CLAUSTROPHOBIA, OR WHAT EVERY YOUNG WIFE SHOULD KNOW
There is an erroneous impression current nowadays that sex is
everything. It is similar to the psychological delusion common
during the war years that the war would never end. Man is inclined
to exaggerate the immensity of his chief preoccupation. Thus when
the World War was in progress, men convinced themselves that there
would never be anything else but war. Then the war ended, and Man
was left, as it were, stranded. Used to a tremendous preoccupation,
he had to have another. He turned to sex, out of sheer momentum, and
overestimated its importance as he had magnified the immensity of war.
Sex is by no means everything. It varies, as a matter of fact, from
only as high as 78 per cent of everything to as low as 3.10 per cent.
The norm, in a sane, healthy person, should be between 18 and 24 per
cent. In these hectic days, however, it is not unusual to hear even
intelligent persons say, or imply, that sex is everything. This, of
course, leads to the mistaken idea that a couple who are, so to speak,
emotionally compatible, are going to be compatible in every other way.
“Take care of sex, and the details will look after themselves,” is the
rule, in a manner of speaking. Nothing could be more stupid. A man and
woman may be very, very happy emotionally and not get anywhere at all.
There are many reasons for this, but none is more important than the
inability of many a husband, otherwise normal, to become adjusted to a
lack of freedom. Freedom is as essential and as primary an urge with a
man as the loss of it is with a woman. A man grows up with the desire
to be free and unfettered. The boy of six wants to play outside the
house all the time. He doesn’t even want to come into the house for his
meals. On the other hand, little girls like to be in the house as much
as they can. When dusk falls, the little boys are restless under the
urge to be several blocks away, playing Go, Sheepy, Go, but the little
girls want to be home putting their dolls to bed. Usually at least one
of the dolls is ill and needs constant attention. Often it is necessary
to force little girls to go outside and get some air and exercise, just
as it is frequently necessary to use force to get little boys _into_
the house. And even when girls do go outdoors, they have to be watched
like a hawk or they will be playing house in the dog box or under the
cellar door.
And yet, in spite of all this, women marry men without giving the
serious chasm between their essential natures a thought. They think
that a man wants a home. Well, he does, in a vague sort of way. Not so
much a home, however, as a house. He likes to be able to say where he
lives when he goes to vote, and things like that. But he doesn’t want
a home in the sense that a woman does, to potter around in. He has
neither the same urge nor the same talent for hanging pictures and
rearranging furniture. A woman, no matter how opposed she may become to
housework, still gets a small thrill out of shifting things. It never
wears off. She may be too tired to cook and insist on going out to
dinner, but before she goes she would be willing, nay, glad, to put the
Victrola where the davenport is and move the davenport over in front
of the fireplace. One simple move like that is enough to alarm a man
sufficiently to serve as the onset of a serious psychological or mental
disturbance. Men don’t stop to reason about individual moves. As soon
as a woman calls on her husband to help her change the position of a
couple of pieces of furniture, he instantly thinks the house is going
to be torn up, as it was last spring, with carpets rolled up in the
hall, and stepladders and buckets everywhere. This gives him a strange
“boxed-in” feeling. If that feeling recurs too often, the husband may
get claustrophobia. Claustrophobia is “a dread of being in an enclosed
space, of living under conditions which would interfere with a speedy
escape into the open.”
Every young wife should know the first symptoms of claustrophobia,
because, if taken in time, it can be cured, but if allowed to run on,
deterioration sets in and may result in anything from benign stupor
to complete paranoia. Once a husband gets into the outer rim of the
paranoid and paranoic psychoses, he may easily run through all of
them, and in the end simply be no good at all. The first symptoms
are usually innocuous enough, and may consist of nothing more than
a mere Amplification of Personality Without Signs of Conflict. (The
symptoms listed herein are largely selected from Claudé’s table.) But
from there it is an easy step up to and including Logical Development
of Delusions upon False Premises, Fragmentation of Personality,
Dissimulation of Egocentricity, Looseness of Systematization,
Exaggerated Feelings of Prejudice, Polymorphic Delusions, Ingenious
Methods of Defense, Reticence, Recourse to Legal Measures, Apathy,
Writing Letters to the Newspapers, and, finally, Diminution, or Total
Loss, of Neuro-Vegetative Reflexes. There is nothing sadder than the
spectacle of a once strong, firm-minded man no longer master of his
neuro-vegetative reflexes, to say nothing of a hitherto well-integrated
fellow in the throes of Fragmentation.
