Hitherto mental states of individuals have been our chief study in
this book. But collective phenomena of mental disturbance are likewise
met with at several distinct periods of history. The influence which
the insane have exerted upon different branches of human production
and upon the general development of humanity has been already pointed
out. We have particularly referred to the influence of individuals,
such as weak-minded benefactors of the people, mad prophets, and the
imbecile Roman emperors who displayed what is called moral insanity.
But besides such individual phenomena there is a form of mental disease
the peculiarity of which is that it attacks not isolated individuals,
but epidemically entire communities, and in that way influences the
development and metaphysical conceptions (_Weltanschauung_) of whole
nations.
A correct recognition of such states will be of no slight value for
the community; for along with the recognition comes, as we shall see,
an indication of the way to improvement and remedy. Thus it becomes
the task of modern psychiatry not only to treat individual patients,
but also to observe society, and especially to keep guard against that
phenomenon which ought to be termed Secular Hysteria (_Zeithysterie_).
It is a pretty widespread opinion that nervous diseases, and especially
hysteria, have alarmingly increased during the last decades, and that
they are about to increase much more. In all civilized countries,
we are told, and in every stratum of the population, a weakness of
the nervous system manifests itself of which our forefathers had no
knowledge. Neurasthenia and hysteria spread wider and wider, like a
devastating epidemic, attacking not merely the lower classes but just
the “upper ten thousand.” It is educated society which is threatened
with total overthrow by utter derangement of the nerves. “Whither is
this to lead, and how is it to end?” lament some solicitous prophets
who already see yawning before them the gulf by which the enervated
human race is about to be swallowed up.
Let us weigh the reasons which occasion this apprehension. What real
proof is there of this enormous increase of nervous diseases and of
the continually progressive degeneration of civilized man? First of
all, there are the statistics. “Numbers,” we have been told, “can not
lie.” Perhaps not; but those who collect them may fasten upon them very
seriously mistaken labels.
The assiduous statistician ascertains that the insane asylums contain
more women than men. So far, so good. But if he tells us that more
women are insane than men, he labels those numbers erroneously,
for the inequality is really due to the fact that insane males die
off, while insane females survive, relatively speaking. Suppose the
statistics of different countries do show that the number of inmates
of insane asylums is increasing out of all proportion to the growth of
the general population, would it not be superficial in the extreme to
conclude, without further data, that insanity was upon the increase?
At present these statistics mean nothing more than that the number of
patients in such institutions has considerably increased. But when we
consider what great advances have been made in the diagnosis of mental
diseases, and consider also that a great number of such cases, which
were formerly treated unsuccessfully at home, are now treated in such
institutions with good results, because there they are removed from the
detrimental influences of familiar surroundings, while the proper means
and methods for rational treatment are at hand, we shall find that the
seemingly enormous increase of mental disturbances need not cause us
uneasiness.
Other extensive statistical material for nervous diseases is afforded
by the numerous dispensaries of the great cities; but no extended
experience is required to teach that a large proportion of such
cases would not appear if the patients had to pay fixed fees, and
round ones, as they had to do in the good old times when physicians
saw comparatively little of nervous diseases. Our grandmothers had
their “headaches” and their “twitchings in the limbs” like the women
of to-day; but they never dreamed of calling a doctor or going to
the dispensary for such things, so that they were not “statistical
material.”
In the dispensaries for nervous diseases there are numerous chronical
patients who, becoming discouraged in one place, think they would like
to try another doctor; and some of them make a round of sojourns in
different hospitals. Each of them is counted as many times over in the
statistics as there are places where he is treated. This perceptibly
increases the numbers.
These considerations give some idea, though but a slight one, of the
extreme difficulty of making even rough approximate inferences from
sanitary statistics.
But certain observers tell us that exact enumeration is not required.
Hysteria and degeneration of the race stare us, as they aver, daily
in the face. In every department of human activity disorders of the
nervous system are seen. The very style and methods of the art and
literature of the day proclaim a general nervous prostration.
Max Nordau is the protagonist of this widespread opinion. In his eyes,
mental degeneration has seized upon the majority of civilized men to
such a degree that “the upper strata of urban population” form but a
“suffering hospital.” The art, the poetry, the fiction, the philosophy
of the day present the most manifold embodiments of degeneration and
of secular hysteria.
Nordau admits, of course, that degeneration and hysteria have always
existed. “But,” says he, “they formerly showed themselves sporadically,
and had no importance in the life of the whole community. It was only
the vast fatigue which was experienced by the generation on which the
multitude of discoveries and innovations burst abruptly, imposing upon
it organic exigencies greatly surpassing its strength, which created
favourable conditions under which these maladies could gain ground
enormously and become a danger to civilization.”[104] The conception of
secular hysteria which advances epidemically and attacks whole classes
is therefore, according to Nordau, only applicable to the present time;
and of this he says: “We stand now in the midst of a severe mental
epidemic; of a sort of black death of degeneration and hysteria.”[105]
But in declaring that in former times hysteria was but of sporadic
occurrence and attained no importance for the life of society as a
whole, Nordau falls into a grave error. Mental diseases, and especially
hysteria, have, from the earliest times to the present, exercised a
tremendous influence upon the current _Weltanschauung_ or metaphysical
conception of the universe and upon the whole mental development, and
that precisely because they not only occurred sporadically, but, as
we shall soon see, attacked the masses in the form of epidemics, and
so became of the highest significance and importance for the life of
society as a whole.
