervous person ill. As Boris Sidis puts it,
+"The pathological is the normal out of place." The person who is
+master of himself, working together as a harmonious whole, is stronger
+in every way than the person whose forces are divided. Given a little
+self-knowledge, the nervous invalid often becomes one of the most
+successful members of society,--to use the word successful in the best
+sense.
+
+=It Pays to Know.= To be educated is to have the right idea and the
+right emotion in the right place. To be sure, some people have so well
+learned the secret of poise that they do not have to study the why nor
+the how. Intuition often far outruns knowledge. It would be foolish
+indeed to suggest that only the person versed in psychological lore is
+skilled in the art of living. Psychology is not life; it can make no
+claim to furnish the motive nor the power for successful living, for
+it is not faith, nor hope, nor love; but it tries to point the way and
+to help us fulfil conditions. There is no more reason why the average
+man should be unaware of the instincts or the subconscious mind, than
+that he should be ignorant of germs or of the need of fresh air.
+
+If it be argued that character and health are both inherently
+by-products of self-forgetful service, rather than of painstaking
+thought, we answer that this is true, but that there can be no
+self-forgetting when things have gone too far wrong. At such times it
+pays to look in, if we can do it intelligently, in order that we may
+the sooner get our eyes off ourselves and look out. The pursuit of
+self-knowledge is not a pleasurable pastime but simply a valuable
+means to an end.
+
+
+KNOWING OUR MACHINE
+
+=Counting on Ourselves.= Knowing our machine makes us better able to
+handle it. For, after all, each of us is, in many ways, very like a
+piece of marvelous and complicated machinery. For one thing, our
+minds, as well as our bodies, are subject to uniform laws upon which
+we can depend. We are not creatures of chaos; under certain conditions
+we can count on ourselves. Freedom does not mean freedom from the
+reign of law. It means that, to a certain extent, we can make use of
+the laws. Psychic laws are as susceptible to investigation,
+verification, and use as are any laws in the physical world. Each
+person is so much the center of his own life that it is very easy for
+him to fall into the way of thinking that he is different from all the
+rest of the world. It is a healthful experience for him to realize
+that every person he meets is made on the same principles, impelled by
+the same forces, and fighting much the same fight. Since the laws of
+the mental world are uniform, we can count on them as aids toward
+understanding other people and understanding ourselves.
+
+="Intelligent Scrutiny versus Morbid Introspection."= It helps
+wonderfully to be able to look at ourselves in an objective,
+impersonal way. We are likely to be overcome by emotion, or swept by
+vague longings which seem to have no meaning and which, just because
+they are bound up so closely with our own ego, are not looked at but
+are merely felt. Unknown forces are within us, pulling us this way and
+that, until sometimes we who should be masters are helpless slaves.
+One great help toward mastery and one long step toward serenity is a
+working-knowledge of the causes and an impersonal interest in the
+phenomena going on within. Introspection is a morbid, emotional
+fixation on self, until it takes on this quality of objectivity. What
+Cabot calls the "sin of impersonality" is a grievous sin when
+directed toward another person, but most of us could stand a good deal
+of ingrowing impersonality without any harm.
+
+The fact that the human machine can run itself without a hitch in the
+majority of cases is witness to its inherent tendency toward health.
+People were living and living well through all the centuries before
+the science of psychology was formulated. But not with all people do
+things run so smoothly. There were demoniacs in Bible times and
+neurotics in the Middle Ages, as there are nervous invalids and
+half-well people to-day. Psychology has a real contribution to make,
+and in recent years its lessons have been put into language which the
+average man can understand.
+
+Psychology is not merely interested in abstract terms with long names.
+It is no longer absorbed merely in states of consciousness taken
+separately and analyzed abstractly. The newer functional psychology is
+increasingly interested in the study of real persons, their purposes
+and interests, what they feel and value, and how they may learn to
+realize their highest aspirations. It is about ordinary people, as
+they think and act, in the kitchen, on the street cars, at the
+bargain-counter, people in crowds and alone, mothers and their babies,
+little children at play, young girls with their lovers, and all the
+rest of human life. It is the science of _you_, and as such it can
+hardly help being interesting.
+
+While psychology deals with such topics as the subconscious mind, the
+instincts, the laws of habit, and association of ideas and suggestion,
+it is after all not so much an academic as a practical question. These
+forces govern the thought you are thinking at this moment, the way you
+will feel a half-hour from now, the mood you will be in to-morrow, the
+friends you will make and the profession you will choose, besides
+having a large share in the health or ill-health of your body in the
+meantime.
+
+
+SUMMARY
+
+Perhaps it would be well before going farther to summarize what we
+have been saying. Here in a nutshell is the kernel of the subject:
+
+Disease may be caused by physical or by psychic forces. A "nervous"
+disorder is not a physical but a psychic disease. It is caused not by
+lack of energy but by misdirected energy; not by overwork or
+nerve-depletion, but by misconception, emotional conflict, repressed
+instincts, and buried memories. Seventy-five per cent. of all cases of
+ill-health are due to psychic causes, to disjointed thinking rather
+than to a disjointed spine. Wherefore, let us learn to think right.
+
+In outline form, the trouble in a neurosis may be stated something
+like this:
+
+Lack of adaptation to the social environment--caused by
+  Lack of harmony within the personality--caused by
+    Misdirected energy--caused by
+      Inappropriate emotions--caused by
+        Wrong ideas or ignorance.
+
+Working backward, the cure naturally would be:
+
+Right ideas--resulting in
+  Appropriate emotions--resulting in
+    Redirected energy--resulting in
+      Harmony--resulting in
+        Readjustment to the environment.
+
+If the reader is beginning to feel somewhat bewildered by these
+general statements, let him take heart. So far we have tried merely to
+suggest the outline of the whole problem, but we shall in the future
+be more specific. Nervous troubles, which seem so simple, are really
+involved with the whole mechanism of mental life and can in no way be
+understood except as these mechanisms are understood. We have hinted
+at some of the causes of "nerves," but we cannot give a real
+explanation until we explain the forces behind them. These forces may
+at first seem a bit abstract, or a bit remote from the main theme, but
+each is essential to the story of nerves and to the understanding of
+the more practical chapters in Part III.
+
+As in a Bernard Shaw play, the preface may be the most important part
+of this "drama of nerves." Nor is the figure too far-fetched,
+because, strange as it may seem, every neurosis is in essence a drama.
+It has its conflict, its villain, and its victim, its love-story, its
+practical joke, its climax, and its denouement. Sometimes the play
+goes on forever with no solution, but sometimes psychotherapy steps in
+as the fairy god-mother, to release the victim, outwit the villain,
+and bring about the live-happily-ever-after ending.
+
+
+
+
+PART II: "HOW THE WHEELS GO ROUND"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+_In which we find a goodly inheritance_
+
+THE STORY OF THE INSTINCTS
+
+EACH IN HIS OWN TONGUE
+
+    A fire mist and a planet,
+    A crystal and a cell,
+    A jelly-fish and a saurian,
+    And caves where cavemen dwell;
+    Then a sense of law and beauty,
+    And a face turned from the clod;
+    Some call it evolution
+    And others call it God.[4]
+
+
+If we begin at the beginning, we have to go back a long way to get our
+start, for the roots of our family tree reach back over millions of
+years. "In the beginning--God." These first words of the book of
+Genesis must be, in spirit at least, the first words of any discussion
+of life. We know now, however, that when God made man, He did not
+complete His masterpiece at one sitting, but instead devised a plan by
+which the onward urge within and the environment without should act
+and interact until from countless adaptations a human being was made.
+
+[Footnote 4: William Herbert Carruth.]
+
+As the late Dr. Putnam of Harvard University says, "We stand as the
+representative of a Creative Energy that expressed itself first in far
+simpler forms of life and finally in the form of human instincts."[5]
+And again: "The choices and decisions of the organisms whose lives
+prepared the way through eons of time for ours, present themselves to
+us as instincts."[6]
+
+[Footnote 5: Putnam: _Human Motives_, p. 32.]
+
+[Footnote 6: Putnam: _Human Motives_, p. 18.]
+
+
+INTRODUCING THE INSTINCTS
+
+=Back of Our Dispositions.= What is it that makes the baby jump at a
+noise? What energizes a man when you tell him he is a liar? What makes
+a young girl blush when you look at her, or a youth begin to take
+pains with his necktie? What makes men go to war or build tunnels or
+found hospitals or make love or save for a home? What makes a woman
+slave for her children, or give her life for them if need be?
+"Instinct" you say, and rightly. Back of every one of these well-known
+human tendencies is a specific instinct or group of instincts. The
+story of the life of man and the story of the mind of man must begin
+with the instincts. Indeed, any intelligent approach to human life,
+whether it be that of the mother, the teacher, the preacher, the
+social worker or the neurologist, leads back inevitably to the
+instincts as the starting-point of understanding. But what is
+instinct?
+
+We are apt to be a bit hazy on that point, as we are on any
+fundamental thing with which we intimately live. We reckon on these
+instinctive tendencies every hour of the day, but as we are not used
+to labeling them, it may help in the very beginning of our discussion
+to have a list before our eyes. Here, then, is a list of the
+fundamental tendencies of the human race and the emotions which drive
+them to fulfilment.
+
+THE SPECIFIC INSTINCTS AND THEIR EMOTIONS (AFTER MCDOUGALL)
+
+_Instinct_             _Emotion_
+
+Nutritive Instinct    Hunger
+Flight                Fear
+Repulsion             Disgust
+Curiosity             Wonder
+Self-assertion        Positive Self-feeling (Elation)
+Self-abasement        Negative Self-feeling (Subjection)
+Gregariousness        Emotion unnamed
+Acquisition           Love of Possession
+Construction          Emotion unnamed
+Pugnacity             Anger
+Reproductive Instinct Emotion unnamed
+Parental Instinct     Tender Emotion
+
+These are the fundamental tendencies or dispositions with which every
+human being is endowed as he comes into the world. Differing in degree
+in different individuals, they unite in varying proportions to form
+various kinds of dispositions, but are in greater or less degree the
+common property of us all.
+
+There flows through the life of every creature a steady stream of
+energy. Scientists have not been able to decide on a descriptive term
+for this all-important life-force. It has been variously called
+"libido," "vital impulse" or "elan vital," "the spirit of life,"
+"horme," and "creative energy." The chief business of this life-force
+seems to be the preservation and development of the individual and the
+preservation and development of the race. In the service of these two
+needs have grown up these habit-reactions which we call instincts. The
+first ten of our list belong under the heading of self-preservation
+and the last two under that of race-preservation. As hunger is the
+most urgent representative of the self-preservative group, and as
+reproduction and parental care make up the race-preservative group,
+some scientists refer all impulses to the two great instincts of
+nutrition and sex, using these words in the widest sense. However, it
+will be useful for our purpose to follow McDougall's classification
+and to examine individually the various tendencies of the two groups.
+
+=In Debt to Our Ancestors.= An instinct is the result of the
+experience of the race, laid in brain and nerve-cells ready for use.
+It is a gift from our ancestors, an inheritance from the education of
+the age-long line of beings who have gone before. In the struggle for
+existence, it has been necessary for the members of the race to feed
+themselves, to run away from danger, to fight, to herd together, to
+reproduce themselves, to care for their young, and to do various other
+things which make for the well-being or preservation of the race. The
+individuals that did these things at the right time survived and
+passed on to their offspring an inherited tendency to this kind of
+reaction. McDougall defines an instinct as "an inherited or innate
+psycho-physical disposition which determines its possessor to perceive
+or pay attention to objects of a certain class, to experience an
+emotional excitement of a particular quality upon perceiving such an
+object, and to act in regard to it in a particular manner, or at least
+to experience an impulse to such action." This is just what an
+instinct is,--an inherited disposition to notice, to feel, and to want
+to act in certain ways in certain situations. It is the something
+which makes us act when we cannot explain why, the something that goes
+deeper than reason, and that links us to all other human
+beings,--those who live to-day and those who have gone before.
+
+It is true that East is East and West is West, but the two do meet in
+the common foundation of our human nature. The likeness between men
+and between races is far greater and far more fundamental than the
+differences can ever be.
+
+=Firing Up the Engine.= Purpose is writ large across the face of an
+instinct, and that purpose is always toward action. Whenever a
+situation arises which demands instantaneous action, the instinct is
+the means of securing it. Planted within the creature is a tendency
+which makes it perceive and feel and act in the appropriate way. It
+will be noticed that there are three distinct parts to the process,
+corresponding to intellect, emotion, will. The initial intellectual
+part makes us sensitive to certain situations, makes us recognize an
+object as meaningful and significant, and waves the flag for the
+emotion; the emotion fires up the engine, pulls the levers all over
+the body that release its energy and get it ready for action, and
+pushes the button that calls into the mind an intense, almost
+irresistible desire or impulse to act. Once aroused, the emotion and
+the impulse are not to be changed. In man or beast, in savage or
+savant, the intense feeling, the marked bodily changes, and the
+yearning for action are identical and unchangeable. The brakes can be
+put on and the action suppressed, but in that case the end of the
+whole process is defeated. Could anything be plainer than that an
+instinct and its emotion were never intended to be aroused except in
+situations in which their characteristic action is to be desired? An
+emotion is the hot part of an instinct and exists solely for securing
+action. If all signs of the emotion are to be suppressed, all
+expression denied, why the emotion?
+
+But although the emotion and the impulse, once aroused, are beyond
+control, there is yet one part of the instinct that is meant to be
+controlled. The initial or receptive portion, that which notices a
+situation, recognizes it as significant, and sends in the signal for
+action, can be trained to discrimination. This is where reason comes
+in. If the situation calls for flight, fear is in order; if it calls
+for fight, anger is in order; if it calls for examination, wonder is
+in order; but if it calls for none of these things, reason should show
+some discrimination and refuse to call up the emotion.
+
+=The Right of Way.= There is a law that comes to the aid of reason in
+this dilemma and that is the "law of the common path."[7] By this is
+meant that man is capable of but one intense emotion at a time. No one
+can imagine himself strenuously making love while he is shaken by an
+agony of fear, or ravenously eating while he is in a passion of rage.
+The stronger emotion gets the right of way, obtains control of mental
+and bodily machinery, and leaves no room for opposite states. If the
+two emotions are not antagonistic, they may blend together to form a
+compound emotion, but if in the nature of the case such a blending is
+impossible, the weaker is for the time being forgotten in the
+intensity of the stronger. "The expulsive power of a new affection" is
+not merely a happy phrase; it is a fact in every day life. The
+problem, then, resolves itself into ways of making the desirable
+emotion the stronger, of learning how to form the habit of giving it
+the head start and the right of way. In our chapter on "Choosing the
+Emotions," we shall find that much depends on building up the right
+kind of sentiments, or the permanent organization of instincts around
+ideas. However, we must first look more closely at the separate
+instincts to acquaint ourselves with the purpose and the ways of each,
+and to discover the nature of the forces with which we have to deal.
+
+[Footnote 7: Sherrington: _Integrative Action of the Nervous System_.]
+
+
+I THE SELF-PRESERVATIVE INSTINCTS
+
+=Hunger.= Hunger is the most pressing desire of the egoistic or
+self-preserving impulse. The yearning for food and the impulse to seek
+and eat it are aroused organically within the body and are behind much
+of the activity of every type of life. As the impulse is so familiar,
+and its promptings are so little subject to psychic control, it seems
+unnecessary to do more than mention its importance.
+
+=Flight and Fear.= All through the ages the race has been subject to
+injury. Species has been pitted against species, individual against
+individual. He who could fight hardest or run fastest has survived and
+passed his abilities on to his offspring. Not all could be strongest
+for fight, and many species have owed their existence to their ability
+to run and to know when to run. Thus it is that one of the strongest
+and most universal tendencies is the instinct for flight, and its
+emotion, fear. "Fear is the representation of injury and is born of
+the innumerable injuries which have been inflicted in the course of
+evolution."[8] Some babies are frightened if they are held too
+loosely, even though they have never known a fall. Some persons have
+an instinctive fear of cats, a left-over from the time when the race
+needed to flee from the tiger and others of the cat family. Almost
+every one, no matter in what state of culture, fears the unknown
+because the race before him has had to be afraid of that which was not
+familiar.
+
+[Footnote 8: Crile: _Origin and Nature of the Emotions_.]
+
+The emotion of fear is well known, but its purpose is not so often
+recognized. An emotion brings about internal changes, visceral changes
+they are called, which enable the organism to act on the emotion,--to
+accomplish its object. There is only so much energy available at a
+given moment, stored up in the brain cells, ready for use. In such an
+emergency as flight every ounce of energy is needed. The large muscles
+used in running must have a great supply of extra energy. The heart
+and lungs must be speeded up in order to provide oxygen and take care
+of extra waste products. The special senses of sight and hearing must
+be sensitized. Digestion and intestinal peristalsis must be stopped in
+order to save energy. No person could by conscious thought accomplish
+all these things. How, then, are they brought about?
+
+=Internal Laboratories.= In the wonderful internal laboratory of the
+body there are little glands whose business it is to secrete chemicals
+for just these emergencies. When an object is sighted which arouses
+fear, the brain cells flash instantaneous messages over the body,
+among others to the supra-renal glands or adrenals, just over the
+kidneys, and to the thyroid gland in the neck. Instantly these glands
+pour forth adrenalin and thyroid secretion into the blood, and the
+body responds. Blood pressure rises; brain cells speed up; the liver
+pours forth glycogen, its ready-to-burn fuel; sweat-glands send forth
+cold perspiration in order to regulate temperature; blood is pumped
+out from stomach and intestines to the external muscles. As we have
+seen, the body as a whole can respond to just one stimulus at a time.
+The response to this stimulus has the right of way. The whole body is
+integrated, set for this one thing. When fear holds the switchboard no
+other messages are allowed on the line, and the creature is ready for
+flight.
+
+But after flight comes concealment with the opposite bodily need, the
+need for absolute silence. This is why we sometimes get the opposite
+result. The heart seems to stop beating, the breath ceases, the limbs
+refuse to move, all because our ancestors needed to hide after they
+had run, and because we are in a very real way a part of them.
+
+=Old-Fashioned Fear.= There is one passage from Dr. Crile's book which
+so admirably sums up these points that it seems worth while to insert
+it at length.
+
+     We fear not in our hearts alone, not in our brains alone, not in
+     our viscera alone--fear influences every organ and tissue. Each
+     organ or tissue is stimulated or inhibited according to its use
+     or hindrance in the physical struggle for existence. By thus
+     concentrating all or most of the nerve force on the
+     nerve-muscular mechanism for defense, a greater physical power is
+     developed. Hence it is that under the stimulus of fear animals
+     are able to perform preternatural feats of strength. For the same
+     reason, the exhaustion following fear will be increased as the
+     powerful stimulus of fear drains the cup of nervous energy even
+     though no visible action may result.... Perhaps the most striking
+     difference between man and animals lies in the greater control
+     which man has gained over his primitive instinctive reactions. As
+     compared with the entire duration of organic evolution, man came
+     down from his arboreal abode and assumed his new role of
+     increased domination over the physical world but a moment ago.
+     And now, though sitting at his desk in command of the complicated
+     machinery of civilization, when he fears a business catastrophe
+     his fear is manifested in the terms of his ancestral physical
+     battle in the struggle for existence. He cannot fear
+     intellectually, he cannot fear dispassionately, he fears with all
+     his organs, and the same
+     organs are stimulated and inhibited as if, instead of its being a
+     battle of credit, or position, or of honor, it were a physical
+     battle with teeth and claws.... Nature has but one means of
+     response to fear, and whatever its cause the phenomena are always
+     the same--always physical.[9]
+
+[Footnote 9: Crile: _Origin and Nature of the Emotions_, p. 60 ff.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The moral is as plain as day: Learn to call up fear only when speedy
+legs are needed, not a cool head or a comfortable digestion. Fear is a
+costly proceeding, an emergency measure like a fire-alarm, to be used
+only when the occasion is urgent enough to demand it. How often it is
+misused and how large a part it plays in nervous symptoms, both mental
+and physical, will appear more clearly in later chapters.
+
+=Repulsion and Disgust.= Akin to the instinct of flight is that of
+repulsion, which impels us, instead of fleeing, to thrust the object
+away. It leads us to reject from the mouth noxious and disgusting
+objects and to shrink from slimy, creepy creatures, and has of course
+been highly useful in protecting the race from poisons and snakes. It
+still operates in the tendency to put away from us those things,
+mental or physical, toward which we feel aversion or disgust. Recent
+psychological discoveries have revealed how largely a neurosis
+consists in putting away from us--out of consciousness,--whatever we
+do not wish to recognize, and so it happens that disgust plays an
+unexpected part in nervous disorders.
+
+=Curiosity and Wonder.= Fortunately for the race, it has not had to
+wait until different features of the environment prove to be helpful
+or harmful. There is an instinct which urges forward to exploration
+and discovery and which enables the creature not only to adapt itself
+to the environment but to learn how to adapt the environment to
+itself. This is the instinct of curiosity. It is the impulse back of
+all advance in science, religion, and intellectual achievement of
+every kind, and is sometimes called "intellectual feeling."
+
+=Self-Assertion.= It goes almost without saying that one of the
+strongest and most important impulses of mankind is the instinct of
+self-assertion; it often gets us into trouble, but it is also behind
+every effort toward developed character. At its lowest level
+self-assertion manifests itself in the strutting of the peacock, the
+prancing of the horse, and the "See how big I am," of the small boy.
+At its highest level, when combined with self-consciousness and the
+moral sentiments acquired from society and developed into the
+self-regarding sentiment, it is responsible for most of our ideas of
+right, our conception of what is and what is not compatible with our
+self-respect.
+
+=Self-Abasement.= Self-assertion is aroused primarily by the presence
+of others and especially of those to whom we feel in any way
+superior, but when the presence of others makes us feel small, when we
+want to hide or keep in the background, we are being moved by the
+opposite instinct of self-abasement and negative self-feeling. It may
+be either the real or the fancied superiority of the spectators that
+arouses this feeling,--their wisdom or strength, beauty or good
+clothes. Sometimes, as in stage-fright, it is their numerical
+superiority. Bashfulness is the struggle between the two
+self-instincts, assertion and abasement. Our impulse for self-display
+urges us on to make a good impression, while our feeling of
+inferiority impels us to get away unnoticed. Hence the struggle and
+the painful emotion.
+
+=Gregariousness.= Man has been called a gregarious animal. That is,
+like the animals, he likes to run with his kind, and feels a
+pronounced aversion to prolonged isolation. It is this
+"herd-instinct," too, which makes man so extremely sensitive to the
+opinions of the society in which he lives. Because of this impulse to
+go with the crowd, ideas received through education are accepted as
+imperative and are backed up by all the force of the instinct of
+self-regard. When the teachings of society happen to run counter to
+the laws of our being, the possibilities of conflict are indeed
+great.[10]
+
+[Footnote 10: For a thorough discussion of the importance of this
+instinct, see Trotter's _Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War_.]
+
+=Acquisition.= Another fundamental disposition in both animals and
+men is the instinct for possession, the instinct whose function it is
+to provide for future needs. Squirrels and birds lay up nuts for the
+winter; the dog hides his bone where only he can find it. Children
+love to have things for their "very own," and almost invariably go
+through the hoarding stage in which stamps or samples or bits of
+string are hoarded for the sake of possession, quite apart from their
+usefulness or value. Much of the training of children consists in
+learning what is "mine" and what is "thine," and respect for the
+property of others can develop only out of a sense of one's own
+property rights.
+
+=Construction.= There is an innate satisfaction in making
+something,--from a doll-dress to a poem,--and this satisfaction rests
+on the impulse to construct, to fashion something with our own hands
+or our own brain. The emotion accompanying this instinct is too
+indefinite to have a name but it is nevertheless a real one and plays
+a large part in the sense of power which results from the satisfaction
+of good work well done. Later it will be seen how closely related is
+this impulse to the creative instinct of reproduction and how useful
+it can be in drawing off the surplus energy of that much denied
+instinct.
+
+=Pugnacity and Anger.= What is it that makes us angry? A little
+thought will convince us that the thing which arouses our fury is not
+the sight of any special object, but the blocking of any one of the
+other instincts. Watch any animal at bay when its chance for flight
+has gone. The timidest one will turn and fight with every sign of
+fury. Watch a mother when her young are threatened,--bear, or cat or
+lion or human. Fear has no place then. It is entirely displaced by
+anger over the balking of the maternal instinct of protection.
+Strictly speaking, pugnacity belongs among the instincts neither of
+self-preservation nor of race-preservation, but is a special device
+for reinforcing both groups.
+
+As fear supplies the energy for running, so anger fits us for
+fight,--and for nothing but fight. The mechanism is almost identical
+with that of fear. Brain and liver, adrenals and thyroid are the
+means, but the emotion presses the button and releases the energy,
+stopping all digestion and energizing all combat-muscles. The blood is
+flooded with fuel and with substances which, if not used, are harmful
+to the body. We were never meant to be angry without fighting. The
+habit of self-control has its distinct advantages, but it is hard on
+the body, which was patterned before self-control came into fashion.
+The wise man, once he is aroused, lets off steam at the woodpile or on
+a long, vigorous walk. He probably does not say to himself that he is
+a motor animal integrated for fight and that he must get rid of
+glycogen and adrenalin and thyroid secretion. He only knows that he
+feels better "on the move."
+
+The wiser man does not let himself get angry in the first place unless
+the situation calls for fight. However, the fight need not be a
+hand-to-hand combat with one's fellow man. William James has pointed
+out that there is a "moral equivalent for war," and that the energy of
+this instinct may be used to reinforce other impulses and help
+overcome obstacles of all sorts. A good deal of the business man's
+zest, the engineer's determination, and the reformer's zeal spring
+from the fight-instinct used in the right way. As James, Cannon, and
+others have pointed out, the way to end war may be to employ man's
+instinct of pugnacity in fighting the universal enemies of the
+race--fire, flood, famine, disease, and the various social
+evils--rather than let it spend its force in war between nations. Even
+our sports may be offshoots of the fight-instinct, for McDougall holds
+that the play-tendency has its root in the instinct of rivalry, a
+modified form of pugnacity. Evidently fighting-blood is a useful
+inheritance, even to-day, and rightly directed is a necessary part of
+a complete and forceful personality.
+
+This, then, completes the list of self-preservative instincts, those
+which are commonly called egoistic and which have been given us for
+the maintenance of our own individual personal lives. But our
+endowment includes another set of impulses which are no less important
+and which must be reckoned with if human conduct is to be understood.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+_In which we learn more about ourselves_
+
+THE STORY OF THE INSTINCTS (Continued)
+
+II. THE RACE-PRESERVATIVE INSTINCTS
+
+
+=Looking beyond Ourselves.= We sometimes speak of self-preservation as
+though it were the only law of life, while as a matter of fact it is
+but half the story. Nature has seen to it that there shall be planted
+in every living creature an innate urge toward the larger life of the
+race. Although the creature may never give a conscious thought to the
+welfare of the race, he still bears within himself a set of instincts
+which have as their end and aim, not the individual at all, but
+society as a whole, and the life of generations that are to come. He
+is bigger than he knows. Although he may have no notion why he feels
+and acts as he does, and although he may pervert the purpose for his
+own selfish end, he is continually being moved by the mighty impulse
+of the race-life, an impulse which often outrivals the desire I or his
+own personal existence. The craving to reproduce ourselves and the
+craving to cherish and protect our young are among the most dynamic
+forces in life. The two desires are so closely bound together that
+they are often spoken of as one under the name of the sex-instinct, or
+the family instincts. Let us look first at that part of the yearning
+which urges toward perpetuating our own life in offspring.
+
+=Watching Nature Work.= It is wonderful, indeed, to watch Nature in
+the long process of Evolution, as she adapts her methods to the
+growing complexity of the organism. With a variety and ingenuity of
+means, but always with the same steady purpose, she works from the
+lowest levels,--where there is no true reproduction, only
+multiplication by division,--on through the beginning of reproduction
+proper, where a single parent produces the offspring; then on to the
+level where it takes two parents of different structure to produce a
+new organism, and sex-life begins. At first Nature does not even
+demand that father and mother shall come near each other. In the
+water, the female of this type lays an egg, and the male, guided by
+his instinct, swims to it and deposits his fertilizing fluid. In plant
+life, bird and bee, attracted by wonderfully planned perfumes and
+color and honey, are called in to carry the pollen from male to female
+cell.
+
+But it is when we come to the highest level that we find even more
+subtle ways planned to accomplish the desired end. Here we enter the
+realm of individual initiative, for it is not now enough to leave to
+external forces the joining of the two life-elements. In order to make
+a new individual, father and mother must be drawn together, and so
+there enters into the situation a personal relationship with all that
+that implies. Because Nature has had to provide ways of drawing
+individuals to one another, she has put into the higher types of life
+the power of mutual attraction,--a power which in man, the highest of
+all types, is responsible for many outgrowths that seem far removed
+from the original purpose.
+
+=The Love-Motif.= On the one hand, there is the persistent desire to
+be attractive, which manifests itself in the subtlest ways. How many
+of the yearnings and activities of human life have their roots in this
+ancient and honorable desire! The love of pretty clothes,--however it
+may seem to be motivated and however it may be complicated by other
+motives,-draws its energy, fundamentally, from the same need that
+provides the gay plumage and limpid song of the bird or the painted
+wings of the butterfly.
+
+On the other hand, there is the capability of being attracted, with
+all the personal relationships which spring from the power of admiring
+and loving another person. The interest in others does not expend its
+whole force on its primary objects,--mate and children. It flows out
+into all human relationships, developing all the possibilities of
+loving which mean so much in human life; the love of man for man and
+woman for woman, as well as mutual love of man and woman. A force like
+this, once planted, especially in the higher types of life, does not
+spend all its energies in its main trunk. It sends out branches in
+many directions, bearing by-products which are rich in value for all
+of life.
+
+Many of our richest relationships, our best impulses, and our most
+firmly fixed social habits spring from the family instincts of
+reproduction and parental care. The social life of our young people,
+so well calculated to bring young men and women together; all the
+beauty of family life and, as we shall later see, all the broader
+benevolent activities for society in general, are energized by the
+same love-instincts which form so large a part of human nature.
+
+
+LEARNING TO LOVE
+
+=A Four-Grade School.= It is impossible to watch the growth of the
+love-life of a human being, to trace its development from babyhood up
+to its culmination in mating and parenthood, without a sense of wonder
+at the steady purpose behind it all. We used to believe that the love
+for the young girl that suddenly blooms forth in the callow youth was
+an entirely new affair, something suddenly planted in him as he
+developed into manhood; but now we know, thanks to the uncovering of
+human nature by the painstaking investigations of the psycho-analytic
+school of psychologists, that the seeds of the love-life are planted,
+not in puberty, but with the beginning of life itself. Looked at in
+one way, all infancy and childhood are a preparation, a training of
+the love-instinct which is to be ready at the proper time to find its
+mate and play its part in the perpetuation of the race. Nature begins
+early. As she plants in the tiny baby all the organs that shall be
+needed during its lifetime, so she plants the rudiments of all the
+impulses and tendencies that shall later be developed into the
+full-grown instincts. There have been found to be four periods in the
+love-life of the growing child, three of them preparatory steps
+leading up to maturity; periods in which the main current of love is
+directed respectively toward self, parents, comrades, and finally
+toward lover or mate.
+
+=Like Narcissus.= In the first stage, the baby's interest is in his
+own body. He is getting acquainted with himself, and he soon finds
+that his body contains possibilities of pleasurable sensations which
+may be repeated by the proper stimulation. Besides the
+hunger-satisfaction that it brings, the act of sucking is pleasurable
+in itself, and so the baby begins to suck his thumb or his quilts or
+his rattle. Later, this impulse to stimulate the nerves about the
+mouth finds its satisfaction in kissing, and still later it plays a
+definite part in the wooing process; but at first the child is
+self-sufficient and finds his pleasure entirely within himself. Other
+regions of the body yield similar pleasure. We often find a tiny child
+rubbing his genital organs or his thighs or taking exaggerated
+pleasure in riding on someone's foot in order to stimulate these
+nerves, which he has discovered at first merely by chance. When he
+begins to run around, he loves to exhibit his own body, to go about
+naked. None of this is naughtiness or perversion; it is only Nature's
+preparation of trends that she will later need to use. The child is
+normally and naturally in love with himself.[11] But he must not
+linger too long in this stage. None of the channels which his
+life-force is cutting must be dug too deep, else in later life they
+will offer lines of least resistance which may, on occasion, invite
+illness or perversion.
+
+[Footnote 11: This is the stage which is technically known as
+auto-eroticism or self-love.]
+
+=In Love with His Family.= Presently Nature pries the child loose from
+love of himself and directs part of his interests to people outside
+himself. Before he is a year old, part of his love is turned to
+others. In this stage it is natural that at first his affection should
+center on those who make up his home circle,--his parents and other
+members of the household. Even in this early choice we see a
+foreshadowing of his future need. The normal little boy is especially
+fond of his mother, and the normal little girl of her father. Not all
+the love goes to the parent of the opposite sex, but if the child be
+normal, a noticeably larger part finds its way in that direction.
+Observing parents can often see unmistakable signs of jealousy: toward
+the parent of the same sex, or the brother or sister of the same sex.
+The little boy who sleeps with his mother while his father is away, or
+who on these occasions gets all the attention and all the petting he
+craves, is naturally eager to perpetuate this state of affairs. Many a
+small boy has been heard to say that he wished his father would go
+away and stay all the time,--to the horror of the parents who do not
+understand. All this is natural enough, but it is not to be
+encouraged. The pattern of the father or the mother must not be
+stamped too deep in the impressionable child-mind. Too little love and
+sympathy are bad, leading to repression and a morbid turning in of the
+love-force; but too much petting, too many caresses are just as bad.
+Sentimental self-indulgence on the part of the parents has been
+repeatedly proved to be the cause of many a later illness for the
+child. As the right kind of family love and comradeship, the kind that
+leads to freedom and self-dependence, is among the highest forces in
+life, so the wrong kind is among the worst. Parents and their
+substitutes--nurses, sisters, and brothers--are but temporary
+stopping-places for the growing love, stepping-stones to later
+attachments which are biologically more necessary. The small boy who
+lets himself be coddled and petted too long by his adoring relatives,
+who does not shake off their caresses and run away to the other boys,
+is doomed to failure, and, as we shall later see, probably to
+illness.[12]
+
+[Footnote 12: One of the best discussions of this theme is found in
+the chapter "The Only or Favorite Child," by A.A. Brill, in
+_Psychoanalysis_.]
+
+In the later infantile period, the child, besides wanting to exhibit
+his own body, shows marked interest in looking at the bodies of
+others, and marked curiosity on sex-questions in general. He
+particularly wants to know "where babies come from." If his questions
+are unfortunately met by embarrassment or laughing evasion, or by
+obvious lying about the stork or the doctor or the angels, his
+curiosity is only whetted, and he comes to the very natural conclusion
+that all matters of sex are sinful, disgusting, and indecent, and to
+be investigated only on the sly. This conception cannot be brought
+into harmony with the unconscious mental processes arising from his
+race-instincts nor with his instinctive sense that "whatever is is
+right." The resulting conflict in some four-year-old children is
+surprisingly intense. Astonished indeed would many parents be if they
+knew what was going on inside the heads of their "innocent" little
+children; not "bad" things, but pathetic things which a little candor
+would have avoided.
+
+Alongside the rudimentary impulses of showing and looking, there is
+developed another set of trends which Nature needs to use later on,
+the so-called sadistic and masochistic impulses, the desire to
+dominate and master and even to inflict pain, and its opposite impulse
+which takes pleasure in yielding and submitting to mastery. These
+traits, harking back to the time when the male needed to capture by
+force, are of course much more evident in adolescence and especially
+in love-making, but have their beginning in childhood, as many a
+mother of cruel children knows to her sorrow. In adolescence, when
+sex-differentiation is much more marked, the dominating impulse is
+stronger in the boy and the yielding impulse in the girl; but in
+little children the differentiation has not yet begun.
+
+=Gang and Chum.= At about four or five years the child leaves the
+infantile stage of development, with its self-love and its intense
+devotion to parents and their substitutes. He begins to be especially
+interested in playmates of his own sex, to care more for the opinions
+of the gang--or if it be a little girl, of the chum--than for those of
+the parents. The life-force is leading him on to the next step in his
+education, freeing him little by little from a too-hampering
+attachment to his family. This does not mean that he does not love
+his father and mother. It means only that some of his love is being
+turned toward the rest of the world, that he may be an independent,
+socially useful man.
+
+This period between infancy and puberty is known as the latency
+period. All interest in sex disappears, repressed by the spontaneously
+developing sense of shame and modesty and by the impact of education
+and social disapproval. The child forgets that he was ever curious on
+sex-matters and lets his curiosity turn into other, more acceptable
+channels.
+
+=The Mating-Time.= We are familiar with the changes that take place at
+puberty. We laugh at the girl who, throwing off her tom-boy ways,
+suddenly wants her skirts let down and her hair done up. We laugh at
+the boy who suddenly leaves off being a rowdy, and turns into a
+would-be dandy. We scold because this same boy and girl who have
+always been so "sweet and tractable" become, almost overnight, surly
+and cantankerous, restive under authority and impatient of family
+restraint. We should neither laugh nor scold, if we understood. Nature
+is succeeding in her purpose. She has led the young life on from self
+to parents, from parents to gang or chum, and now she is trying to
+lead it away from all its earlier attachments, to set it free for its
+final adventure in loving. The process is painful, so painful that it
+sometimes fails of accomplishment. In any case, the strain is
+tremendous, needing all the wisdom and understanding which the family
+has to offer. It is no easy task for any person to free himself from
+the sense of dependence and protection, and the shielding love that
+have always been his; to weigh anchors that are holding him to the
+past and to start out on the voyage alone.
+
+At this time of change, the chemistry of the body plays an important
+part in the development of the mental traits; all half-developed
+tendencies are given power through the maturing of the sex-glands,
+which bind them into an organization ready for their ultimate purpose.
+The current is now turned on, and the machinery, which has been
+furnished from the beginning, is ready for its task. After a few false
+starts in the shape of "puppy love," the mature instinct, if it be
+successful, seeks until from among the crowd it finds its mate. It has
+graduated from the training-school and is ready for life.
+
+
+CIVILIZATION'S PROBLEM
+
+=When Nature's Plans Fall Through.= We have been describing the normal
+course of affairs. We know that all too often the normal is not
+achieved. Inner forces or outer circumstances too often conspire to
+keep the young man or the young woman from the culmination toward
+which everything has been moving. If the life-force cannot liberate
+itself from the old family grooves to forge ahead into new channels,
+or if economic demands or other conditions make postponement
+necessary, then marriage is not possible. All the glandular secretions
+and internal stimuli have been urging on to the final consummation,
+developing physical and emotional life for an end that does not come;
+or if it does come, is not sufficient to satisfy the demands of the
+age-old instinct which for millions of years knew no restraint. In any
+case, man finds himself, and woman herself, face to face with a
+pressing problem, none the less pressing because it is in most cases
+entirely unrecognized.
+
+=Blundering Instincts.= The older a person is, the more fixed are his
+habits. Now, an instinct is a race-habit and represents the
+crystallized reactions of a past that is old. Whatever has been done
+over and over again, millions of times, naturally becomes fixed,
+automatic, tending to conserve itself in its old ways, to resist any
+change and to act as it has always acted. This conserves energy and
+works well so long as conditions remain the same. But if for any
+reason there comes a change, things are likely to go wrong. By just so
+far as things are different, an automatic habit becomes a handicap
+instead of a help.
+
+This having to act under changed conditions is exactly the trouble
+with the reproductive instinct. Under civilization, conditions have
+changed but the instinct has not. It is trying to act as it always
+has acted, but civilized man wills otherwise. The change that has come
+is not in the physical, external environment, but in man himself and
+in the social environment which he has created. There is in man an
+onward urge toward new and better things. Side by side with the desire
+to live as he always has lived, there is a desire to make new
+adaptations which are for the advancement of the whole race-life.
+Besides the natural wish to take his desires as he finds them, there
+is also the wish to modify them and use them for higher and more
+socially useful ends.
+
+As the race has found through long experience that monogamy is to be
+preferred to promiscuous mating; that the highest interests of life
+are fostered by loyalty to the institution of the family; that the
+careful rearing of several children rather than the mere production of
+many is in the long run to be desired; and that a single standard of
+morality is practicable; so society has established for its members a
+standard which is in direct opposition to the immeasurable urge of the
+past. To make matters worse, there have at the same time grown up in
+many communities a standard of living and an economic competition
+which still further limit the size of the family and the satisfaction
+of the reproductive impulse.
+
+=The Perpetual Feud.= There thus arises the strategic struggle
+between that which the race has found good in the past and that which
+the race finds good in the present. As the older race-experience is
+laid in they body and built into the very fiber of the individual,
+inherited as an innate impulse, it has become an integral part of
+himself, an individual need rather than a social one. On the other
+hand, man has, as another innate part of his being, the desire to go
+with the herd, to conform to the standards of his fellows, to be what
+he has learned society wants him to be. Hence the struggle, insistent,
+ever more pressing, between two sets of desires within the man
+himself; the feud between the past and the present, between the
+natural and the social, between the selfish and the ideal. On one
+side, there is the demand for instinctive satisfaction; on the other,
+for moral control; on one side the demand for pleasure; on the other,
+the demands of reality.[13]
+
+[Footnote 13: "All the burdens of men or society are caused by the
+inadequacies in the association of primal animal emotions with those
+mental powers which have been so rapidly developed in
+man-kind."--Shaler quoted by Hinkle: Introduction to Jung's
+_Psychology of the Unconscious_.]
+
+Two factors intensify the conflict. In the first place, the older
+habits have the head start. Compared with the almost limitless extent
+of our past history, our desire for the control of the instincts is
+very new indeed. It requires the long look and the right perspective
+to understand how very lately we have entered into our new conditions
+and how old a habit we are trying to break. In the second place, the
+larger part of the stimulus comes from within the body itself. When
+studying the other instincts, we saw that the best way to control was
+to refuse to stimulate when the situation was not suitable for
+discharge. But with the organically aroused sex-instinct there is no
+such power of choice. We may fan the flame by the thoughts we think or
+the environment we seek, or we may smother the flame until it is out
+of sight, but we cannot extinguish it by any act of ours. The issue
+has always been too important to be left to the individual. The
+stimulation comes, primarily, not by way of the mind but by way of the
+body. With this instinct we cannot "stop before we begin," because
+Nature has taken the matter out of our hands and begins for us.
+
+
+THE BULWARK WE HAVE BUILT
+
+With the competing forces so strong and the issues so great, it is not
+to be wondered at that society has had to build up a massive bulwark
+of public opinion, to establish regulations and fix penalties that are
+more stringent than those imposed in any other direction. Nor is it
+remarkable that in its effort to protect itself, society has sometimes
+made mistakes.
+
+These blunders seem to lie in two directions. Assuming that it is
+nearly impossible for the male to control his instincts, and that,
+after all, it does not matter so much whether he does or not, society
+has blinked at license in men, and thus has fostered a demoralizing,
+anti-social double standard which has broken up countless homes, has
+been responsible for the spread of venereal diseases, and has been
+among the greatest curses of modern civilization. At the same time
+society, in its efforts to maintain its standards for woman, has
+taught its children, especially its girls, that anything savoring of
+the word "sexual" is sinful, disgusting, and impure. To be sure, very
+many women have modified their childish views, but an astonishingly
+large number conserve, even in maturity, their warped ideas about the
+whole subject of sex. Many a mature woman secretly believes that she,
+at least, is not guilty of harboring anything so "vulgar" as a
+reproductive instinct, not realizing that if this were so, she would
+be, in very truth, a freak of nature.
+
+Of course, woman is by nature as fully endowed with sex instincts as
+is man. Kipling portrays the female of the species as "deadlier than
+the male" in that the very framework of her constitution outlines the
+one issue for which it was launched,--stanch against any attack which
+might endanger the carrying on of life. Feeling the force of this
+instinctive urge, she braces herself against precipitancy in response
+by what seems almost a negation.
+
+Just as we lean well in when riding around a corner, in order to keep
+ourselves from falling out, so by an "over-compensation" for what is
+unconsciously felt to be danger woman increases her feeling of safety
+by setting up a taboo on the whole subject of sex. It is time that we
+freed our minds from the artificial and perverted attitude toward this
+dominant impulse; time to rescue the word "sex" from its implications
+of grossness and sensuousness, and to recognize the instinct in its
+true light as one of the necessary and holy forces of life, a force
+capable of causing great damage, but also holding infinite
+possibilities for good if wisely directed.
+
+Society only gets its members into trouble when, even by implication,
+it attempts to deny its natural make-up, and allows little children to
+grow up with the false idea that one of their strongest impulses is to
+be shunned by them as a thing of shame. We cannot dam back the flood
+by building a bulwark of untruth, and then expect the bulwark to hold.
+
+=Adaptable Energy.= We neither have to give in to our over-insistent
+desires nor to deny that they exist. Man has a power of adaptation.
+Just when we seem to run up against a dead wall, to face an
+irreconcilable conflict, we find a wonderful power of indirect
+expression that affords satisfaction to all the innate forces without
+doing violence to the ethical standards which have proved so necessary
+for the development of character.
+
+Hunger, which, like the reproductive instinct, is stimulated by the
+changing chemistry of the body, can be satisfied only by achieving its
+primary purpose, the taking of material food; but the creative impulse
+to reproduce oneself possesses a unique ability to spiritualize itself
+and expend its energy in other lines of creative endeavor. There seems
+to be some sort of close connection between the especially intense
+energy of the reproductive instinct and the modes of expression of the
+instinct for construction; a connection which makes possible the
+utilization of threatening destructive energy by directing it toward
+socially valuable work. Just as we harness the mountain stream and use
+its wild force to light our cities, or catch the lightning to run our
+trolley cars, so we find man and woman--under the right
+conditions--easily and naturally switching over the power of their
+surplus sex-energy to ends which seem at first only slightly related
+to its original aim, but which resemble it in that they too are
+self-expressive and creative. If a person is able to express himself
+in some real way, to give himself to socially needed work; if he can
+reproduce himself intellectually and spiritually in artistic
+production, in invention, in literature, in social betterment, he is
+drawing on an age-old reservoir of creative energy, and by so doing is
+relieving himself of inner tension which would otherwise seek less
+beneficent ways of expression.
+
+The world knew all this intuitively for a long time before it knew it
+theoretically. The novelists, who are unconsciously among the best
+psychologists, have thoroughly worked the vein. The average man knows
+it. "He was disappointed in love," we say, "and we thought he would go
+to pieces, but now he has found himself in his work"; or, "She will go
+mad if she doesn't find some one who needs her." It is only lately
+that science has caught up with intuition, but now the physicians and
+psychologists who have had the most intimate and first-hand
+acquaintance with the human heart are recognizing, to a man, this
+unique power of the love-instinct and its possibilities for creative
+work of every sort.[14]
+
+[Footnote 14: Among those who have shown this connection between the
+love-force and creative work are Freud, Jung, Jelliffe, White, Brill,
+Jones, Wright, Frink, and the late Dr. Putnam of Harvard University,
+who writes: "Freud has never asserted it as his opinion and it
+certainly is not mine, that this is the only root from which artistic
+expression springs. On the other hand, it is probable that all
+artistic productions are partly referable to this source. A close
+examination of many of them would enable any one to justify the
+opinion that it is a source largely drawn upon."--_Human Motives_. p.
+87.]
+
+
+=Higher Levels.= Freud has called this spiritualization of natural
+forces by a term borrowed from chemistry. As a solid is "sublimated"
+when transformed into a gas, so a primal impulse is said to be
+"sublimated" when it is diverted from its original object and made to
+serve other ends. By this power of sublimation the little
+exhibitionist, who loved to show himself, may become an actor; the
+"cruel" boy who loved to dissect animals may become a surgeon; the
+sexually curious child may turn his curiosity to other things and
+become a scholar; the "born mother," if denied children of her own or
+having finished with their upbringing, may take to herself the
+children of the city, working for better laws and better care for
+needy little ones; the man or woman whose sex-instinct is too strong
+to find expression in legitimate, direct ways, may find it a valuable
+resource, an increment of energy for creative work, along whatever
+line his talent may lie.
+
+There is no more marvelous provision in all life than this power of
+sublimation of one form of energy into another, a provision shadowing
+forth almost limitless possibilities for higher adaptations and for
+growth in character. As we think of the distance we have already
+traveled and the endless possibilities of ever higher excursions of
+the life-force, we feel like echoing Paul's words: "He who began a
+good work in you will perfect it unto the end." The history of the
+past holds great promise for the future.
+
+=When Sublimation Fails.= But in the meantime we cannot congratulate
+ourselves too heartily. Sublimation too often fails. There are too
+many nervous wrecks by the way, too many weak indulgers of original
+desires, too many repressed, starved lives with no outlet for their
+misunderstood yearnings; and, as we shall see, too many people who, in
+spite of a big lifework, fail to find satisfaction because of
+unnecessary handicaps carried over from their childhood days.
+"Society's great task is, therefore, the understanding of the
+life-force, its manifold efforts at expression and the way of
+attaining this, and to provide as free and expansive ways as possible
+for the creative energy which is to work marvelous things for the
+future."
+
+If "the understanding of the life force" is to be available for use,
+it must be the property of the average man and woman, the fathers and
+mothers of our children, the teachers and physicians who act as their
+advisers and friends.[15] This chapter is intended to do its bit
+toward such a general understanding.
+
+[Footnote 15: "Appropriate educational processes might perhaps guide
+this enormous impulsive energy toward the maintenance instead of the
+destruction of marriage and the family. But up to the present time,
+education with respect to this moral issue has commonly lacked any
+such constructive method. The social standard and the individual
+impulse have simply collided, and the individual has been left to
+resolve the conflict, for the most part by his own resources."--G.A.
+Coe: _Psychology of Religion_, p. 150.]
+
+
+PARENTAL INSTINCT AND TENDER EMOTION
+
+=Until They Can Fly.= Only half of Nature's need is met by the
+reproductive instinct. Her carefulness in this direction would be
+largely wasted without that other impulse which she has planted, the
+impulse to protect the new lives until they are old enough to fend for
+themselves. The higher the type of life and the greater the future
+demands, the longer is the period of preparation and consequent period
+of parental care. This fact, coupled with man's power for lasting
+relationships through the organization of permanent sentiments, has
+made the, bond between parent and child an enduring one. Needless to
+say, this relationship is among the most beautiful on earth, the
+source of an incalculable amount of joy and gain. However, as we have
+already suggested, there lurks here, as in every beneficent force, a
+danger. If parents forget what they are for, and try to foster a more
+than ordinary tie, they make themselves a menace to those whom they
+most love. Any exaggeration is abnormal. If the childhood bond is
+over-strong, or the childhood dependence too long cultivated, then the
+relationship has overstepped its purpose, and, as we shall later see,
+has laid the foundation for a future neurosis.
+
+=Mothering the World.= Probably no instinct has so many ways of
+indirect expression as this mothering impulse of protection. Aroused
+by the cry of a child in distress, or by the thought of the weakness,
+or need, or ill-treatment of any defenseless creature, this
+mother-father impulse is at the root of altruism, gratitude, love,
+pity, benevolence, and all unselfish actions.
+
+There is still a great difference of opinion as to how man's spiritual
+nature came into being; still discussion as to whether it developed
+out of crude beginnings as the rest of his physical and mental
+endowment has developed, or whether it was added from the outside as
+something entirely new. Be that as it may, the fact remains that man
+has as an innate part of his being an altruistic tendency, an
+unselfish care for the welfare of others, a relationship to society as
+a whole,--a relationship which is the only foundation of health and
+happiness and which brings sure disaster if ignored. The egoistic
+tendencies are only a part of human nature. Part of us is naturally
+socially minded, unselfish, spiritual, capable of responding to the
+call to lose our lives in order that others may find theirs.
+
+
+SUMMARY
+
+Civilized man as he is to-day is a product of the past and can be
+understood only as that past is understood. The conflicts with which
+he is confronted are the direct outcome of the evolutional history of
+the race and of its attempt to adapt its primitive instincts to
+present-day ideals.
+
+Character is what we do with our instincts. According to Freud, all
+of a man's traits are the result of his unchanged original impulses,
+or of his reactions against those impulses, or of his sublimation of
+them. In other words, there are three things we may do with our
+instincts. We may follow our primal desires, we may deny their
+existence, or we may use them for ends which are in harmony with our
+lives as we want them to be. As the first course leads to degeneracy,
+the second to nervous illness, and the third to happy usefulness, it
+is obviously important to learn the way of sublimation. Sometimes this
+is accomplished unconsciously by the life-force, but sometimes
+sublimation fails, and is reestablished only when the conscious mind
+gains an understanding of the great forces of life. This method of
+reeducation of the personality as a means of treatment in nervousness
+is called psycho-therapy.
+
+=Religion's Contribution.= If it be asked why, amid all this
+discussion of instincts and motives we have made no mention of that
+great energizer religion, we answer that we have by no means forgotten
+it, but that we have been dealing solely with those primary tendencies
+out of which all of the compound emotions are made. Man has been
+described as instinctively and incurably religious, but there seems no
+doubt that religion is a compound reaction, made up of
+love,--sympathetic response to the parental love of God,--fear,
+negative self-feeling, and positive self-feeling in the shape of
+aspiration for the desired ideal of character; all woven into several
+compound emotions such as awe, gratitude, and reverence.
