FOOTNOTE:
[4] The experimental work was carried on by me at the physiological laboratory, Harvard Medical School, and in my private laboratory, and published in my work on “Sleep.”
[CHAPTER IX]
HEALTH AND MORBIDITY
While health cannot be separated from disease by a sharp line, the two are relative and fluctuating. Still, on the whole, the two can be differentiated by the criterion of hurt and dissolution. Any process or state conducive to hurt, and tending to dissolution of the organism may be regarded as pathological or abnormal. The same criterion should be applied, when differentiating the healthy, normal states of instincts and emotions from abnormal and morbid states of instinctive and emotional activities. Those states that further life activities are healthy, normal; those that hinder life are morbid.
The same holds true of the fear instinct. Every form of fear which, instead of helping or furthering vigor of life, instead of stimulating living energy, instead of being a protection, becomes a hindrance, a menace to the organism, is accompanied with suffering and distress, and ultimately leads to destruction, should be regarded as essentially morbid.
The following are the chief characteristics of morbid instinctive and emotional states:
I. When they are disproportionate to the cause.
II. When they are chronic.
III. When their feeling-tone is painful, distressing.
IV. When they are non-adaptive to the stimulations.
V. When the reactions are not adjusted to the external environment.
VI. When they are uncontrollable.
VII. When coming in recurrent or periodic attacks.
VIII. When the physical and mental reactions are of great intensity.
IX. When they are dissociative.
X. When they lead to dissolution.
Fear is not a matter of belief. To regard fear as a form of belief, is fallacious, dangerous, and suicidal. It is as dangerous as to consider smallpox and cholera the result of faith. We must never forget that fear is one of the most fundamental of animal instincts having its roots deep down in animal life existence. To ignore this fact is suicidal.
According to the great anthropologist, Galton: “Every antelope in South Africa has to run for its life every one or two days, and the antelope starts and gallops under the influence of a false alarm many times a day. Fear is a fundamental condition of animal existence.”
The fear instinct in its healthy normal state is a protection and defense. As Ribot puts it: “The basis of fear exists in the organism, forms part of the constitution of animals and man, and helps them to live by a defensive adaptation:” In fact, we may even go to the point of affirming that the fear instinct, like all other healthy, normal instincts, is absolutely requisite in the total economy of animal and human life.
In man, however, fear should not be at the mercy of blind animal instincts and reflexes, but should be guided and controlled by reason, by reflection, by scientific, medical measures, by scientific sanitation, by physical and mental hygiene, and by the rational cultivation and development of all human functions and faculties.
One of the greatest Greek thinkers well puts it: “Imbeciles, fools, and the mad alone have no understanding of fear. True education, true reason, and true courage consist in the knowledge of what to fear and what not to fear.”
Mysticism, occultism, and credulity act like virulent germs, fatal to man. “Metaphysical” cults anesthetize the intellect, put judgment into lethargic sleep from which there is no awaking. Mysticism kills the most precious essence of man’s life,—the critical sense of human personality.
Occultism, mysticism, et id genus omne declare that “fear is a false belief, an error of the mortal mind.” Mystics claim the “unreality” of the material fear instinct of which they are in “reality” in “mortal” terror. This zealous negation of fear is its strongest affirmation.
As a matter of fact, fear is one of the most stern realities of life. The neurotic in denying disease, evil, and fear is like the proverbial ostrich which on perceiving danger hides its head in the sand. The “Love” of mysticism is the Fear of death.
[CHAPTER X]
THE SUBCONSCIOUS[5]
Man’s nerve cell organization may be classified into two main systems:
(I) The inferior, the reflex, the instinctive, the automatic centers.
(II) The superior, the controlling, selective, and inhibitory brain-centers of the cortex.
The double systems of nerve-centers have correspondingly a double mental activity, or double-consciousness as it is sometimes called, the inferior, the organic, the instinctive, the automatic, the reflex consciousness, or briefly termed the subconsciousness, consciousness below the threshold of self-consciousness; and the superior, the choosing, the willing, the critical, the will-consciousness. This controlling will-consciousness may also be characterized as the guardian-consciousness of the individual.
From an evolutionary standpoint, we can well realize the biological function or importance of this guardian-consciousness. The external world bombards the living organism with innumerable stimuli. From all sides thousands of impressions come crowding upon the senses of the individual. Each neuron system with its appropriate receptors has its corresponding system of reactions which, if not modified or counteracted, may end in some harmful or fatal result.
It is not of advantage to an individual of a complex organization to respond with reaction to all impressions coming from the external environment. Hence, that organism will succeed best in the struggle for existence that possesses some selective, critical, inhibitory “choice and will” centers. The more organized and the more sensitive and delicate those centers are, the better will the organism succeed in its life existence.
The guardian-consciousness wards off, so far as it is possible, the harmful blows given by the stimuli of the external environment. In man, this same guardian consciousness keeps on constructing, by a series of elimination and selection, a new environment, individual and social, which leads to an ever higher and more perfect development and realization of the inner powers of individuality and personality.
Under normal conditions man’s superior and inferior centers with their corresponding upper, critical, controlling consciousness together with the inferior automatic, reflex centers and their concomitant subconscious consciousness, keep on functioning in full harmony. The upper and lower consciousness form one organic unity,—one conscious, active personality.
Under certain abnormal conditions, however, the two systems of nerve-centers with their corresponding mental activities may become dissociated. The superior nerve-centers with their critical, controlling consciousness may become inhibited, split off from the rest of the nervous system. The reflex, automatic, instinctive, subconscious centers with their mental functions are laid bare, thus becoming directly accessible to the stimuli of the outside world; they fall a prey to the influences of external surroundings, influences termed suggestions.
The critical, controlling, guardian-consciousness, being cut off and absent, the reduced individuality lacks the rational guidance and orientation given by the upper choice- and will-centers, and becomes the helpless plaything of all sorts of suggestions, sinking into the trance states of the subconscious. It is this subconscious that forms the highway of suggestions. Suggestibility is the essential characteristic of the subconscious.
The subconscious rises to the surface of consciousness, so to say, whenever there is a weakening, paralysis, or inhibition of the upper, controlling will and choice-centers. In other words, whenever there is a disaggregation of the superior from the inferior nerve-centers, there follows an increase of ideo-sensory, ideo-motor, sensori-secretory, reflex excitability; and ideationally, or rationally there is present an abnormal intensity of suggestibility.[6]