Psychotherapy Part 10

Cramp Rings.--Scarcely less famous than the king's touch for nutritional and neurotic conditions were the "cramp rings," which were blessed by the Queens of England and were supposed to cure all sorts of cramps. The power attached to them for this form of ailment was similar to that which the king's touch had for scrofula or the king's evil. Cramps seemed to be the "queen's evil." Whenever a queen died there was a great demand for these rings, because no more could be obtained until a new queen was crowned. The efficiency of these and the cures which they performed can be readily understood. Many of the hysterical conditions within the abdomen are cramplike in character.

Hysteria will imitate nearly every form of cramp, including even those due to gallstone and kidney calculus. Any strong mental influence will do more for hysterical pain than our strongest medicines. On the other hand, many of the cramplike conditions within the abdomen may be relieved by concentration of mind on some distracting thought, and feelings of discomfort in the intestines may thus be relieved.

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Mental Healers.--When the king was absent from England during Cromwell's time, the touching for the king's evil was sadly missed. If Cromwell himself had announced that he would touch for the diseases that used to come to the king, a number of cures would undoubtedly have been reported. As it was, Greatrakes, the Irish soldier adventurer, dreamt that he was commissioned from on high to touch for the same diseases as formerly had gone to the king, and, having begun it, cures followed until probably many more came to him every year than usually went to the sovereign in the olden times. He worked at least as great a proportion of cures. Greatrakes had many imitators, some of them doubtless quite sincere, but they were people of more or less deranged intellect, the kind who easily get the idea that they are commissioned for some purpose that sets them above the common people. Indeed, the story of the mental healers is probably, more than anything else, a chapter in the history of insanity, and the power of those with delusions to lead others to share their delusions. This is not a slur upon human nature, and especially upon some of the inspirations and aspirations that lift it up to do great things, but a literal statement of the view of these phenomena that seems forced upon us by modern advances in the knowledge of the psychology of mental influence and of psychic contagion.

Most of the influence that was acquired by men who in the course of history claimed to have a heavenly mission has been due, as with healers heretofore referred to, to reputed cures made by them. Trace the story of this among the Eastern nations in the old time. The pseudo-Messiahs of the Jews always advanced as one evidence their healing power, but so did the founders of religions among all the other nations of antiquity. It must be borne in mind, however, that many of the queer religions of after times were founded by men who claimed to have a Messiahs.h.i.+p, and put forth, as the evidence of a divine commission, their power to cure the afflicted. Sometimes the men who made these claims were good men. In many cases they were apparently self-deceived. Very often, however, they had no claim to goodness in the commonly accepted meaning of that term, for they counseled the violation of moral precepts, made exceptions, for their own benefit, to general laws, and exploited their followers for selfish reasons. Provided their followers had confidence in them, however, they continued to work cures, so that even reasonable people were likely to be led to the thought that there must be something supernatural about their activities. In every century there have been two or three men who have thus secured a following, and apparently healed many diseases.

The phenomena of faith-healing as the result of belief in the heavenly mission of special men, are as common now as at any time. Dr. Cutten in his "Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing" (_Scribners_, 1911) has a chapter on "Healers of the Nineteenth Century," which shows how many phenomena of faith-healing can be studied in recent generations.

Some of the men and the women who are mentioned secured wide reputations throughout our own country.

These faith-healing movements have particularly affected the New England portion of our population, and many of our most prominent healers have been born in the New England States. Wherever the new cults flourished, it is usually found that some of the most prominent members are descendants of {82} the old New Englanders. It has been suggested that this is due to the gradual loss of belief in great religious truths by New Englanders, and a definite tendency toward reaction against this loss of the religious sense, which, as is usual with reactions, easily becomes exaggerated. From lack of belief they jump to excess of belief. Men without trust in Providence find the trials of life hard to bear, and they dread the development of physical ill so much that they exaggerate their feelings, or even create symptoms. Men are happier with the feeling that the supernatural powers surrounding them are interested in them directly and personally, and that somehow things, even in an incomprehensible world, are arranged, if not for the best, at least for such good as makes ills stepping-stones to new benefits. Whenever they are led far away from that thought, there is likely to be an exaggerated reaction back to it. The stronger minded apparently can get on without religion, but to the great ma.s.s of men a strong religious sense is needed to enable them to overcome the lack of self-confidence that is the root of dreads, doubts, difficulties of many kinds, and which is also the source of many symptoms as well as the cause of the exaggeration of many ailments.

