_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."