Acknowledgments
The first drafts of these essays appeared in the Australasian Medical Journal, The Sydney Bulletin, the Australian Home, Art in Australia, and the Australian Forum. They have nearly all been considerably modified with the growth of knowledge and frequent rewriting. I have to thank Miss Kibble, of the New South Wales Public Library, for assisting me immensely in hunting up many authorities from whom I quote. Without her help this book could never have been written.
Glossary
Imperative idea: An idea that, however malapropos it may be, keeps mounting into consciousness.
Obsession: An imperative idea that compels appropriate action.
Phobias: Unconscious fears, often acquired in early infancy, which may ruin a man’s whole life for him. There are many different kinds of “phobia” of which syphilophobia is probably the most common.
These three are all signs of:
Psychasthenia: A weird half-sister of neurasthenia, generally the result of heredity, combined with abnormal education in early youth. In the psychasthenic state the patient may be subject to all manner of imperative ideas, obsessions and phobias. Sometimes he stammers, sometimes he is compelled by his “unconscious” to jerk his limbs about in quaint antics; sometimes he is afflicted with awful doubts and scruples.[1]