+
+It goes almost without saying that religion, if it be vital, is one of
+the greatest sources of moral energy and spiritual dynamic, and that
+it is and always has been one of the greatest aids to sublimation that
+man has found. A force like the Christian religion, which sets the
+highest ideal of character and makes man want to live up to it, and
+which at the same time says, "You can. Here is strength to help you";
+which unifies life and fills it with purpose; which furnishes the
+highest love-object and turns the thought outward to the good of
+mankind--such a force could hardly fail to be a dynamic factor in the
+effort toward sublimation. This book, however, deals primarily with
+those cases for which religion has had, to call science to her aid in
+order to find the cause of failure, to flood the whole subject with
+light, and to help cut the cords which, binding us to the past, make
+it impossible to utilize the great resources that are at hand for all
+the children of men.
+
+=Where We Keep Our Instincts.= It must have been impossible to read
+through these two chapters on instinct without feeling that, after
+all, we are not very well acquainted with ourselves. The more we look
+into human nature, the more evident it becomes that there is much in
+each one of us of which we are only dimly aware. It is now time for us
+to look a little deeper,--to find where we keep these instinctive
+tendencies with which it is possible to live so intimately without
+even suspecting their existence. We shall find that they occupy a
+realm of their own, and that this realm, while quite out of sight, is
+yet open to exploration.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+_In which we look below the surface and discover a veritable
+wonderland_
+
+THE SUBCONSCIOUS MIND
+
+STRANGERS TO OURSELVES
+
+
+=Hidden Strings.= A collie dog lies on the hearthrug. A small boy with
+mischievous intent ties a fine thread to a bone, hides himself behind
+a chair, and pulls the bone slowly across the floor. The dog is thrown
+into a fit of terror because he does not know about the hidden string.
+
+A Chinese in the early days of San Francisco stands spell-bound at the
+sight of a cable car. "No pushee. No pullee. Go allee samee like
+hellee!" He does not know about the hidden string.
+
+A woman of refinement and culture thinks a thought that horrifies her
+sensitive soul. It is entirely out of keeping with her character as
+she knows it. In her misunderstanding she considers it wicked and
+thrusts it from her, wondering how it ever could have been hers. She
+does not know about the hidden string.
+
+In the last two chapters we thought together about some of these
+strings, examining the fibers of which they are made and learning in
+what directions they pull. We found them to be more powerful than we
+should have supposed, more insistent and less visible. We found that
+instinctive desire is the string, the cable that energizes our every
+act, but that our desires are neither single nor simple, and are but
+rarely on the surface. Many of us live with them a long time, feeling
+the tug, but not recognizing the string.
+
+=There's a Reason.= We take our thoughts and feelings and actions for
+granted, without stopping very often to wonder where they come from.
+But there is always a reason. When the law of cause and effect reaches
+the doorsill of our minds, it does not stop short to give way to the
+law of chance. We wake up in the morning with a certain thought on
+top. We say it "just happens." But nothing ever just happens. No
+thought that ever comes into our heads has been without its
+history,--its ancestors and its determining causes. But what about
+dreams? They, at least, you say, have no connections, no past and no
+future, only a weird, fantastic present. Strange to say, dreams have
+been found to be as closely related to our real selves, as interwoven
+with the warp and woof of our lives as are any of our waking thoughts.
+Even dreams have a reason.
+
+We find ourselves holding certain beliefs and prejudices, interested
+in certain things and indifferent to others, liking some foods, some
+colors and disliking others. Search our minds as we will, we find no
+clue to many of these inner trends. Why?
+
+The answer is simple. The cause is hidden below the surface. If we try
+to explain ourselves on the basis of the open-to-inspection part of
+our minds, we must come to the conclusion that we are queer creatures
+indeed. Only by assuming that there is more to us than we know, can we
+find any rational basis for the way we think and feel and act.
+
+=A Real Mind.= We learn of our internal machinery by what it does. We
+must infer a part of our minds which introspection does not reveal, a
+mind within the mind, able to work for us even while we are unaware of
+its existence. This inner mind is usually known as the subconscious,
+the mind under the level of consciousness.[16] We forget a name, but
+we know that it will come to us if we think about something else.
+Presently, out of somewhere, there flashes the word we want. Where was
+it in the meanwhile, and what hunted it out from among all our other
+memories and sent it up into consciousness? The something which did
+that must be capable of conserving memories, of recognizing the right
+one and of communicating it,--surely a real mind.
+
+[Footnote 16: Writers of the psycho-analytic school use the word
+"unconscious" to denote the lower layers of this region, and
+"fore-conscious" to denote its upper layers. Morton Prince uses the
+terms "unconscious" and "conscious" to denote the different strata. As
+there is still a good deal of confusion in the use of terms, it has
+seemed to us simpler to use throughout only the general term
+"subconscious."]
+
+One evening my collaborator fumbled unsuccessfully for the name of a
+certain well-known journalist and educator. It was on the tip of her
+tongue, but it simply would not come, not even the initial letter. In
+a whimsical mood she said to herself just as she went to sleep,
+"Little subconscious mind, you find that name to-night." In the middle
+of the night she awoke, saying, "Williams--Talcott Williams." The
+subconscious, which has charge of her memories, had been at work while
+she slept.
+
+The history of literature abounds in stories of under-the-surface
+work. The man of genius usually waits until the mood is on, until the
+muse speaks; then all his lifeless material is lighted by new
+radiance. He feels that some one outside himself is dictating. Often
+he merely holds the pen while the finished work pours itself out
+spontaneously as if from a higher source.
+
+But it is not only the man of genius who makes use of these unseen
+powers. He may have readier access to his subconscious than the rest
+of us, but he has no monopoly. The most matter-of-fact man often says
+that he will "sleep over" a knotty problem. He puts it into his mind
+and then goes about his business, or goes to sleep while this unseen
+judge weighs and balances, collects related facts, looks first at one
+side of the question and then at the other, and finally sends up into
+consciousness a decision full of conviction, a decision that has been
+formulated so far from the focus of attention that it seems to be
+something altogether new, a veritable inspiration.
+
+We must infer the subconscious from what it does. Things
+happen,--there must be a cause. Some of the things that happen
+presuppose imagination, reason, intelligence, will, emotion, desire,
+all the elements of mind. We cannot see this mind, but we can see its
+products. To deny the subconscious is to deny the artist while looking
+at his picture, to disbelieve in the poet while reading his poem, and
+to doubt the existence of the explosive while listening to the report.
+The subconscious is an artist, a poet, and an explosive by turns. If
+we deny its existence, a good portion of man's doings are
+unintelligible. If we admit it, many of his actions and his
+afflictions which have seemed absurd stand out in a new light as
+purposeful efforts with a real and adequate cause.
+
+=The Submerged Nine Tenths.= The more deeply psychologists and
+physicians have studied into these things, the more certainly have
+they been forced to the conclusion that the conscious mind of man, the
+part that he can explore at will, is by far the smaller part of his
+personality. Since this is to some people a rather startling
+proposition, we can do no better than quote the following statement
+from White on the relation of consciousness to the rest of the psychic
+life:
+
+     Consciousness includes only that of which we are _aware_, while
+     outside of this somewhat restricted area there lies a much wider
+     area in which lie the deeper motives for conduct, and which not
+     only operates to control conduct, but also dictates what may and
+     what may not become conscious. Stanley Hall has very forcibly put
+     the matter by using the illustration of the iceberg. Only
+     one-tenth of the iceberg is visible above water; nine-tenths is
+     beneath the surface. It may appear in a given instance that the
+     iceberg is being carried along by the prevailing winds and
+     surface currents, but if we keep our eyes open we shall sooner or
+     later see a berg going in the face of the wind, and, so,
+     apparently putting to naught all the laws of aerodynamics. We can
+     understand this only when we come to realize that much the
+     greater portion of the berg is beneath the surface and that it is
+     moving in response to invisible forces addressed against this
+     submerged portion.
+
+     Consciousness only arises late in the course of evolution and
+     only in connection with adjustments that are relatively complex.
+     When the same or similar conditions in the environment are
+     repeatedly presented to the organism so that it is called upon to
+     react in a similar and almost
+     identical way each time, there tends to be organized a mechanism
+     of reaction which becomes more and more automatic and is
+     accompanied by a state of mind of less and less awareness.[17]
+
+[Footnote 17: White: _Mechanisms of Character Formation_.]
+
+It is easy to see the economy of this arrangement which provides
+ready-made patterns of reaction for habitual situations and leaves
+consciousness free for new decisions. Since an automatic action,
+traveling along well-worn brain paths, consumes little energy and
+causes the minimum of fatigue, the plan not only frees consciousness
+from a confusing number of details, but also works for the
+conservation of energy. While consciousness is busy lighting up the
+special problems of the moment, the vast mass of life's demands are
+taken care of by the subconscious, which constitutes the bulk of the
+mind. "Properly speaking, the unconscious is the real psyche."[18]
+
+[Footnote 18: Freud: _Interpretation of Dreams_, p. 486.]
+
+=The Heart of Psychology.= In the face of all this, it is not to be
+wondered at that the problem of the subconscious has been called not
+one problem of psychology but the problem. It cannot be denied that
+the discoveries which have already been made as to its activities have
+been of immense practical importance in the understanding of normal
+conduct and in the treatment of the psycho-neuroses.
+
+If some of the methods--such as hypnosis, automatic writing, and
+interpretation of dreams--which are used to investigate its activities
+seem to savor of the charlatan and the mountebank, it is because they
+have occasionally been appropriated by the ignorant and the
+unscrupulous. Their real setting is the psychological laboratory and
+the physician's office. In the hands of men like Sigmund Freud, Boris
+Sidis, and Morton Prince, they are as scientific as the apparatus of
+any other laboratory and their findings are as susceptible of proof.
+We may, then, go forward with the conviction that we are walking on
+solid ground and that the main paths, at least, will turn into beaten
+highways.
+
+
+ANCESTRAL MEMORIES
+
+=Race-Memories.= An individual as he stands at any moment is the
+product of his past,--the past which he has inherited and the past
+which he has lived. In other words, he is a bundle of memories
+accumulated through the experience of the race, and through his own
+experience as a person. Some of these memories are conscious, and
+these he calls his, while others fail to reach consciousness and are
+not recognized as part of his assets.
+
+The instincts form the starting-point of mind, conscious and
+subconscious, and are the foundation upon which the rest is built.
+They often show themselves as part of our conscious lives, but their
+roots are laid deep in the subconscious from which they can never be
+eradicated. This deepest-laid instinctive layer of the subconscious is
+little subject to change. It represents the earlier adjustments of the
+race, crystallized into habit. It takes no account of the differences
+between the present and the past. It knows no culture, no reason, no
+lately acquired prudence. It is all energy and can only wish, or urge
+toward action. But since only those race-memories became instincts
+which had proved needful to the race in the long run, they are on the
+whole beneficent forces, working for the good of the race and the good
+of the individual, if he learns how to handle them aright and to adapt
+them to present conditions.
+
+This instinctive urge toward action arouses in the individual an
+organic response that is felt as a tension or craving and is mainly
+dependent upon its own chemical constitution at the moment. Hunger is
+the sensation caused by the little muscular contractions in the
+stomach when the body is low in its food supply. Sudden fright is felt
+as an all-gone sensation "at the pit of the stomach." What really
+happens is a tightening up of the circular muscles of the
+blood-vessels lying in the network of the solar plexus, and a spasm of
+the muscles of the digestive tract. The hungry stomach impels to
+action until satisfied; the physical discomfort in fear impels toward
+measures of safety. The apparatus that is made use of by the
+subconscious in carrying out this instinctive urge is called the
+autonomic nervous system.[19] It regulates all the functions of
+living, not only under the stress of emotion, but during every moment
+of waking or sleeping.
+
+[Footnote 19: Kempf: "The Tonus of Automatic Segments as a Cause of
+Abnormal Behavior," _Journal of Nervous and Mental Diseases_, January,
+1921.]
+
+=A Capable Manager.= The conscious mind could not possibly send
+messages to the numerous glands that fit the body for action, nor
+attend to all the delicate adjustments that enter into the process.
+The conscious mind in most of us does not even know of the existence
+of the organs and secretions involved, but something sends the
+messages and it is something that has a remarkable likeness to mind as
+we usually think of mind,--something which takes advantage of the past
+and gages means to an end with a nicety that excites our wonder.
+
+=Take no Anxious Thought.= We take food into our stomachs and forget
+about it, if we are wise; and this subconscious overseer who through
+millions of years of experience has learned how to digest food does
+the rest. As with digestion, so with our heart-action; we lie down at
+night fairly sure that there will be no break in the regular rhythm of
+its beat. The subconscious overseer is "on the job" and he never
+rests. No matter how hard we sleep, he never lets us forget to take a
+breath; and if we trust him, he is very likely to wake us up at the
+appointed time in the morning. Also, if we trust him, he carries us
+off to sleep as though we were babies. Has he not had long practice in
+the days before insomnia was invented?
+
+=First Aid to the Injured.= In times of infection or injury, this
+subconscious manager is better than any doctor. The doctors say with
+truth that they only assist nature. If the infection is internal,
+antitoxins are produced within the body. If the injury is external,
+like a cut, the messages fly, and white blood-corpuscles are marshaled
+to take care of poisons and build up the tissue. If the injury is of
+the kind that needs rest, the subconscious doctor knows it. He
+therefore causes pain and rigidity, in order to induce us to hold the
+injured part still until it is restored.
+
+Crile reminds us of a fact that is often noticed by surgeons. If
+patients under ether are handled roughly, especially in the intestinal
+region, respiration quickens and there are tremors and even convulsive
+efforts which interfere with the surgeon's work. The conscious mind
+cannot feel. It is asleep. But the subconscious mind, whose business
+it is to protect the body, is trying to get away from injury. The body
+uses up as much energy as though it had run for miles, and when the
+patient wakes up, we say that he is suffering from shock. The
+subconscious mind which is not affected by ether, has been exhausting
+itself in a vain attempt to get the body away from harm.
+
+=A Tireless Servant.= When the conscious mind undertakes a job, it is
+always more or less subject to fatigue. But the subconscious after its
+long practice seems never to tire. We say that its activities have
+become automatic. With all its inherited skill, the subconscious, if
+left to itself, can be depended upon to run the bodily machinery
+without effort and without hitch. The only things that can interfere
+with its work are the wrong kind of emotions and the wrong kind of
+suggestions from the conscious mind. Barring these, it goes its way
+like a trusty servant, looking after details and leaving its master's
+mind free for other things. Having been "in the family" for
+generations, it knows its business and resents any interference with
+its duties or any infringement of its rights.
+
+No man, then, comes into this world without inheritance: he receives
+from his ancestors two goodly sets of heirlooms, the instincts and the
+mechanism which carries on bodily functions. This is the capital with
+which man starts life; but immediately he begins increasing this
+capital, adding memories from his own experience to the accumulated
+race-records.
+
+
+PERSONAL MEMORIES
+
+No more startling secret has been unearthed by science than the
+discovery of the length and minuteness of our memories. No matter how
+much one may think he has forgotten, the tablets of his mind are
+closely written with records of infinitesimal experiences, shadowy
+sensations, old happenings which the conscious self has lost entirely
+and would scarcely recognize as its own. Many of these brain records,
+or neurograms, as Prince calls them, are never aroused from their
+dormant conditions. But others, aroused by emotion or association of
+ideas, may after years of inactivity, come forth again either as
+conscious memories or as subconscious forces, or even as physiological
+memories,--bodily repetitions of the pains, palpitations, and tremors
+of old emotional experiences.
+
+=Irresistible Childhood.= An experience that is forgotten is not
+necessarily lost. Although the first few years of childhood are lost
+to conscious memory, these years outweigh all others in their
+influence on character. The Jesuit priest was right when he said,
+"Give me a child until he is six years old, and he will be a Catholic
+all his life." As Frink has so ably shown, the determining factors
+that enter into any adult choice, such as the choice of the Catholic
+or the Protestant faith, are in a large measure made up of
+subconscious memories from early childhood, forgotten memories of
+Sunday-school and church, of lessons at home or passages in
+books,--experiences which no voluntary effort could recall, but which
+still live unrecognized in our mature judgments and beliefs. Naturally
+we do not acknowledge these subconscious motives. We like to believe
+that all our decisions are based on reason, and so we invent plausible
+arguments for our attitudes and our actions, arguments which we
+ourselves implicitly believe. This process of substituting a plausible
+reason for a subconscious one is known as rationalization, a process
+which every one of us engages in many times a day.
+
+It is indeed true that the child is father to the man. Those first
+impressionable years, when we believed implicitly whatever any one
+told us and when through ignorance we reacted emotionally to ordinary
+experiences, are molding us still, making us the men and women we are
+to-day, coloring with childish ideas many of the attitudes of our
+supposedly reasoning life. Bergson says:
+
+     The unconscious is our historical past. In reality the past is
+     preserved automatically. In its entirety probably it follows us
+     at every instant; all that we have felt, thought and willed from
+     our earliest infancy is there, leaning over the present which is
+     about to join it, pressing against the portals of consciousness
+     that would fain leave it outside.
+
+=Spontaneous Outbursts.= "How do we know all this?" some one says.
+"What is the evidence for these sweeping statements? If we cannot
+remember, how can we discover these strange memories that are so
+powerful but so elusive? If they are below the level of consciousness,
+are they not, in the very nature of the case, forever hidden from
+view, in the sphere of the occult rather than that of science?"
+
+The answer to these questions is determined by one important fact; the
+line between the conscious and subconscious minds does not always
+remain in the same place; the "threshold of consciousness" is
+sometimes displaced, automatically allowing these buried memories to
+come to the surface. In sleep and delirium, in trance and
+hallucination, in hysteria and intoxication, the tables are turned;
+the restraining hand of the conscious mind is loosened and the
+submerged self comes forth with all its ancient memories.
+
+It is a common experience to have a patient in delirium repeat
+long-forgotten verses or descriptions of events that the "real man"
+has lost entirely. The renowned servant-girl, quoted by Hudson, who in
+delirium recited passage after passage of Hebrew, Latin, and Greek,
+which she had heard her one-time master repeat in his study, is
+typical of many such instances.[20]
+
+[Footnote 20: Hudson: _The Law of Psychic Phenomena_, p. 44. Quoted
+from _Coleridge's Biographia Literaria_, Vol. I, p. 117 (edit. 1847).]
+
+A young girl of nineteen, a patient of mine, lapsed for several weeks
+into a dissociated state in which she forgot all the memories and
+ideas of her adult life, and returned to the period of her childhood.
+She used to say that she saw things inside her head and would
+accurately describe events that took place before she was two years of
+age,--scenes which she had completely forgotten in her normal life.
+One day when I asked her to tell me what she was seeing, she began to
+talk about "little sister" (herself) and "little brother." "Little
+sister and brother were the two little folks that lived with their
+mother and their daddy and they were playing on the sand-pile. You
+know there was only one sand-pile, not like all the ones they have
+down here (at the seaside), and they had a bucket that they would put
+sand in and they would dump it out again and they would make nice
+things, you know; they would play with their little dog Ponto and he
+was white with black and brown spots on him. Little brother had white
+hair and he was bigger than little sister and he had a little waist
+with ruffles down the front and around the collar and a black coat
+that came down to his knees and it had two little white bands around
+it. Some of the waists he wore had blue specks and some had red and
+black specks in it.
+
+"Little sister had yellow curls and she had a blue coat with jiggly
+streaks of white in it, and she had a little white bonnet that was
+crocheted, and she had little blue mittens on that were tied to a
+string that went around her neck and down the other arm. It got pretty
+cold where they lived. Little sister and little brother would go out
+to the pile of leaves and jump on them and bounce and they would
+crackle. The leaves came down from the trees all of a sudden when they
+got tired, and they were different colors, brown and red. Little
+sister could walk then but she could not walk one other time before
+then; she could stand up by holding to a chair, but she could not go
+herself. One morning Big Tom said 'Run to Daddy' and she went to her
+daddy, and after that she always walked; they were glad and she was
+glad. She walked all day long. Big Tom was a man who used to help
+Daddy and little sister always liked him. He was a nice man."
+
+The mother verified this scene of the first walking, saying that it
+had occurred on her own wedding-anniversary when the child was
+twenty-three months old.
+
+One night I heard the same patient talk in her sleep in the slow and
+hesitating manner of a child reading phonetically from a printed page.
+I soon recognized the words as those of a poem of Tagore's, called "My
+Prayer," and remembered that a magazine containing the poem had been
+lying on the bed during the day. When she had finished I wakened her,
+saying, "Now tell me what you have been dreaming." She answered in
+her childish way, "I think I do not dream." She went to sleep
+immediately and again repeated the poem, word for word, without a
+single mistake. Again I awakened her with the words, "Now tell me what
+you have been dreaming." And again she answered, "I think I do not
+dream." I said: "But yes; don't you remember you were just saying,
+'When the time comes for me to go'?" (the last line of the poem). "Oh,
+yes," she said, "I was seeing it, and I think I'll not go to sleep
+again. It tires me so to see it."
+
+While she was awake she had no recollection of having seen the poem
+and was indeed in her dissociated state quite incapable of
+understanding its meaning. Asleep, she saw every word as plainly as if
+the page had been before her eyes.
+
+The distorted pictures of dreams are always made of the material which
+past experiences have furnished and which have in many cases been
+dropped out of consciousness for years only to rise out of their long
+oblivion when the conscious mind has been put to sleep.
+
+=Unearthing Old Experiences.= However, psychology does not have to
+wait for buried memories to come forth of their own free will. It has
+a number of successful ways of summoning them from their hiding-place
+and helping them across the line into consciousness. In the hands of
+skilled investigators and therapeutists, hypnosis, hypnoidization,
+automatic writing, crystal-gazing, abstraction, free association,
+word-association, and interpretation of dreams have all been
+repeatedly successful in bringing to light memories which apparently
+have been for many years completely blotted out of mind. As we become
+better acquainted with these technical devices we shall find that
+there are four kinds of experiences whose records are carefully stored
+away in our minds. Some were always so far from the center of our
+attention that we could swear they never had been ours; others,
+although once present in consciousness, were so trivial and
+unimportant that it seems ridiculous to suppose them conserved; others
+never came into our waking minds at all and entered our lives only in
+special states, such as sleep or delirium or dreams. All these we
+should expect to forget; the astonishing thing is that they ever were
+conserved. But there is a fourth class that is different. It is made
+up of experiences that were so vital, so emotional, so closely woven
+into the fiber of our being that it seems impossible that they ever
+could be forgotten. Let us look at a few examples of records of all
+these four kinds of experiences, examples chosen from hundreds of
+their kind as illustrations of the all-embracing character of buried
+memories.[21]
+
+[Footnote 21: For further examples see Prince, _The Unconscious_;
+Prince, _The Dissociation of a Personality_, and Hudson, _The Law of
+Psychic Phenomena_.]
+
+=Out of the Corners of Our Eyes.= In the first place, we are much
+more observing than we imagine. We may be so interested in our own
+thoughts that details of our environment are entirely lost on the
+conscious mind, but the subconscious has its eyes open, and its ears.
+People in hypnosis have been known to repeat verbatim whole passages
+from newspapers which they had never consciously read. While they were
+busy with one column, their wide-awake subconscious was devouring the
+next one, and remembering it. Prince relates the story of a young
+woman who unconsciously "took in" the details of a friend's
+appearance:
+
+     I asked B.C.A. (without warning and after having covered her
+     eyes) to describe the dress of a friend who was present and with
+     whom she had been conversing perhaps some twenty minutes. She was
+     unable to do so beyond saying that he wore dark clothes. I then
+     found that I myself was unable to give a more detailed
+     description of his dress, although we had lunched and been
+     together about two hours. B.C.A. was then asked to write a
+     description automatically. Her hand wrote as follows (she was
+     unaware that her hand was writing):
+
+     "He has on a dark greenish gray suit, a stripe in it--little
+     rough stripe; black bow cravat; shirt with three little stripes
+     in it; black laced shoes; false teeth; one finger gone; three
+     buttons on his coat."
+
+     The written description was absolutely correct. The stripes in
+     the coat were almost invisible. I had not noticed
+     his teeth or the loss of a finger and we had to count the buttons
+     to make sure of their number owing to their partial concealment
+     by the folds of the unbuttoned coat. The shoe-strings I am sure
+     under the conditions would have escaped nearly every one's
+     notice.[22]
+
+[Footnote 22: Prince: _The Unconscious_, p. 53.]
+
+Automatic writing, the method used to uncover this subconscious
+perception, is a favorite method with some investigators and is often
+used by Morton Prince. The hand writes without the direction of the
+personal consciousness and usually without the person's being aware
+that it is writing. A dissociated person does this very easily; other
+people can cultivate the ability, and perhaps most of us approach it
+when we are at the telephone, busily writing or drawing remarkable
+pictures while the rest of us is engaged in conversation.
+
+The present epidemic of the Ouija board shows how many persons there
+are who are able to switch off the conscious mind and let the
+subconscious control the muscles that are used in writing. The fact
+that the writer has no understanding of what he is doing and believes
+himself directed by some outside power, in no way interferes with the
+subconscious phenomenon.
+
+=Everyday Doings.= Besides perceptions which were originally so far
+from the focus of attention that the conscious mind never caught them
+at all, there are the little experiences of everyday life, fleeting
+thoughts and impressions which occupy us for a minute and then
+disappear. Every experience is a dynamic fact and no matter how
+trivial the experience may be or how completely forgotten, it still
+exists as a part of the personality.
+
+An amusing example of the everyday kind of forgotten experience
+occurred during the writing of this chapter. I wrote a sentence which
+pleased me very well. This is the sentence: "In the esthetic processes
+of evolution they [man's desires] have sunk below the surface as soon
+as formed, and have been covered over by an elastic and snug-fitting
+consciousness as the skin covers in the tissues and organs of the
+body." After showing this passage to my collaborator and remarking
+that this figure had never been used before, I was partly chagrined
+and partly amused to have her bring me the following sentence from
+White and Jelliffe: "Consciousness covered over and obscured the inner
+organs of the psyche just as the skin hides the inner organs of the
+body from vision." My originality had vanished and I was close to
+plagiarism. Indeed, if a history of plagiarism could be written, it
+would probably abound in just such stories. I had read the article
+containing this sentence only once, about three years before, and had
+never quoted it or consciously thought of it. It had lain buried for
+three years, only to come forth as an original idea of my own. Who
+knows how many times we all do just this thing without catching
+ourselves in the trick?
+
+=Back-Door Memories.= There are other kinds of memories which hide in
+the subconscious, memories of experiences which have not come in by
+the front door, but have entered the mind during special states, such
+as sleep, delirium, intoxication, or hypnosis. What is known as
+post-hypnotic suggestion is the functioning of a suggestion received
+during hypnosis and emerging later as an impulse without being
+recognized as a memory. A man in a hypnotic state is told that at five
+o'clock he will take off his clothes and go to bed, without
+remembering that such a suggestion has been given him. He awakens with
+no recollection of the suggestion, but at five o'clock he suddenly
+feels impelled to go to bed, even though his unreasonable desire puts
+him into a highly embarrassing position. The suggestion, to be thus
+effective, must have been conserved somewhere in his mind outside of
+consciousness.
+
+Suggestions that enter the mind during the normal sleep are also
+recorded,--a fact that carries a warning to people who are in the
+habit of talking of all sorts of matters while in the room with
+sleeping children. I have sometimes suggested to sleeping patients
+that on waking they will remember and tell me the cause of their
+symptoms. The following example shows not only the conservation of
+impressions gained in sleep, but also the sway of forgotten ideas of
+childhood, still strong in mature years. This young woman, a trained
+nurse, with many marked symptoms of hysteria, had been asked casually
+to bring a book from the Public Library. She cried out in
+consternation, "Oh, no, I am afraid!" After a good deal of urging she
+finally brought the book, although at the cost of considerable effort.
+Later, while she was taking a nap, I said to her, "You will not
+remember that I have talked to you. You will stay asleep while I am
+talking and while you are asleep there will come to your mind the
+reasons why you are afraid to go to the Public Library. When you
+waken, you will tell me all about it." Upon awakening, she said: "Oh,
+do you know, I can tell you why I have always been afraid to go to the
+Public Library. While I was in Parochial School, Father ---- used to
+come in and tell us children to use the books out of the school
+library and never to go to the Public Library." I questioned her
+concerning her idea of the reason for such an injunction and what she
+thought was in the books which she was told not to read. She
+hesitatingly stated that it was her idea, even in childhood, that the
+books dealt with topics concerning the tabooed subject of the birth of
+children and kindred matters.
+
+=Smoldering Volcanoes.= Let us now consider those emotional
+experiences which seem far too compelling to be forgotten, but which
+may live within us for years without giving any evidence of their
+existence. Memories like these are apt to be anything but a dead past.
+
+Many of my own patients have uncovered emotional memories through
+simply talking out to me whatever came into their minds, laying aside
+their critical faculty and letting their minds wander on into whatever
+paths association led them. This is known as the free-association
+method, and simple as it seems, is one of the most effective in
+uncovering memories which have been forgotten for years. One of my
+patients, a refined, highly educated woman of middle age, had suffered
+for two years with almost constant nausea. One day, after a long talk,
+with no suggestion on my part, only an occasional, "What does that
+remind you of?" she told with great emotion an experience which she
+had had at eighteen years of age, in which she had for a moment been
+sexually attracted to a boy friend, but had recoiled as soon as she
+realized where her impulse was leading her. She had been so horrified
+at the idea of her degradation, so nauseated at what she considered
+her sin, that she had put it out of her mind, denied that such a
+thought had ever been hers, repressed the desire into the
+subconscious, where it had continued to function unsatisfied,
+unassimilated with her mature judgments. Her nausea was the symbol of
+a moral disgust. Physical nausea she was willing to acknowledge, but
+not this other thing. Upon reciting this old experience, with every
+sign of the original shame, she cried: "Oh, Doctor! why did you bring
+this up? I had forgotten it. I haven't thought of it in thirty years."
+I reminded her that I couldn't bring it up,--I had never known
+anything about it. With the emotional incoming of this memory and the
+saner attitude toward it which the mature woman's mind was able to
+take, the nausea disappeared for good. This case is typical of the
+psycho-neuroses and we shall have occasion to refer to it again. The
+present emphasis is on the fact that an emotional memory may be buried
+for many years while it still retains the power of reappearing in more
+or less disguised manifestation.
+
+=Repressed Memories.= If we ask how so burning a memory could escape
+from the consciousness of a grown woman, we are driven to the
+conclusion that this forgetting can be the result of no mere quiet
+fading away, but that there must have been some active force at work
+which kept the memory from coming into awareness. It was not lost. It
+was not passive. Out of sight was not out of mind. There must have
+been a reason for its expulsion from the personal consciousness. In
+fact, we find that there is a reason. We find that whenever a vital
+emotional experience disappears from view, it is because it is too
+painful to be endured in consciousness. Nor is it ever the pain of an
+impersonal experience or even the thought of what some one else has
+done to us that drives a memory out of mind. As a matter of fact, we
+never expel a memory except when it bears directly on ourselves and on
+our own opinion of ourselves. We can stand almost anything else, but
+we cannot stand an idea that does not fit in with our ideal for
+ourselves. This is not the pious ideal that we should like to live up
+to and that we hope to attain some day, not the ideal that we think we
+ought to have--like never speaking ill of others or never being
+selfish--but the secret picture that each of us has, locked away
+within him, the specifications of ourselves reduced to their lowest
+terms, below which we cannot go. Energized by the instinct of positive
+self-feeling, and organized with the moral sentiments which we have
+acquired from education and the ideals of society, especially those
+acquired in early childhood, this ideal of ourselves becomes
+incorporated into our conscience and is an absolute necessity for our
+happiness.
+
+We have found that when two emotions clash, one drives out the other.
+So in this case, the woman's positive self-feeling of self-respect,
+combined with disgust, drove from the field that other emotion of the
+reproductive instinct which was trying to get expression. Speaking
+technically, one repressed the other. The woman said to herself, "No,
+I never could have had such a thought," and promptly forgot it.
+Needless to say, this kind of handling did not kill the impulse.
+Buried in the depths of her soul, it continued to live like a live
+coal, until in later years, fanned by the wind of some new experience,
+it burst into flame.
+
+In this case the wish had originally flashed into awareness for an
+instant, but very often the impulse never gets into consciousness at
+all. The upper layers of the subconscious, where the acquired ideals
+live, automatically work to keep down any desires which are thought to
+be out of keeping with the person as he knows himself. He then would
+emphatically deny that such desires had ever had any place in his
+life.
+
+Freud has called this repressing force the psychic censor. To get into
+consciousness, any idea from the subconscious must be able to pass
+this censor. This force seems to be a combination of the
+self-regarding and herd-instincts, which dispute with the instinct for
+reproduction the right to "the common path" for expression.
+
+A considerable part of any person's subconscious is made up of
+memories, wishes, impulses, which are repressed in this way. Of course
+any instinctive desire may be repressed, but it is easy to understand
+why the most frequently denied impulse, the instinct of reproduction,
+against whose urgency society has cultivated so strong a feeling,
+should be repressed more frequently than any other.[23]
+
+[Footnote 23: See foot-note, p. 145, Chap. VII.]
+
+=Past and Present.= It matters not, then, in what state experiences
+come to us, whether in sleep or delirium, intoxication or hypnosis, or
+in the normal waking condition. They are conserved and may exert great
+influence on our normal lives. It matters not whether the experiences
+be full of meaning and emotion or whether they be so slight as to pass
+unnoticed, they are conserved. It matters not whether these
+experiences be mere sense-impressions, or inner thoughts, whether they
+be unacknowledged hopes or fears, undesirable moods and unworthy
+desires or fine aspirations and lofty ideals. They are conserved and
+they may at a later day rise up to bless or to curse us long after we
+had thought them buried in the past. The present is the product of the
+past. It is the past plus an element of choice which keeps us from
+settling down in the despair of fatalism and enables us to do
+something toward making the present that is, a help and not a
+stumbling-block to the present that is to be.
+
+
+SOME HABITS OF THE SUBCONSCIOUS
+
+=The Association of Ideas.= It is only by something akin to poetic
+license that we can speak of lower and higher strata of mind. When we
+carry over the language of material things into the less easily
+pictured psychic realm, it is sometimes well to remind ourselves that
+figures of speech, if taken too literally, are more misleading than
+illuminating. When we speak of the deep-laid instinctive lower levels
+of mind and the higher acquired levels, we must not imagine that these
+strata are really laid in neat, mutually exclusive layers, one on top
+of the other in the chambers of the mind. Nor must we imagine the
+mental elements of instinct, idea, and memory as jumbled together in
+chaotic confusion, or in scattered isolated units. As a matter of
+fact, the best word to picture the inside of our minds is the word
+"group." We do not know just how ideas and instincts can group
+themselves together, but we do know that by some arrangement of brain
+paths and nerve-connections, the laws of association of ideas and of
+habit take our mental experiences and organize them into more or less
+permanent systems. Instinctive emotions tend to organize themselves
+around ideas to form sentiments; ideas or sentiments, which through
+repetition or emotion are associated together, tend to stay together
+in groups or complexes which act as a whole; complexes which pertain
+to the same interests tend to bind themselves into larger systems or
+constellations, forming moods, or sides to one's character. It is not
+highly important to differentiate in every case a sentiment from a
+complex, or a complex from a constellation, especially as many writers
+use "complex" as the generic term for all sorts of groups; but a
+general understanding of the much-used word "complex" is necessary
+for a comprehension of modern literature on psychology, psychotherapy
+or general education.
+
+"=What Is a Complex=?" Reduced to its lowest terms, a complex is a
+group. It may be simply a group of associated movements, like lacing
+one's shoes or knitting; it may be a group of movements and ideas,
+like typewriting or piano-playing, which through repetition have
+become automatic or subconscious; it may be merely a group of ideas,
+such as the days of the week, the alphabet or the multiplication
+table. In all these types it is repetition working through the law of
+habit that ties the ideas and movements together into an organic
+whole. Usually, however, the word complex is reserved for psychic
+elements that are bound together by emotion. In this sense, a complex
+is an emotional thought-habit. Frink's definition, which is one of the
+simplest, recognizes only this emotional type: "A complex is a system
+of connected ideas, having a strong emotional tone, and displaying a
+tendency to produce or influence conscious thought and action in a
+definite and predetermined direction."[24]
+
+[Footnote 24: Frink: "What Is a Complex?" _Journal American Medical
+Assoc_., Vol. LXII, No. 12, Mar. 21, 1914.]
+
+Emotion and repetition are the great welders of complexes. Emotion is
+the strongest cement in the world. A single emotional experience
+suffices to bind together ideas that were originally as far apart as
+the poles.
+
+Sometimes a complex includes not only ideas, movements, and emotions,
+but physiological disturbances and sensations. Some people cannot go
+aboard a stationary ship without vomiting, nor see a rose, even though
+it prove to be a wax one, without the sneezing and watery eyes of
+hay-fever. This is what is known as a "conditioned reflex." Past
+associations plus fear have so welded together idea and bodily
+manifestation that one follows the other as a matter of course, long
+after the real cause is removed. In such ways innumerable nervous
+symptoms arise. The same laws which form healthy complexes, and,
+indeed, which make all education possible, may thus be responsible for
+the unhealthy mal-adaptive association-habits which lie back of a
+neurosis. Fortunately, a knowledge of this fact furnishes the clue to
+the re-education that brings recovery.
+
+A complex may be either conscious or unconscious, but as it usually
+happens that either all or part of its elements are below the surface,
+the word is oftenest used to mean those buried systems of the
+subconscious mind that influence thought or behavior without
+themselves being open to scrutiny. It is these buried complexes,
+memory groups, gathered through the years of experience, that
+determine action in uniform and easily prophesied directions. Every
+individual has a definite complex about religion, about politics,
+about patriotism, about business, and it is the sum of these buried
+complexes which makes up his total personality.
+
+=Displacement.= Association or grouping is, then, an intrinsic power
+of mind; but as all life seems to be built on opposites--light and
+darkness, heat and cold, love and hate--so mind, which is capable of
+association, is capable also of displacement or the splitting apart of
+elements which belong together. There is such a thing as the simple
+breaking up of complexes, when education or experience or neglect
+separate ideas and emotions which had been previously welded together;
+but displacement is another matter. Here there is still a path between
+idea and emotion; they still belong to the same complex, but the
+connection is lost sight of. The impulse or emotion attaches itself to
+another substitute idea which is related to the first but which is
+more acceptable to the personality. Sometimes the original idea is
+forgotten; repressed, or dissociated into the subconscious, as in
+anxiety neurosis; and sometimes it is merely shorn of its emotional
+interest and remembered as an unrelated or insignificant idea, as in
+compulsion neurosis.
+
+=Transference.= Another kind of displacement which seems hard to
+believe possible until it is repeatedly encountered in intelligent
+human beings is the process called transference, by which everybody at
+some time or other acts toward the people he meets, not according to
+rational standards but according to old unconscious attitudes toward
+other people. Each of us carries, within, subconscious pictures of the
+people who surrounded us when we were children; and now when we meet a
+new person we are likely unconsciously to say to ourselves--not, "This
+person has eyebrows like my mother, or a voice like my nurse," or,
+"This person bosses me around as my father used to do," but, "This is
+my mother, this is my nurse, this is my father." Whereupon we may
+proceed to act toward that person very much as we did toward the
+original person in childhood.
+
+Transference is subconsciously identifying one person with another and
+behaving toward the one as if he were that other. Analysis has
+discovered that many a man's hostile attitude toward the state or
+religion or authority in general, is nothing more than this kind of
+displacement of his childhood's attitude toward authority in the
+person of his perhaps too-domineering father. Many a woman has married
+a husband, not for what he was in himself, but because she
+unconsciously identified him with her childish image of her father.
+
+Students of human nature have always recognized the kind of
+displacement which transfers the sense of guilt from some major act or
+attitude to a minor one which is more easily faced, just as _Lady
+Macbeth_ felt that by washing her hands she might free herself from
+her deeper stain. This is a frequent mechanism in the
+psychoneuroses--not that neurotics are likely to have committed any
+great crime, but that they feel subconsciously that some of their
+wishes or thoughts are wicked.
+
+=The Phenomena of Dissociation.= When an idea or a complex, a
+perception or a memory is either temporarily or permanently shoved out
+of consciousness into the subconscious, it is said to be dissociated.
+When we are asleep, the part of us that is usually conscious is
+dissociated and the submerged part takes the stage. When we forget our
+surroundings in concentration or absent-mindedness, a part of us is
+dissociated and our friends say that we are "not all there," or as
+popular slang has it, "Nobody home." When a mood or system of
+complexes drives out all other moods, one becomes "a different
+person." But if this normal dissociation is carried a step farther, we
+may lose the power to put ourselves together again, and then we may
+truly be said to be dissociated. Almost any part of us is subject to
+this kind of apparent loss. In neurasthenia the happy, healthy
+complexes which have hitherto dominated our lives may be split off and
+left lying dormant in the subconscious; or the power of will or
+concentration may seem to be gone. In hysteria we may seem to lose the
+ability to see or feel or walk, or we may lose for the time all
+recollection of certain past events, or of whole periods of our lives,
+or of everything but one system of ideas which monopolizes the field
+of attention. Sometimes great systems of memories, instincts, and
+complexes are alternately shifted in and out of gear, leaving first
+one kind of person on top and then another.[25] Stevenson's _Dr.
+Jekyll_ and _Mr. Hyde_ is not so fantastic a character as he seems.
+Any one who doubts the ability of the mind to split itself up into two
+or more distinct personalities, entertaining totally different
+conceptions of life, disliking each other, playing tricks on each
+other, writing notes to each other, and carrying on a perpetual feud
+as each tries to get the upper hand, should read Morton Prince's
+"Dissociation of a Personality," a fascinating account of his famous
+case, Miss Beauchamp.
+
+[Footnote 25: When a memory or system of memories is suddenly lost
+from consciousness the person is said to be suffering from amnesia or
+pathological loss of memory.]
+
+=Internal Warfare.= Conflict, often accentuated by shock or fatigue,
+represses or drives down certain ideas, perceptions, wishes, memories,
+or complexes into the subconscious, where they remain, sometimes
+dormant and passive but often dynamic, emotional, carrying on an
+over-excited, automatic activity, freed from the control of reason and
+the modifying influence of other ideas, and able to cause almost any
+kind of disturbance. So long as there is team-work between the
+various parts of our personality we are able to act as a unit; but
+just as soon as we break up into factions with no communication
+between the warring camps, so soon do we become quite incapable of
+cooerdination or adjustment, like a nation torn by civil war. Many of
+the seemingly fantastic and bizarre mental phenomena of which a human
+being is capable are the result of this kind of disintegration.
+
+However, nature has a remarkable power for righting herself, and it is
+only under an accumulation of unfortunate circumstances that there
+appears a neurosis, which is nothing more than a functioning of
+certain parts of the personality with all the rest dissociated. We
+shall later inquire more fully into the causes that lead up to such a
+result and shall find that the mechanisms involved are these processes
+of organization and disorganization by which mind is wont to group
+together or separate the various elements within its borders.
+
+
+SUMMARY
+
+Gathering up our impressions, we find a number of outstanding
+qualities which we may summarize in the following way:
+
+The Subconscious is:
+
+_1 Vast yet Explorable_
+
+The fraction that could accurately show the relation of the conscious
+to the unconscious part of ourselves would have such a small numerator
+and such a huge denominator that we might well wonder where
+consciousness came in at all.[26] Some one has likened the
+subconscious to the great far-reaching depths of the Mammoth Cave, and
+consciousness to the tiny, flickering lamp which we carry to light our
+way in the darkness. However, ever the subconscious mind is becoming
+explorable, and it may be that science is giving the tiny lamp the
+revealing power of a great searchlight.
+
+[Footnote 26: "The entire active life of the individual may be
+represented by a fraction, the numerator of which is any particular
+moment, the denominator is the rich inheritance of the
+past."--Jelliffe: "The Technique of Psychoanalysis," _Psychoanalytic
+Review,_ Vol. III, No. 2, p. 164.]
+
+_2 Ancient yet Modern_
+
+The lowest layers of the subconscious, represented by the instincts,
+are as old as life itself, with their lineage reaching back in direct
+and unbroken line to the first living things on the ooze of the ocean
+floor. The higher strata are more modern, full, and accurate records
+of our own lifetime, beginning with our first cry and ending with
+to-day's thoughts.
+
+_3 Primitive yet Refined_
+
+The lowest level, representing the past of the race, is primitive like
+a savage, and infantile, like a child; it is instinctive, unalterable,
+and universal; it knows no restraint, no culture, and no prudence. The
+higher level, the storehouse of individual experience, bears the
+marks of acquired ideals, of cultivated refinement, and represents
+among other things the precepts and prudence of civilized society.
+
+_4 Emotional yet Intellectual_
+
+Our records of the past are not dead archives, but living
+forces--persistent, urging, dynamic and emotional. They give meaning
+to new experiences, color our judgments, shape our beliefs, determine
+our interests, and, if wrongly handled, make their way into
+consciousness as neurotic symptoms.
+
+However, the subconscious is not all emotion. It is a mind capable of
+elaborate thought, able to calculate, to scheme, to answer doubts, to
+solve problems, to fabricate the purposeful, fantastic allegories of
+dreams and to create from mere knowledge the inspired works of genius.
+
+But the subconscious has one great limitation, it cannot reason
+inductively. Given a premise, this mind can reason as unerringly as
+the most skilful logician; that is, it can reason deductively, but it
+cannot arrive at a general conclusion from a number of particular
+facts. However, except for inductive reasoning and awareness, the
+subconscious seems to possess all the attributes of conscious mind and
+is in fact an intellectual force to be reckoned with.
+
+_5 Organized yet Disorganizable_
+
+The subconscious mind is a highly organized institution, but like all
+such institutions it is liable to disorganization when rent by
+internal dissension. Ordinarily it keeps its ideas and emotions, its
+complexes and moods in fairly accurate order, but when upset by
+emotional warfare, it gets its records confused and falls into a
+chaotic state which makes regular business impossible.
+
+_6 Masterful yet Obedient_
+
+The subconscious, which is master of the body, is in normal life the
+servant of consciousness. One of its outstanding qualities is
+suggestibility. Since it cannot reason from particulars to a general
+conclusion it takes any statement given it by consciousness, believes
+it implicitly and acts accordingly.
+
+The pilot wheel of the ship is, after all, the conscious mind,
+insignificant in size when compared with the great mass of the vessel,
+but all-powerful in its ability to direct the course of the voyage.
+
+Nervous persons are people who are too much under the sway of the
+subconscious; so, too, are some geniuses, who narrowly escape a
+neurosis by finding a more useful outlet for their subconscious
+energies. While the poet, the inventor, and the neurotic are likely to
+be too largely controlled by the subconscious, the average man is to a
+greater extent ruled by the conscious mind; and the highest type of
+genius is the man whose conscious and subconscious minds work together
+in perfect harmony, each up to its full power.
+
+If, as many believe, the next great strides of science are to be in
+this direction, it may pay some of us to be pioneers in learning how
+to make use of these undeveloped riches of memory, organization, and
+surplus energy. The subconscious, which can on occasion behave like a
+very devil within us, is, when rightly used, our greatest asset, the
+source of powers whose appearance in the occasional individual has
+been considered almost superhuman, but which prove to be
+characteristically human, the common inheritance of the race of man.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+_In which we learn why it pays to be cheerful_
+
+BODY AND MIND
+
+THE MISSING LINK
+
+
+=Ancient Knowledge.= People have always known that mind in some
+strange way carries its moods over into the body. The writer of the
+Book of Proverbs tells us, from that far-off day, that "A merry heart
+doeth good like a medicine, but a broken spirit drieth the bones."
+Jesus in His healing ministry always emphasized the place of faith in
+the cure of the body. "Thy faith hath made thee whole," is a frequent
+word on His lips, and ever since His day people have been
+rediscovering the truth that faith, even in the absence of a worthy
+object, does often make whole. Faith in the doctor, the medicine, the
+charm, the mineral waters, the shrine, and in the good God, has
+brought health to many thousands of sufferers. People have always
+reckoned on this bodily result from a mental state. They have
+intuitively known better than to tell a sick person that he is looking
+worse, but they have not always known why. They have known that a fit
+of anger is apt to bring on a headache, but they have not stopped to
+look for the reason, or if they have, they have often gotten
+themselves into a tangle. This is because there has always been, until
+recently, a missing link. Now the link has been found. After the last
+chapter, it will not be hard to understand that this connecting link,
+this go-between of body and mind, is nothing else than the
+subconscious mind. When we remember that it has the double power of
+knowing our thoughts and of controlling our bodies, it is not hard to
+see how an idea can translate itself into a pain, nor to realize with
+new vividness the truth of the statement that healthy mental states
+make for health, and unhealthy mental states for illness.
+
+=Suggestion and Emotion.= There are still many gaps in our knowledge
+of the ways of the subconscious, but investigation has thrown a good
+deal of light on the problem. Two of the principles already discussed
+are sufficient to explain most of the phenomena. These are, first,
+that the subconscious is amenable to control by suggestion, and
+secondly, that it is greatly influenced by emotion. Tracing back the
+principles behind any example of the power of mind over body, one
+finds at the root of the matter either a suggestion or an emotion, or
+both. If, then, the stimulating and depressing effects of mental
+states are to be understood, the first Step must be a fuller
+understanding of the laws governing suggestion and emotion.
+
+
+THE CONTAGION OF IDEAS
+
+One of the most important points about the subconscious mind is its
+openness to suggestion. It likes to believe what it is told and to act
+accordingly. The conscious mind, too,--proud seat of reason though it
+may be,--shares this habit of accepting ideas without demanding too
+much proof of their truth. Even at his best, man is extremely
+susceptible to the contagion of ideas. Most of us are even less immune
+to this mental contagion than we are to colds or influenza; for ideas
+are catching. They are such subtle, insinuating things that they creep
+into our minds without our knowing it at all; and once there, they are
+as powerful as most germs.
+
+Let a person faint in a crowded room, and a good per cent. of the
+women present will begin to fan themselves. The room has suddenly
+become insufferably close. After we have read half a hundred times
+that Ivory soap floats, a fair proportion of the population is likely
+to be seized with desire for a soap that floats,--not because they
+have any good reason for doing so, but simply because the suggestion
+has "taken." As for the harbingers of spring, they are neither the
+birds nor the wild flowers, but the blooming windows of the
+milliners, which successfully suggest in wintry February that summer
+is coming, and that felt and fur are out of season. It is evident that
+all advertising is suggestion.
+
+The training of children, also, if it is done in the right way, is
+largely a matter of suggestion. The little child who falls down and
+bumps his head is very likely to cry if met with a sympathetic show of
+concern, while the same child will often take his mishaps as a joke if
+his elders meet them with a laugh or a diverting remark. Unlucky is
+the child whose mother does not know, either consciously or
+intuitively, that example and contagion are more powerful--and more
+pleasant--than command and prohibition.
+
+=Everything Suggestive.= Human beings are constantly communicating,
+one to another. Sometimes they "get over" an idea by means of words,
+but often they do it in more subtle ways,--by the elevation of an
+eyelid, the gesture of a hand, composure of manner in a crisis, or a
+laugh in a delicate situation. A suggestion is merely an idea passed
+from one person to another, an idea that is accepted with conviction
+and acted upon, even though there may be no logic, no reason, no proof
+of its truth. It is an influence that takes hold of the mind and works
+itself out to fulfilment, quite apart from its worth or
+reasonableness. Of course, logical persuasion and argument have their
+place in the communication of ideas; an idea may be conveyed by other
+ways than suggestion. But while suggestion is not everything, it is
+equally true that there is suggestion in everything. The doctor may
+give a patient a very rational explanation of his case, but the
+doubtful shake of the head or the encouraging look of his eye is quite
+likely to color the patient's general impression. The eyes of our
+subconscious are always open, and they are constantly getting
+impressions, subtle suggestions that are implied rather than
+expressed.
+
+=Abnormal Suggestibility.= While everybody is suggestible, nervous
+people are abnormally so. It may be, as McDougall suggests, that they
+have so large an amount of submission or negative self-feeling in
+their make-up that they believe anything, just because some one else
+says it is true. Sometimes it is lack of knowledge that makes us
+gullible, and at other times the cause of our suggestibility is
+failure to use the knowledge that we have. Sometimes our ideas are
+locked away in air-tight compartments with no interaction between
+them. The psychologists tell us that suggestion is greatly favored by
+a narrowing of the attention, a "contraction of the field of
+consciousness," a dissociation of other ideas through concentration.
+This all simply means that we forget to let our common sense bring to
+bear counter ideas that might challenge a false one; or that worry--a
+veritable "spasm of the attention"--has fixed upon an idea to the
+exclusion of all others; or that through fatigue or the dissociation
+of sleep or hypnosis or hysteria, our reasoning powers have been
+locked out and for the time being are unable to act.
