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Outwitting Our Nerves by Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury

J >> Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury >> Outwitting Our Nerves




=Ourselves and Our Bodies.= If the statement that "nervous troubles
are neither physical nor imaginary but a disease of the personality,"
sounds rather mystifying to the average person, it is only because the
average person is not very conversant with his own inner life. We
shall hope, later on, to find some definite guide-posts and landmarks
which will help us feel more at home in this fascinating realm. At
present, we are not attempting anything more than a suggestion of the
itinerary which we shall follow. A book on physical hygiene can
presuppose at least a rudimentary knowledge of heart and lungs and
circulation, but a book on mental hygiene must begin at the beginning,
and even before the beginning must clear away misconceptions and make
clear certain fundamental principles. But the gist of the whole matter
is this: in a neurosis, certain forces of the personality--instincts
and their accompanying emotions--which ought to work harmoniously,
having become tangled up with some erroneous ideas, have lost their
power of cooeperation and are working at cross purposes, leaving the
individual mis-adapted to his environment, the prey of all sorts of
mental and physical disturbances.

The fact that the cause is mental while the result is often physical,
should cause no surprise. In the physiological realm we are used to
the idea that cause and effect are often widely separated. A headache
may be caused by faulty eyes, or it may result from trouble in the
intestines. In the same way, we should not be too much surprised if
the cause of nervous troubles is found to be even more remote,
provided there is some connecting link between cause and effect. The
difficulty in this case is the apparent gulf between the realm of the
spirit and the realm of the body. It is hard to see how an intangible
thing like a thought can produce a pain in the arm or nausea in the
stomach. Philosophers are still arguing concerning the nature of the
relation between mind and body, but no one denies that the closest
relation does exist. Every year science is learning that ideas count
and that they count physically, as well as spiritually.

=Such Stuff as "Nerves" are Made Of.= Dr. Tom A. Williams in the
little composite volume "Psychotherapeutics" says that the neuroses
are based not on inherently weak nervous constitutions but on
ignorance and on false ideas. What, then, are some of these erroneous
ideas, these misconceptions, that cause so much trouble? We shall want
to examine them more carefully in later chapters, but we might glance
now at a few examples of these popular bugaboos that need to be slain
by the sword of cold, hard fact.

=Popular Misconceptions about the Body.=

1 "Eight hours' sleep is essential to health. All insomnia is
dangerous and is incompatible with health. Nervous insomnia leads to
shattered nerves and ultimately to insanity."

2 "Overwork leads to nervous breakdown. Fatigue accumulates from day
to day and necessitates a long rest for recuperation."

3 "A carefully planned diet is essential to health, especially for the
nervous person. A variety of food, eaten at the same time, is harmful.
Acid and milk--for example, oranges and milk--are difficult to digest.
Sour stomach is a sign of indigestion."

4 "Modern life is so strenuous that our nerves cannot stand the
strain."

5 "Brain work is very fatiguing. It causes brain-fag and exhaustion."

6 "Constipation is at the root of most physical ailments and is
caused by eating the wrong kind of food."

Some of these misconceptions are household words and are so all but
universally believed that the thought that they can be challenged is
enough to bewilder one. However, it is ideas like this that furnish
the material out of which many a nervous trouble is made. Based on a
half-knowledge of the human body, on logical conclusions from faulty
premises, on hastily swallowed notions passed on from one person to
another, they tend by the very power of an idea to work themselves out
to fulfilment.


THE POWER BEHIND IDEAS

=Ideas Count.= Ideas are not the lifeless things they may appear. They
are not merely intellectual property that can be locked up and ignored
at will, nor are they playthings that can be taken up or discarded
according to the caprice of the moment. Ideas work themselves into the
very fiber of our being. They are part of us and they _do_ things. If
they are true, in line with things as they are, they do things that
are for our good, but if they are false, we often discover that they
have an altogether unsuspected power for harm and are capable of
astonishing results, results which have no apparent relation to the
ideas responsible for them and which are, therefore, laid to physical
causes. Thinking straight, then, becomes a hygienic as well as a
moral duty.

