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Often these ideas, so potent for mental and bodily disturbance, are almost entirely unconscious or exist in the patient's subconsciousness and are recalled only under such special conditions as remove the bonds of the patient's occupation with himself or herself at the present time and allow memories to come back without interference. There are many curious stories of such cases. A child is frightened or very much disturbed by having a cat kill a favorite bird. The cat becomes a deterrent object. Gradually this deterrence grows. As a consequence, there may develop one of those intense dreads of cats which makes life miserable if near that animal. There may even be physical effects produced by the continued presence of a cat in the same room. Often in these cases the beginning of this mental attitude, or at least its occasion in the incident of the killing of the bird is forgotten, or at least not consciously referred to as an etiological element in the dread.

Patients have been known to develop states of mind which made them object to certain figures or names because of earlier associations with them that were unpleasant. There is the story of a man who would never take a car with an odd number though this was sometimes a source of annoyance and delay and who could not explain to himself or his physician how this objection had developed, until his memory was searched and it was found that, years before, he had witnessed the death of a child under the wheels of a car with an odd number. He had completely lost the sense of the direct influence of this, but it existed in subconscious memory and proved the source of much annoyance to him, for if with a friend he were not able to avoid taking an odd numbered car he would feel quite miserable during the ride. Frights of various kinds may produce this same effect. I have in my notes the case of a man who is unable to sleep at night without a light in his room, because of a fright. Once while asleep in the dark, he awoke conscious that someone was in the room and sat up and demanded who was there. The answer was a revolver shot and a bullet, passing not far away from him, pierced the head of the bed. As he sank back the burglar leaped from the window and escaped. He realized that this was the cause of his fear of the dark, but lesser incidents might easily become subconscious yet continue their influence.

Psycho-Analysis.—In recent years Freud has suggested that in many puzzling cases of psycho-neurosis, where, so far as is known, there seems to be no dominant idea bringing about the concentration of attention, careful analysis of the patients' memories will bring out the fact that there is a subconscious idea as the underlying substratum of these affections. Freud has developed what is called the process of psycho-analysis in order to bring out these ideas which are sometimes exerting their influence unconsciously to the patient. The subconscious is one of the fads of the hour, so that Freud's announcement attracted much attention. Psycho-analysis, however, is not advanced so confidently even by its inventor as a positively curative measure, as it was at the beginning. It has been found that after the dominant idea in the subconsciousness has been found and neutralized with a consequent amelioration of the psycho-neurotic symptoms, there may be a relapse, when another dominant idea will have to be found, and that there seems to be the possibility, in some cases at least, of an almost endless succession of such ideas to account for further and further relapses.

Undoubtedly psycho-analysis has its place in psychotherapy and is of great value in certain cases. There is no doubt, however, in my mind that in most of these cases reported as cured after psycho-analytic methods had been employed, what really happened is that the patient's mind became diverted to another idea—that of marvelous cure through mind searching which relieved the previous concentration of mind underlying the psycho-neurosis. These are the cases that used to be cured by hypnotism. Before hypnotism was developed they were cured by mesmerism. Before mesmerism they were cured by magnets or by the Leyden jar, and during the past century they have been cured by electrical methods or by osteopathy or by Eddyism. Many of the cures were effected by stroking and touches, the use of Perkins' tractors, or Greatrakes' methods, or anything else that attracted attention very strongly. They were given a new idea which occupied them very much and so saved them from that preoccupation with themselves and their feelings and whatever slight ailment might be present that was the physical occasion for psycho-neurotic symptoms. This happened with psycho-analysis. When it was absolutely new and the operator had great confidence in it, this confidence was imparted to the patients, with the consequent cure or decided amelioration of their psycho-neurosis, just as that used to be brought about by our previous method of treating such cases by some strong suggestion.

