Psychotherapy Part 16

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 22--MOTOR CELL OF VENTRAL HORN OF SPINAL CORD FROM THE HUMAN FETUS, THIRTY CENTIMETERS LONG (method of Golgi; after von Lenhossek. Barker.)]

This vital force behind the nervous system contains stores of energy that can be called on for therapeutic purposes. It is the directing, co-ordinating and energizing force which controls the central nervous system, and enables it to accomplish its purposes. It is the disappearance of this force at death which leaves the body without vital activity, though no physical difference between the dead and the living body can be demonstrated. Changes in the body _follow_ death; they are not simultaneous. This vital force supplies the energy that we call the will, and underlies the process called "living on the will" which so often serves to maintain existence when there is every reason to think that a fatal termination is due. The amount of energy thus available is limited, {134} but is much more powerful than has been thought. It is of the greatest possible service in preserving health and eliminating disease. Its existence, demonstrated by the complex nervous system which we employ with such confidence, though we know nothing of it, furnishes the best possible basis for confident attempts at rousing the patient to use the vital energy he possesses for the strengthening of weakness, the correction of deficiency and the control of evil tendencies.

CHAPTER VI

UNCONSCIOUS CEREBRATION

Many of the exhausting neurotic and psycho-neurotic affections so common in recent years are largely due to the failure of patients to secure such mental relaxation as will permit complete repair of nervous waste. We are proud of being a generation of specialists. Some men never get completely away from the set of thoughts with which they are occupied in their particular specialty. Waking or sleeping these thoughts are with them. It is almost impossible, then, for cells of the central nervous system to secure such rest as they need. Cells must be put at absolute rest so that nutritional processes may go on entirely undisturbed, and every portion of the cell be renewed in vigor. Re-creation, in its original meaning, is exactly what must be provided for nerve cells.

The trouble is not alone that men occupy a very narrow set of brain cells with their special interest, and make all their energy pa.s.s through that set, but among men who are lacking in a certain insulation in the nervous system, this particular set of cells continues to be active, even at times when they think they are resting or diverting themselves. Unconscious cerebration (the occupation of the mind with subjects when we are not deliberately giving our attention to them) is a common phenomenon in human psychology. With the rise of extreme specialization, it has become even more dangerous than before. In the past unconscious cerebration might mean any occupation, with any one of a number of interests. At the present it is likely to mean concentration of thought on a particular subject with which the brain is p.r.o.ne to be occupied more than is good for it, even during the hours of ordinary labor. It seems worth while to discuss at some length, then, the subject of unconscious cerebration, because it const.i.tutes the pathological physiology of many nervous states that we see in modern life.

Frequency of Unconscious Cerebration.--The mind, having been set to work over a given thought, continues at it sub-consciously, even while apparently completely occupied with something else. Most people who devote themselves to the intellectual life have experienced phenomena more striking and going much farther in unconscious cerebration than this. Most writers have a common experience: if they arrange their thoughts on a given subject and then turn aside to something else, they find, when they go over the same subject next day, much more material than came the day before. The thoughts for an article will often gradually acc.u.mulate by unconscious cerebration after the process has been consciously started.

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At intervals during the next few days succeeding the determination to write a certain article (at moments when no conscious thought is being given to it), ideas crop up that help to fill out the original scheme of thought, and if these are jotted down, a good deal of intellectual work is accomplished without the necessity for that labor over a desk that most of us scheme to avoid. The more familiar literary work becomes, the more frequent are these experiences, and one occasionally wakes up with a thought that opens up a new vista and adds valuable material to what has already been acc.u.mulated. If the subject is a large one, as for a book, then most writers will probably confess that some of their best thoughts have come in this "hit and miss" fashion rather than at the times when they were seriously applying themselves to elaborating their theme.

Inspiration.--Some of the great literary writers have felt that their brain work was so independent of themselves that the word inspiration properly suited what they were accomplishing. Thackeray destroyed sheet after sheet of ma.n.u.script, utterly dissatisfied with it until, as the result of keeping at it, inspiration would come. Then he would be able to fill up rapidly many pages with work so finished that it needed little correction or polish. George Eliot, at times, became so absorbed in her writing that it almost appeared to her that some other personality than her own was wielding the pen. Her imaginary characters became real to her, and it was while under the stimulus of this impression of living in an imaginative world with them that she succeeded in accomplishing her best work. Many other authors were, of course, very different. Some of them ridiculed the idea of waiting for inspiration. Most of them, however, found it difficult to begin their task at certain times, yet if they forced themselves to it, and once got their minds going, the line of thought ran on easily and, at the close of the task, they looked back with pleasure and wonder that they were able to accomplish so much.