=Ideas and Emotions.= Ideas do not depend upon themselves for their
driving-power. Life is not a cold intellectual process; it is a vivid
experience, vibrant with feeling and emotion. It therefore happens
that the experiences of life tend to bring ideas and emotions together
and when an idea and an emotion get linked up together, they tend to
stay together, especially if the emotion be intense or the experience
is often repeated.

The word emotion means outgoing motion, discharging force. This force
is like live steam. An emotion is the driving part of an instinct. It
is the dynamic force, the electric current which supplies the power
for every thought and every action of a human life.

Man is not a passive creature. The words that describe him are not
passive words. Indeed, it is almost impossible to think about man at
all except in terms of desire, impulse, purpose, action, energy. There
are three things that may be done with energy: First, it may be
frittered away, allowed to leak, to escape. Secondly, it may be locked
up; this results usually in an explosion, a finding of destructive
outlets. Finally, it may be harnessed, controlled, used in beneficent
ways. Health and happiness depend upon which one of the three courses
is taken.


CHARACTER AND HEALTH

Evidently, it is highly important to have a working knowledge of these
emotions and instincts; important to know enough about them and their
purpose to handle them rightly if they do not spontaneously work
together for our best character and health. The problems of character
and the problems of health so overlap that it is impossible to write a
book about nervous disorders which does not at the same time deal with
the principles of character-formation. The laws and mechanisms which
govern the everyday life of the normal person are the same laws and
mechanisms which make the nervous person ill. As Boris Sidis puts it,
"The pathological is the normal out of place." The person who is
master of himself, working together as a harmonious whole, is stronger
in every way than the person whose forces are divided. Given a little
self-knowledge, the nervous invalid often becomes one of the most
successful members of society,--to use the word successful in the best
sense.

=It Pays to Know.= To be educated is to have the right idea and the
right emotion in the right place. To be sure, some people have so well
learned the secret of poise that they do not have to study the why nor
the how. Intuition often far outruns knowledge. It would be foolish
indeed to suggest that only the person versed in psychological lore is
skilled in the art of living. Psychology is not life; it can make no
claim to furnish the motive nor the power for successful living, for
it is not faith, nor hope, nor love; but it tries to point the way and
to help us fulfil conditions. There is no more reason why the average
man should be unaware of the instincts or the subconscious mind, than
that he should be ignorant of germs or of the need of fresh air.

If it be argued that character and health are both inherently
by-products of self-forgetful service, rather than of painstaking
thought, we answer that this is true, but that there can be no
self-forgetting when things have gone too far wrong. At such times it
pays to look in, if we can do it intelligently, in order that we may
the sooner get our eyes off ourselves and look out. The pursuit of
self-knowledge is not a pleasurable pastime but simply a valuable
means to an end.


KNOWING OUR MACHINE

=Counting on Ourselves.= Knowing our machine makes us better able to
handle it. For, after all, each of us is, in many ways, very like a
piece of marvelous and complicated machinery. For one thing, our
minds, as well as our bodies, are subject to uniform laws upon which
we can depend. We are not creatures of chaos; under certain conditions
we can count on ourselves. Freedom does not mean freedom from the
reign of law. It means that, to a certain extent, we can make use of
the laws. Psychic laws are as susceptible to investigation,
verification, and use as are any laws in the physical world. Each
person is so much the center of his own life that it is very easy for
him to fall into the way of thinking that he is different from all the
rest of the world. It is a healthful experience for him to realize
that every person he meets is made on the same principles, impelled by
the same forces, and fighting much the same fight. Since the laws of
the mental world are uniform, we can count on them as aids toward
understanding other people and understanding ourselves.

="Intelligent Scrutiny versus Morbid Introspection."= It helps
wonderfully to be able to look at ourselves in an objective,
impersonal way. We are likely to be overcome by emotion, or swept by
vague longings which seem to have no meaning and which, just because
they are bound up so closely with our own ego, are not looked at but
are merely felt. Unknown forces are within us, pulling us this way and
that, until sometimes we who should be masters are helpless slaves.
One great help toward mastery and one long step toward serenity is a
working-knowledge of the causes and an impersonal interest in the
phenomena going on within. Introspection is a morbid, emotional
fixation on self, until it takes on this quality of objectivity. What
Cabot calls the "sin of impersonality" is a grievous sin when
directed toward another person, but most of us could stand a good deal
of ingrowing impersonality without any harm.

