Nervous ills, their cause and cure

by Boris Sidis

Hypnoidal states did good service. The patient’s mental condition began to improve rapidly. He was no longer troubled with depression, insomnia, and fears; began to gain in weight, appetite improved, felt energy flowing in; began to look for work in real earnest, finally found it, and kept at it.

Man, aged forty-three years, suffered from palpitation of the heart, fainted easily, especially on physical examination by physician, or at the beginning of medical treatment. He suffered from indigestion for which he had been under treatment for a number of years by physicians who gave him medicine for his bowels and also from time to time kept on washing his stomach. He had a great fear of becoming a victim of cardiac troubles, especially of some unknown, terrible, valvular affection. When under my care he kept on asking to be taken to heart and stomach specialists, to be examined, and have some radical operation performed. Frequently under the influence of the fear states and obsession of heart and stomach trouble, especially the heart, he would collapse suddenly, be unable to walk, and be afraid that he suffered from some paralysis.

On examination the patient revealed a history full of various traumas which, from his very childhood until he came under my care, helped to bring about his psychopathic condition, and developed the fear instinct to an extraordinary degree.

Physicians had the lion’s share in this special case by their rearing of the fear instinct, and by their favoring the patient’s phobias by their examinations, by their prescriptions, and by the diet and treatment. The patient was in such a panic that he kept on taking his pulse on the least occasion, was feeling his heart, stomach, and intestines at every opportunity. The hypertrophied growth of his morbid self and fear instinct had invaded and dominated the patient’s whole personality, developed a typical psychosomatic pathophobia with its recurrent states. The patient was cured by hypnoidal states.

In the Trudi for 1913 of the University of Moscow, Russia, Doctor Ribakov made an extensive study of a series of cases of psychopathic or psychoneurotic asthma, and arrived at a conclusion similar to my own, although he was no doubt unaware of my work and publications on the same subject. He came to the same conclusion as I that the etiology of neurosis is to be found in fear, which alone forms the basis of psychopathic neurosis. All other factors, social, professional, sexual, religious, repressions, conflicts are only occasions of the disease. It is fear, and fear alone that forms the pathology of the psychopathic neurotic symptom complex.

A young lady was afflicted with ornithophobia, fear of birds, fear of chickens. The sight of a chicken set her into a panic. The patient is very timid, and this timidity can be traced to her early childhood. When at the age of six, a play-mate threw a live chicken at her in the dark. The child was terribly frightened, screamed, and fainted. The mother used to tell her fairy stories full of adventure, of ghosts, of dragons, and of monsters. This prepared the patient to react so violently to the sudden attack made by the flight, struggling, and feel of the chicken in the dark. Since that time, patient has formed an uncontrollable fear of live birds.

Another patient of mine, a lady of forty-nine years, single, suffered from potamophobia, a fear of going into rivers, or into the ocean. When about seven years old she was thrown into water by one of her elder sisters. She was nearly drowned and was half dead with fear when rescued. Since then she has been in terror of water, or rather of rivers and oceans. Several times she made conscious efforts to get rid of the fear, but the attempts were unsuccessful. In fact, the more she was forced or forced herself consciously to get into the water, the greater was the fear. This fear became all the more intensified, when some of her intimate friends were drowned in a boat. This fixed the fear which became uncontrollable.

A patient of mine, a man of thirty-five years, was afraid of going out in the dark. This was traced to early associations of fears of the dark, to superstitious beliefs in ghosts and spirits cultivated in the patient’s early childhood. He was afraid to remain alone in the dark or to go down at night into cellars or other secluded places. This fear was unfortunately still more intensified by an accident. At the age of twenty-seven, one night when returning late from a visit, he was assaulted from behind by foot-pads. This accident fixed the fear of darkness.

A lady of sixty-seven years, with pronounced arteriosclerosis, had an attack of hemiplegia of the left side. She suffered from motor aphasia, but did not lose consciousness. The paralysis cleared up in a few days, but the sudden attack demoralized her. Since that time she is in terror of another attack. She watches for symptoms, and the least sensation of faintness throws her into a panic. The patient is the wife of a general and was in China during the Boxer riots, in the Spanish American war, in the Philippines, and other military engagements. The fear instinct was cultivated in her by all such conditions.

In her early childhood there were fears and frights of child character, enough to arouse the fear instinct, which was gradually developed and cultivated by the circumstances of life and by worries in the course of the various wars, of which she was a witness. Finally the fear culminated by the stroke of paralysis.