has made extensive use of psychoanalytic methods--the patient was a man of
middle age, who stammered not only when he spoke, but even when he wrote,
repeating letters and syllables in anything he tried to put on paper. He
had been to two stammering schools and had been discharged from both as
cured, but each time had speedily relapsed.
As in the case of Doctor Dattner's patient, psychoanalysis demonstrated
that the causal agency of his stammering was a lingering subconscious
remnant of distressing emotional states experienced in childhood. Only,
in this instance, the distressing states related, not to an unexpected,
stupefying fright, but to painful reveries indulged in as a child, and
occasioned by certain unpleasant stories he had been told regarding the
end of the world and the fate of the sinful.
"These," he recalled, "took complete possession of my mind. I became
convinced that the end of the world could not be long delayed, and I was
in an agony of terror. Constantly I kept asking myself what I should do to
escape destruction. I knew I was a bad boy--very bad. Nothing could atone
for the sins I fancied I had committed. But I kept my fears to myself; I
did not dare confide them to others. Night and day I worried about them,
picturing to myself the terrible happenings of the approaching time of
doom."
Until psychoanalysis brought them up to the surface of consciousness, he
had long ceased to think of these foolish imaginings of childhood. He had
as entirely forgotten them as though he had never entertained them. But,
as the event showed, it was their malign influence, working on a nervous
system already infirm by defects of inheritance, that had produced a
psychoneurosis which, in his case, had taken the form of a speech disorder
through the suggestions unconsciously absorbed by watching his mother, who
likewise suffered from a peculiar variety of stammering.
Another of Doctor Coriat's patients--a young woman--impressed him,
from the day of her first visit, with her extreme timidity and
self-consciousness. Both were so pronounced as to be abnormal, and he
immediately suspected that they, in common with her stammering, would be
found linked with subconscious memories of occurrences that had tended to
deprive her of proper appreciation of her abilities and rights. She proved
a good hypnotic subject, and, knowing that in hypnosis long-forgotten
events are easily recalled, Doctor Coriat questioned her as to her
previous history.
"Can you remember," he asked her, "just when it was that you began to
stammer?"
"It was when I was a very little girl."
"Had any one or anything greatly frightened you before then?"
"Yes."
"What was it?"
"It was my father."
Then followed, in answer to further questions, a long series of
reminiscences of the severe discipline imposed on her in earliest
childhood by her father, a stern, hard man. As she related them, she
seemed to feel again all the emotions that they had provoked--the
shame, grief, fear, doubt, longing for sympathy. Literally, she lived
through them anew, and to the trained understanding of the physician it
was evident that she had never really forgotten them--although, in the
waking state, she was able to recall her childhood only vaguely--but
had subconsciously dwelt on them all her life, to the wrecking of her
self-confidence, as well as the causing of her troubles of speech. Only by
completely blotting them out, through psychotherapeutic means, could her
restoration to health be effected.
Similarly, it has been found that emotional disturbances are at the bottom
of stammering when it develops, not in childhood, but in adult life. A
particularly instructive case, because of the insight it affords into the
ingenuity with which the expert psychoanalyst gets at the truth in even
the most complicated cases of functional nervous or mental disorder, is
one that was successfully handled by Doctor A. A. Brill, already mentioned
in these pages, a pupil of the pioneer Austrian psychoanalyst, Doctor
Sigmund Freud. Doctor Brill's patient was a man who, after an early life
untroubled by speech defect, had begun to stammer from no discernible
cause, and had been stammering for a number of years before he consulted
the New York specialist. Several weeks of psychoanalysis elicited nothing
that would account for his trouble, and Doctor Brill was in much
perplexity, until he one day noticed that the words on which his patient
chiefly stammered were words beginning with or containing the letter
"k." It occurred to him that this letter might have some significant
association in the stammerer's mind, but the latter denied that it could
have.
