Outwitting Our Nerves Part 8

[34] The Psychoa.n.a.lytic Review and the International Journal of Psychoa.n.a.lysis.

A Searching Question. We find, then, that when we ask, "What makes people nervous?" we are really asking: "What is man like, inside and out, up and down? What makes him think, feel, and act as he does every hour of every day?" We are asking for the source of human motives, the science of human behavior, the charting of the human mind. It is hard to-day to understand how so much reproach and ridicule could have been aroused by the statement that the ultimate cause of nervousness is a disturbance of the s.e.x-life. There has already been a change in the public att.i.tude toward things s.e.xual.

Training-courses for mothers and teachers, elementary teaching in the schools, lectures and magazine articles have done much to show the fallacy of our old hypersensitive att.i.tude. Since the war, some of us know, too, with what success the army has used the Freudian principles in treating war-neurosis, which was mistakenly called sh.e.l.l-shock by the first observers. We know, too, more about the const.i.tution of man's mind than the public knew ten years ago. When we remember the insistent character of the instincts and the repressive method used by society in restraining the most obstreperous impulse, when we remember the pain of such conflict and the depressing physical effects of painful emotions, we cannot wonder that this most sharply repressed instinct should cause mental and physical trouble.

What about Sublimation? On the other hand, it has been stated in Chapter IV that although this universal urge cannot be repressed, it can be sublimated or diverted to useful ends which bring happiness, not disaster, to the individual. We have a right, then, to ask why this happy issue is not always attained, why sublimation ever fails. If a psycho-neurosis is caused by a failure of an insistent instinct to find adequate expression, by a blocking of the libido or the love-force, what are the conditions which bring about this blocking? The s.e.x-instinct of every respectable person is subject to restraint. Some people are able to adjust themselves; why not all? The question, "What makes people nervous?" then turns out to mean: What keeps people from a satisfactory outlet for their love-instincts? What is it that holds them back from satisfaction in direct expression, and prevents indirect outlet in sublimation? Whatever does this must be the real cause of "nerves."

The Causes of "Nerves"

Plural, not Singular. The first thing to learn about the cause is that it is not a cause at all, but several causes. We are so well made that it takes a combination of circ.u.mstances to upset our equilibrium. In other words, a neurosis must be "over-determined." Heredity, faulty education, emotional shock, physical fatigue, have each at various times been blamed for a breakdown. As a matter of fact, it seems to take a number of ingredients to make a neurosis,-a little unstable inheritance plus a considerable amount of faulty upbringing, plus a later series of emotional experiences bearing just the right relations.h.i.+p to the earlier factors. Heredity, childhood reactions, and later experiences, are the three legs on which a neurosis usually stands. An occasional breakdown seems to stand on the single leg of childhood experiences but in the majority of cases each of the three factors contributes its quota to the final disaster.

Born or Made? It used to be thought that neurotics, like poets, were born, not made. Heredity was considered wholly responsible, and there seemed very little to do about it. But to-day the emphasis on heredity is steadily giving way to stress on early environment. There are, no doubt, such factors as a certain innate sensitiveness, a natural suggestibility, an intensity of emotion, a little tendency to nervous instability, which predispose a person to nerves, but unless the inborn tendency is reinforced by the reactions and training of early childhood, it is likely to die a natural death.

Childhood Experiences

Early Reactions. Freud found that a neurotic is made before he is six years old. When by repeated explorations into the minds of his patients, he made this important discovery, he at first believed that the disturbing factor was always some single emotional experience or shock in childhood,-usually of a s.e.xual nature. But Freud and later investigators have since found that the trouble is not so often a single experience as a long series of exaggerated emotional reactions, a too intense emotional life, a precocity in feeling tending toward fixation of childhood habits, which are thus carried over into adult life.

Fixation of Habits. Fixation is the word that expresses all this,-fixation of childish habits. A neurotic is a person who made such strong habits in childhood that he cannot abandon them in maturity. He is too much ruled by the past. His unconscious emotional thought-habits are the complexes which were made in childhood and therefore lack the power of adaptation to mature life.