As a rule, modern healers have been founders of new religions, or at least they have broken away from old-established sects, and have formed congregations for themselves. They have sprung up in every part of the country. East, North, South, West, and among all the differing nationalities of our population. We cannot console ourselves with the idea that they affect especially the foreigners, for the native-born people have proved to be quite as susceptible to them. These healers have, as a rule, abused the medical profession and the use of drugs, and have taught that disease, if it really existed at all, was from the devil: that what one needed, in order to secure relief from pains and ills, was faith in G.o.d--but always through _them_. Many of these men and women have probably been serious and earnest and have deceived themselves first. Most of them have undoubtedly been more or less disequilibrated, though they have practically all exhibited the power to acc.u.mulate large amounts of money from their followers. The people who have gone to them have not been the ignorant among our population, but particularly those who read the newspapers, and who look upon themselves as well informed. The intelligence of the disciples of these healers, as we ordinarily estimate intelligence, has been a little above the average, rather than below it.

_Schlatter and Dowie._--Probably the most disillusioning phenomena with regard to the complacent idea that the diffusion of information prevents manifestations of superst.i.tion are stories of the healers Schlatter and Dowie. At the end of the nineteenth century both of them attracted widespread attention. Schlatter was probably not quite sane.

He wandered through the deserted portions of the Southwest, hatless, unkempt, with clothing torn and without shoes. In July, 1895, he first attracted attention as a public healer in New Mexico. After a reputed forty-day fast he went to Denver, where people flocked from all parts of the country to him. Files of people formed--sometimes five or six thousand--to be touched, and healed, by him. His reputation was due to the cures that were reported. Dowie was another of these healers. Just at the beginning of the twentieth century he organized a great new church of his own, and announced himself as Elijah, the prophet, returned to life. {83} Nearly 20,000 persons are claimed to have been healed during the first ten years of his healing career. Toward the end of his life he declared that he treated, and cured, over 50,000 a year. An abundance of crutches, canes and every form of surgical appliance for the ailing hung on the walls of his church at Zion City, Chicago, left by people who, having been healed, had no further use for them.

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GENERAL PSYCHOTHERAPEUTICS

SECTION II

_GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS_

CHAPTER I

INFLUENCE OF MIND ON BODY

The power of mind over body for the relief of symptoms has been recognized, not only by physicians, but by the generality of men at all times. Every one has had experiences of aches, or actual pains, or discomfort quite annoying while one is alone, but that disappear while in pleasant company or occupied in some absorbing occupation. Many a headache that was painful enough to disturb us seriously while we tried to apply ourselves to something of little interest, and became almost unbearable if we tried to do something disagreeable, and actually intolerable if the occupation of the moment was a drudgery, disappeared, at least for the time, when we turned to a pleasant game of cards or indulged in some other favorite pastime. Our relief was not, however, from an imaginary ill, for the symptoms usually rea.s.serted themselves when we got through with the pleasant occupation, showing that they have been there all the time and that we have only turned our mind away from them, and hence have ceased to feel them. This is so familiar it seems almost too commonplace to repeat, yet it const.i.tutes the special phenomenon that lies at the base of psychotherapeutics, or the mental healing of physical ills.

It is not alone the slighter, more or less negligible aches or pains, nor the vague discomforts that thus disappear when our attention is occupied, but even quite severe and otherwise unbearable pain may be modified to a great extent. A toothache that is bearable, though it nags at us constantly and never lets us forget its presence while we are occupied with many other things during the evening, may become a positive torture when we get to bed. This is not only because of physical conditions modifying the pain, for there seems no doubt that the warmth induced by the preliminaries for sleep and the bed-covering have a tendency to increase congestion, but it is mainly because as we doze off we are able, less and less, to inhibit our attention, or divert it from the pain that is present, and so this is emphasized until we have to do something for it or lose hours of sleep. This lack of inhibition, which characterizes the dozing hours, represents the state of mind in which people are who have no interest in their occupations, and who have ceased to find recreation in the ordinary pleasures of life, when pain of any kind comes to them.

Cabanis, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, under the t.i.tle of {85} "The Influence of the Moral on the Physical," discusses what we would now call mental influence on the body. He says:

The great influence of what one may call the moral or mental on what may be called the physical is an incontestible fact. Examples without end confirm it every day. Every man capable of making observations finds proofs of it thousands of times in himself. Many physiologists and psychologists as well as moralists, have collected the evidence that brings out clearly this power of the intellectual operations and emotions on the different organs and the diverse functions of the living body. All of us could add new ill.u.s.trations to these collections. Men who are rude and credulous talk of the effect of the imagination, and if they are not themselves its playthings and its victims, at least they know how to observe its effects In others.