However, after psychoanalysis had proceeded further, Doctor Brill learned
that there had been an event in the patient's life, though occurring some
little time before the development of the stammering, that had made a most
painful, even agonising, impression on him. He had been engaged to a young
woman who had eloped with his closest friend; and this had so wrought on
him that he had vowed never to utter her name again.
"And what was her name?" asked Doctor Brill.
The stammerer stared at him and burst into a violent tirade.
"Haven't I just told you," he cried, "that I have taken an oath never to
speak it? What business is it of yours, anyway? What bearing can it have
on my trouble of speech?"
"Only this bearing--that it may be the means of curing you. Come, now, I
am sorry you have taken an oath, because you will have to break it and
tell me the name."
"I'll die first."
With this he seized his hat and dashed out of the doctor's office in a
frenzy of indignation. Doctor Brill did not see him again for a month.
Then he returned, repentant. He would tell the name, he said, on condition
that Doctor Brill did not write it down in the detailed record which,
as is customary, he was making of the case. To this a prompt assent was
given, and the troublesome name was as promptly made known. As Doctor
Brill had expected, it began with K. He then said, leaning forward and
showing his sheet of notes:
"See, I have kept my promise. I have called her Miss W. And, now, we'll
soon have you quite well."
But on his next visit the patient was in despair. He was, he protested,
stammering worse than ever. Words that had never given him any trouble
before were now almost unpronounceable by him. On investigation, it turned
out that they were, one and all, words in which the letter "w" had a place.
"At last," said Doctor Brill, "we know for a certainty what has made you
stammer. It was the foolish oath you took, which served to sustain in your
mind the memory of the terrible experience you went through on account of
your faithless sweetheart. Vowing never to utter her name, yet thinking
constantly of her, you have unconsciously made it difficult for you to
utter even words in which the most prominent letter of that name--its
initial--occurs. And, now, since she has become Miss W. to you, as well as
Miss K., you are stammering on words with "w," as well as words with "k."
We must free you from the torment of that vow and of the pent-up emotions
that go with the forbidden name, and then you will never stammer more."
To this mode of dealing with stammerers could anything be in stronger
contrast than the brutal Dieffenbach technique? The latter exemplifies,
if in an extreme form, the folly of attempting--as is so often done, even
to-day--to treat stammering on a basis of imperfect observation. The
former shows the happy results that may be obtained when it is attacked in
the light of thorough investigation. No; it is neither by the surgeon's
knife nor by the use of mechanical appliances or physiological devices
that stammering is to be really conquered, but by intelligent application
of the wonderful remedial measures which modern medical psychology has
worked out.
Stammering, to recapitulate, is not at bottom an anatomical or
physiological trouble. Its individual peculiarities, varied as they
are, all tend to prove that it is a mental malady, symptomatic of a
psychoneurosis having its origin in subconscious emotional states. The
rôle that heredity plays in it is merely to provide the soil in which it
can flourish. Of wholly mental causation, it is curable by mental means,
whether by faith in the efficacy of any method of treatment, however
intrinsically worthless that method may be; by "suggestions" of a general
character; or, if needful, by specific recall and eradication of the
"forgotten memories" that underlie it.
Lest, however, I raise hope unduly, I would at once add that not even the
most expert practitioners in psychoanalysis, or in any other psychological
mode of treating stammering, are justified in guaranteeing an absolute
or an "approximate" cure in every case. Experience is showing that the
"emotional complexes" responsible for stammering are, in many cases,
so deep-seated--and often so entangled in later complexes--that it is
virtually impossible to get at them by any present-known method of mind
tunnelling. And, in many other cases, the process of psychoanalysis is so
slow and tedious that the stammerer is all too likely to lose heart and
abandon the effort at cure.
Consequently, in respect to stammering, prevention becomes of more
than usual importance. And the prevention of stammering, I trust I
have already made amply clear, rests chiefly with parents. It is again
primarily a question of guarding the young from needless emotional
stresses, of early training to foster in children calmness, courage,
self-confidence; so that, when inevitable shocks and trials come, they
will have no power to overwhelm the mind and give birth to stammering or
any other neurotic evil.
