This constant craving for stimulation of energy, this reaction to the anxiety of the morbid fear instinct is the expression of exhaustion of available dynamic energy for the purpose of normal life activity. The patient attempts to draw on his latent reserve energy. Since this form of energy is not accessible to the stimulations of common life, he tries to release the energy by means of artificial stimulations, be it morphine, alcohol, mysticism, Freudism, sexual and religious “at-one-ments” or by other stimuli of exciting character. Unable to release energy by fair means the patient is driven to the employment of foul means for the stimulation of new sources of energy. The psychopathic patient is driven by fear, by fears of life and death.
The morbid fear instinct in all cases is brought about by exhaustion of energy, whether sudden or gradual. Fear is due to exhaustion of lower levels of dynamic energy and to the inability of liberation of stored up reserve energy. The more intense this incapacity of utilization of reserve stores of energy be, the more intense is the fear. When this condition is prolonged the psychopathic symptoms become unendurable.
The experienced, thinking surgeon has learned the danger of this condition in his operating room. Thus it is told of Porta, the great surgeon of Pavia, when his patients died under an operation, he used to throw his knife and instruments contemptuously to the ground, and shout in a tone of reproach to the corpse: “Cowards die of fear.”
The great physiologist Mosso gives a graphic description of the effects of fear in a pathetic case that has come under his personal observation: “As army surgeon, I had once to be present at the execution of some brigands. It was a summary judgment. A major of the besaglieri put a few questions to one or two, then turning to the captain said simply: ‘Shoot them.’ I remember one lad, of scarcely twenty years of age, who mumbled replies to a few questions, then remained silent, in the position of a man warding off a fatal blow, with lifted arms, extended palms, the neck drawn between the shoulders, the head held sideways, the body bent and drawn backwards. When he heard the dreadful words he emitted a shrill, heart-rending cry of despair, looked around him, as though eagerly seeking something, then turned to flee, and rushed with outspread arms against a wall of the court, writhing and scratching it as though trying to force an entrance between the stones, like a polyp clinging to a rock. After a few screams and contortions, he suddenly sank to the ground, powerless and helpless like a log. He was pale and trembled as I have never seen anyone tremble since. It seemed as though the muscles had been turned to a jelly which was shaken in all directions.”
[CHAPTER XXXV]
FEAR VARIETIES
The great psychologist Ribot classifies fears into pain fears, and disgust fears. To quote from Ribot: “I propose to reduce them (fears) to two groups. The first is directly connected with fear and includes all manifestations, implying in any degree whatever the fear of pain, from that of a fall or the prick of a needle, to that of illness or death. The second is directly connected with disgust, and seems to me to include the forms which have sometimes been called pseudophobia (Gelineau). Such are the fear of contact, the horror of blood and of innocuous animals, and many strange and causeless aversions. Let us remark furthermore that fear and disgust have a common basis, being both instruments of protection or defense. The first is the defensive-conservative instinct of relative life, the second the defensive-conservative instinct of organic life. As both have a common basis of aversion, they show themselves in equivalent ways: fear of withdrawal, departure, flight, disgust by vomiting and nausea: The reflexes of disgust are the succedanea of flight; the organism cannot escape by movement in space from the repugnant object which it has taken into itself, and goes through a movement of expulsion instead.”
I hesitate to accept Ribot’s classification, inasmuch as we have pointed out that fear is prior to pain. In most lower animals it is hardly probable that not having representations that there is present a fear of pain in advance of the pain itself. Fear under such conditions can only be awakened by an actual sensory experience whether it be painful or not. In fact Ribot himself agrees to the fact that “There is a primary, instinctive, unreasoning fear preceding all individual experience, a hereditary fear.”
Perhaps a word may be said in regard to the factor of disgust as having a common basis with fear. It is only by a stretch of imagination, if not by a stretch of words, that fear and disgust can be identified. There may be fear where there is no disgust, and there may be disgust where there is no fear. The two are independent variables, and can hardly be referred to as one and the same fundamental reaction, such as withdrawal and flight. The object of disgust does not preclude approach. The avoidance or aversion, the nausea and vomiting are all subsequent phenomena. Disgust may even follow after an abuse of food, of pleasant or necessary objects of nutrition, such as satiety.