+
+It was through experiments on hypnotized subjects that scientists
+first learned of the suggestibility of the subconscious mind. In
+hypnosis a person can be made to believe almost anything and to do
+almost anything compatible with the safety and the moral sense of the
+individual. The instinct of self-preservation will not allow the most
+deeply hypnotized person to do anything dangerous to himself; and the
+moral complexes, laid in the subconscious, never permit a person to
+perform in earnest an act of which the waking moral sense would
+disapprove. Within these limits, a person in the dissociated hypnotic
+state can be made to accept almost any suggestion. We found in the
+last chapter how open to suggestion is a person in normal sleep. Of
+the dissociation of hysteria we shall have occasion to speak in later
+chapters. Although all these special states heighten suggestibility,
+we must not forget how susceptible each of us is in his normal waking
+state.
+
+=Living Its Faith.= All this gathers meaning only when we realize that
+ideas are dynamic. They always tend to work themselves out to
+fulfilment. The subconscious no sooner gets a conviction than it tries
+to act it out. Of course it can succeed only up to a certain limit.
+If it believes the stomach to have cancer, it cannot make cancer, but
+it can make the stomach misbehave. One of my patients, on hearing of a
+case of brain-tumor immediately imagined this to be her trouble, and
+developed a pain in her head. She could not manufacture a tumor, but
+she could manufacture what she believed to be the symptoms.
+
+There was another patient who was supposed to have brain-tumor. This
+young woman seemed to have lost almost entirely the power to keep her
+equilibrium in walking. Her center of gravity was never over her feet,
+but away out in space, so that she was continually banging from one
+side of the room to the other, only saving herself from injury by
+catching at the wall or the furniture with her hands. Several
+physicians who had been interested in the case had found the symptoms
+strongly suggestive of brain-tumor. There were, however, certain
+unmistakable earmarks of hysteria, such as childlike bland
+indifference to the awkwardness of the gait which was a grotesque
+caricature of several brain and spinal-cord diseases, with no accurate
+picture of any single one. This was evidently a case, not of actual
+loss of power but a dissociation of the memory-picture of walking. The
+patient was a trained nurse and knew in a general way the symptoms of
+brain-tumor. When the suggestion of brain-tumor had fixed itself in
+her mind she was able subconsciously to manufacture what she believed
+to be the symptoms of that disease.
+
+By injecting a keen sense of disapprobation and skepticism into the
+hitherto placidly accepted state of disability, by flashing a mirror
+on the physical and moral attitudes which she was assuming, I was able
+to rob the pathological complex of its (altogether unconscious)
+pleasurable feeling-tone, and to restore to its former strength and
+poise a personality of exceptional native worth and beauty. After a
+few weeks at my house she was able to walk like a normal person and
+went back to her work, for good.
+
+We have already learned enough about the inner self to see in a faint
+way how it works out its ideas. Since the subconscious mind runs the
+bodily machinery, since it regulates digestion, the building up of
+tissue, circulation, respiration, glandular secretion, muscular tonus,
+and every other process pertaining to nutrition and growth, it is not
+difficult to see how an idea about any of these matters can work
+itself out into a fact. A thought can furnish the mental machinery
+needed to fulfil the thought. Some one catches the suggestion:
+"Concentration is hard on the brain. It soon brings on brain-fag and
+headache." Not knowing facts to the contrary, the suggestible mind
+accepts the proposition. Then one day, after a little concentration,
+the idea begins to work. Whereupon the autonomic nervous system
+tightens up the blood-vessels that regulate the local blood supply,
+too much blood stays in the head, and lo, it aches! The next time, the
+suggestion comes with greater force, and soon the habit is
+formed,--all the result of an idea. It is a good thing to remember
+that constant thought about any part of the body never fails to send
+an over-supply of blood to that part; of course that means congestion
+and pain.
+
+=Hands Off!= By sending messages directly to an organ through the
+nerve-centers or by changing circulation, the subconscious director of
+our bodies can make any part of us misbehave in a number of ways. All
+it needs is a suggestion of an interfering thought about an organ. As
+we have insisted before, the subconscious cannot stand interference.
+Sadler well says: "Man can live at the equator or exist at the poles.
+He can eat almost anything and everything, but he cannot long stand
+self-contemplation. The human mind can accomplish wonders in the way
+of work, but it is soon wrecked when directed into the channels of
+worry."[27] In other words, hands off!--or rather, minds off! Don't
+get ideas that make you think about your body. The surest way to
+disarrange any function is to think about it. It is a stout heart that
+will not change its beat with a frequent finger on the pulse, and a
+hearty stomach that will not "act up" under attention. "Judicious
+neglect" is a good motto for most occasions. Take no anxious thought
+if you would be well. Know enough about your body to counteract false
+suggestions; fulfil the common-sense laws of hygiene,--eight hours in
+bed, plenty of exercise and fresh air, and three square meals a day.
+Then forget all about it. "A mental representation is already a
+sensation,"[28] and we have enough legitimate sensations without
+manufacturing others.
+
+[Footnote 27: Sadler: _Physiology of Faith and Fear_.]
+
+[Footnote 28: DuBois: _Psychic Treatment of Nervous Disorders_.]
+
+=From Real Life.= Startling indeed are the tricks that we can play on
+ourselves by disregarding these laws. A patient who was unnecessarily
+concerned about his stomach once came to me in great alarm, exhibiting
+a distinct, well-defined swelling about the size of a match-box in the
+region of his stomach. I looked at it, laughed, and told him to forget
+it. Whereupon it promptly disappeared. The first segment of the rectus
+muscle had tied itself up into a knot, under the stimulus of anxious
+attention.
+
+Another patient appeared at my door one day saying, "Look here!"
+Examination showed that her abdomen was swollen to the size of more
+than a six-months pregnancy. As it happened, this woman had a friend
+who a short time before had developed a pseudo, or hysterical
+pregnancy which continued for several months. My patient, accepting
+the suggestion, was prepared to imitate her. I gave her a punch or
+two and told her to go and dress for luncheon. In the afternoon she
+had returned to her normal size.
+
+Another woman, suffering from chronic constipation, was firmly
+convinced that her bowels could not move without a cathartic, which I
+refused to give. However, I did give her some strychnine pills,
+carefully explaining that they were not for her intestines and that
+they would have no effect there. She did not believe me, and promptly
+began to have an evacuation every day. It seems that sometimes two
+wrong ideas are equal to a right one.
+
+If doctors fully realized the power of suggestion, they would be more
+careful than they sometimes are about suggesting symptoms by the
+questions they ask their patients.
+
+A patient of mine with locomotor-ataxia suffered from the usual train
+of symptoms incident to that disease. It turned out, however, that
+many of the symptoms had been suggested by the questions of former
+physicians who had asked him whether he had certain symptoms and
+certain disabilities. The patient had answered in the negative and
+then promptly developed the suggested symptoms. When I told him what
+had happened, these false symptoms disappeared leaving only those
+which had a real physical foundation.
+
+Another patient, a young girl, complained of a definite localized
+pain in her arm, and told me that she was suffering from angina
+pectoris. As we do not expect to find this disease in a young person,
+I asked her where she got such an idea. "Dr. ---- told me so last
+May." "Did you feel the pain in this same place before that time?" I
+asked. She thought a minute and then answered: "Why no, I had a pain
+around my heart but I did not notice it in my arm until after that
+consultation." The wise physician lets his patients describe their own
+symptoms without suggesting others by the implication of his
+questions.
+
+=Autosuggestion.= Of course we must remember that an idea cannot
+always work itself out immediately. Conditions are not always ripe. It
+often lies fallow a long time, buried in the subconscious, only to
+come up again as an autosuggestion, a suggestion from the self to the
+self. If some one tells us that nervous insomnia is disastrous, and we
+believe it, we shall probably store up the idea until the next time
+that chance conditions keep us awake. Then the autosuggestion "bobs
+up," common sense is side-tracked, we toss and worry--and of course
+stay awake. An autosuggestion often repeated becomes the strongest of
+suggestions, successfully opposing most outside ideas that would
+counteract it,--reason enough for seeing to it that our
+autosuggestions are of the healthful variety.
+
+At the base of every psycho-neurosis is an unhealthful suggestion.
+This is never the ultimate cause. There are other forces at work. But
+the suggestion is the material out of which those other forces weave
+the neurosis. Suggestibility is one of the earmarks of nervousness. A
+sensible and sturdy spirit, stable enough to maintain its equilibrium,
+is a fairly good antidote to attack. "As a man thinketh in his heart,
+so is he."
+
+
+WHY FEELINGS COUNT
+
+=The Emotions Again.= It seems impossible to discuss any psychological
+principle without finally coming back to the subject of emotions. It
+truly seems that all roads lead to the instincts and to the emotions
+which drive them. And so, as we follow the trail of suggestion, we
+suddenly turn a corner and find ourselves back at our
+starting-point--the emotional life. Like all other ideas, suggestions
+get tied up with emotions to form complexes, of which the
+driving-power is the emotion.
+
+If we look into our emotional life, we find, besides the true
+emotions, with which we have become familiar in Chapter III, a great
+number of feelings or feeling-tones which color either pleasurably or
+painfully our emotions and our ideas. On the one hand there are
+pleasure, joy, exaltation, courage, cheer, confidence, satisfaction;
+and on the other, pain, sorrow, depression, apprehension, gloom,
+distrust, and dissatisfaction. Every complex which is laid away in
+our subconscious is tinted, either slightly or intensely, with its
+specific feeling-tone.
+
+=Emotions--Tonic and Poisonous.= All this is most important because of
+one vital fact; joyful emotions invigorate, and sorrowful emotions
+depress; pleasurable emotions stimulate, and painful emotions burden;
+satisfying emotions revitalize, and unsatisfying emotions sap the
+strength. In other words, our bodies are made for courage, confidence,
+and cheer. Any other atmosphere puts them out of their element,
+handicapped by abnormal conditions for which they were never
+fashioned. We were written in a major key, and when we try to change
+over into minor tones we get sadly out of tune.
+
+There is another factor; painful emotions make us fall to pieces,
+while pleasant emotions bind us together. We can see why this is so
+when we remember that powerful emotions like fear and anger tend to
+dissociate all but themselves, to split up the mind into separate
+parts and to force out of consciousness everything but their own
+impulse. Morton Prince in his elaborate studies of the cases of
+multiple personality, Miss Beauchamp and B.C.A., found repeatedly that
+he had only to hypnotize the patient and replace painful, depressing
+complexes by healthy, happy ones to change her from a weak, worn-out
+person, complaining of fatigue, insomnia, and innumerable aches and
+pains, into a vigorous woman, for the time being completely well. On
+this point he says:
+
+     Exalting emotions have an intense synthesizing effect, while
+     depressing emotions have a disintegrating effect. With the
+     inrushing of depressive memories or ideas ... there is suddenly
+     developed a condition of fatigue, ill-being and disintegration,
+     followed after waking by a return or accentuation of all the
+     neurasthenic symptoms. If on the other hand, exalting ideas and
+     memories are introduced and brought into the limelight of
+     attention, there is almost a magical reversal of processes. The
+     patient feels strong and energetic, the neurasthenic symptoms
+     disappear and he exhibits a capacity for sustained effort. He
+     becomes re-vitalized, so to speak.[29]
+
+[Footnote 29: Prince: _Psycho-therapeutics_, Chap. I.]
+
+In cases like this the needed strength and energy are not lost; they
+are merely side-tracked, but the person feels as weak as though he
+were physically ill.
+
+
+BODILY RESPONSE TO EMOTIONAL STATES
+
+=Secretions.= Let us look more carefully into some of the
+physiological processes involved in emotional changes. Among the most
+apparent of bodily responses are the various external secretions.
+Tears, the secretion of the lachrymal glands in response to an
+emotion, are too common a phenomenon to arouse comment. It is common
+knowledge that clammy hands and a dry mouth betray emotion. Every
+nursing mother knows that she dares not become too disturbed lest her
+milk should dry up or change in character. Most people have
+experienced an increase in urine in times of excitement; recently
+physiologists have discovered the presence of sugar in the urine of
+students at the time of athletic contests and difficult
+examinations.[30] We have seen what an important role the various
+internal secretions, such as the adrenal and thyroid secretions play
+in fitting the body for flight and combat, and how large a part fear
+and anger have in their production. Constant over-production of these
+secretions through chronic states of worry is responsible for many a
+distressing symptom.
+
+[Footnote 30: Cannon.]
+
+Most graphic evidence of the disturbance of secretions by emotion is
+found in the response of the salivary and gastric glands to painful or
+pleasurable thinking. As these are the secretions which play the
+largest part in the digestive processes, they lead us naturally to our
+next heading.
+
+=Digestion.= Everybody knows that appetizing food makes the mouth
+water, but not everybody realizes that it makes the stomach water
+also. Nor do we often realize the vital place that this watering has
+in taking care of our food. "Well begun is half-done," is literally
+true of digestion. A good flow of saliva brings the food into contact
+with the taste-buds in the tongue. Taste sends messages to the
+nerve-centers in the medulla oblongata; these centers in turn flash
+signals to the stomach glands, which immediately "get busy" preparing
+the all-important gastric juice. It takes about five minutes for this
+juice to be made ready, and so it happens that in five minutes after
+the first taste, or even in some cases after the first smell, the
+stomach is pouring forth its "appetite juice" which determines all the
+rest of the digestive process, in intestines as well as in stomach.
+Experiments on dogs and cats by Pawlow, Cannon, and others have shown
+what fear and anger and even mildly unpleasant emotions do to the
+whole digestive process. Cannon tells of a dog who produced 66.7 cubic
+centimeters of pure gastric juice in the twenty minutes following five
+minutes of sham feeding (feeding in which food is swallowed and then
+dropped out of an opening in the esophagus into a bucket instead of
+into the stomach). Although there was no food in the stomach, the
+juice was produced by the enjoyment of the taste and the thought of
+it. On another day, after this dog had been infuriated by a cat, and
+then pacified, the sham feeding was given again. This time, although
+the dog ate eagerly, he produced only 9 cubic centimeters of gastric
+juice, and this rich in mucus. Evidently a good appetite and
+attractively served food are not more important than a cheerful mind.
+Spicy table talk, well mixed with laughter, is better than all the
+digestive tablets in the world. What is true of stomach secretions is
+equally true of stomach contractions. "The pleasurable taking of food"
+is a necessity if the required contractions of stomach and intestines
+are to go forward on schedule time. A little extra dose of adrenalin
+from a mild case of depression or worry is enough to stop all
+movements for many minutes. What a revelation on many a case of
+nervous dyspepsia! The person who dubbed it "Emotional Dyspepsia" had
+facts on his side.
+
+=Circulation.= It is not the heart only that pumps the blood through
+the body. The tiny muscles of the smallest blood-vessels, by their
+elasticity are of the greatest importance in maintaining an even flow,
+and this is especially influenced by fear and depression. Blushing,
+pallor, cold hands and feet, are circulatory disturbances based
+largely on emotions. Better than a hot-water bottle or electric pads
+are courage and optimism. A patient of mine laughingly tells of an
+incident which she says happened a number of years ago, but which I
+have forgotten. She says that she asked me one night as she carried
+her hot-water bottle to bed, "Doctor, what makes cold feet?" and that
+I lightly answered "Cowardice!" Whereupon she threw away her beloved
+water-bag and has never needed it since.
+
+There is a disturbance of the circulation which results in very
+marked swelling and redness of the affected part. This is known as
+angio-neurotic edema, or nervous swelling. I do not have to go farther
+than my own person for an example of this phenomenon. When I was a
+young woman I taught school and went home every day for luncheon. One
+day at luncheon, some one of the family criticized me severely. I went
+back to school very angry. Before I entered the school-room, the
+principal handed me some books which she had ordered for me. They were
+not at all the books I wanted, and that upset me still more. As I went
+into the schoolroom, I found that my face was swollen until my eyes
+were almost shut; it was a bright red and covered with purplish
+blotches. My fingers were swollen so that I could not bend the joints
+in the slightest degree. It was a day or two before the disturbance
+disappeared, and the whole of it was the result of anger.
+
+We hear much to-day about high blood pressure. They say that a man is
+as old as his arteries, and now it is known that the health of the
+arteries depends largely on blood pressure. Since this is a matter
+that can be definitely measured at any minute, we have an easy way of
+noting the remarkable effect of shifting emotions. Sadler tells of an
+ex-convict with a blood pressure of 190 millimeters. It seems that he
+was worrying over possible rearrest. On being reassured on this
+point, his blood pressure began to drop within a few minutes, falling
+20 mm. in three hours, and 35 mm. by the following day.
+
+=Muscular Tone.= A force that affects circulation, blood pressure,
+respiration, nutrition of cells, secretion, and digestion, can hardly
+fail to have a marked effect on the tone of the muscles, internal as
+well as external. When we remember that heart, stomach, and intestines
+are made of muscular tissue, to say nothing of the skeletal muscles,
+we begin to realize how important is muscular tone for bodily health.
+Over and over again have I demonstrated that a courageous mind is the
+best tonic. Perhaps an example from my "flat-footed" patients will be
+to the point. One woman, the young mother of a family, came to me for
+a nervous trouble. Besides this, she had suffered for seven or eight
+years from severe pains in her feet and had been compelled to wear
+specially made shoes prescribed by a Chicago orthopedist. The shoes,
+however, did not seem to lessen the pain. After an ordinary day's
+occupation, she could not even walk across the floor at dinner-time. A
+walk of two blocks would incapacitate her for many days. She was
+convinced that her feet could never be cured and came to me only on
+account of nervous trouble. On the day of her arrival she flung
+herself down on the couch, saying that she would like to go away from
+everybody, where the children would never bother her again. She was
+sure nobody loved her and she wanted to die. Within three weeks, in
+ordinary shoes, this woman tramped nine miles up Mount Wilson and the
+next day tramped down again. Her attitude had changed from that of
+irritable fretfulness to one of buoyant joy, and with the moral change
+had come new strength in the muscles. The death of her husband has
+since made it necessary for her to support the family, and she is now
+on her feet from eight to fourteen hours a day, a constant source of
+inspiration to all about her, and no more weary than the average
+person.
+
+Flabbiness in the muscles often causes this trouble with the feet.
+"The arches of the foot are maintained by ligaments between the bones,
+supported by muscle tendons which prevent undue stretching of the
+ligaments and are a protection against flat-foot."[31] Muscle tissue
+has an abundant blood supply, while ligaments have very little and
+soon lose their resiliency if unsupported. Any lack of tone in the
+calf-muscles throws the weight on the less resistant ligaments and on
+the cartilages placed as cushions between the bony structures of the
+arch. This is what causes the pain.[32]
+
+[Footnote 31: Grey's Anatomy--"The Articulations."]
+
+[Footnote 32: Actual loss of the arch by downward displacement of the
+bones cannot be overcome by restoring muscle-tone. The majority of
+so-called cases of flatfoot are, however, in the stage amenable to
+psychic measures.]
+
+Flat-footedness is only one result of weak muscles. Eye-strain is
+another; ptosis, or falling of the organs, is another. In a majority
+of cases the best treatment for any of these troubles is an
+understanding attempt to go to the root of the matter by bracing up
+the whole mental tone. The most scientific oculists do not try to
+correct eye trouble due to muscular insufficiency by any special
+prisms or glasses. They know that the eyes will right themselves when
+the general health and the general spirits improve. I have found by
+repeated experience with nervous patients that it takes only a short
+time for people who have been unable to read for months or years to
+regain their old faculty. So remarkable is the power of mind.
+
+
+SUMMARY
+
+We have found that the gap between the body and the mind is not so
+wide as it seems, and that it is bridged by the subconscious mind,
+which is at once the master of the body and the servant of
+consciousness. In recording the physical effects of suggestion and
+emotion, we have not taken time to describe the galvanometers, the
+weighing-machines and all the other apparatus used in the various
+laboratory tests; but enough has been said to show that when doctors
+and psychologists speak of the effect of mind on body, they are
+dealing with definite facts and with laws capable of scientific
+proof.
+
+We have emphasized the fact that downcast and fearful moods have an
+immediate effect on the body; but after all, most people know this
+already. What they do not know is the real cause of the mood. When a
+nervous person finds out why he worries, he is well on the way toward
+recovery. An understanding of the cause is among the most vital
+discoveries of modern science.
+
+The discussion, so far, has merely prepared us to plunge into the
+heart of the question: What is it that in the last analysis makes a
+person nervous, and how may he find his way out? This question the
+next two chapters will try to answer.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+_In which we go to the root of the matter_
+
+THE REAL TROUBLE
+
+
+PIONEERS
+
+=Following the Gleam.= Kipling's Elephant-child with the "'satiable
+curiosity" finally asked a question which seemed simple enough but
+which sent him on a long journey into unknown parts. In the same way
+man's modest and simple question, "What makes people nervous?" has
+sent him far-adventuring to find the answer. For centuries he has
+followed false trails, ending in blind alleys, and only lately does he
+seem to have found the road that shall lead him to his journey's end.
+
+We may be thankful that we are following a band of pioneers whose
+fearless courage and passion for truth would not let them turn back
+even when the trail led through fields hitherto forbidden. The leader
+of this band of pioneers was a young doctor named Freud.
+
+
+THE SEARCH FOR TRUTH
+
+=Early Beginnings.= In 1882, when Freud was the assistant to Dr.
+Breuer of Vienna, there was brought to them for treatment a young
+woman afflicted with various hysterical pains and paralyses. This
+young woman's case marked an epoch in medical history; for out of the
+effort to cure her came some surprising discoveries of great
+significance to the open-minded young student.
+
+It was found that each of this girl's symptoms was related to some
+forgotten experience, and that in every case the forgetting seemed to
+be the result of the painfulness of the experience. In other words,
+the symptoms were not visitations from without, but expressions from
+within; they were a part of the mental life of the patient; they had a
+history and a meaning, and the meaning seemed in some way to be
+connected with the patient's previous attitude of mind which made the
+experience too painful to be tolerated in consciousness. These
+previous ideas were largely subconscious and had been acquired during
+early childhood. When by means of hypnosis a great mass of forgotten
+material was brought to the surface and later made plain to her
+consciousness, the symptoms disappeared as if by magic.
+
+=A Startling Discovery.= For a time Breuer and Freud worked together,
+finding that their investigations with other patients served to
+corroborate their former conclusions. When it became apparent that in
+every case the painful experience bore some relation to the love-life
+of the patient, both doctors were startled. Along with most of the
+rest of the world, they had been taught to look askance at the
+reproductive instinct and to shrink from realizing the vital place
+which sex holds in human life.
+
+Breuer dropped the work, and after an interval Freud went on alone. He
+was resolved to know the truth, and to tell what he saw. When he
+reported to the world that out of all his hundreds of patients, he had
+been unable, after the most careful analysis, to find one whose
+illness did not grow from some lack of adjustment of the sex-life, he
+was met by a storm of protest from all quarters. No amount of evidence
+seemed to make any difference. People were determined that no such
+libel should be heaped on human nature. Sex-urge was not respectable
+and nervous people were to be respected.
+
+Despite public disapproval, the scorn of other scientists, and the
+resistance of his own inner prejudices, Freud kept on. He was forced
+to acknowledge the validity of the facts which invariably presented
+themselves to view. Like Luther under equal duress, he cried: "Here I
+stand. I can do no other."
+
+=Freudian Principles.= Gradually, as he worked, he gathered together a
+number of outstanding facts about man's mental life and about the
+psycho-neuroses. These facts he formulated into certain principles,
+which may be summed up in the following way.
+
+1 There is no _chance_ in mental life; every mental phenomenon--hence
+every nervous phenomenon--has a cause and meaning.
+
+2 Infantile mental life is of tremendous importance in the direction
+of adult processes.
+
+3 Much of what is called forgetting is rather a repression into the
+subconscious, of impulses which were painful to the personality as a
+whole.
+
+4 Mental processes are dynamic, insisting on discharge, either in
+reality or in phantasy.
+
+5 An emotion may become detached from the idea to which it belongs and
+be displaced on other ideas.
+
+6 Sex-interests dominate much of the mental life where their influence
+is unrecognized. The disturbance in a psycho-neurosis is always in
+this domain of sex-life. "In a normal sexual life, no neurosis." If a
+shock is the precipitating cause of the trouble, it is only because
+the ground was already prepared by the sex-disturbance.
+
+Freud was perhaps unfortunate in his choice of the word "sex," which
+has so many evil connotations; but as he found no other word to cover
+the field, he chose the old one and stretched its meaning to include
+all the psychic and physical phenomena which spring directly and
+indirectly from the great processes of reproduction and parental care,
+and which ultimately include all and more than our word "love."[33]
+
+[Footnote 33: Freud and his followers have always said that they saw
+no theoretical reason why any other repressed instinct should not form
+the basis of a neurosis, but that, as a matter of fact, they never had
+found this to be the case, probably because no other instinct comes
+into such bitter and persistent conflict with the dictates of society.
+Now, however, the Great War seems to have changed conditions. Under
+the strain and danger of life at the front there has developed a kind
+of nervous breakdown called shellshock or war-neurosis, which seems in
+some cases to be based not on the repression of the instinct of
+race-preservation but on the unusual necessity for repression of the
+instinct of self-preservation. Army surgeons report that wounded men
+almost never suffer from shell-shock. The wound is enough to secure
+the unconsciously desired removal to the rear. But in the absence of
+wounds, a desire for safety may at the same time be so intense and so
+severely repressed that it seizes upon the neurosis as the only
+possible means of escape from the unbearable situation. In time of
+peace, however, the instinct of reproduction seems to be the only
+impulse which is severely enough repressed to be responsible for a
+nervous breakdown.]
+
+=Later Developments.= Little by little, the scientific world came to
+see that this wild theorizer had facts on his side; that not only had
+he formulated a theory, but he had discovered a cure, and that he was
+able to free people from obsessions, fears, and physical symptoms
+before which other methods were powerless. One by one the open-minded
+men of science were converted by the overpowering logic of the
+evidence, until to-day we find not only a "Freudian school," counting
+among its members many of the eminent scientists of the day, but we
+find in medical schools and universities courses based on Freudian
+principles, with text-books by acknowledged authorities in medicine
+and psychology. We find magazines devoted entirely to psycho-analytic
+subjects,[34] besides articles in medical journals and even numerous
+articles in popular magazines. Not only is the treatment of nervous
+disorders revolutionized by these principles but floods of light are
+thrown on such widely different fields of study as ancient myths and
+folk lore, the theory of wit, methods of child training, and the
+little slips of the tongue and everyday "breaks" that have until
+recently been considered the meaningless results of chance.
+
+[Footnote 34: _The Psychoanalytic Review_ and the _International
+Journal of Psychoanalysis._]
+
+=A Searching Question.= We find, then, that when we ask, "What makes
+people nervous?" we are really asking: "What is man like, inside and
+out, up and down? What makes him think, feel, and act as he does every
+hour of every day?" We are asking for the source of human motives, the
+science of human behavior, the charting of the human mind. It is hard
+to-day to understand how so much reproach and ridicule could have been
+aroused by the statement that the ultimate cause of nervousness is a
+disturbance of the sex-life. There has already been a change in the
+public attitude toward things sexual.
+
+Training-courses for mothers and teachers, elementary teaching in the
+schools, lectures and magazine articles have done much to show the
+fallacy of our old hypersensitive attitude. Since the war, some of us
+know, too, with what success the army has used the Freudian principles
+in treating war-neurosis, which was mistakenly called shell-shock by
+the first observers. We know, too, more about the constitution of
+man's mind than the public knew ten years ago. When we remember the
+insistent character of the instincts and the repressive method used by
+society in restraining the most obstreperous impulse, when we remember
+the pain of such conflict and the depressing physical effects of
+painful emotions, we cannot wonder that this most sharply repressed
+instinct should cause mental and physical trouble.
+
+=What about Sublimation?= On the other hand, it has been stated in
+Chapter IV that although this universal urge cannot be repressed, it
+can be sublimated or diverted to useful ends which bring happiness,
+not disaster, to the individual. We have a right, then, to ask why
+this happy issue is not always attained, why sublimation ever fails.
+If a psycho-neurosis is caused by a failure of an insistent instinct
+to find adequate expression, by a blocking of the libido or the
+love-force, what are the conditions which bring about this blocking?
+The sex-instinct of every respectable person is subject to restraint.
+Some people are able to adjust themselves; why not all? The question,
+"What makes people nervous?" then turns out to mean: What keeps people
+from a satisfactory outlet for their love-instincts? What is it that
+holds them back from satisfaction in direct expression, and prevents
+indirect outlet in sublimation? Whatever does this must be the real
+cause of "nerves."
+
+
+THE CAUSES OF "NERVES"
+
+=Plural, not Singular.= The first thing to learn about the cause is
+that it is not a cause at all, but several causes. We are so well made
+that it takes a combination of circumstances to upset our equilibrium.
+In other words, a neurosis must be "over-determined." Heredity, faulty
+education, emotional shock, physical fatigue, have each at various
+times been blamed for a breakdown. As a matter of fact, it seems to
+take a number of ingredients to make a neurosis,--a little unstable
+inheritance plus a considerable amount of faulty upbringing, plus a
+later series of emotional experiences bearing just the right
+relationship to the earlier factors. Heredity, childhood reactions,
+and later experiences, are the three legs on which a neurosis usually
+stands. An occasional breakdown seems to stand on the single leg of
+childhood experiences but in the majority of cases each of the three
+factors contributes its quota to the final disaster.
+
+=Born or Made?= It used to be thought that neurotics, like poets, were
+born, not made. Heredity was considered wholly responsible, and there
+seemed very little to do about it. But to-day the emphasis on heredity
+is steadily giving way to stress on early environment. There are, no
+doubt, such factors as a certain innate sensitiveness, a natural
+suggestibility, an intensity of emotion, a little tendency to nervous
+instability, which predispose a person to nerves, but unless the
+inborn tendency is reinforced by the reactions and training of early
+childhood, it is likely to die a natural death.
+
+
+CHILDHOOD EXPERIENCES
+
+=Early Reactions.= Freud found that a neurotic is made before he is
+six years old. When by repeated explorations into the minds of his
+patients, he made this important discovery, he at first believed that
+the disturbing factor was always some single emotional experience or
+shock in childhood,--usually of a sexual nature. But Freud and later
+investigators have since found that the trouble is not so often a
+single experience as a long series of exaggerated emotional reactions,
+a too intense emotional life, a precocity in feeling tending toward
+fixation of childhood habits, which are thus carried over into adult
+life.
+
+=Fixation of Habits.= Fixation is the word that expresses all
+this,--fixation of childish habits. A neurotic is a person who made
+such strong habits in childhood that he cannot abandon them in
+maturity. He is too much ruled by the past. His unconscious emotional
+thought-habits are the complexes which were made in childhood and
+therefore lack the power of adaptation to mature life.
+
+We saw in Chapter IV that Nature takes great pains to develop in the
+child the psychic and physical trends which he will need later on in
+his mature love-life, and that this training is accomplished in a
+number of well-defined periods which lead from one to the other. If,
+however, the child reacts too intensely, lingers too long in any one
+of these phases, he lays for himself action lines of least resistance
+which he may never leave or to which he may return during the strain
+and stress of adult life.
+
+In either case, the neurotic is a grown-up child. He may be a very
+learned, very charming person, but he is nevertheless dragging behind
+him a part of his childhood which he should have outgrown long ago.
+Part of him is suffering from an arrest of development,--not a leg or
+an arm but an impulse.
+
+=Precocious Emotions.= The habits which tend to become fixed too soon
+seem to be of four kinds; the habit of loving, the habit of rebelling,
+the habit of repressing normal instincts, and the habit of dreaming.
+In each case it is the excess of feeling which causes the
+trouble,--too much love, too much hate, too much disgust, or too much
+pleasure in imagination. Exaggeration is always a danger-signal. An
+overdeveloped child is likely to be an underdeveloped man. Especially
+in the emotions is precocity to be deplored. A premature alphabet or
+multiplication table is not nearly so serious as premature intensity
+of feeling, nor so likely to lead later to trouble. Of course fixation
+in these emotional habits does not always lead to a serious breakdown.
+If the fixation is not too extreme, and if later events do not happen
+to accentuate the trouble, the arrest of development may merely show
+itself in certain weaknesses of character or in isolated symptoms
+without developing a real neurosis.
+
+Let us examine each of these arrested habits and the excess emotion
+which sets the mold before it is ready for maturity.
+
+=Too Much Self-Love.= In the chapter on the reproductive instinct, we
+found that the natural way to learn to love is by successively loving
+oneself, one's parents and family, one's fellows, and one's mate. If
+the love-force gets too much pleasure in any one of these phases, it
+finds it hard to give up its old love and to pass on to the next
+phase. Thus some children take too much pleasure in their own bodies
+or, a little later, in their own personalities. If they are too much
+interested in their own physical sensations and the pleasure they get
+by stimulating certain zones of the body, then in later life they
+cannot free themselves from the desire for this kind of satisfaction.
+Try as they may, they cannot be satisfied with normal adult relations,
+but sink back into some form of so-called sex-perversion.
+
+Perhaps it is another phase of self-love which holds the child too
+much. If, like Narcissus, he becomes too fond of looking at himself,
+is too eager to show off, too desirous of winning praise, then forever
+after he is likely to be self-conscious, self-centered, thinking
+always of the impression he is making, unable ever to be at leisure
+from himself. He is fixed in the Narcissistic stage of his life, and
+is unadapted to the world of social relations.
+
+=Too Much Family-love.= We have already spoken of the danger of
+fixation in the second period, that of object-love--the period of
+family relationships. The danger is here again one of degree and may
+be avoided by a little knowledge and self-control on the part of the
+parents. The little girl who is permitted to lavish too much love on
+her father, who does not see anybody else, who cannot learn to like
+the boys is a misfit. The wise mother will see that her love for her
+boy does not express itself too much by means of hugs and kisses. The
+mother who shows very plainly that she loves her little boy better
+than she loves her husband and the mother who boasts that her
+adolescent boy tells her all his secrets and takes her out in
+preference to any girl--that deluded mother is trying to take
+something that is not hers, and is thereby courting trouble. When her
+son grows up, he may not know why, but no girl will suit him, and he
+will either remain a bachelor or marry some older woman who reminds
+him subconsciously of his mother. His love-requirements will be too
+strict; he will be forever trying either in phantasy or in real life
+to duplicate his earlier love-experiences. This, of course, cannot
+satisfy the demands of a mature man. He will be torn between
+conflicting desires, unhappy without knowing why, unable either to
+remain a child or to become a man, and impelled to gain
+self-expression in indirect and unsatisfactory ways.
+
+Since it is not possible in this space to recite specific cases which
+show how often a nervous trouble points back to the father-mother
+complex,[35] it may help to cite the opinions of a few of our best
+authorities. Freud says of the family complex, "This is the root
+complex of the neurosis." Jelliffe: "It is the foot-rule of
+measurement of success in life": by which he means that just so far as
+we are able at the right time to free ourselves from dependence on
+parents are we able to adjust ourselves to the world at large.
+Pfister: "The attitude toward parents very often determines for a
+life-time the attitude toward people in general and toward life
+itself." Hinkle: "The entire direction of lives is determined by
+parental relationships."
+
+[Footnote 35: This is technically known as the Oedipus Complex.]
+
+=Too Much Hate.= Besides loving too hard, there is the danger of
+hating too hard. If it sounds strange to talk of the hatreds of
+childhood, we must remember that we are thinking of real life as it is
+when the conventions of adult life are removed and the subconscious
+gives up its secrets.
+
+Several references have been made to the jealousy of the small child
+when he has to share his love with the parent of the same sex. For
+every little boy the father gets in the way. For every little girl the
+mother gets in the way. At one time or other there is likely to be a
+period when this is resented with all the violence of a child's
+emotions. It is likely to be very soon repressed and succeeded by a
+real affection which lasts through life. But underneath, unmodified by
+time, there may exist simultaneously the old childish image and the
+old unconscious reaction to it, unconscious but still active in
+indirect ways.
+
+Jealousy is very often united with the natural rebellion of a child
+against authority. The rebellion may, of course, be directed against
+either parent who is final in authority in the home. In most cases
+this is the father. As the impulse of self-assertion is usually
+stronger in boys than in girls, and as the boy's impulse in this
+direction is reinforced by any existing jealousy toward his father, we
+find a strong spirit of rebellion more often playing a subconscious
+part in the life of men than of women. The novelist's favorite theme
+of the conflict between the young man and "the old man" represents the
+conscious, unrepressed complex. More often, however, there is true
+affection for the father, while the rebellion which really belongs to
+the childish father-image is displaced or transferred to other symbols
+of authority,--the state, the law, the king, the school, the teacher,
+the church, or perhaps to religion and authority in general.
+Anarchists and atheists naturally rationalize their reasons for
+dissent, but, for all that, they are not so much intellectual pioneers
+as rebellious little boys who have forgotten to grow up.
+
+=Liking to be "Bossed."= There is a worse danger, however, than too
+much rebellion, and that is too little rebellion. Sometimes this
+yielding spirit is the result of an overdose of negative self-feeling
+and an under-dose of positive self-feeling; but sometimes it is
+over-compensation for the repressed spirit of rebellion which the
+child considers wicked. Consciously he becomes over-meek, because he
+has to summon all his powers to fight his subconscious insurrection.
+Whether he be meek by nature or by training, he is likely to be a
+failure. Everybody knows that the child who is too good never amounts
+to anything. He who has never disobeyed is a weakling. Naturally
+resenting all authority, the normal individual, if he be well trained,
+soon learns that some authority is necessary. He rebels, but he learns
+to acquiesce, to a certain degree. If he acquiesces too easily,
+represses too severely his rebellious spirit, swings to the other
+extreme of wanting to be "bossed," he is very likely to end as a
+nervous invalid, unfitted for the battles of life. The neurotic in the
+majority of cases likes authority, clings to it too long, wants the
+teacher to tell him what to do, wants the doctor to order him around,
+is generally over-conscientious, and afraid he will offend the "boss"
+or some one else who reminds him of the father-image. All this carries
+a warning to parents who cannot manage their children without
+dominating their lives, even when the domination is a kindly one.
+Perhaps the modern child is in more danger of being spoiled than
+bullied, but analysis of nervous patients shows that both kinds of
+danger still exist.
+
+=Too Much Disgust.= The third form of excessive emotion is disgust.
+The love-force, besides being blocked by a fixation of childish love
+and of childish reactions toward authority, is very often kept from
+free mature self-expression by a perpetuation of a childish reaction
+against sex. We hardly need dwell longer on the folly of teaching
+children to be ashamed of so inevitable a part of their own nature.
+Disgust is a very strong emotion, and when it is turned against a part
+of ourselves, united with that other strong impulse of self-regard and
+incorporated into the conscience, it makes a Chinese wall of exclusion
+against the baffled, misunderstood reproductive instinct, which is
+thrust aside as alien.
+
+=Restraint versus Denial.= Repression is not merely restraint. It is
+restraint plus denial. To the clamoring instinct we say not merely,
+"No, you _may_ not," but "No, you _are_ not. You do not exist. Nothing
+like you could belong to me." The woman with nausea (Chapter V) did
+not say to herself: "You are a normal, healthy woman, possessed of a
+normal woman's desires. But wait a while until the proper time comes."
+Controlled by an immature feeling of disgust, she had said: "I never
+thought it. It cannot be."
+
+The difference is just this. When an ungratifiable desire is honestly
+faced and squarely answered, it is modified by other desires, chooses
+another way of discharge, and ceases to be desire. When a desire is
+repressed, it is still desire, unsatisfied, insistent, unmodifiable by
+mature points of view, untouched by time, automatic, and capable of
+almost any subterfuge in order to get satisfaction. A repressed desire
+is buried, shut away from the disintegrating effects of sunlight and
+air. While the rest of the personality is constantly changing under
+the influence of new ideas, the buried complex lives on in its
+immaturity, absolutely untouched by time.
+
+=Childish Birth-theories.= When a child's questions about where babies
+come from are met by evasions, he is forced to manufacture his own
+theories. His elders would laugh if they knew some of these theories,
+but they would not laugh if they knew how often the childish ideas,
+wide of the truth, furnish the material for future neuroses. Frink
+tells the story of a young woman who had a compulsion for taking
+drugs. Although not a drug-fiend in the usual sense, she was
+constantly impelled to take any kind of drug she could obtain. It was
+finally revealed that during her childhood she had tried hard to
+discover how babies were made, and had at last concluded that they
+grew in the mother as a result of some medicine furnished by the
+doctor. The idea had long been forgotten, only to reappear as a
+compulsion. The natural desire for a child was strong in her, but was
+repressed as unholy in an unmarried woman. The associated childish
+idea of drug-taking was not repellent to her moral sense and was used
+as a substitute for the real desire to bear a child.
+
+Many of my patients have suffered from the effect of some such
+birth-theories. One young girl, twenty years old, was greatly
+afflicted with myso-phobia, or the fear of contamination. She spent
+most of her time in washing her hands and keeping her hands and
+clothing free from contamination by contact with innumerable harmless
+objects. When cleaning her shoes on the grass, she would kneel so that
+the hem of her skirt would touch the grass, lest some dust should fly
+up under her clothes. After eating luncheon in the park with a girl
+who had tuberculosis, she said that she was not afraid of tuberculosis
+in the lungs, but asked if something like tuberculosis might not get
+in and begin to grow somewhere else. Her life was full to overflowing
+of such compulsive fears.
+
+As opportunity offered itself from day to day, I would catch her
+compulsive ideas in the very act of expressing themselves, and would
+pin her down as to the association and the source of her fear, always
+taking care not to make suggestions or ask leading questions. She was
+finally convinced out of her own mouth that her real fear was the idea
+of something getting into her body and growing there. Then she told
+how she had questioned her mother about the reproductive life and had
+been put off with signs of embarrassment. For a long time she had been
+afraid to walk or talk with a boy, because, not knowing how conception
+might occur, she feared grave consequences.
+
+Very soon after the beginning of her conversations with me, the girl
+realized that her fear was really a disguised desire that something
+might be planted within and grow. With her new understanding of
+herself, her compulsions promptly slipped away. She began to eat and
+sleep, and to live a happy, natural life.
+
+=Chronic Repression.= It takes first-hand acquaintance with nervous
+patients to realize how common are stories like these. Unnecessary
+repressions based on false training are the cause of many a physical
+symptom and mental distress which a little parental frankness might
+have forestalled.[36]
+
+[Footnote 36: Parents who are eager to handle this subject in the
+right way are often sincerely puzzled as to how to go about it. No
+matter how complete their education, it is very likely to fail them at
+this critical point. For the benefit of such parents, let it be said
+with all possible emphasis that the first and most important step must
+be a change in their own mental attitude. If there is left within them
+the shadow of embarrassment on the subject of sex, their children will
+not fail to sense the situation at once. A feeling of hesitation or a
+tendency to apologize for nature makes a far deeper impression on the
+child-mind than do the most beautiful of half-believed words on the
+subject. And this impression, subtle and elusive as it may seem, is a
+real and vital experience which is quite likely to color the whole of
+the child's life. If you would give your children a fair start, you
+must first get rid of your own inner resistances. After that, all will
+be clear sailing.
+
+In the second place, take the earliest opportunity to bring up the
+subject in a natural way. A young father told me recently that his
+little daughter had asked her mother why she didn't have any lap any
+more. "And of course your wife took that chance to tell her about the
+baby that is coming," I said. "Oh, no," he answered, "she did nothing
+of the kind. Mary is far too young to know about such things." There
+are always chances if we are on the look out for them--and the earlier
+the better. It has been noticed that children are never repelled by
+the idea of any natural process unless the new idea runs counter to
+some notion which has already been formed. The wise parent is the one
+who gets in the right impression before some other child has had a
+chance to plant the wrong one.
+
+Then, too, we elders are judged quite as much by what we do not say as
+by what we do. Happy is the child who is not left to draw his own
+conclusions from the silence and evasiveness of his parents. The
+sex-instruction which children are getting in the schools is often
+good, but it usually comes too late--the damage is always done before
+the sixth year.
+
+When it comes to the exact words in which to explain the phenomena of
+generation and birth each parent must naturally find his own way. The
+main point is that we must tell the truth and not try to improve on
+nature. If we say that the baby grows under the mother's heart and
+later the child learns that this is not true, he inevitably gets the
+idea that there is something not nice about the part of the body in
+which the baby does grow. What could be wrong with the simple truth
+that the father plants a tiny seed in the mother's body and that this
+seed joins with another little seed already there and grows until it
+is a real baby ready to come into the world? The question as to how
+the father plants the seed need cause no alarm. If brothers and
+sisters are brought up together with no artificial sense of false
+modesty, they very early learn the difference between the male and the
+female body. It is simple enough to tell the little child the function
+of the male structure. And it is easy to explain that the seeds do not
+grow until the little boy and girl have grown to be man and woman and
+that the way to be well and to have fine strong children is to leave
+the generative organs alone until that time. A sense of the dignity
+and high purpose of these organs is far more likely to prevent
+perversions--to say nothing of nervousness--than is an attitude of
+taboo and silence.]
+
+A certain amount of repression is inevitable and useful, but a
+neurotic is merely an exaggerated represser. He represses so much of
+himself that it will not stay down.[37] He builds up a permanent
+resistance which automatically acts as a dam to his normal sex
+instinct and forces it into undesirable outlets.
+
+[Footnote 37: "A neurosis is a partial failure of repression." Frink:
+_Morbid Fears and Compulsions_.]
+
+A resistance is a chronic repression, repression that has become fixed
+and subconscious, a habit that has lost its flexibility and outlives
+its usefulness. It is a fixation of repression, and is built out of an
+over-strong complex or emotional thought habit, acquired during
+childhood, incorporated into the conscience and carried over into
+maturity, where it warps judgment and interferes with normal
+development because it is fundamentally untrue and at variance with
+the laws of nature.
+
+=Too Much Day-Dreaming.= The fourth habit which holds back the adult
+from maturity and predisposes toward "nerves" is the habit of
+imagination. It need hardly be said that a certain kind of imagination
+is a good thing and one of man's greatest assets. But the essence of
+day-dreaming is the exact opposite; it is the desire to see things as
+they are not, but as we should like them to be,--not in order that we
+may bring them to pass, but for the mere pleasure of dreaming. Instead
+of turning a microscope or a telescope on the world of reality, as
+positive imagination does, this negative variety refuses even to look
+with the naked eye. To dream is easier than to do; to build up
+phantasies is easier than to build up a reputation or a fortune; to
+think a forbidden pleasure is easier than to sublimate.
+"Pleasure-thinking" is not only easier than "reality-thinking,"--it is
+the _older_ way.
+
+Children gratify many of their desires simply by imagining them
+gratified. Much of the difficulty of later life might be avoided if
+the little child could be taught to work for the accomplishment of his
+pleasures rather than to dream of them. The normal child gradually
+abandons this "pleasure-thinking" for the more purposeful thinking of
+the actual world, but the child who loiters too long in the realm of
+fancy may ever after find it hard to keep away from its borders. His
+natural interest in sex, if artificially repressed, is especially
+prone to satisfy itself by way of phantasy.
+
+=Turning back to Phantasy.= In later life, when the love-force for one
+reason or another becomes too strong to be handled either directly or
+indirectly in the real world, there comes the almost irresistible
+impulse to regress to the infantile way and to find expression by
+means of phantasy. After long experience Freud concluded that phantasy
+lies at the root of every neurosis. Jung says that a sex-phantasy is
+always at least one determiner of a nervous illness, and Jelliffe
+writes that the essence of the neurosis is a special activity of the
+imagination.
+
+Such a statement need not shock the most sensitive conscience. The
+very fact that a neurosis breaks out is proof that the phantasies are
+repellent to the owners of them and are thrust down into the
+subconscious as unworthy. In fact, every neurosis is witness to the
+strength of the human conscience. No phantasy could cause illness. It
+is the phantasy plus the repression of it that makes the trouble, or
+rather it is the conflict between the forces back of the phantasy and
+the repression. The neurosis, then, turns out to be a "flight from the
+real," the result of a desire to run away from a difficulty. When a
+problem presses or a disagreeable situation is to be faced, it is
+easier to give up and fall ill than to see the thing through to the
+end. Here again, we find that nervousness is a regression to the
+irresponsible reactions of childhood.
+
+=Maturity versus Immaturity.= We have been thinking of the main causes
+of "nerves" and have found them to be infantile habits of loving,
+rebelling, repressing, and dreaming. We have tried to show that these
+habits are able to cause trouble because of their bearing on that
+inevitable conflict between the ancient urge of the reproductive
+instinct and the later ideals which society has acquired. If this
+conflict be met in the light of the present, free from the backward
+pull, of outgrown habits, an adjustment is possible which satisfies
+both the individual and society. We call this adjustment sublimation.
+This is rather a synthesis than a compromise, a union of the opposing
+forces, a happy utilization of energy by displacement on more useful
+ideas. But if the conflict has to be met with the mind hampered by
+immature thinking and immature feeling; if the demands of the
+here-and-now are met as if it were long ago; if unhealthy and untrue
+complexes, old loves and hates complicate the situation; if to the
+necessary conflict is added an unnecessary one; then something else
+happens. Compromise of some kind must be made, but instead of a happy
+union of the two forces a poor compromise is effected, gaining a
+partial satisfaction for both sides, but a real one for neither. The
+neurosis is this compromise.
+
+
+LATER EXPERIENCES
+
+=The Last Straw.= The precipitating cause may be one of a number of
+things. It may be entirely within, or it may be external. Perhaps it
+is only a quickening of the maturing instincts at the time of
+adolescence, making the love-force too strong to be held by the old
+repressions. Perhaps the husband, wife, or lover dies, or the
+life-work is taken away, depriving the vital energy of its usual
+outlets. Perhaps the trigger is pulled by an emotional shock which
+bears a faint resemblance to old emotional experiences, and which
+stimulates both the repressing and repressed trends and makes the
+person at the same time say both "Yes," and "No."[38] Perhaps
+physical fatigue lets down the mental and moral tension and makes the
+conflict too strong to be controlled. Perhaps an external problem
+presses and arouses the old habit of fleeing from disagreeable
+reality. Any or all these factors may cooperate, but not one of them
+is anything more than a last straw on an overburdened back. No
+calamity, deprivation, fatigue, or emotion has been able to bring
+about a neurosis unless the ground was prepared for it by the earlier
+reactions of childhood.
+
+[Footnote 38: "The external world can only cause repression when there
+was already present beforehand a strong initial tension reaching back
+even to childhood."--Pfister: _Psychoanalytic Method_, p. 94.]
+
+
+THE BREAKDOWN ITSELF
+
+="Two Persons under One Hat."= We can understand now why a neurotic
+can be described in so many ways. We often hear him called an
+especially moral, especially ethical person, with a very active
+conscience; an intensely social being, unable to be satisfied with
+anything but a social standard; a person with "finer intellectual
+insight and greater sensitiveness than the rest of mankind." At the
+same time we are told that a neurosis is a partial triumph of
+anti-social, non-moral factors, and that it is a cowardly flight from
+reality; we hear a nervous invalid called selfish, unsocial, shut in,
+primitive, childish, self-deceived. Both these descriptions are true
+to life. A neurosis is an ethical struggle between these two sets of
+forces. If the lower set had triumphed, the man would have been merely
+weak; if the higher set had been victorious, he would have been
+strong. As it is, he is neither one nor the other,--only nervous. The
+neurosis is the only solution of the struggle which he is able to
+find, and serves the purpose of a sort of armed armistice between the
+two camps.
+
+
+SERVING A PURPOSE
+
+If a neurosis is a compromise, if it is the easiest way out, if it
+serves a purpose, it must be that the individual himself has a hand in
+shaping that purpose. Can it be that a breakdown which seems such an
+unmitigated disaster is really welcomed by a part of our own selves?
+Nothing is more intensely resented by the nervous invalid than the
+accusation that he likes his symptoms,--and no wonder. The conscious
+part of him hates the pain, the inconvenience, and the disability with
+a real hatred. It is not pleasant to be ill. And yet, as it turns out,
+it is pleasanter to be ill than it is to bear the tension of
+unsatisfied desire or to be undeceived about oneself. Every symptom is
+a means of expression for repressed and forgotten impulses and is a
+relief to the personality. It tends to the preservation of the
+individual, rather than to his destruction. The nervous invalid is not
+short-lived, but his family may be! It has been said that a neurosis
+is not so much a disease as a dilemma. Rather might it be said that
+the neurosis is a way out of the dilemma. It is a harbor after a
+stormy sea, not always a quiet harbor, but at least a usable one.
+Unpleasant as it is, every nervous symptom is a form of compensation
+which has been deliberately though unconsciously chosen by its owner.
+
+=Rationalizing Our Distress.= Among other things, a nervous symptom
+furnishes a seemingly reasonable excuse for the sense of distress
+which is behind every breakdown. Something troubles us. We are not
+willing to acknowledge what it is. On the other hand, we must appear
+reasonable to ourselves, so we manufacture a reason. Perhaps at the
+time when the person first feels distress, he is on a railroad train.