FOOTNOTE:
[Footnote 13: It is important to recognise that certain organic diseases
of the central nervous system do sometimes, through destructive action
on the lower speech centres, cause incurable speech defect resembling
stammering. Thus, a "stammerer" whom I referred to Doctor Coriat was
found to be a victim, not of true stammering, but of the effects of
a paralysis-causing organic disease experienced in early life. This
condition, however, is of infrequent occurrence; and its presence can be
readily determined by a neurologist.]
FAIRY TALES THAT HANDICAP
VIII
FAIRY TALES THAT HANDICAP
"Every ugly thing told to the child, every shock, every fright given him,
will remain like minute splinters in the flesh to torture him all his life
long."
Thus said the famous Italian scientist, Angelo Mosso, a good many
years ago. The facts of more recent research into the psychology and
psychopathology of childhood, as reviewed in the preceding chapters,
vindicate Professor Mosso's statement to an extent and in ways undreamed
of by him. Nor is it only the emotionally disturbing things seen, heard,
or experienced by children that may have a decisively adverse influence
on their development. Harm may similarly and equally be done by the books
and stories they read, even to the extent of provoking or accentuating
nervous maladies. Particularly mischievous in this respect, because
of their wide reading by children, are certain fairy tales which many
parents--nay, I might say, nearly all parents--consider quite suitable for
young readers.
You smile incredulously at the suggestion that a fairy tale could possibly
affect a child harmfully. Still more preposterous seems to you the idea
that the harmful effects of fairy tales--if such harmful effects actually
occur--may be carried over into adult life. But, listen:
To the Doctor Brill of the letter "k" stammering case just narrated,
there once came a young man of twenty-eight, afflicted with a strange and
alarming malady.
"Doctor," he said, "I want your candid opinion as to what is the matter
with me. Physically I feel well, but mentally I am badly off. In fact,
I fear I am insane, and dangerously so. For a long time I have been
tormented by a strange desire to bite and stab people and to torture them
in all sorts of ways. I yearn for the times when everybody carried the
dirk and dagger and could kill when offended. As yet I have restrained my
mad impulse, but I am in terror lest I give way to it. Is there anything
you can do to help me?"
The mere fact that he thus clearly recognised and candidly confessed his
mental state was in itself a hopeful sign. But Doctor Brill was well aware
that it might be extremely difficult to cure him, perhaps impossible.
Everything would depend, in the first place, on whether the young man
were actually insane or merely the victim of a psychoneurotic obsession.
If the latter, there was a possibility of his being cured, provided
the subconscious region of his mind could be explored with sufficient
thoroughness to get at and root out the ideas underlying and responsible
for his dangerous obsession. Satisfying himself that it actually was a
case of psychoneurosis, Doctor Brill began the work of mental exploration.
And, knowing that submerged ideas are pretty sure to reveal themselves,
directly or indirectly, through the character of a person's dreams, he
began by directing the young man to make a written record of his dreaming.
"Whenever you have a dream," he told him, "I want you to write it down as
soon as you awake, and bring me an account of it."
Before long, Doctor Brill was in possession of a remarkable collection
of dreams, many of which, as he had expected, were of an exceedingly
unpleasant character. Analysing these dreams, a curious fact at once
became evident--namely, that the patient's mental life was largely
occupied with imaginings that related, not to the world of everyday
existence, but to the people and events of mythology and fairy tale.
Always, too, in his subconscious imaginings, ideas of death and
violence were uppermost. During the dream-analysis he recalled with
special vividness such themes as the beheading of Medusa, the cruelties
of Bluebeard, and the freezing to death of Eva, heroine of Bryant's
"Little People of the Snows." Even trivial details in the settings of
these and similar fairy tales were remembered and brought out in his
dream-associations with a fulness that astonished the patient himself.
Dr. Brill comments:
"He was very imaginative, so that the harrowing adventures enacted by
fairies, genii, and Greek deities, on which he was constantly fed, were
deeply interwoven with his own life, and he built up for himself a
strange, archaic world. He liked to be alone, and often wandered away from
his companions, to act through, in his own way, the adventures of which he
had just heard or read.