AVOIDING THIS SAD STATE
There are various simple ways to avoid this sad state of affairs. Of
course, where a husband and wife have plenty of money to begin with,
and servants take care of all the details of household management,
there is very little danger of claustrophobia. (There is always danger,
even with money and servants, of dual personality, melancholia, and
automatic writing, but not of claustrophobia.) In wealthy marriages,
which are usually made for either financial or social reasons, the
husband and wife see little, if anything, of each other, and the
husband need have no fear of being boxed in at all. He is free to
come and go at any time. But I am dealing with the typical American
marriage, in which the wife runs her own home—builds it up around her
husband—either because she has to, or because she wants to. A woman’s
desire to potter about her own home goes back a long way, so far back
that the urge often remains when economic necessity no longer exists.
Women like to do their own work. They even build up ingenious excuses
for doing it, such as claiming that the maid or the handy man didn’t
do it right. This desire may not last for longer than the first three
or four weeks of marriage, but that is ample time for the onset of
claustrophobia. During that period a wife will concentrate on buying
kitchen ware, painting chairs, selecting silver patterns, building
bookshelves, etc., to the complete exclusion of everything else in
life. The young husband, hearing all this tinkling and rattling and
shoving going on around him, smelling paint, listening to hammering,
etc., will begin at once to have a fear of being trapped or “caught.”
He will strive to get out of the house, and his wife should allow him
to go. What she almost invariably does, however, is to stop him and ask
him to hold a piece of chintz or toile de jouy up over the mantel so
that she can see whether she likes it there. She won’t like it there,
and he then has to hold it, first high, then low, then in between,
over a table in another part of the room. When this point is settled,
he will likely be asked to hang a few pictures. Now a curious thing
happens to many sensitive husbands when they are hanging pictures or
holding things against walls. They get the impression that the walls
are being made thicker, for the purpose of making it harder for them
to get out—interfering with a speedy escape into the open. This is
usually the beginning of the most dangerous of all hallucinations in
claustrophobia cases—the Persecution Complex. The husband feels that
he is not only being boxed in, but persecuted. If deterioration is
allowed to set in, the delusion of persecution may attain astounding
proportions, such as that the Masons or the Pianomakers are against
him, or that former Vice President Charles G. Dawes is trying to
“get” him. A case history will show how this happens.
[Illustration: “_He will strive to get out of the house, and his wife
should allow him to go._”]
Case No. 22. _Personal History._ Normal birth and development. Born
June 14, 1894. Had the usual childhood diseases with no sequelæ. No
serious accidents or operations. Patient began school at the age of
six, got along very well, graduating from high school at 18. Graduated
from college at 22, and became an architect. He always held good
positions with good salaries. Considered capable and efficient. Habits
normal. Everything normal. Case married when he was 29.
_General Make-up._ Always considered keen, intelligent, amiable, and
trusting. Liked outdoor activities, something of an athlete, with a
strong urge to “get away by himself.” Began to be suspicious shortly
after his marriage. He frequently showed this suspicion in his work by
complaining to his associates that his ability was not recognized, and
intimating that he thought the elevators in the building had purposely
quit stopping for him, so that he could not get out. Nervous. Jumpy.
_Mental Examination._ Patient was very keen, alert, but suspicious when
brought under observation. His demeanor was self-assertive, but he was
inclined to be anxious and restless. He demanded his immediate freedom
of the physicians who were examining him, and was greatly frightened.
“Let’s get out of here!” he kept repeating to the doctors. He was
allowed to depart, commitment to an institution not being thought
necessary on the occasion of this first examination. Later the patient
became violent. Would jump up from dinner table and cry, “Let’s get out
of this!”