+So he says to himself, "It is the train. I must not go near the
+railway"; and he develops a phobia for cars. Perhaps at the onset of
+the fear he happens to have a slight pain in the arm. He makes use of
+the pain to explain his distress. He thinks about it and holds on to
+it. It serves a purpose, and is on the whole less painful than the
+feeling of unexplained impending disaster which is attached to no
+particular idea. Perhaps he happens to be tired when the conflict
+first gets beyond control. So he seizes the idea of fatigue to explain
+his illness. He develops chronic fatigue and talks proudly of
+overwork. In every case the symptom serves a real purpose, and is,
+despite its discomfort, a relief to the distressed personality.
+
+A neurosis is a subconscious effort at adjustment. Like a physical
+symptom, it is Nature's way of trying to cure herself. It is an
+attempt to get equilibrium, but it is an awkward attempt and hardly
+the kind that we would choose when we see what we are doing.
+
+=Securing an Audience.= Besides furnishing relief from too intense
+strain, a nervous breakdown brings secondary advantages that are at
+most only dimly recognized by the individual. One of the most intense
+cravings of the primitive part of the subconscious is for an audience;
+a nervous symptom always secures that audience. The invalid is the
+object of the solicitous care of the family, friends, physician, and
+specialist. Pomp and ceremony, so dear to the child-mind, make their
+appeal to the dissociated part of the personality. The repressed
+instincts, hungry for love and attention, delight in the petting and
+special care which an illness is sure to bring. Secretly and
+unconsciously, the neurotic takes a certain pleasure in all the
+various changes that are made for his benefit,--the dismantling of
+striking clocks, the muffling of household noises, the banishing of
+crowing roosters, and the changes in menu which must be carefully
+planned for his stomach.
+
+This characteristic of finding pleasure in personal ministrations is
+plainly a regression to the infantile phase of life. The baby demands
+and obtains the center of the stage. Later he has to learn to give it
+up, but the neurotic gets the center again and is often very loth to
+leave it for a more inconspicuous place.
+
+=Capitalizing an Illness.= Then, too, a neurosis provides a way of
+escape from all sorts of disagreeable duties. It can be capitalized in
+innumerable ways,--ways that would horrify the invalid if he realized
+the truth. Much of the resentment manifested against the suggestion
+that the neurosis is psychic in origin is simply a resistance against
+giving up the unconsciously enjoyed advantages of the illness. An
+honest desire to get well is a long step toward cure.
+
+The purposive character of a nervous illness is well illustrated by
+two cases reported by Thaddeus Hoyt Ames.[39] A young woman, the
+drudge of the family, suddenly became hysterically blind, that is, she
+became blind despite the fact that her eyes and optic nerves proved to
+be unimpaired. She remained blind until it was proved to her that a
+part of her welcomed the blindness and had really produced it for the
+purpose of getting away from the monotony of her unappreciated life at
+home. She naturally resented the charge but finally accepted it and
+"turned on" her eyesight in an instant. The other patient, a man,
+became blind in order to avoid seeing his wife who had turned out to
+be not at all what he had hoped. When he realized what he was doing,
+he decided that there might be better ways of adjusting himself to his
+wife. He then switched on his seeing power, which had never been
+really lost, but only disconnected and dissociated from the rest of
+his mind.
+
+[Footnote 39: Thaddeus Hoyt Ames: _Archives of Ophthalmology_, Vol.
+XLIII, No. 4, 1914.]
+
+That the conscious mind has no part in the subterfuge is shown by the
+fact that both patients gave up their artificial haven as soon as they
+saw how they had been fooling themselves. The fact remains that every
+neurosis is the fulfilment of a wish,--a distorted, unrecognized,
+unsatisfactory fulfilment to be sure, but still an effort to satisfy
+desire. As Frink remarks, "A neurosis is a kind of behaviour." We
+always choose the conduct we like. It is a matter of choice. Does not
+this answer our question as to why some people always take unhealthy
+suggestions? If we take the bad one, it is because it serves the need
+of a part of our being.
+
+
+SIGN LANGUAGE
+
+=Talking in Symbols.= We have several times suggested that a nervous
+symptom is a disguised, indirect expression of subconscious impulses.
+It is the completeness of the disguise which makes it so hard for us
+to realize its true meaning. It takes a stretch of the imagination to
+believe that a pain in the body can mean a pain in the soul, or that
+a fear of contamination can signify a desire to bear a child. But in
+all this we must not forget the primitive, childlike nature of the
+instinctive life.
+
+The savage and the child do not think as civilized man thinks. Savage
+or child thinks in pictures; he acts his feelings; he groups things
+according to superficial resemblances, he expresses an idea by its
+opposite; he talks in symbols. We still use these devices in poetic
+speech and in everyday thought. A wedding-ring stands for the marriage
+bond; the flag for a nation; a greyhound for fleetness; a wild beast
+for ferocity; sunrise for youth; and sunset for old age. "The essence
+of language consists in the statement of resemblance. The expression
+of human thought is an expression of association."[40]
+
+[Footnote 40: Trigant Burrow: _Journal of American Medical
+Association_, Vol. LXVI, No. II, 1916.]
+
+The association may be so accidental and superficial as to seem absurd
+to another person, or it may be so fundamental as to express the
+universal thought of man from the beginning of time. Many of the signs
+and symbols which crop out in neurotic symptoms and in normal dreams
+are the same as those which appear in myths, fairy tales and folk-lore
+and in the art of the earlier races.
+
+=A Secret Code.= When the denied instincts of a man's repressed life
+insist on expression, and when the shocked proprieties of his
+repressing life demand conformity to social standards, the
+subconscious, held back from free speech, strikes a compromise by
+making use of figurative language. As Trigant Burrow says, if the
+moral repugnance is very strong, the disguise must be more elaborate,
+the symbols more far-fetched. The symbols of nervous symptoms and of
+dreams are a "secret code," understood by the sender but meaningless
+to the censoring conscience, which passes them as harmless.
+
+=The Right Kind of Symbolism.= Sublimation itself is merely a symbolic
+expression of basic impulses. It follows the line of our make-up,
+which naturally and fundamentally is wont to let one thing stand for
+another and to express itself in indirect ways. Sublimation says: "If
+I cannot recreate myself in the person of a child, I will recreate
+myself in making a bridge, or a picture, or a social settlement,--or a
+pudding." It says: "If I cannot have my own child to love, I will
+adopt an orphan-asylum, or I will work for a child-labor law." It
+merely lets one thing stand for another and transfers all the passions
+that belong to the one on to the other, which is the same thing as
+saying that it gives vent to its original desire by means of symbolic
+expression.
+
+=The Wrong Kind of Symbolism.= A nervous disorder is an unfortunate
+choice of symbols. Instead of spiritualizing an innate impulse, it
+merely disguises it. The disguise takes a number of forms. One of the
+commonest ways is to act out in the body what is taking place in the
+soul. The woman with nausea converted her moral disgust into a
+physical nausea, which expressed her distress while it hid its
+meaning. The girl who was tired of seeing her work, and the man who
+wanted to avoid seeing his wife chose a way out which physically
+symbolized their real desire. A dentist once came to me with a
+paralyzed right arm. He had given up his office and believed that he
+would never work again. It turned out that his only son had just died
+and that he was dramatizing his soul-pain by means of his body. His
+subconscious mind was saying, "My good right arm is gone," and saying
+it in its own way. Within a week the arm was playing tennis, and ever
+since it has been busy filling teeth. There were, of course, other
+factors leading up to the trouble, but the factor which determined its
+form was the sense of loss which acted itself out through the body.
+
+Sometimes, as we have seen, the disguise takes another form. Instead
+of conversion into a physical symptom, it lets one idea stand for
+another and displaces the impulse or the emotion to the substitute
+idea. The girl with the impulse to take drugs fooled her conscience by
+letting the drug-taking idea stand for the idea of conception. The
+girl with the fear of contamination carried the disguise still
+farther by changing the desire into fear,--a very common subterfuge.
+
+=The Case of Mrs. Y.= There came to me a short time ago a little woman
+whose face showed intense fright. For several months she had spent
+much of the time walking the floor and wringing her hands in an agony
+of terror. In the night she would waken from her sleep, shaking with
+fear; soon she would be retching and vomiting, although she herself
+recognized the fact that there was nothing the matter with her
+stomach.
+
+Part of the time her fear was a general terror of some unknown thing,
+and part of the time it was a specialized fear of great intensity. She
+was afraid she would choke her son, to whom she was passionately
+devoted. During the course of the treatment, which followed the lines
+of psycho-analysis to be described in the next chapter, I found that
+this fear had arisen one evening when she was lying reading by the
+side of her sleeping child. Suddenly, without warning, she had a sort
+of mental picture of her own hands reaching out and choking the boy.
+Naturally she was terrified. She jumped out of bed, decided that she
+was losing her mind and went into a hysterical state which her husband
+had great trouble in dispelling. After that she was afraid to be left
+alone with her children lest she should kill them.
+
+During the analysis it was discovered that what she had been reading
+on that first night was the thirteenth verse of the ninety-first
+Psalm. "Thou shalt tread upon the lion and the adder. The young lion
+and the dragon thou shalt trample under foot." To her the adder meant
+the snake, the tempter in the Garden of Eden, and hence sex. What she
+wanted to choke was her own insistent sex urge of which the child was
+the symbol and the result. On later occasions she had the same sort of
+hallucinations in connection with another child and on sight of a
+brutish kind of man who symbolized to the subconscious mind the
+sex-urge, of which she was afraid. Not so much by what her mother had
+said as by what she had avoided saying, and by her expression whenever
+the subject was mentioned, had she given her little daughter a
+fundamentally wrong idea of the reproductive instinct. Later when the
+girl was woman grown she still clung to the old conception, deploring
+the sex-part of the marriage relation and feeling herself too refined
+to be moved by any such sensual urge. But the strong sex-instinct
+within her would not be downed. It was so insistent as to be an object
+of terror to her repressing instinct, which could not bring itself to
+acknowledge its presence. The fear that came to the surface was merely
+a disguised and symbolic representation of this real fear which was
+turning her life into a nightmare.
+
+The nausea and vomiting in this woman seemed to be symbolic of the
+disgust which she felt subconsciously at the thought of her own
+sex-desires, but sometimes the physical disturbances which accompany
+such phobias are the natural physical reactions to the constant fear
+state. Indigestion, palpitation, and tremors are not in themselves
+symbolic of the inner trouble but may be the result of an overdose of
+the adrenal and thyroid secretions and the other accompaniments of
+fear. In such cases the real symptom is the fear, and the physical
+disturbance an incidental by-product of the emotional state. In any
+case a nervous symptom is always the sign of something else--a
+hieroglyph which must be deciphered before its real meaning can be
+discovered.
+
+
+SUMMARY
+
+=Three Kinds of People.= Absurd as it sounds, "nerves" turn out to be
+a question of morals; a neurosis, an affair of conscience; a nervous
+symptom an unsettled ethical struggle. The ethical struggle is not
+unusual; it is a normal part of man's life, the natural result of his
+desire to change into a more civilized being. The people in the world
+may be divided into three classes, according to the way they decide
+the conflict.
+
+=The Primitive.= The first class merely capitulate to their primitive
+desires. They may not be nervous, but it is safe to say that they are
+rarely happy. The voice of conscience is hard to drown, even when it
+is not strong enough to control conduct. Happily it often succeeds in
+making us miserable, when we desert the ways that have proved best for
+our kind. The "immoral" person has not yet "arrived"; he simply
+disregards the collective wisdom of society and gives the victory to
+the primitive forces which try to keep man back on his old level. We
+cannot break the ideals by which man lives, and still be happy.
+
+=The Salt of the Earth.= The second class of people decide the
+conflict in a way that satisfies both themselves and society. They
+give the victory to the higher trends and at the same time make a
+lasting peace by winning over the energy of the undesirable impulses.
+By sublimation they divert the threatening force to useful work and
+turn it out into real life, using its steam to make the world's wheels
+go round. Their love-force, unhampered by childish habits, is free to
+give itself to adult relationships or to express itself symbolically
+in socially helpful ways.
+
+=Nervous People.= To the third class belong the people who have not
+finished the fight. These are the folk with "nerves," the people in
+whom the conflict is fiercest because both sides are too strong. The
+victory goes to neither side; the tug of war ends in a tie. Since the
+energy of the nervous person is divided between the effort to repress
+and the effort to gain expression, there is little left for the
+external world. There is plenty of energy wasted on emotion, physical
+symptoms, phantasy, or useless acts symbolizing the struggle.
+
+A neurotic is a normal person, "only more so." His impulses are the
+same impulses as those of every other person; his complexes are the
+same kind of complexes, only more intense. He is an exaggerated human
+being. He may be only slightly exaggerated, showing merely a little
+character-weakness or a slight physical symptom, or he may be so
+intensified as to make life miserable for himself and everybody near
+him. It is quantity, not quality, that ails him, for he differs from
+his steady-going neighbor not in kind but in degree. More of him is
+repressed and a larger part of him is fixed in a childish mold.
+
+=Tricking Ourselves.= A neurosis is a confidence game that we play on
+ourselves. It is an attempt to get stolen fruit and to look pious at
+the same time,--not in order to fool somebody else but to fool
+ourselves.
+
+No nervous symptom is what it seems to be. It is an arch pretender. It
+pretends to be afraid of something it does not fear at all, or to
+ignore something that interests it intensely. It pretends to be a
+physical disease, when primarily it has nothing to do with the body;
+and the person most deluded is the one who "owns" the symptom. Its
+purpose is to avoid the pain of disillusionment and to furnish relief
+to a distracted soul which dares not face itself.
+
+Although the true meaning of a symptom is hidden, there is fortunately
+a clue by which it can be traced. Sometimes it takes the art of a
+psychic detective to follow the clues down, down through the different
+layers of the subconscious mind, until the troublesome impulses and
+complexes are found and dragged forth,--not to be punished for
+breaking the peace but to be led toward reconciliation. But "that is
+another story," and belongs to another chapter. We are approaching THE
+WAY OUT.
+
+PART III--THE MASTERY OF "NERVES"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+_In which we pick up the clue_
+
+THE WAY OUT
+
+THE SCIENCE OF RE-EDUCATION
+
+
+There is a story of an Irishman at the World's Fair in Chicago.
+Although his funds were getting low, he made up his mind that he would
+not go home without a ride on a camel. For several minutes he stood
+before a sign reading: "First ride 25c, second ride 15c, third ride
+10c." Then, scratching his head, he exclaimed, "Faith, and I'll take
+the third ride!" Should there by any chance be a reader who, eager to
+find the way out without paying the price of knowledge, is tempted to
+say to himself "Faith, and I'll begin with Part III," we give him fair
+warning that if he does so, he will in all probability end by putting
+down the book in a confused and skeptical frame of mind.
+
+It is difficult to find our way out of a maze without some faint idea
+of the path by which we got in. He who brings to this chapter the
+popular notion that nervousness is the result of worn-out
+nerve-cells, can hardly be expected to understand how it can be cured
+by a process of mental adjustment. Suggestion to that effect can
+scarcely fail to appear to him faddish and unpractical. But once a
+person has grasped the idea that "nerves" are merely a slip in the cog
+of hidden mental machinery, and has acquired at least a
+working-knowledge of "the way the wheels go round," he can scarcely
+fail to understand that the only logical cure must consist in some
+kind of readjustment of this underground machinery. If "nerves" were
+physical, then only physical measures could cure, but as they are
+psychic, the only effective measures must be psychic.
+
+=Gross Misconceptions.= Nervousness is caused by a lack of adjustment
+to the world as it is; therefore the only possible cure must be some
+sort of readjustment between the person's inner forces and the demands
+of the social world. As this lack of adjustment is concerned chiefly
+with the repressed instinct of reproduction, it is only natural that
+there should be people who believe that "the way out" lies in some
+form of physical satisfaction of the sex-impulse--in marriage, in
+changing or ignoring the social code, in homo-sexual relations or in
+the practice of masturbation. But we have only to look about us to see
+that this prescription does not cure. Freud naively asks whether he
+would be likely to take three years to uncover and loosen the psychic
+resistances of his patients, if the simple prescription of sex-license
+would give relief.
+
+Since there are as many married neurotics as single, it is evident
+that even marriage is not a sure preventive of nervousness. License,
+on the other hand, can satisfy only a part of the individual's
+craving. Freud insists that the sex-instinct has a psychic component
+as well as a physical one, and that it is this psychic part which is
+most often repressed. He maintains that for complete satisfaction
+there must be psychic union between mates, and that gratification of
+the physical component of sex when dissociated from psychic
+satisfaction, results in an accumulation of tension that reacts badly
+on the whole organism.
+
+The psychic tension accumulating in adult sex-relations has its
+inception in the mistaken attitude on the part of the wife, who
+remains true to her childhood training that any pleasure in sex is
+vulgar; or on the part of the man, who reacts to the mood of the wife,
+or is held by his own unbroken mother-son complex; or on the part of
+both the tension piles up because of society's taboo upon rearing
+large families. As the first two factors in this lack of adjustment
+grew largely out of some kind of faulty education or from faulty
+reaction to early experiences, the only effective way to secure a
+better adaptation must be through a re-education which reaches down
+to that part of the personality that bears the stamp of the
+unfortunate early factors.
+
+=Remaking Ourselves.= As a matter of fact, the science of
+psychotherapy or mental treatment is simply the science of
+re-education,--a process designed to break up old unhealthy complexes
+which disrupt the forces of the individual, and to build up healthy
+complexes which adjust him to the social world and enable him to use
+his energy in useful ways.
+
+Fortunately, minds can be changed. It is easier to make over an
+unhealthy complex than to make over a weak heart, to straighten out a
+warped idea than to straighten a bent back. Remarkable indeed have
+been some of the transformations in people who are supposed to have
+passed the plastic period in life. While it is true that some persons
+become "set" in middle life, and almost impervious to new ideas, it is
+also true that a person at fifty has more richness of experience upon
+which to draw, more appreciation of the value of the good, than has a
+person at twenty. If he really wants to change himself, he can do
+wonderful things by re-education.
+
+The first step in this re-education is a grasp of the facts. If you
+want to pull yourself out of a nervous disorder, first of all learn as
+much as you can about the causes of "nerves," about the general laws
+of mind and body, and about your own mental quirks. If this is not
+sufficient, go to a specialist trained in psychotherapy and let him
+help you uncover those trouble-making parts of your personality which
+you cannot find for yourself. It is the purpose of this book to
+summarize the facts which most need to be known. Let us now consider
+those methods which the psychopathologist finds most useful in helping
+his patients to self-knowledge and readjustment.
+
+=Various Methods.= As there are a number of schools of medicine, so
+there are a number of distinct methods of psychotherapy, each with its
+own theories and methods of procedure, and each with its ardent
+supporters. These methods may be classified into two groups. The first
+group includes those methods, hypnosis and psycho-analysis, which make
+a thorough search through the subconscious mind for the buried
+complexes causing the trouble, and might, therefore, be called
+"re-education with subconscious exploration." The other group,
+includes so-called explanation and suggestion, or methods of
+"re-education without subconscious exploration," which content
+themselves with making a general survey and building up new complexes
+without going to the trouble of uncovering the buried past. Although
+the theory and the technique vary greatly, the aim of all these
+methods is the same,--the readjustment of the individual to life.
+
+RE-EDUCATION WITH SUBCONSCIOUS EXPLORATION
+
+=Hypnosis.= The method by which most of the important early
+discoveries were made is hypnosis, or artificial sleep, a method by
+which the conscious mind is dissociated and the subconscious brought
+to the fore. It was through hypnosis that Freud, Janet, Prince, and
+Sidis made their first investigations into the nature of nervousness
+and worked their first cures. With the conscious mind asleep and its
+inhibitions out of the way, a hypnotized patient is often able to
+remember and to disclose to the physician hidden complexes of which he
+is unaware when awake. Hypnosis may thus be a valuable aid to
+diagnosis, enabling the physician to determine the cause of
+troublesome symptoms. He may then begin to make suggestions calculated
+to break up the old complexes and to build new ones, made up of more
+healthful ideas, desirable emotions and happy feeling-tones. As we
+have seen, a hypnotized subject is highly suggestible. His
+counter-suggestions inactivated, he believes almost anything told him
+and is extremely susceptible to the doctor's influence.
+
+The dangers of hypnosis have been much exaggerated. Indeed, as an
+instrument in the hands of a competent physician, it is not to be
+feared at all. It has, however, its limitations. Many times the very
+memories which need to be unearthed refuse to come to the surface.
+Stubborn resistances are more likely to be subconscious than
+conscious, and may prove too strong to be overcome in this way.
+Moreover, the road to superficial success is very inviting. It is easy
+to cure the symptom, leaving the ultimate cause untouched and ready to
+break out in new manifestations. The drug and drink habits may be
+broken up without making any attempt to discover the unsatisfied
+longings which were responsible for the habit. A pain may be cured
+without finding the mental cause of the pain or initiating any
+measures to guard against its return, and without giving the patient
+any insight into the inner forces with which he still has to deal.
+
+Since nervousness is a state of exaggerated suggestibility and
+abnormal dissociation, many psychologists believe that it is unwise to
+employ a method which heightens the state of suggestibility and
+encourages the habit of dissociation. They feel that it is wiser to
+use less artificial methods which rest on the rational control of the
+conscious mind and make the patient better acquainted with his own
+inner forces and more permanently able to cope with new manifestations
+of those forces. They believe that the character of the patient is
+strengthened and his morale raised by methods which increase the
+sovereignty of reason and decrease the role of unreasoning
+suggestibility.
+
+=Psycho-Analysis.= Freud's contribution has been not only a discovery
+of the general causes of nervousness, but a special means of locating
+the cause in any particular case. Abandoning hypnosis, he developed
+another method which he called psycho-analysis. What chemical analysis
+is to chemistry, psycho-analysis is to the science of the mind. It
+splits up the mental content into its component parts, the better to
+be examined and modified by the conscious mind. Psycho-analysis is
+merely a technical process for discovering repressed complexes and
+bringing them into consciousness, where they may be recognized for
+what they are and altered to meet the demands of real life. It is a
+device for finding and removing the cause of nervousness,--for
+bringing to light hidden desires which may be honestly faced and
+efficiently directed instead of being left to seethe in dangerous
+insurrection. In order permanently to break up a real neurosis, a man
+must first know himself and then change himself. He must gain insight
+into his own mental processes and then systematically set to work to
+change those processes that unfit him for life.
+
+We shall later find that a detailed self-discovery through
+psycho-analysis is not always necessary, and that a more general
+understanding of oneself is sufficient for the milder kinds of
+nervousness. But because of the promise which psycho-analysis holds
+out to those stubborn cases before which other methods are powerless;
+because of the invaluable understanding of human nature which it
+places at the disposal of all nervous people, who may profit by its
+findings without undergoing an analysis; and because of the flood of
+light which it sheds on the motives, conduct, and character of every
+human being, no educated person can afford to be without a general
+knowledge of psycho-analysis.[41]
+
+[Footnote 41: It is unfortunate that the records of an analysis are
+too voluminous for use in so brief an account as this. Since the
+report of one case would fill a book, and a condensed summary would
+require a chapter, we must refer to some of the volumes which deal
+exclusively with the psychoanalytic principles. For a list of these
+books, see Bibliography.]
+
+=A Chain of Associations.= Psycho-analysis is not, like hypnosis,
+based on dissociation; it is based on the association of ideas. Its
+main feature is a process of uncritical thinking called "free
+association." To understand it, one must realize how intricately woven
+together are the thoughts of a human being and how trivial are the
+bonds of association between these ideas. One person reminds us of
+another because his hair is the same color or because he handles his
+fork in the same way. Two words are associated because they sound
+alike. Two ideas are connected because they once occurred to us at the
+same time. A subtle odor or a stray breeze serves to remind us of some
+old experience. Connections that seem far-fetched to other people may
+be quite strong enough to bind together in our minds ideas and
+emotions which have once been associated, even unconsciously, in past
+experience.
+
+In this way, thoughts in consciousness and in the upper layers of the
+subconscious are connected by a series of associations, forming links
+in invisible chains that lead to the deepest, most repressed ideas.
+Even a dissociated complex has some connection with the rest of the
+mind, if we only have the patience to discover it. Therefore, by
+adopting a passive attitude, by simply letting his thoughts wander, by
+talking out to the physician everything that comes to his mind without
+criticizing or calling any thought irrelevant or far-fetched, and
+without rejecting any thought because of its painful character, the
+patient is helped to trace down and unearth the troublesome complex
+which may have been absolutely forgotten for many years. He is helped
+to relive the childhood experiences back of the over-strong habits
+which lasted into maturity.
+
+=Resisting the Probe.= Naturally, it is not all fair sailing. The
+subconscious impulses which repressed the painful complex in the first
+place still shrink from uncovering it. In many cases the resistance is
+very strong. It, therefore, often happens that after a time the
+patient becomes restive; he begins to criticize the doctor and to
+ridicule the method. His mind goes blank and no thought will come; or
+he refuses to tell what does come. The nearer the probe comes to the
+sore spot, the greater the pain of the repressing impulses and the
+stronger the resistance. Usually a strange thing happens; the patient,
+instead of consciously remembering the forgotten experiences, begins
+to relive them with his original emotions transferred on to the
+doctor. Depending upon what person of his childhood he identifies with
+him, the patient develops either a strong affection or an intense
+antagonism to the physician, attitudes called in technical terms
+positive and negative transference. If the analyst is skilful, he is
+able to circumvent all the subterfuges of the resisting forces and to
+uncover and modify the troublesome complexes. Sometimes this can be
+accomplished at one sitting, but more often it requires long hours of
+conversation. Freud has spent three years on a single difficult case,
+and very frequently the analysis drags out through weeks or months.
+The amount of mental material is so great, especially in a person who
+is no longer young, that every analysis would probably be an
+interminable affair if it were not for three valuable ways of finding
+the clue and picking up the scent somewhere near the end of the trail.
+The first of these clues is nothing else than so despised a phenomenon
+as the patient's own night-dreams, which turn out to be not
+meaningless jargon, as we have supposed, but significant utterances of
+the inner man.
+
+=The Message of the Dream.= When Freud rescued dreams from the mental
+scrap-basket and learned how to piece them together so that their
+message to man about himself became for the first time intelligible,
+he furnished the human race with what will probably be considered its
+most valuable key to the hidden mysteries of the mind. Freeing the
+dream from the superstition of olden times and from the neglect of
+later days, Freud was the first to discover that it is part and parcel
+of man's mental life, that it has a purpose and a meaning and that the
+meaning may be scientifically deciphered. It then invariably reveals
+itself to be not a prophecy for the future but an interpretation of
+the present and of the past, an invaluable synopsis of the drama which
+is being staged within the personality of the dreamer.
+
+As modern man has swung away from the idea of the dream as a warning
+or a prophecy, he has accepted the even more untrue conception of
+dreaming as the mere sport of sleep,--the "babble of the mind," the
+fantastic and insignificant freak-play of undirected mental processes,
+or the result of physical sensations without relation to the rest of
+mental life. No wonder, then, that Freud's startling dictum, "A dream
+is a disguised fulfilment of a repressed wish," should be met with
+astonishment and incredulity. When a person is confronted for the
+first time with this statement, he invariably begins to cite dreams in
+which he is pursued by wild beasts, or in which his loved ones are
+seen lying dead. He then triumphantly asserts that no such dream
+could be the fulfilment of a wish.
+
+The trouble is that he has overlooked the word "disguised." Like wit
+and some figures of speech, a dream says something different from what
+it means. It deals in symbols. Its "manifest content" may be merely a
+fantastic and impossible scene without apparent rhyme or reason, but
+the "latent content," the hidden meaning, always expresses some urgent
+personal problem. Although the dream may seem to be impersonal and
+unemotional, it nevertheless deals in every case with some matter of
+vital concern to the dreamer himself. It is a condensed and composite
+picture of some present problem and of some related childish repressed
+wish which the experiences of the preceding day have aroused.
+
+As Frink says, a dream is like a cartoon with the labels
+omitted--absolutely unintelligible until its symbols are interpreted.
+Although some dreams whose symbolism is that which man has always
+used, can be easily understood by a person who knows, many dreams are
+meaningless, even to an experienced analyst, until the patient himself
+furnishes the labels by telling what each bit of the picture brings to
+his mind. The dream, as a rule, merely furnishes the starting-point
+for free association.
+
+Each symbol is an arrow pointing the way to forbidden impulses which
+are repressed in waking life but which find partial expression during
+sleep. The subconscious part of the conscience is still on the job, so
+the repressed desires can express themselves only in distorted ways
+which will not arouse the censor and disturb sleep. The purpose of the
+dream is thus two-fold,--to relieve the tensions of unsatisfied
+desire, and to do this in such a subtle way as to keep the dreamer
+asleep. Sometimes it fails of its purpose, but when there is danger of
+our discovering too much about ourselves, we immediately wake up,
+saying that we have had a bad dream.
+
+It is at first difficult to believe that we are capable of this
+elaborate mental work while we are fast asleep. However, a little
+investigation shows us to be more clever than we realize. The
+subconscious mind, in its effort to satisfy both the repressing and
+the repressed impulses, carries on very complicated processes,
+disguises material by allowing one person to stand for another, two
+persons to stand for one, or one person to stand for two; it shifts
+emotion from important to trivial matters, dramatizes, condenses, and
+elaborates, with a skill that is amazing. We are all of us very clever
+playwrights and makers of allegories--in our sleep. Also, we are all
+very clever at getting what we want, and the dream secures for us, in
+a way, something which we want very much indeed and which the world
+of social restraint or our own warped childish notion denies us.
+
+Not every one can become an interpreter of dreams. It takes a skilled
+and patient specialist thoroughly to understand the process. But it is
+fortunate indeed that we possess such a valuable means of diagnosis
+when extraordinary conditions make it necessary to explore the
+subconscious in the search for trouble-making complexes.[42]
+
+[Footnote 42: For further study of the dream, see Freud:
+_Interpretation of Dreams_; and _General Introduction to
+Psycho-Analysis_.]
+
+=The Word-Test.= Although dreams furnish the main clues to buried
+complexes, they are by no means the only instrument of the
+psycho-analyst. Another device, called the association word-test, has
+been developed by Dr. Carl Jung of Switzerland. The analyst prepares a
+list of perhaps one hundred words, which he reads one by one to the
+patient, hoping in this way to strike some of the emotional reactions
+of which the patient himself is unaware. The latter responds with the
+first word that comes into his mind, no matter how absurd it may seem.
+The responses themselves are often significant, but the time that
+elapses is even more so. It usually happens that it takes very much
+longer for some responses than for others. If a patient's average time
+is one or two seconds, some responses may take five or ten or twenty
+seconds. Sometimes no word comes at all and the patient says that his
+mind is a blank. He coughs or blushes, grows pale or trembles, showing
+all the signs of emotion even when he himself has no notion of the
+cause. The significant word has hit upon a subconscious association
+with some emotional complex. The blocking of the mind is an effort of
+the resistance to keep the painful ideas out of consciousness. The
+telltale word then furnishes a starting point for further
+associations.
+
+One of my patients blocked on the word "long." Instead of saying
+"short" or "pencil" or "road" or "day" or any other word which might
+naturally be associated with "long," she laughed and said that no word
+would come. Finally an emotional memory came to light. It seems that
+this woman had been courted by a man whom she unconsciously loved, but
+whom she had "turned down" because she was ambitious for a career.
+After the man had moved to another town, my patient heard that he was
+engaged to another girl. She then realized that she loved him and
+began to long for him with her whole heart. The meaningful word "long"
+thus led us to one of the emotional memories for which we were
+seeking.
+
+="Chance" Signs.= There are other clues to hidden inner processes,
+other sign-posts pointing to the cause of a neurosis. Not only through
+dreams and through emotional reactions to certain words does the
+subconscious reveal its desires, but also through the little slips of
+the tongue and of the pen, the "chance" acts and unconscious
+mannerisms which are usually ignored as entirely insignificant. When
+we "make a break" and say what we secretly mean but wish to hide from
+ourselves or others; when we forget an appointment which part of us
+really wishes to avoid, or forget a name with which we are perfectly
+familiar; when we lose the pen so that we cannot write or the desk key
+so that we cannot work; when we blunder and drop things and do what we
+did not mean to do; then we may know--the normal as well as the
+nervous person--that our subconscious minds with their repressed
+desires are trying to get the reins and are partially succeeding.
+
+An example from my own life may illustrate the point. In building a
+number of houses, I had occasion often to use the word studding, but
+on every occasion, I forgot the word and always had to end lamely by
+saying "those pieces of timber that go up and down." Each time the
+builder supplied the word, but the next time it was no more
+accessible. Finally, the reason came to me. One day when I was a
+little child I looked out of the window and cried, "Oh, see that great
+big beautiful horse." My grandmother exclaimed, "Sh! sh! that is a
+stud horse." Over-reaction to that impression repressed the word stud
+so successfully that as a grown woman I could not recall another word
+which happened to contain the same syllable.
+
+During an analysis a patient of mine who had a mother-in-law situation
+on her hands told me a dream of the night before. "I dreamed that my
+mother-in-law, who has really been very ill, was taken with a
+sinking-spell. I rushed to the telephone to call the doctor, but found
+to my terror that I could not remember his number." "What is his
+number?" I asked, knowing that she ought to know it perfectly.
+"Two-eight-nine-six," she answered at once. The number really was
+2876. Asleep and awake, her repressed desire for release from the
+mother-in-law's querulous presence was attempting to have its way. In
+the dream, she avoided calling the doctor by forgetting his number
+entirely. Awake, she evaded the issue by remembering a wrong number.
+In the dream she thinly disguised her desire by displacing the anxious
+emotion from the sense of her own guilty wishes to the idea of the
+mother-in-law's death. When confronted with this interpretation, the
+woman readily acknowledged its truth.
+
+Even stammering, which has always been considered a physical disorder,
+has been proved, by psycho-analysis, to be the sign of an emotional
+disturbance. H. Addington Bruce reports the case of one of Dr. Brill's
+patients, a young man who had been stammering for several years.
+Observation revealed the fact that his chief difficulty was with
+words beginning with K and although at first he firmly denied any
+significance to the letter, he later confessed that his sweetheart
+whose name began with K had eloped with his best friend and that he
+had vowed never to mention her name again. Upon Dr. Brill's suggestion
+he tried to think of the unfaithful lover as Miss W., but soon
+returned, saying that he was stammering worse than ever. Investigation
+showed that the additional unpronounceable words contained the letter
+W. When he was induced to renounce his oath never to call the girl's
+name again, he found that he had no more difficulty with his
+speech.[43]
+
+[Footnote 43: H. Addington Bruce; "Stammering and Its Cure,"
+_McClure's_, February, 1913.]
+
+Thus we see that even the halting tongue of a stammerer may point the
+way to the buried complex for which search is being made.
+
+Since there is no accident in mental life, and since there is behind
+every action a force or group of forces, no smallest action is
+insignificant to the person trained to understand.
+
+If this at first seems disturbing, it is only because we do not
+realize that there is nothing within of which we need be ashamed.
+People are very much alike, especially in the deeper layers of their
+being. What belongs to the whole human race does not need to be
+hidden away in darkness. There is nothing to lose and everything to
+gain by an increasing understanding of the chance signals which reveal
+the forces at work within the depths of the mind. To the analyst every
+little unconscious act is a valuable clue pointing toward the end of
+his quest.[44]
+
+[Footnote 44: For further discussion of this subject, see Freud's
+_Psycho-pathology of Everyday Life_, translated by A.A. Brill.]
+
+=The Aim of Psycho-Analysis.= As we have seen, the object of all this
+technique is the discovery and the removal of the resistances which
+have been keeping the emotional conflicts in the dark. It is a long
+step just to learn that there are resistances; and by reliving, bit by
+bit, the earlier experiences responsible for unfortunate habits, we
+find that the habits themselves lose much of their old power. They can
+be seen for what they are, and changed to suit present conditions. A
+wish is incomparably stronger when unconscious than when conscious;
+and the old stereotyped, automatic reactions tend to cease when once
+they have been seen for what they are. They become assimilated with
+the rest of the personality and modified by the mature attitudes of
+the conscious mind. The person then re-educates himself by the very
+act of discovering himself. In other cases, the uncovering is merely
+the first step in the process of re-education. The analyst then
+assumes the role of educator, cutting away old shackles, breaking down
+false standards, building up new complexes, showing the patient the
+naturalness of his desires, inducing him to look at them as biologic
+facts, and showing him how to sublimate those which may not find
+direct expression; in fact, leading him out into the self-expression
+of a free, unhampered life.[45]
+
+[Footnote 45: "It will be readily understood that in the
+reconstruction of the shattered purposes, the frustrated hopes and the
+outraged instincts which are found to lie at the source of those human
+woes we call 'nervous disorders,' there takes place a gradual
+transposition of values, a total recasting of ideas, and that through
+the whole process, education in the deepest meaning of the word,
+enters at last into its full sovereign rights."--Trigant Burrow.]
+
+Among my patients at one time was a woman subject to terrible fits of
+despondency. She was happily married and enjoyed the marriage
+relationship, but could not free herself from a terrible sense of
+guilt and degradation, a sense which was so acute that she wanted to
+end her life. Although she was an active member of a church, she was
+starving for the real message of the church, continually bound by a
+feeling of aloofness which made her a stranger in the midst of
+friends. Psycho-analysis revealed an experience of her childhood which
+she had kept a secret all these years. It seems that when she was
+seven years of age an old minister had driven her into town and had
+made some sort of sex-approach on the way. Although ignorant of its
+significance, the child was badly frightened and overcome with a sense
+of guilt. She had already inferred that such subjects were not to be
+mentioned and she hesitated long before telling even her mother.
+Smoldering within her through the years had been this emotional
+complex about the sex-life and about people connected with a church,
+so that even as a grown woman the relationships of her mature years
+were completely ruined by her old childish reaction. With insight as
+to the cause of her trouble, she was able to modify her attitudes and
+to live a free and happy life.
+
+Several years ago there came to me a man of exceptional intellectual
+ability, who for years had been totally incapacitated because of blind
+resistances built up in childhood. Although married to a woman whom he
+thoroughly liked and admired, he was absolutely miserable in his
+married life. He had, in fact, a deep-rooted complex against marriage,
+and had only allowed himself to be captured because the woman, with
+whom he had been good friends, had cried when he refused to marry her.
+During analysis it transpired that as a little boy of four he had
+often seen his silly young mother cry because she could not have a new
+dress. He had taken her side and bitterly felt that she was abused by
+his father. Later, at six, he had heard some coarse stories about sex
+to which he had over-reacted. Still later he had heard the workmen on
+the farm say that they could not go to the gold-fields because they
+had wives and were held back by marriage. "There are no idle words
+where children are," and this little boy had built up such a strong
+complex against marriage that he could not possibly be happy as a
+grown man. He was as much crippled by the old scar as is an arm which
+is bent and stunted from a deep scar in the flesh. After the analysis
+had broken up the adhesions, he found himself free, able to give
+mature expression to his repressed and dissatisfied love-instincts.
+
+Psycho-analysis is not a process of addition, but one of subtraction.
+Like a surgical operation, it undoes the results of old injuries,
+removes foreign material, and gives nature a chance to develop freely
+in her own satisfactory way.
+
+
+RE-EDUCATION WITHOUT SUBCONSCIOUS EXPLORATION
+
+=Simple Explanation.= So far, "the way out" sounds rather involved. It
+seems to require a special kind of doctor and a complicated, lengthy
+process before the exact trouble can be determined. But, fortunately
+for the average nervous patient, this lengthy process of analysis is
+by no means always necessary. People with troublesome nervous
+symptoms, and even those who have had a serious breakdown, are
+constantly being cured by a kind of re-education which breaks up
+subconscious complexes without trying to bring them to the surface. If
+the dead past can be let alone, so much the better. Sometimes a
+bullet buried in the flesh sends up a constant stream of discomfort
+until it is dug out and removed; but if it has carried in no infection
+and the body can adjust itself, it is usually considered better to let
+it remain.
+
+The subconscious makes its own deductions. If resistances are not too
+strong it is often possible to introduce healthy ideas by way of the
+conscious reason, to break up old habits, and make over the mentality
+without going to the trouble of uncovering some of the reactions which
+are responsible for the difficulty.
+
+=Moral Hygiene.= Because this is true, there has grown up a kind of
+psychotherapy which is known as simple explanation, or persuasion. As
+usually practised, this kind of re-education pays very little
+attention to the ultimate cause of "nerves." It has little to say
+about repressed instincts or the real reasons for fearful emotions and
+physical symptoms. Instead, it attacks the symptom itself, contenting
+itself with teaching the patient that his trouble is psychic in
+origin; that it is based on exaggerated suggestibility and
+uncontrolled emotionalism; that it is made out of false ideas about
+the body, illogical conclusions, and unhealthy feeling-tones; and that
+it may be cured by a kind of moral hygiene, which breaks up these old
+habits and replaces them with new and better ones. It tries to
+inculcate the cheerful attitude of mind; to give the patient the
+conviction of power; to correct his false ideas about his stomach, his
+heart, or his head; to train him out of his emotionalism; to lead him
+into a state of mind more largely controlled by reason; and to make
+him find some useful and absorbing work.
+
+This kind of mental and moral treatment has been sufficient to cure
+many neuroses of long standing. In cases that are helped by this
+method, the patient's love-force, robbed of the material out of which
+it has woven its disguise, and trained out of its bad habits by
+re-education, automatically makes its own readjustments and forces new
+channels for itself out into more useful activities. Very many nervous
+persons seem to need nothing more than this simple kind of help.
+
+=When Simple Explanation Does not Explain.= For very many cases,
+however, this procedure, good as it is, does not go deep enough.
+Although it gives a sound objective education about the facts of one's
+body, it furnishes only the most superficial subjective knowledge of
+one's inner life. If the inner struggle be bitter, the competing
+forces will hold on to their poor refuge in the symptom, despite any
+number of explanations that the symptom can have no physical cause.
+Sometimes it is enough for a person to be shown that he is too
+suggestible, but often it is far more helpful for him to get an
+inkling as to why he likes unhealthy suggestions, and to understand
+something of his starved instincts which he may learn to satisfy in
+better ways.
+
+
+PSYCHOLOGICAL EXPLANATION
+
+Between the two extremes of the cases which need a real analysis and
+those which are cured by simple explanation, I have found the great
+bulk of nervous cases. To simple explanation with its highly useful
+information, I therefore add what might be called psychological
+explanation, a re-education which makes use of all that illuminating
+material unearthed by the explorations of hypnosis and especially of
+psycho-analysis. Along with correct ideas about such matters as
+digestion, sleep, and fatigue, I give, so far as the patient is able
+to understand, a comprehension of the rights of the denied instincts,
+the ways of the subconscious, the fettering hold of unfortunate
+childish habits, the various mental mechanisms by which we fool
+ourselves, and the ways by which we may make better adaptations.
+
+=According to the Patient.= The treatment varies according to the
+nature of the trouble, and is somewhat dependent on the mentality of
+the patient. There are many people who would only be confused by being
+forced into a study of mental phenomena. Not being students, they
+would be more bewildered than helped by the details of their inner
+mechanisms. Others, of studious habits and inquiring minds, are
+encouraged to browse at will in a library of psychotherapy and to
+learn all that they can from the best authorities.
+
+In any case, I give the patients as much as they are able to take of
+my own understanding of the subject. There are no secrets in this
+method. The patient is treated as a rational human being who has
+nothing to lose and everything to gain by the fullest knowledge that
+he is able to acquire. Without forcing him to plunge in over his
+depth, I encourage him to understand himself to the fullest possible
+extent. Besides individual private conferences, we have twice a day an
+informal gathering of all the patients in my household--"the family"
+as we like to call ourselves--for a reading or talk on the various
+ways of the body and the mind, which need to be understood for normal
+living and for the cure of nerves. Very often people of only average
+education, long without the opportunity of study, gain in a
+surprisingly short time enough insight to make new adaptations and
+cure themselves. For this, a college education is not nearly so
+important as an open mind. It is because of the success of this method
+that I have been encouraged to reach a larger number of people by
+means of a book, based on the same plan of re-education.
+
+=Explanation vs. Suggestion.= Re-education through this kind of
+explanation is simply a matter of learning the truth and acting upon
+it. It is a process of real enlightenment, and is very different from
+suggestion which trades upon the patient's credulity, increasing his
+already exaggerated suggestibility.
+
+Freud illustrates the difference between suggestion and
+psycho-analysis by saying that suggestion is like painting and
+psycho-analysis like sculpture. Painting adds something from the
+outside, plastering over the canvas with extraneous matter, while
+sculpture cuts away the unnecessary material and reveals the angel in
+the marble. So suggestion covers over the real trouble by crying,
+"Peace, peace, when there is no peace." Without attempting to remove
+the cause, it says to the patient: "You have no pain. You are not
+tired. You will sleep to-night. You will be cheerful." Sometimes the
+suggestion works and sometimes it does not, but at best the relief is
+likely to be a mere temporary makeshift. The symptom may be relieved,
+but the character is not changed and therefore no permanent relief is
+assured. It is far better for a nervous person to say to himself,
+"There is something wrong and I am going to find it," than to keep
+repeating over and over, "There is nothing wrong," and so on through a
+list of half-believed autosuggestions.
+
+On the other hand, psycho-analysis, and this kind of re-education
+based on psycho-analytic principles, do not pay a great deal of
+attention to the individual symptom. Instead of adding from without
+they try to take away whatever has proved a hindrance to normal
+growth and development, and to remove unnecessary resistances which
+are responsible for the symptom, and which have been holding the
+patient back from the fullest self-expression.
+
+=Incantation vs. Knowledge.= There came to me one day a well-known
+public woman who had suffered from nervous indigestion for many years.
+As she was able to be with me for only one night, we had time for just
+one conversation, but in that time she discovered what she was doing
+and lost her indigestion. In the course of the conversation she turned
+to me, saying: "Doctor, I know what a force suggestion is. I believe
+in its power. Will you tell me why I have not been able to cure myself
+of this trouble? Every night after I go to bed I repeat over and over
+these Bible verses," naming a number of passages relating to God's
+goodness and care for His children. My answer was something like this:
+"You are too intelligent a woman to be cured by an incantation. When
+you feel surging up within you the sense of God's goodness, or when
+you actually want to realize His loving kindness, then by all means
+repeat the verses. But don't prostitute those wonderful words by
+making them into a charm and then expect them to cure your
+indigestion. It is a desecration of the words and a denial of your own
+intelligence. Autosuggestion is a powerful force, but real
+psychotherapy is based not on the mechanical repetition of any set of
+words, but on a knowledge of the truth."
+
+=The "Bullying Method."= Sometimes, to be sure, explanation is not
+enough. The brain paths between the associated ideas are so deeply
+worn that no amount of persuasion avails. It is easy for the doubter
+to say: "Well, that sounds very well, but my case is different. I have
+tried over and over again and I know." With people of this sort, an
+ounce of demonstration is worth a pound of argument.
+
+By way of illustration we might mention the man who couldn't eat eggs.
+To be sure, he had tried many times but always had suffered the most
+intense cramps in his stomach, and no amount of talk could make him
+believe that an egg was not poison to him. I took the straight road of
+simply proving to him that he was mistaken, and had him eat an egg.
+After a time of apprehension and retching, he vomited the egg,
+thinking, of course, that he had proved his point. To his
+astonishment, I said, "Now, let's go and eat another." With great
+consternation, he finally complied, evidently expecting to die on the
+spot; but as I immediately prescribed a game of tennis, he scarcely
+had time to think of the pain, which in fact failed to appear.
+However, as he thereafter insisted on eating four eggs a day,--with
+eggs at top-notch price I decided that the joke was on the doctor!
+
+=Enjoying the Right Things.= In substituting healthful complexes for
+unhealthful ones, psychotherapy not only changes ideas and emotions,
+but alters the feelings of pleasure or pain that are bound up with the
+ideas. Dr. Tom A. Williams writes: "The essence of psychotherapy and
+education is to associate useful activities with agreeable
+feeling-tones and to dissociate from injurious acts the agreeable
+feeling-tones that may have been acquired." Right character consists
+not so much in enjoying things as in enjoying the right things.
+
+Some people enjoy being martyrs. They love to tell about the terrible
+strain they have been under, the amount of work they have done, or the
+number of times they have collapsed. One of my patients gave every
+evidence of satisfaction as he told about his various breakdowns. "The
+last time I was ill," or "That time when I was in the sanatorium,"
+were frequent phrases on his lips. Finally, after I had asked him if
+he would boast about the number of times he had awkwardly fallen down
+in the street, and had shown him that a neurosis is not really a
+matter to be proud of, he saw the point and stopped taking pleasure in
+his mistakes.
+
+Such signs of pleasure in the wrong things are evidence of suppressed
+wishes which we do not acknowledge but try to gratify in indirect
+ways.[46] The pleasure which ought to be associated with the idea of
+good work well done has somehow been switched over to the idea of
+being an invalid. The satisfaction which ought to go with a sense of
+power and ability to do things has attached itself to the idea of
+weakness and inability. The pleasurable feeling-tone which normally
+belongs to ministering to others, regresses in the nervous invalid to
+the infantile satisfaction of being ministered unto.
+
+[Footnote 46: For a further elaboration of this theme, see Holt: _The
+Freudian Wish_.]
+
+But these things are only a habit. A good look in the mirror soon
+makes one right about face and start in the other direction. Once
+started, a good habit is built up with surprising ease. It is really
+much more satisfying to cook a good dinner for the family's comfort
+than to think about one's ills; much pleasanter to enjoy a good meal
+than to insist on hot water and toast. Once we have satisfied our
+suppressed longings in more desirable ways, or by a process of
+self-training have initiated a new set of habits, we feel again the
+old zest in normal affairs, the old interest and pleasure in
+activities which add to the joy of life. Thus does re-education fit a
+man to take his place in the world's work as a socially useful being,
+no longer a burden, but a contributor to the sum total of human
+happiness.
+
+
+SUMMARY
+
+=Knowing and Doing.= Having set out to learn how to outwit our
+nerves, we are now ready to sum up conclusions and in the following
+chapters to apply them to the more common nervous symptoms. It has
+been shown that a nervous person is in great need of change,--not,
+indeed, a change in climate or in scene, in work or in diet, but a
+change in the hidden recesses of his own being. Outwitting nerves
+means first and foremost changing one's mind, an inner and spiritual
+process very different from the kind of change which used to be
+prescribed for the nervous invalid.
+
+As Putnam says, the slogan of the suggestion-school of psychotherapy
+has always been, "You can do better if you try"; while that of the
+psycho-analytic school is, "You can do better when you know." Refuting
+the old adage, "Where ignorance is bliss 'tis folly to be wise," the
+best methods of psychotherapy insist that the first step in any
+thorough-going attempt to change oneself must be the great step of
+self-knowledge. As the conflicts which result in "nerves" are always
+far beyond those mental regions which are open to scrutiny, a real
+self-knowledge requires an examination of the half-conscious or wholly
+unconscious longings which are usually ignored. A real understanding
+of self comes only when one is willing, to analyze his motives until
+he sees the connection between them and his nervous symptoms, which
+are but the symbolic gratification of desires he dares not
+acknowledge.
+
+Although these deeply buried complexes are the real force behind a
+nervous illness, the material out of which the symptoms are
+manufactured is taken largely from superficial misconceptions
+concerning the bodily functions. It is therefore a great help, also,
+to possess a fund of information,--not technical nor detailed but
+accurate as far as it goes,--about the more important workings of the
+bodily machinery. A little knowledge about the actual chemistry of
+fatigue and the way it is automatically cared for by the body is
+likely to do away with the idea of nervous exhaustion as resulting
+from accumulation of fatigue. A simple understanding of the biological
+and physiological facts concerning the assimilation of food and the
+elimination of waste material leaves the intelligent person less ready
+to convert his psychic discomfort into indigestion and constipation.
+Chapters IX to XIII in this book, which at first glance may seem to
+belong to a work on physiology rather than on psychology are designed
+to give just such needed insight.
+
+But knowing the truth is only the first half of the way out. Every
+neurosis is a deliberate choice by a part of the personality.
+Self-discovery is helpful only when it leads to better ways of
+self-expression. The final aim of psychotherapy is the happy
+adjustment of the individual to the demands of society and the
+establishment of useful outlets for his energy. This phase of the
+subject will be discussed more fully in Chapter XVI.
+
+=The Future Hope.= Much has been said about the cure of a neurosis.
+There are enough people already in the maze of nervousness to warrant
+the setting up of numerous signs reading, "This way out." But after
+all, is not a blocking of the way in of vastly more importance? As it
+is always easier to prevent than to cure, so it is easier to train
+than to reform. If re-education is the cure, why is not education the
+ounce of prevention which shall settle the problem for all time?
+
+If the general public understood what "nerves" are, it is hardly
+conceivable that there could be so many breakdowns as there are at
+present. If a man's family and friends, to say nothing of himself,
+understood what he is doing when he suddenly collapses and has to quit
+work, it is not likely that he would choose that way out of his
+difficulties.
+
+Most important of all, when parents know that the foundation of
+nervousness is laid in childhood, they will see to it that their
+children are started right on the road to health. When fathers and
+mothers realize that an over-strong bond between parents and children
+is responsible for a large proportion of nervous troubles, most of
+them will make sure that such exaggeration is not allowed to develop.
+
+And, finally, when parents are freed from their "conspiracy of
+silence" by a reverent attitude toward the whole of life, their very
+saneness will impart to their children a wholesome respect for the
+reproductive instinct. There will then be found in the next generation
+fewer half-starved men and women carrying the burden of unnecessary
+repressions and the pain of unsatisfied yearnings.
