Spiritualism and the New Psychology

ought for certain conditions, it was supposed that the uterus (Greek, hystera) came adrift from its position and wandered about the body, producing the condition thenceforward known as hyste

scribed as symptoms of the disease various manifestations which were really called up by himself or his assistants. Ther

iter who describes hysteria expresses his own ideas about it, and as the ideas of n

binski, a French writer of

of their own. It manifests itself in primary and secondary symptoms. The former can be exactly reproduc

Pierre Janet, a man

of personal consciousness, and a tendency to complete division of the personalit

nest Jones, the chief exponent o

lanation of abnormal suggestion is to be sought. Even if it were true, which it certainly is not, that most hysterical

these definitions, and see how each represents one aspect, and how

eases which are not imitated. Hysteria therefore has a superficial resemblance to malingering, or the conscious simulation of disease for a definite end, and many people find it hard to conceive any difference between the two. Various criteria have been given to distinguish them, but, in my opinion, when the question arises the distinction can rarely be made upon physical grounds and is chiefly a matter of judgement concerning the honesty of the patient; that is to say, the hys

oncerning hysteria are so far from the truth that it is a pity a new word is not employed. If a man has fought bravely for years and at last succumbed in his effort to forget the horrors he has seen, it sounds an insult to say he is sufferin

physical effect of an explosion, 'shell-shock' and 'concussion' being regarded as almost synonymous. But the same symptoms occurred when there was no question of concussion, whilst the recoveries, often sensationally reported in the press, a

rds, to repress his emotions. The strain continuing, the shell-burst proved the last straw, and his repressed feelings broke into consciousness and took possession of it; this is what the man called being 'unconscious', but the condition is rea

streams of thought-the one desirous of cure and the other engaged in keeping up the symptoms-and we recognise an extreme example of continuous dissociation, in which the main stream is no

hysteria but to allied nervous conditions. What follows is not an exposition of his ideas, but rather my interpretation of such as are acceptable and useful to me. A complex, which according to Freud usually centres around an infantile sexual desire, is repugnant to the consciousness and becomes repressed as a result of conflict in just the same way as a memory is repressed. The complex

he handling of a file or spanner produced feelings of anxiety. Then he joined the army. Being put to work at aeroplanes he tried to do his duty and succeeded so far as to be made a corporal, saying never a word about his fears and banishing them as far as possible from his thoughts. At last the repression broke forth and took symbolic form in pain, the expression of his fear of the machinery which was blamed as its material cause. No account can picture the emotion produced by the recall of this complex, and it was evident that his feelings were intense and of more importance

keeping away from machinery all the time the pain lasted, and his anxiety s

ect attainment of this desire is impossible, the end is striven for by a fantasy or fiction produced by the unconscious. This view, thus baldly put, shows a relation between hysteria and malingering, and, returning to the case of the prentice engineer, we can see his work in th

-strained soldier. As an example I will quote a case of a soldier who had an impulse to attack any single companion, which was cured by bringing into consciousness the repressed memory of a gruesome hand-to-hand fight in which he killed his opponent. The repression was so complete that after its first revival under hypnosis it was

us trace the growth of a case of hysteria. Imagine a girl who is 'misunderstood', who has her round of daily tasks and feels that she was meant for higher things, that she ought to be loved and obeyed in

own wishes as the supreme law, until at last the time comes when some desire, some wish that she cannot or will not face and

hysterical manifestation, and h

striking neurosis. Heart attacks, choking fits, convulsions of all kinds achieve enormous effects, that can hardly be surpassed. Picture the fountains of pity let loose, the sublime anxiety of the dear kind parents, the hurried running to and fro of the servants, the incessant sounding of the call of the telephone, t

ne the patient complaining of severe pain in one foot: the sympathising friends tend her with care and affection, the doctor suspects the early stage of some bone disease, and, as is the fate of so many practitioners, he is urged by the friends to say 'what is the

deceit when her friends, by their pardonable credulity, have allowed themselves to be deceived and her troubles have been accepted by the doctor as real? Her pride or self-respect prevents open confes

ssion or recovery, and I have sho

hance, and now I am quite right in imposing upon them as long as I can.' But her feelings

deceit and maintain her symptoms

d the patient is now a Dissociat

station of disease-the desire for sympathy, the

owledge o

ning the symptoms-the pains,

but cruel. We can now understand the capriciousness of the hysteric, her moods and contrary ways. On the one side is a mind with ordinary motives, and on the other is the split-off portion containin

onscious, and when the unconscious elements predominate we approach the condition in which there has never existed any consciousness of deceit. The case of the soldier with an obsession to attack his companion does not admit of the hypothesis of a stage in which the symptom was due to a conscious desire to any end: but his repression might have shown itself, let us

ses of conscious simulation, then passing on to those of hysteria with repression of the knowledge of deceit, and ending

tance had a patient who placed irritants under the lid of one eye till the sight was lost and the organ was removed, and the process was begun on the remaining eye before the trick was discovered. Such things occur in the history of malingering, and what the consciousness can do the disso

d whether mental processes can produce bleeding into the skin or blisters upon it. Such bleedings were the 'stigmata' representing the marks of the Crucifixi

a blister will follow. Success has been claimed for this experiment, but one source of error is hard to exclude. If a blister appears the next day, and the subject is known to be an honest man with no end to gain by cooking the experiment, an observer might be inclined to accept the result as due to the direct influence of suggestion; but the subject is, by the terms of the experiment, i

t had been watched continually, she had succeeded in penetrating the bandages with a hair-pin. A further experiment, in which the arm was enveloped in plaster of Paris bandage, gave a negative result. This experiment is very valuable; it does not disprove the possibility of producing blisters

ould find what he was looking for, and this desire I called receptivity. The receptivity is at first necessary to keep up the deception, for the patient does not know the symptoms of the simulated disease, and must always be on the alert to pick up hint

ry is not great then suggestion may even remove symptoms, just as it created them; and if we now turn back to Babinski's def

ts, conscious or unconscious, which preceded their appearance and which form the so-called 'hysterical predisposition'. This explains the success which has followed the employment of exorcism, Christian Science, na

the disease, and therefore I am spared the task of attacking a mass of credulity; and, further, the mental processes are identical with those shown in other phenomena concern