The fact that the human machine can run itself without a hitch in the
majority of cases is witness to its inherent tendency toward health.
People were living and living well through all the centuries before
the science of psychology was formulated. But not with all people do
things run so smoothly. There were demoniacs in Bible times and
neurotics in the Middle Ages, as there are nervous invalids and
half-well people to-day. Psychology has a real contribution to make,
and in recent years its lessons have been put into language which the
average man can understand.

Psychology is not merely interested in abstract terms with long names.
It is no longer absorbed merely in states of consciousness taken
separately and analyzed abstractly. The newer functional psychology is
increasingly interested in the study of real persons, their purposes
and interests, what they feel and value, and how they may learn to
realize their highest aspirations. It is about ordinary people, as
they think and act, in the kitchen, on the street cars, at the
bargain-counter, people in crowds and alone, mothers and their babies,
little children at play, young girls with their lovers, and all the
rest of human life. It is the science of _you_, and as such it can
hardly help being interesting.

While psychology deals with such topics as the subconscious mind, the
instincts, the laws of habit, and association of ideas and suggestion,
it is after all not so much an academic as a practical question. These
forces govern the thought you are thinking at this moment, the way you
will feel a half-hour from now, the mood you will be in to-morrow, the
friends you will make and the profession you will choose, besides
having a large share in the health or ill-health of your body in the
meantime.


SUMMARY

Perhaps it would be well before going farther to summarize what we
have been saying. Here in a nutshell is the kernel of the subject:

Disease may be caused by physical or by psychic forces. A "nervous"
disorder is not a physical but a psychic disease. It is caused not by
lack of energy but by misdirected energy; not by overwork or
nerve-depletion, but by misconception, emotional conflict, repressed
instincts, and buried memories. Seventy-five per cent. of all cases of
ill-health are due to psychic causes, to disjointed thinking rather
than to a disjointed spine. Wherefore, let us learn to think right.

In outline form, the trouble in a neurosis may be stated something
like this:

Lack of adaptation to the social environment--caused by
Lack of harmony within the personality--caused by
Misdirected energy--caused by
Inappropriate emotions--caused by
Wrong ideas or ignorance.

Working backward, the cure naturally would be:

Right ideas--resulting in
Appropriate emotions--resulting in
Redirected energy--resulting in
Harmony--resulting in
Readjustment to the environment.

If the reader is beginning to feel somewhat bewildered by these
general statements, let him take heart. So far we have tried merely to
suggest the outline of the whole problem, but we shall in the future
be more specific. Nervous troubles, which seem so simple, are really
involved with the whole mechanism of mental life and can in no way be
understood except as these mechanisms are understood. We have hinted
at some of the causes of "nerves," but we cannot give a real
explanation until we explain the forces behind them. These forces may
at first seem a bit abstract, or a bit remote from the main theme, but
each is essential to the story of nerves and to the understanding of
the more practical chapters in Part III.

As in a Bernard Shaw play, the preface may be the most important part
of this "drama of nerves." Nor is the figure too far-fetched,
because, strange as it may seem, every neurosis is in essence a drama.
It has its conflict, its villain, and its victim, its love-story, its
practical joke, its climax, and its denouement. Sometimes the play
goes on forever with no solution, but sometimes psychotherapy steps in
as the fairy god-mother, to release the victim, outwit the villain,
and bring about the live-happily-ever-after ending.




PART II: "HOW THE WHEELS GO ROUND"




CHAPTER III

_In which we find a goodly inheritance_

THE STORY OF THE INSTINCTS

EACH IN HIS OWN TONGUE

A fire mist and a planet,
A crystal and a cell,
A jelly-fish and a saurian,
And caves where cavemen dwell;
Then a sense of law and beauty,
And a face turned from the clod;
Some call it evolution
And others call it God.[4]


If we begin at the beginning, we have to go back a long way to get our
start, for the roots of our family tree reach back over millions of
years. "In the beginning--God." These first words of the book of
Genesis must be, in spirit at least, the first words of any discussion
of life. We know now, however, that when God made man, He did not
complete His masterpiece at one sitting, but instead devised a plan by
which the onward urge within and the environment without should act
and interact until from countless adaptations a human being was made.