+
+Not that such a day will usher in the millennium. We are not
+suggesting a panacea for all the social ills. There is an inevitable
+conflict between the instinctive urge of the life-force and the
+demands of society, a conflict which makes men and women either finer
+or baser, according to the way they handle it. What is claimed is that
+the right kind of education--using the word in its largest, deepest
+sense--will remove the most fruitful cause of nervousness by taking
+away the extra burden of misconception and making it easier for people
+to be "content with being moral."[47]
+
+[Footnote 47: Frink: _Morbid Fears and Compulsions._]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+_In which we discover new stores of energy and learn the truth about
+fatigue_
+
+THAT TIRED FEELING
+
+UNFAILING RESOURCES
+
+
+"They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall
+mount up with wings as eagles. They shall run and not be weary. They
+shall walk and not faint."
+
+It is safe to say that many a person loves this promise of the prophet
+Isaiah without taking it in anything like a literal sense. The words
+are considered to be so figurative and so highly spiritualized that
+they seem scarcely to relate at all to this earthly life, much less to
+the possibilities of these physical bodies.
+
+Besides the nervous folk who feel themselves so weary that they
+scarcely have strength to live, there are thousands upon thousands of
+men and women who are called normal but who have lost much of the joy
+of life because they feel their bodies inadequate to meet the demands
+of everyday living.
+
+To such men and women the Biblical promise, "As thy day, so shall thy
+strength be," comes now as the message of modern science. Nature is
+not stingy. She has not given the human race a meager inheritance. She
+did not blunder when she made the human body, nor did she allow the
+spirit of man to develop a civilization to whose demand his body is
+not equal. After its long process of development through the survival
+of the fittest, the human body, unless definitely diseased, is a
+perfectly adequate instrument, as abundantly able to cope with the
+complex demands of modern society as with the simpler but more
+strenuous life of the stone age. The body has stored within its cells
+enough energy in the shape of protein, carbohydrate and fat to meet
+and more than meet any drains that are likely to be made upon it,
+either through the monotony of the daily grind or the excitement of
+sudden emergency. Nature never runs on a narrow margin. Her motto
+seems everywhere to be, "Provide for the emergency, enough and to
+spare, good measure, pressed down, running over." She does not start
+her engines out with insufficient steam to complete the journey. On
+the contrary, she has in most instances reserve boilers which are
+almost never touched. As a rule the trouble is not so much a lack of
+steam as the ignorance of the engineer who is unacquainted with his
+engine and afraid to "let her out."
+
+="The Energies of Men."= Perhaps nothing has done so much to reveal
+the hidden powers of mankind as that remarkable essay of Professor
+William James, "The Energies of Men."[48] Listen to his introductory
+paragraph as he opens up to us new "levels of energy" which are
+usually "untapped":
+
+[Footnote 48: James: _On Vital Reserves_.]
+
+     Every one knows what it is to start a piece of work, either
+     intellectual or muscular, feeling stale--or _cold_, as an
+     Adirondack guide once put it to me. And everybody knows what it
+     is to "warm up to his job." The process of warming up gets
+     particularly striking in the phenomenon known as the "second
+     wind." On usual occasions we make a practice of stopping an
+     occupation as soon as we meet the first effective layer (so to
+     call it) of fatigue. We have then walked, played or worked
+     "enough," so we desist. That amount of fatigue is an efficacious
+     obstruction on this side of which our usual life is cast. But if
+     an unusual necessity forces us to press onward, a surprising
+     thing occurs. The fatigue gets worse up to a certain critical
+     point, when gradually or suddenly it passes away, and we are
+     fresher than before. We have evidently tapped a level of new
+     energy, masked until then by the fatigue-obstacle usually obeyed.
+     There may be layer after layer of this experience. A third and
+     fourth "wind" may supervene. Mental activity shows the phenomenon
+     as well as physical, and in exceptional cases we
+     may find, beyond the very extremity of fatigue-distress, amounts
+     of ease and power that we never dreamed ourselves to own, sources
+     of strength habitually not taxed at all, because habitually we
+     never push through the obstruction, never pass those early
+     critical points.
+
+Again Professor James says:
+
+     Of course there are limits; the trees don't grow into the sky.
+     But the plain fact remains that men the world over possess
+     amounts of resource which only very exceptional individuals push
+     to their extremes of use. But the very same individual, pushing
+     his energies to their extreme, may in a vast number of cases keep
+     the pace up day after day, and find no "reaction" of a bad sort,
+     so long as decent hygienic conditions are preserved. His more
+     active rate of energizing does not wreck him; for the organism
+     adapts itself, and as the rate of waste augments, augments
+     correspondingly the rate of repair.[49]
+
+[Footnote 49: Ibid., pp. 6-7.]
+
+Another psychologist, Boris Sidis, writes: "But a very small fraction
+of the total amount of energy possessed by the organism is used in its
+relation with the ordinary stimuli of its environment."[50] These
+men--Professor James and Dr. Sidis--represent not young enthusiasts
+who ignorantly fancy that every one shares their own abundant
+strength, but careful men of science who have repeatedly been able to
+unearth unsuspected supplies of energy in "worn out" men and women,
+supposed to be at the end of their resources. Every successful
+physician and every leader of men knows the truth of these statements.
+What would have happened in the great war if Marshal Foch had not
+known that his men possessed powers far beyond their ken, and had not
+had sublime faith in the "second wind"?
+
+[Footnote 50: Sidis: P. 112 of the composite volume
+_Pychotherapeutics_.]
+
+=What about Being Tired?= If all these things are true, why do people
+need to be told? If man's equipment is so adequate and his reserves
+are so ample, why after all these centuries of living does the human
+race need to learn from science the truth about its own powers? The
+average man is very likely to say that it is all very well for a
+scientist sitting in his laboratory to tell him about hidden
+resources, but that he knows what it is to be tired. Is not the crux
+of the whole question summed up in that word "tired"? If we do not
+need to rest, why should fatigue exist? If the purpose of fatigue
+seems to be to slow down our efforts, why should we disregard it or
+seek to evade its warnings? The whole question resolves itself into
+this: What is fatigue? In view of the hampering effect of
+misconception on this point, it is evident that the question is not
+academic, but intensely practical. We shall find that fatigue is of
+two kinds,--true and false, or physical and moral, or physiological
+and nervous,--and that while the two kinds feel very much alike,
+their origin and behavior are quite different.
+
+
+PHYSIOLOGICAL FATIGUE
+
+=Fatigue, not Exhaustion.= In the first place, then, fatigue very
+seldom means a lack of strength or an exhaustion of energy. The
+average man in the course of a lifetime probably never knows what it
+is to be truly exhausted. If he should become so tired that he could
+in no circumstances run for his life, no matter how many wild beasts
+were after him, then it might seem that he had drained himself of all
+his store of energy. But even in that case, a large part of his
+fatigue would be the result of another cause.
+
+=A Matter of Chemistry.= True fatigue is a chemical affair. It is the
+result of recent effort,--physical, mental, or emotional,--and is the
+sum of sensations arising from the presence of waste material in the
+muscles and the blood. The whole picture becomes clear if we think of
+the body as a factory whose fires continuously burn, yielding heat and
+energy, together with certain waste material,--carbon dioxide and ash.
+Within man's body the fuel, instead of being the carbon of coal is the
+carbon of glycogen or animal starch, taken in as food and stored away
+within the cells of the muscles and the liver. The oxygen for
+combustion is continuously supplied by the lungs. So far the factory
+is well equipped to maintain its fires. Nor does it fail when it comes
+to carrying away waste products. Like all factories, the body has its
+endless chain arrangement, the blood stream, which automatically picks
+up the debris in its tiny buckets--the blood-cells and serum--and
+carries it away to the several dumping-grounds in lungs, kidneys,
+intestines, and skin.
+
+Besides the products of combustion, there are always to be washed away
+some broken-down particles from the tissues themselves, which, like
+all machinery, are being continuously worn out and repaired. By
+chemical tests in the laboratory, the physiologist finds that a muscle
+which has recently been in violent exercise contains among other
+things carbon dioxid, urea, creatin, and sarco-lactic acid, none of
+which are found in a rested muscle. Since all this debris is acid in
+reaction and since we are "marine animals," at home only in salt water
+or alkaline solution, the cells must be quickly washed of the fatigue
+products, which, if allowed to accumulate, would very soon poison the
+body and put out the fires.
+
+=No Back Debts.= The human machine is regulated to carry away its
+fatigue products as fast as they are made, with but slight lagging
+behind that is made good in the hours of sleep, when bodily activities
+are lessened and time is allowed for repair. Unless the body is
+definitely diseased, it virtually never carries over its fatigue from
+one day to another. In the matter of fatigue, there are no old debts
+to pay. Nature renews herself in cycles, and her cycle is twenty-four
+hours,--not nine or ten months as many school-teachers seem to
+imagine, or eleven months as some business men suppose. In order to
+make assurance doubly sure, many set apart every seventh day for a
+rest day, for change of occupation and thought, and for catching up
+any slight arrears which might exist. But the point is that a healthy
+body never gets far behind.
+
+If through some flaw in the machine, waste products do pile up, they
+destroy the machine. If the heart leaks or the blood-cells fail in
+their carrying-power, or if lungs, kidneys or skin are out of repair,
+there is sometimes an accumulation of fatigue products which poisons
+the whole system and ends in death. But the person with tuberculosis
+or heart trouble does not usually allow this to happen. The body
+incapacitated by disease limits its activities as closely as possible
+within the range of its power to take care of waste matter. Even the
+sick body does not carry about its old toxins. The man who had not
+eliminated the poisons of a month-old effort would not be a tired man.
+He would be a dead man.
+
+=A Sliding Scale.= If all this be true, real fatigue can only be the
+result of recent effort. If one is still alive, the results of earlier
+effort must long since have disappeared. The tissue-cells retain not
+the slightest trace of its effects. Fatigue cannot possibly last,
+because it either kills us or cures itself. Up to a certain point, far
+beyond our usual high-water mark, the more a person does the more he
+can do. As Professor James has pointed out, the rate of repair
+increases with the rate of combustion. Under unusual stress, the rate
+of the whole machine is increased: the heart-pump speeds up,
+respirations deepen and quicken, the blood flows faster, the endless
+chain of filling and emptying buckets hurries the interchange of
+oxygen and carbon dioxid, until the extreme capacity is reached and
+the organism refuses to do more without a period of rest.
+
+The whole arrangement illustrates the wonderful provisions of Nature.
+Although each individual is continuously manufacturing enough
+carbonic-acid gas to kill himself in a very few minutes, he need not
+be alarmed for fear that he may forget to expel his own poisons.
+Nobody can hold his breath for more than a few minutes. The naughty
+baby sometimes tries, but when he begins to get black in the face, he
+takes a breath in spite of himself. The presence of carbonic-acid gas
+in the circulation automatically regulates breathing, and the greater
+the amount of gas the deeper the breath. The faster we burn the faster
+we blow. As with breathing, so with all the rest of elimination and
+repair. The body dares not get behind.
+
+="Second Wind."= A city man frequently sets out on a mountain tramp
+without any muscular preparation for the trip. He walks ten or fifteen
+miles when his average is not over one or two. Sometimes after a few
+hours he feels himself exhausted, but a glorious view opens out before
+him and he goes on with new zest. He has merely increased his rate of
+repair and drawn on a new stock of energy. That night he is tired, and
+the next day he is likely to be stiff and sore. There is a little
+fatigue left in him, but it takes only a day or two for the body to be
+wholly refreshed, especially if he hastens the process by another good
+walk. Up to a certain point, far beyond our usual limit, the more we
+do, the more we can do.
+
+One day after a long walk my little daughter said that she could go no
+farther and waited to be carried. But she soon spied a dog on ahead
+and ran off after him with new zest. She followed the dog back and
+forth, running more than a mile before she reached home, and then in
+the exuberance of her spirits, ran around the house three times.
+
+=The Emotions Again.= What is the key that unlocks new stores of
+energy and drives away fatigue? What is it in the amateur
+mountain-climbers that helps the body maintain its new standard? What
+keeps indefatigable workers on the job long after the ordinary man has
+tired? Is it not always an invigorating emotion,--the zest of
+pursuit, the joy of battle, intense interest in work, or a new
+enthusiasm? All great military commanders know the importance of
+morale. They know that troops can stand more while they are going
+forward than while running away, that the more contented and hopeful
+they are, the better fighters they make; discouragement, lack of
+interest, the fighting of a losing game, dearth of appreciation,
+futility of effort, monotony of task, all conspire in soldier or
+civilian to use up and to lock up energy which might have been
+available for real work. Approaching the matter from a new angle, we
+find once more that the difference between strength and weakness is in
+many cases merely a difference in the emotions and feeling-tones which
+habitually control.
+
+Fatigue is a safety-device of nature to keep us within safe limits,
+but it is a device toward which we must not become too sensitive. As a
+rule it makes us stop long before the danger point is reached. If we
+fall into the habit of watching its first signals, they may easily
+become so insistent that they monopolize attention. Attention
+increases any sensation, especially if colored by fear. Fear adds to
+the waste matter of fatigue little driblets of adrenalin and other
+secretions which must somehow be eliminated before equilibrium is
+reestablished. This creates a vicious circle. We are tired, hence we
+are discouraged. We are discouraged, hence we are more tired. This
+kind of "tire" is a chemical condition, but it is produced not by work
+but by an emotion. He who learns to take his fatigue philosophically,
+as a natural and harmless phenomenon which will soon disappear if
+ignored, is likely to find himself possessed of exceptional strength.
+We can stand almost any amount of work, provided we do not multiply it
+by worry. We can even stand a good deal of real anxiety provided it is
+not turned in on ourselves and directed toward our own health.
+
+="Decent Hygienic Conditions."= If fatigue products cannot pile up,
+why is extra rest ever needed? Because there is a limit to the supply
+of fuel. If the fat-supply stored away for such emergencies finally
+becomes low, we may need an extra dose of sleeping and eating in order
+to let the reservoirs fill again. But this never takes very long. The
+body soon fills in its reserves if it has anything like common-sense
+care. The doctrine of reserve energy does not warrant a careless
+burning of the candle at both ends. It presupposes "decent hygienic
+conditions,"--eight hours in bed, three square meals a day, and a fair
+amount of fresh air and exercise.
+
+="Over There."= On the other hand, the stories that floated back to us
+from the war zone illustrate in the most powerful way what the human
+body can do when necessity forbids the slightest attention to its
+needs. One of the best of these stories is Dorothy Canfield's account
+of Dr. Girard-Mangin, "France's Fighting Woman Doctor." Better than
+any abstract discussion of human endurance is this vibrant narrative
+of that little woman, "not very strong, slightly built, with some
+serious constitutional weakness," who lived through hardships and
+accomplished feats of daring which would have been considered beyond
+the range of possibility--before the war.
+
+Think of her out there in her leaky makeshift hospital with her twenty
+crude helpers and her hundreds of mortally sick typhoid patients; four
+hundred and seventy days of continuous service with no place to
+sleep--when there was a chance--except a freezing, wind-swept attic in
+a deserted village. Think of her in the midst of that terrible Battle
+of Verdun, during four black nights without a light, among those
+delirious men, and then during the long, long ride with her dying
+patients over the shell-swept roads. Listen to her as she speaks of
+herself at the end of that ride, without a place to lay her head: "Oh,
+then I did feel tired! That morning for the first time I knew how
+tired I was, as I went dragging myself from door to door begging for a
+room and a bed. It was because I was no longer working, you see. As
+long as you have work to do you can go on." Then listen to her as she
+receives her orders to rush to a new post, before she has had time to
+lay herself on the bed she has finally found. "Then at once my
+tiredness went away. It only lasted while I thought of getting to bed.
+When I knew we were going into action once more, I was myself again."
+Watch her as she rides on through the afternoon and the long dangerous
+night; as she swallows her coffee and plum-cake, and operates for five
+hours without stopping; as she sleeps in the only place there is--a
+"quite comfortable chair" in a corner; and as she keeps up this life
+for twenty days before she is sent--not on a vacation, mind you, but
+to another strenuous post.[51]
+
+[Footnote 51: Dorothy Canfield: _The Day of Glory._]
+
+This brave little woman is not an isolated example of extraordinary
+powers. The human race in the great war tapped new reservoirs of power
+and discovered itself to be greater than it knew. Professor James's
+assertions are completely proved,--that "as a rule men habitually use
+only a small part of the powers which they actually possess," and that
+"most of us may learn to push the barrier (of fatigue) further off,
+and to live in perfect comfort on much higher levels of power."
+
+=How?= The practical question is: how may we--the men and women of
+ordinary powers, away from the extraordinary stimulus of a crisis like
+the great war--attain our maximum and drop off the dreary mantle of
+fatigue which so often holds us back from our best efforts? It may be
+that the first step is simply getting a true conception of physical
+fatigue as something which needs to be feared only in case of a
+diseased body, and which is quite likely to disappear under a little
+judicious neglect.
+
+In the second place, fatigue shows itself to be closely bound up with
+emotions and instincts. The great releasers of energy are the
+instincts. What but the mothering instinct and the love of country
+could uncover all those unsuspected reserves of Dr. Girard-Mangin and
+others of her kind? What is it but the enthusiasm for work which
+explains the indefatigable energy of Edison and Roosevelt? If the
+wrong kind of emotion locks up energy, the right kind just as surely
+unlocks great stores which have hitherto lain dormant. If most people
+live below their possibilities, it is either because they have not
+learned how to utilize the energy of their instinctive emotions in the
+work they find to do, or because some of their strongest instincts
+which are meant to supply motive power to the rest of life are locked
+away by false ideas and unnecessary repressions, and so fail to feed
+in the energy which they control. In such a case, the "spring tonic"
+that is needed is a self-knowledge which shall release us from
+hampering inhibitions and set us free for enthusiastic
+self-expression.
+
+
+NERVOUS FATIGUE
+
+_What of the Nervous Invalid?_ If the normal man lives constantly
+below his maximum, what shall we say of the nervous invalid?
+Fatigability is the very earmark of his condition. In many instances
+he seems scarcely able to raise his hand to his head. Sometimes he can
+scarcely speak for weariness. Frequently to walk a block sends him to
+bed for a week. I once had a patient who felt that she had to raise
+her eyelids very slowly for fear of over-exertion. She could speak
+only about two or three words a day, the rest of the time talking in
+whispers. She could not raise a glass to her lips if it were full of
+water, but could manage it if only half full. A person nearly dead
+with some fatal disease does not appear more powerless than a typical
+neurasthenic.
+
+If it he true that accumulation of fatigue is promptly fatal, what
+shall we say of the woman who says that she is still exhausted from
+the labor of a year ago,--or of ten years ago? What of the business
+man who travels from sanatorium to sanatorium because five years ago
+he went through a strenuous year? What of the college student who is
+broken down because he studied too hard, or the teacher who is worn
+out because of ten hard years of teaching? There can be but one
+answer. No matter what their feelings, they can be suffering from no
+true physiological fatigue. Something very real has happened to them,
+but only through ignorance and the power of suggestion can it be
+called fatigue and attributed to overwork.
+
+=Stories of Real People.= Perhaps if we look over the stories of a few
+people who have been members of my household, we may work our way to
+an understanding of the truth. We give only the barest outline of the
+facts, thinking that the cumulative effect of a number of cases will
+outweigh a more detailed description of one or two. The most casual
+survey shows that whatever it was that burdened these fine men and
+women, it was not lack of energy. No matter how extreme had been their
+exhaustion, they were able at once, without rest or any other physical
+treatment, to summon strength for exertions quite up to those of a
+normal person.
+
+The second point that stands out clearly to any one acquainted with
+these inner histories is the conviction that in each case the trouble
+was related in some way to the unsatisfied love-life, to the insistent
+and thwarted instinct of reproduction. In some cases no search was
+made for the cause. The simple explanation that there was no lack of
+power was sufficient to release inhibited energy. But in every case
+where the cause was sought, it was found to be some outer lack of
+satisfaction, or some inner repression of the love-force.
+
+=From Prostration to Tennis.= One young woman, Miss A., had suffered
+for ten years from the extremest kind of fatigue. She could not walk a
+block without support and without the feeling of great exhaustion.
+Before her illness she had had a sweetheart. Not understanding her
+normal physical sensations when he was near, she had felt them
+extremely wicked and had repressed them with all her strength. Later,
+she broke off the engagement, and a little while after developed the
+neurosis. Within a week after coming to my house, she was playing
+tennis, walking three miles to church, and generally living the life
+of a normal person.
+
+=Making Her Own Discoveries.= Then there was Miss B. who for four
+years had been "exhausted." She had such severe pains in her legs that
+she was almost helpless. If she sewed for half an hour on the sewing
+machine, she would be in bed for two weeks. Although she was engaged
+to be married, she could not possibly shop for her trousseau. Two
+years before, a very able surgeon had been of the opinion that the
+pain in the legs was caused by an ovarian tumor. He removed the tumor,
+assuring the patient that she would be cured. However, despite the
+operation and the force of the suggestion, the pains persisted.
+
+After she had been with me for a few days, she sewed for an hour on
+the machine. In a day or so she took a four-mile walk in a canon near
+the house and, on returning in the afternoon, walked two and a half
+miles down town to do some shopping. I did not make an analysis in
+her case because she recovered so quickly,--going home well within two
+weeks. But she declared that she had found the cause while reading in
+one of the books on psychology. I had my suspicions that the
+long-drawn-out engagement had something to do with the trouble, but I
+did not confirm my opinion. A long engagement, by continually
+stimulating desire without satisfying it, only too often leads to
+nervous illness.
+
+=Afraid of Heat.= Professor X., of a large Eastern college, had been
+incapacitated for four years with a severe fatigue neurosis and an
+intense fear of heat. Constantly watching the weather reports, he was
+in the habit of fleeing to the Maine coast whenever the
+weather-prophet predicted warm weather. After a short reeducation, he
+discovered that his fatigue was symbolic of an inner feeling of
+inadequacy, and that it bore no relation to his body. Discarding his
+weariness and throwing all his energies into the Liberty Loan
+Campaign, he found himself speaking almost continuously throughout one
+of the hottest days in the history of California, with the thermometer
+standing at 107 degrees. After that he had no doubt as to his cure.
+
+=In Bed from Fear.= Miss C. was carried into my house rolled in a
+blanket. She had been confined to her bed except for fifteen minutes a
+day, during which time she was able to lie in a hammock! It seems
+that her illness was the result of fear, an over-reaction to early
+teaching about self-abuse. Her mother had frightened her terribly by
+giving her the false idea that this practice often leads to insanity.
+Having indulged in self-abuse, she believed herself going insane, and
+very naturally succumbed to the effects of such a fear. After a few
+days of re-education, she was as strong as any average person. Having
+no clothing but for a sick-room, she borrowed hat, skirt, and shoes,
+and walked to church, a three-mile walk.
+
+=Empty Hands.= Miss Y., a fine woman of middle age, suffering from
+extreme fatigue could neither sleep nor eat. She could only weep. She
+had spent her life taking care of an invalid girl who had recently
+died. Now her hands were empty. Like many a mother whose family has
+grown up, she had no outlet for her mothering instinct, and her sense
+of impotency expressed itself in the only way it knew how,--through
+her body. As there is never any lack of unselfish work to be done, or
+of people who need mothering, she soon found herself and learned how
+to sublimate her energy in useful activities.
+
+=Defying Nature.= One young man from Wyoming had felt himself obliged
+to give up his business because he could neither work nor eat. It soon
+cropped out that he and his wife had decided that they must not have
+any children. With a better understanding of the great forces which
+they were defying, his strength and his appetite came back and he went
+back to work, rejoicing.
+
+=Left-over Habits.= Often a state of fatigue is the result of a
+carried-over habit. One of my patients, a young girl, had several
+years before been operated on for exophthalmic goiter. This is a
+disease of the thyroid gland, and is characterized by rapid heart,
+extreme fatigue, and numerous other symptoms. Although this girl's
+goiter had been removed, the symptoms still persisted. She could not
+walk nor do even a little work, like wiping a few dishes. I took her
+down on the beach, let her feel her own pulse and mine and then ran
+with her on the sand. Again I let her feel our pulses and discover for
+herself that hers had quickened no more than was normal and had slowed
+down as soon as mine. After a few such lessons, she was convinced that
+her symptoms were reverberations for which there was no longer any
+physical cause.
+
+Another young girl, Miss L., had had a similar operation for goiter
+six years before. Since that time she had been virtually bedridden.
+During the first meal she had at my house her sister sat by her couch
+because she must not be left alone. By the second meal the sister had
+gone, and Miss L. ate at the table with the other guests. That night
+she managed to crawl upstairs, with a good deal of assistance and
+with great terror at the probable results of such an effort. After
+that, she walked up-stairs alone whenever she had occasion to go to
+her room. Her heart will always be a little rapid and her body will
+never be very strong, but she now lives a helpful happy life at home
+and among her friends.
+
+In cases like this the exaggeration proves the counterfeit. Nobody
+could have been so down and out _physically_ without dying. The
+exaggeration secures attention and gives the little satisfaction to
+the natural desires which are denied expression, and which gain an
+outlet through habit along the lines previously worn by the real
+disease. Many a person is still suffering from an old pain or an old
+disability whose cause has long since disappeared, but which is
+stamped on the mind and believed in as a present reality. Since the
+sensation is as real as ever, it is sometimes very hard to believe
+that it is not legitimate, but if the person is intelligent, a little
+explanation and re-education usually suffices.
+
+=Twenty Years an Invalid.= Mr. S., from Ohio, had spent much of his
+time for twenty years going from one sanatorium to another. There was
+scarcely a health resort in the country with which he was not
+familiar. The day he came to me he felt himself completely exhausted
+by the two-block walk from the car. He explained that he could
+scarcely listen to what I was saying because his brain was so fagged
+that concentration was impossible. When asked to read a book, he
+dramatically exclaimed, "Books and I have parted company!" I set him
+to work reading "Dear Enemy" but it was not a week before he was
+devouring the deeper books on psychology, in complete forgetfulness of
+the pains in his head. Playing golf and walking at least six miles
+every day, he rejoiced in a new sense of strength in his body, which
+for twenty years he had considered "used up." He is now doing a
+man-sized job in the business and philanthropic life of his home city.
+
+=Brain-fag.= This feeling of brain-fag is one of the commonest nervous
+symptoms; and almost always it is supposed to be the result of
+intellectual overwork. Some people who easily accept the idea that
+physical work cannot cause nervous breakdown can scarcely give up the
+deep-rooted notion that intense mental work is harmful. Intellectual
+effort does give rise to fatigue in exactly the same way as does
+physical exertion, but the body takes care of the waste products of
+the one just as it does those of the other. Du Bois says that out of
+all his nervous cases he has not found one which can be traced to
+intellectual overwork. I can say the same thing, and I know no case in
+all the literature of the subject whose symptoms I can believe to be
+the result of mental labor.
+
+The college students who break down are not wrecked by intellectual
+work. In some cases, one strong factor in their undoing is the strain
+and readjustment necessary because of the discrepancies between some
+of their deepest religious beliefs and the truth as they learn it in
+the class-room. The other factors are merely those which play their
+part in any neurosis.
+
+=Re-educating the Teacher.= School-teachers are prone to believe
+themselves worn out from the mental work and the strain of the
+strenuous life of teaching. Many a fine, conscientious teacher has
+come to me with this story of overwork. But the school-teacher is as
+easily re-educated as is any one else. I usually begin the process by
+stating that I taught school myself for ten years and can speak from
+experience. After I explain that there is no physical reason why the
+teachers of some cities are fagged out at the end of nine months while
+those in other cities whose session is longer can hold on for ten
+months, and stenographers who lead just as strenuous a life manage to
+exist with only a two-weeks' vacation, they begin to see that perhaps
+after all they have been fooling themselves by a suggestion, "setting"
+themselves for just so long and expecting to be done up at the end of
+the term. Many of these same teachers have gone back to their work
+with a new sense of "enough and to spare" and some of them have
+written back that they have passed triumphantly through especially
+trying years with no sense of depletion.
+
+In any work, it is the feeling of strain which tells, the emotionalism
+and feeling sorry for oneself because one has a hard job. It is
+wonderful what a sense of power comes from the simple idea that we are
+equal to our tasks.
+
+=Sudden Relief.= The story of Mr. V. illustrates Professor James's
+statement that often the fatigue gets worse up to a certain critical
+point, and then suddenly passes away. Mr. V. was another patient who
+was "physically exhausted." When the rest of "the family" went
+clamming on the beach, he felt himself too weak for such exertions, so
+I left him on the sand to hold the bag while the rest of us dug for
+clams. The minute I turned my back he disappeared. I found him lying
+flat on his back, resting, behind the bulk-head. I decided that he
+needed the two-mile walk home and we all set out to walk. "Doctor,
+this is cruel. It is dangerous. My knees can never stand this. I shall
+be ill!" ran the constant refrain for the first mile. Then things went
+a bit better. Toward the last he found, to his absolute astonishment,
+that the fatigue had entirely rolled away. The last half-mile he
+accomplished with perfect ease. Needless to say, he never again
+complained of physical exhaustion.
+
+=False Neuritis.= Miss T. was suffering from fatigue and very severe
+pains in her arms, pains which were supposed to be the result of real
+neuritis, but which did not correspond to the physiological picture of
+that disease. A consultation revealed the fact that her love-instinct
+had been repeatedly stimulated, and then at the last, when it had
+expected satisfaction, had been disappointed. A discussion of her
+life, its inner forces, and her future aims helped to pull her
+together again and give her instinct new outlets. The pains and the
+fatigue disappeared at once.
+
+=Something Wrong.= These cases are chosen at random and are typical of
+scores of others. In no single case was the trouble feigned or
+imaginary or unreal. But in every case it was a mistake. _The sense of
+loss of muscular power was really a sense of loss of power on the part
+of the soul._ Some inner force was reaching out, reaching out after
+something which it could never quite attain. As it happened, in every
+case that I analyzed, the force which felt itself defeated and
+inadequate was the thwarted instinct of reproduction. Like a man
+pinned to the ground by a stronger force, it felt itself most helpless
+while struggling the hardest. Just as we feel a thrill of fright when
+we step up in the dark and find no step there, so this instinct had
+gotten itself ready for a step which was not there. Inner repressions
+or outer circumstances had denied satisfaction and left only an
+undefined sense that something was wrong. The life-force, feeling
+itself helpless, limp, tired, had no way of expressing itself except
+in terms of the body. Since expression is itself a relief and an
+outlet for feeling, the denied desire had seized on suggestions of
+overwork to explain its sense of weariness, and had symbolized its
+soul-pain by converting it into a physical pain. The feeling of
+inadequacy was very real, but it was simply displaced from one part of
+the personality to another,--from an unknown, inarticulate part to one
+which was more familiar and which had its own means of expression.
+
+=Locked-up Energy.= We do not know just how the soul can make its pain
+so intensely real to the body, but we do know that any conviction on
+the part of the subconscious mind is quickly expressed in the physical
+machine. A conviction of pain or of powerlessness is very soon
+converted into a feeling which can scarcely be denied. The mere
+suggestion that the body is overworked is enough to make it tired.
+
+We know, too, that the instincts are the great releasers of energy. So
+it happens that when our most dynamic instinct--that for the
+reproduction of the race--is repressed, we lack one of the greatest
+sources of usable energy. The energy is there, but it is not
+accessible. Inhibited and locked away, it is not fed into the engine,
+and we feel exactly as though it were _nil_. Despite its name, the
+disease neurasthenia does not signify a real asthenia or weakness.
+Rather, it is a disorder in which there is plenty of energy that has
+somehow been temporarily misplaced. Then, too, we must remember that
+under the depressing influence of chronic fear, not quite so much
+energy is stored away as would otherwise be. All the bodily functions
+are slowed down; food is not so completely assimilated, the heart-beat
+is weakened, the breathing is more shallow, and fatigue products are
+more slowly eliminated. As Du Bois says, "An emotion tires the
+organism more than the most intense physical or intellectual work."
+
+=Avoid the Rest-Cure.= It is a healthful sign that the rest-cure is
+fast going out of style. Wherever it has helped a nervous patient, the
+real curative agent has been the personality of the doctor and the
+patient's faith in him. The whole theory was based on ignorance of the
+cause of nerves. People suffering from "nervous exhaustion" are likely
+to be just as "tired" after a month in bed as they were before. Why
+not? Physical fatigue is quickly remedied, and what can rest do after
+that? What possible effect can rest have on the fatigue of a
+discouraged instinct? Since the best releaser of energy is enthusiasm,
+don't try to get that by lying around in bed or playing checkers at a
+health resort.
+
+
+SUMMARY
+
+If you are chronically and perpetually fatigued, or if you tire more
+easily than the other people you know, consult a competent physician
+and let him look you over. If he tells you that you have neither
+tuberculosis, heart trouble, Bright's disease, nor any other
+demonstrable disease, that you are physically fit and "merely
+nervous," give yourself a good shake and commit the following
+paragraphs to memory.
+
+
+     A CATECHISM FOR THE WEARY ONE
+
+     WHAT?
+
+     Q. What is fatigue?
+
+     A. It is a chemical condition resulting from effort that is very
+     recent.
+
+     Q. What else creates fatigue?
+
+     A. Worry, fear, resentment, discontent, and other depressing
+     emotions.
+
+     Q. What magnifies fatigue?
+
+     A. Attention to the feeling.
+
+     Q. What makes us weary long after the cause is removed?
+
+     A. Habit.
+
+     WHY?
+
+     Q. Why do many people believe themselves over-worked?
+
+     A. Because of the power of suggestion.
+
+     Q. Why do they take the suggestion?
+
+     A. Because it serves their need and expresses their inner feelings.
+
+     Q. Why are they willing to choose such an uncomfortable mode of
+     expression?
+
+     A. Because they don't know what they are doing, and the
+     subconscious is very insistent.
+
+     WHO?
+
+     Q. Who gets up tired every morning?
+
+     A. The neurotic.
+
+     Q. Who fancies his brain so exhausted that a little concentration
+     is impossible?
+
+     A. The neurotic.
+
+     Q. Who still believes himself exhausted as the result of work that
+     is now ancient history?
+
+     A. The neurotic.
+
+     Q. Who lays all his woes to overwork?
+
+     A. The neurotic.
+
+     Q. Who complains of fatigue before he has well begun?
+
+     A. The neurotic.
+
+     Q. Who may drop his fatigue as soon as he "gets the idea?"
+
+     A. The neurotic.
+
+     HOW?
+
+     Q. How can he get the idea?
+
+     A. By understanding himself.
+
+     Q. How may he express his inner feelings?
+
+     A. By choosing a better way.
+
+     Q. How can he forget his fatigue?
+
+     A. By ignoring it.
+
+     Q. How can he ignore it?
+
+     A. By finding a good stiff job.
+
+     If he wants advice in a nutshell, here it is: Get understanding!
+     Get courage! Get busy!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+_In which the ban is lifted_
+
+DIETARY TABOOS
+
+MISUNDERSTOOD STOMACHS
+
+
+=Modern Improvements.= Most people have heard the story of the little
+girl who wanted to know what made her hair snap. After she had been
+informed that there was probably electricity in her hair, she sat
+quiet for a few minutes and then exclaimed: "Our family has all the
+modern improvements! I have electricity in my hair and Grandma has gas
+on her stomach!" Judged by this standard many American families are
+well abreast of the times; and if we include among the modern
+improvements not only gas on the stomach but also nervous dyspepsia,
+acid stomach, indigestion, sick-headache, and biliousness, we must
+conclude that a good proportion of the population is both modern and
+improved.
+
+Despite all this the stomach is one of the best-equipped mechanisms in
+the world. It, at least, is not modern. After their age-long
+development the organs of the body are remarkably standardized and
+adapted to the work required of them. It is safe to say that ninety
+per cent. of all so-called "stomach trouble" is due not to any
+inherent weakness of the organ itself but to a misunderstanding
+between the stomach and its owner.
+
+=Organic Trouble.= Unfortunately, there are a few real organic causes
+for trouble. There are a few cancers of the stomach and a certain
+number of ulcers. But if the patients whom I have seen are in any way
+typical, the ulcers that really are cannot compare in number with the
+ulcers that are supposed to be. Patients go to physicians with so many
+tales of digestive distress that even the best doctors are fooled
+unless they are especially alert to the ways of "nerves." They must
+find some explanation for all the various functional disturbances
+which the patients report, and as they are in the habit of taking only
+the body into account, they find the diagnosis of stomach ulcer as
+satisfactory as any.
+
+There is, of course, such a thing as an enlarged or sagging stomach.
+But it is only in the rarest of cases that such a condition leads to
+any functional disturbances unless complicated by suggestion. In most
+cases a person can go about his business as happily as ever unless he
+gets the idea that ptosis must inevitably lead to pain and discomfort.
+
+Confusion sometimes arises when the stomach is blamed for
+disturbances which originate elsewhere. One day a very sick-looking
+girl came to me with eager expectation written all over her face. Her
+stomach was misbehaving and she had heard that I could cure nervous
+indigestion. It needed little more than a glance to know that she was
+suffering from organic heart trouble. A boy of sixteen had been taking
+a stomach-tonic for three months, but the thin, wiry pulse pointed to
+a different ailment. His digestive disturbances were merely the echo
+of an organic disease of the kidneys. When the body is burdened by
+disease, it may have little energy left for digesting food, but in
+that case the trouble must be sought in other quarters than the
+stomach.
+
+Aside from a few organic difficulties, there is almost no real disease
+of the stomach. Its misdoings are not matters of food and chemistry,
+muscle-power and nerve supply, but are the end results of slips in the
+mental and emotional life of its owner.
+
+=Fads Dynamogenic.= What is it that gives the impetus to fads about
+eating, or about religious belief? Are they advocated by the
+individual whose libido is finding abundant expression in the natural
+channels of business and family life, or by his less fortunate brother
+who can gain a sense of power only by means of some unaccustomed idea?
+William James says:
+
+     This leads me to say a word about ideas considered as dynamogenic
+     agents or stimuli for unlocking what would otherwise be unused
+     reservoirs of individual power.... In general, whether a given
+     idea shall be a live idea depends more on the person into whose
+     mind it is injected than on the idea itself. Which is the
+     suggestive idea for this person and which for that one? Mr.
+     Fletcher's disciples regenerate themselves by the idea (and the
+     fact) that they are chewing and re-chewing and super-chewing
+     their food. Dr. Dewey's pupils regenerate themselves by going
+     without their breakfast--a fact, but also an ascetic idea. Not
+     every one can use these ideas with the same success.
+
+Because it is so adaptable and sturdy, the stomach lends itself
+readily to these devices for gaining self-expression; but the danger
+lies in bringing the process of digestion into conscious attention
+which interferes with automatic functioning. Still further, the
+disregard of physiological chemistry is likely to deprive the body of
+food-stuffs which it requires.
+
+The average person is too sensible to be carried off his feet by the
+enthusiasm of the health-crank, but as most of us are likely to pick
+up a few false notions, it may be well to be armed with the simple
+principles of food chemistry in order to combat the fads which so
+easily beset us and to know why we are right when we insist on eating
+three regular meals of the mixed and varied diet which has proved
+best for the race through so many years of trial and experience.
+
+
+WHAT WE NEED TO EAT
+
+=The Essence of Dietetics.= To the layman the average discussion of
+food principles is, to say the least, confusing. Dealing largely, as
+it does, with unfamiliar terms like carbohydrate and hydrocarbon and
+calories, it is hard to translate into the terms of the potatoes left
+over from dinner and the vegetables we can afford to buy. But the
+practical deductions are not at all difficult to understand. Boiled
+down to their simplest terms, the essential principles may be stated
+in a few sentences. The body must secure from the food that we eat,
+tissue for its cells, energy for immediate use or to be stored for
+emergency, mineral salts, vitamins, water and a certain bulk from
+fruits and vegetables,--this latter to aid in the elimination of waste
+matter.
+
+Food for repairing bodily tissue is called protein and is secured from
+meat, eggs, milk, and certain vegetables, notably peas. Fuel for heat
+and energy is in two forms--carbohydrate (starch and sugar) and fat.
+We get sugar from sugar-cane and beets, and from syrups, fruit, and
+honey. Starch is furnished from flour products--mainly bread--from
+rice, potatoes, macaroni, tapioca, and many vegetables. Fats come from
+milk and butter, from nuts, from meat-fat--bacon, lard and suet--and
+from vegetable oils. The mineral salts are obtained mainly from fruit
+and vegetables, which also provide certain mysterious vitamins
+necessary for health, but as yet not well understood.
+
+=What the Market Affords.= The moral from all this is plain. The human
+body needs all the foods which are ordinarily served on the table.
+Whenever, through fad or through fear, we leave out of our diet any
+standard food, we are running a risk of cutting the body down on some
+element which it needs. They say that variety is the spice of life. In
+the matter of food it is more than that, it is the essence of life.
+Eat everything that the market affords and you will be sure to be well
+nourished. If you leave out meat you will make your body work overtime
+to secure enough tissue material from other foods. If you leave out
+white bread, you will lose one of the greatest sources of energy. If
+you leave out tomatoes and cucumbers and strawberries, you deprive
+your body of the salts and vitamins which are essential.
+
+=A Simple Rule.= There is one point that is good to remember. The
+average person needs twice as much starch as he needs of protein and
+fat together. That is, if he needs four parts of protein and three of
+fat, he ought to eat about fourteen parts of starch. This does not
+mean that we need to bother ourselves with troublesome tables of what
+to eat, but only to keep in mind in a general way that we need more
+bread and potatoes than we do meat and eggs. The body does not have
+to rebuild itself every day. It is probable that a good many people
+eat too much protein food. If a man is doing hearty work he must have
+a good supply of meat, but the average person needs only a moderate
+amount. Here again, the habits of the more intelligent families are
+likely to come pretty near the dictates of science.
+
+=For the Children.= The mother of a family ought to know that the
+children need plenty of bread, butter, and milk. Despite all the
+notions to the contrary, good well-baked white bread is neither
+indigestible nor constipating. It is indeed the staff of life. Two
+large slices should form the background of every meal, unless there is
+an extraordinary amount of other starchy food or unless the person is
+too fat. Milk-fat (from whole milk, cream, and butter) is by far the
+best fat for children. Besides fat, it furnishes a certain
+growth-principle necessary for development. As the dairyman cannot
+raise good calves on skimmed milk, so we cannot raise robust children
+without plenty of butter and milk. The pity of it is that poor people
+are forced to try! Milk is also the best protein for children, whose
+kidneys may be overstrained by trying to care for the waste matter
+from an excessive quantity of eggs and meat. Bread and butter, milk,
+fruit, vegetables, and sugar in ample quantities and meat and eggs in
+moderate quantities are pretty sure to make the kind of children we
+want. Above all things, let us train them not to be afraid of normal
+amounts of any regular food or of any combination of foods.
+
+=The Fear of Mixtures.= There are many people who can without
+flinching face almost any single food, but who quail before mixtures.
+Perhaps there is no notion which is more firmly entrenched in the
+popular mind than this fear of certain food-combinations, acquired
+largely from the advertisements of certain so-called "food
+specialists."
+
+The most persistent idea is the fear of acid and milk. It is
+interesting to watch the new people when they first come to my table.
+Confronted with grape-fruit and cream at the same meal, or oranges and
+milk, or cucumbers and milk, they eat under protest, in consternation
+over the disastrous results that are sure to follow. Out of all these
+scores of people, many of whom are supposed to have weak stomachs, I
+have never had one case of indigestion from such a combination. When a
+person knows that the stomach juices themselves include hydrochloric
+acid which is far more acid than any orange or grapefruit, that the
+milk curdles as soon as it reaches the stomach, and that it must
+curdle if it is to be digested, he has to be very "set" indeed if he
+is to cling to any remnant of fear.
+
+Of course to say that the stomach is well prepared chemically,
+muscularly, and by its nerve supply to handle any combination of
+ordinary food in ordinary amounts is not the same thing as saying that
+we may devour with impunity any amount of anything. It is a good thing
+for every one to know when he has reached his limit, and a person with
+organic heart disease should avoid eating large quantities at one
+time, or when he is extraordinarily fatigued or emotionally disturbed,
+lest at such a time he may put a fatal strain on the pneumogastric
+nerve that controls both stomach and heart.
+
+
+THE FEAR OF CERTAIN FOODS
+
+=Physical Idiosyncrasies.= Most of our false fears on food subjects
+come from some tradition--either a social tradition or a little
+private, pet tradition of one's own. Some one once was ill after
+eating strawberries and cream. What more natural than to look back to
+those little curdles in the dish and to start the tradition that such
+mixtures are dangerous? The worst of it is that the taboo habit is
+very likely to grow. One after another, innocent foods are thrown out
+until one wonders what is left. A patient of mine, Mr. G., told me
+that he had a short time before gone to a physician with a tale of woe
+about his sour stomach. "What are you eating?" asked the doctor. "Bran
+crackers and prunes." "Then," said the learned doctor, "you will have
+to cut out the prunes!" Needless to say, this man ate everything at my
+table, and flourished accordingly.
+
+There may be such a thing as physical idiosyncrasies for certain
+foods. I have often heard of them, but I have never seen one. I have
+often challenged my patients to show me some of the "spells" which
+they say invariably follow the eating of certain foods, but I have
+almost never been given an exhibition. The man who couldn't eat eggs
+did throw up once, but he couldn't do it a second time. Many people
+have threatened to break out with hives after strawberries. One woman
+triumphantly brought me what looked like a nice eruption, but which
+proved to be the after-results of a hungry flea! After that she ate
+strawberries,--without the flea and without the hives.
+
+=Not Miracles but Ideas.= Conversions on food subjects are so common
+at my table that I should have difficulty in remembering the
+individual stories. Scores of them run together in my mind and make a
+sort of composite narrative something like this: "Oh, no, thank you, I
+don't eat this. You really must excuse me. I have tried many times and
+it is invariably disastrous." Then a reluctant yielding and a day or
+two later some talk about miracles. "It really is wonderful. I don't
+understand," etc. Experiences like these only go to show the power of
+the subconscious mind, both in building up wrong habit-reactions and
+in quickly substituting healthy ones, once the false idea is removed.
+
+Among my stomach-patients there were two men, brothers-in-law,
+immigrants from the Austrian Tyrol, and now resident in one of the
+cow-boy states. Leonardo spoke little English, and though Giovanni
+understood a very little, he spoke only Italian.
+
+Several years before I knew them, Giovanni had developed a severe case
+of stomach trouble and had finally gone to a medical center for
+operation. The disturbance, however, was not relieved by the operation
+and before long his brother-in-law fell into the same kind of trouble.
+For several years the two had spent much of their time dieting,
+vomiting, and worrying over their sour stomachs. Giovanni finally
+became so ill that his sick-benefit society had actually assessed its
+members to pay for his funeral expenses. About this time a business
+man of their town, impressed by the cure of a former patient who had
+made a quick recovery after seven years of invalidism, persuaded the
+two men to take their little savings and come to California to be
+under my care. The evening meal and breakfast went smoothly enough,
+although the menu included articles which they had been taught to
+avoid. However, as I left the house on a necessary absence soon after
+breakfast, I saw Leonardo weeping in the garden and Giovanni spitting
+up his breakfast, out at the entrance gate. On my return, I found one
+of "the family" literally sitting on the coat-tails of Leonardo, while
+Giovanni hovered at a distance, safe from capture. Leonardo upbraided
+me bitterly for having undone all the gain they had made in the long
+months of rigid dieting, for now the vomiting had returned, because
+they had eaten sugar on their oatmeal at breakfast! I made Leonardo
+drink an egg-nog, took him into the consultation-room and held my hand
+on his knee to keep him in his chair, while explaining to him as best
+I could the physiologic action of the hydrochloric acid on the
+digestive juice, which he feared as a sour stomach, the sign of
+indigestion.
+
+During the conversation I said, "I suppose Giovanni imitated you in
+this mistaken fear about your health." The reply was, "No, I got it
+off him!" Nearly two hours later he exclaimed in astonishment: "Why,
+that milk hasn't come up! Maybe I am cured!" "Of course you are
+cured," I answered; "there never was anything really the matter with
+your stomach, so you are cured as soon as you think you are."
+
+Later Giovanni was inveigled into the house by the promise that he
+would have to eat nothing more than milk soup. All was smooth sailing
+after this. For my own part I feared for the permanency of the cure,
+for they were returning to the old environment. But more than three
+years have passed, and grateful letters still come telling of their
+continued health.
+
+Another patient, a teacher of domestic science in a big Eastern
+university, had lived on skimmed milk and lime-water from Easter to
+Thanksgiving. Several attempts to enlarge the dietary by adding cream
+or white of egg had only served to increase the sense of discomfort.
+Finding nothing in the history of the case to warrant a diagnosis of
+organic disease of the stomach, I served her plate with the regular
+dinner, bidding her have no hesitancy even over the pork chops and
+potato chips. She gained nine pounds in weight the first week, and in
+two and a half months was forty pounds to the good.
+
+=When Re-education Failed.= But there is one patient who has had to
+have his lesson repeated at intervals. This man laughingly calls
+himself a disgrace to his doctor because he is a "repeater." His story
+illustrates the power of an autosuggestion and the disastrous effect
+of attention to a physiological function. When Mr. T. came first to me
+he weighed only 120 pounds, although he is over six feet tall and of
+large frame. From the age of sixteen he had followed fads in eating
+and thought he had a weak stomach. I treated his "weak stomach" to
+everything there was in the market, including mince-pies, cabbage,
+cheese, and all the other so-called indigestibles. He gained 16-1/2
+pounds the first week and 31 pounds in five weeks. One would think
+that the idea about the weak stomach would have died a natural death,
+but it did not. Again and again he came back to me like a living
+skeleton, the last time weighing only 105 pounds, and again and again
+he has gone back to his home in the Middle West plump and well. Twice
+while he was at home he underwent unnecessary operations, once for an
+ulcer that was not there and once for supposed chronic spasm of the
+pylorus. Needless to say, the operations did not help. You cannot cut
+out an idea with a knife. Neither can you wash it out with a
+stomach-pump; else would Mr. T. long ago have been cured! This
+particular idea of his seems to be proof against all my best efforts
+at re-education. Psycho-analysis is impracticable, partly because of
+the duration of the habit of repression, but the history, and certain
+symbolic symptoms, indicate the Freudian mechanisms at work. All I can
+do is to feed him up, bully him along, and keep him from starving to
+death. Just now he is doing very well at home, although he has moved
+to California so as not to be too far away from "the miracle-worker."
+
+If Mr. T.'s case had been typical, I should long ago have lost my
+faith in psychotherapy. Keeping people from starving is worth while,
+but is less satisfactory than curing them of what ails them. The
+nervous patient who has a relapse is no credit to his doctor. It is
+only when the origin of his trouble is not removed that the bond of
+transference tends to become permanent. The neurotic who is well only
+while under the influence of his physician is still a neurotic.
+However, as most people's complexes are neither so deeply buried nor
+so obstinate as this, a simple explanation or a single demonstration
+is usually enough to loose the fettering hold of old misconceptions.
+
+
+COMMON AILMENTS
+
+="Gas on the Stomach."= We all know people who suffer from "gas."
+Indeed, very few of us escape an occasional desire to belch after a
+hearty meal. But the person with nervous indigestion rolls out the
+"gas" with such force that the noise can sometimes be heard all over
+the house. He may keep this up for hours at a time, under the
+conviction that he is freeing himself from the products of fermenting
+food. He may exhibit a well-bloated stomach as proof of the disastrous
+effect of certain articles of diet. The gas and the bloating are
+supposed to be the sign and the seal of indigestion, a positive
+evidence that undigested food is fermenting in the stomach.
+
+But what is fermentation? It is, necessarily, a question of the growth
+of bacteria and is a process which we may easily watch in our own
+kitchens. Bread rises when the yeast-cells have multiplied and acted
+on the starch of the flour, producing enough gas to raise the whole
+mass. Potatoes ferment because bacteria have multiplied within them.
+Canned fruit blows up because enough bacteria have developed inside to
+produce sufficient gas to blow open the can. Every housewife knows
+that it takes time for each of these processes. Bread has to stand
+several hours before it will rise; potatoes do not ferment under
+twelve hours, and canned fruit is not considered safe from the
+fermenting process under three days. Evidently there is some mistake
+when a person begins to belch forth "gas" within an hour or two after
+a meal. As a matter of fact, it is not gas at all but merely air that
+is swallowed with the food or that was present in the empty stomach.
+
+When the food enters the stomach it necessarily displaces air, which
+normally comes out automatically and noiselessly. But if, through fear
+or attention, a certain set of muscles contract, the pent-up air may
+come forth awkwardly and noisily or it may stay imprisoned until we
+take measures to let it out. A hearty laugh is as good as anything,
+but if that cannot be managed, we may have to resort to a cup of hot
+water which gives the stomach a slap and makes it let go. Two belches
+are enough to relieve the pressure. After that we merely go on
+swallowing air and letting it out again, a habit both awkward and
+useless.
