STAGES OF FEAR
The fear instinct in its course of development passes through three
stages:
I. The Stimulating Stage
II. The Arrestive, or Inhibitory Stage
III. The Paralyzing Stage.
In its milder forms when the fear instinct is but nascent, it
serves as a sort of trigger to the activities of the organism.
The animal may for a moment stop whatever activities and pursuits
in which it happens to be engaged, and have its interest turn in
the direction of the particular new stimulus, whether it be of an
auditory, visual, or olfactory character. The fear instinct is
just strong enough to suspend present interests, and direct its
activities to the new source of the unknown stimulus.
When the source is unfamiliar, the animal becomes prepared for
action. The energies are aroused for attack, or for hiding,
freezing, or running, according to the mode of defense to which the
animal has been adapted in its adjustments to the stimulations of
its environment. The lion, the tiger, the skunk, the snake, the
bird, the rabbit, the squirrel will act differently, according
to their natural disposition in response to external objects and
stimuli.
While the motor system may react differently in various animals,
the fear instinct is alike in all of them. This stage of the fear
instinct should be regarded as the healthy physiological reaction
to strange and new stimuli, and is essentially protective, inasmuch
as it serves for the arousal of energy and proper reactions of
self-defense, characteristic of the particular individual.
In its milder forms the fear instinct is _normal_, _physiological_,
and healthy in its reactions. In fact, the absence of it is rather
pathological. It is quite natural that under the influence of some
danger, the organism may feel the urging of this vital instinct,
the consequent of the fundamental life impulse, and feel it as a
stimulus rather than as a deterrent experience, feel fear as the
key for the unlocking of energies in defense or attack. Such a
reaction is healthy and strictly requisite in the total economy of
life.
When I advanced the theory that the fear instinct is at the bottom
of functional psychosis, or of psychopathic maladies, some jumped
to the conclusion that I regarded the fear instinct as abnormal,
giving rise to pathological states under all conditions and
circumstances. This is not correct. _The fear instinct in its
initial stages is perfectly normal, and is as indispensable to life
as hunger and thirst._ It is only in the more advanced and extreme
stages that the fear instinct becomes pathological, and is apt to
give rise to psychopathic states.
In the arrestive or inhibitory state, the innervation of the
voluntary and the involuntary muscular systems is arrested, or
weakened. There is tremor and even convulsive contractions,
the voluntary reactions are affected, and are carried out with
some difficulty; there is cardiac arrhythmia, the respiration
is irregular; there may be chattering of the teeth; the various
bodily secretions are interfered with, and the vaso-motor nerves
as well as the general vascular structures are thrown into
disorder. Peristalsis, intestinal secretions, and the innervation
of the sympathetic nervous system may become affected, first
by inhibition, and then by irregular functioning. Associative
mental or cerebral activity becomes arrested, confused; memory is
disturbed, and the whole personality or individuality appears in a
state of dissociation, accompanied by a lack of precision and lack
of exactness of neuromuscular adaptations. The delicate reactions
and adaptations are specially affected.
If this stage of fear instinct does not become intensified, the
organism recovers its control,--many of the disturbances pass
away, and the following reaction may come with a greater release
of energy, developing a greater output of activity than under
normal conditions. In short, the fear instinct may still serve as
a stimulation to greater effort, but the chances of such a result
are far smaller than in the first stage, which is essentially of a
stimulating, useful, and healthful character.
The second stage of the fear instinct is the possibility of a
pathological state, and, if persistent, leads directly to the third
stage with consequent paralysis and danger of destruction. The
first stage of fear is fully normal, helpful, and self-defensive.
The second stage is harmful, but with the possibility of recovery
and restitution of normal function. The third stage leads to
destruction and death.
In the third stage there is paralysis of function of most of the
muscular, secretory, excretory, circulatory, intestinal, and
nervous systems. The animal is petrified with fear, and falls
into a state of paralysis, rigidity, cataplexy, or in a state
simulating death. This last stage of the effects of the fear
instinct is pathological, and instead of conducing to the good of
the individual, really leads to his destruction and death. The fear
instinct in its extreme cases is not a help to the organism, but is
distinctly a hindrance, and is felt as such by the organism which
experiences it.
The fear instinct, which originally is a stimulating agent for
self-defense, when in excess becomes a danger hastening the
dissolution of the animal organism into its constituent parts.
The intensity of the fear instinct is the expression of the fact
that the organism is in imminent danger of destruction. The fear
instinct in its extreme state is decidedly to the disadvantage of
the animal.
Of course, it may be claimed that the paralysis and inhibition
stages might have been of service or of protective value in the
lower forms of life, when mimicking death or freezing prevented
the animal from being noticed. This may possibly hold true in the
cases of lower forms, but in the higher forms the fear instinct in
its third stage, by bringing about inhibitions and paralysis of the
vital functions, is decidedly of disservice to the organism, and
leads to its destruction and death.