FEAR SUGGESTIONS
In my psychopathological and clinical work of the various
manifestations and symptoms of psychopathic and functional diseases
I come to the conclusion that the principal cause of all those
morbid affections is the fear instinct, rooted in the very impulse
of life, the impulse of self preservation. Fears are not secondary
effects, they are due to one of the most fundamental of all
instincts, the instinct of fear which is primary and elemental.
Anything which arouses the fear instinct in the inhibitory or
paralyzing stages will necessarily give rise to psychopathic
functional psychosis or neurosis. The fear instinct and the impulse
of self-preservation, inherent in all life, are the alpha and omega
of psychopathic maladies.
The fear instinct is usually cultivated by a long history of events
of a fearsome character so that fear instinct and the impulse
of self-preservation become easily aroused on various occasions
of external stimulation, producing general fear, mental or
emotional, and often accompanied by sensory, motor, and intestinal
derangements of various organs with their secretions and hormones,
as well as with general morbid, functional changes of the central
nervous system, sympathetic and parasympathetic systems. This
in its turn gradually cultivates a disposition to formation of
hypnoidal states, that is, the brief momentary formation of trance
states, in which the subconscious becomes through dissociation
exposed to fear suggestions or fear stimulations, which arouse in
the morbidly cultivated subconscious morbid fear symptoms, motor,
sensory, intestinal, emotional in their various combinations and
associations.
_The cultivated predisposition to lapses into hypnoidal states is a
prerequisite of psychopathic disturbances. We may, therefore, say
that the three factors, namely, Self-preservation, Fear instinct,
Hypnoidal states form the triumvirate of psychopathic, functional
neurosis._
Charcot with his sharp eye for observation as well as his long
clinical experience observed, in what he termed hystericals, a
brooding period which precedes the manifestations of the hysterical
attacks and symptom complex of the hysterical manifestations. These
brooding periods are of the utmost consequence, although Charcot
and his disciples as well as the psychopathologists generally,
hardly paid any attention to this important phenomenon.
These brooding periods preceding the onset of the malady
afterwards recur regularly before each attack of the malady, only
the period is brief, and is hardly noticeable except by the one who
looks searchingly. Psychopathologists pass this important stage
without noticing its full significance. _The period appears as a
sort of a psychic aura, a sort of_ momentary attack of epileptic
_petit mal_. This brooding state is a modification of the hypnoidal
state.
It is during such hypnoidal states, when the conditions which
I have shown to be requisite for the induction of trance or
subconscious states, happen to be specially strong and the
hypnoidal state is prolonged, that the unprotected subconscious
becomes subject to fear suggestions or to stimuli arousing the fear
instinct and the impulse of self-preservation.
“Many patients,” says the famous physiologist and physician, Mosso,
“die in the hospital from fear and depression who would probably
have recovered had they been tended in their own homes.... In their
morning round the physicians find that the serious cases have grown
worse, while those who are better beg to be dismissed.... The
physician, who has the night watch must walk up and down the whole
night, and is kept busy preventing convulsive attacks, or fainting
fits.
“Fear attacks nullify every effort of the will.... Even Alexander
of Macedon had to count with fear in his courageous army of select
Macedonians. In order to insure victory he offered sacrifices to
Fear before he joined battle.”
Physical maladies become worse during the night, and especially
during the early morning hours when the energy of the body is at
its lowest level,--conscious and subconscious fears reaching their
highest intensity. This holds specially true of nervous cases, and
particularly of psychopathic patients, who are dominated by the
impulse of self-preservation and the fear instinct. The fears and
worries keep the patient awake, and the subconscious fears become
emphasized by concentration of attention, monotony, limitation
of field of consciousness, limitation of voluntary movements,
and other factors favorable to dissociation and the induction of
the hypnoidal state, in which the patient becomes sensitive to
the awakening of the fear instinct, with all its horrible fear
suggestions.
The symptoms of the disease which are more or less under his
control during the day become often so intensified in the dark,
that the patients become demoralized with fear, suffering as they
do the anxiety and anguish induced by the terrors of the night.
Even medical men, professors of medical colleges, who have come
under my care, have confessed to me that, when in a state of
insomnia, the terrors of the night are so intense that they had to
resort to morphine to still the anguish of the fear instinct.
For years I lived in close relation with neurotic, psychopathic
patients. I watched them day and night. I have been called by
patients for medical aid in the late hours of the night, and more
so during the vigil hours of the darkness of the night. I had to
relieve and soothe the fears, the terrors of the night. It is in
the night, when in a low state of neuron energy that patients
feel the grip of horrors oppressing them with nightmares of the
relentless and merciless instinct, the fear instinct. To be
relieved of the night terrors many patients are willing to risk
anything, even the consequence of deadly narcotics, the plagues of
mental healers, and the sexual phantasms of Psychoanalysis.
The hypnoidal state is induced artificially, often brought about
by intoxication, as in the case of holy Soma drink among the
Hindoos, or by fasting, as among the American Indians during the
initiation periods, or by dancing, such as the corrobboree among
the aborigines of Australia, or by singing, or by praying. All the
conditions of disjunction of consciousness with the manifestations
of subconscious activities are brought into play, in order to come
in contact with demons, spirits, totems, and find among them guides
and protectors.