Religious enthusiasm and proneness to the mystic and the occult
formed, even in the highest antiquity, an important factor of those
degenerate and hysterical individuals who entertained the delusion that
they were in communication with good or with bad spirits, and who by
that channel influenced the masses not a little. A great number of
the priestesses who delivered oracular responses to the Greeks “with
strong quakings of their body” were psychopathic subjects undergoing
the hysterical convulsions well known to us to-day. Hence epilepsy,
which in those days was not discriminated from hysterical cramps,
came to be called the _morbus sacer_, or sacred disease. Plutarch,
in his description of the Pythian priestess, delineates the typical
image of a hysterical subject who, in ecstatic convulsion, stammered
unintelligible words, into which the priests injected some sense.
But hysteria, with its inclination to religious enthusiasm, was not
limited to separate persons. On the contrary, we meet with it among all
peoples and in all periods of history; and among all peoples we meet
with it in the form of epidemics of various kinds. But never did this
disease find a better or more fertile soil in which to thrive than in
the Middle Ages of northern Europe, marked as they were by ignorance
and superstition; and, accordingly, we find that epidemics of hysteria
then assumed dimensions surpassing those of any similar outbursts in
other centuries. A great many fine books have been written about the
individual and epidemic crazes of those ages. The French have made
particularly careful researches into the matter. Let it suffice here to
adduce a few examples in order to show how great an influence hysteria,
in its collective manifestation, exercised upon the social relations
and entire development of civilization of those times.
Calmeil[106] describes a great number of hysterical epidemics of
different forms. One of the principal eruptions in Germany was
demonomania, or _Teufelswahn_. “In the year 1549,” says Calmeil, “a
delusion called _Vaudoisie_ prevailed in Artois, that the devils
carried many secretly in the night to the assemblies, where compacts
were made with Satan and where carnal intercourse took place. Without
knowing how, the participants of the nocturnal meetings found
themselves next morning back in their dwellings. At the place of
assemblage is a devil of human form whose face, however, is seen by
none. He reads his commands to them, and then every one has to offer
an indecent salute; and he gives them money, wine and food in great
quantities. Thereupon each takes a woman--for there are women and men
together there--the light is extinguished, and they carnally converse.
Suddenly every one is back at the place whence he came. On account
of this delusion many persons of Arras, both gentle and simple, were
imprisoned and stretched on the rack.”[107]
A manifestation equally widespread in Germany was anthropophagy--that
is, the delusion that the Devil and his worshippers lived on human
flesh. Men were believed to live in the neighbourhood of Berne and of
Lausanne who had given themselves to the Devil and who ate their own
children. Hundreds of men were for this stretched on the rack or burned
at the stake. Indeed, there were a number of insane persons who thought
that they themselves were in league with the Devil, and that they slew
children. A woman who was executed at Berne testified: “We lie in
wait especially for unbaptized children, but also for those who are
baptized, particularly when they are not protected by the sign of the
cross. We kill them by our words and ceremonies as they lie in their
cradles or by their parents’ sides. So people suppose they have been
stifled or have just died of themselves. Then we secretly steal them
out of the earth and boil them until, after separating the bones, the
whole meat becomes fluid and potable. Of the more solid parts we make
a magic salve for our arts and transformations. We bottle the juice,
and when a neophyte drinks a few drops of it he has a share in our
science.”[108]
The bull of Innocent VIII, which appeared in 1484, showed how
deep-rooted the devil-delusion was in Germany. Everywhere people talked
of how there was a great league with devils whose votaries committed
deeds of shame in their assemblies; of how they were under obligation
to destroy and consume newborn babes before they were baptized. In
one year after the publication of the bull, forty-one women were
executed in Burbia because in their nocturnal assemblies they always
strangled, boiled, and ate a child. Midwives were on the Rhine feared
more than ordinary witches. Since their calling brought them daily
into connection with newborn babes, it must plainly be of the utmost
consequence to the Devil to win them over to his service. A midwife
who was burned alive at Dann, near Basel, accused herself of having
killed more than forty children.[109] Bodin adds that she afterward
by night disinterred the bodies and ate of them, baking the meat in
a stove.[110] Among the persons who were burned in Strassburg, one
woman was distinguished by her insensibility to the most terrible
tortures. She declared that this freedom from pain was due to her
being embrocated with the fat of a newborn child.[111] This sort of
delirium was very widely spread under Innocent III. “The inclination to
worship the Devil appears in many families to be hereditary and in many
localities to be endemic.” The religious delusion was, as is commonly
the case, connected with states of sexual excitement and delusions
belonging thereto.
Toward the middle of the sixteenth century there broke out in many
places in Germany, especially in convents, epidemic convulsions which
exhibited the typical image of _la grande hystérie_ and were connected
with symptoms of religious delusions and of sexual excitement. Calmeil
cites the following report upon the malady in one convent: “The
majority of the nuns had at that time been living for more than fifty
days exclusively upon turnip juice. Their sickness would begin by the
vomiting of a black liquid so sharp and acrid that it would take the
skin off their tongues and lips. Their nights soon became restless.
They would suddenly walk in their sleep. They would think they heard
a sound of human lamentation, and on hurrying to the spot would find
nobody. When they had passed their urine, they immediately afterward
wet the bed or their linen. They often had the sensation of being
tickled on the soles of their feet, and could not keep from laughing.