"He himself traced the selection of his profession--that of an actor--to
these boyish actions when he tried to imitate the fleet-footed Mercury,
some character from fairyland or the "Arabian Nights," or some savage
Indians. He thus imagined himself flying, and beheading monsters above
the clouds, or penetrating to the centre of the earth in the form of some
wicked magician, all the time passing through the most harrowing scenes.
By a process of condensation, he fused ancient characters and episodes
with persons and actions of reality, but his fancies usually began with
some god-like or demon-like myth and gradually descended to human beings.
"During the first few weeks of the analysis he was in the habit of merging
into a dreamy state while reproducing associations, and often became so
excited that the work had to be temporarily interrupted."[14]
It was unnecessary to seek much further for the explanation of the
obsession of torture. In large part, at all events, this was quite
evidently the expression in consciousness of the gruesome images with
which the patient's mind had been filled by the tales told him in his
childhood. Though faded from conscious remembrance, they had remained with
him subconsciously, to influence for evil the current of his conscious
thoughts. Or, to put the matter tersely: Had tales of cruelty and violent
death not been told him in his early days, he might never have been
afflicted in manhood with his morbid longings to inflict pain.
Of course, if this case stood by itself it would be of no great
significance. But the fact is that during the past few years--or since
physicians began to appreciate the part played by childhood impressions
in causing mental and nervous disease--evidence has been accumulating
to indicate that the almost universal custom of telling fairy tales to
children does entail grave risks to their character and their health. The
child of normal nervous constitution is likely to be affected only in
character; the supersensitive, neurotic child may be hurried, by the tales
he hears or reads, into some more or less serious mental or nervous malady.
Let me hasten to add that this does not mean that the fairy tale should
be entirely banished from the literature of childhood. It means only that
parents should exercise more discrimination than they usually show in
selecting fairy tales for their children. The rightly chosen fairy tale is
indeed an almost indispensable aid in the early education of children,
for reasons that are admirably summarised by an American educator, Mr.
Percival Chubb, in these words:
"One value in fairy stories for the young is that they embody and
commemorate the man-child's first rude assertion of the lordship of mind,
and subserve the development of a later sense of spiritual freedom and
autonomy. Another is that they are expressive, as all art is expressive,
of the idealistic hunger at the heart of men. Again, as forms of art, they
select and co-ordinate those facts which bring out the spiritual meanings
of life. That is, they release from the unsifted materials of experience
the imprisoned 'Soul of Fact.' And not only do they embody the basic moral
insights and interpretations of childish man, but they express the simple
and larger emotions, and so feed the heart of the child. They quicken,
too, the imagination--that master-faculty without which the sympathy
which is man's highest and richest endowment fails of fruition. They are
an aid to culture by giving an outlook upon all nations and kindreds,
all countries and conditions of life. Finally, along with their allied
forms of literary invention, the myth, saga, fable, and so on, they are
a condition to understanding the innumerable allusions with which the
literature of the world is studded."[15]
All this is assuredly the function of the fairy tale, but frequently it
is frustrated by the kind of fairy tales children are allowed to read.
For one thing, the imaginative faculty is scarcely stimulated in a
healthy fashion when the mind is led to dwell constantly, as in the case
of Doctor Brill's patient, on thoughts of cruelty and pain. Nor can the
fairy tale be said to have exerted a healthy influence in such a case as
that represented by a little girl who was brought for treatment to another
medical psychologist, and whose morbid irritability, disobedience, and
crying spells were, by psychological analysis, traced to an excessive
jealousy of her brother. In the course of the analysis the discovery was
made that the girl had frequent dreams of seeing both her mother and her
brother cruelly treated. In one dream, witches shut her mother in a cave
to starve to death, and threw her brother into a large caldron of boiling
water, leaving her to perish miserably.
"This dream," the little girl naïvely explained to the physician who was
analysing her mental states, "is just like the fairy tales I read."
Other dreams of cruelty were likewise found to be drawn from the reading
of unpleasant fairy tales. So that, although in this case jealousy was
undoubtedly the chief cause of the nervous condition for which treatment
was required, fairy tales also played a part in directing the course of
the little girl's morbid thinking and her difficult behaviour. Warned
by this revelation of the dream-analysis, her physician made it a point
to notify her mother that unless steps were taken to change the girl's
reading matter she might develop traits of character--harshness,
coldness, indifference to the sufferings of others--that would handicap
her throughout life.
Or, instead of causing an abnormal harshness, the fairy tale abounding in
gory elements may breed an equally abnormal timidity, passing sometimes
beyond the category of a character defect to that of positive disease. A
typical instance is found in the experience of a young New York boy.
"Our son," his parents told the physician, to whom they took him for
treatment, "has suddenly become excitable and nervous, afraid to go
outdoors alone, and still more afraid to sleep alone. If left to himself
after having been put to bed, he often wakes out of a sound sleep,
shrieking for us. When we go to him he seems dazed, and for some moments
does not recognise us. But he cannot tell us what has frightened him, and
in the morning does not remember his alarm."
From this brief description the physician at once recognised that he had
to deal with a case of what is technically known as _pavor nocturnus_,
but better known to the lay public as "night terrors." Having had a
thorough training in medical psychology, he was well aware that night
terrors are grounded in disturbing experiences of the waking life.
Accordingly, he questioned the parents closely.
Insistently they denied that anything had occurred to cause their son
undue anxiety or alarm. Then the physician resorted to psychological
analysis of the boy's mental states and, before long, made the discovery
that his mind was full of frightful images of giants, wizards, and slimy
monsters. Promptly he summoned the father and mother to a conference, and
asked them:
"Have you been reading or telling fairy stories to your boy lately?"
"Why, yes," the mother replied. "He is passionately fond of them, and I
tell him some every day."
"And what, may I ask, are the stories that you tell to him most
frequently?"
"'Jack the Giant Killer' is one. He is also particularly fond of 'The Boy
Who Did Not Know How to Shiver.'"
"Well, madam," said the physician, gravely, "I must ask you either to
stop telling him fairy tales or to choose for him fairy tales with less
gruesome elements in them. He is a boy of nervous temperament, and,
figuratively speaking, he has been poisoned by the fear-images that are
so abundant in the stories he has heard. Take him out into the open air,
turn his thoughts to other things, and be more discreet in your choice of
reading matter for him. Unless you do this, there is danger that he will
yet suffer from something far more serious than night terrors."
The truth of this last statement may be concretely re-enforced by another
citation from recent medical experience--the case, not of a young boy, but
of a man of thirty, who came to Doctor Brill with a remarkable story.
"Ever since my boyhood," he related, "I have fainted at seeing blood. Now
I feel weak and dizzy, and sometimes I faint outright, at anything which
merely brings into my mind the thought of blood. I am afraid to talk to
certain people because they are likely to speak about accidents which make
me think of blood. The sight of a man who looks like a doctor suggests an
operation, and at once I feel faint. On one occasion I fainted away while
my blood pressure was being taken. It was not that I was afraid of having
my blood pressure taken; it was simply that the word 'blood' brought on
the usual attack. You do not appreciate the difficulty I have in telling
you all this. Every time I mention the word to you I have to get a grip on
myself. I fear I must seem very weak and foolish, but I cannot overcome
the horror I feel. Unless you help me, I do not know what I shall do. I
cannot go on this way indefinitely."
In answer to Doctor Brill's questions, he insisted nothing had occurred
in his life that could give rise to his "phobia," or morbid dread of
blood. He had been in no bad accident, had undergone no serious surgical
operation, had witnessed no sanguinary scenes of any sort.
"Nevertheless," Doctor Brill assured him, "there is a logical reason for
your abnormal fear. It is evidently buried deep in your mind; but there
are ways of getting at it, and get at it we must."