Fear has played an important rôle in the development of the antipathies of the great—fear that was often groundless in its origin and inexplicable in its manifestation. The unaccountable fear of dogs is not so common as ailurophobia, although it is said that De Musset cordially detested them, and Goethe despised them, notwithstanding, forsooth, he kept a tame snake. Much more frequent is the fear of spiders, centipedes, and other insects. Charles Kingsley, thorough naturalist though he was, entertained an unconquerable horror of spiders, even the common house spider; Turenne became weak when he saw a spider; while the author of the "Turkish Spy" once asserted that he would far prefer, with sword in hand, "to face a lion in his desert lair than to have a spider crawl over him in the dark." Lord Lauderdale, on the contrary, while declaring that the mewing of a cat was "sweeter to him than any music," had a most intense dislike for the flute and the bag-pipe; and Dr. Johnson was so fond of his cats that he would personally buy oysters for them, his servants being too proud to do so.
There are curious contradictions to be found in these matters. Montaigne confesses that he did his best writing and was in the best humor for keeping at his Essays while stroking his favorite cat with his left hand, his other being occupied with his writing. This would be seriously disturbing to many people, but apparently occupied certain distracting sensory tendencies and enabled him to concentrate his mental energies. To many people the very thought of doing anything like this would put all ideas for writing out of their mind. Other of Montaigne's peculiarities are quite as interesting. He always refused to sit down with thirteen at table, his liking for odd numbers was so great that he made all sorts of excuses in order not to use [{625}] even numbers and his aversion for Friday made the quota of work that he could do on that day much less than any other day of the week.
OBSESSIONS
There are many curious obsessions that disturb people and that are often extremely difficult of explanation even by themselves. Dr. Johnson, one of the most sensible men in many ways in his time in England, could not, it is said, pass a post on the street without touching it. At least if he did so he felt that somehow he had omitted to do something that he ought to have done and it would make him uncomfortable. There are many people who have some idea that it is lucky to touch posts as they pass along and the number of people who do things like this is larger than might be imagined. Many people put themselves out of the way in order to avoid letting a post come between the person with whom they are walking and themselves because it is said to be unlucky. Most of them will laugh at it, but still they continue the practice in spite of the bother it may occasion them. Occasionally there is some incident in their past life which accounts for such obsessions, though the patients themselves are occasionally not quite conscious of them. Dr. Boris Sidis tells the story of a man who could not take a car with an odd number. Psycho-analysis showed that he had once seen a child run down by an odd-numbered car.
In such cases there has been a long series of suggestions that have created a dominant state of mind. The only way to overcome this when it becomes a serious annoyance is to undo the influence of the suggestions by a continued series of counter-suggestions, and by such discipline of mind as will prevent the former suggestion from exerting itself. The cure can be accomplished in this way, though, as a rule, the patient will need the help of someone else.
FORGOTTEN FRIGHTS AND DREADS
Dreads founded on terrifying or seriously disturbing incidents of the past, the details of which at times have gone out of the patient's mind, are not infrequent. It is probable that many of the unreasoning dreads have some such foundation and occasionally, if patients' memories are carefully searched, the whole story can be reconstructed. All that is needed, as a rule, is to get the patients interested in conjunction with the physician in tracing the origin of their affliction and not infrequently an interesting story will turn up. Hypnosis used to be considered of great value for such reconstructions, but unfortunately patients then become so suggestible that it is often difficult to decide how much of what is brought out by questioning is due to the suggestive quality that cannot well be kept out of questions, and how much to a true redintegration of memory.
Frights in children may for a time be forgotten and yet the memory of them may come back, or a dread connected with them develop, that will make the patient profoundly miserable. One of my patients slipped and fell on a smooth steel plate at the head of a coal breaker and was only saved by good fortune from falling a long distance. This happened when he was a [{626}] boy of ten. There were times when the memory of this recurred so vividly as to set him all atremble and he could not look down from a height without something of the feeling of goneness coming over him that he felt at the time of the accident. The calling of his attention to the fact that his memory probably exaggerated the danger he had been in as a boy led him to go back and have another look at the conditions in which he had fallen some thirty years before. He found that they were not so dangerous as he thought and that while he would have been scratched and his clothes would probably have been soiled and torn, he would not have been seriously injured. This has greatly diminished his dread of heights.
Various physical manifestations may be due to dreads which are often supposed to be the result of some physical process in the nervous system. Occasional fits of trembling, for instance, are, in sensitive people, due to more or less forgotten memories of dangers or frights. Occasionally even slight convulsive seizures may follow such recurrent dreads. Not a few of the cases of so-called hystero-epilepsy in the borderland between hysteria and epilepsy but always one or the other, are due to such mental states rather than to any physical conditions. Such incomplete memories are sometimes spoken of as subconscious. The word subconscious has been so much abused, however, that I prefer not to use it. The reminiscences have been obscured by an accumulation of other facts but may with an effort of attention and concentration of mind be recalled. Hypnosis, or the milder form of it spoken of as the hypnoidal state, may enable the patient to recall them more vividly by enabling him to concentrate his attention, but there are always risks that suggestion will vitiate the old story in these cases. With care all the details can usually be recalled and the patient is thus given renewed confidence in himself and his own powers and does not learn to lean on someone else in the process.