They were thrown out of bed and rolled on the floor, as if they had
been pulled out by the feet. Their arms and legs were contorted in
every direction, and their faces were convulsively drawn up. They
would leap high and then fling themselves with all their force upon
the floor again. Many bore bruises on their bodies. Often, when they
seemed perfectly quiet and sane, they would suddenly fall down, lose
the use of speech, and remain stretched on the ground as if they had
completely lost consciousness. Then they would throw themselves out of
their apparent immobility convulsively into the air with such violence
and strength that those about could hardly hold them down. Many found
it too hard to keep themselves erect, and crawled on their hands and
knees. Others clambered up to the roof beams, and let themselves hang
head down.”[112]
Such cases of typical hysteria appeared everywhere in the form of
epidemics, and with special frequency in convents. Of one convent
we read: “It was singular that as soon as one nun had her fit, the
others, even in distant parts of the building, would immediately go off
into fits as soon as they heard the noise of a person falling. The nuns
had no power of will at all; they bit themselves, struck and bit their
mates, knocked against one another, and endeavoured vehemently to wound
strangers. Upon any attempt to control the indecency of their conduct,
their tumult and exaltation would become more angry. If they were left
to themselves, they would soon come to biting and wounding without
seeming to feel the least pain.” Such subjects were considered to be
bewitched or possessed of the Devil. They were treated by exorcisms and
conjurations which often increased their sufferings.
Not women alone were attacked by the disease; men were visited in
the same way. Gilles de la Tourette[113] gives an account of such an
epidemic, according to a description by Hecker.[114] We read: “In
Aix-la-Chapelle, in 1574, troops of men and women from Germany were
seen labouring under a common madness and displaying in the streets
and churches this singular spectacle. With clasped hands, and carried
away by an inward compulsion which they could not master, they danced
for hours and kept up the spectacle without being abashed by those
who were about, until they would fall exhausted to the ground. Then
they would complain of their great agony, and would groan as though
they were going to die, until people wrapped their abdomens with linen
cloths, whereupon they would come to themselves and be free for a time
from their sufferings. The object of this was to dispel the wind which
set in after the attack. People often resorted to the simpler method
of planting blows of the fist or kicks upon their abdomens. During
their dance the subjects had visions. They did not see or hear; but in
their imagination they beheld spirits whose names they pronounced, or
rather shrieked out.... In well-developed cases the fits began with
epileptiform convulsions. The subjects fell snorting to the ground
without consciousness, and foamed at the mouth. Then, all at once, they
got up and began their dance with frightful wrenchings. In a few months
this plague extended from Aix-la-Chapelle as far as the Netherlands.”
Like the men and women, children were likewise attacked. Calmeil
adduces the following example: “Toward the end of the winter of 1566
the majority of the foundlings in the hospital of Amsterdam were seized
with convulsions and delirium. Thirty children (other accounts say
seventy) suffered from the malady. They tumbled suddenly to the ground,
rolled from half an hour to an hour upon the floor, as if possessed,
and when they then stood up they awoke as from a deep sleep. They did
not know what had happened. Prayers, conjurations, and exorcisms of
such power that they would certainly have driven out the Devil were
of no avail. After a longer duration of the disease the children
finally began to vomit. They threw up nails, needles, wool, pieces of
linen, bits of skin, and other foreign bodies which they had secretly
swallowed down. They climbed like cats upon the walls and roofs, spoke
in unknown tongues, and had such a terrific look that it scared people.
This was more than sufficient for regarding them as possessed. At the
sight of many women they made peculiar gestures, and such women were
regarded as witches.”[115]
A phenomenon often seen to-day in insane asylums is, that patients
think themselves to be beasts, such as dogs, cats, monkeys, wolves,
etc., and behave accordingly. In the Middle Ages this gave rise to
the superstition of the Werewolf. The word is formed from _wolf_ and
the obsolete word _wër_, in Gothic _vair_, in Latin _vir_, man. Such
persons, who during epidemics were sometimes found in great numbers,
ran about the woods on all fours, lived and behaved exactly like
beasts, fell upon men who might pass by, attacked even riders and
vehicles, and stole children and devoured their flesh. Such things
were known to the ancients too. The Scythians, according to Herodotus,
knew the werewolf; the Greeks, especially the Arcadians, spoke of a
λυκάνθρωπος; and the Romans of the _versipellis_. Toward the end of the
year 1573 the peasants in the vicinity of Dôles were authorized to hunt
werewolves. The parliamentary license ran thus: “In the territories
of Espagny, Salvange, Courchapon and surrounding places, it is known
that for some days a werewolf has been seen. It has secretly stolen
and killed several children, and has also attacked riders who have
escaped it with difficulty. In consideration of all these things, this
court of justice, wishing to avoid greater damage, allows the inmates
and inhabitants of the said places and others, contrary to the edict
concerning hunting, to come together with spears, halberds, pikes,
crossbows, and sticks to hunt and pursue the said werewolf in all
places where they can find him, and to bind him and to kill him without
punishment or revenge.... Given in the council of the said court of
justice this 13th day of September, in the year of grace 1573.”[116] A
man captured as a werewolf confessed that he was changed into a beast,
and asserted that his skin grew inside out so that the fur was not
seen. They cut off his arms and legs, to make sure he spoke the truth,
and he bled to death.
The disease of demonomania continued to spread. According to one
report, a thousand dancers filled the streets of Metz. Young people of
both sexes fled from their parents, and servants from their masters,
and allowed themselves to be carried away by the epidemic, and to take
part in the insane proceedings.[117]
In the electoral see of Trèves, within a few years, six thousand five
hundred men were executed as enchanted and as bewitched.
