because they afford concrete illustration of some little known facts
with which every parent ought to be acquainted. In each case, it will
be observed, an element of deception was present; and, moreover,
in each case the deception was seemingly motiveless. The child who
pretended that she had been operated upon had apparently nothing to
gain from the deceit practised by her; neither had the little girl
who played the part of a “poltergeist,” nor the boy with the sham
contracture and paralysis. Besides which, in two of the three cases the
children subjected themselves to considerable inconvenience and even
pain; and, in all three cases, they ran the risk of severe punishment.
None the less, they systematically and persistently kept up their
deceptions until discovery ensued.
Now, why did they do it?
They did it, as recent medical and psychological investigation into the
inner life of childhood has conclusively demonstrated, because they
were so constituted that they could not help doing it. And for the
same reason, hundreds—nay, thousands—of children, before and since,
have been doing much the same thing. It is not that they are merely
“naughty.” The ordinary naughty child will, to be sure, lie and cheat
and otherwise deceive; but only from readily ascertainable motives, and
never in the way of an elaborately sustained deception. When a child’s
“naughtiness” takes this latter form, medical authorities are to-day
agreed, it is in reality indicative of the presence of a really serious
disease—hysteria.
Than this disease—of which most people, unfortunately, have next to
no exact knowledge, mistakenly confusing it with, and confining it
to, uncontrollable attacks of weeping or laughing—there is no malady
more insidious, peculiar, or dangerous in the variety of its possible
consequences. Its peculiarity lies in the fact—discovered only within
recent years—that it is always rooted in an extreme “suggestibility”
on the part of its victims; and that the symptoms it develops
are invariably conditioned by the character of the suggestions
received from the environment. Hysteria is, to put the case briefly,
pre-eminently a mental trouble; and this although, not infrequently,
its only outward manifestations are wholly physical.
A child with a hysterical tendency—that is to say, an unusually
sensitive, impressionable child, of undisciplined will, and quickly
overwhelmed by whatever it sees, hears, or feels—is always liable,
when brought into contact with a person suffering from any serious
ailment of picturesque symptomatology, to manifest in some degree the
symptoms of that particular ailment. Or, more commonly, such a child
may manifest grave physical disabilities simply as a result of hearing
or reading about them.
It does not do this voluntarily; there is no conscious intention to
deceive; for the matter of that, the child itself is as much deceived
as are its parents and friends. The trouble is that in its state of
abnormal suggestibility, it is irresistibly impelled by the strange
power of self-suggestion to imitate the symptoms of disease.
Or, instead of simulating disease symptoms, a hysterical child
may enter on a course of seemingly deliberate chicanery like that
practised by little “poltergeist” Polly Turner, whose case is typical
of a species of behaviour indulged in by hysterical children in all
countries and all ages. Here, likewise, abnormal suggestibility is
in evidence, the resultant hysterical manifestations differing only
because the suggestions received and acted on are different.
In cases like Polly Turner’s, it has been found, the hysterical child
usually lives with people more or less superstitious and credulous.
They are people inclined to attribute to some spiritistic agency any
occurrence they cannot easily explain. In this environment the child
gradually becomes obsessed—though quite unconsciously—with a desire
to provide “marvels” for their edification and mystification, and,
yielding to the desire, is soon in full career as a “poltergeist,”
the hysterical obsession becoming intensified in proportion as the
gullibility of those deceived increases, and also in proportion to the
amount of attention paid to the little deceiver.
For—and this is a point to be borne well in mind—it is not alone
abnormal suggestibility that characterises the hysterical child. There
is also present an abnormal craving to attract attention, to be a
centre of interest. Of this craving, as of the deceits carried out to
attain its realisation, the child itself is unconscious. But it may
be stated with assurance that it invariably exists as a concomitant
of hysteria. Ordinarily it is the family and intimate friends whose
interest and sympathy the child wishes to arouse, though this is
not always the case. There may be special reasons for desiring to
impress mere acquaintances, or even absolute strangers. Then we have
the odd spectacle of children, like the pupil in the German school,
whose hysterical obsessions appear chiefly or only in the presence of
outsiders, while the parents remain in partial or total ignorance of
them.
And, speaking of this type of hysteria, I may say that I am acquainted
with a young New York woman who, since the age of fifteen, has led many
an unsuspecting physician a merry dance by reason of her extraordinary
hysterical simulations. In early girlhood she began to complain of
various ailments, which on examination proved to be of no moment. Not
unnaturally her family lost patience with her “whims,” as they called
them, and regarded her as a wholly imaginary invalid. Like most people
similarly situated, they utterly failed to appreciate that, as has
been well said by Doctor Pierre Janet, one of the world’s foremost
authorities on hysteria, “When a person is so ill that he says he is
ill when he is not ill at all, then he must be very ill indeed.” They
scolded the girl, they argued with her; but they made no attempt to
give her the treatment she really needed.