+
+If the emotion which ties the muscle-knot is very intense, and the
+stomach refuses to let go under ordinary measures, the pain may be
+severe. But a quantity of hot water or a dose of ipecac is sure to
+relieve the situation. If the person is able to give himself a good
+moral slap and relax his unruly muscles, he reaches the same end by a
+much pleasanter road.
+
+Some people are fond of the popular remedy of hot water and soda.
+Their faith in its efficacy is likely to be increased by the good
+display of gas which is sure to follow. As any cook knows, soda and
+acid always fizz. The soda is broken up by the hydrochloric acid of
+the stomach and forms salt and carbon dioxid, a gas. However, as the
+avowed aim of the remedy is the relief of gas rather than its
+manufacture, and as the soda uses up the hydrochloric acid needed in
+digestion, the practice cannot be recommended as reasonable.
+
+=Gastritis.= I once knew a woman who went to a big city to consult a
+fashionable doctor. When she returned she told with great satisfaction
+that the doctor had pronounced her case gastritis. "It must be true,"
+she added, "because I have so much gas on my stomach!" The diagnosis
+of gastritis used to be very common. The ending _itis_ means
+inflammation,--gastritis, enteritis, colitis, each meaning
+inflammation of the corresponding organ. An inflammation implies an
+irritant. There can be no kind of _itis_ without the presence of
+something which irritates the membrane of the affected part. If we
+get unusual and irritating bacteria in some spoiled food, we are
+likely to have an acute inflammation until the offending bacteria are
+expelled. But an inflammation of this kind never lasts. People who
+have had ptomaine poisoning sometimes assert that they are afterwards
+susceptible to poisoning by the kind of food which first made them
+ill. Such a susceptibility is not so much a hold-over effect from the
+poison as a hold-over fear which tends to repeat the physical reaction
+whenever that food is eaten. I, myself, have had ptomaine poisoning
+from canned salmon, but I have never since had any trouble about
+eating salmon.
+
+=Sour Stomach.= Sometimes when a person lies down an hour or so after
+a meal, some of the contents of his stomach comes up in his throat.
+Then if he be ignorant of physiology, he may be very much alarmed
+because his stomach is "sour." Not knowing that he would have far
+greater cause for alarm if his stomach were _not_ sour, he may, if the
+idea is interesting to him, begin to restrict his diet, to take
+digestive tablets, and to develop a regular case of nervous dyspepsia.
+Sometimes when the specialists measure the amount of hydrochloric acid
+in the stomach, they do find too much or too little acid; but this
+merely means that an emotion has made the glands work overtime or has
+stopped their action for a little while. The functions of the body
+are so very, very old that there is little likelihood of permanent
+disturbance.
+
+=Biliousness.= The stomach is not the only part of the body concerning
+which we lack proper confidence. Next to it the liver is the most
+maligned organ in the whole body. Although the liver is about as
+likely to be upset in its process of secreting bile as the ocean is
+likely to be lacking in salt, many an intelligent person labels every
+little disturbance "biliousness" and lays it at the door of his
+faithful, dependable liver.
+
+As a matter of fact, the liver is liable to injury from virtually but
+three sources--alcohol, bacterial infection, and cancer--and even a
+liver hardened by alcohol goes on secreting bile as usual. The patient
+dies of dropsy but not of "liver complaint."
+
+Some people act as if they thought bile were a poison. On the
+contrary, it is a very useful digestant; it aids in keeping down the
+number of harmful bacteria and helps to carry the food from intestines
+to blood. Every day the liver manufactures at least a pint of this
+important fluid. The body uses what it needs and stores the surplus
+for reserve in the gall-bladder. The flow is continuous and, despite
+all appearances to the contrary, there is no such thing as a torpid or
+an over-active liver.
+
+It is true that after a "bilious" person has vomited for a few minutes
+he is likely to throw up a certain amount of bile, which is supposed
+to have been lying in his stomach and causing the nausea. In fact,
+however, this bile is merely a part of the usual supply stored away in
+the gall-bladder. By the very act of retching, the bile is forced out
+of the bile channels into the stomach and thence up into the mouth.
+Anybody can throw up bile at any time if he only tries hard enough.
+
+One of the favorite habits of certain people is the taking of calomel
+and salts. After such a dose they view with satisfaction the green
+character of the stools and conclude that they have rid themselves of
+a great amount of harmful matter. As a matter of fact, the greater
+part of the coloring in the stools is from the calomel itself, changed
+in the intestines from one salt of mercury to another. Any excess bile
+is the result of the irritating action of the calomel on the
+intestinal wall, an irritation which makes the bowel hurry to cast out
+this foreign substance without waiting for the bile to be absorbed as
+usual.
+
+A patient once told me that he had bought medicine from a street fakir
+and by his direction had followed it with a dose of salts. He saved
+the bowel movement, washed it in a sieve, and discovered a great
+number of "gall-stones," which the medicine had so effectively washed
+from his system. He was much astonished when I told him that his
+gall-stones were merely pieces of soap. He did not know that
+everybody manufactures soap in his body every day, and that by taking
+an extra quantity of oil in the shape of the fakir's medicine and an
+extra quantity of potash in the salts, he had merely augmented a
+normal physiological process. The supposed action of calomel belongs
+to the same class of phenomena, and has no slightest effect on the
+liver or on real gall-stones, which are the precipitate of bile-salts
+in the gall-bladder, and which cannot be reached by any medicine.
+
+If the popular notions about biliousness are ill founded, what then
+causes the disturbances which undoubtedly do occur and which show
+themselves in attacks of nausea or sick headache? The answer can be
+given in a word of four letters; a coated tongue, a bilious attack and
+a sick headache are all the outcome of a mood. Stocks have gone down
+or the wife is cranky or the neighbors are hateful. Adrenalin and
+thyroid secretions are poured out as the result of emotion; digestion
+is stopped, circulation disturbed, and the whole apparatus thrown out
+of gear.
+
+=Sick-Headache.= Sick-headache is primarily a circulatory disturbance;
+and although the disturbance may have been inaugurated by some
+chemical unbalance, the sum total of the force that makes a
+sick-headache is emotional. The emotion, of course, need not be
+conscious in order to be effective. If we picture the arteries all
+over the body as being supplied with, among other things, a wall of
+circular muscles, and then imagine messages of emotion being flashed
+to the nerves controlling this muscle wall, we may get an idea of what
+happens just before a sick-headache. Some parts of the arteries
+contract too much and other parts relax. The arteries to the head
+tighten up at the extremities and become loose lower down. The force
+of the blood-stream against the constricted portion can hardly fail to
+cause pain. The sick part of the headache is merely a sympathetic
+strike of the nerves which control circulation and stomach.
+
+The moral of all this is plain. If a sick-headache is the result of an
+emotional spasm of the blood-vessels, the obvious cure is a change of
+the emotion. Some people manage it by going to a party or a picnic,
+others by ignoring the symptoms and keeping on with their work. A
+woman physician whom I know was in the midst of a violent headache
+when called out on an obstetrical case. She felt sorry for herself,
+but went on the case. In the strenuous work which followed, she quite
+forgot the headache, which disappeared as if by magic.
+
+Sometimes it happens that a headache recurs periodically or at regular
+intervals. It is easy to see that in such cases the exciting cause is
+fear and expectation. At some time in the past, headaches have
+occurred at an interval of, say, fourteen days; as the next
+fourteenth day approaches the sufferer says to himself: "It is about
+time for another headache. I am afraid it will come to-morrow," and of
+course it comes. One man told me that if he ate Sunday-night supper he
+inevitably had a headache on Monday morning. We were about to sit down
+to a simple Sunday supper and he refused very positively to join us. I
+told him he could stay all night and that I would take care of him if
+the Monday sickness appeared. He accepted my challenge but was unable
+to produce a headache. In fact, he felt so unusually flourishing the
+next morning that he insisted on frying the bacon for my entire
+family. That was the end of the Monday headaches.
+
+=A Few Examples.= As sick-headache has always been considered a rather
+stubborn difficulty, not amenable to most forms of treatment, it may
+be well to cite a few cases which were helped by educational methods.
+A patient came home from a walk one day and announced that he was
+going to bed. When questioned, be said: "I am tired and I have a
+sick-headache. Isn't it logical to go to bed?" To which I answered
+that it would be far more logical to put some food into his stomach
+and change the circulation than to lie in bed and think about his
+pain. This man was completely cured. I have had patients throw up one
+meal, and very rarely two, but I have never had to supply more than
+three meals at a time. The waste of food I consider amply justified by
+the benefit to the patient.
+
+There once came to me an elderly woman, the wife of a poor minister.
+She was suffering from attacks of nausea, which recurred every five to
+ten days with intense pain through the eyes, and with photo-phobia or
+fear of light. I found that she had by dint of heroic efforts raised a
+large and promising family on the salary of an itinerant
+minister--from four hundred to six hundred a year! All the time she
+had been feeling sorry for herself because her husband did not
+appreciate her. One day, after reading one of his letters which seemed
+to show an utter lack of appreciation of all that she was doing, she
+fell down in the field beside her plow, paralyzed. From that time on
+she had been more or less of an invalid, continually nursing her
+grudge and complaining that she ought not to have been made to bear so
+many children.
+
+After I had heard this plaint over and over for about a week, I said:
+"Perhaps you ought not to have had that little daughter, the little
+ewe-lamb. Maybe she was one too many." "Oh, no," came the quick
+response. "I couldn't have spared _her_." Then I went down the line of
+the fine stalwart sons. Perhaps she could have spared John or Tom or
+Fred? Finally she saw the whole matter in a different light,--saw
+herself as a queen among women, the mother of such a family.
+
+As to the husband, I tried to show her that she was not very clever
+to live with a man all those years without discovering that he was not
+likely to change. "You can't change him but you can change your
+reaction to him. If something keeps hurting your hand, you don't keep
+on being sore. You grow callous. Isn't it about time you grew a moral
+callous, too?"
+
+I put her on the roof to sleep, on account of her fear of light. Only
+once did she start a headache, which I quickly nipped in the bud by
+making her get up and dress. She had come to stay "three months or
+four,--if I get along well." At the end of four weeks she left, an
+apparently well woman. The last I heard of her she was stumping the
+state for temperance, the oldest of an automobile party of speakers,
+and the sturdiest physically. With the emotional grievance,
+disappeared also the physical effects in stomach and head.
+
+Miss S., a very brilliant woman, ambitious to make the most of her
+life, had been shelved for twenty-five years because of violent
+sick-headaches which made it impossible for her to undertake any kind
+of work. She had not been able to read a half-hour a day without
+bringing on a terrible headache. I insisted on her reading, and very
+soon she was so deep in psychological literature that I had difficulty
+in making her go to bed at all. After learning the cause of her
+headaches and gaining greater emotional control, she succeeded so
+well in freeing herself from the old habit, that she now leads the
+busiest kind of useful life with only an occasional headache, perhaps
+once in six months.
+
+A certain minister suffered constantly from a dull pain in his head,
+besides having violent headaches every few days. He started in to have
+a bad spell the day after his arrival at my house. As I was going out
+of the door, he caught my sleeve. "Doctor," he said, "would it be bad
+manners to run away?" "Manners?" I answered. "They don't count, but
+morals, yes." He stayed--and that was his last bad headache. Both
+chronic and periodic pains disappeared for good.
+
+One woman who had suffered from bad headaches for eighteen years lost
+them completely under a process of re-education. On the other hand, I
+have had patients who were not helped at all. The principles held good
+in their cases, but they were simply not able to lose the old habit of
+tightening up the body under emotion.
+
+=Hysterical Nausea.= Sometimes nausea is merely the physical symbol of
+a subconscious moral disgust. We have already told the stories of "the
+woman with the nausea" (Chapter V) and of Mrs. Y. (Chapter VII). These
+cases are typical of many others. Their bodies were perfectly normal,
+and when, through psycho-analysis and re-education, they were helped
+to make over their childish attitudes toward the sex-life, the nausea
+disappeared.
+
+=Loss of Appetite.= A nervous patient with a good appetite is "the
+exception that proves the rule." The neurotic is usually under weight
+and often complains that he feels satiated almost as soon as he begins
+to eat. Loss of appetite may, of course, mean that the body is busy
+combating toxins in the blood, but in a nervous person it usually
+means a symbolic loss of appetite for something in life, a struggle of
+the personality against something for which he has "no stomach."
+Psycho-analysis often reveals the source of the trouble, and a little
+bullying helps along the good work. By simply taking away a harmful
+means of expression, we may often force the subconscious mind to find
+a better language.
+
+
+SUMMARY
+
+Since the stomach seems to be an organ which is much better fitted to
+care for food than to care for a depressing emotion or a false idea,
+it seems far more sensible to change our minds than to keep enlarging
+our list of eatables which are taboo.
+
+And since most indigestion is in very truth nothing more nor less than
+an emotional disturbance, worked up by fear, anger, discontent, worry,
+ignorance, suggestion, attention to bodily functions which are meant
+to be ignored, love of notice and the conversion of moral distress
+into physical distress, the best diet list which can be furnished to
+Mr. Everyman in search of health must read something like this:
+
+                              MENU
+
+     Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday,
+                             Sunday
+
+  A Calm Spirit                            Plenty of Good Cheer
+      A Varied Diet                           Commonsense
+                          Good Cooking
+                 Judicious Neglect of Symptoms
+            Forgetfulness of the Digestive Process
+                   A Little Accurate Knowledge
+                       A Determination to
+                         BE LIKE FOLKS
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+_In which we relearn an old trick_
+
+THE BUGABOO OF CONSTIPATION
+
+POPULAR SUPERSTITIONS
+
+
+In line with the taboos connected with the taking of food are the
+ceremonials attendant upon its elimination. Taking anxious thought
+about functions well established by nature is a feature of
+conversion-hysteria, the displacement of emotional desire from its
+psychic realm into symbolic physical expression. Whatever other
+symptoms nervous people may manifest, they are almost sure to be
+troubled with chronic constipation. It is true that there are many
+constipated people who do not seem to be nervous and who resent being
+classed among the neurotics. Everybody knows that the occasional
+individual who has difficulty in swallowing his food is nervous and
+that the, trouble lies not in the muscles of his throat but in the
+ideas of his mind. But very few people seem to realize that the more
+common individual who makes hard work of that other simple
+process--elimination of his intestinal waste matter--is suffering
+from the same kind of disturbance and giving way to a nervous trick.
+When all the facts are in, the constipated person will have hard work
+to clear himself of at least one count on the charge of nerves.
+
+=An Oft-told Tale.= Sooner or later, then, the neurotic, whether he
+calls himself a neurotic or not, is very likely to begin worrying over
+his diet or his sedentary occupation. He imagines himself the victim
+of autointoxication, afflicted with paralysis of the colon or dearth
+of intestinal secretions. He leaves off eating white bread, berries,
+cheese, chocolate, and many another innocent food, and insists on a
+diet of bran-biscuit, flaxseed breakfast-foods, prunes, spinach,
+cream, and olive-oil with doses of mineral oil between meals. In all
+probability, he begins a course of massage or he starts to take extra
+long walks and to exercise night and morning, pulling his knees up to
+his chin and touching his fingers to his toes. When all these measures
+fail, he gives in to the morning enema or the nightly pill, in
+imminent danger of succumbing to a life-long habit.
+
+
+THE TRUTH ABOUT CONSTIPATION
+
+=What the Colon Is For.= It is well, then to have a fair understanding
+of the structure and purpose of our intestinal machinery. Contrary to
+general opinion, the intestines are not a dumping-ground but a
+digestive organ. After the food is partly digested in the stomach, it
+passes through a twenty-two foot tube (the small intestine) into a
+five-foot tube (the large intestine or colon) where digestion is
+completed, the nutriment is absorbed, and the waste matter is passed
+on and out through the rectum. As the food passes along the colon,
+pushed slowly ahead by the peristaltic wave, or rhythmic muscular
+contractions of the intestinal wall, it is seized upon by the four
+hundred varieties of friendly bacteria which inhabit the intestines of
+every healthy person, and is changed into a form which the body can
+assimilate. Digestion in the stomach and small intestine is carried on
+by means of certain digestive juices, but in the large intestine it is
+the bacteria which do the work. Without them we could not live.
+
+Around the colon is a thick network of little blood vessels, all of
+which lead straight to the liver, the storehouse of the body. After
+the food is fully digested, it is passed through the thin intestinal
+wall into these tiny vessels and carried away to liver and muscles for
+storage or for immediate use.
+
+This process of absorption is carried on throughout the whole length
+of the colon. Not until the very end of the intestine is reached is
+all the nutrition abstracted. The bowel-content can properly be called
+waste matter only after it has reached the rectum or pouch at the
+lower end of the colon. Even then, this waste matter is not poison,
+but merely indigestible material which the body cannot handle.
+
+=Food, not Poison.= The colon is not a cesspool but a digestive and
+assimilating organ. Its content is not poison but food. Active
+elimination is important not so much because delay causes
+autointoxication or poisoning as because too large a mass is hard to
+manage and irritates the intestinal wall. The problem is not so much
+one of toxicology as of simple mechanics. If Nature had put within the
+body five feet of tubing which could easily become a cesspool and a
+breeder of poison, it is not at all likely that she would have laid
+alongside an elaborate system of blood vessels leading not out to the
+kidneys but into the storehouse of the liver; and if civilized man's
+changed manner of living had so upset Nature's plans as easily to
+transform his internal machinery into a chronic source of danger, we
+may be sure that he would long ago have gone the way of the unfit and
+succumbed to his own poisons.
+
+=Possible Invasions.= It is true that the intestinal tract, like the
+rest of the body, is open to attack by harmful bacteria. But in a
+great majority of cases, these enemy bacteria are either quickly
+destroyed by the beneficent microbes within or are immediately cast
+out as unfit. Any germs irritating to the intestinal wall cause the
+mucous membrane to produce an unusual flow of mucus which washes away
+the offending bacteria in what we call a diarrhea.[52]
+
+[Footnote 52: If the invading army proves obstinate and the diarrhea
+continues a day or so, it is wise to assist Nature by a dose of
+castor-oil, which gives an additional insult to the intestinal wall,
+spurs it on to a desperate effort, and hastens the cleansing process.
+In severe cases the more promptly the castor-oil is administered the
+better. Such emergency measures are very different from the habitual
+use of insulting drugs.]
+
+Sometimes the wrong kind of bacteria do persist, causing anemia,
+rheumatism, sciatica, or neuritis. When these disorders are not the
+result of infection from teeth, tonsils, or other sources of poison,
+but are really caused by intestinal bacteria, I have found that a diet
+of buttermilk (lactic acid bacteria), with turnip-tops or spinach to
+supply the necessary mineral salts, often succeeds in planting the
+right bacteria and driving out the disturbing ones. These disorders
+are invasions from without, like tuberculosis or malaria, and are as
+likely to attack the person with easy bowel movements as the one with
+the most chronic constipation.
+
+=Autointoxication.= A good deal of the talk about autointoxication is
+just talk. It sounds well and affords an easy explanation for all
+sorts of ills, but in a large majority of cases the diagnosis can
+hardly be substantiated. Uninformed writers of newspaper articles on
+the care of the body, or purveyors of purgatives or apparatus for
+internal baths are fond of dilating on the "foulness of the colon" as
+a leading cause of disease. As a rule, they advise either a strict
+diet, some kind of cathartic, or an elaborate process of washing out
+the colon to clear the body of its terrible accumulation of poisons.
+
+=Cathartics and Enemas.= He who makes a practice of flushing out his
+intestinal tract with high enemas and internal baths is like a person
+who eats a good dinner and then proceeds to wash out his stomach. In
+the mistaken idea that he is making himself clean, he is washing what
+was never intended to be washed and robbing the body of the nutrition
+which it needs. And the man who persists in the pill habit is making a
+worse mistake, adding insult to injury and forcing the mucous membrane
+to toughen itself against such malicious attacks.
+
+=Cathartics and Operations.= Even in emergencies, the use of
+purgatives as a routine measure is happily decreasing year by year.
+For many years I have deplored the use of purgatives before and after
+operations. That other practitioners are coming to the same conclusion
+is witnessed by a number of papers recently read in medical societies
+condemning purgation at the time of operation.
+
+Among the most favorably received papers of the California Medical
+Societies have been one by Emmet L. Rixford, surgeon of the Stanford
+University Medical College, read before the Southern California
+Medical Society at Los Angeles December 8, 1916, and one by W.D.
+Alvarez at the California Medical Society, Del Monte, 1918,--both
+condemning the use of purgatives as a routine measure before
+operations. An article entitled the "Use and Abuse of Cathartics" in
+the "Journal of the American Medical Association" admirably summarizes
+the disadvantages of purgation at such a time.[53]
+
+[Footnote 53: "1 Danger of dissemination of infection throughout the
+peritoneal cavity, in case localized infection exists.
+
+"2 Increased absorption of toxins and greater bacterial activity by
+reason of the fact that undigested food has been carried down into the
+colon to serve as pabulum for bacteria, and that liquid feces form a
+better culture medium than solid feces.
+
+"3 Increased distention of the intestine with gas and fluid, when it
+should be empty....
+
+"4 Psychic and physical weakness produced by dehydration of the body,
+disturbance in the salt balance of the system, and the loss of sleep
+occasioned by the frequent purging during the night preceding the
+operation. As Oliver Wendell Holmes says: 'If it were known that a
+prize fighter were to have a drastic purgative administered two or
+three days before a contest, no one will question that it would affect
+the betting on his side unfavorably. If this be true for a powerful
+man in perfect health, how much more true must it be of the sick man
+battling for life.'
+
+"5 Increase in postoperative distress and danger: thirst, gas pains,
+and even ileus...."--_Journal of American Medical Association_, Vol.
+73, No. 17, p. 1285, Oct. 25. 1919.]
+
+Four years ago I was called to a near-by city to see a former patient
+who two days before had had a minor operation,--removal of a cyst of
+the breast. She was dazed, almost in a state of surgical shock and
+very near collapse. I found that she had been put through the usual
+course of purgation before operation and starvation afterward, and I
+diagnosed her condition as a state bordering on acidosis, or lowering
+of the alkaline salts of the body. I ordered food at once. She rallied
+and recovered.
+
+A few months later this same woman had to undergo a much more serious
+operation for multiple fibroids of the uterus and removal of the
+appendix. This time I advised the surgeon against the use of any
+purgative, and he took my remarks so seriously that he did not even
+allow an enema to be given. This time the patient showed no signs of
+exhaustion and had very few gas pains. I firmly believe that the day
+will soon come when a patient under operation, or a patient after
+childbirth, will no longer be depleted by a weakening and dehydrating
+cathartic and by a period of starvation, at a time when he needs all
+the energy he can summon.
+
+=Cathartics and Childbirth.= The article referred to in the "Journal
+of the American Medical Association" cites the experiences of Dr. R.
+McPherson of the Lying-in Hospital of New York, "who showed that the
+routine purgation after confinement is not only useless but harmful.
+Of 322 women who were not purged, only three had fever (and one of
+them a mammary abscess); most of them had normal bowel movements and
+those who did not were given an enema every third day. Of 322 women
+who were delivered by the same technique and the same operators but
+were purged in the usual routine manner, twenty-eight had some fever."
+This experience of one physician is corroborated by that of others who
+find that the more we tamper with the natural functions in time of
+stress the harder do we make the recuperative process. There are
+certainly times when catharsis is necessary but "one thing is certain,
+the day for routine purgation is past."[54] Even in emergencies we
+need to know why we administer cathartics and in chronic cases we may
+be sure that they are always a mistake.
+
+[Footnote 54: Ibid, p. 1286.]
+
+="An Old Trick."= Before we make a practice of interfering with
+Nature's processes, it is well to remember how old and stable those
+processes are. As long as there has been the taking in of food, there
+has been also the casting out of waste matter. The sea-anemone closes
+in on the little mollusk that floats against its waving petals,
+assimilates what it can and rejects the rest. In the long line from
+sea-anemone to man, this automatic process of elimination has gone on
+without a hitch, adapting itself with perfect success to the changing
+habits of the varying types of life. So old a process is not easily
+upset. And, be it noted, in the human body this automatic, involuntary
+process still goes on with very little trouble until it reaches a
+point in the body where man, the thinking animal, tries to control it
+by conscious thought.
+
+=A Question of Evacuation.= Much of the misconception about
+constipation arises from the mistaken idea that this is a disorder of
+the whole intestine or at least of the whole colon. As a matter of
+fact, the trouble is almost wholly in the rectum. There is no trouble
+with the general traffic movement, but only with the unloading at the
+terminus. In my experience, the patient reports that he feels the
+fecal mass in the lower part of the rectum, but that he is unable to
+expel it. Examination by finger or by X-ray reveals a mass in the
+rectal pouch. If there is a piling up of freight further back on the
+line, it is only because the unloading process has been delayed at the
+terminus.
+
+So long as the bowel-content is in the region of automatic control,
+there is very little likelihood of trouble. An occasional case of
+organic trouble--appendicitis, lead-colic, mechanical obstruction, new
+growths or spinal-cord disease--may cause a real blockade, but in
+ninety-nine cases out of every hundred there is little trouble so long
+as the involuntary muscles, working automatically under the direction
+of the subconscious mind, are in control. By slow or rapid stages, on
+time or behind time, the bowel-content reaches the upper part of the
+rectum and passes through a little valve into the lower pouch. Here is
+where the trouble begins.
+
+=Meddlesome Interference.= In the natural state the little human, like
+the other animals, empties his bowel whenever the fecal mass enters
+the lower portion of the rectum. The presence of the mass in the
+rectum constitutes a call to stool which is responded to as
+unthinkingly as is the desire for air in the taking of a breath. But
+the tiny child soon has to learn to control some of his natural
+functions. At the lower end of the rectum there is a purse-string
+muscle called the _Sphincter-ani_, an involuntary muscle which may
+with training be brought partly under voluntary control. Under the
+demands of civilization, the baby learns to tighten up this muscle
+until the proper time for evacuation. Then, if he be normal, he lets
+go, the muscles higher up contract and the bowel empties itself
+automatically, as it always did before civilization began.
+
+There is, however, a possibility of trouble whenever the conscious
+mind tries to assume control of functions which are meant to be
+automatic. Under certain conditions necessary control becomes
+meddlesome interference. If the child for one reason or another takes
+too much interest in the function of elimination; if he likes too much
+the sense-gratification from stimulation of the rectal nerves and
+learns to increase this gratification by holding back the fecal mass;
+if he gets the idea that the function is "not nice" and takes the
+interest that one naturally feels in subjects that are taboo; or if he
+catches from his elders the suggestion that the bowel movement is a
+highly important process and that something disastrous is likely to
+happen unless it is successfully performed every day; then his very
+interest in the matter tends to interfere with automatic regulation,
+and to cause trouble.
+
+Just as people often find it hard to let go the bladder muscle and
+urinate when in a hurry or under observation, and just as an
+apprehensive woman in childbirth tightens up the purse-string muscle
+of the womb, so the little child, or the grown up who catches the
+suggestion of difficulty in the bowel movement, loses the trick of
+letting go. Instead of merely exercising control by temporarily
+inhibiting the function, he tries to carry through the process itself
+by voluntary control--and fails. Constipation is a perfect example of
+the power of suggestion, and of the troublesome effect of a fear-idea
+in the realm of automatic functions.
+
+
+FOOD AND CONSTIPATION
+
+Since the waste matter from all foods finally reaches the rectum, and
+since constipation is merely a difficulty in the forces of expulsion,
+it is hard to see how any normal food in the quantities usually eaten
+could have the slightest effect on the problem. When we remember that
+it takes food from twelve to twenty-four hours to reach the rectum,
+and that it has during all that time been subjected to the action of
+the powerful chemicals of the digestive tract, it is hard to imagine a
+piece of cheese, of whatever variety, strong enough to stop the
+contraction of the muscles of the upper rectum or to tie the
+sphincter-muscle into a knot. It would be difficult to find a food
+which could pass without effect through twenty-seven feet of
+intestinal tubing only to become suddenly effective on the wall of the
+rectum. If the wrong kind of food is the cause of constipation, why
+does the rectum prove to be the most refractory portion of the tube?
+On what principle could a piece of chocolate inhibit the call to stool
+or contract the sphincter muscle? On the other hand, even if it should
+be conceded that constipation were the result of lack of lubricating
+secretions in the colon, how could two tablespoonfuls of mineral oil
+be a sufficient lubricant after being mixed with liquid and solid food
+through many feet of the intestinal tract?
+
+=An Adaptable Apparatus.= The lining of the intestines has plenty of
+secretions to take care of its function. It is as well adapted to the
+vicissitudes of life as are the other parts of the body. The muscular
+coat is no more liable to paralysis or spasm than are the voluntary
+muscles. As the skin adapts itself to all waters and all weathers,
+and as the lungs adjust themselves to varying air-pressures, so the
+intestinal wall makes ready adaptation to any common-sense demands,
+adjusting itself with ease to an athletic or a sedentary life, and to
+the normal variations of diet. What man has eaten throughout the
+centuries man may eat to-day. If you will but believe it, your
+intestines will make no more objection to white bread, blackberries,
+and cheese, along with all other ordinary articles of food, than the
+skin makes to varying kinds of water. Naturally, the suggested idea
+that a food will constipate tends to carry itself out to fulfilment
+and to prevent the call to stool from rising to the level of
+consciousness; but the real force lies not in the food but in the
+suggestion.
+
+=The Bran Fad.= It is when we try to improve on the normal human diet
+that we really insult the body. He who leaves off eating nourishing
+white bread and takes to bran muffins is simply cheating his body.
+Bran has a small food value, but the human body is not made to extract
+it. Not only does bran fail to give us any nourishment itself, but it
+lessens the power of the intestines to care for other food.[55] The
+fad for bran is based on the well-known fact that we need a certain
+quantity of bulk in order to stimulate the intestinal wall to normal
+peristalsis. We do need bulk, but not more than we naturally get from
+a normal and varied diet including a reasonable amount of fruit and
+vegetables.
+
+[Footnote 55: See an article entitled "Bread and Bran," _Journal of
+American Medical Association_, July 5, 1919, p. 36.]
+
+It is true that the suggestion of the efficacy of bran, dates,
+spinach, or any other food is frequently quite sufficient to give
+relief, temporarily, just as massage, manipulation of the vertebrae,
+the surgeon's knife, or mineral oil may be enough to carry the
+conviction of power to a suggestible individual. But who wants to take
+his suggestions in such inconvenient forms as these?
+
+=Change of Water.= Another popular superstition centers around
+drinking-waters. There are people who cannot move from one town to
+another, much less take an extensive trip, without a fit of
+constipation--or a box of pills. If they only knew it, there is no
+water on earth which could make a person constipated. A new water,
+full of unusual minerals, might hasten the bowel movement, but on what
+possible principle could it retard it? Constipation has nothing to do
+with food or with water, but solicitous care about either can hardly
+fail to create the trouble which it tries to avoid.
+
+
+THE CURE
+
+=Taking off the Brakes.= Since constipation is wholly due to the
+acceptance of a false suggestion, the only logical cure must be
+release from the power of that suggestion. "He is able as soon as he
+thinks he is able"; not that thought gives the power, but that the
+right thought releases the inhibition of the mistaken thought. As soon
+as the brakes are taken off, the internal machinery is quite able to
+make the wheels go round. The bowel will empty itself if we let it.
+The function of elimination is not a new trick learned with difficulty
+by the aged, but a trick as old and as elemental as life itself. Like
+balancing on a bicycle, it may not be done by any voluntary muscular
+effort, but it just does itself when one learns how.
+
+Once the sense of power comes, once the mind forgets to be doubtful or
+afraid, then the old automatic habit invariably reasserts itself.
+Meddlesome interference may throw the mechanism out of gear, but
+fortunately it cannot strip the gears. Constipation is an inhibition
+or restraint of function, but is never a loss of function. No one is
+too old, no one is too fixed in the bad habit to relearn the old
+trick. I have had a good many patients with chronic constipation, but
+I have never had one who failed to learn. Real conviction speedily
+brings success, and in many cases success seems to outrun conviction.
+So efficient is Nature if she has only half a chance!
+
+=Some People Who Learned.= Unless you are over ninety-two, do not
+despair. One old lady of that age, a sort of patient by proxy, was
+able to cure herself without even one consultation. Her daughter had
+been a patient of mine and had been cured of the constipation with
+which she had been busy for many years. The mother, who believed her
+own bowel paralyzed, had been in the habit of lying on the bed and
+taking a copious enema every second day of her life. When, however,
+she heard of her daughter's cure, the bright old woman gave up her
+enemas and let her bowels do their own functioning. She stayed cured
+until her death at ninety-five.
+
+=A Fifty-year Habit.= Another old lady was not quite so easily
+convinced. She ridiculed the idea that her son of fifty, who had been
+"constipated in his cradle" could be cured of his lifelong habit, but
+he was cured. As long as there is life and the light of reason, so
+long may Nature's functions be reestablished.
+
+=The Whole Family.= Nor is any one too young to learn. A tiny baby is
+easily taught. There came to me for two consultations a mother and her
+two babies, all three constipated. The four-year-old child, mentally
+deficient, had been fed on milk of magnesia from his infancy, and the
+four-months-old baby had been started on the same path. I explained to
+the mother the mechanism of elimination, told her to give up
+cathartics, and to set a regular time for herself and the baby, but
+was a little dubious about the mentally deficient four-year-old.
+However she soon reported that they had all three promptly acquired
+the new habit. Four years later she told me that they had never had
+any more trouble.
+
+=A Record History.= When Miss H. first came to my house, she told a
+story that was almost incredible. She said that for many months she
+had been taking eight tablespoonfuls of mineral oil three times a day
+besides a cathartic at night, and an enema in the morning. No wonder
+she was a little dubious over such mild treatment as mine seemed to
+be!
+
+Constipation was only one of this young woman's troubles. She could
+not sleep and was so fatigued that she believed herself at the end of
+her physical capital. When she first came to me she had tears in her
+eyes most of the time and used to confide to various people that she
+was sure she was a patient that I could not cure,--a very common
+belief among nervous invalids! She was sure that I did not understand
+her case, and that she could not get anything out of this kind of
+treatment.
+
+It was only a very short time, however, before her bowels were
+functioning like those of a normal person. She lost her insomnia and
+her fatigue and went away as well as ever. When she got back to her
+office, she found that her old position, which she had believed secure
+to her, had been given to another. She had to go out and hunt a new
+job and face conditions harder than she had had before, but she came
+through with flying colors. A short time ago Miss H. came back to see
+me,--a happy, robust young woman, very different from the person I had
+first known. She assured me that she had never had any return of her
+old symptoms and that she was as well as a person could be.
+
+=Living up to a Suggestion.= Mrs. T. had not had a natural movement of
+the bowels in twenty-five years. After the birth of a child,
+twenty-five years before, her physician had told her that her muscles
+had been so badly torn in labor that they could not carry through a
+natural movement. After that she had never gone a day without a pill
+or an enema. I explained to her that when any muscle of the rectum is
+injured in childbirth, it is the sphincter-ani, and that since this is
+the muscle whose contraction holds back the bowel content, its injury
+would tend to over-free evacuation rather than to constipation. She
+saw the point and within two or three days regained her old power of
+spontaneous evacuation.
+
+=Practical Steps.= The first step, then, in acquiring normal habits is
+the conviction of the integrity of our physical machines and a
+determination not to interfere by thought, or by physical meddling,
+with the elemental functions of our bodies. After this all-important
+step, there are a few practical suggestions which it is well to
+follow. Most of them are nothing more than the common-sense habits of
+personal hygiene which are so obvious as to be almost axiomatic, but
+which are nevertheless often neglected:
+
+1 Eat three square meals a day.
+
+2 Drink when thirsty, having conveniently at hand the facilities for
+drinking.
+
+3 Heed the call to stool as you heed the call of hunger. When the
+stool passes the little valve between the upper and lower portions of
+the rectum, it gives the signal that the time for evacuation has come.
+If this signal is always heeded, it will automatically start the
+machinery that leads to evacuation. If it is persistently ignored
+because one is too busy, or because the mind is filled with the idea
+of disability, the call very soon fails to rise to the level of
+consciousness. The feces remain in the rectum, and the bad habit is
+begun.
+
+4 Choose a regular time and keep that appointment with yourself as
+regularly as possible. In all the activities of Nature, there is a
+rhythm which it is well to observe.
+
+5 Take time to acquire the habit. Do not be in a hurry. Do not strain.
+No amount of effort will start the movement. Just let it come of
+itself.
+
+6 Finally, should the unconscious suggestion of lack of power
+stubbornly remain in force, take a small enema on the third day. If
+the waste matter accumulates for three or more days, the bulk becomes
+so great that the circular muscles of the rectum are unable to handle
+it, just as the fingers cannot squeeze down to expel water from too
+large a mass of wet blankets. Take only a small enema--never over a
+quart at a time--and expel the water immediately. One or two such
+measures will bring away the mass in the rectum. The material farther
+up still contains food elements and is not yet ready for expulsion.
+Lessen the amount of water each time until no outside help is needed.
+Once you get the right idea, all enemas will be superfluous.
+
+
+SUMMARY
+
+If you would have in a nutshell an epitome of the truth about
+constipation, indigestion, insomnia, and the other functional
+disturbances common to nervous folk, you can do, no better than to
+commit to memory and store away for future reference that choice
+limerick of the centipede, which so admirably sums up the whole matter
+of meddlesome interference:
+
+    A centipede was happy quite
+    Until a frog in fun
+    Said, "Pray, which leg comes after which?"
+    This raised her mind to such a pitch,
+    She lay distracted in the ditch,
+    Considering how to run.
+
+Whoever tries to consider "which leg comes after which" in any line
+of physiological activity, is pretty sure to find himself in the ditch
+considering how to run. Wherefore, remember the centipede!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+_In which handicaps are dropped_
+
+A WOMAN'S ILLS
+
+"THE FEMALE OF THE SPECIES"
+
+
+If ever there was a man who wished himself a woman, he has hidden away
+the desire within the recesses of his own heart. But one does not have
+to wait long to hear a member of the female sex exclaim with evident
+emotion, "Oh, dear, I wish I had been born a man!" It is probable that
+if these same women were given the chance to transform themselves
+overnight, they would hesitate long when it actually came to the
+point. The joys of being a woman are real joys. However, in too many
+cases these joys seem hardly to compensate for the discomforts of the
+feminine organism. It is the body that drags. Painful menstrual
+periods, the dreaded "change of life," various "female troubles" with
+a number of pregnancies scattered along between, make some of the
+daughters of Eve feel that they spend a good deal of their lives
+paying a penalty merely for being women. Brought up to believe
+themselves heirs to a curse laid on the first woman, they accept their
+discomforts with resignation and try to make the best of a bad
+business.
+
+="Since the War."= Nothing is quite the same since the war. Among
+other things we have learned that many of our so-called handicaps were
+nothing but illusions,--base libels on the female body. Under the
+stern necessity of war the women of the world discovered that they
+could stand up under jobs which have until now been considered quite
+beyond their powers. Society girls, who were used to coddling
+themselves, found a new joy in hard and continuous work; middle-aged
+women, who were supposed to be at the time of life when little could
+be expected of them, quite forgot themselves in service. Ambulance
+drivers, nurses, welfare workers, farmerettes, Red-Cross workers,
+street-car conductors and "bell-boys," revealed to themselves and to
+the world unsuspected powers of endurance in a woman's body. Although
+some of the heavier occupations still seem to be "man's work," better
+fitted for a man's sturdier body, we know now that many of these
+disabilities were merely a matter of tradition and of faulty training.
+
+There still remains, however, a goodly number of women who are
+continuously or periodically below par because of some form of
+feminine disability. Some of these women are suffering from real
+physical handicaps, but many of them need to be told that they are
+disabled not by reason of being women but by reason of being nervous
+women.
+
+="Nerves" Again.= Despite the organic disturbances which may beset the
+reproductive organs, and despite the havoc wrought by venereal
+diseases, it may be said with absolute assurance that the majority of
+feminine ills are the result neither of the natural frailty of the
+female body, nor even of man's infringement of the social law, but are
+the direct result of false suggestion and of false attitudes toward
+the facts of the reproductive life. The trouble is less a difficulty
+with the reproductive organs than a difficulty with the reproductive
+instinct. "Something wrong" with the instinct is translated by the
+subconscious mind into "something wrong" with the related generative
+organs, and converted into a physical pain.
+
+That this relation has always been dimly felt is shown by the fact
+that the early Greeks called nervous disorders _hysteria_, from the
+Greek word for womb. It is only lately, however, that the blame has
+been put in the right place and the trouble traced to the _instinct_
+rather than to the _organs_ of reproduction.
+
+=Why Women Are Nervous.= Although women hold no monopoly, it must be
+conceded that they are particularly prone to "nerves." The reason is
+not hard to find. Since the leading factor in a neurosis is a
+disturbance of the insistent instinct of reproduction, a disturbance
+usually based on repression, then any class of persons in whom the
+instinct is particularly repressed would, in the very nature of the
+case, be particularly liable to nervousness.
+
+No one who thoroughly knows human nature would attempt to deny that
+woman is as strongly endowed as man with the great urge toward the
+perpetuation of the race, or that she has had to repress the instinct
+more severely than has man. The man insists on knowing that the
+children he provides for are his own children. Whatever the degree of
+his own fidelity, he must be sure that his wife is true to him. Thus
+has grown up the insistence that, no matter what man does, woman, if
+she is to be counted respectable, shall control the urge of the
+instinct and live up to the requirements of continence set for her by
+society.
+
+Unfortunately, however, there is more often blind repression than
+rational control. The measures taken to prevent a girl's becoming a
+tom-boy are measures of sex-repression quite as much as of
+sex-differentiation. Over-reaction of sensitive little souls to
+lessons in modesty often causes distortion of normal sex-development.
+Ignorance concerning the phenomena of life is commended as innocence,
+while it really implies a sex-curiosity which has been too severely
+repressed. The young woman blushes at thoughts of love, while the
+young man is filled with a sense of dignity. We smile at the picture
+of "Miss Philura's" confusion as she hesitatingly sends up to her
+Creator a petition for the much-desired boon of a husband. But really,
+why shouldn't she want one? Many a young woman, in order to deaden her
+senses to the unsuspected lure of the reproductive instinct by what is
+really an awkward attempt at _sublimation_, makes a fetish of dress
+and social position and considers only the marriage of convenience;
+or, on the other hand, she scorns men altogether and throws herself
+into a "career."
+
+Young men are not so often taught to repress, but neither are they
+taught to swing their vital energies into altruistic channels through
+sublimation. Since the woman of his class will not marry him until he
+has money, the young man too often satisfies his undirected instincts
+in a commercial way. The statistics of venereal diseases prove that
+here, as elsewhere, goods subject to barter are subject to
+contamination. In a late marriage, too often a contaminated body
+accompanies the material possessions which the standards of society
+have demanded of a husband.
+
+But the woman pays in still other coin for the repressions arising
+from faulty childhood training. Unable to find expression for herself
+either in marriage or in devotion to work, because some old childish
+repression is still denying all outlet to her legitimate desire, she
+frequently falls into a neurosis; or if she escapes a real breakdown,
+she gives expression to unsatisfied longings in some isolated nervous
+symptoms which in many cases center about the organs of generation.
+There then results any one of the various functional disturbances
+which are only too often mistaken for organic disease. What is needed
+in cases like this is not a gynecologist nor a surgeon, but a
+psycho-pathologist--or perhaps only a grasp of the facts. Let us look
+at the more common of these disturbances in order to gain an
+understanding of the situation.
+
+
+THE MENSTRUAL PERIOD
+
+=Potential Motherhood.= Among the normal phenomena of a woman's life
+is the recurring cycle of potential motherhood. Every three or four
+weeks a new ovum or egg matures in the ovary and undergoes certain
+chemical changes, which send into the blood a substance called a
+hormone. This hormone is a messenger, stimulating the mucous membrane
+of the womb into making its velvet pile longer and softer, and its
+nutrient juices more abundant in readiness for the ovum.
+
+The same stimulus causes the whole organism to make ready for a new
+life. As in hunger, the chemistry of the body produces the
+muscle-tension that is felt as a craving for food, so this recurring
+chemical stimulus produces a definite craving in body and mind. This
+craving brings about an increased irritability or sensitiveness to
+stimuli which may result either in a joyous or a fretful mood.
+
+During sleep the social inhibitions are felt less distinctly and the
+sleeper dreams love-dreams woven from messages coming up from all the
+minute nerve-endings in the expectant reproductive organs. But if no
+germ-cell travels up the womb-canal and tube to meet and impregnate
+the ovum, the womb-lining rejects the egg as chemically unfit. All the
+furbishings are loosened from the walls and slowly cast out,
+constituting the menstrual flow. The phenomenon as a whole is a
+physiological function and should be accompanied by a sense of
+well-being and comfort as is the exercise of any other function, such
+as digestion or muscular activity. Only too often, however, it is
+dreaded as an unmitigated disaster, a time for giving up work or fun
+and going to bed with a hot-water bottle until "the worst is over."
+Let us see how this perversion comes about.
+
+=Why Menstruation Is Painful.= What sort of atmosphere is created for
+the young girl as she attains puberty? Most girls get their first
+inkling of the menstrual period from the periodic "sick spells" of
+mother or sister. This knowledge comes without conscious thought and
+is a direct observation of the subconscious mind, which records
+impressions with the accuracy and completeness of a photographic
+plate. Hearing the talk about a "sick-time" and observing the signs of
+"cramps" among older friends, the young girl's subconscious mind plays
+up to the suggestion and recoils with fear from the newly experienced
+sensations in the maturing organs of reproduction.
+
+This recoil of fear interferes with the circulation in the functioning
+organs, just as fear blanches the face or hinders digestion. There is
+several times as much blood in the stomach when it is full of food as
+there is between meals, but we do not for this reason fancy that we
+have a pain after each meal. There is more blood in the generative
+organs during their functioning, but this means pain only when fear
+ties up the circulation and causes undue congestion. Fear acts further
+on the sturdy muscle of the womb, tying it up into just such knots as
+we feel in the esophagus when we say that we have a lump in the
+throat. It is safe to say that ninety-five cases of painful
+menstruation out of every hundred are caused by fear and by the
+expectation of pain. The cysts and tumors responsible for pain are so
+rare as to be fairly negligible, when compared with these other
+causes.
+
+Dr. Clelia Duel Mosher of Stanford University has for many years
+carried on careful investigations among the students of the
+university. After describing in detail certain physical exercises
+which she has found of value, she continues:
+
+     But more important even than this is an alteration of the morbid
+     attitude of women themselves toward this function; and almost
+     equally essential is a fundamental change in the habit of mind on
+     our part as physicians; for do we not tend to translate too much,
+     the whole of a woman's life into terms of menstruation? If every
+     young girl were taught that menstruation is not normally a "bad
+     time" and that pain or incapacity at that period is as
+     discreditable and unnecessary as bad breath due to decaying
+     teeth, we might almost look for a revolution in the physical life
+     of women.... In my experience the traditional treatment of rest
+     in bed, directing the attention solely to the sex-zone of the
+     body, and the accepted theory that it is an inevitable illness
+     while at the same time the mind is without occupation, produces a
+     morbid attitude and favors the development and exaggeration of
+     whatever symptoms there may be.[56]
+
+[Footnote 56: Clelia Duel Mosher: _Health and the Woman Movement_, pp.
+25, 26, 19.]
+
+=Pre-Menstrual Discomfort.= If it be objected that women often feel
+badly for a day or two before the period begins, before they know that
+it is due, and that this feeling of discomfort could not be caused by
+fear and expectation, it is easy to reply that the subconscious mind
+knows perfectly what is happening within the body. The emotion of
+fear, working within the subconscious, is able to translate all the
+varying bodily sensations into feelings of distress without any
+knowledge on the part of the conscious mind.
+
+Sometimes before the period begins, a girl feels blue and upset for a
+day or two, a sign that the instinct is getting discouraged. The whole
+body is saying, "Get ready, get ready," but it has gotten ready many
+times before, and to no purpose. Unsatisfied striving brings
+discouragement. What reaches consciousness is a feeling of pessimism
+and a general dissatisfaction with life as a whole. If, instead of
+giving in to the blues or going to bed and predicting a pain, the girl
+finds other outlets for her energy, she finds that after all, her
+instinct may be satisfied in indirect ways and that she has strangely
+come into a new supply of _vim_.
+
+=The Purpose of the Pain.= Although suggestion is behind all nervous
+symptoms, there is a deeper reason for the disturbance. When an
+unhealthy suggestion is seized and acted upon, it is because some
+unsatisfied part of the personality sees in it a chance for
+accomplishing its own ends. The pre-menstrual period is the
+blooming-time, the mating-time, the springtime of the organism. That
+means eminently a time for coming into notice, that one's charms may
+attract the desired complement. But if the rightfully insistent
+instinctive desires are held in check by unnatural repressions and
+misapplied social restrictions, the starved instinct can obtain
+expression only by a concealment of purpose. The disguise assumed is
+often one of indifference or positive distaste for the allurements of
+the other sex. But, as we know, an instinctive desire will not be
+denied. In this case, the misguided instinct which has been given the
+suggestion that menstruation means illness, fits this conception into
+the scheme of things and obtains notice in a roundabout way by the
+attention given to the invalid.
+
+=The Treatment.= To find that the symptom has a purpose rather than a
+cause gives the indication for the treatment. Judicious neglect causes
+the symptom to cease by defeating its very purpose,--that of drawing
+attention to itself. The person who never mentions her discomfort,
+thinks about it as little as possible, and goes about her business as
+usual, is likely to find her trouble gone before she realizes it.[57]
+
+[Footnote 57: Violent exercise at this time is unwise, but continuing
+one's usual activity helps the circulation and keeps the mind from
+centering on the affected part. The physiological congestion is unduly
+intensified by standing; therefore all employments should afford
+facilities for the woman to sit at least part of the time while
+continuing work.]
+
+A little explanation gives the patient insight into the workings of
+her own mind, and usually causes the pain to disappear in short order.
+Astonished, indeed, and filled with gratitude have been some of my
+young-women patients who had all their lives been unable to plan any
+work or social engagements for the time of this functioning. Many of
+them were the worst kind of doubters when they were told that to go to
+bed and center their attention on the generative organs only made the
+muscles tighten up and the circulation congest. They could not
+conceive themselves up and around, pursuing their normal life during
+such a time. However, as they have found by experience that this point
+of view is not an optimistic dream, they have broken up the
+confidence-game which their subconscious had been playing on them, and
+have gone on their way rejoicing.
+
+There was one young girl, a doctor's daughter, who suffered
+continuously from pain in the abdomen, and from back-pain which
+increased so greatly at the time of the menses that she was in the
+habit of going to bed for several days, to be waited on with
+solicitous care by her family. In an attempt to cure the trouble she
+had undergone an operation to suspend the uterus, but the pain had
+continued as before. When she came to me, I explained to her that
+there was no physical difficulty and that her trouble was wholly
+nervous. I made her play tennis every day and she had just finished a
+game when her period came on. She stayed up for luncheon, went for a
+walk in the afternoon, ate her dinner with the family, and behaved
+like other people. Her mother telephoned that evening and when I told
+her what her daughter had been doing, she gasped in astonishment. She
+had difficulty in believing that the new order was not miracle but
+simply the working out of natural law. Since that time her daughter
+has had no more trouble.
+
+=The Ounce of Prevention.= If young girls had wiser counselors in
+their mothers and physicians, the misconception would never occur, and
+such an indirect outlet would not be needed; the organic sensations
+incident to puberty and the recurring menstrual period would have
+something of the significance of the annunciation to Mary, bringing
+wonder and a sense of well-being.
+
+When your little daughter arrives at maturity, give her a joyous
+initiation into the noble order of women. She will welcome the new
+function as a badge of womanhood and as a harbinger of wonderful
+things to come.
+
+A girl of fifteen came under my care to be helped out of a mood of
+increasing depression and uneasiness. Her glance was furtive, yet
+anxiously expectant. Tears came unbidden as she sat alone or fingered
+the keys of the piano. Tactful questioning elicited no response as to
+reasons for her unhappiness. Opportunities for giving confidence were
+not accepted. At a chance moment our talk drifted to the subject of
+menstruation. "Your periods are regular and easy; and do you know what
+they are for?" Then I painted for her a picture of the preparations
+that are made throughout the whole organism, for the germ-cell that
+comes each month and has in it all the possibilities of a new little
+life.
+
+The result of this confidential talk may seem fanciful to any one but
+an eye-witness. We had only a week's association, but the depression
+ceased, the furtive look and deprecatory manner were replaced by a
+joyous buoyancy. In a few weeks the thin neck and awkward body rounded
+out into the symmetry which usually precedes the establishment of
+puberty, but which was delayed in this case until the unconscious
+conflict resolved itself.
+
+=In the Large.= Looked at from any angle, this subject is an important
+one. There are involved not only the physical comfort and convenience
+of the sufferers themselves, but also the economic prospects of women
+as a whole. If women are to demand equal opportunity and equal pay,
+they must be able to do equal work without periodic times of illness.
+When employers of women tell us that they regularly have to hire extra
+help because some of their workers lose time each month, we realize
+how great is the aggregate of economic waste, a waste which would
+assuredly be justified if the health of the country's womanhood were
+really involved, but which is inefficient and unnecessary when caused
+merely by ignorant tradition. "Up to standard every day of every
+week," is a slogan quite within the range of possibility for all but
+the seriously ill. When reduced to their lowest terms, the
+inconveniences of this function are not great and are not too dear a
+price to pay for the possibilities of motherhood.