We saw in Chapter IV that Nature takes great pains to develop in the child the psychic and physical trends which he will need later on in his mature love-life, and that this training is accomplished in a number of well-defined periods which lead from one to the other. If, however, the child reacts too intensely, lingers too long in any one of these phases, he lays for himself action lines of least resistance which he may never leave or to which he may return during the strain and stress of adult life.

In either case, the neurotic is a grown-up child. He may be a very learned, very charming person, but he is nevertheless dragging behind him a part of his childhood which he should have outgrown long ago. Part of him is suffering from an arrest of development,-not a leg or an arm but an impulse.

Precocious Emotions. The habits which tend to become fixed too soon seem to be of four kinds; the habit of loving, the habit of rebelling, the habit of repressing normal instincts, and the habit of dreaming. In each case it is the excess of feeling which causes the trouble,-too much love, too much hate, too much disgust, or too much pleasure in imagination. Exaggeration is always a danger-signal. An overdeveloped child is likely to be an underdeveloped man. Especially in the emotions is precocity to be deplored. A premature alphabet or multiplication table is not nearly so serious as premature intensity of feeling, nor so likely to lead later to trouble. Of course fixation in these emotional habits does not always lead to a serious breakdown. If the fixation is not too extreme, and if later events do not happen to accentuate the trouble, the arrest of development may merely show itself in certain weaknesses of character or in isolated symptoms without developing a real neurosis.

Let us examine each of these arrested habits and the excess emotion which sets the mold before it is ready for maturity.

Too Much Self-Love. In the chapter on the reproductive instinct, we found that the natural way to learn to love is by successively loving oneself, one's parents and family, one's fellows, and one's mate. If the love-force gets too much pleasure in any one of these phases, it finds it hard to give up its old love and to pa.s.s on to the next phase. Thus some children take too much pleasure in their own bodies or, a little later, in their own personalities. If they are too much interested in their own physical sensations and the pleasure they get by stimulating certain zones of the body, then in later life they cannot free themselves from the desire for this kind of satisfaction. Try as they may, they cannot be satisfied with normal adult relations, but sink back into some form of so-called s.e.x-perversion.

Perhaps it is another phase of self-love which holds the child too much. If, like Narcissus, he becomes too fond of looking at himself, is too eager to show off, too desirous of winning praise, then forever after he is likely to be self-conscious, self-centered, thinking always of the impression he is making, unable ever to be at leisure from himself. He is fixed in the Narcissistic stage of his life, and is unadapted to the world of social relations.

Too Much Family-love. We have already spoken of the danger of fixation in the second period, that of object-love-the period of family relations.h.i.+ps. The danger is here again one of degree and may be avoided by a little knowledge and self-control on the part of the parents. The little girl who is permitted to lavish too much love on her father, who does not see anybody else, who cannot learn to like the boys is a misfit. The wise mother will see that her love for her boy does not express itself too much by means of hugs and kisses. The mother who shows very plainly that she loves her little boy better than she loves her husband and the mother who boasts that her adolescent boy tells her all his secrets and takes her out in preference to any girl-that deluded mother is trying to take something that is not hers, and is thereby courting trouble. When her son grows up, he may not know why, but no girl will suit him, and he will either remain a bachelor or marry some older woman who reminds him subconsciously of his mother. His love-requirements will be too strict; he will be forever trying either in phantasy or in real life to duplicate his earlier love-experiences. This, of course, cannot satisfy the demands of a mature man. He will be torn between conflicting desires, unhappy without knowing why, unable either to remain a child or to become a man, and impelled to gain self-expression in indirect and unsatisfactory ways.

Since it is not possible in this s.p.a.ce to recite specific cases which show how often a nervous trouble points back to the father-mother complex, [35] it may help to cite the opinions of a few of our best authorities. Freud says of the family complex, "This is the root complex of the neurosis." Jelliffe: "It is the foot-rule of measurement of success in life": by which he means that just so far as we are able at the right time to free ourselves from dependence on parents are we able to adjust ourselves to the world at large. Pfister: "The att.i.tude toward parents very often determines for a life-time the att.i.tude toward people in general and toward life itself." Hinkle: "The entire direction of lives is determined by parental relations.h.i.+ps."