[Illustration: _Onset of the boxed-in feeling._]
_Causation._ When examined for causation, the patient at first talked
guardedly, and then incoherently. “Look out for the water!” he would
say, and, again, “You can’t get out that way!” His physicians, unable
to correlate his statements and his apprehensions, called in Dr. Damon
Prill, the eminent New York psycho-analyst. “What have we here?” said
Dr. Prill. “Patient,” explained one of the doctors. “Look out for
the water!” cried the patient. “Where did the water come from?” asked
Dr. Prill, quietly. “From the drip-pan under the refrigerator,” said
the patient. “Ah yes,” said Dr. Prill. “You can’t get out that way!”
cried the case. “Now, why is it that we can’t get out that way?” asked
Dr. Prill. “Because we are painted in,” said the patient. “Painted
in, eh?” asked Dr. Prill. “You heard me,” said the patient. “Painted
in, hammered in, pictured in, davenported in”—here he made a strange
twisting gesture with both hands, leaned forward, and ended, in a
confidential whisper—“rolled up in a rug!”
The reiteration of these incoherencies was all that Prill could get out
of the patient, but it was enough to persuade him to question the man’s
wife. He made some interesting discoveries. It turned out that the
wife, one day, had asked her husband to keep his eye on the pan under
the refrigerator and see that the water did not overflow, while she
went to a bridge tea. The husband was home, going over some important
plans. He forgot the pan and the place was flooded. The ceiling in the
apartment below fell. The woman in the apartment below went all to
pieces. The patient’s wife, returning from her tea, went all to pieces.
The patient went all to pieces. Thus the hallucination formulated in
his mind that being married and living in a house necessitated going
to pieces. As for being “rolled up in a rug,” that, it transpired, had
actually happened to him also. One day, during a thorough cleaning of
the house, which his wife was superintending, she ordered two burly
men to roll up a rug, without noticing that her husband was on it at
the time. He was accordingly rolled up in it and had considerable
difficulty getting out. As for being “painted in,” Prill established
that the husband was also actually painted in on one occasion. He was
in the bathroom shaving, and his wife did not know it. Thus she had
a man paint the floors outside the bathroom, and when the husband
opened the door to emerge, he couldn’t get out without stepping on the
paint. He was about to step on the paint, anyway, when his wife saw
him. “Here, here!” she said, “you can’t get out that way!” There was
no other way out. “You’ll simply have to stay in there till the paint
dries,” his wife told him, and he did.
Prill explained to the wife what these inhibitions had done to her
husband and that his condition was precarious. He stressed the
importance of allowing her husband his freedom at all times, paint
or no paint. The husband was then brought back into the home and was
allowed to live a free, unfettered existence, coming and going as he
pleased—always, however, under the discreet surveillance of Dr. Prill.
With that perspicacity of psycho-mental cases, however, that almost
second sight, the patient became aware that some one was snooping
around, watching him, and one night he leaped out of bed, pulled open
the door of a little-used closet, and there was Dr. Prill watching. The
patient, who otherwise might have been cured, went instantly into the
last stages of the Persecution Complex.[18]
[18] This discovery of Dr. Prill in the closet is one of the few blots
on the splendid record of psycho-analysis, and is most unfortunate.
[Illustration: _Fig. 14._ _Here we have that strange, alert furtiveness
which instantly overtakes a man when he beholds a woman doing something
which he does not thoroughly understand._]
The husband-patient began with the idea that he was being persecuted by
the Detective Bureau of the Police Department and gradually enlarged
his Apprehension Field until he believed he was also being persecuted
by the Navy, the towns of Indianapolis and St. Louis, and the Box
Manufacturers’ Association. He whispered to doctors that a bearded
man,[19] representing the Box Manufacturers, was following him around
with a box and trying to catch him. Partly to avoid this imaginary
menace, and also partly to stay off imaginary paint, the patient no
longer walked on the floor, but on table tops, mantels, and so on,
leaping around the room like an oriole. Unless watched, he would jump
for the window-sills, and try to get out. He wrote to the Department
of Justice at Washington, and finally to the President of the United
States, protesting against the activities of the Order of the Eastern
Star, the Railway Y. M. C. A., a Rev. W——, and the _New York Times_.
The case was decreed hopeless in 1926. Later, the wife got a divorce
and the husband seemed to improve. He was permitted to go to a ranch in
Dakota, where he had a horse, a dog, and a pipe and was allowed to come
and go as he liked. The last time I saw the patient, he was completely
cured.
[19] Dr. Prill wore a small, black beard.