As I emphasize in the chapter on Dreams, the examination of the dreams in order to get a hint of the dominant idea, is particularly interesting, because it represents a return to the oldest methods of suggestion of which we have record. The fact that sexual ideas seem to represent a great many of the dominant ideas in these cases is of interest for a similar reason. It represents the tendency constantly recurring to refer most nervous ailments, as indeed most other ailments, to something pathological in the sexual or genital sphere. The old idea embodied in the word hysterical exemplifies this very well. The "vapors" or "tantrums" or fits which were supposed to be due, to some extent at least, to suppressed sexuality by medical writers of three or four generations ago, have come back to us under another form and with other terms. Psycho-analysis gives occasion for instruction in so far as it helps the patient to get rid of old persuasions and exploded ideas as to disease and diet and the various functions of the body and the mind that have often almost unconsciously been acquired and secured a dominance. It is surprising how often it will be found that people are taking too much or too little water at meals, too many or too few vegetables, too much or too little of salt or of other condiments as the result of habits and notions acquired when they were young and under influences that they may now forget. In the same way habits of life with regard to bathing, clothing and the like may be the source of unfavorable conditions in mind and body that need only to be discovered to be corrected. Their correction will often bring about the relief of symptomatic conditions that have proved quite obstinate to treatment. We have emphasized this in the chapters on the Individual Patient and the necessity for acquiring just as much knowledge as possible about both his occupations and his mental attitude in order to be able successfully to treat chronic disease.

SECTION XVIII
DISORDERS OF MIND

CHAPTER I
MENTAL INCAPACITY (PSYCHASTHENIA)

In recent years we have come to realize that many of the so-called nervous diseases, or if they do not deserve the serious name of disease, nervous symptom-complexes, are really due to a deficiency of vital energy. Some people have a store of energy that enables them to accomplish many different things successfully. Some become exhausted from a few trivial occupations. What is noteworthy in the cases to be discussed in this chapter is that they show always certain symptoms of mental tiredness or, at least, of lack of capacity for affairs. Patients complain, for instance, that they cannot make up their minds so as to reach decisions because they doubt so much whether the decision they come to will be right or wrong. Others dread the outcome of any and every act and feel that something is hanging over them. Slight sources of irritation become so exaggerated by thinking about them and dwelling on their possibilities that they may even disturb sleep and appetite and, as a consequence, the general health. Fears come over patients lest various things should happen and they dread microbes, or infections, or dirt in general, or the approach of insanity, and all to such a degree as to incapacitate them for their ordinary occupations.

Many of these patients become quite incapable of willing effectively. They not only lose initiative, the power to undertake new enterprises, but they find it difficult to make up their minds as to details of the ordinary affairs of life. As we have stated elsewhere in Professor Grasset's expressive formula, these patients say that they cannot do things, their friends say "they will not," and the physician, taking the middle course, which, as usual in human affairs, has much more of truth than either of the extremes, says "they cannot will."

For these states Janet of Paris suggested the word psychasthenia. It is formed on the model of the word neurasthenia and unless it is used with discretion will have all the objections that attach to that other term. Above all, it shares the tendency pointed out by Sir William Gowers with regard to neurasthenia of being "too satisfying. Men are apt to rest on it as they would not on its English equivalent. Physicians, if they do not actually think that they have found the malady from which the patient is suffering, have an influence exerted on them of which they are often unconscious, which lessens the tendency to go farther in the search for the whole mental state." Much more can be said in defence of psychasthenia, however, than of neurasthenia, for the substitution for it of the translation of the Greek words of which it is composed—"mind weakness" would be alarming. While it is important, then, to realize that the term may easily be made too general and prove, as such words as rheumatism has done in our time and malaria did in the past, a cloak for ignorance and an excuse for incomplete investigation for diagnostic purposes, it represents a satisfactory answer to the patient's question as to what is the matter without committing the physician to such definitely detailed opinions as to the patient's condition as would surely prove unfavorably suggestive.

Psychasthenia, Natural and Acquired.—There are two forms of the mental incapacity that underlies many of the curious symptom-complexes that have been studied under the term psychasthenia. One is natural, that is, inherent in the special character of the individual, and the other acquired through disease or exhausting labor, worry, or anxiety. Some people are born without sufficient mental energy to do the work they attempt to accomplish. This is true, also, in the physical order. It is often pitiable to see young men who have not the physical strength necessary for athletic exercises, or the dexterity required for them, faithfully trying to accomplish by effort what others do with ease. When there is some natural defect in the way they will usually fail, no matter how much they strive. Just in the same way some persons are not able to accomplish certain more serious purposes requiring special mental ability or power which they attempt. Their brothers, their friends, their schoolmates, may have the ability, and they cannot understand why they should not have it, but the fact remains that they are not possessed of it and if they try to make up for this defect by overwork they simply break down.