_Ill.u.s.trations_.--This is true not only of literary work, whose main purpose is the arrangement of details of information of various kinds with personal opinions concerning it, but also of original thought of any kind. Many stories of poets are told ill.u.s.trating this. They wander round with pencils and jot down thoughts that come here and there at what are called moments of inspiration. The poets dream over their subjects, catch fleeting thoughts that, vague at first, sing themselves into musical expression. Music seems to be on the same plane with poetry, for there is the well-known story of the distinguished German musician who, walking with his wife in the park, found himself without paper at the moment when he had an inspiration.

He used his own cuffs to write upon, and then finally impressed those of his wife into the service of carrying home the precious musical motifs that he was afraid might not come again if he allowed the favorable moment to pa.s.s without recording them.

There are stories of Tennyson finding some of his most perfect lines in the fields, after hours of seclusion and effort in his study had failed to round them out to his satisfaction, or dreaming them into shape, or waking to find one ready made to be written down. The letters of Wordsworth tell how often such incidents happened in his life.

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SLEEP COMMUNICATIONS

Any one who has been thinking much for several days about a problem is likely to wake up with the thought that he has dreamed a solution of it, though unfortunately the solution has not remained in his memory.

It seems as if a communication has been made to him during sleep. I have discussed dream life with many men engaged in serious work, and practically all of them confess to such experiences. Preoccupation of mind with a subject during the waking hours leads to at least some occupation of mind with the same subject during sleep. This unconscious occupation must often require rather strenuous attention, exhausting nutrition, using up nerve force and hampering the rest that is so important for tired human nature. [Footnote 17]

[Footnote 17: A number of poetic products of dreams are in our literature, some of them interesting for more than their curious origin. Dr. S. Weir Mitch.e.l.l, in his latest volume of poems, "The Comfort of the Hills," made an interesting contribution to the psychology of dreams by publishing two poems which were composed by him while asleep. The little poem, "Which?" has all the curious alliterativeness and frequent rhyme that is so likely to be noted in expressions that come during sleep, or just as we awake. The other is more like a somnambulistic effort. What we might suggest here is that the habit of poetizing during sleep would surely be dangerous to any one less eminently sane than their author. We give them as curious examples that will interest patients who complain that their dreams are too vivid.

APRIL FIRST

Come, let us be the willing fools Of April's earliest day.

And dream we own all pleasant things The years have reft away.

'Tis but to take the poet's wand, A touch or here or there, And I have lost that ancient stoop, And you are young and fair.

Ah, no! The years that gave and took Have left with you and me The wisdom of the widening stream; Trust we the larger sea.

WHICH?

Birth-day or Earth-day, Which the true mirth-day?

Earth-day or birth-day, Which the well-worth day?

For further details on this subject, see the chapter on Dreams.]

Art in Dreams.--Many a painter testifies that as he slept interesting details have been added to his scheme for a picture. Mr. Huntington, who was for so long president of the National Academy, once told me that some of the arrangements of his famous picture, "Mercy's Dream"

in the Corcoran Art Gallery at Washington, had come to him during sleep. Giovanni Dupre, the French sculptor, confessed that the ideas for his beautiful _pieta_ had practically all come to him in a dream.

He had been thinking for a long time how he should arrange it, without allowing any of the ideas of sculptors whose treatment of the subject was well known to influence him too much, and had almost felt that it would be impossible to make anything individual. While deeply occupied with it one day he fell asleep, and when he awoke the whole scheme was clear.

Mathematical Dreams.--Such phenomena of unconscious cerebration are not uncommon in the exact sciences. Some of the best examples of these {137} curious phenomena that we have are to be found in the history of them. We all know the stories of mathematicians who, occupied deeply with a problem which they have been unable to solve, have gone to bed still thinking about it, have slept deeply and, as they thought, dreamlessly, and yet they have waked in the morning to find by the bedside the problem all worked out in their own penciling--all accomplished during a somnambulistic state. Missing factors have been found in dreams; mistakes in the working out of problems have been clearly pointed out in dreams, so that, on awaking, the calculator could at once correct his calculations, and even serious errors have been thus corrected.

Aga.s.siz's Experience.--Some examples of these experiences in other sciences are striking. One that is likely to be impressive because it occurred in the experience of Professor Louis Aga.s.siz, seems worth reporting. [Footnote 18]

[Footnote 18: "Louis Aga.s.siz, His Life and Correspondence,"

edited by Elizabeth Cary Aga.s.siz, Houghton, Mifflin and Co., 1885.]