What was the consequence? One day she mysteriously disappeared from
home, and some time passed before she was located in a hospital,
where preparations were making to perform an operation upon her for
appendicitis. A little later she wandered off again, and turned up at
another hospital with symptoms so closely resembling a tumorous growth
that a diagnosis to that effect was made, and an immediate operation
advised. Still later an eminent specialist was misled into crediting
her with a serious spinal disease.
After this it was decided that she was insane, and the family had her
committed to an asylum. Before her release she developed symptoms of
ear trouble so pronounced that the dangerous mastoid operation would
have been performed had not the superintendent of the asylum been
informed of her previous adventures as a hospital visitant.
Manifestly, a disease that both impels and enables its victims to mimic
the symptoms of grave organic affections, with such verisimilitude as
to deceive even physicians, is an extremely serious affair. And one has
only to inquire of doctors with an extensive hospital experience to
learn that hysteria, in one form or another, is a widespread trouble
among both children and adults. But it is no longer the bugbear of
the medical profession that it used to be. Following the discovery
of its essentially mental character, methods have been devised and
perfected for handling it. Some of these seem absurdly simple, but even
the simplest have been proved efficacious, especially in the case of
children. Differing in detail, they have one feature in common. They
directly attack the hysterical symptoms by the employment of the same
agency that was provocative of them—namely, suggestion.
In the case of the boy with the pseudo paralysis, reported above, it
was not any therapeutic virtue inherent in the electrical treatment
that brought about his rapid restoration to health. It was simply the
suggestive efficacy of the way in which the treatment was administered
to him. The truth of this, however, may be made clearer by the citation
of one or two other cases, that are also of interest as illustrating
the ingenious devices by which hysterical attacks in the period of
childhood are nowadays overcome.
There was brought to a New England neurologist a little girl of ten,
suffering from a curious physical abnormality. As long as she was
seated, there seemed to be little the matter with her; but the moment
she attempted to stand her feet bent under her so that they would not
support her weight. When left alone she swayed backward and forward,
and then fell on her hands and knees. In addition to this, there was a
complete paralysis of the left arm, the child thus being deprived of
the use of three of her four limbs.
Questioned by the physician, her mother explained that these muscular
troubles had first set in six months before, following an attack of
measles, and that her condition had grown progressively worse. This
pointed to an organic and incurable malady; and, indeed, the mother
was firmly convinced that nothing could be done. But, on making some
delicate diagnostic tests, no signs of true organic trouble were to be
found; whereas there were some indications that the disability might
be wholly functional, the result of hysteria. In verification of his
suspicion the physician made a few experiments which proved that the
child was extremely suggestible. Turning to her mother, he said:
“You are quite wrong in supposing that your daughter cannot be cured.
She is ill, it is true; but her illness is of such a nature that it
will quickly respond to the right kind of treatment.”
“But,” protested the mother, incredulous, “she cannot use her legs, she
cannot move her arm.”
“No matter. I have something here that will enable her to use her legs
and move her arm.”
He took up a large magnet and showed it to the little girl. She watched
him with the keenest interest, while he used it to lift several pieces
of iron.
“Now look,” said he.
Holding it over his left hand, he slowly raised that hand until it
touched the magnet, pretending that it had been drawn up exactly as the
pieces of iron had been.
“You see the power of this instrument,” he said, to the wondering
child. “It can move your arm, and give strength to your legs and feet,
in the very same way.”
For three weeks the magnet was applied to the different muscles, with
the suggestion that the limbs would thereby regain their power. Nine
treatments in all were given. After the ninth treatment the girl walked
into the doctor’s office unaided.
“Yesterday,” her mother explained, “she told me that she thought her
arm felt better, and she found that she could raise it. Then she said
she believed she could walk; and, getting out of bed, she crossed the
room without the least assistance, and without her feet clubbing under
her. Can it be, Doctor, that she is cured?”
In fact, she was cured; although, of course, the magnet itself had had
no power to cure her, but was used merely as an agent for an efficient
“counter-suggestion” to dislodge and uproot the symptom-producing
suggestions in the girl’s own mind.
Excellent results have also been obtained in many cases of hysterical
paralysis among children by the use of what is known as the “method
of surprise,” the invention of a German specialist named Bruns. As
employed by Doctor Bruns and his followers, this method has undoubtedly
a certain aspect of brutality; but this is more than compensated by its
effectiveness. Having determined, by a searching medical examination,
that the paralysis in any given case is functional and not organic,
what Bruns does is to place the paralysed child in a bath-tub, turn on
the cold water faucet, and watch the youngster climb out and scamper
off.
