We are now engaged in investigating this subliminal consciousness, or unconscious mind, with every means at our disposal, and year by year we are making headway. Our progress is not adequate, perhaps, to satisfy the impatient and the impulsive, but with each succeeding decade there is a distinct achievement. Nevertheless, in the half-century during which we have been working at the matter in a methodical—perhaps one might almost say a scientific—way, we have discovered things about the mind which are truly epoch-making.
It is evident that the writer of the article, “Up from Insanity,” has never been insane. He is a psychopathic individual who has had distressing episodes. At times these episodes have parallelled with considerable closeness the features of definite mental diseases such as manic depressive insanity, at other times they seem to have resembled the features of dementia præcox; but he never was the victim of either one. He inherited an unstable nervous system which displayed itself in youth as a shut-in, markedly sensitive, anti-social personality. Like the majority of individuals so burdened, he was subject to periods of excitation, at which times he did things at top speed. Neurologists call this a “hypo-manic state,” that is, a state that resembles mania in miniature. Such states would be followed by periods of inadequacy, of retardation of mental and physical activity, and of depression.
After a severe attack which he suffered when he was twenty-one, he had what is called in polite circles a “nervous breakdown,” the chief symptoms being abortive delusions of reference. He thought that certain parts of his body had changed so materially that it was necessary to hide them from the gaze of onlookers. It made him sick to look at his own face. He had to wear coloured glasses in order that others might not read his secret from his eyes, and his sense of relationship with everything constituting the external world was disordered disagreeably. Accompanying this there were a series of symptoms which constitute “feeling badly,” and all the functions of the body that were concerned with nutrition were disordered, so that he became weak and lost flesh. Oftentimes his depression of spirits was so great that he convinced himself he wanted to die, but he did not embrace a good opportunity to accomplish this end when it was offered to him. In fact, he struggled so valiantly with the run-away horse that he checked him and “slid from his back ingloriously,” physically exhausted. It would be interesting to know why sliding off the back of a horse who has run away and whose frenzy has been subdued by the rider should be an inglorious dismounting. Of course it might be more glorious to tame him to such a degree that his master could stand upon his back and direct his capriciousness with a glance or a silken cord, but surely there is nothing inglorious about any kind of dismount from the back of a horse who has been transformed from a gentle to a wild animal.
Nevertheless, the experience was a beneficial one. When he reviewed his prowess he realised that he had imposed his will-power, mediated by muscle, upon the animal, and it occurred to him, a victim of aboulia like the majority of psychopathic individuals, that to impose a similar will-power upon himself would be a salutary procedure. With this discernment came other revelations. One was that he had always been lacking in concentration and was easily distracted—psychopathic hallmarks which can be effaced to a remarkable degree, in many instances, by training. The first fruit of his labour in this direction was the discovery that Dr. Cook had been understudying Ananias, Munchausen, et al.
In another part of his article he says, with consummate familiarity, “You are from Missouri when it comes to asking you to accept new thoughts.” He may be assured that one of his readers is not. New thoughts are as acceptable to this reader as breath to his nostrils; but he would claim citizenship in that State if asked to accept it as an indication of perspicacity to have discovered that Dr. Cook was a fake.
Despite the fact that the writer of the article had “developed the sixth sense to a startling degree,” which assured him success as a journalist, he was chafing under his impotencies when he met a former medium who “had given up that life since her marriage.” Unlike the celebrated specialist's wife, who was the most beautiful creature he had ever seen up to the time he met his own wife, this one was “the most insignificant little woman I ever saw.” Whether it was her experience gained as a medium, or as the wife of a rich lumberman of the Middle West, that prompted her to shy the alleged lunatic, fearing he would bore her with a narrative of his troubles, or whether she did not want to rake up her past, cannot be gathered from the meagre narrative. However, he got from her this nugget of wisdom:
“To be really successful you must get in touch with the great reservoir of experience.”
From “one of the country's greatest physicians,” the like of which are his personal friends, he got a paraphrase of the Scripture:
“Learn a lesson from the flowers of the field, be humble and modest, be natural and play a man's part.”
It was then that calm repose settled upon him, and his nervous energy returned to the old channels and nourished him.