As a matter of fact, the action of our organs can be in turn excited, suspended, or totally inhibited, according to the state of mind, the change of ideas, the affections and the emotions.

A vigorous, healthy man has just made a good meal. In the midst of the feeling of satisfaction which diffuses itself over all his body, his food is digested with energy and without any bother. The digestive juices perform their work steadily and without causing any annoyance. But let such a man receive some bad news; let some sudden emotion come to excite him, and especially to shock him into profound sadness, and at once his stomach and intestines cease to act upon the food which they inclose, or they at best perform their functions badly. The digestive juices, by which the food materials were gradually being dissolved, are suddenly stricken with inactivity. What might seem to be a stupor comes over the digestive tract, and while the nervous influence which determines digestion ceases entirely, that which tends to bring about the expulsion of material from the digestive tract may become more active and all the material contained in the digestive viscera may, in a short time, be expelled.

Relief in Severe Injuries.--Even extremely severe injuries, which inflict serious organic lesions that ordinarily would produce shock and collapse, quite apart from the pain induced, may at moments of excitement pa.s.s unnoticed. A soldier often does not know that he is wounded until the flow of blood calls his attention to it, or perhaps a friend points it out to him, or loss of blood causes him to faint.

The prostrating effects of even fatal wounds may thus be overcome for a considerable time in the excitement of battle, or because of a supreme occupation by a surpa.s.sing sense of duty. There is the well-known story of the young corporal detailed to make a report to Napoleon at a very important crisis of one of his great battles, who made the report with such minute accuracy that it called forth a compliment from Bonaparte, for it involved a very special exercise of memory for details, yet who was actually on the verge of death when he delivered the message. As his duty was accomplished the Emperor, noticing his extreme pallor, said: "But you are wounded, my lad." The young soldier replied, as if, now that duty was done, the consciousness of his wound had just come to him, "No, Sire, I am killed," dropping dead at the Emperor's feet as he uttered the words.

In all of the great theater fires examples of this kind are recorded.

A woman who barely escaped with her life from a theater fire some years ago had an ear torn off, very probably by some one grasping it in the crowd. She knew nothing of this until it was called to her attention after she got out of the theater, and then she promptly fainted from the pain and shock. Under such circ.u.mstances men walk with broken legs or limp even with dislocations, utterly unconscious that anything serious has happened to them. Men have been known to be unaware of a broken bone or even more serious conditions, {86} ordinarily quite painful and disabling, while laboring to help others in an accident.

Suppression of Reaction.--This side of the influence of the mind on the body is so interesting that its effects have often been noted and studied. While we do not quite understand the mechanism by which it accomplishes its marvels of anesthesia and even of motility under apparently impossible conditions, there is no doubt that severe pain may utterly fail to reach the consciousness, though the nervous system is uninterruptedly carrying the messages just as it did before. The lack of attention suppresses the ordinary effect upon the personality.

Evidently the messages originate and are carried to the nerve centers, but find no attention available for them, and so pa.s.s unnoticed. The study of phases of this phenomenon of suppression of reaction forms a good basis for the use of mental influence, and shows its marvelous power to overcome disturbing physical factors.

Amputation Stump Aches.--An interesting example of the influence of mind over body, when circ.u.mstances favor its exercise or emphasize it, and at the same time a striking ill.u.s.tration of the potency of suggestion in the cure of discomfort, is found in the stories that are so common of cases of pains in amputation stumps. Any number of weird tales are told of men who complain of feeling cramps in the toes of an amputated limb after this portion of their body had been buried. The discomfort is common enough. In the special stories, however, the limbs have been dug up, the toes straightened out--according to the story, they were always found cramped in some way--and then the patient is at once restored to ease. In the good old times they probably believed in some direct connection between the straightening out of the toes of the amputated member and subsequent relief of pain.

For us it is but an example of the power of suggestion. It is not the sort of suggestion that one likes to think of employing, though it has a certain dramatic quality which adds efficiency to suggestion.

The Mind and Motility.--We have spoken thus far almost exclusively of painful conditions as relieved by suggestion or mental influence, but disturbance of motor function may also be favorably affected. There are any number of cases on record in which patients who had been utterly unable to walk were restored to motility by a shock. Many such patients have, in the midst of the excitement of a fire, or the scare caused by the presence of a burglar, got up and walked quite as well as ever, though sometimes they have been for years previously confined to bed. The San Francisco earthquake is said to have exerted such an effect on a number of patients, and, while such unusual disturbances cannot often be provided for the cure of these ailments, there can be no doubt at all of the power of a shock to the mind to overcome functional incapacity that has resisted every possible form of treatment.