“You see,” he then says to him, at this psychological moment, “you can
walk very well, after all. Now let us hear no more from you about being
unable to walk.”
If for any reason he deems the bath-tub device inadvisable, his plan is
to put the child to bed, keep it entirely isolated, and deprive it of
all food for a day or so. An appetising meal is then brought into the
room, and left some distance from the child’s bed. Frequently this is
all that is needed to effect a cure. The suggestion of food overcoming
the suggestion of paralysis, the child gets out of bed and starts
across the room, being encountered midway by Bruns, who—of course by
accident—enters the room at that precise instant, and makes use of
verbal suggestion to reinforce and maintain the “miraculous” recovery.
In contrast with this method of surprise is the “method of disregard,”
also originated by Bruns and used by him in cases of hysteria other
than those involving muscular paralysis—cases, for example, of
obsessions, facial “tics,” spasms, or convulsive seizures. In employing
the method of disregard the little patient is carefully watched by
doctor and nurses but in such a manner that he is led to believe they
are paying scarcely any attention to him. As a result the idea that,
despite his own conviction, his malady must be most insignificant,
gradually takes increasing possession of him, and in proportion as it
does so the hysterical symptoms disappear.
But, the reader may ask, does this truly mean that the hysteria itself
has been cured? Do not these methods, one and all, achieve merely the
removal of symptoms? Is not the child still suggestible enough to
develop a new variety of hysterical disturbances should occasion arise?
Such objections are not without force, though in practice it has been
observed that the cure of the symptoms by suggestion does actually
seem to weaken the tendency to future hysterical outbreaks of any
kind. To be on the safe side, however, it is always well to institute
environmental changes of a sort that will make for a constantly closer
approach by the child to a normal life.
With this, we come to the point that is of supreme interest to parents.
Almost without exception it is in the home that the seeds are sown
which may afterward bear the bitter fruit of hysteria, whether bearing
it in childhood or not until some critical period comes in later
years. It is the child who is “spoiled,” or kept by unwise parents
in a state of nervous tension and excitement; the child whose sense
of moral responsibility is not properly developed, and whose natural
suggestibility is unduly heightened by the superstitions, fears, and
eccentricities of its elders; it is such a child who, soon or late, may
be counted on to manifest some hysterical taint, perhaps not of the
extreme type illustrated by the cases narrated above, but nevertheless
of a sort making against happiness, usefulness, and success in the
world of active effort. Or, to state the situation in more detail in
the words of a physician of my acquaintance:
“Hysterical children, it has been my observation, usually have neurotic
parents. At first I was disposed to see in this another evidence of the
dread workings of heredity. But I am now inclined to the belief that
it illustrates rather the influence of environment. All children, as
you know, are highly imitative. They tend to copy, with exaggerations,
whatever models are placed before them, and instinctively they take
their parents as their chief models. If, then, the parents are
flighty, excitable, passing rapidly from extreme to extreme of mood,
it is only natural that the children should be likewise. Their minds
undisciplined, their will-power undeveloped, they easily fall a prey
to the baneful, hysteria-producing suggestions of their unhealthy
surroundings.
“To make matters worse, there is often, even among well-educated
persons, an amazing disregard of the hygienic and dietetic requirements
for neural stability. Children are allowed to sit up to unreasonable
hours; they are permitted altogether too frequent attendance at
parties, theatres, moving-picture shows, and similar places of
entertainment, where they receive impressions too vivid and varied for
them to absorb easily. Then, too, there is a tendency to give them at
their meals an undue allowance of meat, and to permit them to drink
tea, coffee, and other stimulants making for nerve disturbance.
“All the while they are living in an atmosphere of parental uneasiness
and unrest. Their mothers—and perhaps their fathers also—fuss and fume
over them. They delight, it may be, in ‘showing them off’ to admiring
visitors, thus suggesting to the already over-impressionable little
ones undue ideas of their own importance. Presently signs of trouble
appear—restless sleep, ‘night terrors,’ facial ‘tics,’ possibly even
full-blown attacks of hysterical convulsions, paralysis, deafness, or
what not—and the neurologist has another patient on his hands.”
Surely the duty of parents is plain. To set before their children from
earliest infancy examples of placidity and strength of character, to
educate their will no less than their intellect, to guard them as
far as possible from all harmful suggestions, to love them without
idolising them, to study carefully their physical as well as their
mental and moral needs—in this way, and in this way alone, can
safety be had against the dread evil of hysteria and allied nervous
troubles. Especially is such a course indispensable in view of the
now well-demonstrated fact that a faulty upbringing may be primarily
responsible for mental and nervous maladies, not of childhood but of
adult life, and of a character to challenge the utmost skill of the
best trained physicians. Of this, more in our next chapter.