[Footnote 4: William Herbert Carruth.]

As the late Dr. Putnam of Harvard University says, "We stand as the
representative of a Creative Energy that expressed itself first in far
simpler forms of life and finally in the form of human instincts."[5]
And again: "The choices and decisions of the organisms whose lives
prepared the way through eons of time for ours, present themselves to
us as instincts."[6]

[Footnote 5: Putnam: _Human Motives_, p. 32.]

[Footnote 6: Putnam: _Human Motives_, p. 18.]


INTRODUCING THE INSTINCTS

=Back of Our Dispositions.= What is it that makes the baby jump at a
noise? What energizes a man when you tell him he is a liar? What makes
a young girl blush when you look at her, or a youth begin to take
pains with his necktie? What makes men go to war or build tunnels or
found hospitals or make love or save for a home? What makes a woman
slave for her children, or give her life for them if need be?
"Instinct" you say, and rightly. Back of every one of these well-known
human tendencies is a specific instinct or group of instincts. The
story of the life of man and the story of the mind of man must begin
with the instincts. Indeed, any intelligent approach to human life,
whether it be that of the mother, the teacher, the preacher, the
social worker or the neurologist, leads back inevitably to the
instincts as the starting-point of understanding. But what is
instinct?

We are apt to be a bit hazy on that point, as we are on any
fundamental thing with which we intimately live. We reckon on these
instinctive tendencies every hour of the day, but as we are not used
to labeling them, it may help in the very beginning of our discussion
to have a list before our eyes. Here, then, is a list of the
fundamental tendencies of the human race and the emotions which drive
them to fulfilment.

THE SPECIFIC INSTINCTS AND THEIR EMOTIONS (AFTER MCDOUGALL)

_Instinct_ _Emotion_

Nutritive Instinct Hunger
Flight Fear
Repulsion Disgust
Curiosity Wonder
Self-assertion Positive Self-feeling (Elation)
Self-abasement Negative Self-feeling (Subjection)
Gregariousness Emotion unnamed
Acquisition Love of Possession
Construction Emotion unnamed
Pugnacity Anger
Reproductive Instinct Emotion unnamed
Parental Instinct Tender Emotion

These are the fundamental tendencies or dispositions with which every
human being is endowed as he comes into the world. Differing in degree
in different individuals, they unite in varying proportions to form
various kinds of dispositions, but are in greater or less degree the
common property of us all.

There flows through the life of every creature a steady stream of
energy. Scientists have not been able to decide on a descriptive term
for this all-important life-force. It has been variously called
"libido," "vital impulse" or "elan vital," "the spirit of life,"
"horme," and "creative energy." The chief business of this life-force
seems to be the preservation and development of the individual and the
preservation and development of the race. In the service of these two
needs have grown up these habit-reactions which we call instincts. The
first ten of our list belong under the heading of self-preservation
and the last two under that of race-preservation. As hunger is the
most urgent representative of the self-preservative group, and as
reproduction and parental care make up the race-preservative group,
some scientists refer all impulses to the two great instincts of
nutrition and sex, using these words in the widest sense. However, it
will be useful for our purpose to follow McDougall's classification
and to examine individually the various tendencies of the two groups.

=In Debt to Our Ancestors.= An instinct is the result of the
experience of the race, laid in brain and nerve-cells ready for use.
It is a gift from our ancestors, an inheritance from the education of
the age-long line of beings who have gone before. In the struggle for
existence, it has been necessary for the members of the race to feed
themselves, to run away from danger, to fight, to herd together, to
reproduce themselves, to care for their young, and to do various other
things which make for the well-being or preservation of the race. The
individuals that did these things at the right time survived and
passed on to their offspring an inherited tendency to this kind of
reaction. McDougall defines an instinct as "an inherited or innate
psycho-physical disposition which determines its possessor to perceive
or pay attention to objects of a certain class, to experience an
emotional excitement of a particular quality upon perceiving such an
object, and to act in regard to it in a particular manner, or at least
to experience an impulse to such action." This is just what an
instinct is,--an inherited disposition to notice, to feel, and to want
to act in certain ways in certain situations. It is the something
which makes us act when we cannot explain why, the something that goes
deeper than reason, and that links us to all other human
beings,--those who live to-day and those who have gone before.