“In 1609 the Government was informed that all Labourd, the
district approximately coinciding with the present Département des
Basses-Pyrénées swarmed with devil-worshippers. Seven-and-twenty
parishes were attacked by the malady. The difficulty was greatest in
Siboure, St. Jean de Luz, Andage, and the neighbourhood of Bayonne. The
account of this epidemic is a shining contribution to the history of
insanity as a social disease.”[118] All these sufferers were considered
as bewitched and possessed. The ministers of Henry IV held it to be
imperatively requisite to bring the whole power of justice against
witches; and hundreds of human beings were burned or incarcerated. The
judges worked the rack actively in order to get complete confessions
from the bewitched and from those who were sold to the Devil. Often
the victims fell into ecstatic convulsion, and boasted, when they were
tortured nigh unto death, that they felt inexpressible joy at finding
themselves brought near to the Devil, who doubtless stood in their
minds for the great adversary of the court. Many made vain efforts to
utter a word when they were virtually throttled. A report says: “The
Devil sought to vex them so that, even if they wished to confess, they
should be unable to bring out a word. We saw with our own eyes that,
as soon as they had spoken one word of confession, the Devil sprang at
their throat, and that a hindrance mounted from their chest to their
chin, just as when a plug is put before the opening of a cask in order
to hinder the flow of the liquor.” This describes a common symptom of
hysteria which we call _globus hystericus_.
The influence which hysterical subjects exercised upon the whole
metaphysics, or view of the universe (_Weltanschauung_) of those times,
was tremendous. While superstition and fanaticism may truly be called
the best fertilizers to yield a crop of hysteria--and they have vastly
contributed to its extension and large growth--at the same time,
hysteria, in its turn, with its astonishing symptoms, far beyond the
classificatory powers of those ages, has had the effect of enormously
feeding and propagating superstition. In short, the two phenomena,
hysteria and superstition, played into one another’s hands; each was
alternately cause and effect; and between them they called forth
that dismal period in which the human mind was loaded with fetters,
and postponed for centuries its free possession of its heritage. The
author who is capable of saying that before this our time “hysteria
only showed itself sporadically, and had no importance in the life of
the whole community,” is not acquainted with the history of insanity
and the biography of the human race. In order to pass judgment upon
the present times from a psychological point of view, the very first
requisite is an acquaintance with times gone by, and a tracing out of
the path which has brought our culture to its present height.
Before passing on to the study of the present, let us first ask why and
how it was that diseases of the mind took on an epidemic character.
Most of those authors who have made hysteria the subject of deep
investigations agree in this: that _suggestibility_ (using this word
approximately in its psychological sense) is a particular mark of the
state of soul of the hysterical.[119] Every man is to a certain degree
susceptible of _suggestion_. Everyday life shows this. Merely seeing
somebody else laugh, gape, hawk, or cough, makes other people do so;
and so it is with other semi-voluntary acts. Hence it is that people
are accustomed to say that laughing and gaping are “contagious.” In
hysteria, _suggestibility_ is present in greater or less measure,
according to the intensity of the disease. The subjects usually possess
little or no force of will, but are receptive of outward influences.
This characteristic becomes particularly apparent during emotions, such
as anxiety, fear, terror, etc. An infinity of examples shows that grave
states of hysteria are brought on by passionate emotion. Frequently it
is a concatenation of such emotions that results at last in hysteria;
whence the extreme importance of education, and of the collective
impressions of childhood for persons of the sort considered, becomes
apparent. As long as children drew in mystical tendencies with their
mother’s milk, and were kept in fear and terror by the belief in the
apparition of the Devil and in witchcraft, it is self-evident that the
doors for the development of hysteria were opened, and _suggestibility_
and emotivity appeared in full blossom.
Unintermittent religious observances, imaginary converse with
supernatural beings, such as saints and angels, led first to
hallucinations and ultimately to morbid phenomena of hysteria. To look
upon an ecstatical state, or upon a case of hysterical cramps, was
sufficient to excite similar states in a circle of companions much
disposed to the same thing by anxiety and surprise. Physicians who
devote themselves specially to diseases of the nervous system and who
enjoy a large practice know only too well that, when their anterooms
are thronged, as often as one woman goes into a hysterical fit several
others among those who happen to be there are pretty sure to follow
the example. How much more strongly must the _suggestion_ act if the
individual who originates it is supposed not to be diseased, but, on
the contrary, to have driven some astute bargain with Satan or to be
deep in the lore of the Chaldeans, so that the attack is regarded as
an evidence of superiority!
Severe diseases of the mind proper, such as mania and paranoia, have
undoubtedly also played their parts, and no unimportant ones, in the
production of epidemics. All the phenomena of those diseases which are
now speedily confined to asylums, continued in former ages before the
public eye, and fell like sparks upon the magazine of superstition and
mysticism in the people. Those who raved were supposed to be witches;
and weak-minded persons who imagined themselves to be animals, etc.,
were taken for werewolves at least. As for those who were attacked by
religious delusions of greatness, they were rated as holy souls endowed
with the grace of God’s Spirit. The influence of these subjects upon
the mass of the hysterical, with their high-grade _suggestibility_,
must, of course, have been a quite fatal one. Conditions which in the
one were produced by insane ideas and imperative motions were called
forth in the mass of the others by the force of _suggestion_, and were
terribly spread.
The influence of these phenomena--that is to say, of insanity, but
more particularly of endemic eruptions of hysteria, upon the whole
culture--is shown in the literature of that time. Ideas of sorcery, of
the apparition of the Devil, and of witchcraft prevailed not only among
the rude populace, the mass of the people, but also among scholars of
renown and consideration--men who had accomplished great things in
their generation. Bulky tomes were devoted to the discussion of matters
of witchcraft and possession. Pierre Delancre, a councillor of the
Parliament of Bordeaux, wrote three large volumes on the subject; and
his conclusion is, that to spare the life of a single person who is
even suspected of sorcery[120] is a crime.