In prolonged hypnoidal states, the fear instinct and the impulse
of self-preservation are calmed under appropriate conditions.
Illusions and hallucinations which easily appeared in the twilight
states of hypnoidal subconscious states became manifested as
beneficent spirits, as agents favorable to the life existence of
the individual, the spirit appearing as the totem, the guardian of
the individual. Prayer and singing, which are the most successful
of all the methods of inducing subconscious subwaking, twilight
states, have survived to our present day.
Of all the methods of utilization of subconscious subwaking,
twilight states the most effective is prayer, especially,
the individual form of prayer. Prayer admirably fulfills the
conditions requisite for the induction of the hypnoidal state
and for the getting access to the subconscious activities, the
formation of subconscious personalities, subconscious illusions
and hallucinations. Such subconscious states have been shown, on
experimental evidence, to be not of a sensory, but of a purely
delusional character, strong enough to affect the individual with
an intense belief in its external reality.
The deluded human mind in its craven fear of the unseen and
the mysterious spirit-forces helps itself to any soporific or
anaesthetic, narcotic stimulant, to bring about a scission of the
conscious self from the subconscious activities. The induction of
the hypnoidal state is brought about by all kinds of intoxicants,
narcotics, fasting, dancing, self-mortification, sex excesses which
exhaust the devotee, and leave him in a state of trance. All such
practices and rites seek blindly for some trance-state to still the
morbid fear instinct.
The psychoanalysis of Freud, Jung, Adler, Stoekel, with their
sexual love, belongs to this category of _narcotic sexual
religions_ which inhibit the critical self.[15]
FOOTNOTE:
[15] The popular novelists try to disclose “the secrets of the
heart” by means of Freudian sex phantasies, psychoanalytic mother
complexes, and Jungian mystic sex libido. It is only in an era
of philistinism and vulgarity with a literature of decadence and
commonplace mediocrity that psychoanalysis can take root and
flourish.
“Die Theorie behauptet mit ausschliessender Sicherheit (?),
das es nur sexuelle Wünschregungen aus dem Infantilen sein
können, welche in den Entwicklungsperioden der Kindheit die
Verdrängung (Affectverwandlung) erfahren haben, in späteren
Entwicklungsperioden dann einer Erneuerung fähig sind, sei es in
folge der sexuelle Konstitution, die sich ja aus der ursprünglichen
Bisexualität herausbildet, sei es in folge ungünstiger Einflüsse
des sexuellen Lebens, und die somit die Triebkräfte für alle
psychoneurotische Symptombildung ab geben.” (S. Freud, “Die
Traumdeutung,” p. 376, zweite Auflage 1909.) In other words,
slippery and mutable as Freud’s statements are, he clearly declares
in his _magnum opus_ the far-reaching generalization that neurosis
is based on infantile sexual wishes, either due to bisexuality or
to unfavorable influences of sexual life. Suppression of sexual
experiences can be easily observed (by competent observers, of
course), in infants a few months old. If you miss the process
of suppression in the baby, you can easily trace it by means of
psychoanalysis to the early recollections of tender infancy. It
is certainly lack of comprehension that induces Ziehen to dub
Freud’s speculations as Unsinn (nonsense). Freud’s admirers with
a metaphysical proclivity delight over the theory of suppressed
wishes. The wish is fundamental and prior to all mental states.
This piece of metaphysical psychologism is supposed to be based on
clinical experience. If wishes were horses, beggars would ride. The
Freudist manages to ride such horses.
The following speculation of Jung’s well represents the
metaphysico-religious character of psychoanalysis: “By entering
again into the mother’s womb he (Christ) redeems in death the sin
of life of the primitive man, Adam, in order symbolically through
his deed to procure for the innermost and most hidden meaning of
the religious libido its highest satisfaction and most pronounced
expression.... In the Christian mysteries the resurrected one
becomes a supermundane spirit, and the invisible kingdom of God,
with its mysterious gifts are obtained by his believers through
the sacrifice of himself on his mother. In psychoanalysis the
infantile personality is deprived of its libido fixations in a
rational manner. The libido which is thus set free serves for the
building up of a personality matured and adapted to reality, a
personality that does willingly and without complaint everything
required by necessity. (It is, so to speak, the chief endeavor of
the infantile personality to struggle against all necessities,
and to create coercions for itself where none exist in reality.)”
Such metaphysico-religious lucubrations parade under the term
psychoanalysis.
“Man,” says James, “believes as much as he can,” but the
credulity of the psychoanalyst is limitless. The psychoanalyst
with his allegories, symbolism, sublimation, incest phantasies,
bi-sexuality, sexual suppression, mother complexes, Oedipus and
Electra phantasms, and all the other complex psychoanalytic
instrumentalities is an excellent example of sex obsessed,
delusional dementia praecox. Psychoanalysis is a sort of sexual
mysticism. All mental life is reduced by psychoanalysis to
“creation” or “procreation.”