It is true that East is East and West is West, but the two do meet in
the common foundation of our human nature. The likeness between men
and between races is far greater and far more fundamental than the
differences can ever be.

=Firing Up the Engine.= Purpose is writ large across the face of an
instinct, and that purpose is always toward action. Whenever a
situation arises which demands instantaneous action, the instinct is
the means of securing it. Planted within the creature is a tendency
which makes it perceive and feel and act in the appropriate way. It
will be noticed that there are three distinct parts to the process,
corresponding to intellect, emotion, will. The initial intellectual
part makes us sensitive to certain situations, makes us recognize an
object as meaningful and significant, and waves the flag for the
emotion; the emotion fires up the engine, pulls the levers all over
the body that release its energy and get it ready for action, and
pushes the button that calls into the mind an intense, almost
irresistible desire or impulse to act. Once aroused, the emotion and
the impulse are not to be changed. In man or beast, in savage or
savant, the intense feeling, the marked bodily changes, and the
yearning for action are identical and unchangeable. The brakes can be
put on and the action suppressed, but in that case the end of the
whole process is defeated. Could anything be plainer than that an
instinct and its emotion were never intended to be aroused except in
situations in which their characteristic action is to be desired? An
emotion is the hot part of an instinct and exists solely for securing
action. If all signs of the emotion are to be suppressed, all
expression denied, why the emotion?

But although the emotion and the impulse, once aroused, are beyond
control, there is yet one part of the instinct that is meant to be
controlled. The initial or receptive portion, that which notices a
situation, recognizes it as significant, and sends in the signal for
action, can be trained to discrimination. This is where reason comes
in. If the situation calls for flight, fear is in order; if it calls
for fight, anger is in order; if it calls for examination, wonder is
in order; but if it calls for none of these things, reason should show
some discrimination and refuse to call up the emotion.

=The Right of Way.= There is a law that comes to the aid of reason in
this dilemma and that is the "law of the common path."[7] By this is
meant that man is capable of but one intense emotion at a time. No one
can imagine himself strenuously making love while he is shaken by an
agony of fear, or ravenously eating while he is in a passion of rage.
The stronger emotion gets the right of way, obtains control of mental
and bodily machinery, and leaves no room for opposite states. If the
two emotions are not antagonistic, they may blend together to form a
compound emotion, but if in the nature of the case such a blending is
impossible, the weaker is for the time being forgotten in the
intensity of the stronger. "The expulsive power of a new affection" is
not merely a happy phrase; it is a fact in every day life. The
problem, then, resolves itself into ways of making the desirable
emotion the stronger, of learning how to form the habit of giving it
the head start and the right of way. In our chapter on "Choosing the
Emotions," we shall find that much depends on building up the right
kind of sentiments, or the permanent organization of instincts around
ideas. However, we must first look more closely at the separate
instincts to acquaint ourselves with the purpose and the ways of each,
and to discover the nature of the forces with which we have to deal.

[Footnote 7: Sherrington: _Integrative Action of the Nervous System_.]


I THE SELF-PRESERVATIVE INSTINCTS

=Hunger.= Hunger is the most pressing desire of the egoistic or
self-preserving impulse. The yearning for food and the impulse to seek
and eat it are aroused organically within the body and are behind much
of the activity of every type of life. As the impulse is so familiar,
and its promptings are so little subject to psychic control, it seems
unnecessary to do more than mention its importance.

=Flight and Fear.= All through the ages the race has been subject to
injury. Species has been pitted against species, individual against
individual. He who could fight hardest or run fastest has survived and
passed his abilities on to his offspring. Not all could be strongest
for fight, and many species have owed their existence to their ability
to run and to know when to run. Thus it is that one of the strongest
and most universal tendencies is the instinct for flight, and its
emotion, fear. "Fear is the representation of injury and is born of
the innumerable injuries which have been inflicted in the course of
evolution."[8] Some babies are frightened if they are held too
loosely, even though they have never known a fall. Some persons have
an instinctive fear of cats, a left-over from the time when the race
needed to flee from the tiger and others of the cat family. Almost
every one, no matter in what state of culture, fears the unknown
because the race before him has had to be afraid of that which was not
familiar.

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