[35] This is technically known as the Oedipus Complex.

Too Much Hate. Besides loving too hard, there is the danger of hating too hard. If it sounds strange to talk of the hatreds of childhood, we must remember that we are thinking of real life as it is when the conventions of adult life are removed and the subconscious gives up its secrets.

Several references have been made to the jealousy of the small child when he has to share his love with the parent of the same s.e.x. For every little boy the father gets in the way. For every little girl the mother gets in the way. At one time or other there is likely to be a period when this is resented with all the violence of a child's emotions. It is likely to be very soon repressed and succeeded by a real affection which lasts through life. But underneath, unmodified by time, there may exist simultaneously the old childish image and the old unconscious reaction to it, unconscious but still active in indirect ways.

Jealousy is very often united with the natural rebellion of a child against authority. The rebellion may, of course, be directed against either parent who is final in authority in the home. In most cases this is the father. As the impulse of self-a.s.sertion is usually stronger in boys than in girls, and as the boy's impulse in this direction is reinforced by any existing jealousy toward his father, we find a strong spirit of rebellion more often playing a subconscious part in the life of men than of women. The novelist's favorite theme of the conflict between the young man and "the old man" represents the conscious, unrepressed complex. More often, however, there is true affection for the father, while the rebellion which really belongs to the childish father-image is displaced or transferred to other symbols of authority,-the state, the law, the king, the school, the teacher, the church, or perhaps to religion and authority in general. Anarchists and atheists naturally rationalize their reasons for dissent, but, for all that, they are not so much intellectual pioneers as rebellious little boys who have forgotten to grow up.

Liking to be "Bossed." There is a worse danger, however, than too much rebellion, and that is too little rebellion. Sometimes this yielding spirit is the result of an overdose of negative self-feeling and an under-dose of positive self-feeling; but sometimes it is over-compensation for the repressed spirit of rebellion which the child considers wicked. Consciously he becomes over-meek, because he has to summon all his powers to fight his subconscious insurrection. Whether he be meek by nature or by training, he is likely to be a failure. Everybody knows that the child who is too good never amounts to anything. He who has never disobeyed is a weakling. Naturally resenting all authority, the normal individual, if he be well trained, soon learns that some authority is necessary. He rebels, but he learns to acquiesce, to a certain degree. If he acquiesces too easily, represses too severely his rebellious spirit, swings to the other extreme of wanting to be "bossed," he is very likely to end as a nervous invalid, unfitted for the battles of life. The neurotic in the majority of cases likes authority, clings to it too long, wants the teacher to tell him what to do, wants the doctor to order him around, is generally over-conscientious, and afraid he will offend the "boss" or some one else who reminds him of the father-image. All this carries a warning to parents who cannot manage their children without dominating their lives, even when the domination is a kindly one. Perhaps the modern child is in more danger of being spoiled than bullied, but a.n.a.lysis of nervous patients shows that both kinds of danger still exist.

Too Much Disgust. The third form of excessive emotion is disgust. The love-force, besides being blocked by a fixation of childish love and of childish reactions toward authority, is very often kept from free mature self-expression by a perpetuation of a childish reaction against s.e.x. We hardly need dwell longer on the folly of teaching children to be ashamed of so inevitable a part of their own nature. Disgust is a very strong emotion, and when it is turned against a part of ourselves, united with that other strong impulse of self-regard and incorporated into the conscience, it makes a Chinese wall of exclusion against the baffled, misunderstood reproductive instinct, which is thrust aside as alien.

Restraint versus Denial. Repression is not merely restraint. It is restraint plus denial. To the clamoring instinct we say not merely, "No, you may not," but "No, you are not. You do not exist. Nothing like you could belong to me." The woman with nausea (Chapter V) did not say to herself: "You are a normal, healthy woman, possessed of a normal woman's desires. But wait a while until the proper time comes." Controlled by an immature feeling of disgust, she had said: "I never thought it. It cannot be."