Ailments of this kind, which involve inability of the will to control, or rather to initiate, movements of the body, receive their best explanation on the neuron or neuroglia theory. (See the chapter on the Mechanism of Suggestion.) The central neurons become either quite separated from certain of the peripheral neurons, or at least the connections are not made with that nice adjustment necessary for the proper pa.s.sage of nerve impulses. The shock communicated to the nervous system by fright is sufficient, however, to restore these connections, and consequently to enable the patient once more to exercise motor functions that have been in abeyance for some time.

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_Astasia-abasia._--Any one who has had to deal with the cases for which the French have invented the rather impressive Greek name of astasia-abasia--how much better it would be to call the condition simply what we know it to be, nervous inability to stand or walk!--appreciates how almost a miracle is needed to improve them. The incapacity for station or movement to which the disease owes its name is so complete in many cases, and the patients' lack of confidence in self so absolute, that no ordinary remedial measure is capable of doing any good. These cases are usually a severe trial to the patients' friends. Indeed, the patients themselves maintain their nutrition so well and, as a rule, enjoy such good health, or, as has been said, enjoy their bad health so well, that it is for their attendants the physician feels most commiseration. Yet generally he is quite unable to do anything. It is certain, however, that with care and authoritative suggestion there would not need to be an earthquake, or a fire, or even a burglary, as a therapeutic measure in these cases. As a matter of fact, their cure when it occurs is always brought about by some strong mental influence.

Mental Influence on Organs.--_The Heart_.--The influence of mind can be noted on practically every organ of the body in a concrete way. It might be thought that the heart, the first living thing in the animal being, the pulsations of which begin before there is any sign of the nervous system, might be free from this influence. On the contrary, the heart is so readily affected by mental states that, taking effect for cause, the old popular, and even scientific idea with regard to it, was that it was the organ of the emotions. The heart is stimulated more by favoring circ.u.mstances, and suffers more from depression, than almost any other organ. In the melancholic states it usually beats less frequently and is sluggish. When individuals are tired out and the heart has become weakened in its action, new courage will first be noted as having its effect upon the heart action. As the whole muscular system is much influenced by the mental state and, as the control of the arterial system depends on the muscles in the arteries, it is easy to understand how much the general bodily condition may by mental influence be modified for good and ill.

_Digestive Tract_.--The stomach and intestines, though their functions might be presumed to be dependent entirely on physical conditions, are almost completely under the control of the mental state. At moments of depression, just after bad news has been received, the appet.i.te is absent, or is very slight and digestion itself proceeds slowly and unsatisfactorily. On the other hand, when there is mental good feeling appet.i.te is vigorous and digestion is usually quite capable of disposing of all that is eaten. If after a period of rejoicing in the midst of which food is taken abundantly bad news is brought, the mental influence on digestion can be seen very well. It is not alone that depression interferes with digestive processes, but apparently some favorable factors for digestion consequent upon the previous state of mind are withdrawn, and now what would have been a proper amount of food proves to be an excess and the digestive organs find it difficult to deal with it..

Nervous Inhibition.--The mind can actually inhibit certain of the involuntary processes of the body by thinking about them, and, above all, by dwelling on the thought that they are going wrong. This becomes easier to understand when we recall how, in the same way, we may disturb many habitual and more or less unconscious actions that we have grown accustomed to. There {88} are any number of actions requiring careful attention to details which become so habitual that we do not have to think of them at all. Not infrequently it happens when we try to explain to others how we do them, we disturb the facility of performance and have to repeat the acts several times before we succeed in performing successfully what a moment before we did without any thought. The story of the centipede who was asked how he walked with all his hundred legs, and who tried to describe how easy it was and got so mixed up that he was unable to move at all, is a whimsical symbol of conscious attention disturbing actions which go on quite well of themselves if only we do not allow ourselves to think consciously of each and every phase of them.

How much the mind may influence the body under certain conditions when trance-like states either a.s.sert themselves or are brought on, has often been noted. Lombroso in his book "After Death What?" [Footnote 11] says of Eusapia Paladino the "medium," that "when she is about to enter the trance state the frequency of the respiratory movements is lessened just as is the case with the Indian fakirs. Before the trance she will have been breathing eighteen to twenty times a minute; as the trance begins the number of respirations is gradually reduced to fifteen; when the trance is fully developed she breathes twelve times a minute or less. On the other hand, at the same time the heart beats increase. Normally her pulse is about seventy, but during the early trance stage it rises to ninety, while during the course of a deep trance, it may go as high even as one hundred and twenty. The pa.s.sing from a more or less rigid state to that of active somnambulism is marked by yawns and sobs and spontaneous perspiration on the forehead." The observation of these phenomena is, of course, entirely apart from any theory one may hold with regard to mediumistic manifestations, and it provides evidence of mental influence that is very striking.

