183. In making the analysis, therefore, I was in no way antagonistic in my mind to the Freudian hypothesis.
183. In making the analysis, therefore, I was in no way antagonistic in my mind to the Freudian hypothesis.
184. I want to emphasize this point, because certain students, assuming the well-known alleged sexual symbolism as the meaning of steeples and towers, will read and have read such an interpretation into this phobia. As a matter of fact, although these objects had been originally alleged by the subject herself to be the object of the fear it was done thoughtlessly as the result of careless introspection. Later she clearly distinguished the true object. They were no more the object than the churches and schoolhouses themselves. They bore an incidental association only, and only indicated where the ringing of bells might be expected to be heard, having been an element in the original episode. Nor were bells, qua bells, the object of the phobia, but the ringing-of-bells of the kind that recalled the mother’s death. In other words, the fear was of bells with a particular meaning. Nor was the fear absolutely limited to tower-bells, for it transpired that the subject had refrained from having, as she desired, an alarm bell arranged in her house in the country (in case of fire, etc.), because of her phobia. (This note is perhaps made necessary by the violent shaking of the heads of my Freudian friends that I noticed at this point during the presentation of this case before the American Psychopathological Association.) SeeJour. Abn. Psychol., Oct.-Nov., 1913.
184. I want to emphasize this point, because certain students, assuming the well-known alleged sexual symbolism as the meaning of steeples and towers, will read and have read such an interpretation into this phobia. As a matter of fact, although these objects had been originally alleged by the subject herself to be the object of the fear it was done thoughtlessly as the result of careless introspection. Later she clearly distinguished the true object. They were no more the object than the churches and schoolhouses themselves. They bore an incidental association only, and only indicated where the ringing of bells might be expected to be heard, having been an element in the original episode. Nor were bells, qua bells, the object of the phobia, but the ringing-of-bells of the kind that recalled the mother’s death. In other words, the fear was of bells with a particular meaning. Nor was the fear absolutely limited to tower-bells, for it transpired that the subject had refrained from having, as she desired, an alarm bell arranged in her house in the country (in case of fire, etc.), because of her phobia. (This note is perhaps made necessary by the violent shaking of the heads of my Freudian friends that I noticed at this point during the presentation of this case before the American Psychopathological Association.) SeeJour. Abn. Psychol., Oct.-Nov., 1913.
185. This idea had its origin in a child’s fairy tale, and had been fostered by the governess as a useful expedient in enforcing good behavior. The child accepting the fairy legend believed the Eye of God was always on her and every one in the world, and observed all that each did or omitted to do. The legend excited her imagination, and she used to think about it and wonder how God could keep His eye on so many people as there were in the world. At a still earlier age, when she was about eight, she had thought her little brother’s death was also her fault, because she had neglected one night, at the time of his illness, God’s eye being upon her, to say her prayers. For a long time afterward she suffered similarly from self-reproach. It is interesting to compare the outgrowing with maturity of this self-reproach with the persistence of the later one, evidently owing to the reasons given in the text.
185. This idea had its origin in a child’s fairy tale, and had been fostered by the governess as a useful expedient in enforcing good behavior. The child accepting the fairy legend believed the Eye of God was always on her and every one in the world, and observed all that each did or omitted to do. The legend excited her imagination, and she used to think about it and wonder how God could keep His eye on so many people as there were in the world. At a still earlier age, when she was about eight, she had thought her little brother’s death was also her fault, because she had neglected one night, at the time of his illness, God’s eye being upon her, to say her prayers. For a long time afterward she suffered similarly from self-reproach. It is interesting to compare the outgrowing with maturity of this self-reproach with the persistence of the later one, evidently owing to the reasons given in the text.