The difference is just this. When an ungratifiable desire is honestly faced and squarely answered, it is modified by other desires, chooses another way of discharge, and ceases to be desire. When a desire is repressed, it is still desire, unsatisfied, insistent, unmodifiable by mature points of view, untouched by time, automatic, and capable of almost any subterfuge in order to get satisfaction. A repressed desire is buried, shut away from the disintegrating effects of sunlight and air. While the rest of the personality is constantly changing under the influence of new ideas, the buried complex lives on in its immaturity, absolutely untouched by time.

Childish Birth-theories. When a child's questions about where babies come from are met by evasions, he is forced to manufacture his own theories. His elders would laugh if they knew some of these theories, but they would not laugh if they knew how often the childish ideas, wide of the truth, furnish the material for future neuroses. Frink tells the story of a young woman who had a compulsion for taking drugs. Although not a drug-fiend in the usual sense, she was constantly impelled to take any kind of drug she could obtain. It was finally revealed that during her childhood she had tried hard to discover how babies were made, and had at last concluded that they grew in the mother as a result of some medicine furnished by the doctor. The idea had long been forgotten, only to reappear as a compulsion. The natural desire for a child was strong in her, but was repressed as unholy in an unmarried woman. The a.s.sociated childish idea of drug-taking was not repellent to her moral sense and was used as a subst.i.tute for the real desire to bear a child.

Many of my patients have suffered from the effect of some such birth-theories. One young girl, twenty years old, was greatly afflicted with myso-phobia, or the fear of contamination. She spent most of her time in was.h.i.+ng her hands and keeping her hands and clothing free from contamination by contact with innumerable harmless objects. When cleaning her shoes on the gra.s.s, she would kneel so that the hem of her skirt would touch the gra.s.s, lest some dust should fly up under her clothes. After eating luncheon in the park with a girl who had tuberculosis, she said that she was not afraid of tuberculosis in the lungs, but asked if something like tuberculosis might not get in and begin to grow somewhere else. Her life was full to overflowing of such compulsive fears.

As opportunity offered itself from day to day, I would catch her compulsive ideas in the very act of expressing themselves, and would pin her down as to the a.s.sociation and the source of her fear, always taking care not to make suggestions or ask leading questions. She was finally convinced out of her own mouth that her real fear was the idea of something getting into her body and growing there. Then she told how she had questioned her mother about the reproductive life and had been put off with signs of embarra.s.sment. For a long time she had been afraid to walk or talk with a boy, because, not knowing how conception might occur, she feared grave consequences.

Very soon after the beginning of her conversations with me, the girl realized that her fear was really a disguised desire that something might be planted within and grow. With her new understanding of herself, her compulsions promptly slipped away. She began to eat and sleep, and to live a happy, natural life.

Chronic Repression. It takes first-hand acquaintance with nervous patients to realize how common are stories like these. Unnecessary repressions based on false training are the cause of many a physical symptom and mental distress which a little parental frankness might have forestalled. [36]

[36] Parents who are eager to handle this subject in the right way are often sincerely puzzled as to how to go about it. No matter how complete their education, it is very likely to fail them at this critical point. For the benefit of such parents, let it be said with all possible emphasis that the first and most important step must be a change in their own mental att.i.tude. If there is left within them the shadow of embarra.s.sment on the subject of s.e.x, their children will not fail to sense the situation at once. A feeling of hesitation or a tendency to apologize for nature makes a far deeper impression on the child-mind than do the most beautiful of half-believed words on the subject. And this impression, subtle and elusive as it may seem, is a real and vital experience which is quite likely to color the whole of the child's life. If you would give your children a fair start, you must first get rid of your own inner resistances. After that, all will be clear sailing.

In the second place, take the earliest opportunity to bring up the subject in a natural way. A young father told me recently that his little daughter had asked her mother why she didn't have any lap any more. "And of course your wife took that chance to tell her about the baby that is coming," I said. "Oh, no," he answered, "she did nothing of the kind. Mary is far too young to know about such things." There are always chances if we are on the look out for them-and the earlier the better. It has been noticed that children are never repelled by the idea of any natural process unless the new idea runs counter to some notion which has already been formed. The wise parent is the one who gets in the right impression before some other child has had a chance to plant the wrong one.