Differential Diagnosis.—Each of the two forms of mental incapacity, congenital and acquired, must be carefully differentiated and treated from a special standpoint. With regard to congenital lack of mental control, all that the doctor can do is to counsel against the assumption of duties and responsibilities that are too heavy for the patient. Some people have not enough nervous energy to run a business with many details, and some even find it difficult to try to do things involving much less responsibility. There is no use for a man five feet in height, weighing one hundred pounds, to try to be a stevedore. There is no use for men of delicate muscular build to try to make their living at heavy manual labor; they simply wear themselves out in a very short time. This inadaptability is recognized at once. Just the same thing is true with regard to many nervous systems, but the recognition is not so easy or immediate. Some cannot stand the strain of intricate business details or the burden of responsibility in important transactions. They must be taught to be satisfied, then, with quiet simple lives without what is for them, excessive responsibility and without strenuous business worries. A country life with regular hours, plenty of open air and as little responsibility as possible, is the ideal for them.

The most difficult problem in this matter is the question of diagnosis. As a rule, the history is the most helpful for this. The patient tells of having found difficulty all his life whenever anything of special significance was placed on his shoulders. He is one of those who were born tired and remain so all their lives. It has been the custom to blame these people; they are rather to be pitied. If they are born in circumstances that allow of their living quietly in the country, they accomplish a certain amount of work quite successfully and live happy, contented lives. If they are born in the city where the hurry and bustle around them and the insistence of friends that they must take up responsibilities becomes poignant, they get discouraged and even despondent. It is from this class of patients that the "ne'er-do-wells" of modern life are recruited. They form the under-stratum of trampdom, the scions of good families with the wanderlust, the willing but incapable. Certain of them become vicious and criminal, either because they do not want to work or because their mentality is perverted in some way. Such patients cannot be treated with any hope of their becoming successful exemplars of the strenuous life, but they may be directed into the less exacting occupations of country life and so live quiet, useful and happy lives. For the congenital class we can do little except to prevent them from trying to do things that are beyond their mental capacity and helping them to see just what their limitations are.

Mental Exhaustion .—Many disturbances of mental energy are acquired. These may be either functional or organic. For the organic variety we cannot do much, since it is dependent on changes in organs that are permanent. We can, however, usually predispose the patient's mind to the recognition of the fact that he should no longer try to devote himself to occupations that constitute a special drain on his nervous energy. The man, for instance, who is already suffering from arterio-sclerosis must be warned that worry and work will surely hasten the process and that his nervous symptoms cannot be cured, but must be palliated. He must be advised to lessen his mental strain and to take up something which, while occupying his mind, does not make insistent calls on his vitality. In this matter it must be remembered that when a man over fifty develops nervous symptoms, as a rule there is no question of functional trouble but of organic change and usually heart or arteries or kidneys are at fault.

In recent years we have come to realize that typhoid fever often makes serious inroads upon a patient's vitality which can only be retrieved by care, not alone for some months but, if possible, even for some years, not to put an overstrain on the vital energy. Certain other diseases produce an even more lasting effect. A sufferer from well-developed tuberculosis will probably never be able to go back to the strenuous city life. If he attempts to do so, not only is there danger of a recurrence of his tuberculosis, but there may even be a development of neurotic symptoms. Syphilis is another disease that leaves patients in a condition in which it is dangerous for them to assume the serious responsibilities of an exacting occupation and especially anything that involves excitement and worry. Syphilitic patients should be warned of the danger of pursuing vocations that make such demands upon them. It is the actor, the broker, the speculator, and the strenuous business man generally, who is likely to suffer from parasyphilitic conditions, tabes, paresis and the like, much more than those who follow occupations that make less demands on them.

Functional Mental Incapacity.—In a large number of cases the incapacity to do things because of lack of mental energy is due to functional disturbances of the nervous system. These are the most important for the psycho-therapeutist because much can be accomplished for them. Nearly always the patient can be benefited by advice and suggestion, and very often some unfavorable factor at work, using up his mental energy to no purpose, will be discovered. In order to do good, however, careful study of the individual patient is the most important element. The most frequent functional disturbance of the nervous system, leading to exhaustion of mental energy, is over-attention to one's self and to one's occupations. Men can do many complicated things quite naturally and easily, but when they carefully watch themselves doing them, accomplishment is not so ready and the task is double. They tire much easier, for, as a rule, what they are doing could be accomplished automatically and they are using up energy attending to it. This is probably one of the commonest causes for the rather frequent development of that state called nervous exhaustion in our time. People watch themselves too closely and by so doing they not only use up energy unnecessarily in the surveillance, but also they hamper their powers to do things and so consume additional energy in overcoming this inhibition.