[Footnote 11: Small, Maynard & Co.. Boston, 1909.]

Imaginary Drug Effects.--Drug effects may be produced through the imagination. Physicians know that when patients are persuaded that certain effects are to be expected from a particular medicine, the effects may follow all the same in sensitive, imaginative people, if that medicine is replaced by some inert compound. Many a physician who has used bread pills or other placebos to replace a drug that he did not want the patient to acquire a habit for, has thus been able to allow good effects to go on without interruption, where the stoppage of medicine had previously interfered with the continuance of the good habit that had been formed. Very few physicians have not seen the effect of a hypodermic of pure water when a hypodermic of morphine is demanded, and when the patient would not sleep without having the hypodermic injection. Sleeping powders of various kinds can sometimes with distinct advantage be replaced by inert materials, because the patient's mind is fixed upon the idea of sleep coming after a certain time and they, in consequence, compose themselves to rest.

The Nerves and Tissues.--Cases occur where disturbances of vitality are noted as a consequence of nervous affections, though no gross lesion of the nervous system is demonstrated. Certain nervous people suffer from ulcerative conditions of their hands, and it is evident that in some the nervous impulses {89} that would ordinarily keep the skin surface in good, healthy condition are insufficient. Some people who use a typewriter have no difficulty at all with the ends of their fingers, while others are subject even to loss of skin or ulcerative conditions that make it almost impossible for them to go on with their work. In some this is true in the winter, in others in the summer.

There are a number of skin conditions which are due to nervous factors and these evidently point to the influence of the central nervous system in keeping the forces of our body in such health, and resistive vitality, as will enable us to carry on whatever work we may wish to.

This is, of course, a very individual matter. Some people chap very easily, some suffer from chilblains, or are frost-bitten even on slight exposure, and these peculiarities are evidently dependent on the intensity of the nervous impulses as well as the tone of the circulation, which itself depends on the nerves to a great extent.

It is evident that some of these disturbances are not enduring, but are only temporary and therefore are due to functional disturbances of the nervous system. Physicians often see hysterical patients suffering from intense pain that requires an injection of morphine, yet after a series of such incidents, the physician is able to give an injection of plain water and produce just as good an anodyne effect. In these cases some influence of the will is enough to correct the painful disturbances. Occasionally a single member loses sensation, or motion, or both, yet the fact that its nutrition does not suffer shows that there is only disturbance in the motor connections between it and the central nervous system and not in the sensory nor trophic tracts, and that this functional defect may be restored by some favorable influence.

_Nerve Supply and Health_.--We know now that when a part of the body is cut off from its connections with the central nervous system, it begins at once to be lowered in vitality and gradually tends to dissolution. This will be true in spite of the fact that the circulation continues as actively as before. It is not necessary, indeed, that the nerve trunk to a part should be cut, if it is sufficiently compressed its function is stopped and various disturbances begin to appear in the vitality of the part which it supplies. A typical example is to be seen in certain fractures of the clavicle, where a fragment presses on one of the nerves leading to the arm. After a time pains develop in the arm, a burning feeling is noticed in the skin, which becomes s.h.i.+ny and cold and of distinctly lowered vitality. Even a slight injury to the arm will now produce a serious ulcerative condition. There are evidently important influences for life that flow down through the nerves from the central nervous system, quite as important in their way as the nutritional elements which flow through the blood.

How these influences of the mind on the body are accomplished is a portion of that larger mystery of the influence of mind, or soul, or principle of life, on the material elements of which our body is composed. Why a man receives a shock of lightning or a charge of electricity at high voltage, and without a mark on his body or a change in any cell that we can make out, be dead, though he was living an instant before, is another of these mysteries too familiar for discussion. There is no change in the weight of the body, nothing physical has happened, but what was living matter with the power to accomplish the functions of living things is now simply dead material, unable to resist the invasion of saprophytic micro-organisms which will at once, {90} unhampered, proceed to tear it down, though the preceding moment resistive vitality was completely victorious. The mystery remains, but the mechanism of the influence can now at least be studied with much more satisfaction than was the case a few years ago.