With the gradual awakening of science and the beginning--or, more
accurately speaking, the restoration--of the doctrine of mental
diseases, the fatal consequences of superstition became milder, and
the extension of hysterical epidemics was narrowed. To recognise that
possession does not imply dealings with the enemy, but is simply
a disease, was to break off the poisoned tip from the arrow of
suggestion, and thenceforward the morbid impulse to imitation of the
insane symptoms lost much of its strength and asserted itself less
frequently.
No doubt hysterical epidemics based upon religion continue even to
this day. The last century was by no means poor in such phenomena.
They are to be met with still. The religious epidemics which broke out
in Sweden in the years 1841 and 1842, and which have been described
by the Swedish psychiatrist Sonden, are good examples.[121] To this
very day, among certain religious denominations--the Methodist Church
of the United States, for instance--phenomena can still be observed
bearing a close resemblance to the mediæval epidemics. I myself had
an opportunity of attending a Methodist camp-meeting, and was there
enabled to assure myself of the overwhelming force _suggestion_ may
exert upon a crowd of thousands of people. Men and women, children
and superannuated persons, behaved for all the world like mad. They
howled and shrieked until they were too exhausted to bring forth a
sound. Here and there one would leap up. He was “inspired,” and would
communicate to the crowd his divine inspirations, drawn in reality from
hallucination or auto-suggestion. I saw one young man climb a tree,
imagining that he saw Christ in it.
The principal causes of the spread of epidemics of insanity and of the
so-called secular hysteria are, then, _suggestibility_, emotionalism,
the impulse to mimicry, and the tendency to mysticism. These important
symptoms form the well-ripened dung heap for the growth of whatever
mushroom crop of occult and supernatural ideas you will, whether from
the spawn of superstition and fanaticism or from that of a lore that
drolly mimics a true and living science. During the _Renaissance_
of literature and art, which was followed by that of science, the
religious fanaticism of the Middle Ages gradually lost its energy. The
corresponding phenomena of our century may be called runners from that
dismal period. But secular hysteria has by this time gradually assumed
a different character. Belief in the devil and witches has faded
quite away. Nowadays phenomena that seem unaccountable are produced
in great variety by the hysteria which still subsists, and lead to
crazy doctrines and errors, but they are new ones. Spiritualism,
which flourished most in the middle part of the century, had such an
origin. All those surprising phenomena that in earlier times had been
referred to the agency of the devil and of witches were now treated as
evidences of spiritual presence, telepathy, etc. Hysteria and religious
superstition had formerly communicated each vitality to the other; now
hysteria and pseudo-science intensified and propagated one another. The
literature to which spiritualism has given rise is perfectly enormous,
and forms a pendant to the old books on witchcraft. Scientific men of
standing write in our times thick books to discuss the evidences of the
most incredible theories about spirits, about veracious dreams, about
prophecies, about telepathy, about clairvoyance, about premonitions,
etc.
Such teachings could not fail to exert a decided influence upon the
_suggestible_ and mystically inclined mob of hysterics. The belief
in ghosts continually spread, spiritualistic societies were formed
everywhere. The social psychological situation was strongly analogous
to that of the Middle Ages in regard to witchcraft. The differences
were chiefly extrinsic, although it must be confessed that they were
not unimportant, for nobody was any longer burned at the stake or
stretched on the rack.
The success of a spiritualistic sitting required that there should be
among the company one strongly stamped morbid case, such as a person
subject to cataleptic seizures or to hallucinations, or something of
the sort. This person, who would have been considered a witch in the
Middle Ages, was now termed a “medium,” a middle term or _tertium
quid_, through which the spirits of the dead could be brought into
communication with the living. The mysterious darkness in which the
sittings were held, the communion hymn that was softly intoned by the
company, the excitement and strain with which the manifestations were
expected, the medium’s voice of awed assurance--these things, together
with physiological conditions to which we need not refer, beclouded
the brain and heightened the already high _suggestibility_ of the
hysterical circle. In this way appearances of ghosts of their lost
ones were _suggested_ to great numbers of persons. To the visions were
joined auditory delusions. They heard the ghosts speak, and conversed
with them; and with actual conversation all remnants of doubt of their
living reality were swept away.
The psychological conditions were thus essentially the same as in
the religious epidemics of the Middle Ages. There appearances of
infernal spirits and of witches were _suggested_; here the ghosts
of dead relatives were seen and heard. Hysteria, with its high
_suggestibility_, accompanied by external circumstances adapted to
excite it, acted as common cause in the two cases.
Transmission of delusions and hallucinations, or, so to say, “psychical
contagion,” is, in the experience of the practising psychiatrist,
by no means a phenomenon of the extremest infrequency. In that form
of mental derangement which goes by the name of _folie à deux_ two
persons share the same hallucinations and deluded ideas. One of them
is usually chronically insane, the other a degenerate, weak-minded, or
hysterical person to whom deluded ideas and deceptions of sense are
suggested by the former. I have myself had opportunities of observing
a number of such cases. Among others, there was a man, chronically
insane, who had erected a completely systematic structure of delusions.
He was the deputy of God on earth. It was his duty to promulgate God’s
will and to better humanity. In consequence of his high mission, he had
to endure many enmities and snares. He was persecuted (so he fancied)
in every possible way. Attempts were even made (he thought) to put
him out of the way. Moreover, his ideas of grandeur and persecution
were nourished by corresponding deceptions of sense. Now, this patient
had a wife. This wife regarded her husband as the delegate of God,
believed every word he said, and was completely inoculated with his
delusion. He _suggested_ to her his hallucinations; so that she
confirmed every assertion he made. She was a weak-minded person, who,
under other outward circumstances, would most likely have exhibited no
peculiarities out of the ordinary.