VIII
THE MENACE OF FEAR
I have no intention of describing the ordinary, familiar phenomena
of fear. These, in both their psychological and physiological
manifestations, will be found adequately treated in any good text-book
on the emotions. What I wish to do, rather, is to call attention to
some little-known facts which find scant mention in the text-books for
the excellent reason that it is only within the past few years that
they have been made part of organised knowledge. Yet they are facts of
the utmost significance from both a theoretical and a practical point
of view; and, indeed, an understanding of them is of no less importance
to the layman than to the scientist. Their discovery has made
possible for the first time what may be called an applied psychology
of fear—that is to say, a statement of principles the application
of which will go far toward solving the problem of how to avert the
evil consequences of fear without the loss of its really beneficial
qualities.
That there is a certain virtue in fear requires no scientific
demonstration. Fear, as everybody ought to be aware, is intrinsically
one of the most useful of emotions. It is an instinct implanted in us
as a prime aid in the struggle for existence. Doubtless for this reason
it is, as compared with the other emotions, the earliest to make its
appearance in the newborn child. Preyer, whose book, “The Mind of the
Child,” is not nearly so well known in this country as it should be,
puts the first manifestation of fear in an infant at the twenty-third
day after birth. Other observers, including Charles Darwin, have found
no indications of it until somewhat later than this. But all agree that
it is the first emotion, properly so called, to show itself, and that
its normal function is to instil caution and prudence in relation to
objects and actions that might have destructive effects.
The trouble is that fear has a great tendency to function to excess,
especially in the years of childhood, that formative period which means
so much to future development. There is scarcely one of us who, looking
back, cannot recall some youthful fear, abnormal in its intensity. Nor
are such abnormal fears confined to the young. With many people they
persist in one form or another throughout life; it may be as fear of
thunder, fear of mice, fear of snakes. Moreover, they sometimes do not
appear with full force until the period of youth is long past. At the
age of thirty or forty—at any age—there may develop, with irresistible
power, and seemingly for no reason, a paralysing, appalling fear of
doing some trivial, everyday act, or of coming into contact with some
familiar and entirely harmless object. When fear becomes as extreme as
this it amounts to a disease, and is recognised as such by the medical
profession, being technically known as a “phobia.” It is through
scientific study of these phobias, as recently carried out by medical
specialists with a psychological training, that full realisation has
been gained of the tremendous rôle played by fear in the life of man,
and the need for its proper control and direction.
The two commonest phobias are direct opposites of one another—namely,
fear of open places (agoraphobia) and fear of being in a closed place
(claustrophobia). The victim of agoraphobia can with difficulty be
persuaded to trust himself outdoors. He fears that if he goes out some
catastrophe will overwhelm him. His state of mind is one of absolute
panic, and when obliged to cross any open space, such as a public park,
he displays all the symptoms of extreme fear. The person troubled
with abnormal fear of closed places experiences no difficulty of this
sort. He is, on the contrary, never so happy as when in the open. His
troubles begin when he is asked to take, say, a drive in a cab or a
journey in a railway car. He dare not attend the theatre, or any indoor
public entertainment. Whence comes his aversion from closed places he
cannot say. He only knows that the mere thought of being in any place
from which he cannot escape at a moment’s notice fills him with a
torturing dread.
In accounting for phobias like these psychologists have, as a usual
thing, fallen back on pure theory, and—especially when strongly
influenced by the evolutionary doctrine—have been wont to attribute
them to the emergence of ancestral traits and instincts once of real
biological value. But recent investigation has made it certain that
this ancestral revival theory is both superfluous and erroneous, and
tends to hinder rather than help an understanding of the mechanism and
consequences of fear. For one thing, there is the fact that agoraphobia
and claustrophobia are not the only irrational fears. There may be a
phobia for any conceivable act or object, and to explain all these in
terms of the revival of ancestral instincts is surely beyond the power
of the most vivid scientific imagination. Further than this, so far as
abnormal fear of open or closed spaces is concerned, the researches
of the medical specialists have rendered possible a satisfactory
explanation—and an explanation that has much practical value—without
harking back to the feelings and doings of primitive man.
It has been found in every case scientifically studied that there is
indeed a memory revival of past experiences, but that it is invariably
a revival of experiences in the life of the victim himself, not of his
remote ancestors. This is true of every kind of phobia. The sufferer
may honestly declare his inability to recall any antecedent happening
of a fear-inducing character. But it is found that, subconsciously
at any rate, he always carries with him a vivid memory-image of some
occurrence that at the time shocked him greatly; and that his phobia
is due to the ceaseless presentation in his subconsciousness of this
vivid memory-image. In proof of which may be cited the experiences of
any medical man accustomed, in treating patients for nervous and mental
troubles, to make use of modern methods—hypnotism, hynoidisation, and
so forth—for exploring the obscurer workings of the human mind.