Then, too, we elders are judged quite as much by what we do not say as by what we do. Happy is the child who is not left to draw his own conclusions from the silence and evasiveness of his parents. The s.e.x-instruction which children are getting in the schools is often good, but it usually comes too late-the damage is always done before the sixth year.

When it comes to the exact words in which to explain the phenomena of generation and birth each parent must naturally find his own way. The main point is that we must tell the truth and not try to improve on nature. If we say that the baby grows under the mother's heart and later the child learns that this is not true, he inevitably gets the idea that there is something not nice about the part of the body in which the baby does grow. What could be wrong with the simple truth that the father plants a tiny seed in the mother's body and that this seed joins with another little seed already there and grows until it is a real baby ready to come into the world? The question as to how the father plants the seed need cause no alarm. If brothers and sisters are brought up together with no artificial sense of false modesty, they very early learn the difference between the male and the female body. It is simple enough to tell the little child the function of the male structure. And it is easy to explain that the seeds do not grow until the little boy and girl have grown to be man and woman and that the way to be well and to have fine strong children is to leave the generative organs alone until that time. A sense of the dignity and high purpose of these organs is far more likely to prevent perversions-to say nothing of nervousness-than is an att.i.tude of taboo and silence.

A certain amount of repression is inevitable and useful, but a neurotic is merely an exaggerated represser. He represses so much of himself that it will not stay down. [37] He builds up a permanent resistance which automatically acts as a dam to his normal s.e.x instinct and forces it into undesirable outlets.

[37] "A neurosis is a partial failure of repression." Frink: Morbid Fears and Compulsions.

A resistance is a chronic repression, repression that has become fixed and subconscious, a habit that has lost its flexibility and outlives its usefulness. It is a fixation of repression, and is built out of an over-strong complex or emotional thought habit, acquired during childhood, incorporated into the conscience and carried over into maturity, where it warps judgment and interferes with normal development because it is fundamentally untrue and at variance with the laws of nature.

Too Much Day-Dreaming. The fourth habit which holds back the adult from maturity and predisposes toward "nerves" is the habit of imagination. It need hardly be said that a certain kind of imagination is a good thing and one of man's greatest a.s.sets. But the essence of day-dreaming is the exact opposite; it is the desire to see things as they are not, but as we should like them to be,-not in order that we may bring them to pa.s.s, but for the mere pleasure of dreaming. Instead of turning a microscope or a telescope on the world of reality, as positive imagination does, this negative variety refuses even to look with the naked eye. To dream is easier than to do; to build up phantasies is easier than to build up a reputation or a fortune; to think a forbidden pleasure is easier than to sublimate. "Pleasure-thinking" is not only easier than "reality-thinking,"-it is the older way.

Children gratify many of their desires simply by imagining them gratified. Much of the difficulty of later life might be avoided if the little child could be taught to work for the accomplishment of his pleasures rather than to dream of them. The normal child gradually abandons this "pleasure-thinking" for the more purposeful thinking of the actual world, but the child who loiters too long in the realm of fancy may ever after find it hard to keep away from its borders. His natural interest in s.e.x, if artificially repressed, is especially p.r.o.ne to satisfy itself by way of phantasy.

Turning back to Phantasy. In later life, when the love-force for one reason or another becomes too strong to be handled either directly or indirectly in the real world, there comes the almost irresistible impulse to regress to the infantile way and to find expression by means of phantasy. After long experience Freud concluded that phantasy lies at the root of every neurosis. Jung says that a s.e.x-phantasy is always at least one determiner of a nervous illness, and Jelliffe writes that the essence of the neurosis is a special activity of the imagination.

Such a statement need not shock the most sensitive conscience. The very fact that a neurosis breaks out is proof that the phantasies are repellent to the owners of them and are thrust down into the subconscious as unworthy. In fact, every neurosis is witness to the strength of the human conscience. No phantasy could cause illness. It is the phantasy plus the repression of it that makes the trouble, or rather it is the conflict between the forces back of the phantasy and the repression. The neurosis, then, turns out to be a "flight from the real," the result of a desire to run away from a difficulty. When a problem presses or a disagreeable situation is to be faced, it is easier to give up and fall ill than to see the thing through to the end. Here again, we find that nervousness is a regression to the irresponsible reactions of childhood.

