ANTAGONISTIC GESTURES AND STRATAGEMS
However harmless and insignificant a tic may be, it is a source of
annoyance to its subject of which he constantly seeks to disembarrass
himself. But the feebleness of his will militates against any sustained
effort, and if for a brief space he can conserve his immobility, victory
eludes his grasp, for his tics resume the offensive and increase in
violence. More than ever convinced of his helplessness, he resorts to
measures that serve but to accentuate the mischief. Thus it comes to
pass that he desists from his attempts at repression and admits himself
vanquished.
Some there are, nevertheless, whose inventive faculty leads them to
adopt singular attitudes, to execute curious gestures, to utilise
elaborate apparatus--proceedings always more or less childish, whose
employment is usually followed by success, but only for a time. The
history of O. acquaints us with a whole series of these subterfuges, for
which the expressive name of para-tics was invented by him, tricks
intended to mask or to modify existing tics, but they soon themselves
became as involuntary and as inevitable.
Not all who tic are imaginative enough to conceive such plans, and many
have no thought of showing fight at all, but it is worth while dwelling
on this point for a little, especially in view of the frequency with
which certain tics are accompanied by methods of correction evolved by
the patient.
To begin with, we may quote the case of mental torticollis. The
sufferer's head is irresistibly driven to the right, say, yet he
replaces it immediately by the mere application of his right forefinger
to his chin, and the correct attitude is maintained so long as the
finger is applied. Of the variants of this efficacious antagonistic
gesture the most common is the grasping of the head in the hands, or its
support in the palm, or the simple contact of the fingers with chin, or
cheek, or temple. In some cases the mere threat of this gesture suffices
for the purpose. S. approximates his hand to his left ear, but before he
has actually touched it his head turns spontaneously to the right. It
would be difficult to find more conclusive evidence of the purely
psychical value of such corrective acts.
Sometimes the resources at the patient's disposal are confined to one
measure, though more frequently he avails himself of several, as in a
case recorded by Sgobbo.[141] The antagonistic gesture may fail of its
object if some one other than the patient put it to the test. Even with
the expenditure of considerable force he may make no impression on the
tonic contraction; this rule, however, is by no means general.
One of our patients, whose head used to be strongly tilted on to his
elevated right shoulder, while his right arm was flexed, his left
shoulder depressed, and his whole trunk deviated to the former side, was
able instantaneously to resume his normal attitude by merely placing his
thumbs one on either side of his head. If any one else sought to correct
his vicious position he could do so by applying his fingers to two
well-defined spots on the occiput, towards the base of the mastoid
processes.[142]
Occasionally the antagonistic gesture is of the nature of a paradox. We
may cite an example from Raymond and Janet.[143]
If we ask the patient whether she cannot sometimes prevent her head
from rotating, she declares she can, and demonstrates how it is
done by lightly touching her forehead with her finger tips. Now, in
view of the fact that her head is deviated to the left and
backwards, it will be seen that no pressure exerted in front could
obviate this. What really happens is that at the moment of contact
not only does she inhibit the movement by the aid of her will, but
she also makes a slight forward inclination of her head to rest it
on the point of support. No performance of this description could
have any efficacy in the case of a genuine spasm due to irritation
on a reflex arc.
At length the day arrives when the hand is unequal to the task, and the
patient endeavours to utilise more resistant bodies, such as the back of
a chair or the wall of the room, as in a case of retrocollis reported by
Brissaud. These devices in their turn prove insufficient, and relief is
obtained only in the recumbent position. Fournier[144] has seen a case
of convulsive twitching of the right sternomastoid and trapezius
arrested when the head was reclining on a pillow.
Even in bed, however, there is usually something to complain of: the
pillow is too high, or too low, or too soft; the rustle of the packing
is disagreeable, the sheets are too rough, etc., etc. It is then that
all sorts of unlikely arrangements are adopted, and the patient puts his
head under the bolster, or lets it hang over the edge of the bed, or
piles up additional cushions and mattresses calculated to retain it in
the desired situation.
Frequently the stratagems are highly ingenious and complicated.
Madame K.,[145] forty-three years of age, suffers from clonic
movements of the head which disappear with the adoption of a
torticollic attitude, the face looking to the left. Nothing is
easier than voluntarily to correct this attitude, but the clonic
movements at once reassert themselves, although they may
momentarily be kept in abeyance by placing the hand on the chin.