In company, and still more in large assemblies, the _suggestibility_ of
almost everybody is heightened.
Thus, then, morbid symptoms are propagated in any sort of crowded
meeting, and since at spiritualistic reunions the above-mentioned
outward conditions are particularly favourable to _suggestion_, it
is not necessary that people should be downright weak-minded. It is
only requisite that there should be among them a goodly sprinkling of
_suggestible_ persons of somewhat hysterical disposition; and when
these are once attacked, the strength of _suggestion_ that is brought
to bear upon the remainder of the company will be multiplied.
It has been fully proved, and is generally admitted by spiritualists
themselves, that from the beginning a great deal of trickery--partly
mischievous, partly mercenary or otherwise deliberate--was mingled with
the delusions. Besides, hysterical subjects are apt to be untruthful.
At the same time mere jugglery would not have gone far if it had had
nothing but cold understanding to work upon. Very often fraud was not
present, and still oftener was superfluous. The real cause of the
spiritualistic movement, broadly considered, was mental and nervous
derangement.
Spiritualism has now, in the main, died out nearly as much as religious
superstition and fanaticism have done. It is at present almost entirely
in the hands of swindlers and their weak-minded victims.
With our present knowledge of hysteria, its causes and symptoms, men
of science and all who are enlightened by its teachings are under a
positive obligation, which can not be shaken off, and must not be
shirked, to combat everything which tends to further superstition or
to nourish the inclination of the people toward mysticism. Our duty it
equally is to set our faces against those pernicious practices which
are calculated to favour and augment that fatal symptom of hysteria,
a heightened _suggestibility_. The very first of these practices is
that of hypnotism. The hypnotic state is brought about by _suggestion_
alone. It greatly increases the suggestibility of the subject. A number
of the most eminent authors have become convinced that hypnotism
is always a morbid state closely allied to hysteria. Charcot has
asserted this most decidedly. His most eminent scholar, Gilles de la
Tourette,[122] says: “We believe that with Cathelineau we have shown
by irrefragable proofs that hysteria and hypnotism are two morbid
affections which are closely allied, and, in particular, that hypnosis
is only possible in persons who have a tendency toward hysteria,
although this disease may not have as yet otherwise manifested itself.
It is easily to be conceived, then, what an influence hypnotic
experiments must have upon the calling forth of hysterical phenomena.”
Jolly,[123] too, comes to the conclusion that “habitual hypnotics do
not differ essentially from hysterical subjects.”
Although not all authors accept this conception of hypnotism, to
which, for my part, I give in my full adhesion, yet all do agree
that hypnotism in the hands of the laity, used as an amusement and a
curiosity, may have the most unwholesome consequences. I know one case
in my own experience in which such irresponsible fooling, kept up in
spite of emphatic warnings, was followed by severe hysterical attacks.
It is absolutely revolting that public exhibitions of professional
hypnotizers are allowed to exercise their baleful influence unchecked.
The subjects whom the hypnotizer selects from the audience are persons
of high _suggestibility_, inclined to hysteria. The persons present are
convinced of the real power of the hypnotizer, because the subjects
are people with whom they are acquainted, who perhaps are members of
their own family, so that all collusion and trickery are excluded. But
fathers and mothers ought to reflect that it is a morbid state which
is being induced in their daughters, that they are inoculated with
a dangerous poison whose consequences may be destructive. The young
ladies who are put into a cataleptic condition at the exhibition, who
are made to eat raw potatoes for apples, and the like, are led to show
off a mental weakness, and to be brought into a state of absolute
idiocy to excite the hilarity of the audience. These are the persons
who in spiritualistic _séances_ think they see ghosts of the departed,
and who some centuries ago would have been joining in a wild dance
in the street, or who would have committed actions leading to their
execution, as persons possessed of the devil. Such exhibitions ought to
be prohibited, as they are in France, for their pernicious influence is
beyond question. As for the employment of hypnotism as a therapeutic
agent, that is a question into which I do not here enter.
The above study of the causes and mode of origination of the so-called
secular hysteria shows very clearly that this morbid phenomenon can
be brought about under the most diverse outward conditions, and that,
in fact, we meet with it in history in the most widely separate
fields. The psychological conditions are, however, everywhere the
same--suggestibility, excessive emotionalism, the impulse to mimicry,
and the inclination to mysticism.
It is highly important to recognise public hysterias in good season, in
order to work against the pernicious influence of morbid suggestions.
It is therefore indubitably a service to the public to sound in time
the warning voice, and thus protect humanity against great harm. Such
a duty Nordau thinks that he fulfils when he tells us that we stand
“in the midst of a severe mental epidemic, a sort of black death of
degeneration and hysteria.”
Whether diseases of the nerves, and particularly degeneration and
hysteria, considered as sporadic cases, are at present more frequently
to be observed than in earlier times can not be determined with
certainty. Pertinent statistics are wanting; and, indeed, all but a
small percentage of cases of hysteria and degeneration remain without
medical treatment, and consequently escape all statistics. Some general
remarks of Nordau--as, for example, that people nowadays grow gray
and bald earlier than they used to do, and that we lose our power of
optical accommodation earlier than our forefathers did--seem to be
assertions without one particle of proof. Now, without proof they can
have no weight, unless we are to allow our own opinions to be formed by
_suggestion_.