+
+
+THE "CHANGE OF LIFE"
+
+=Another Phantom Peril.= As the young girl is taught to fear the
+menstrual period, so the older woman is taught to dread the time when
+the periods shall cease. Despite the general enlightenment of this day
+and age, the menopause or "change of life" is all too frequently
+feared as a "critical period" in a woman's life, a time of distressing
+physical sensations and even of danger to mental balance.
+
+As a matter of fact, the menopause is a physiological process which
+should be accomplished with as little mental and physical disturbance
+as accompanies the establishment of puberty. The same internal
+secretion is concerned in both. When the function of ovulation ceases
+the body has to find a new way to dispose of the internal secretion of
+the ovary. Its presence in the blood is the cause of the sudden
+dilatation of the blood-vessels that is known as the "hot flash."
+
+The matter is altogether a problem of chemistry, with the necessity
+for a new adjustment among the glands of internal secretion. The body
+easily manages this if left to itself, but is greatly interfered with
+by the wrong suggestion and emotion. We have already seen how quickly
+emotion affects all secretions and how easily the adrenal and thyroid
+glands are influenced by fear. This is the root of the trouble in many
+cases of difficult "change." If an occasional body is not quite able
+to regulate the chemical readjustment, we may have to administer the
+glands of some other animal, but in the majority of cases, the body,
+unhampered by an extra burden of fear, is quite able to make its own
+adjustments. The hot flash passes in a moment, if not prolonged by
+emotion or if not converted into a habit by attention.
+
+One source of trouble in the menopause is that it comes at a time in a
+woman's life when she is likely to have too much leisure. In no way
+can a woman so easily handicap her body at this time as by stopping
+work and being afraid. Those women who have to go on as usual find
+themselves past the change almost before they know it,--unless they
+consider themselves abused, and worry over the necessity for working
+through such a "critical time."
+
+=Three Rules.= Here are a few pointers which have have been of help to
+a number of women:
+
+1 Remember that this is a physiological process and therefore
+abundantly safeguarded by Nature. If you don't expect trouble you will
+not be likely to find it.
+
+2 Remember that the sweating and flushing are made worse by notice.
+
+3 Do everything in your power to keep from the public the knowledge
+that you are no longer a potential mother. If you are past forty, do
+not mop your face or gasp for breath or carry a fan to the theater!
+Shun attention and fear, and you will be surprised at the ease with
+which the "change" is effected.
+
+=Nature's Last Chance.= While we are on the subject of the middle-aged
+woman, it may be well to mention a phenomenon sometimes noticed in the
+early forties. Often an "old maid" who has considered herself settled
+for life in her bachelor estate, suddenly takes to herself a husband.
+(I use the verb advisedly!) Mothers who have thought their
+child-bearing days long past sometimes find themselves pregnant. "The
+child of her old age" is not an uncommon occurrence. Unmarried women
+who have "kept straight" all their lives sometimes go down before
+temptation at this late time. There is a reason. It is as though
+Nature were making a last desperate attempt to produce another life
+before it is too late, speeding up all the internal secretions and
+flashing insistent messages throughout the whole organism.
+
+It may help some woman who feels herself inexplicably impelled toward
+the male sex to know that she is not being "tempted by the devil" but
+merely driven by the insistent chemicals within her body. She is
+likely to rationalize and tell herself that it is too bad for a
+worth-while person like herself to leave no progeny behind her; or she
+may say, as one of my patients did when contemplating running away
+with another woman's husband,--that she could make that man so much
+happier than his wife did, and that she really owed it to him as well
+as to herself. When a woman knows what is the matter with her, it
+makes it easier to bide her time and wait for the demands of Nature to
+subside. Chemicals may not be so romantic as love, but neither are
+they so melodramatic!
+
+
+OTHER TROUBLES
+
+="Speaking of Operations."= Physicians are often called upon to
+diagnose some such vague symptom as pain in the abdomen, back and
+head; ache in the legs; constipation, or loss of appetite. Since the
+patient is very insistent that something shall be done, the physician
+may be driven to operate, even when he has an uneasy feeling that the
+trouble is "merely nervous." Sixty per cent. of the operations on
+women are necessitated by the results of gonorrheal infection. Next in
+frequency up to recent date, have been operations for nervous symptoms
+which could in no way be reached by the knife. Only too often a
+nerve-specialist hears the tale of an operation which was supposed to
+cure a certain pain but which left it worse rather than better. It is
+a pleasure to see some of these pains disappear under a little
+re-education, but one cannot help wishing that the re-education had
+come before the knife instead of after it.
+
+A skilled surgeon can cut almost anything out of a person's body, but
+he cannot cut out an instinct. It sometimes takes great skill to
+determine whether the trouble is an organic affection or a functional
+disturbance caused by the misdirected instinct of reproduction. Often,
+however, the clinical pictures are so different as to leave no room
+for doubt, provided the diagnostician has his eyes open and is not
+over-persuaded by the importunity of the poor neurotic, who insists
+that the surgeon shall remove her appendix, her gall-bladder, her
+genital organs, and her tonsils, and who finally comes back that he
+may have a whack at the operation scar.
+
+=The Bearing of Children.= A number of years ago I became acquainted
+with a charming young married woman who had all her life recoiled with
+fear from the phenomena of sex. She had been afraid of menstruation
+and of marriage, and had at this time almost a phobia for pregnancy
+and childbirth. Before long she came to me in terror, telling me that
+she had become pregnant. I explained to her that pregnancy is the time
+when most women are at their best, that the nausea which is often
+troublesome in the beginning is caused merely by a mixing of messages
+from the autonomic nerves, which refer new sensations in the womb to
+the more usual center of activity in the stomach; and that after the
+body has become accustomed to these sensations, most women experience
+a greater sense of well-being and peace than at any other time in
+life. We had a conversation or two on the subject and everything
+seemed to go well for a while.
+
+As it happened, this young woman and her husband came to call on me
+one afternoon just before the baby was expected. During the visit she
+began to show signs of being in labor. Again she was in terror. Again
+I explained the phenomena of labor, telling her that the
+womb-contractions are caused by the presence in the blood of a
+chemical secretion (hormone) which continues its good work as long as
+there is a state of confidence, but which sometimes stops under fear
+or apprehension. I explained that these womb-efforts are a peristaltic
+movement, a contraction of the upper muscles and a letting go of the
+purse-string muscle at the mouth of the womb, and that fear only tends
+to tie up this purse-string muscle, making a difficult process out of
+one which was intended by Nature to be much more simple. She seemed to
+understand and to lose a good deal of her fright.
+
+About six o'clock the couple went home on the street car from the
+upper end of Pasadena to the far end of Los Angeles. The next morning
+I had a jubilant telephone message from the happy father, announcing
+that the boy-baby had arrived at midnight and that, wonderful to
+relate, he had come without the mother's experiencing any pain
+whatever.
+
+I give this account for what it is worth, without of course contending
+that labor could always be as easy as this. It happened that this girl
+was a normal, healthy woman and that there were no complications of
+any kind in the process of childbirth. A right attitude of mind could
+not have corrected any physical difficulty, but it did seem to help
+her let go of her fear, which would of itself have caused long and
+painful labor.
+
+A patient once told me that when her first baby came, she happened to
+be out in the country where she had to call in a doctor whom she did
+not know. He was an uncouth sort of fellow who inspired fear rather
+than confidence. She soon found that labor stopped whenever he came
+into the room, and started again when he went out. She had the good
+sense to send him out and complete her labor with only the help of her
+mother. Unfortunate is the obstetrician who does not know how to
+inspire a feeling of confidence in his patients. Even childbirth may
+be mightily helped or hindered by the mother's state of mind.
+
+
+SUMMARY
+
+A woman's body has more stability than she knows. It is sometimes out
+of order, but it is more often misunderstood; usually it is an
+unobtrusive and satisfactory instrument, quite fit for its daily
+tasks. The average woman is really well put together. We hear about
+the ones who have difficulty, but not about the great majority who do
+not. We notice the few who are upset during the menopause, and forget
+all the others. To be comfortable and efficient most of the time is,
+after all, merely to be "like folks."
+
+The special functions which Nature has been perfecting in a woman's
+body are as a rule, easily carried through unless complicated by false
+ideas or by fear.
+
+If the woman who has no organic difficulty but who still finds herself
+handicapped by her body, will cease being either resigned to her
+languishing lot or envious of her stalwart brothers; if instead she
+will set out to learn how to be efficient as a woman, she will find
+that many of her ills are not the blunders of an inefficient Creator,
+but are home-made products, which quickly vanish in the light of
+understanding.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+_In which we lose our dread of night._
+
+THAT INTERESTING INSOMNIA
+
+THE FEAR OF STAYING AWAKE
+
+
+To sleep or not to sleep! That is the question. In all the world there
+is nothing to equal it in importance,--to the man with insomnia. His
+days are mere interludes between troubled nights spent in restless
+tossing to and fro and feverish worry over the weary day to come. His
+mind filled with ideas about the disastrous effects of insomnia, he
+imagines himself fast sliding down hill toward the grave or the
+insane-asylum. It is true that his conversation very often politely
+begins something like this: "Good morning. Did you sleep well last
+night?" but if we fail to respond by an equally polite "and I hope you
+had a good night?" he seems restless until he has somehow
+disillusioned us by stating the exact number of hours and minutes
+during which he was able to lose himself in slumber.
+
+We must not ridicule the man who doesn't sleep. We are all very much
+alike. If any one of us happens to lie awake for a night or two, he is
+likely to get into a panic, and if the spell should last a week, he
+begins looking up steamship agents and talking of voyages to Southern
+seas. The fact is that most people are dreadfully afraid of insomnia.
+Knowing the effects of a few nights of enforced wakefulness, and
+having had a little experience with the fagged feeling after a
+restless night, they believe themselves only logical when they fall
+into a panic over the prospect of persistent insomnia.
+
+=Two Kinds of Wakefulness.= As a matter of fact, insomnia is a phantom
+peril. There is not the slightest danger from lying awake nights,
+provided one is not kept awake by some irritating physical stimulus.
+All fear of insomnia is based on ignorance of the difference between
+enforced wakefulness and deliberate wakefulness, or insomnia. The man
+who has acquired the habit may stay awake almost indefinitely without
+appreciable harm, but the one who is kept awake for a week by a pain,
+by a chemical poison from infection, or by the necessity for staying
+up on his job, may easily be in a state of exhaustion. Even in cases
+of prolonged pain or over-exertion, the body tends to maintain its
+equilibrium by hastening its rate of repair and by falling asleep
+before the danger point is reached. It is almost impossible to impair
+permanently the tissue of the brain except in the presence of a
+chemical irritant. In case of infection we often have to give medicine
+to neutralize the effect of the poison or to resort to narcotics which
+make the brain cells less susceptible to irritation. But nervous
+insomnia is another story.
+
+
+A HARMLESS HABIT
+
+=Long-Lived Insomniacs.= A man of my acquaintance once said in all
+seriousness and with evident alarm: "I am following in the footsteps
+of my mother. She lived to be seventy years old and she had insomnia
+all her life." If this man had been preaching a sermon on the
+harmlessness of chronic insomnia, he could not have chosen a better
+text, but he seemed just as much concerned about himself as if his
+mother had died from the effects of three months' wakefulness. People
+can live healthy lives during twenty or thirty years of insomnia
+because chronic insomnia is nothing more or less than a habit, and
+"habit spells ease." The brain cells are not irritated by either
+internal or external stimuli; there is no effort to keep awake;
+virtually no energy is expended,--except in restless tossing and
+worry. If the body is kept still and emotion eliminated, fatigue
+products are washed away and the reserves are filled in with perfect
+ease.
+
+=Thinking in Circles.= Habit means automatic, subconscious activity,
+with the least expenditure of energy and the least amount of fatigue.
+We have already noted the ease with which heart and diaphragm muscles
+carry on their work from the beginning of life to its end. Anything
+relegated to the subconscious mind can be kept up almost indefinitely
+without tire, and to this subconscious type of activity belong the
+thoughts of a chronic insomniac. Despite all assertions to the
+contrary, his conscious mind is not really awake. If he is questioned
+about the happenings of the night, he is likely to have been unaware
+of the most audible noises. The thoughts that run through his brain
+are not new, constructive, energy-consuming thoughts, but the same old
+thoughts that have been going around in circles for days and weeks at
+a time.
+
+It is true that a person sometimes chooses to wake up and do his
+constructive planning in the night. This kind of thought does bring
+fatigue, up to a certain point. After that the body hastens its rate
+of repair or automatically goes to sleep. Activity of this kind is
+always a matter of choice. He who really prefers sleep will shut the
+drawers containing the day's business and leave them shut until
+morning.
+
+=Day-Dreaming at Night.= However, the man who makes a practice of
+staying awake rarely does much real thinking. He lets the thoughts run
+through his mind as they will, builds air-castles of things he would
+like to do and can't, or other kinds of air-castles about the
+disastrous effects of his insomnia on the day that is to come; he
+worries over his health, or his finances, and grieves over his
+sorrows. He is really indulging himself, thinking the thoughts he
+likes most to think, and these consume but little energy. Like a horse
+that knows the rounds, they can go jogging on indefinitely without
+guidance from the driver.
+
+
+WHAT CAUSES THE FATIGUE
+
+=Tossing and Fretting.= The thing that tires is not the insomnia but
+the emotion over the insomnia. If people who fail to sleep are
+perpetually fagged out, it is not from loss of sleep, but from worry
+and tossing. Often they spend a good deal of the night feeling sorry
+for themselves. They turn and toss, exclaiming with each turn: "Why
+don't I sleep? How badly I shall feel to-morrow! What a night! What a
+night!" Such a spree of emotionalism can hardly fail to tire, but it
+is not fair to blame the insomnia.
+
+He who makes up his mind to it can rest almost as well without sleep
+as with it, provided he keeps his mind calm and his body relaxed.
+"Decent hygienic conditions" demand not necessarily eight hours of
+sleep but eight hours of quiet rest in bed. Tossing about drives away
+sleep and uses up energy. I make it a rule that my patients shall not
+turn over more than four times during the night. This is more
+important than that they should sleep. To be sure, I do not stay awake
+to enforce the rule, but most people catch the idea very quickly and
+before they know it they are sleeping.
+
+
+HOW TO GO TO SLEEP
+
+=Ceasing to Care.= The best way to learn to sleep is not to care
+whether you do or not. Nothing could be better than DuBois's advice:
+"Don't look for sleep; it flies away like a pigeon when one pursues
+it."[58] Attention to anything keeps the mind awake, and most of all,
+attention to sleep. More than one person has waked up to see whether
+or not he was going to sleep. We cannot, however, fool ourselves by
+merely pretending indifference. The only sensible way is to get the
+facts firmly fixed in our minds so that we actually realize that we do
+not need more sleep than our bodies take. As soon as it is realized
+that insomnia is really of no importance, it tends to disappear.
+
+[Footnote 58: DuBois: _Psychic Treatment of Nervous Disorders_, p.
+339.]
+
+=Catching the Idea.= There came one day for consultation a very
+healthy-looking woman, a deaconess of the Lutheran Church. "Doctor,"
+she said, "I came to get relief from insomnia. For twenty years I have
+not slept more than one or two hours a night." "Why do you want more?"
+I asked. "Why, isn't it very unhealthy not to sleep?" she exclaimed
+in astonishment. "Evidently not," I answered.
+
+This woman had tried every doctor she could think of, including the
+splendid S. Weir Mitchell. Her insomnia had become a preoccupation
+with her, her chief thought in life. All I did was to explain to her
+that her body had been getting all the sleep it needed, and that
+neither body nor mind was in the least run down after twenty years of
+sleeplessness. "When you cease being interested in your insomnia, it
+will go away, although from a health standpoint it matters very little
+whether it does or not." We had two conversations on the subject, and
+a week later she came back to tell me that she was sleeping eight
+hours a night.
+
+One woman had had insomnia for thirty years. After I had explained to
+her that her body had adjusted itself to this way of living and that
+she need not try to get more sleep, she snored so loud all night and
+every night that the rest of the family began to complain!
+
+A certain banker proved very quick at catching the idea. He had been
+so troubled with insomnia and intense weakness that his doctors
+prescribed a six-months voyage in Southern waters. Knowing that my
+prescriptions involved a change in point of view rather than in scene,
+he came to me. Although he had been getting only about half an hour's
+sleep a night, he went to sleep in his chair the first evening, and
+then went upstairs and slept all night. He resumed his duties at the
+bank, walking a mile and a half the first day and three miles the
+second. During the months following, he reported, "No more insomnia."
+
+=Keeping Account.= A bright young college graduate came to me for a
+number of ailments, chief among them being sleeplessness. She was also
+overcome by fatigue, having spent four months in bed. A four-mile walk
+in the canon and a few other such outings soon dispelled the fatigue,
+but the insomnia proved more obstinate. After she had been with me for
+a week or two, I took her aside one day for a little talk. "Well?" I
+said as we sat down. Then she began: "Sunday night I was awake from
+half-past one to four, Monday from twelve to one, Tuesday from one to
+three, Wednesday from two to four, Thursday--" By this time she became
+aware of the quizzical expression on my face and began to be
+embarrassed. Then she stopped and laughed. "Well," she said, "I did
+not know that I was paying so much attention to my sleep." She was
+bright enough to see the point at once, gave up her preoccupation in
+the all-absorbing topic and promptly forgot to have any trouble with
+so natural a function as sleep.
+
+=Making New Associations.= Examples like this show how natural is
+childlike slumber when once we take away the inhibitions of a
+hampering idea. Age-old habits like sleep are not lost, but they may
+easily be interfered with by a little too much attention. When a
+person who can scarcely keep his eyes open all the evening is
+instantly wide awake as soon as his head touches the pillow, we may be
+sure that a part of his trouble comes from the wrong associations
+which he has built up with the thought of night. When a dear little
+old lady told me of her constant state of apprehension about going to
+bed, I said to her: "When I go to my room, the darkness says sleep.
+When I take off my clothes, the very act says sleep. When I put my
+head on the pillow, the pillow says sleep." She liked that and found
+herself able to sleep all night. The next evening she wanted another
+"sleeping-potion" but as I did not want her to become dependent on
+anybody's suggestion, I put my mouth up close to her ear and
+whispered, "Abra ca dabra, dum, dum, dum." She laughed, but saw the
+point. After that she slept very well. She merely broke the habit by
+making a new kind of association with the thought of bed. Nature did
+the rest.
+
+It seems hardly necessary to remark that drug-taking is the most
+inefficient way of handling the situation. Everybody knows that
+narcotics are harmful to the delicate cells of the brain and that the
+dose has to be continuously increased in cases of chronic insomnia.
+If a person realizes that the drug is far more harmful than the
+insomnia itself, he is weak indeed to yield to temptation for the sake
+of a few nights of sleep. As the cause of insomnia is psychic, so the
+only logical cure is a new idea and a new attitude of mind.
+
+
+THE PURPOSE OF INSOMNIA
+
+Like all nervous symptoms, insomnia is not an affliction but an
+indulgence. Somehow, and in ways unknown to the conscious mind, it
+brings a certain amount of satisfaction to a part of the personality.
+No matter how unpleasant it may be, no matter how much we consciously
+fear it, something inside chooses to stay awake.
+
+Started, as a rule, through suggestion or imitation, insomnia is
+sometimes kept up as a means of making ourselves seem important,--to
+ourselves and to others. It at least provides an excuse for thinking
+and talking about ourselves, and furnishes a certain feeling of
+distinction. If something within us craves attention, even staying
+awake may not be too dear a price to pay for that attention. Strange
+to say, there are other times when the insomnia is chosen by the
+primitive subconscious mind with the idea of doing penance for
+supposed sins whose evil effects might possibly be avoided by this
+kind of expiation. Analysis shows that motives like this are not so
+uncommon as might be supposed. In other cases insomnia is chosen for
+the chance it gives for phantasy-building. A person denied the right
+kind of outlet for his instincts may so enjoy the day-dreaming habit
+that he prolongs it into the night, really preferring it to sleep.
+Such a state of affairs is not at all incompatible with an intense
+conscious desire to sleep and a real fear of insomnia. So strange may
+be the motives hidden away within the depths of the most prosaic
+individual!
+
+
+SUMMARY
+
+Nervous insomnia is something which a part of us makes use of and
+another part fears. It is a mistake on both sides. Although not in the
+least dangerous, the habit can hardly be considered a satisfactory
+form of amusement. Nature has provided a better way to spend the
+night, a way to which she speedily brings us when we choose to let her
+do it.
+
+We do not have to ask for sleep as for a special boon which may be
+denied. We simply have to lie down in trust, expecting to be carried
+away like a child. If our expectation is not at once realized we can
+still trust, as with relaxed mind and body we lie in calm content,
+knowing that Nature is, minute by minute, restoring us for another
+day.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+_In which we raise our thresholds_
+
+FEELING OUR FEELINGS
+
+FINELY STRUNG VIOLINS
+
+
+The young girl had been telling me about her symptoms. "You know,
+Doctor," she said. "I am a very sensitive person. In fact, I have
+always been told that I am like a finely strung violin." There was
+pride in every tone of her voice,--pride and satisfaction over
+possessing an organization so superior to the common clay of the
+average person. It was a typical remark, and showed clearly that this
+girl belonged among the nervous folk. For the nervous person is not
+only over-sensitive, but he accepts his condition with a secret and
+half-conscious pride as a token of superiority.
+
+It seems that there are a good many kinds of sensitiveness. Whether it
+is a good or bad possession depends entirely on what kind of things a
+person is sensitive to. If he is quick to take in a situation, easily
+impressed with the needs of others, open-doored to beauty and to the
+appeal of the spiritual, keenly alive to the humorous, even when the
+joke is on himself and the situation uncomfortable, then surely he has
+a right to be glad of his sensitiveness. But too often the word means
+something else. It means feeling, intensely, physical sensations of
+which most people are unaware, or reacting emotionally to situations
+which call for no such response. It means, in short, feeling our
+feelings and liking to feel them. There seems to be nothing
+particularly praiseworthy or desirable about this kind of
+sensitiveness. If this is what it means to be a "finely-wrought
+violin," it might even be better to be a bass drum which can stand a
+few poundings without ruin to its constitution.
+
+"But," says the sensitive person, "are we not born either violins or
+drums? Is not heredity rather than choice to blame? And what can a
+person do about it?" These questions are so closely bound up with the
+problems of nervous symptoms of indigestion, fatigue, a woman's ills,
+hysterical pains and sensations, and with all the problems of
+emotional control, that we shall do well to look more carefully into
+this question of sensibility, which is really the question of the
+relation of the individual to his environment.
+
+
+SELECTING OUR SENSATIONS
+
+=Reaction and Over-Reaction.= Every organism, if it is to live, must
+be normally sensitive to its environment. It must possess the power
+of response to stimuli. As the sea-anemone curls up at touch, and as
+the tiny baby blinks at the light, so must every living thing be able
+to sense and to react to the presence of a dangerous or a friendly
+force. Only by a certain degree of irritability can it survive in the
+struggle for existence. The five senses are simply different phases of
+the apparatus for receiving communications from the outside world.
+Other parts of the machinery catch the manifold messages continually
+pouring into the brain from within our bodies themselves. These
+communications cannot be stopped nor can we prevent their impress on
+the cells of the brain and spinal cord, but we do have a good deal to
+say as to which ones shall be brought into the focus of attention and
+receive enough notice to become real, conscious sensations.
+
+=Paying Attention.= If a human being had to give conscious attention
+to every stimulus from the outer world and from his own body, to every
+signal which flashes itself along his sensory nerves to his brain, he
+would need a different kind of mind from his present efficient but
+limited apparatus. As it is, there is an admirable provision for
+taking care of the messages without overburdening consciousness. The
+stream of messages never stops, not even in sleep. But the conscious
+mind has its private secretary, the subconscious, to receive the
+messages and to answer them.
+
+During any five minutes of a walk down a city street a man has
+hundreds of visual images flashed upon the retina of the eye. His eye
+sees every little line in the faces of the passers-by, every detail of
+their clothing, the decorations on the buildings, the street signs
+overhead, the articles in the shop-windows, the paving of the
+sidewalks, the curbings and tracks which he crosses, and scores of
+other objects to most of which the man himself is oblivious. His ear
+hears every sound within hearing distance,--the honk of every horn,
+the clang of every bell, the voices of the people and the shuffle of
+feet. Some part of his mind feels the press of his foot on the
+pavement, the rubbing of his heel on his stocking, the touch of his
+clothing all over his body, and all those so-called kinesthetic
+sensations,--sensations of motion and balance which keep him in
+equilibrium and on the move, to say nothing of the never-ending stream
+of messages from every cell of every muscle and tissue of his body.
+
+Out of this constant rush of stimuli our man gives attention to only
+the smallest fraction. Whatever is interesting to him, that he sees
+and hears and feels. All other sensations he passes by as indifferent.
+Unless they come with extraordinary intensity, they do not get over
+into his consciousness at all.
+
+="Listening-in" on the Subconscious.= The subconscious mind knows and
+needs to know what is happening in the farthermost cell of the body.
+It needs to know at any moment where the knees are, and the feet;
+otherwise the individual would fall in a heap whenever he forgot to
+watch his step. It needs to know just how much light is entering the
+eye, and how much blood is in the stomach. To this end it has a system
+of communication from every point in the body and this system is in
+constant operation. Its messages never cease. But these messages were
+never meant to be in the focus of attention. They are meant only for
+the subconscious mind and are generally so low-toned as to be easily
+ignored unless one falls into the habit of listening for them. Unless
+they are invested with a significance which does not belong to them,
+they will not emerge into consciousness as real sensations.
+
+=Psychic Thresholds.= Boris Sidis has given us a word which has proved
+very useful in this connection. The limit of sensitivity of a
+cell--the degree of irritability--he calls the stimulus-threshold.[59]
+As the wind must come in gusts to drive the rain in over a high
+doorsill, so must any stimulus--an idea or a sensation--come with
+sufficient force to get over the obstructions at the doorway of
+consciousness. These psychic thresholds do not maintain a constant
+level. They are raised or lowered at will by a hidden and automatic
+machinery, which is dependent entirely on the ideas already in
+consciousness, by the interest bestowed upon the newcomer. The
+intensity of the stimuli cannot be controlled, but the interest we
+feel in them and the welcome given them are very largely a matter of
+choice.
+
+[Footnote 59: Sidis: _Foundations of Normal and Abnormal Psychology_,
+Chap. XXX.]
+
+Each organism has a wide field of choice as to which ideas and which
+physical stimuli it shall welcome and which it shall shut out. We may
+raise our thresholds, build up a bulwark of indifference to a whole
+class of excitations, shut our mental doors, and pull down the shades;
+or we may lower the thresholds so that the slightest flicker of an
+idea or the smallest pin-prick of a sensation finds ready access to
+the center of attention.
+
+=Thresholds and Character.= There are certain thresholds made to shift
+frequently and easily. When one is hungry any food tastes good, for
+the threshold is low; but the food must be most tempting to be
+acceptable just after a hearty meal. On the other hand, a fairly
+constant threshold is maintained for many different kinds of stimuli.
+These stimuli are always bound together in groups, and make appeal
+depending upon the predominating interest. As anything pertaining to
+agriculture is noticed by a farmer, or any article of dress by a
+fashionable woman, so any stimulus coming from a "warm" group is
+welcomed, while any from a "cold" group is met by a high threshold.
+The kind of person one is depends on what kind of things are "warm"
+to him and what kind are "cold." The superman is one who has gained
+such conscious control of his psychic thresholds that he can raise and
+lower them at will in the interests of the social good.
+
+=Thresholds and Sensations.= The importance of these principles is
+obvious. The next chapter will show more of their influence on ideas
+and emotions; but for the present we will consider their lessons in
+the sphere of the physical. Psychology speaks here in no uncertain
+terms to physiology. Whoever becomes fascinated by the processes of
+his own body is bound to magnify the sensations from those processes,
+until the most 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 feelings"
+unless, despite all discomfort, he really enjoys them. A hard
+statement to accept perhaps, but one that is repeatedly proved by a
+specialist in "nerves"!
+
+
+DETERMINING CAUSES
+
+=Accidental Association.= In many cases, the form which the
+sensitiveness takes is merely a matter of accident. Often it is based
+on some small physical disability, as when a slight tendency to take
+cold is magnified into an intense fear of fresh air.
+
+Sometimes a past fleeting pain which has become associated with the
+stream of thought of an emotional moment--what Boris Sidis calls the
+moment-consciousness--is perpetuated in consciousness in place of the
+repressed emotion. "In the determination of the pathology of hysteria,
+the accidental moment plays a much greater part than is generally
+recognized; if a painful affect--emotion--originates while eating but
+is repressed, it may produce nausea and vomiting and continue for
+months as an hysterical symptom."[60]
+
+[Footnote 60: Freud: _Selected Papers_, p. 2.]
+
+One of Freud's patients, Miss Rosalie H----, found while taking
+singing-lessons that she often choked over notes of the middle
+register, although she took with ease notes higher and lower in the
+scale. It was revealed that this girl, who had a most unhappy home
+life, had, during a former period, often experienced this choking
+sensation from a painful emotion just before she went for her music
+lesson. Some of the left-over sensations had remained during the
+singing, and as the middle notes happen to involve the same muscles as
+does a lump in one's throat, she had often found herself choking over
+these notes. Later on, while living in a different city and in a
+wholly different environment, the physical sensations from her throat
+muscles, as they took these middle notes, brought back the associated
+sensations of choking,--without, however, uncovering the buried
+emotion.[61] Many a painful hysterical affliction is based on just
+such mechanisms as these. As Freud remarks, "The hysteric suffers
+mostly from reminiscences."[62]
+
+[Footnote 61: Ibid, p. 43.]
+
+[Footnote 62: Ibid, p. 5.]
+
+=Subconscious Symbolism.= Sometimes, as we have seen, the form which
+a hypersensitiveness assumes is not determined by any physical
+sensation, either past or symbolism which acts out in the body the
+drama of the soul.
+
+=Facing the Facts.= Whatever the motives and whatever the determining
+causes, hypersensibility is in any case a feeling of feelings which is
+not warranted by the present situation. Hypersensitiveness is never
+anything but a makeshift kind of satisfaction. Despite certain
+subconscious reasoning, it does not make one more important nor more
+beloved. Neither does it furnish a real expression for that great
+creative love-instinct whose outlet, if it is to bring satisfaction,
+must be a real outlet into the external world. An understanding of the
+motives is helpful only when it makes clear that they are
+short-sighted motives and that the real desires back of them may be
+satisfied in better ways.
+
+
+SOME LOWERED THRESHOLDS
+
+As the public appetite for specific cases appears to be insatiable, we
+will give from real life some examples of low thresholds which were
+raised through re-education. One hesitates to write down these
+examples because when they are on paper they sound like advertisements
+of patent medicines. However, there is no magic in any of these cures,
+but only the working out of definite laws which may be used by other
+sufferers, if they only know. Re-education through a knowledge of
+oneself and the laws at work really does remarkable things when it has
+a chance.
+
+="Danger-Signals" without the Danger.= There was the man who had queer
+feelings all over his body, especially in his head and stomach, and
+who considered these sensations as danger-signals warning him to stop.
+This man had worked up from messenger boy to a position next to the
+president in one of the transcontinental railroad systems. On the
+appearance of these "danger-signals" he had tried to resign but had
+been given a year's leave of absence instead. Half the year had gone
+in rest-cure, but he was still afraid to eat or work, and believed
+himself "done for." After three weeks of re-education he saw that
+instead of having overdrawn his capital, he had in another sense
+overdrawn his sensations. He went away as fit as ever, finished his
+leave of absence doing hard labor on his farm, and then went back to
+even harder tasks, working for the Government in the administration of
+the railroads during the war. He is still at work.
+
+=Enjoying Poor Health.= There was the woman who had been an invalid
+for twenty years, doing little else during all that time than to feel
+her own feelings. Because of the distressing sensations in her
+stomach, she had for a year taken nothing but liquid nourishment. She
+had queer feelings in her solar-plexus and indeed a general luxury of
+over-feeling. She could not leave her room nor have any visitors. She
+was the star invalid of the family, waited on by her two hard-working
+sisters who earned the living for them all.
+
+Her sisters had inveigled her to my house under false pretenses,
+calling it a boarding-house and omitting to mention that I was a
+doctor, because "she guessed she knew more about her case than any
+doctor." For the first week I got in only one sentence a day,--just
+before I slipped out of the door after taking in her "liquid
+nourishment." But at the end of the week I announced that thereafter
+her meals would be served in the dining-room. When she found that
+there was to be no more liquid nourishment, she had to appear at the
+family table. After that it was only a short time before she was at
+home, cooking for her sisters. When she saw the role she had been
+unconsciously playing, she could hardly wish to go on with it.
+
+=Feeling His Legs.= Mr. R. suffered from such severe and distressing
+pains in his legs that he believed himself on the verge of paralysis.
+He was also bothered by a chronic emotional state which made him look
+like a "weepy" woman. His eyes were always full of tears and his chin
+a-quiver, and he had, as he said, a perpetual lump in his throat.
+Under re-education both lump and paralysis disappeared completely and
+Mr. R. took his wife across the continent, driving his machine with
+his own hands--and feet.
+
+=A Subconscious Association.= Mr. D.'s case admirably illustrates the
+return of symptoms through an unconscious association. He was a
+lawyer, prominent in public affairs of the Middle West, who had been
+my patient for several weeks and who had gone home cured of many
+striking disabilities. Before he came to me, he had given up his
+public work and was believed by all his associates to be afflicted
+with softening of the brain, and "out of the game" for good. From
+being one of the ablest men of his State, he had fallen into such a
+condition that he could neither read a letter nor write one. He could
+not stand the least sunshine on his head, and to walk half a mile was
+an impossibility. He was completely "down and out" and expected to be
+an invalid for the rest of his life.
+
+But these symptoms had one by one disappeared during his five-weeks
+stay with me. He had done good stiff work in the garden, carried a
+heavy sack of grapefruit a mile in the hot sun, and was generally his
+old self again. Now he was back in the harness, hard at work as of
+old. Suddenly, as he sat reading in his home one evening, all his old
+symptoms swept over him,--the pains in his head and legs, the pounding
+of the heart, the "all-gone" sensations as though he were going to die
+on the spot. He became almost completely dissociated, but through it
+all he clung to the idea which he had learned,--namely that this
+experience was not really physical as it seemed but was the result of
+some idea, and would pass. He did not tell any one of the attack,
+ignored it as much as possible, and waited. In a few minutes he was
+himself again. Then he looked for the cause and realized that the
+article he was reading was one he had read several months previous,
+when suffering most severely from the whole train of symptoms. When
+the familiar words had again gone into his mind, they had pressed the
+button for the whole physiological experience which had once before
+been associated with them. This is the same mechanism as that involved
+in Prince's case, Miss Beauchamp, who became completely dissociated at
+one time when a breeze swept across her face. When Dr. Prince looked
+for the cause, he found that once before she had experienced certain
+distressing emotions while a breeze was fanning her cheek. The
+recurrence of the physical stimulation had been sufficient to bring
+back in its entirety the former emotional complex.
+
+=Another Kind of Association.= One of my women patients illustrates
+another kind of association-mechanism, based not on proximity in time
+but proximity of position in the body. This woman had complained for
+years of "bladder trouble" although no physical examination had been
+able to reveal any organic difficulty. She referred to a constant
+distress in the region of the bladder and was never without a certain
+red blanket which she wrapped around her every time she sat down.
+During psycho-analysis she recounted an experience of years before
+which she had never mentioned to anybody. During a professional
+consultation her physician, a married man, had suddenly seized her and
+exclaimed, "I love you! I love you!" In spite of herself, the woman
+felt a certain appeal, followed by a great sense of guilt. In the
+conflict between the physiological reflex and her moral repugnance,
+she had shunted out of consciousness the real sex-sensation and had
+replaced it with a sensation which had become associated in her
+subconscious mind with the original temptation. Since the nerves from
+the genital region and from the bladder connect with the same segment
+of the spinal cord, she had unconsciously chosen to mix her messages,
+and to cling to the substitute sensation without being in the least
+Conscious of the cause. As soon as she had described the scene to me
+and had discerned its connection with her symptoms, the bladder
+trouble disappeared.
+
+=Afraid of the Cold.= Patients who are sensitive to cold are very
+numerous. Mr. G.--he of the prunes and bran biscuits--was so afraid of
+a draft that he could detect the air current if a window was opened a
+few inches anywhere in a two-story house. He always wore two suits of
+underwear, but despite his precautions he had a swollen red throat
+much of the time. His prescription was a cold bath every morning, a
+source of delight to the other men patients, who made him stay in the
+water while they counted five. He was required to dress and live like
+other folks and of course his sensitiveness and his sore throat
+disappeared.
+
+Dr. B----, when he came to me, was the most wrapped-up man I had ever
+met. He had on two suits of underwear, a sweater, a vest and suit
+coat, an overcoat, a bear-skin coat and a Jaeger scarf--all in
+Pasadena in May!
+
+Besides this fear of cold, he was suffering from a hypersensitiveness
+of several other varieties. So sensitive was his skin that he had his
+clothes all made several sizes too big for him so that they would not
+make pressure. He was so aware of the muscles of the neck that he
+believed himself unable to hold up his head, and either propped it
+with his hands or leaned it against the back of a chair.
+
+He had been working on the eighth edition of his book, a scientific
+treatise of nation-wide importance, but his eyes were so sensitive
+that he could not possibly use them and had to keep them shaded from
+the glare. He was so conscious of the messages of fatigue that he was
+unable to walk at all, and he suffered from the usual trouble with
+constipation. All these symptoms of course belonged together and were
+the direct result of a wrong state of mind. When he had changed his
+mind, he took off his extra clothes, walked a mile and a half at the
+first try, gave up his constipation, and went back to work. Later on I
+had a letter from him saying that his favorite seat was an overturned
+nail-keg in the garden and that he was thinking of sawing the backs
+off his chairs.
+
+Miss Y---- had worn cotton in her ears for a year or two because she
+had once had an inflammation of the middle ear, and believed the
+membrane still sensitive to cold. There was Miss E----, whose
+underwear always reached to her throat and wrists and who spent her
+time following the sun; and Dr. I----, who never forgot her heavy
+sweater or her shawl over her knees, even in front of the fire. The
+procession of "cold ones" is almost endless, but always they find that
+their sensitiveness is of their own making and that it disappears when
+they choose to ignore it.
+
+=Fear of Light.= Fear of cold is no more common than fear of light.
+Nervous folk with half-shut eyes are very frequent indeed. From one
+woman I took at least seven pairs of dark glasses before she learned
+that her eye was made for light. A good example is furnished by a
+woman who was not a patient of mine at all, but merely the sister of a
+patient. After my patient had been cured of a number of distressing
+symptoms--pain in the spine, sore heels, a severe nervous cough,
+indigestion and other typical complaints,--she began to scheme to get
+her sister to come to me.
+
+This sister, the wife of a minister in the Middle West, had a constant
+pain in her eyes, compelling her to hold them half-shut all the time.
+When she was approached about coming to me, she said indignantly, "If
+that doctor thinks that my trouble is nervous, she is much mistaken,"
+and then proceeded to get well. Once the subconscious mind gets the
+idea that its game is recognized, it is very apt to give it up, and it
+can do this without loss of time if it really wants to.
+
+=Pain at the Base of the Brain.= Of all nervous pains, that in the
+back of the neck is by all odds the most common. It is rare indeed to
+find a nervous patient without this complaint, and among supposedly
+well folk it is only too frequent. Indeed, it almost seems that in
+some quarters such a pain stands as a badge of the fervor and zeal of
+one's work.
+
+But work is never responsible for this sense of discomfort. Only an
+over-sensitiveness to feelings or a false emotionalism can produce a
+pain of this kind, unless it should happen to be caused by some poison
+circulating in the blood. The trouble is not with the nerves or with
+the spine, despite the fad about misplaced vertebrae. When a doctor
+examines a sensitive spine, marking the sore spots with a blue pencil,
+and a few minutes later repeats the process, he finds almost
+invariably that the spots have shifted. They are not true physical
+pains and they rarely remain long in the same place.
+
+Pain in the spine and neck is an example of exaggerated sensibility or
+over-awareness. Since all messages from every part of trunk and limb
+must go through the spinal cord, and since very many of them enter the
+cord in the region of the neck and shoulder blades, it is only natural
+that an over-feeling of these messages should be especially noticed in
+this zone.
+
+Sometimes a false emotionalism adds to the discomfort by tensing the
+whole muscular system and making the messages more intense. When a
+social worker or a business man gets tense over his work or ties
+himself into knots over a committee meeting, he not only foolishly
+wastes his energy but makes his nerves carry messages that are more
+urgent than usual. Then if he is on the look-out for sensations, he
+all the more easily becomes aware of the central station in the spine
+where the messages are received. By centering his attention on this
+station and tightening up his back-muscles, he increases this
+over-awareness and easily gets himself into the clutch of a vicious
+habit.
+
+Sometimes a tenseness of the body is the result, not of a false
+attitude toward one's work, but of a lack of satisfaction in other
+directions. If the love-force is not getting what it wants, it may
+keep the body in a state of tension, with all the undesirable results
+of such tension. The person who keeps himself tense, whether because
+of his work or because of tension in other directions, has not really
+learned how to throw himself into his job and to forget himself, his
+emotions, and his body.
+
+=Various Pains.= Tender spots may appear in almost any part of the
+body. There was the girl with the sore scalp, who was frequently so
+sensitive that she could not bear to have a single hair touched at its
+farthermost end, and who could not think of brushing her hair at such
+a time. There was the man whose wrists and ankles were so painful that
+the slightest touch was excruciating; the woman with the false
+sciatica; the man with the so-called appendicitis pains; and the man
+with the false neuritis, who always wore jersey coats several sizes
+too large. Each one of these false pains was removed by the process of
+re-education.
+
+=Low Thresholds to Fatigue.= Mr. H. was habitually so overcome by
+fatigue that he could not make himself carry through the slightest
+piece of work, even when necessity demanded it. On Sunday night, when
+there was no one else to milk the cow, he had had to stop in the
+middle of the process and go into the house to lie down. To carry the
+milk was impossible, so low were his thresholds to the slightest
+message of fatigue. It turned out that things were not going right in
+the reproductive life. His threshold was low in this direction, and it
+carried down with it all other thresholds. After a general revaluation
+of values, he found himself able to keep his thresholds at the normal
+level.
+
+A fine, efficient missionary from the Orient had been so overcome with
+fatigue that he was forced to give up all work and return to this
+country. He had been with me for a while and was again ready to go to
+work. He came one day with a radiant face to bid me good-by. "Why are
+you so joyous?" I asked. "Because," he answered, "before I came home I
+was so fatigued that it used me up completely just to see the native
+servants pack our luggage. Now we are taking back twice as much, and I
+not only packed it all myself but made the boxes with my own hands. No
+more fatigue for me!"
+
+A charming young girl who in many ways was an inspiration to all her
+associates fell into the habit of over-feeling her fatigue. "You know,
+Doctor," she said, "that I give out too much of myself; everybody
+tells me so." That was just the trouble. Everybody had told her so,
+and the suggestion had worked. It did not take her long to learn that
+in scattering abroad she was enriching herself, and that her "giving
+out" was not exhausting to her but rather the truest kind of
+self-expression. It is only when a "giving out" is accompanied by a
+"looking in" that it can ever deplete. The "See how much I am
+giving," and "How tired I shall be," attitude could hardly fail to
+exhaust, but a real self-expression and the fulfilment of a real
+desire to give are never anything else than exhilarating. There is
+something wrong with the minister who is used up after his Sunday
+sermons. If his message and not himself is his real concern, he will
+have only a normal amount of fatigue, accompanied by a general sense
+of accomplishment and well-being, after he has fed his flock. To be
+sure, I have never been a minister, but I have had a goodly number
+among my patients and I speak from a fairly close acquaintance with
+their problems.
+
+=Stopping Our Ears.= Roosters seem to be a perpetual source of
+annoyance to the folk whose thresholds are not under proper control.
+But as roosters seem to be necessary to an egg-eating nation, it seems
+simpler to change the threshold than to abolish the roosters. There
+was one woman who complained especially about being disturbed by
+early-morning Chanticleers. I explained that the crowing called for no
+action on her part, and that therefore she should not allow it to come
+into consciousness. "Do you mean," she said, "that I could keep from
+hearing them?" As it happened, she was sitting under the clock, which
+had just struck seven. "Did you hear the clock strike?" I asked. "No,"
+she said; "did it strike?"
+
+This poor little woman, who suffered from a very painful back and
+other distressing symptoms, had been married at sixteen to a roue of
+forty; and, without experiencing any of the psychic feelings of sex,
+had been immediately plunged into the physical sex-relations. Since
+sex is psycho-physical and since any attempt to separate the two
+elements is both desecrating and unsatisfactory; it is not surprising
+that misery, and finally divorce, had been her portion. Another
+equally unpleasant experience had followed, and the poor woman in the
+strain and disappointment of her love-life, and in the lowering of the
+thresholds pertaining to this thwarted instinct, had unconsciously
+lowered the thresholds to all physical stimuli, until she was no
+longer master of herself in any line. When she saw the reason for her
+exaggerated reactions, she was able to gain control of herself, and to
+find outlet in other ways.
+
+Too many persons fall into the way of being disturbed by noises which
+are no concern of theirs. As nurses learn to sleep through all sounds
+but the call of their own patients, so any one may learn to ignore all
+sounds but those which he needs to hear. Connection with the outside
+world can be severed by a mental attitude in much the same way as this
+is accomplished by the physical effect of an anaesthetic. Then the
+usual noises, those which the subconscious recognizes as without
+significance, will be without power to disturb. The well-known New
+York publisher who spent his last days on his private yacht, on which
+everything was rubber-heeled and velvet-cushioned, thought that he
+couldn't stand noises; but how much more fun he would have had, if
+some one had only told him about thresholds!
+
+
+SUMMARY
+
+There are two kinds of people in the world,--masters and puppets.
+There is the man in control of his thresholds, at leisure from himself
+and master of circumstance, free to use his energy in fruitful ways;
+and there is the over-sensitive soul, wondering where the barometer
+stands and whether people are going to be quiet, feeling his feelings
+and worrying because no one else feels them, forever wasting his
+energy in exaggerated reactions to normal situations.
+
+This "ticklish" person is not better equipped than his neighbor, but
+more poorly equipped. True adjustment to the environment requires the
+faculty of putting out from consciousness all stimuli that do not
+require conscious attention. The nervous person is lacking in this
+faculty, but he usually fails to realize that this lack places him in
+the class of defectives. A paralyzed man is a cripple because he
+cannot run with the crowd; a nervous individual is a cripple, but only
+because he thinks that to run with the crowd lacks distinction.
+Something depends on the accident of birth, but far more depends on
+his own choice. Understanding, judicious neglect of symptoms,
+whole-souled absorption in other interests, and a good look in the
+mirror, are sure to put him back in the running with a wholesome
+delight in being once more "like folks."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+_In which we learn discrimination_
+
+CHOOSING OUR EMOTIONS
+
+LIKING THE TASTE
+
+
+It was a summer evening by the seaside, and a group of us were sitting
+on the porch, having a sort of heart-to-heart talk about
+psychology,--which means, of course, that we were talking about
+ourselves. One by one the different members of the family spoke out
+the questions that had been troubling them, or brought up their
+various problems of character or of health. At length a splendid Red
+Cross nurse who had won medals for distinguished service in the early
+days of the war, broke out with the question: "Doctor, how can I get
+rid of my terrible temper? Sometimes it is very bad, and always it has
+been one of the trials of my life." She spoke earnestly and sincerely,
+but this was my answer: "You like your temper. Something in you enjoys
+it, else you would give it up." Her face was a study in astonishment.
+"I don't like it," she stammered; "always after I have had an
+outburst of anger I am in the depths of remorse. Many a time I have
+cried my eyes out over this very thing." "And you like that, too," I
+answered. "You are having an emotional spree, indulging yourself first
+in one kind of emotion and then in another. If you really hated it as
+much as you say you do, you would never allow yourself the indulgence,
+much less speak of it afterward." Her astonishment was still further
+increased when several of the group said they, too, had sensed her
+satisfaction with her moods.
+
+Hard as it is to believe, we do choose our emotions. We like emotion
+as we do salt in our food, and too often we choose it because
+something in us likes the savor, and not because it leads to the
+character or the conduct that we know to be good.
+
+
+THE POWER OF CHOICE
+
+Whether we believe it or not, and whether we like it or not, the fact
+remains that we ourselves decide which of all the possible emotions we
+shall choose, or we decide not to press the button for any emotion at
+all.
+
+To a very large extent man, if he knows how and really wishes, may
+select the emotion which is suitable in that it leads to the right
+conduct, has a beneficial effect on the body, adapts him to his social
+environment, and makes him the kind of man he wants to be.
+
+=The Test of Feeling.= The psychologist to-day has a sure test of
+character. He says in substance: "Tell me what you feel and I will
+tell you what you are. Tell me what things you love, what things you
+fear, and what makes you angry and I will describe with a fair degree
+of accuracy your character, your conduct, and a good deal about the
+state of your physical health."
+
+Since this test of emotion is fundamentally sound, it is not
+surprising that the nervous man is in a state of distress.
+Indigestion, fatigue, over-sensibility, sound like problems in
+physiology, but we cannot go far in the discussion of any of them
+without coming face to face with the emotions as the real factors in
+the case. When we turn to the mental characteristics of nervous folk,
+we even more quickly find ourselves in the midst of an emotional
+disturbance. Worried, fearful, anxious, self-pitying, excitable, or
+melancholy, the nervous person proves that whatever else a neurosis
+may be, it is, in essence, a riot of the emotions.
+
+There is small wonder that a riot at the heart of the empire should
+lead to insurrection in every province of the personality. It is only
+for the purpose of discussion that we can separate feeling from
+thinking and doing. Every thought and every act has in it something of
+all three elements. An emotion is not an isolated phenomenon; it is
+bound up on the one hand with ideas and on the other with bodily
+states and conduct. Whoever runs amuck in his emotions runs amuck in
+his whole being. The nervous invalid with his exhausted and sensitive
+body, his upset mind and irrational conduct is a living illustration
+of the central place of the emotions in the realm of the personality.
+
+But it is not the nervous person only who needs a better understanding
+of his emotional life. The well man also gets angry for childish
+reasons; he is prejudiced and envious, unhappy and suspicious for the
+very same reason as is the nervous man. Since the working-capital of
+energy is limited to a definite amount, the control of the emotions
+becomes a central problem in any life,--a deciding factor in the
+output and the outcome, as well as in comfort and happiness by the
+way.
+
+Nothing is harder for the average man to believe than this fact that
+he really has the power to choose his emotions. He has been
+dissatisfied with himself in his past reactions, and yet he has not
+known how to change them. His anger or his depression has appeared so
+undesirable to his best judgment and to his conscious reason that it
+has seemed to be not a part of himself at all but an invasion from
+without which has swept over him without his consent and quite beyond
+control.
+
+
+A HOUSE DIVIDED AGAINST ITSELF
+
+Most of the confusion comes from the fact that we know only a part of
+ourselves. What we do not consciously enjoy we believe we do not enjoy
+at all. What we do not consciously choose we believe to be beyond our
+power of choice,--the work of the evil one, or the natural depravity
+of human nature, perhaps; but certainly not anything of our choosing.
+
+The point is that a human being is so constituted that he can, without
+knowing it, entertain at the same time two diametrically opposite
+desires. The average person is not so unified as he believes, but is,
+in fact, "a house divided against itself."
+
+The words of the apostle Paul express for most of us the truth about
+ourselves: "For what I would, that I do not; but what I hate that I
+do." What Paul calls the law of his members warring against the law of
+his mind is simply what we call to-day the instinctive desires coming
+into conflict with our conscious ideal.
+
+=Hidden Desires.= Although we choose our emotions, we choose in many
+cases in response to a buried part of ourselves of which we are wholly
+unaware, or only half-aware. When we do not like what we have chosen,
+it is because the conscious part of us is out of harmony with another
+part and that part is doing the choosing. If the emotions which we
+choose are not those that the whole of us--or at least the
+conscious--would desire, it is because we are choosing in response to
+hidden desires, and giving satisfaction to cravings which we have not
+recognized. Repeated indulgence of such desires is responsible for the
+emotional habits which we are too likely to consider an inevitable
+part of our personality, inherited from ancestors who are not on hand
+to defend themselves. When we form the habit of being afraid of things
+that other people do not fear, or of being irritated or depressed, or
+of giving way to fits of temper, it is because these habit-reactions
+satisfy the inner cravings that in the circumstances can get
+satisfaction in no better way.
+
+These hidden desires are of several different kinds, when squarely
+looked at. Some of the cravings are found to be childish, and so out
+of keeping with our real characters that we could not possibly hold on
+to them as conscious desires. Others turn out to be so natural and so
+inevitable that we wonder how we could ever have imagined that they
+ought to be repressed. Still others, legitimate in themselves, but
+denied because of outer circumstances, are found to be easily
+satisfied in indirect ways which bear no resemblance to their old
+unfortunate forms of outlet.