Numerous and ingenious have been the devices framed by this lady,
but in no instance has their success been other than transient. Her
latest invention is a stiff high collar fashioned of several
thicknesses of a heavy material. At the risk of strangling herself
she has so compressed her neck that no movement is possible, but
the right arm has now become the seat of action.
A patient of Grasset[146] used to promenade in the grounds of the
hospital holding a cane in his teeth and maintaining his head in
position by keeping one finger on the end of the stick.
Another patient, under the care of Noguès and Sirol,[147] whose
head was fixed in irresistible anteroflexion and rotation to the
left, had invented a most elaborate piece of apparatus, the
adoption of which was followed by perfectly satisfactory results.
On the frame of a pair of pince-nez deprived of the glasses he
fixed a piece of iron wire ten centimetres long in such a way that
it stood out from the spring at right angles to the plane of the
pince-nez. It was sufficient to wear this thing on his nose to
inhibit the spasm, and to be able to talk, walk, do anything
unhampered by his torticollis; it was not even necessary to
concentrate his gaze on the extremity of the rod.
In the case of one of our patients, N., whose head we had on several
occasions succeeded in keeping straight while he was writing by
directing a pin towards his left cheek, the idea was entertained of
utilising this procedure out of doors, and accordingly a long pin was
fixed in the collar of his overcoat. There never was the slightest prick
on his cheek, but we strongly dissuaded him from the continuation of
this objectionable practice.
Antagonistic stratagems of this kind are met with in other tics.
A curious case of mental trismus is reported by Raymond and Janet,[148]
where the patient always spoke through his clenched teeth, but opened
his mouth widely enough when showing his tongue or when eating. To
overcome the tonic contraction of his masseters he used to insert a
minute piece of cork between his jaws, though he could also open them to
articulate properly by holding his chin with his hand.
Chatin's patient[149] nullified the permanent contraction of his
masticatory muscles by insinuating his little finger between the dental
arches.
In this connection reference may again be made to the fixation attitude
adopted by young J.[150] for his left arm, a subterfuge of his own
invention which he considered a sovereign remedy. In essence it was
nothing else than an efficacious antagonistic gesture, inspired by a tic
and become its indispensable complement. Of other ingenious ideas of his
brief mention may be made.
Convinced of the necessity and possibility of checking the
movements of his shoulder, he sought the aid of his "immobilising
mattress," an ordinary mattress spread in a corner of the
dining-room, on which he flung himself and reclined from morning to
night, making the wretched thing his companion, solace, and
confidant, who alone understood and could alleviate his tics. In
his anxiety to find some point of resistance for his left arm to
work against, he had a second and much narrower mattress put under
the first, so that prodigious efforts were required on his part to
maintain equilibrium on the cylindrical surface. This was exactly
what he desired, and for a time he ceased to tic.
An equally curious case is that of one of Raymond and Janet's patients
afflicted with multiple tics.[151]
He was a man thirty years old, who denied having had tics for more
than four years; he had always been eccentric, however, and came of
a family some of whose members were dullards and others hysterics.
His career at school and college was brilliant, but his vain and
erratic disposition had prevented him from realising his boundless
ambitions, and carrying into effect many ingenious schemes. For
that matter, a prominent trait in his character was a curious
scrupulousness that led him to seek an impossible perfection for
all his actions. Anything he put his hands to he thought might be
better accomplished if he had a system for the purpose; he had, for
instance, all sorts of plans for improving his caligraphy, for
holding the pen, interminable "tips" for correct punctuation, for
learning, for reciting. To such an extent was he embarrassed by
these procedures that he could not write two letters consecutively.
Purposeless voyages to Africa ended in his contracting
conjunctivitis, malaria, and dysentery, and he returned to France
worn out and more eccentric than ever. Thereafter the state of his
health, and above all his functions of respiration and digestion,
became matters of absorbing attention. A system had to be thought
out for breathing better and for avoiding possible suffocation. He
next devoted himself to the question of alimentation, and conceived
the idea of moistening each mouthful of food with water, soon
finding it desirable to wet his lips, apart from meal time, in
order to breathe better. One day during a journey by train he
suffered agonies from want of his drop of water.
Examples such as these serve to illustrate how the misplaced ingenuity
of the sufferer from tic complicates his misfortunes instead of
banishing them, and indicate to what extremes his eagerness to obtain
respite may lead him.
All these gestures and stratagems may be considered as manifestations of
ideas of defence, comparable to what obtains among those afflicted with
obsessions and delusions of persecution.