186. Another example of this idea and of the way it induced a psychosis is the following: She had an intense dislike to hearing the sound of running water. This sound induced an intense feeling ofunhappiness and loneliness. This feeling was so intense that whenever she heard the sound of running water she endeavored to get away from it. The sound of a fountain or rainwater running from a roof, for example, would cause such unpleasant feelings that she would change her sleeping room to avoid them. Likewise drawing water to fill the bathtub was so unpleasant that she would insist upon the door being closed to exclude the sound. She could give no explanation of this psychosis. It was discovered in the following way: She had been desirous of finding out the cause, and we had discussed the subject. I had promised that I would unravel the matter in due time, after the other phobia had been cured. I then hypnotized her and, while she was in hypnosis and just after we had completed the other problem, she remarked that a memory of the running water association was on the verge of emerging into her mind. She could not get it for some time, and then, after some effort, it suddenly emerged. She described it as follows: “It was at Bar Harbor. She was about eight years of age. There was a brook there called Duck Brook. The older girls used to go up there on Sundays for a walk with the boys. I went with them one Sunday, accompanied by the governess, and was standing by the brook with a boy. It was a very noisy brook, the water running down from the hillside. While I was standing by the brook, watching the running water, the boy left me to join the other girls, who had gone off. I thought that was the way it would always be in life; that I was ugly, and that they would never stay with me. I felt lonely and unhappy. During that summer I would not join parties of the same kind, fearing or feeling that the same thing would happen. I stayed at home by myself, and when I refused to go it was attributed to sullenness. They did not know my real reasons. Ever since I have been unable to bear the sound of running water, which produces the feeling of unhappiness and loneliness, the same feeling that I had at that time. I thought then that it was all my fault, because I was ugly.” It was then tentatively pointed out at some length to the subject that as she now knew all the facts which had been brought to the “full light of day,” etc., she, of course, would no longer have her former unpleasant emotions from the sound of running water. Hereupon, to put the question to the test, I reached out my hand and poured some water from a caraffe, by chance standing by, into a tumbler, letting the water fall from a height to make a sound. At once she manifested discomfort, and sought to restrain me with her hand. Plainly the setting had to be changed. This was easily done by leading her to see that her childhood’s ideas had been proven by life’s experiences to be false. When this became apparent she laughed at herself, and the psychosis ceased at once.
186. Another example of this idea and of the way it induced a psychosis is the following: She had an intense dislike to hearing the sound of running water. This sound induced an intense feeling ofunhappiness and loneliness. This feeling was so intense that whenever she heard the sound of running water she endeavored to get away from it. The sound of a fountain or rainwater running from a roof, for example, would cause such unpleasant feelings that she would change her sleeping room to avoid them. Likewise drawing water to fill the bathtub was so unpleasant that she would insist upon the door being closed to exclude the sound. She could give no explanation of this psychosis. It was discovered in the following way: She had been desirous of finding out the cause, and we had discussed the subject. I had promised that I would unravel the matter in due time, after the other phobia had been cured. I then hypnotized her and, while she was in hypnosis and just after we had completed the other problem, she remarked that a memory of the running water association was on the verge of emerging into her mind. She could not get it for some time, and then, after some effort, it suddenly emerged. She described it as follows: “It was at Bar Harbor. She was about eight years of age. There was a brook there called Duck Brook. The older girls used to go up there on Sundays for a walk with the boys. I went with them one Sunday, accompanied by the governess, and was standing by the brook with a boy. It was a very noisy brook, the water running down from the hillside. While I was standing by the brook, watching the running water, the boy left me to join the other girls, who had gone off. I thought that was the way it would always be in life; that I was ugly, and that they would never stay with me. I felt lonely and unhappy. During that summer I would not join parties of the same kind, fearing or feeling that the same thing would happen. I stayed at home by myself, and when I refused to go it was attributed to sullenness. They did not know my real reasons. Ever since I have been unable to bear the sound of running water, which produces the feeling of unhappiness and loneliness, the same feeling that I had at that time. I thought then that it was all my fault, because I was ugly.” It was then tentatively pointed out at some length to the subject that as she now knew all the facts which had been brought to the “full light of day,” etc., she, of course, would no longer have her former unpleasant emotions from the sound of running water. Hereupon, to put the question to the test, I reached out my hand and poured some water from a caraffe, by chance standing by, into a tumbler, letting the water fall from a height to make a sound. At once she manifested discomfort, and sought to restrain me with her hand. Plainly the setting had to be changed. This was easily done by leading her to see that her childhood’s ideas had been proven by life’s experiences to be false. When this became apparent she laughed at herself, and the psychosis ceased at once.