Maturity versus Immaturity. We have been thinking of the main causes of "nerves" and have found them to be infantile habits of loving, rebelling, repressing, and dreaming. We have tried to show that these habits are able to cause trouble because of their bearing on that inevitable conflict between the ancient urge of the reproductive instinct and the later ideals which society has acquired. If this conflict be met in the light of the present, free from the backward pull, of outgrown habits, an adjustment is possible which satisfies both the individual and society. We call this adjustment sublimation. This is rather a synthesis than a compromise, a union of the opposing forces, a happy utilization of energy by displacement on more useful ideas. But if the conflict has to be met with the mind hampered by immature thinking and immature feeling; if the demands of the here-and-now are met as if it were long ago; if unhealthy and untrue complexes, old loves and hates complicate the situation; if to the necessary conflict is added an unnecessary one; then something else happens. Compromise of some kind must be made, but instead of a happy union of the two forces a poor compromise is effected, gaining a partial satisfaction for both sides, but a real one for neither. The neurosis is this compromise.

Later Experiences

The Last Straw. The precipitating cause may be one of a number of things. It may be entirely within, or it may be external. Perhaps it is only a quickening of the maturing instincts at the time of adolescence, making the love-force too strong to be held by the old repressions. Perhaps the husband, wife, or lover dies, or the life-work is taken away, depriving the vital energy of its usual outlets. Perhaps the trigger is pulled by an emotional shock which bears a faint resemblance to old emotional experiences, and which stimulates both the repressing and repressed trends and makes the person at the same time say both "Yes," and "No." [38] Perhaps physical fatigue lets down the mental and moral tension and makes the conflict too strong to be controlled. Perhaps an external problem presses and arouses the old habit of fleeing from disagreeable reality. Any or all these factors may cooperate, but not one of them is anything more than a last straw on an overburdened back. No calamity, deprivation, fatigue, or emotion has been able to bring about a neurosis unless the ground was prepared for it by the earlier reactions of childhood.

[38] "The external world can only cause repression when there was already present beforehand a strong initial tension reaching back even to childhood."-Pfister: Psychoa.n.a.lytic Method, p. 94.

The Breakdown Itself

"Two Persons under One Hat." We can understand now why a neurotic can be described in so many ways. We often hear him called an especially moral, especially ethical person, with a very active conscience; an intensely social being, unable to be satisfied with anything but a social standard; a person with "finer intellectual insight and greater sensitiveness than the rest of mankind." At the same time we are told that a neurosis is a partial triumph of anti-social, non-moral factors, and that it is a cowardly flight from reality; we hear a nervous invalid called selfish, unsocial, shut in, primitive, childish, self-deceived. Both these descriptions are true to life. A neurosis is an ethical struggle between these two sets of forces. If the lower set had triumphed, the man would have been merely weak; if the higher set had been victorious, he would have been strong. As it is, he is neither one nor the other,-only nervous. The neurosis is the only solution of the struggle which he is able to find, and serves the purpose of a sort of armed armistice between the two camps.

Serving a Purpose

If a neurosis is a compromise, if it is the easiest way out, if it serves a purpose, it must be that the individual himself has a hand in shaping that purpose. Can it be that a breakdown which seems such an unmitigated disaster is really welcomed by a part of our own selves? Nothing is more intensely resented by the nervous invalid than the accusation that he likes his symptoms,-and no wonder. The conscious part of him hates the pain, the inconvenience, and the disability with a real hatred. It is not pleasant to be ill. And yet, as it turns out, it is pleasanter to be ill than it is to bear the tension of unsatisfied desire or to be undeceived about oneself. Every symptom is a means of expression for repressed and forgotten impulses and is a relief to the personality. It tends to the preservation of the individual, rather than to his destruction. The nervous invalid is not short-lived, but his family may be! It has been said that a neurosis is not so much a disease as a dilemma. Rather might it be said that the neurosis is a way out of the dilemma. It is a harbor after a stormy sea, not always a quiet harbor, but at least a usable one. Unpleasant as it is, every nervous symptom is a form of compensation which has been deliberately though unconsciously chosen by its owner.