“As I became older, about the age of eight, I began to fear disease and death. This may be due to the infectious diseases that attacked many members of our family, about this time. In fact, I have been present at the death bed of some of them, and the impression was one of terror, mysterious horror. I was afraid I might get diseases from which I might die. After my witnessing the last agonizing moment of death, my elders thought of removing me to a safer place; their fears and precautions still more impressed the fear of danger of disease and death. I may say that I really never freed myself from the fear of disease and death. The latter fear is always present with me in a vague form, always ready to crop up at any favorable opportunity. This fear, in so far as it is extending its tentacles in various directions, is often the bane of my life. Even at my best there is always a kind of vague fear of possible danger, lurking in various objects which may be infected or possibly poisonous.
“This fear has been spreading and has become quite extensive, involving my family, my children, my friends, my acquaintances, and my patients. Usually I ignore these fears, or get control over them by an effort of will. When, however, I happen to be fatigued, or worried over small things in the course of my work, or happen to be in low spirits by petty reversals of life, these fears may become aroused. Under such conditions I may become afraid, for instance, of drinking milk, because it may be tuberculous.
“This fear may spread and involve fear for my children and my patients; or again I may be afraid of eating oysters and other shell fish, because they may be infected with typhoid fever germs. I may refuse to eat mushrooms, because they may be poisonous. The other day I was actually taken sick with nausea and with disposition to vomiting after eating of otherwise good mushrooms. The fear seized on me that they all might be poisonous ‘toadstools.’ Such fears may extend to ever new reactions and to ever new associations, and are possibly the worst feature of the trouble.
“I have a fear of coming in contact with strangers, lest I get infected by them, giving me tuberculosis, influenza, scarlet fever, and so on. This mysophobia involves my children and my friends, inasmuch that I am afraid that strangers may communicate some contagious diseases. A similar fear I have in regard to animals, that they may possibly be infected with rabies, or with glanders, or with some other deadly, pathogenic micro-organism. I am afraid of mosquito bites, lest they give me malaria, or yellow fever. The fears, in the course of their extension, may become ever more intense and more insidious than the original states.
“As a child I had some bad experiences with dogs; I was attacked by dogs and badly bitten. Although this fear is no longer so intense as it was in my childhood, still I know it is present. My heart sometimes comes to a sudden standstill, when I happen to come on a strange dog. When the strange dog growls and barks, all my courage is lost, and I beat an inglorious retreat. It is only in the presence of other people that I can rise to the effort of walking along and apparently paying no attention to the dog. This is because I fear the opinion of others more even than I fear the growls of dogs. My social and moral fears are far greater than my purely physical fears.
“When I became older, about the age of eighteen to twenty, a new form of fear appeared, like a new sprout added to the main trunk, or possibly growing out of the main fear of disease and death, that is the fear of some vague, impending evil. The fear of some terrible accident to myself and more so to my family, or to any of the people of whom I happen to take care, is constantly present in the margin of my consciousness, or as you would put it, in my subconsciousness. Sometimes the fears leave me for a while, sometimes they are very mild, and sometimes again they flare up with an intensity that is truly alarming and uncontrollable. The energy with which those fears become insistent in consciousness, and the motor excitement to which they give rise are really extraordinary. The fear comes like a sudden flood. The energy with which those fears rise into consciousness is often overwhelming.
“Fear gets possession of me under circumstances in which my suspicions are, for some reason or other, aroused to activity, all the more so if the suspicions of possible impending evil are awakened suddenly. In other words, the fears arise with stimulations of associations of threatening danger to myself and to my family. I am afraid that something may happen to my children; I fear that they may fall sick suddenly; I fear that some terrible accident may happen to them; I fear that they may fall down from some place, and be maimed or be killed. I fear that my children and other members of my family may be poisoned by people who are not well disposed towards them. I am afraid that they may pick up some food that was infected, or that they may be infected in school by children who happen to suffer from some infectious maladies. I am afraid that my children may be overrun by some vehicles, by automobiles, or that they may be killed in an accident, that they may be killed by a street car, or even that the house may collapse. This latter event has actually taken place when I was a child. In fact, many, if not all of those fears have actually their origin in my experience.
“As I write you these lines, memories of such events come crowding upon my mind. Are they the noxious seeds that have been planted on the soil of fear? I am afraid sometimes that even the food I and my children as well as other people eat may give rise to toxic products and thus produce disease. Often in the dead of night, I may come to see my children in order to convince myself that they have no fever, and that they are not threatened by any terrible disease. The very words ‘sickness,’ ‘disease,’ ‘not feeling well,’ ‘death,’ arouse my feeling and sometimes throw me into a panic. I am afraid to use such words in connection with any of my children. I am afraid that the evil mentioned may actually happen.
“When a child I learned about testing and omens. If a test comes through in a certain way, it is an omen of good luck, otherwise it means bad luck. This superstitious testing and omens have remained with me, and that in spite of my liberal training and knowledge of the absurdity of such superstitions. I may test by opening the Bible at any page, or I may test by anything that might occur, according to my guesses. All of these fears I know have no meaning for me, they are senseless and absurd, but they are so rooted in my early childhood, they have been so often repeated, they have accumulated round them so much emotion of fear that they come to my mind with a force which is truly irresistible. Many of the fears have multiplied to such an extent that I cannot touch anything without rousing some slumbering fear.
“To continue with my fears; I am often afraid that the doors are not well locked, and I must try them over and over again; I go away and come back again, and try and try again, and once more. It is tiresome, but as the fear is constantly with me, and is born again and again, I cannot be satisfied, and must repeat the whole process over and over until I get tired, and give up the whole affair in sheer despair. In such cases a contrary and different fear comes in handy. One devil banishes another. I am afraid that the gas jet is left open, and I must try it over and over, and test the jets with matches. This process of testing may go on endlessly. The fear remains and the process must begin again until it is stopped by sheer effort of will as something meaningless, automatic, and absurd. The performance must be stopped and substituted by something else.