187. Social Psychology.
187. Social Psychology.
188. This was done in hypnosis, the dream being forgotten when awake.
188. This was done in hypnosis, the dream being forgotten when awake.
189. For instance, when I came to the therapeutics I found in abstraction that the patient did not want to give up her point of view “because,” as she said, “it forms an excuse so that when I feel lonely, if there is nothing else to be lonely about, I have that memory and point of view to fall back upon as something to justify my crying and feeling lonely and blue.”When she now feels blue and cries, as happens occasionally, and she asks herself Why? then she drifts back in her mind to childhood and remembers she was lonely and then cries the harder. Then she vaguely thinks of her mother’s death being her fault. She likes therefore to hold on to this as a peg on which to hang any present feeling of blueness and loneliness.
189. For instance, when I came to the therapeutics I found in abstraction that the patient did not want to give up her point of view “because,” as she said, “it forms an excuse so that when I feel lonely, if there is nothing else to be lonely about, I have that memory and point of view to fall back upon as something to justify my crying and feeling lonely and blue.”
When she now feels blue and cries, as happens occasionally, and she asks herself Why? then she drifts back in her mind to childhood and remembers she was lonely and then cries the harder. Then she vaguely thinks of her mother’s death being her fault. She likes therefore to hold on to this as a peg on which to hang any present feeling of blueness and loneliness.
190. Some, I have no doubt, will insist upon seeing in towers with bells a sexual symbol, and in the self-reproach a reaction to a repressed infantile or other sexual wish. But I cannot accede to this view first, because a tower was not only not the real object of the phobia, but not even the alleged object, which was the ringing of bells; secondly, because it is an unnecessary postulate unsupported by evidence, and, thirdly, because in fact, the associative memories of early life were conspicuously free from sex knowledge, wishes, curiosity, episodes and imaginings, nor was there any evidence of the so-called “mother complex” or “father-complex,” or any other sexual complex that I could find after a most exhaustive probing. The impulses of instincts other than sexual are sufficient to induce psychical trauma, insistent ideas, and emotion. To hold otherwise is to substitute dogma for the evidence of experience.
190. Some, I have no doubt, will insist upon seeing in towers with bells a sexual symbol, and in the self-reproach a reaction to a repressed infantile or other sexual wish. But I cannot accede to this view first, because a tower was not only not the real object of the phobia, but not even the alleged object, which was the ringing of bells; secondly, because it is an unnecessary postulate unsupported by evidence, and, thirdly, because in fact, the associative memories of early life were conspicuously free from sex knowledge, wishes, curiosity, episodes and imaginings, nor was there any evidence of the so-called “mother complex” or “father-complex,” or any other sexual complex that I could find after a most exhaustive probing. The impulses of instincts other than sexual are sufficient to induce psychical trauma, insistent ideas, and emotion. To hold otherwise is to substitute dogma for the evidence of experience.
191. It is worth noting that between the bringing to the “full light of day” the facts furnished by the analysis and the cure a full year and a half elapsed, during which the phobia continued. The “cure” was effected at one sitting. The original study was undertaken on purely psychological grounds; the cure for the purpose of completing the study.
191. It is worth noting that between the bringing to the “full light of day” the facts furnished by the analysis and the cure a full year and a half elapsed, during which the phobia continued. The “cure” was effected at one sitting. The original study was undertaken on purely psychological grounds; the cure for the purpose of completing the study.
192. This account will be clearer if read in connection with the full analysis (“A Clinical Study of a Case of Phobia”), published in theJour, of Abn. Psychol., October-November, 1912.
192. This account will be clearer if read in connection with the full analysis (“A Clinical Study of a Case of Phobia”), published in theJour, of Abn. Psychol., October-November, 1912.
193. She was apprehensive of having inherited Bright’s disease from her father, who had convulsions.
193. She was apprehensive of having inherited Bright’s disease from her father, who had convulsions.
194. It is quite possible that this subconscious process induced the unreality syndrome in which struggling for air was the salient symptom.
194. It is quite possible that this subconscious process induced the unreality syndrome in which struggling for air was the salient symptom.
195. I am excluding conditions like split personalities, automatic writing, etc., and refer rather to normal mental processes.
195. I am excluding conditions like split personalities, automatic writing, etc., and refer rather to normal mental processes.