The chief arguments for Nordau’s opinions are therefore drawn not from
the observation of individuals, but from the social phenomena of the
period, our mental civilization, in which he believes that he detects
the grave malady of universal degeneration and hysteria. Criticisms,
some judicious and some not so, of fashions, dress, furniture, and
the mode of life of modern society, bring him to the conclusion that
while “to the Philistine the current terms--caprice, eccentricity,
affectation of novelty, imitation--afford a sufficient explanation” of
the phenomena, yet to the physician, “especially to the specialist for
diseases of the nerves and the mind,” two definite states of disease
are to be diagnosed: to wit, degeneration and hysteria. I must confess
that I myself must, for that “specialist in diseases of the nerves
and of the mind,” Dr. Nordau, fall into the class of Philistines,
inasmuch as I am unable to perceive that a “thin moustache” or “wild
moustache,” that very short hair or very long hair, afford sufficient
grounds for a diagnosis of degeneration or of hysteria, or that the
_coiffure_ and dress of a modern lady, however eccentric and _outré_,
constitute a morbid symptom, indicating a black death of degeneration.
Nay, I must with shame confess that, far from finding fault with the
fashions, it had appeared to me that the present dress of ladies bore,
in many respects, the marks of sounder sense than the costumes of other
epochs. I recall, for example, the hoop skirts of 1850, or those of the
reign of Queen Anne, before “the age of degeneration and hysteria” had
set in; the side puffs of 1850 extending laterally six inches right
and left from the head, or the vast structures which were carried on
the heads at an earlier period. Another point may be recollected: In
former days--say in 1850, as a time perfectly remembered by many--the
iron rule of fashion was such that every kind of beauty was forced
to decorate itself according to one strict model, while ladies now
follow their own individual tastes and consult their own convenience
much more. Again, that barbaric custom of wounding the female person
in order to stick shiny trinkets into the apertures so effected is
becoming rapidly extinct.
As for the habitations of modern society, or, in Nordau’s phrase, the
“stage properties and lumber-rooms, rag-shops and museums,” where a
“friar’s cowl” or the “red mantle of Fra Diavolo” wraps the master of
the house “like a Jackpudding”--these things, if such things there
be, are shocking enough, I readily grant, to the feelings of an
æsthetician. But, after all, I am unable to detect in them anything
worse than coarse taste and coarse ostentation, qualities which surely
have never ceased to mark the majority of the human race. These
things are heirlooms from our monkey ancestors, not marks of recent
degeneration. When Dr. Nordau declares that the “specialist physician
for diseases of the nerves and of the mind” recognises degeneracy
and hysteria “at first glance” in the passions and tastes of the
“fashionable world,” I do not believe that he speaks for any great
proportion of the profession.
Whether or not there is such a thing as “correct” taste or “incorrect”
taste is a question that has been endlessly disputed in spite of the
sensible proverb, “De gustibus non est disputandum.” If, however, a
certain kind of taste is to be regarded as a symptom of insanity,
it will plainly be necessary to agree first upon some standard of
correct taste. Now, who shall be the arbiter in that matter? Shall it
be the specialist for nervous diseases? If so, what a revolution will
be imperative in our medical schools! Instead of students devoting
their time to anatomy and pathology, they must be busy forming their
tastes, attending lectures on ladies’ dress, and, in short, must give
themselves over to things of that kind. Is it not to be feared lest
after that sort of culture dealings with the insane should offend their
supersensitive organizations? Yet however exclusive their devotion
to aesthetics, differences of artistic opinion would still subsist
among the “specialists in nervous diseases.” Among them might still
be found those who, instead of seeing a “plague of degeneration” in
modern dress, would think it a happy release from the ideas of those
good old times when, in the absence of secular hysteria, men wore
embroidered coats and had their hands half covered with lace, and when
a long-queued bagwig covered their heads.
In short, Nordau does not give a single plausible reason for treating
modern customs and fashions as symptoms of advanced degeneracy and
hysteria. Ever since women became women they have taken pleasure in the
adornment of their persons. That feminine passion has existed at all
times. Nordau does not tell us why, in modern women, it is to be taken
as a sign of an epidemic disease peculiar to our age. The simple truth
is, that he does not like the present fashions; and that is enough to
make him accuse the rest of the civilized population of the globe of
being degenerate and hysterical.
One of the most important symptoms of universal degeneration is,
according to Nordau, incapacity for adaptation, powerlessness to
accommodate one’s self to the existing order of things. Here, as
elsewhere, he goes too far, setting down anarchists and revolutionists
as degenerates, without further examination. He speaks of a “silly need
of being refractory” on the part of the degenerate, a “union against
taking off one’s hat to people.” In this regard Nordau must consider
his own doctrine as the most striking of all the signs of the times, in
supporting its own contention, for he himself not only protests against
pointed beards, partings of the hair, and cuts of the clothes, but
declares the whole population, with the possible exception of those
who share his tastes, to be diseased in mind.
That is what driving the business of psychiatry in Nordau’s wholesale
style comes to. Whoever judges of a state of mind merely by comparison
with his own sentiments and feelings, and treats every opinion which
departs from his own as morbid, simply makes a layman’s diagnosis; and
such, in plain truth, is the psychiatric dilettantism of Nordau’s whole
book. No doubt Nordau finds in his “mentally decayed contemporaries”
all the symptoms of degeneration which Morel, Magnan, and others have
described. But his way of employing the conceptions of psychiatry marks
his complete dilettantism. Every collector who, with a collector’s
passion, buys old bric-a-brac suffers, according to Nordau, from
_oniomania_, or the mania for purchasing. Whoever occupies himself more
with any matter than Dr. Nordau deems fitting has imperative ideas.