PREVENTION OF NUCLEAR FEARS
Prevention of the nuclear fears which lead to such cases of
claustrophobia should be quite simple. A wife should strive at all
times to give her husband at least the _illusion_ that he is free to
come and go. She should remember that it is the little things that
count, that claustrophobia is brought on by an accumulation of small
details, that it is, in fact, a tragedy of the trivial. If a husband
uses a guest towel, he should be quietly reprimanded, but under no
circumstances sent to his room. After pointing out, briefly, that the
guest towels are not to be used, the wife might even give him a piece
of bread and butter with sugar on it, or a kind word. Too many wives
do not consider it important to explain the facts of the guest towel
to their husbands. A wife expects her husband to pick up his knowledge
in the gutter or from other husbands, who know as little about the
actual truth as he does himself. If a husband uses a guest towel, he
should be gently reproved and then told where guest towels come
from, in clear, simple language. The wife should lead him to the drawer
where she keeps the guest towels and show him wherein they differ
from ordinary towels—the kind he may use. The average guest towel
can be identified by curious markings, either elaborate initials or
picturesque designs in one corner or running all the way around the
border. The husband should also be told that the use of such towels is
not pleasurable, because of the discomfort caused by the hemstitching,
the rough embroidery, and the like. He should be made to understand
that no man ever uses a guest towel, either in his own home or when he
is a guest somewhere else, that they are hung up for lady guests to
look at and are not to be disturbed. If he is told these simple truths
in a calm, unexcited way, the chances are that he will never use a
guest towel again and that he won’t worry unduly over the consequences
of his having used one once or twice. But as soon as he is given
the idea that he has done something terrible, that old feeling of
being boxed in comes over him. He begins to think that he will never
do anything right around the house, and that his home is merely a
laboratory in which he has been trapped for the purpose of serving as
the subject of strange experiments with towels and furniture.
[Illustration: _A wife should tell her husband in clear, simple
language where guest towels come from._]
The same rules should apply to husbands when they leave things lying
around, or track in dirt, or forget to shut the refrigerator door.
None of these faults is, after all, of very great importance, and they
should be lightly dismissed. If they are presented as heinous crimes,
the husband is going to be liable to the inception of a Persecution
Complex and the slow deterioration of mind and spirit incident upon
claustrophobia. A wife is forever taking it for granted that her
husband should know as much about a household as she does. If she would
only realize that things which are easy and uncomplicated to her are
strange and mysterious to her husband, and explain the mysteries to
him, adjustments could be arrived at very simply, and sex would then
have a chance to mean something. As an instance of what I mean take
what happens during the average unpacking. A couple has just moved from
one house to another, say, and the husband has been asked to help put
things away. (He should not, of course, be asked, for the danger of
that boxed-in feeling, with all of its awful consequences, is inherent
in such a request.) As the things are taken out of trunks, the wife
knows instantly where they go, not only the things she is going to use
and wants put where she can get at them, but the things for which she
has no immediate use and wishes stored away for the winter or summer,
as the case may be. A woman can tell instantly whether a given article
belongs in the attic or in the basement. All objects fall into one
or the other of these two categories. For example, while I myself am
not an expert at it, I am aware that anything framed or having wire
attached to it goes to the attic, and that most containers and the
like, especially those made of metal, go to the basement. A woman
comes naturally by this ability to discriminate. She knows most of
it by intuition and the rest she has learned from her mother. But
to suppose that a husband should know, offhand, whether a chest of
drawers with woolens or dimity in it goes to the attic or the basement
is ridiculous. You might as well expect him to understand, without
long, careful instruction, why one tea towel is used for the china and
another for the glassware. The thing for a wife to do, then, is not to
upbraid or rebuff her husband when she finds him tired and worn in the
attic, sitting among a lot of things that should have been taken to the
basement, but simply to say nothing, or, better yet, compliment him on
his strength and agility and then, next day, hire a handy man to shift
the things to where they belong. Adherence to a few simple rules of
solicitude and understanding would prevent nine husbands out of ten, no
matter how passionately dedicated to liberty they may be, from falling
victims to the dread claustrophobia which every year takes its heavy
toll of male minds as the result of the carelessness or stupidity of
wives.
[Illustration: (Sketch of child, man, and woman. Man has a downcast
posture.)]