+
+
+WHEN KNOWLEDGE HELPS
+
+The way to get rid of an undesirable emotion is not by working at the
+emotion itself, but by realizing that this is merely an offshoot of a
+deeper root, hidden below the surface. The great point is to recognize
+this deeper root.
+
+=Childish Anger.= It helps to know that uncalled-for anger is a
+defense reaction--a sort of camouflage or smoke cloud which we throw
+out to hide from ourselves and others the fact that we are being
+worsted in an argument, or being shown up in an undesirable light.
+Better than any amount of weeping over a hot temper is an
+understanding of the fact that when we fly into unseemly rage we are
+usually giving indulgence to a childhood desire to run away from
+unpleasant facts and to cover up our own faults.
+
+=Enjoying the Blues.= It helps to know that the easiest way to fight
+the blues is by realizing that they are a deliberate, if unconscious,
+attempt to gain the pity of ourselves and others. There seems to be in
+undeveloped human nature something that really enjoys being pitied,
+and if we cannot get the commiseration of other people, we can,
+without much trouble, work up a case of self-pity. Most of us would
+have to acknowledge that we seldom find tears in our eyes except when
+our own woes are under consideration. "Whatever else the blues
+accomplish, they certainly afford us a chance to submerge ourselves
+in a sea of self-engrossment."[63]
+
+[Footnote 63: Putnam: _Human Motives_.]
+
+=The Chip on the Shoulder.= It helps to know that irritability and
+over-sensitiveness are usually the result of tension from unsatisfied
+desires which must find some kind of outlet. If a person is secretly
+restive under the fact that he cannot have the kind of clothes he
+wants, cannot shine in society, or secure a college education or a
+large fortune,--all of which minister to our insistent and rarely
+satisfied instinct of self-assertion,--or if he is secretly yearning
+for the satisfaction of the marriage relation, or for the sense of
+completion in parenthood; then the tension from these unsatisfied
+desires shows itself in a hundred little everyday instances of lack of
+self-control. These mystify him and his friends, but they are
+understandable when the whole truth is known.
+
+=Anxiety and Fear.= Nowhere is understanding more valuable than when
+we approach the subject of anxiety and fear. Whenever a person falls
+into a state of abnormal fear, his friends and his physician spend a
+good deal of time in attempting to prove to him that there is no cause
+for apprehension, and in exhorting him to use his reason and give up
+his fear. But how can a person help himself when he is fighting in the
+dark? How can he free himself when the thing he thinks he fears is
+merely a symbol of what he really fears? The woman who was afraid she
+would choke her child had been several months in the hands of
+Christian Scientists, and had earnestly tried to replace fear with
+courage. But in the circumstances, and without further knowledge, this
+was as impossible as it is for a man to lift himself by his own
+boot-straps. She had no point of contact with her real fear, as the
+man has no leverage contact with the earth from which he wishes to
+lift himself.
+
+To be sure there are many cases in which an assumed cheerfulness and
+courage do have a mighty effect on the inner man. The forces of the
+personality are not set, but plastic, and are constantly acting and
+interacting upon one another. Surface habits do influence the forces
+below the surface. William James's advice, "Square your shoulders,
+speak in a major key, smile, and turn a compliment," is good for most
+occasions, but sometimes even a little understanding of the cause is
+far more effective.
+
+It helps to know that persistent anxiety, lacking obvious cause, is
+found to be the anxiety of the thwarted instinct of reproduction. When
+the sex-instinct is repeatedly stimulated and then checked it sets in
+motion some of the same glands that are activated in fear. What comes
+up into consciousness is therefore very naturally a fear or dread of
+impending disaster, very like the poignant anxiety that one feels
+when stepping up in the dark to a step that is not there.
+
+Simultaneous with the fear lest these repressed desires should not be
+satisfied, there is an intense fear lest they should. The more
+insistent the repressed desire, and the more it seems likely to break
+through into consciousness, the keener the anguish of the ethical
+impulses. Abnormal fear, however it may seem to be externalized,
+always implies at the bottom a fear of something within. There is no
+truth which is harder to believe on first hearing but which grows more
+compelling with further knowledge, than this truth that an exaggerated
+fear always implies a desire which somehow offends the total
+personality. When we observe the various distressing phobias, such as
+the common fear of contamination, a woman's fear to undress at night,
+a fear that the gas was not turned off, or that one's clothing is out
+of order; fear lest the exact truth has not been told, or that the
+uttermost farthing of one's obligations has not been met,--then we may
+know that there is something in the fear situation which either
+directly or symbolically refers to some hidden desire; a desire which
+the individual would not for the world acknowledge to himself, but
+which is too keen to be altogether repressed.
+
+The close connection between fear and desire is often shown in the
+unfounded fear of having committed a crime. Both doctors and lawyers
+in their professional work occasionally come upon individuals who
+believe that they have committed some heinous crime of which they are
+really innocent, and who insist upon their guilt despite all evidence
+to the contrary. A quiet, gentle youth who at the age of twenty was
+under my medical care, is still not sure in his own whether he, at
+twelve years of age, was the burglar who broke into the village store
+and killed the owner. It is difficult for the normally self-satisfied
+individual to understand the appeal of heroics to a person whose
+starved instinct of self-assertion makes him choose to be known as a
+villain rather than not to be known at all.
+
+=Breaking the Spell.= When once we bring up into consciousness these
+hidden desires that manifest themselves in such troublesome ways, we
+find that we have robbed them of much of their power over our lives.
+Sometimes, it is true, a detailed and thorough exploration by
+psycho-analysis is necessary, but in many cases it is sufficient just
+to know that there are underlying causes. To know these things is far
+from excusing ourselves because of them. Even though emotions are
+determined by forces that are deep in the subconscious, we may still
+choose in opposition to those forces, if we but know that we can do
+so. The fact that some of the roots of our bad habits reach down into
+the subconscious is no excuse for not digging them up. As Dr. Putnam
+says, "It is the whole of us that acts, and we are as responsible for
+the supervision of the unseen as for the obvious factors that are at
+work. The moon may be only half illumined and half visible, but the
+invisible half goes on, none the less, exerting its full share of
+influence on the motion of the tides and earth."[64]
+
+[Footnote 64: Putnam: _Freud's Psychoanalytic Method and Its
+Evolution_, p. 34.]
+
+
+THE HIGHEST KIND OF CHOICE
+
+There is no easier way to enliven any conversation than by dropping
+the remark that a human being always does what he wants to do. Simple
+as the statement seems, it is quite enough to quicken the dullest
+table-talk and loosen the most reticent tongue.
+
+"I don't do what I want to do," says the college student. "I want to
+play tennis every afternoon; but what I do is to sit in a stuffy room
+and study."
+
+"I don't do what I want to do," says the mother of a family. "At night
+I want to sit down and read the latest magazine, but what I do is to
+darn stockings by the hour."
+
+Nevertheless we shall see that, even in cases like these, each of us
+is acting in accordance with his strongest desire. There may be--there
+often is--a bitter conflict, but in the end the desire that is really
+stronger always conquers and works itself out into action.
+
+It is possible to imagine a situation in which a man would be
+physically unable to do what he wanted to do. Bound by physical cords,
+held by prison walls, or weakened by illness, he might be actually
+unable to carry out his desires. But apart from physical restraint, it
+is hard to imagine a situation in real life in which a person does not
+actually do what he wants to do; that is, what _in the circumstances
+he wants to do_. This is simply saying in another way that we act in
+accordance with the emotion which is at the moment strongest.
+
+=Will Is Choice.= Just here we can imagine an earnest protest: "But
+why do you ignore the human will? Why do you try to make man the
+creature of feeling? A high-grade man does--not what he wants to do
+but what he thinks he ought to do. In any person worthy of the
+adjective 'civilized' it is conscience, not desire, which is the
+motive power of his life."
+
+It is true: in the better kind of man the will is of central
+importance; but what is "will"? Let us imagine a raw soldier in the
+trenches just before a charge into No-Man's Land. He is afraid, but
+the word of command comes, and instantly he is a new creature. His
+fear drops away and, energized by the lust of battle, he rushes
+forward, obviously driven by the stronger emotion. He goes ahead
+because he really wants to, and we say that he does not have to use
+his will.
+
+Imagine another soldier in the same situation; with him fear seems
+uppermost. His knees shake and his legs want to carry him in the wrong
+direction, but he still goes forward. And he goes forward, not so much
+because there is no other possibility as because, in the
+circumstances, he really wants to. All his life, and especially during
+his military training, he has been filled with ideals of loyalty and
+courage. More than he fears the guns of the enemy or of his
+firing-squad does he fear the loss of his own self-respect and the
+respect of his comrades. Greater than his "will to live" is his desire
+to play the man. There is conflict, and the desire which seems at the
+moment weaker is given the victory because it is reinforced by that
+other permanent desire to be a worthy man, brave, and dependable in a
+crisis. He goes forward, because in the circumstances, he really wants
+to, but in this case we say that he had to use his will.
+
+Is it not apparent that will itself is choice,--the selection by the
+whole personality of the emotion and the action which best fit into
+its ideals? Will is choice by the part of us which has ideals.
+McDougall points out that will is the reinforcement of the weaker
+desire by the master desire to be a certain kind of a character.[65]
+
+[Footnote 65: "The essential mark of volition is that the personality
+as a whole, or the central feature or nucleus of the personality, the
+man himself, is thrown upon the side of the weaker
+motive."--McDougall: _Introduction to Social Psychology_, p. 240.]
+
+Each human being as he goes through life acquires a number of moral
+ideals and sentiments which he adopts as his own. They become linked
+with the instinct of self-assertion, which henceforth acts as the
+motive power behind them, and attempts to drive from the field any
+emotion which happens to conflict.
+
+Men, like the lower animals, are ruled by desire, but, as G.A. Coe
+says, "Men mold themselves. They form desires not merely to have this
+or that object, but to be this or that kind of a man."[66]
+
+[Footnote 66: Coe: _Psychology of Religion_.]
+
+If a man be worthy of the name, he is not swayed by the emotion which
+happens for the moment to be strongest. He has the power to reinforce
+and make dominant those impulses which fit into the ideal he has built
+for himself. In other words, he has the power to choose between his
+desires, and this power depends largely upon the ideals which he has
+incorporated into his life by the complexes and sentiments which
+compose his personality.
+
+_Ideas and Ideals_. If emotion is the heart of humanity, ideas are its
+head. In our emphasis on emotion, we must not forget that as emotion
+controls action, so ideas control emotion. But ideas, of themselves,
+are not enough. Everybody has seen weaklings who were full of pious
+platitudes. Ideas do control life, but only when linked up with some
+strong emotion. No moral sentiment is strong enough to withstand an
+intense instinctive desire. If ideas are to be dynamic factors in a
+life, they must become ideals and be really desired. They must be
+backed up by the impulse of self-assertion, incorporated with the
+sentiment of self-regard, and so made a permanent part of the central
+personality.
+
+Parents and teachers who try to "break a child's will" and to punish
+every evidence of independence and self-assertion little know that
+they are undermining the foundations of morality itself, and doing
+their utmost to leave the child at the mercy of his chance whims and
+emotions. There can be no strength of character without self-regard,
+and self-regard is built on the instinctive desire of self-assertion.
+
+=Education and Religion.= It is easy to see how important education is
+in this process of giving the right content to the self-regarding
+sentiment. The child trained to regard "temper" as a disgrace,
+self-pity as a vice, over-sensitiveness as a sign of selfishness, and
+all forms of exaggerated emotionalism as a token of weakness, has
+acquired a powerful weapon against temptation in later life.
+Indulgence in any of these forms of gratification he will regard as
+unworthy and out of keeping with his personality.
+
+It is easy, too, to see how central a place a vital religious faith
+has in enriching and ennobling the ego-ideal, and in giving it
+driving-power. A force which makes a high ideal seem both imperative
+and possible of achievement could hardly fail to be a deciding factor.
+Every student of human nature knows in how many countless lives the
+Christian religion has made all the difference between mere good
+intentions and the power to realize those intentions; how many times
+it has furnished the motive power which nothing else seemed able to
+supply. Moral sentiments which have been merely sentiments become,
+through the magic of a new faith, incorporated into conscience and
+endowed with new power.
+
+Just here lies the value of any great love, or any intense devotion to
+a cause. As Royce says: "To have a conscience, then, is to have a
+cause; to unify your life by means of an ideal determined by this
+cause, and to compare this ideal and the life."[67]
+
+[Footnote 67: Royce: _Philosophy of Loyalty_, p. 175.]
+
+=Avoiding the Strain.= It seems that a human being is to a large
+extent controlled by will, and that will is in itself the highest kind
+of choice. But too often will is crippled because it does not speak
+for the whole personality. Knowledge helps a person to relate
+conscience with hitherto hidden parts of himself, to assert his will,
+and to choose only those emotions and outlets which the connected-up,
+the unified personality wants. Sometimes, indeed, a little knowledge
+makes the exercise of the will power unnecessary. Using will power
+is, after all, likely to be a strenuous business. It implies the
+presence of conflict, and the strain of defeating the desire which has
+to be denied.[68] Why struggle to subdue emotional bad habits when a
+little insight dispels the desire back of them, and makes them melt
+away as if by magic? For example, why use our will to keep down fear
+or anger when a little understanding dissipates these emotions without
+effort?
+
+[Footnote 68: Freud: _Introduction to Psychoanalysis_, p. 42.]
+
+Whatever we do with difficulty we are not doing well. When it requires
+effort to do our duty this means that a great part of us does not want
+to do it. When we get rid of our hidden resistances we work with ease.
+As a strong wind, applied in the right way, drives the ship without
+effort, just so the forces in our lives, if they are adjusted to one
+another, will without strain or stress easily and naturally work
+together to carry us in the direction we have chosen. When we get rid
+of blind conflicts, even the business of ruling our spirits becomes
+feasible.
+
+
+SUMMARY
+
+=Various "Sprees."= The human animal has a constitutional dislike for
+dullness and will seize upon almost any device which promises to lift
+him out of what he considers the monotony of daily grind. An elaborate
+essay might be written on the means which human beings have taken to
+create the sense of _aliveness_ which they so much crave. Some of
+them--we call them savages--have found satisfactory certain wild
+orgies in primitive war-dances; others--we shall soon call them "out
+of date"--have found simpler a bottle of whisky or a glass of
+champagne; still others find a cold shower more invigorating, or a
+brisk walk or a good stiff job which sets them aglow with the sense of
+accomplishment. But there are always those who, for one reason or
+another, find most satisfactory of all a chronic emotional tippling,
+or a good old-fashioned emotional spree. Persons who would be shocked
+at the idea of whisky or champagne allow themselves this other kind of
+indulgence without in the least knowing why.
+
+Nor is the connection between alcoholism and emotionalism so
+far-fetched as it seems. Psycho-analytic investigations have
+repeatedly revealed the fact that both are indulged in because they
+remove inhibitions, give vent to repressed desires, and bring a sense
+of life and power which has somehow been lost in the normal living.
+Both kinds of spree are followed by the inevitable "morning after"
+with its proverbial headache, remorse, and vows of repentance but
+despite all this, both are clung to because the satisfaction they
+bring is too deep to be easily relinquished.
+
+Whenever an emotion quite out of keeping with conscious desire is
+allowed to become habitual, we may know that it is being chosen by a
+part of the personality which needs to be uncovered and squarely
+faced. Nervous symptoms and exaggerated emotionalism are alike
+evidence of the fact that the wrong part of us is doing the choosing
+and that the will needs to be enlightened on what is taking place in
+the outer edge of its domain. In the choice between emotionalism and
+equanimity, the selection of the former can only be in response to
+unrecognized desire.
+
+A nervous person is invariably an emotional person, and as a rule lays
+the blame for his condition upon past experiences. But experience is
+what happens to us _plus_ the way we take it. We cannot always ward
+off the blow, but we can decide upon our reaction. "Even if the
+conduct of others has been the cause of our emotion, it is really we
+ourselves who have created it by the way in which we have
+reacted."[69]
+
+[Footnote 69: DuBois: _Psychic Treatment of Nervous Disorders_, p.
+155.]
+
+    One ship drives east, another drives west,
+    While the self-same breezes blow;
+    'Tis the set of the sail, and not the gale
+    That bids them where to go.
+    Like the winds of the sea are the ways of fate,
+    As we journey along through life;
+    'Tis the set of the soul that decides the goal,
+    And not the calm or the strife.
+    REBECCA R. WILLIAMS.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+_In which we find new use for our steam_
+
+FINDING VENT IN SUBLIMATION
+
+THE RE-DIRECTION OF ENERGY
+
+
+A child pent up on a rainy day is a troublesome child. His energy
+keeps piling up, but there is no opportunity for him to expend it. The
+nervous person is just such a pent-up child. A portion of his
+personality is developing steam which goes astray in its search for
+vent; this portion is found to be the psychic side of his sex-life.
+Something has blocked the satisfactory achievement of instinctive ends
+and turned his interest in on himself.
+
+Perhaps he does not come into complete psychic satisfaction of his
+love-life because his wife is out of sympathy or is held back by her
+own childish repressions. Perhaps his love-instinct is baffled by
+finding itself thwarted in its purpose of creating children,
+restrained by the social ban and the desire for a luxurious standard
+of living. Perhaps he is jealous of his chief, or of an older
+relative whose business stride he cannot equal.
+
+Jung has pointed out how frequently introversion or turning in of the
+life-force is brought about by the painfulness of present reality and
+by the lack of the power of adaptation to things as they are. But this
+lack always has its roots in childhood. The woman who is shocked at
+the thought of sex is the little girl who reacted too strongly to
+early impressions. The man of forty who is disgruntled because he is
+not made manager of a business created by others is the little boy who
+was jealous of his father and wanted to usurp his place of power. The
+man who suffers from a sense of inferiority because his friend has a
+handsomer or more intellectual wife is the same little boy who strove
+with his father for possession of the mother, the most desired object
+in his childish environment. The measure of escape from these childish
+attitudes means the measure of success in life.
+
+Fortunately for society, the average person achieves this success. The
+normal person in his childhood learned how to switch the energy of his
+primitive desires into channels approved by society. Stored away in
+his subconscious, this acquired faculty carries him without conscious
+effort through all the necessary adjustments in maturity. The nervous
+person, less well equipped in childhood, may fortunately acquire the
+faculty in all its completeness, although at the cost of genuine
+effort and patient self-study.
+
+=Sublimation the Key Word.= In the prevention and in the cure of
+nervous disorders there is one factor of central importance, and that
+factor is sublimation--or the freeing of sex-energy for socially
+useful, non-sexual ends. To sublimate is to find vent for oneself and
+to serve society as well; for sublimation opens up new channels for
+pent-up energy, utilizing all the surplus of the sex-instinct in
+substitute activities. When the dynamic of this impulse is turned
+outward, not inward, it proves to be one of man's greatest
+possessions, a valuable contribution of energy to creative activities
+and personal relationships of every kind.
+
+=The Failure to Sublimate.= A neurosis is nonconstructive use of one's
+surplus steam. The trouble with a nervous person is that his
+love-force is turned in on himself instead of out into the world of
+reality. This is what his friends mean when they say that he is
+self-absorbed; and this is what the psychologists mean when they say
+that a neurotic is introverted. A person, in so far as he is nervous,
+does not see other people at all--that is, he does not see them as
+real persons, but only as auditors who may be made to listen to the
+tale of his woes. His own problems loom so large that he becomes
+especially afflicted with what Cabot calls "the sin of impersonality";
+or to use President King's words, he lacks that "reverence for
+personality" which enables one to see people vividly as real persons
+and not as street-car conductors or servants or merely as members of
+one's family. To be sure, many a so-called normal individual is
+afflicted with this same kind of blindness; here as elsewhere the
+neurotic simply exaggerates. Engrossed in his own mental conflicts and
+physical symptoms, he is likely to find his interest withdrawing more
+and more from other people and centering upon himself.
+
+=Sublimation and Religion.= We do not need psychology to tell us that
+engrossment in self is a disastrous condition. When the psycho-analyst
+says that the life-force must be turned out, not in, he is approaching
+from a new angle the truth as it is found in the gospel,--"Thou shalt
+love the Lord thy God with all thy heart," and "thy neighbor as
+thyself." Religion provides the love-object in the Creator; altruism
+provides it in the "neighbor." Christianity and psychology agree that
+as soon as love ceases to be an outgoing force, just so soon does the
+individual become an incomplete and disrupted personality.[70]
+
+[Footnote 70: For emphasis on religion as a means to sublimation, see
+Freud, Putnam, Pfister, James, and DuBois.]
+
+=Carlyle's Doctrine of Work.= "Produce! produce! produce!" Life for a
+social being involves not only rich personal relationships, but
+absorbing, creative work. No nervous person is cured until he is
+willing to take and to keep a "man-size job." A good piece of work is
+not only the sign of a cure; it is the final step without which no
+cure is complete.
+
+=Along Nature's Lines.= If the psychologist is asked what kind of task
+this is to be, he answers that each person must decide for himself his
+own life-work. An individual may not know why, but he does know that
+there are certain things which he most likes to do. Sublimation is
+more readily accomplished if his energy is directed toward self-chosen
+interests. Parents or teachers or physicians who try to force another
+person into any definite plan of action are making a grievous blunder.
+Help may be given toward self-knowledge and the understanding of
+general principles, but advice should never be specific.
+
+Taken in the large, it is found that men and women choose different
+ways of sublimation. Man and woman differ in the psychic components of
+the sex-life even as they differ in the physical. Sublimation to be
+successful must follow the lines laid down by nature. The urge of the
+average man is toward construction, domination, mastery. The urge of
+the average woman is toward mothering, protection, nurture. The
+masculine characteristics find ready sublimation in a career; the man
+builds bridges, digs canals, harnesses mountain streams, conquers
+pests, overcomes gravity, brings the ends of the earth together by
+"wireless" or by rail; he provides for the weak and the helpless--his
+own progeny--or, incarnated in the body of a Hoover, he gives life to
+the children of the world.
+
+In woman, the dominant force is the nurturing instinct. Child and man
+of her own come first, but when these are lacking, to paraphrase
+Kipling, in default of closer ties, she is wedded to convictions;
+Heaven help him who denies! Only as a career opens up full vent for
+this nurturing instinct, will it provide satisfactory substitute in
+sublimation. Its natural trend can be seen in the recent tidal wave of
+social legislation--for prohibition, child-labor laws, sanitation,
+recognition and control of venereal disease, acknowledgment of
+paternity to the illegitimate child.
+
+Since the women of the day, in numbers up to the million, have been
+compelled to sacrifice both man and unformed babe to the grim
+Juggernaut of war, this nurturing urge may press hard against many of
+the social and business barriers now impeding its flow. But if society
+understands and readjusts these barriers, making it possible for its
+citizens--women as well as men--to approximate the natural instinctive
+bent, it will not only save itself much unrest but will also go far
+toward preventing the spread of nervous invalidism.
+
+
+SUMMARY
+
+That which a nervous invalid most needs is a redirection of energy.
+Since, in spite of appearances, there is never any real lack of
+energy, no time is needed for the making of strength, and a cure can
+take place just as soon as the inner forces allow the energy to flow
+out in the right direction. Sometimes, indeed, an outer change may
+start the inner process. Often the "work cure" does cure; occasionally
+the sudden necessity to earn one's living or to mother a little child
+frees the life-force from its old preoccupation and forces it into
+other channels. In most cases, however, the nervous invalid is
+suffering not from lack of opportunities for outside interest but from
+an inner inability to meet the opportunities which present themselves.
+The great change that has to be made is not in external conditions and
+habits but in the hidden corners of the mind; a change that can be
+accomplished only by self-knowledge and re-education.
+
+But if self-knowledge is the first step in any cure, so self-giving
+must be the final step. Sooner or later in the life of every nervous
+invalid there comes a time when nothing will serve to unify his
+disorganized forces but steady and unswerving responsibility for a
+good stiff piece of work. Happy for him that this is so and that he is
+living in a day when science no longer tells him to fold his hands and
+wait.
+
+
+
+
+GLOSSARY
+
+
+_Autonomic nervous system:_ The vegetative nervous system which
+controls vital functions,--as digestion, respiration, circulation.
+
+_Censor:_ A hypothetical faculty of the fore-conscious mind which
+resists the emergence into consciousness of questionable desires.
+
+_Common path:_ In physiology, the final route over which response is
+made to physical stimulation; similarly in psychology, the one outlet
+for the finally dominant impulse.
+
+_Compensation:_ Exaggerated manifestation of one character-trend as a
+defense against its opposite which is painfully repressed; relief in
+substitute symptom formation.
+
+_Complex:_ A group of ideas held together by emotion (usually
+referring to a group which is wholly or in part unconscious).
+
+_Compulsion:_ A persistent compelling impulse to perform some
+seemingly unreasonable (but really substitute or symbolic) act, or to
+hold some irrational fear or idea; an emotional force which has been
+separated from the original idea.
+
+_Conflict:_ (Special) Struggle between instincts (unconscious).
+
+_Conversion:_ (Special) The process by which a repressed mental
+complex expresses itself through a physical symptom.
+
+_Displacement:_ 1. Transposition of an emotion from its original idea
+to one more acceptable to the personality. 2. The shifting of
+emphasis, in dreams, from essential to less significant elements.
+
+_Dissociation:_ 1. The state of being shut out from taking active part
+(applied to a group of ideas), as in normal forgetfulness. 2.
+(Abnormal) An exaggerated degree of separation of groups of ideas,
+with loss to the personality of the forces or memories which these
+groups contain, as in double personality.
+
+_Fixation:_ Establishment in childhood of over-strong habit-reactions.
+
+_Free Association:_ A device for uncovering buried complexes by
+letting the mind wander without conscious direction.
+
+_Homo-sexual:_ The quality of being more attracted by an individual of
+the same sex (abnormal) than by one of the opposite sex
+(hetero-sexual, normal).
+
+_Hysteria:_ That form of functional nervous disorder which manifests
+itself in physical symptoms; an attempt to dramatize unconscious
+repressed desires.
+
+_Inhibition:_ Restraint (Special) limitation of function, physical or
+ideational, due to unconscious emotional attitudes.
+
+_Libido:_ Life-force, elan vital, or (restricted) the energy of the
+sex-instinct.
+
+_Neurosis:_ Used loosely for psycho-neurosis or nervous disorder.
+
+_Obsession:_ A compulsive idea inaccessible to reason.
+
+_Oedipus Complex:_ Over-strong bond between mother and son, or (more
+loosely) between father and daughter.
+
+_Over-determined:_ Used of an impulse made over-strong by lack of
+discharge, with accumulation of emotional tension from added factors.
+
+_Phobia:_ A persistent, unreasoning fear of some object or situation.
+
+_Psycho-neurosis:_ "A perversion of normal (psychic) reactions,"
+(Prince); a general term for functional dissociation of the
+personality, resulting in: psychasthenia--disturbed ideation;
+neurasthenia--disturbed emotions; hysteria--disturbed motor or sensory
+activity.
+
+_Psychotherapy:_ Treatment by psychic or mental measures.
+
+_Rationalization:_ The process of substituting a plausible, false
+explanation for a repressed, unconscious desire.
+
+_Repression:_ Expulsion from consciousness of a pain-provoking mental
+process.
+
+_Resistance:_ The force which impedes the return of a repressed
+complex to consciousness.
+
+_Subconscious:_ That part of the mind of which one is unaware; the
+storehouse of memories ancestral and personal.
+
+_Sublimation:_ The act of freeing sex-energy from definitely sexual
+aims; utilization of sex-energy for nonsexual ends.
+
+_Suggestion:_ The process by which any idea, true or false, takes hold
+of one; the idea may enter the mind consciously or unconsciously,
+through reason or through impulse.
+
+_Symbol:_ An object or an attitude which stands for an ides or a
+quality; (Special) that which stands for or represents some
+unconscious mental process.
+
+_Threshold_ (door-sill): A figure which represents the level of the
+barrier erected by the mind against the perception of an idea or
+sensation.
+
+_Transference:_ Unconscious identification of a present personal
+relationship with an earlier one, with conveyance of the earlier
+emotional attitudes (hostile or affectionate) to the present
+relationship.
+
+
+
+
+BIBLIOGRAPHY
+
+
+BOOKS ON THE GENERAL LAWS OF BODY AND MIND
+
+Cannon, Walter B: Bodily Changes in Pain, Hunger,
+Fear and Rage.
+
+Crile, George W.: The Origin and Nature of the Emotions.
+
+Coe, George Albert: The Psychology of Religion.
+
+Hudson, Thomas Jay: The Law of Psychic Phenomena.
+
+Janet, Pierre: The Major Symptoms of Hysteria; The
+Mental State of Hystericals.
+
+James, William: Psychology; Talks to Teachers on Psychology;
+Varieties of Religious Experience.
+
+Jastrow, Joseph: The Subconscious.
+
+Kempf, Edward J.: The Tonus of Autonomic Segments
+in Psychopathology.
+
+Long, Constance: Psychology of Fantasy.
+
+McDougall, William: Social Psychology.
+
+Mosher, Clelia Duel: Health and the Woman Movement.
+
+Phillips, D. E.: Elementary Psychology.
+
+Prince, Morton: The Unconscious; The Dissociation of
+a Personality; My Life as a Dissociated Personality.
+
+Sherrington, Charles L.: The Integrative Action of the
+Nervous System.
+
+Sidis, Boris: The Foundations of Normal and Abnormal
+Psychology; Psychopathological Researches.
+
+Tansley, A. G.: The New Psychology.
+
+Thomson, William Hanna: Brain and Personality.
+
+White, William A.: Principles of Mental Hygiene;
+  The Mental Hygiene of Childhood.
+
+Proceedings of the International Conference of Women Physicians.
+(National Board, Y.W.C.A., 600 Lexington Avenue, New York City.)
+
+
+BOOKS ON MENTAL HYGIENE
+
+Brown, Charles R.: Faith and Health.
+
+Bruce, H. Addington: Scientific Mental Healing.
+
+Cabot, Richard: What Men Live By;
+  Social Service and the Art of Healing.
+
+DuBois, Paul: The Psychic Treatment of Nervous Disorders.
+
+Huckel, Oliver: Mental Medicine.
+
+James, William: Vital Reserves.
+
+Prince, Morton, and others: Psychotherapeutics.
+
+Sadler, William S.: The Physiology of Faith and Fear.
+
+Worcester, Elwood    }
+McComb, Samuel       }  Religion and Medicine.
+Coriat, Isador H.    }
+
+
+BOOKS ON PSYCHO-ANALYSIS
+
+Brill, A. A.: Fundamentals of Psychoanalysis.
+
+Emerson, L. E.: Nervousness.
+
+Freud, Sigmund: The Interpretation of Dreams;
+  The Psychopathology of Everyday Life;
+  Wit and the Unconscious;
+  Selected Papers and Sexual Theory;
+  A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis.
+
+Frink, H. W.: Morbid Fears and Compulsions.
+
+Hitschmann, E.: Freud's Theories of the Neuroses.
+
+Holt, E. B.: The Freudian Wish.
+
+Jung, Carl G.: The Psychology of the Unconscious; Analytical
+Psychology.
+
+Jones, Ernest: Psycho-analysis; Treatment of the Neuroses, Including
+Psychoneuroses--in Modern Treatment of Nervous and Mental
+Diseases--White and Jelliffe.
+
+Pfister, Oskar: The Psychoanalytic Method.
+
+Putnam, James Jackson: Addresses on Psychoanalysis--Human
+Motives.
+
+Tridon, Andre: Psychoanalysis.
+
+White, William A.: The Mechanisms of Character
+Formation.
+
+
+JOURNALS DEVOTED TO THE SUBJECT OF NERVOUS DISORDERS
+
+Journal of Abnormal Psychology, published in Boston.
+
+Psychoanalytic Review, published in Washington, D.C.
+
+International Journal of Psychoanalysis, published in
+London.
+
+
+
+
+INDEX
+
+
+A
+
+Acid and Milk, 21, 257
+
+Acidosis, 285
+
+Adjustment
+  a neurosis an effort at, 169
+  to new conditions causes consciousness, 82
+  of the race, in subconscious, 78
+  to the social whole, 164, 216, 380
+
+Adolescence, 59
+
+Adrenal Secretion, 42, 48, 133, 229, 270
+
+Alcoholism, relation to unconscious desires, 377
+
+Alvarez, W.D., 284
+
+Ames, Thaddeus Hoyt, 170
+
+Amnesia, 113
+
+Anaemia, buttermilk in, 282
+
+Anger, 47 ff.
+
+Anxiety and Fear, 366, 367, 368
+
+Anxiety Neurosis, 7, 109
+
+Anxious thought in conversion hysteria, 277
+
+Appetite, symbolic loss of, 276
+
+Association
+  accidental, 341
+  a chain of, 191
+  free, 101, 191
+  making new, 329, 330
+  of ideas, 106
+  subconscious, 346
+  word test, 197, 198
+
+Audience, secured in a neurosis, 169
+
+Auto-eroticism, 57
+
+Auto-intoxication, 279, 282
+
+Automatic writing, 96, 97
+
+Autonomic nervous system, 86, 126, 319
+
+Auto-suggestion, 129, 210
+
+
+B
+
+Bacteria, in anaemia, sciatica, rheumatism, 281
+
+Bashfulness, 46
+
+Bergson, 90
+
+Biliousness, 268
+
+Birth-Theories, 158, 160, 161
+
+Blocking, in word association, 198
+
+Bodily Response to Emotional States, 134
+
+Brain,
+  diseased in insanity, sound in neurosis, 13
+  fag, 125, 241
+  records, 89
+
+Bran fad, 291
+
+Breuer, Joseph, 142
+
+Brill, A.A., 58, 69, 201, 202
+
+Bruce, H. Addington, 200, 201
+
+Burrow, Trigant, 173, 203
+
+Buttermilk in anaemia, 282
+
+
+C
+
+Cabot, Richard, 27, 381
+
+Canfield, Dorothy, 231
+
+Cannon, Walter B., 49, 134
+
+Capitalizing an Illness, 170
+
+Catechism, 247
+
+Cathartics, 283
+  and acidosis, 286
+  and bacterial infection, 282
+  and child birth, 285, 286
+  and operations, 284
+
+Causes of Nerves, 146, 164
+
+Censor, psychic, 104, 195
+
+Change of life, 314
+
+Character and health, 24, 25, 362
+
+Chemistry, 61, 190, 224, 225, 230, 247, 306, 315, 317, 324
+
+Child,
+  birth-theories of, 158
+  father to the man, 90
+  habit-fixation of, 150
+  love-life, four periods 54, 55
+  questions, 158
+  too much bossing of, 154
+  too much petting of, 57
+  training, 160
+
+Childhood,
+  bonds too strong, 72
+  determines future character, 91, 148
+  experiences, 149
+  reactions, 148
+
+Choosing our Emotions, 360
+  a neurosis, 122, 169, 216
+  our Sensations, 339
+
+Christian religion, 74, 374
+
+Coe, George A., 71, 373
+
+Colon, function of, 279, 280
+
+Common Path, 52
+
+Compensation, 168, 340
+
+Complex,
+  against marriage, 204
+  and conditioned reflex, 108
+  and personality, 105
+  breaking up of, 109, 186
+  buried, 187, 192, 197, 201, 202, 215
+  chance signs of, 198
+  definition, 107
+  dissociated, 111
+  emotional, 198, 345
+  father-mother, 152
+  feeling-tone of, 130
+  formation of, 129
+  forming a resistance, 159
+  making over, 187, 190
+  mother-son, 185
+  physiological, 108
+  repressed, 112, 157, 190
+  unconscious, 108
+
+Compromise, 163, 164, 165
+
+Compulsion neuroses, 7, 109, 156
+
+Conditioned reflex, 108
+
+Conduct, kind of, 168, 191, 360
+
+Conflict, 59, 64, 112, 145, 154, 164, 178, 200, 218, 313, 372, 376
+
+Conscience, 164, 173, 177, 196, 376
+
+Consciousness,
+  displaced threshold of, 91
+relation to the subconscious, 82
+  rise of, 82
+
+Constipation, 277 ff.
+  and food, 289, 290
+  cure of, 294
+  due to suggestion, 294
+  purpose of, 288
+
+Conversion-hysteria, 174, 236, 237, 238, 245, 277, 302
+
+Crile, George W., 41, 44
+
+Curiosity,
+  child's concerning sex, 58
+  displacement over to scientific investigation, 45
+
+
+D
+
+Day-dreaming, 162, 325, 326
+
+Defence-reaction, 365
+
+Desire
+  energy of, 78
+  in dreams, 194
+  in emotional habits, 364
+  in nervous disorders, 167
+  instinctive, 38
+  instinctive and ideals, 363
+  tensions of, 196
+
+Diarrhoea, bacterial, 281
+
+Dietetics, essence of, 254
+
+Digestion, 86, 133, 250, 251
+
+Disease,
+  of the ego, 15
+  physical, 12, 13, 28
+  psychic, 12, 13, 14, 28
+
+Disorders, functional and organic, 13
+
+Displacement, 109, 110, 165, 174
+
+Dissociation, 111
+  abnormal, 189
+  an example of, 92, 347
+  in hypnosis, 123
+  in hysteria, 111, 123
+  in neurasthenia, 111
+  increases suggestibility, 122
+  normal, 111
+  of a "Personality," 113
+  of memory picture of walking, 125
+  of power of sight, 170
+
+Dreams, 193 ff.
+  Freud's dictum, 193
+  latent content, 195
+  manifest content, 195
+  purpose of, 195
+  work of, 196
+
+DuBois, Paul, 4, 127, 246, 327, 382
+
+
+E
+
+Education, 202, 218
+  in Emotional Control, 374
+
+Emotion, 35, 360 ff.
+  and complexes, 108
+  and fatigue, 229, 247
+  and instincts, 40 ff.
+  and muscle tone, 137
+  blood-pressure in, 136
+  bodily response to, 133
+  feeling tones in, 130
+  precocious, 150
+  repressed (see repression)
+  secretions in, 132
+  the strongest cement, 107
+  tonic and poisonous, 131
+  unrecognized desire in, 364
+
+Energy,
+  adaptable, 67
+  creative, 34, 69, 71
+  inhibited, 235
+  libido, 36, 252
+  misdirected, 28, 379
+  new level of, 221
+  physiological reserve, 117
+  redirection of, 385
+  releasers of, 245
+  three uses of, 23
+  utilization of, 68, 165
+
+"Energies of Men", 221
+
+Environment, 33, 96, 149, 334
+
+Evolution, 73
+
+Exhaustion, nervous, 216, 224, 243, 246
+
+Explanation vs Suggestion, 206 ff.
+
+
+F
+
+Fads-dynamogenic, 252
+
+Faith, 118
+
+Family complex, 153
+
+Fatigue, 219 ff.
+  a Matter of Chemistry, 225
+  and insomnia, 326, 327
+  and moral tension, 166
+  and sex-repression, 235, 244
+  true and false, 223
+
+Fear, 40 ff.
+  exaggerated, 368
+  externalized, 368
+  of cold, 348
+  of fatigue, 219, 354
+  of food, 133, 251
+  of heat, 237
+  of noise, 355
+  physical effects of, 41
+  purpose of, 41
+  symbolic of desire, 368
+
+Feeling our Feelings, 333 ff.
+
+Feeling-tones, 130, 206, 213, 229
+
+Fermentation, 264
+
+Finding New Vents, 379
+
+Fixation of Habits, 150, 151, 162
+
+Flat-foot, 138
+
+Food, 254 ff.
+  and constipation, 289, 290
+  for the children, 256
+  idiosyncrasies, 258
+  mixtures, 255
+  variety essential, 255
+
+Foreconscious, 79
+
+Free Association, 101, 191, 195
+
+Freud, Sigmund, 69, 74, 83, 84, 104, 142, 149, 153, 163, 185, 188, 193,
+  210, 342, 376, 382
+
+Freudian principles, 143, 144, 147
+  misconceptions concerning, 184, 185
+
+Frink, H.W., 89, 107, 158, 162, 171, 195, 218
+
+
+G
+
+Gall-stones, 269
+
+Gas on the stomach, 264
+
+Gastric juice, 86, 134
+
+Gastritis, 266
+
+Genius, 116
+
+Girard-Mangin, Dr., 231
+
+Goitre, 239
+
+
+H
+
+Habit,
+  defined, 150
+  dissociation, 189
+  dreaming, 162
+  fixation of, 150, 152
+  of insomnia, 322
+  of loving, 150, 164
+  of rebelling, 150, 164
+  of repressing normal instincts, 151
+  reactions, 364
+
+Heredity, 148
+
+Hidden desires, 363, 368
+
+Hinkle, Bertha M., 154
+
+Holt, E.B., 213
+
+Homosexuality, 184
+
+Hoover, Herbert A., 384
+
+Hormone, 305, 319
+
+Hudson, J.W., 91, 95
+
+Hydrochloric Acid, 267
+
+Hygiene,
+  laws of, 127
+  moral, 206
+
+Hygienic conditions, 222, 230
+
+Hypersensitiveness, 342
+
+Hypnosis, 84 ff.
+  aid to diagnosis, 187
+  its drawbacks, 188
+  suggestibility in, 189
+
+Hysteria, 7, 111
+
+Hysterical pains, 353
+
+Hysterical pregnancy, (case), 127
+
+
+I
+
+Ideas,
+  and emotions, 23
+  ascetic, 253
+  contagion of, 120
+  dynamogenic, 253
+  not surgical, 262
+
+Idiosyncrasies, physical, 258
+
+Identification, 110
+
+Imagination, 162
+
+Incantation, 211
+
+Indigestion; 211, 250
+
+Inferiority complex, 340, 380
+
+Inhibition, 188, 245, 293, 306, 330, 377
+
+Insomnia, 322 ff.
+
+Instincts and their Emotions, 33 ff., 51 ff.
+
+Instincts,
+  beneficent, 85
+  energy releasers, 233
+  race-inheritance, 85
+  repressed, 28, 103, 147, 169, 172
+  sex (see under sex)
+  thwarted, 235, 244, 340, 356, 367, 379
+
+Internal Secretion,
+  of ovary, 316, 317
+  (see Adrenal)
+  (see Thyroid)
+
+Introspection, 26
+
+Introversion, 380, 381
+
+
+J
+
+James, William, 49, 221, 227, 243, 253, 347, 382
+
+Janet, Pierre, 188
+
+Jealousy, 154, 380
+
+Jelliffe, Smith Ely, 98, 114, 153, 163
+
+Jones, Ernest, 69
+
+Judicious neglect, 127
+
+Jung, C.G., 8, 64, 69, 163, 197, 380
+
+
+K
+
+Kempf, Edward J., 86
+
+Kinaesthetic sensations, 336
+
+
+L
+
+Latency period, 60
+
+Libido, 36, 147, 252
+
+Liver trouble, 268
+
+
+M
+
+Masturbation, 184
+
+McDougall, Wm., 49, 122, 372
+
+Memories, 84 ff.
+
+Menopause, 314
+
+Menstruation, 306
+
+Mind (see Consciousness and Subconscious)
+
+Misconceptions,
+  about the body, 21, 22
+  about theory of sex, 184
+
+Mixtures, fear of, 257
+
+Monogamy, 63
+
+Moral hygiene, 206
+
+Mosher, Clelia Duel, 308
+
+Muscle-tone, 137, 244
+
+Myth, 146
+
+
+N
+
+Narcissus, 55, 152, 340
+
+Nausea, 101, 177, 275
+  of pregnancy, 319
+
+Nerves,
+  attitude toward, 3
+  causes of, 28, 148
+  drama of, 10, 29
+  medical schools and, 16
+  not physical, 14
+  prevention of, 385
+
+Neurasthenia, 111, 246
+
+Neuritis, 14, 244
+
+Neurosis,
+  a compromise, 167
+  a confidence game, 179
+  a failure of sublimation, 381
+  a flight from reality, 170
+  an ethical struggle, 177
+  an introversion, 381
+  and shell-shock, 147
+  and suggestion, 129
+  anxiety, 7, 109
+  awkwardness of, 213
+  compulsion, 109
+  caused by buried complexes, 108, 190
+  definition 112
+  origin in childhood, 149, 157, 217
+  purpose of, 167
+  root-complex of, 153
+
+
+O
+
+Obsession, 7, 204
+
+Oedipus Complex, 154
+
+Organic trouble, 11, 12, 251
+
+Ouija Board, 97
+
+Over-awareness, 352
+
+Over-compensation, 67
+
+Over-determined, 148
+
+
+P
+
+Pain,
+  at base of the brain, 351
+  chronic hysterical, 341
+  menstrual, 306
+
+Personality,
+  alterations of, 7, 15, 20
+  and emotions, 362, 369
+  and will, 372
+  choice by, 216
+  complexes and, 107
+  disrupted, 382
+  multiple, 111, 131
+  nervousness a disorder of, 15
+  reverence for, 383
+  unified, 375
+
+Persuasion, 206
+
+Pfister, Oskar, 153, 166, 382
+
+Phantasy, 153, 163
+
+Phobia, 7, 368
+
+Plagiarism, 98
+
+Popular Misconceptions, 21
+
+Prince, Morton, 79, 84, 89, 95, 97, 112, 132, 188, 347
+
+Psycho-analysis, 189 ff.
+
+Psychological explanation, 208
+
+Psychology, 25, 27, 94
+
+Psycho-neurosis, 144, 147, 163, 169 (see also neurosis)
+
+Psycho-therapy, 74, 187, 216
+
+Ptosis, 139, 251
+
+Putnam, James J., 3, 34, 69, 215, 366, 370, 382
+
+
+R
+
+Race-memories, 84
+
+Rationalization, 90, 155, 168, 317
+
+Reaction and over-reaction, 149, 198, 202, 238, 335
+
+Reality, flight from, 164, 379
+
+Re-education, 183 ff.
+
+Reflex,
+  conditioned, 108
+  physiological, 349
+
+Regression to infantile state, 163, 164
+  case of, 92
+
+Religion, 74, 89, 374, 382
+
+Reminiscences, hysteric suffers from, 7
+
+Repression, 104, 156, 160, 162, 235, 245, 304
+
+Resistance, 160, 188, 192, 202, 211
+
+Rest-cure, 246
+
+Rheumatism, buttermilk treatment of, 282
+
+Rixford, Emmet L., 283
+
+Royce, Josiah, 375
+
+
+S
+
+Sadler, Wm., 126, 136
+
+School, four grade, 54
+
+Second wind, 221
+
+Self-abuse, 184, 238
+
+Self-pity, 365
+
+Self-regard, 45, 103, 157, 374
+
+Sensations, lowered threshold to, 333 ff.
+
+Sensitiveness, 333, 340
+
+Sex,
+  and artistic creation, 379
+  and "Nerves," 141 ff.
+  glands, secretion of, 305, 314, 316
+instinct organically aroused, 65
+  instinct thwarted, 161, 367, 379
+  instruction, 160
+  license, 184
+  life, 143, 146, 157
+  perversion, 152
+  phantasy, 163
+  psychic component of, 185, 356, 379, 383
+  repressed, 104
+  sublimation of, 233, 379
+
+Shell-shock, (see foreword)
+  also 145, 147
+
+Sherrington, Chas., 39
+
+Sick-headache, 270
+
+Sidis, Boris, 24, 84, 188, 222, 337, 341
+
+Slips of tongue, etc., 199
+
+Slogan,
+  of psychoanalytic school, 215
+  woman's, 314
+
+Social code, 184
+
+Soda, misuse of, 266
+
+"Sour-stomach," 260, 266
+
+Sprees, 376
+
+Stammering, 200
+
+Standard,
+  double, 66
+  single, 62
+
+Stomach, 133
+  and conversion hysteria, 250 ff.
+  fads, 252
+  gas on, 252
+
+Subconscious mind, 77 ff.
+  amenable to control by suggestion, emotion, 119
+  functions of, 85, 335, 337
+  habits of, 105, 259
+  physical expression of, 245
+  playing confidence game, 311
+  store-house of memories, 84, 89
+  tireless, 325
+
+Sublimation, 379 ff.
+  a synthesis, 164
+  and religion, 74, 382
+  definition (Freud), 69, 70
+  failure of, 71, 147, 381
+  in a career, 385
+  in artistic creation, 68
+  natural trends of, 383
+  of energy, 178, 238, 309
+
+Success, measure of, 380
+
+Sugar in urine, 133
+
+Suggestion,
+  a method of psychotherapy, 208
+  constipation the result of, 289, 298
+  definition, 121
+  false, 302
+  in child training, 121
+  in hypnosis, 99, 188
+  in sleep, 99
+  inconvenient forms of, 296
+  power of, 45
+  unhealthy, 310
+
+Suggestibility, 122, 189, 206
+
+Superman, 339
+
+Symbolism, 171, 176, 275, 342
+
+Symptoms, purpose of, 168
+
+
+T
+
+Taboos,
+  dietary, 250 ff.
+  interest in, 289
+
+Tensions, psychic, 69, 85, 353, 366
+
+Thresholds, psychic, 337 ff.
+
+Thyroid secretion, 42, 133, 185, 270
+
+Transference, 109, 193, 264
+
+Trotter, W., 46
+
+
+U
+
+Unconscious, (see subconscious)
+
+
+V
+
+Venereal disease, 304, 317
+
+Vitamins, 255
+
+
+W
+
+White, Wm. A., 69, 82, 83, 98
+
+Will, 371
+
+Williams, Tom A., 21, 213
+
+Wish fulfilment, 171, 194, 200, 214
+
+Word-association test, 197
+
+Work-cure, 385
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS FROM CASES
+
+
+A
+
+Adolescence and depression, 312, 313
+
+Anger and circulation, 136
+
+Angina pectoris, false, 129
+
+Anxiety-neurosis, 175
+
+
+B
+
+Bearing children, 318
+
+Brain fag, 241
+
+Bran crackers and prunes, 258
+
+
+C
+
+Cathartics, abuse of, 284
+
+Childhood sex-reactions, 203
+
+Constipation and lacerations in labor, 296
+
+Constipation and Mineral Oil, 295
+
+Constipation, recovery from, (some cases), 294
+
+Contamination, fear of, 159
+
+Conversion of moral distress to physical, 348
+
+
+D
+
+Danger-signals and the railroad man, 344
+
+Dissociated state, memories in, 92
+
+
+E
+
+Emotion and sick-headache, 273
+
+"Enjoying" poor health, 213, 345
+
+"Exhaustion," 243
+
+Eye-strain, twenty-five years, 274
+
+
+F
+
+Fatigue, 228, 234, (two cases), 239
+
+Fatigue and emotion, (three cases), 354
+
+Fear, 237,
+  of heat, 237
+
+Fear of air, 348, 349
+
+Fear of cold, (three cases), 348, 349
+
+Fear of light, (two cases), 350
+
+Fear complicating labor, 320
+
+"Flat-foot," 137
+
+Forgetting and repressed wish, 200
+
+Free-love, chemical cause of, 317
+
+
+G
+
+Gall-stones, 269
+
+
+I
+
+Idiosyncrasy for eggs, 212
+
+Insomnia and attention, 329
+
+Insomnia and point of view, 328
+
+Insomnia and wrong associations, 330
+
+Insomnia, chronic, 328
+
+
+L
+
+Library, child fear of, 100
+
+Locomotor Ataxia, exaggeration of symptoms, 128
+
+
+M
+
+Menstrual pain, unnecessary, 220
+
+Muscle-tumors, phantom, 127, 128
+
+
+N
+
+Nausea, in sex-repression, 101, 177
+
+Nervous indigestion, 211
+
+"Neuritis," 174,
+  false, 244
+
+Noise, fear of, 355
+
+
+O
+
+Obsession against marriage, 204
+
+
+P
+
+Paralysis, fear of, 345, 346
+
+Physical illness mistaken for functional, 252
+
+Plagiarism, 98
+
+
+R
+
+Recovering lost word, 80
+
+Repression and disgust, 199
+
+
+S
+
+Sick-headache, 271, 274
+
+Skim-milk diet, 262
+
+"Sour stomach" and two Tyrolese, 260
+
+T
+
+Temper, an indulgence, 359
+
+The "Repeater" gains in weight, 263
+
+Thyroid disturbance, fatigue in, 239, 240
+
+
+U
+
+Unconscious Association and symptoms, 346
+
+
+W
+
+Walking, lost power of, 124
+
+Word Association test, 198
+
+
+Transcriber's Notes
+
+The following typographical errors were noted and corrected:
+
+On page 146 of the book: Heading changed from "A Searching Queston"
+  to "A Searching Question".
+On page 152, "Narcisstic" changed to "Narcissistic".
+On page 276, "..the nausea disappearaed." changed to "disappeared".
+On page 294, "...Nature's functions re reestablished" changed to "be".
+On page 302, "...nor even of man's infringment..." changed to
+  "infringement".
+On page 330, "I put my mouth up close to to her ear...", removed the
+  duplicate "to".
+On page 346, for the paragraph starting "But these symptoms...",
+  "disappeaared" changed to "disappeared".
+In the Index, page 401, "Thesholds" changed to "Thresholds".
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Outwitting Our Nerves
+by Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury
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+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OUTWITTING OUR NERVES ***
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