Morbidly introspective people watch almost ceaselessly everything they do. They not only watch themselves work and worry about it, but they watch themselves play and grow solicitous that it will do them good; they watch themselves divert themselves to see if it is giving them real recreation and so spoil the diversion; they watch themselves eat and disturb their appetite, and watch themselves digest and hamper digestion; they even try at least to watch themselves sleep and so interfere with sleep. Many of the cases of insomnia are really due to this over-attention. They fear they will not sleep, they worry about it, they keep themselves awake hoping that they will sleep, and in the more serious cases even during sleep itself they are so solicitous that their dreams become very vivid and a form of unconscious cerebration goes on with surveillance of themselves. They do not rest even in sleep. They wake feeling not rested, they get up with a consciousness that they are beginning a long day without being properly refreshed and they exhaust enough energy to complete a good part of the day's work in wondering whether they will be able to go on with their occupation for the day, whatever it may be.

Inhibitory Surveillance .—People become afraid that they cannot or that they may not do things well and set a guard over themselves. This is illustrated very well in the doubts about accomplishment because of which they keep going back to see what they have done and how it was done, though usually it was accomplished quite well without any conscious attention. Dreads form another phase of this attitude of mind. For those who are affected with them they make a thing hard to do before it is begun, and harder to accomplish after it has been entered upon because of the suggestion that it may lead to some serious results, or they even inhibit their activities to a marked extent by their solicitude with regard to them. They worry about things before the event and thus consume energy uselessly. Worry has been defined as anxious solicitude about what we have to do next week at the same time that we occupy ourselves with what we are doing now and have to do in the next hour or two. The solicitude about next week is quite useless, as a rule, until the time comes, and it merely disturbs what we are doing now, making it harder to do and making errors in it almost inevitable, and so preparing ourselves for discouragement because of mistakes that have been made and still further adding to the difficulty of accomplishment.

Inhibition of Automatism .—These introspective people disturb themselves by over-attention to things that need no attention, that are accomplished automatically, and that are not done nearly so well if they are attended to. Not only is it true that it is harder to do work that ought to be accomplished automatically if much attention is given to it, but also nature resents the surveillance. Not only the brain does not work so well if watched to see whether perhaps it is working too much, or whether there are too many feelings in our head while we are doing things, but even the stomach resents being watched and does not do its work as well. The same thing is probably true for every one of our organic functions. In the chapters on the heart we call attention to the fact that surveillance makes a perfectly healthy though nervous heart miss beats. There is a dual waste of nervous energy then. We are employing our attention watching things done that need not be watched, and by that fact we are inhibiting natural processes and requiring that more energy shall be put into them for their accomplishment, and even then accomplishing them with discouraging imperfection.

Mental Short-Circuit .—The reflex mental process that particularly affects many individuals in our time and makes it hard for them to do their work, has been well described under the figure of a short-circuit in an electrical dynamo. The short-circuit diverts the current so that instead of acting outside the dynamo and performing useful work, it is discharged within the machine, brings about deterioration of its elements and soon leads to a reduction in the amount of electrical energy that that particular dynamo can develop.

Association Fibers Diversion.—Prof. Michael Foster in the Wilde Lecture for 1898, "The Physical Basis of Psychical Events,"⁴³ has many valuable suggestions with regard to the mechanism of mental operations on the neuron theory. He has particularly dwelt on the function of the association fibers in connection with mental operations, or with the raising of sensation to the plane of mentality. A portion of the brain that is originating impulses, instead of sending them down to the periphery, through the projection fibers, to lead to the accomplishment of external work, may have its messages diverted through the association fibers to other portions of the brain and thus do harm rather than good.

Occurrence of Psychasthenia.—It must not be thought that these curiously interesting conditions occur only among people of low intellectual caliber, or in those of narrow intellectual interests, mere specialists who may have acquired a reputation for doing one thing well. They are frequent among the most intellectual classes. Brain workers of all kinds, unless they are careful to vary the interests of life, unless, as suggested in the chapters on Occupation of Mind and Diversion of Mind, they have a hobby besides their usual occupations, are likely to suffer in this way. As a matter of fact, many intellectual people have had what are called nervous breakdowns of this kind. A biographical dictionary shows any number of them. Dr. Gould's Biographic Clinics furnish many documents for the study of these conditions. A typical instance, told by the sufferer himself, the distinguished Sir Francis Galton, is of special significance for the psychotherapeutist. I quote because it illustrates the fact that such breakdowns do not portend a short or subsequently listless life, for Sir Francis, a most successful scientific investigator, lived well beyond fourscore years in the full possession of health of mind and body.

