Psychology and parenthood

by H. Addington Bruce

A child with a hysterical tendency—that is to say, an unusually sensitive, impressionable child, of undisciplined will, and quickly overwhelmed by whatever it sees, hears, or feels—is always liable, when brought into contact with a person suffering from any serious ailment of picturesque symptomatology, to manifest in some degree the symptoms of that particular ailment. Or, more commonly, such a child may manifest grave physical disabilities simply as a result of hearing or reading about them.

It does not do this voluntarily; there is no conscious intention to deceive; for the matter of that, the child itself is as much deceived as are its parents and friends. The trouble is that in its state of abnormal suggestibility, it is irresistibly impelled by the strange power of self-suggestion to imitate the symptoms of disease.

Or, instead of simulating disease symptoms, a hysterical child may enter on a course of seemingly deliberate chicanery like that practised by little “poltergeist” Polly Turner, whose case is typical of a species of behaviour indulged in by hysterical children in all countries and all ages. Here, likewise, abnormal suggestibility is in evidence, the resultant hysterical manifestations differing only because the suggestions received and acted on are different.

In cases like Polly Turner’s, it has been found, the hysterical child usually lives with people more or less superstitious and credulous. They are people inclined to attribute to some spiritistic agency any occurrence they cannot easily explain. In this environment the child gradually becomes obsessed—though quite unconsciously—with a desire to provide “marvels” for their edification and mystification, and, yielding to the desire, is soon in full career as a “poltergeist,” the hysterical obsession becoming intensified in proportion as the gullibility of those deceived increases, and also in proportion to the amount of attention paid to the little deceiver.

For—and this is a point to be borne well in mind—it is not alone abnormal suggestibility that characterises the hysterical child. There is also present an abnormal craving to attract attention, to be a centre of interest. Of this craving, as of the deceits carried out to attain its realisation, the child itself is unconscious. But it may be stated with assurance that it invariably exists as a concomitant of hysteria. Ordinarily it is the family and intimate friends whose interest and sympathy the child wishes to arouse, though this is not always the case. There may be special reasons for desiring to impress mere acquaintances, or even absolute strangers. Then we have the odd spectacle of children, like the pupil in the German school, whose hysterical obsessions appear chiefly or only in the presence of outsiders, while the parents remain in partial or total ignorance of them.

And, speaking of this type of hysteria, I may say that I am acquainted with a young New York woman who, since the age of fifteen, has led many an unsuspecting physician a merry dance by reason of her extraordinary hysterical simulations. In early girlhood she began to complain of various ailments, which on examination proved to be of no moment. Not unnaturally her family lost patience with her “whims,” as they called them, and regarded her as a wholly imaginary invalid. Like most people similarly situated, they utterly failed to appreciate that, as has been well said by Doctor Pierre Janet, one of the world’s foremost authorities on hysteria, “When a person is so ill that he says he is ill when he is not ill at all, then he must be very ill indeed.” They scolded the girl, they argued with her; but they made no attempt to give her the treatment she really needed.

What was the consequence? One day she mysteriously disappeared from home, and some time passed before she was located in a hospital, where preparations were making to perform an operation upon her for appendicitis. A little later she wandered off again, and turned up at another hospital with symptoms so closely resembling a tumorous growth that a diagnosis to that effect was made, and an immediate operation advised. Still later an eminent specialist was misled into crediting her with a serious spinal disease.

After this it was decided that she was insane, and the family had her committed to an asylum. Before her release she developed symptoms of ear trouble so pronounced that the dangerous mastoid operation would have been performed had not the superintendent of the asylum been informed of her previous adventures as a hospital visitant.

Manifestly, a disease that both impels and enables its victims to mimic the symptoms of grave organic affections, with such verisimilitude as to deceive even physicians, is an extremely serious affair. And one has only to inquire of doctors with an extensive hospital experience to learn that hysteria, in one form or another, is a widespread trouble among both children and adults. But it is no longer the bugbear of the medical profession that it used to be. Following the discovery of its essentially mental character, methods have been devised and perfected for handling it. Some of these seem absurdly simple, but even the simplest have been proved efficacious, especially in the case of children. Differing in detail, they have one feature in common. They directly attack the hysterical symptoms by the employment of the same agency that was provocative of them—namely, suggestion.

In the case of the boy with the pseudo paralysis, reported above, it was not any therapeutic virtue inherent in the electrical treatment that brought about his rapid restoration to health. It was simply the suggestive efficacy of the way in which the treatment was administered to him. The truth of this, however, may be made clearer by the citation of one or two other cases, that are also of interest as illustrating the ingenious devices by which hysterical attacks in the period of childhood are nowadays overcome.