Whoever writes what Dr. Nordau does not approve is a graphomaniac.
Whoever composes a drama of love suffers from erotomania. Whoever opens
the discussion of a problem concerning which Dr. Nordau has formed his
opinion suffers from the mania for disputation or the mania for doubt.
In this way it is easy in any given man to detect any given symptom of
insanity.
The reader of Nordau is inclined to regard him as a humourist rather
than as a strictly scientific man. But comical and, in part, diverting
as his psychiatric performances are, even to the professional man,
yet, after all, the matter has its serious side, especially since his
book is addressed to the laity, among whom such dilettantism may have
quite fatal consequences. We shall therefore be unable to leave it
unnoticed, however little pleasure there may be in the discussion of
such unprofessional opinions.
“The severe mental epidemic,” “the black death of degeneration and
hysteria,” finds its principal embodiment, according to Nordau’s
statement, in the art, poetry, and philosophy of the present time.
It may here be objected that artists and poets form only a minute
percentage of the community, and that it is impossible from them, and
nothing more, to conclude anything in regard to the whole population,
and to base on this such a smashing diagnosis. To that Nordau replies
that the degeneration of our time shows itself in art and literature,
and that the great secular hysteria is marked in the influence which
a degenerate art can exercise upon the public. Modern art would
correspond to the witch superstition of the Middle Ages which exercised
its baleful influence upon the masses. It is admitted that the secular
hysteria of the Middle Ages forms but a feeble pendant to our modern
disease, for Nordau expressly assures us that in former times hysteria
had no importance for the general life of society, while it now crushes
down the whole human race. As for that art and literature which are,
in Nordau’s estimation, the embodiment of degeneracy, I shall consider
them in the next chapter. We here concern ourselves only with their
effect upon the masses--that is, with secular hysteria. Nordau takes
as a sample a number of eminent poets and _littérateurs_, and, having
reached the conviction that every one of them is a degenerate, he
hangs some sort of _-ism_ upon each and thinks that in this way he has
produced a new form of disease, in comparison wherewith the demonomany
and lycanthropy of the Dark Ages were innocent phenomena. For instance,
Nordau specifies an Ibsenism, a Tolstoiism, and various other such
_-isms_.
It would, at any rate, be exceedingly interesting if Dr. Nordau could
furnish us with accurate analyses of these _-ism_ diseases, and tell
us in what they consist. But of this there is not one word. He just
mentions the authors, labels each with his cheaply manufactured _-ism_,
and thus the plague of the great secular hysteria receives its names.
To judge by what Nordau tells us, Ibsenism and Tolstoiism are symptoms
of a disease which has attacked the population and which manifests
itself in states of high emotion. Surely, then, since there is supposed
to be a terrible and pestlike malady whose symptoms are Ibsenism,
etc., these phenomena must greatly surpass all previous hysterias of
the masses. But in point of fact there is not the slightest trace of
anything of the sort. Like every new phenomenon, the writers named
have excited public interest in a certain measure; but there never
has been observed any morbid state or affection of the masses due to
the influence of any of those writers. If by Ibsenism, Tolstoiism,
etc., Nordau means morbid conceptions of the world, of art, of social
relations, etc., it only amounts to this: that those authors’ ways of
thinking do not accord with his own. In the place of objective proof of
disease Dr. Nordau leaves a blank.
Anybody acquainted with modern society must agree that the influence of
those poets and writers to whose names Nordau attaches the termination
_-ism_ is a pretty slight one. How many people have ever heard of Ibsen
and Tolstoi? For most persons art is but a pastime. They only go to the
theatre for recreation and distraction. Well-to-do people, especially
in the great cities, may have seen a play by Ibsen. The worthy matron
pronounces that Nora did wrong in running away from her husband and
children. But they trouble their heads very little with any purpose the
writer may have had. That is all the Ibsenism that is prevalent.
As for Tolstoi’s philosophical view’s, they are neither so well known
nor so influential that one can speak even of a school of Tolstoiism.
The unhappy and insane Nietzsche does not represent the way of thinking
of the public, and never attained such importance that we could
conclude from his success that his doctrines represented the general
state of mind.
For an echo of the alleged degenerate art we shall therefore seek
in vain in the mass of mankind; and as for the thence inferred
“putrefaction” of our contemporaries and the “black death of degeneracy
and hysteria,” they are mere phantoms of the pessimistic fancy of Dr.
Nordau and his learned colleagues.
Had Nordau in his sharp critique of existing conditions in the fields
of society, literature, and art made no pretension to any other
standpoint than that of the æsthetician and art critic, his work,
in spite of its many eccentricities and falsities, would undeniably
not have been without service, for he lays the scourge that is their
due upon many a folly and absurdity of our time. But when he wraps
himself in the solemn garb of science and, assuming the position of a
psychiatrist, hurls the ban of degeneracy and hysteria upon everything
that does not meet his approval, he can only be called a psychiatric
_dilettante_.
It may be granted that a sort of secular hysteria really does exist.
No doubt many erroneous doctrines of art and science are propagated
by the _suggestibility_ and emotionalism of the hysterical masses,
and many evils are partly due to these phenomena. At the same time,
it is certain that, thanks to the progress of science, the influence
of mental disorders upon the general culture is decidedly less at
present than in former periods of history, and that to-day hysterias
of the masses, such as broke out in the Middle Ages, are relatively
infrequent. This, however, does not imply that the number of isolated
cases of derangement is less than it formerly was.