It was during my third year at Cambridge that I broke down entirely in health and had to lose a term and go home. I suffered from intermittent pulse and a variety of brain symptoms of an alarming kind. A mill seemed to be working inside my head; I could not banish obsessing ideas; at times I could hardly read a book, and found it painful to look at even a printed page. Fortunately I did not suffer from sleeplessness, and my digestion failed but little. Even a brief interval of mental rest did me good, and it seemed as if a long dose of it might wholly restore me. It would have been madness to continue the kind of studious life that I had been leading. I had been much too zealous, had worked too irregularly and in too many directions, and had done myself serious harm. It was as though I had tried to make a steam-engine perform more work than it was constructed for, by tampering with its safety-valve and thereby straining its mechanism. Happily the human body may sometimes repair itself, which the steam-engine cannot.

The physician with experience in such cases would be much more apt to say, "Happily we can learn to control our mental energy and not let it go to waste by foolish persistence at one set of ideas constantly, nor be dissipated in surveillance of functions that work automatically if left to themselves."

Etiological Factors.—This form of mental incapacity develops particularly in people after they have gone through a prolonged period of hard work and then have come to a time when they are much freer than they were before. They are prone to think that they exhausted their nerve force during the preceding period of labor and that now they are paying for it. Almost invariably what is really happening is that they now have much more time to occupy themselves with themselves and about themselves and to worry over their ills, real and imaginary. This is the typical nervous breakdown, as it used to be called, of elderly retired merchants or bankers. They have looked forward all their lives to a time when they could enjoy themselves doing nothing. They retire from business and then their troubles begin. It is no wonder that the old proverb, "A machine rusts out much sooner than it wears out" should have been so often quoted with regard to this condition. A man who has been working busily at something all his life cannot stop all at once and do nothing. He cannot learn to occupy himself with trivial things. Commonly, he has few, if any, interests apart from his business and he very soon wears the novelty off these and then introspection comes to make him exaggerate the significance of every feeling that he has, every stiffness that occurs, every muscle twinge due to change in the weather, until he becomes supremely miserable.

As a rule, these patients are simple, practical, common-sense, business men, and it is hard for the physician to think that there is nothing more than a functional neurosis present. It is even more difficult for the patient to be made to appreciate that his ills are mainly due to his own over-attention to himself in this idleness that he has looked forward to with so much pleasure. Ordinary medicines fail to relieve and the regular professional man seldom succeeds in doing these patients much good. They constitute the richest material for the quack and the charlatan. Much occupied with their ills they tell their friends all about them. Whenever a strong impression is produced on their mind by a promise to cure them with some new wonderful remedy they are favorably influenced, often get better and then are walking advertisements for the particular quack who has happened to benefit them. It is this class of people that has given more trouble to legislative committees of medical societies than any other. Some of them appeal to legislators whenever a bill for the admission of some new form of practitioners of medicine comes up with the story of how much benefit they derived from the treatment. Since they have been successful business men their word carries weight. It is curious how little the making of money, though often presumed to be so, is a test of real intelligence. It is often the man of one idea with no intellectual breadth who is the best money-getter.

These conditions develop almost entirely in predisposed individuals who, for some reason, are trying to overdo the energy they possess, and who, as a consequence, have lost a certain control over themselves. At times, of course, they occur in persons who have so little occupation of mind that thoughts of various kinds along these lines become insistently suggestive and cannot be thrown off because the patients' interests are not sufficiently deep or sufficiently varied to occupy their attention. The rational treatment of them, then, must be founded on a careful study of individual cases, the recognition of the special cause, and also the occasions at work in each case, a neutralization of unfavorable suggestion and a provision of such favorable suggestions and occupation of mind as will enable the patient to rid himself of the annoyance occasioned by these and the physical symptoms that so often develop as a consequence. In a certain number of cases a history of corresponding or equivalent affections in preceding generations will be found. In many patients, however, there is no such history, though there is usually the story of symptomatic mental conditions of one or other of the types mentioned, earlier in life. When in good health physically the patient has very little bother from them. When run down in weight or when worried or anxious about business or from the stress of important responsibilities these symptoms may become bothersome mentally and physically. Often it will be impossible to obliterate them entirely, but always they can be greatly improved and the patient can be made to realize that they are not seriously significant, that in mild form they are rather common and that, above all, they are not so peculiar to the individual as he is likely to think, with consequent increase of the unfavorable suggestion.