These were the men whom she chiefly saw in her dreams; these were the shocks which, aggravated by the more recent experiences of a not dissimilar sort with her brother-in-law, were the true determinants of her hysteria—as was proved by the fact that upon psychological disintegration of her subconscious memories of them, a speedy and lasting return to health resulted.
In like manner the seemingly epileptic attacks of a nineteen-year-old New York “street arab” were found to be nothing more than the external manifestation of subconscious memory-images, dating back to early childhood, of nights passed in a dark, damp, terror-inspiring cellar. The sight of the discoloured corpse of a man who had died from cholera left in the mind of a sensitive girl of ten such a painful impression that years afterward, quite unaccountably as it seemed, she developed an abnormal fear of contracting some deadly disease; and had she not fortunately been taken to a skilled medical psychologist (Doctor Pierre Janet) she would almost certainly have ended her days in an asylum. In the case of an over-worked Boston young man, thought to be suffering from “dementia praecox,” it was found that his morbid notion that he had committed an “unpardonable sin” was only a hysterical product of subconsciously remembered fears of childhood. The victim himself eventually recognised this, declaring, in an autobiographical statement made at his physician’s request:
“My abnormal fear certainly originated from doctrines of hell which I heard in early childhood, particularly from a rather ignorant elderly woman who taught Sunday-school. My early religious thought was chiefly concerned with the direful eternity of torture that might be awaiting me if I was not good enough to be saved.”
Whether or no all cases of functional nervous and mental disease are thus rooted in emotional stresses of youth, certainly this is often enough the fact to constitute a serious warning to all who have anything to do with the upbringing of the young. If fears of childhood can persist throughout life and can affect adult development so profoundly as to be causal agents in the production of disease, it is obvious that parents and educators should adopt every means in their power to prevent the growth of unreasonable fears in the little ones in their care. Yet, as matters are to-day, and not least in the home, most children are subject to influences that tend to foster, not inhibit, such fears.
In their presence, as was noted on a previous page, parents often discuss accidents, crimes, sensational doings of all sorts; they betray a fretfulness, an anxiety, an unrest, that cannot but react on the sensitive mind of the child, filling it with fears of it knows not what; they even utilise the fear impulse as a means of coercing the child into good behaviour; and, what is perhaps worst of all, many parents intrust their children to ignorant and superstitious nurses, who take a strange pleasure in “scaring them half to death” with tales of demons, ghosts and goblins.
Fortunately the majority of people, as a result of later training and experience, or by the exercise of will-power, are able to suppress the fears of childhood; but often only at the cost of great mental torture. Not so long ago I received a letter from a Detroit business man, Mr. John J. Mitchell, that may well be quoted in this connection. He wrote:
“As a child, as far back as memory goes, I was ‘afraid of the dark,’ intensely afraid.... At about eleven years of age I got a place in a country store, and perhaps two years later changed to the largest store in town. This concern did a large, old-fashioned country business, buying produce and selling all manner of merchandise in exchange or on credit. This involved the use of two old-time buildings (frame) with three stories each and a cellar under all. Owing to the character of the business and location, there were doors opening to the street and area on each side and rear from every floor, including the cellar, seven or eight in all, and widely apart, besides windows. It was my duty at dusk to see that all these doors were properly closed and barred for the night.... With my childish fear of the dark this daily task was an ordeal—at times a terrible ordeal.
“I never made complaint or confided my fears to a soul. But for some reason, the source of which was, and is, as obscure as my intangible fears, I resolved to cure myself of this terror.... My plan, adopted and unflinchingly carried out, was to compel myself—a slender, timid little kid—to go that round daily, in the shadowy dusk, without a light (which I was privileged to have, a lantern). I can only remember now the pain of dread and unreasoning apprehension, and the resolution to ‘have it over and done with.’
“I cannot now fix the time when it was accomplished, but in the end I was completely cured, so that, at least since my majority, I have not only been relieved of this dread, but I often welcome the folds of darkness (of night), as if wrapped about with a comforting garment. It will be a certain qualification to state that, at very long intervals, and always after some physical or mental strain, I feel momentarily a fear of return of old impressions in ‘uncanny’ surroundings.”
And, beyond any question, no matter how effectually one may suppress such youthful fears, so far as relates to their survival in the upper consciousness, there will always be a subconscious remnant, a buried complex, ready to emerge and work mischief in one way or another. There is a world of truth in Professor Angelo Mosso’s emphatic declaration: