3. Clinically the periodic recurrence of such complexes is an obsession. An obsession as met with is most likely to be characterized by fear not only because the instinct of fear is the most painful of the emotions, but for another reason. Although biologically fear is useful as a defense for the preservation of the individual, when perverted by useless associations it becomes harmful, in that it is not only painful but prevents the adjustment of the individual to his environment and thereby takes on a pathological taint. Complexes with other emotions are less likely to be harmful and therefore less frequently apply for relief. Yet imperative ideas with jealousy, anger, hatred, love, disgust, etc., centered about an object are exceedingly common though their possessors less often resort to a physician.
From another point of view abnormal complexes, represented by these examples, may be regarded as “association psychoses.” Sometimes the physiological bodily accompaniments form the greater part of the complex which is for the most part made up of physiological disturbances (vasomotor, cardiac, gastric, respiratory, secretory, muscular, etc.); almost pure association neuroses they then become. Neuroses of this kind we shall consider in a later lecture.[[143]]
Sometimes, particularly in people of intensive temperaments, “imperative ideas” are formed by gradual evolution in consequence of the mind constantly dwelling with emotional intensity on certain phases of thought—i.e., through repetition. This we see in the development of religious complexes or faiths, but it is also obtrusive in other fields of thought, political, industrial, social, etc. Hence the evolution of fanatics. A. D. is a man of strong feeling and great imagination. As a child he was a constant witness of quarrels between his father and mother. His mind dwelt upon these experiences and there developed in him at an early date strong aversions toward marriage. Aversion means the instinct of repulsion or disgust. This instinct therefore became systematized with the idea of marriage as its object forming an intense sentiment of aversion. Even as a boy the aversion impelled him to determine never to marry and later he formed strong theoretical anti-matrimonial views which became almost a religion. For years he talked about his views, argued and preached about them like a fanatic to his friends. His aversion rose in successful conflict against every temptation to matrimony and his anti-matrimonial complex became an obsession. The consequences were what might have been expected when, later in life, he allowed himself in a moment of sympathetic weakness and owing to compromising situations to slip within the matrimonial noose. The complex then, like that of Voltaire’s orange rind, would not down at his own bidding, or at that of his devoted spouse for whom he had, in other respects, a strong affection mingled with personal admiration. The resulting situation can be imagined.
4[4]. Hysterical attacks. It is of practical importance to note another part which emotional complexes may play in psychopathology. In certain pathological conditions in which there is limitation of the field of consciousness (involving a disappearance of a large part of the normal mental life) often all that persists of consciousness and represents the personal self is the obsessing complex which previously tormented the patient. In hysterical crises, psycholeptic attacks, trance, and certain types of epilepsy this is peculiarly the case. In these states the content of consciousness consists almost wholly, or at least largely, of a recurrent memory of an experience which originated in the normal life and which has been conserved in the unconscious. Here the obsessing ideas, which at one time were voluntarily entertained by the subject, or, as frequently happens, originated in some emotional experience, automatically recur, while the remainder of the conscious life becomes dissociated and suppressed; in other words the obsessing ideas emerge out of the unconscious (neurograms) and became substantially the whole conscious field. In hysterical attacks, particularly, the complex is accompanied by the same strong emotional tone—such as fear, anxiety, jealousy, or anger—which belonged to the original experience. In such pathological subjects, whenever the complex is awakened, the remainder of the conscious field tends to become dissociated and the psychological state to be reproduced. Hence, in such states, the ideas repeat themselves over and over again with the recurrence of the attacks. The subject lives over again as in a dream the original attack, which is a stereotyped revivification of the original experience. This peculiarity of the mental condition in attacks has been described by various writers. The dream of the hystero-epileptic is substantially always the same. Janet has accurately described the origin and rôle of the fixed ideas in the hysterical attack. “These ideas,” he says, “are not conceived, invented at the moment; they formulate themselves; they are only repetitions. Thus, the most important of the hallucinations which harassed Marcelle during her cloud-attack was but the exact reproduction of a scene which had taken place the previous year. The fixed ideas of dying, of not eating, are the reproduction of certain desperate resolutions taken some years ago. Formerly these ideas had some sense, were more or less well connected with a motive. A desperate love affair had been the cause of her attempts at suicide; she refused to eat in order to let herself die of hunger, etc. To-day these ideas are again reproduced, but without connection and without reason. She has, we convinced ourselves, completely forgotten her old despair, and has not the least wish to die. The idea of suicide comes to her to-day without any relation to her present situation, and she is in despair at the idea of this suicide which imposes itself on her as a relic of her past, so to say. She does not know why she refuses to eat; the ideas of suicide and refusal of food are dissociated. The one exists without the other. At one moment she hears the voice, ‘Do not eat,’ and yet she has no thought of death; at another, she thinks of killing herself and yet she accepts nourishment. We always find in fixed ideas this characteristic of automatic repetition of the past without connection[connection], without actual logic.”[[144]]
When certain emotional and distressing ideas of wounded love are awakened in M. C., an hysteric, she is thrown into an hysterical attack in which these ideas recur over and over again and dominate consciousness. In P. M., another hysteric, ideas of loneliness and jealousy, which had previously been entertained but which had been thrust out of her mind again and again in a conscientious struggle with her moral nature, recur, emerge from the unconscious and dominate the field of consciousness in each hysterical attack which they induce.
6. In the psycholeptic, a variant of the hysteric, the same sensations, motor phenomena, and hallucinations, and the same bizarre ideas—whatever the symptomatic phenomena—characterize each attack. This could be shown experimentally in M——l.[[145]]
Of course the degree of dissociation of consciousness, the content of the fixed idea, and the physiological manifestations vary in individual cases, according to the nature of the case. Sometimes the disturbance of consciousness is slight and the physiological manifestations predominant.
From a consideration of all the facts we see that a conserved complex associated with strong feeling tones may play a disastrous and pathological part in certain individuals.
It is well to bear in mind here, as before, that in these statements we are only giving a literal description of the psychological events without attempt to form any theory of the mechanism of the processes, or the antecedent psychogenetic factors which lead to the development of the particular fixed ideas or complexes. About this there may be and is a difference of view.
Systematized Complexes. In contrast with the limited group of fixed ideas, organized with one or more emotions (i.e., instincts) I have been describing, are the large systems of complexes or associated experiences which become organized and fairly distinctly differentiated in the course of the development of every one’s personality. In many, at least, of these systems there will be found a predominant emotion and certain instinctive tendencies, and a predominant feeling tone—of pleasure or pain, of exaltation or depression, etc. It is quite possible that careful investigation would disclose that it is this conflicting affective force which is responsible for the differentiation of one system from another with opposing affects and tendencies. The differentiation of such systematized complexes is of considerable practical importance for normal and abnormal personality. Among such systems may here be mentioned those which are related to certain subjects or departments of human experience, or are related in time, or to certain dispositions or moods of the individual. The first may be called subject systems, the second chronological systems, and the last mood systems.