It is interesting both as psychological fact and as showing how, sleeping and waking, his work was ever present with him. He had been for two weeks striving to decipher the somewhat obscure impression of a fossil fish on the stone slab in which it was preserved. Weary and perplexed he put his work aside at last, and tried to dismiss it from his mind. Shortly after, he waked one night persuaded that while asleep he had seen his fish with all the missing features perfectly restored. But when he tried to hold and make fast the image it escaped him. Nevertheless he went early to the Jardin des Plantes, thinking that on looking anew at the impression he should see something that would put him on the track of his vision. In vain--the blurred record was as blank as ever. The next night he saw the fish again, but with no more satisfactory result. When he woke it disappeared from his memory as before. Hoping that the same experience might be repeated, on the third night he placed a pencil and paper beside his bed before going to sleep. Accordingly toward morning the fish reappeared in his dream, confusedly at first, but at last with such distinctness that he had no longer any doubt as to its zoological characters. Still half dreaming, in perfect darkness, he traced these characters on the sheet of paper at the bedside. In the morning he was surprised to see in his nocturnal sketch features which he thought it impossible the fossil itself should reveal. He hastened to the Jardin des Plantes, and, with his drawing as a guide, succeeded in chiseling away the surface of the stone under which the portions of the fish proved to be hidden. When wholly exposed, it corresponded with his drawing, and his dream, and he succeeded in cla.s.sifying it with ease. He often spoke of this as a good ill.u.s.tration of the well-known fact that when the body is at rest the tired brain will do the work it refused before.

Hilprecht's Sleep Vision.--Quite as surprising a dream was that of Prof. Hilprecht, of the University of Pennsylvania. He had been trying for some time to decipher certain characters on ancient cylinders from the Orient. In spite of much hard mental labor he had been utterly unable to reach definite conclusions. In the midst of work on the subject he dreamt one night that a priest of the olden time appeared to him and read off the inscription that he had in vain been trying to decipher. Immediately after waking he told his wife of his dream and wrote down the interpretation that had thus been given. It was quite different from anything that he himself had obtained any hint of in his previous studies. When he got back to the inscription he found that this interpretation would satisfy the conditions better than any other, and there seemed no doubt that it represented the missing solution.

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Somnambulism.--These curiously vivid dreams are occasionally a.s.sociated with somnambulistic phenomena. Sometimes very definite purposes, requiring careful adaptation of means to ends, are accomplished in the somnambulistic state, and yet the actions are completely forgotten. I have recently been consulted about a case in which a young woman, on a visit to a family, had been shown some pretty though not expensive jewels. Evidently the guest envied their possession, for she got up during sleep and took the jewels and hid them. There seems no reason to doubt her statement that she remembered nothing at all about the incident. The taking was not attributed to her. There had been previous experiences of the same kind with things belonging to this young woman's sister. Somnambulism represents a degree of unconscious cerebration that may have serious results.

Combinations of intellectual work with somnambulism are not infrequent, though many of the stories that are told are exaggerated.

Some of them are authenticated. Ribot has a typical example of intellectual accomplishment, in a somnambulistic condition, that shows how far this may go:

A clear case of somnambulism was that of a clergyman, whom his wife saw rise from bed in his sleep, go to a writing table, and write rapidly for some minutes. This done he returned to bed, and slept on until morning. On awaking, he told her that in a dream he had worked out an argument for a sermon, of which he now retained no recollection whatever. She led him to the writing table, and showed him the written sheet upon which he found his argument worked out in the most satisfactory manner.

PATHOLOGICAL SIGNIFICANCE

Unconscious cerebration is not, then, a trivial matter, and not an unusual experience. It probably occurs in every individual to a much greater extent than he thinks, unless he is engaged in a.n.a.lyzing his mental processes and their ways rather carefully. This const.i.tutes one of the dangers of the intellectual life, which must also be guarded against in business life or in any absorbing occupation. When the mind has become intensely occupied with a subject, it is not easy to relinquish it. Even when we turn to something else, mental activity in the old groove continues to some extent, and so will prevent the rest that is necessary for the repair of tissue. Under these conditions the _re-creation_ that is so important does not take place quite as well as it should, and even sleep does not relieve us from the burden of mental work. Mental exhaustion will result as a consequence of constant occupation, and so mental relaxation must be secured.

Deliberate means and methods must be employed in order that we may not deceive ourselves into thinking we are securing mental recreation, though all the time certain exhausting mental processes continue to be active.

Dual Mental Occupation.--Many are inclined to think that reading, especially the reading of newspapers and magazines, which has become so popular in our time, furnishes an occupation of mind that enables one, for a time at least, to get away from cares and worries. This is probably true when the news is of special interest, or there is some form of excitement, or at the beginning of such reading before one grows accustomed to the usual {139} formula of the magazine stories; but as years go on and cares increase, such reading does not afford an occupation of mind that enables one to throw them off. It helps to pa.s.s the time, but the cares and worries keep insistently presenting themselves, and the effort to inhibit them, and at the same time pay some attention to what we are reading, makes a double task. Such reading, then, far from being restful, rather adds to the burden of care and to the labor of the mind, for besides the conscious cerebration, there is the undercurrent of subconscious cerebration disturbing the rest of cells that should be free from labor. The constant renewal of effort to keep one train of thought from interfering with another is itself a waste of nervous energy. This whole matter of reading is coming to occupy a new place in the minds of educators, especially of those who are trying to realize the scientific significance of various phases of education. In his address as the President of the British a.s.sociation for the Advancement of Science, at the Winnipeg meeting in 1909, Prof. J. J. Thompson, the British physicist, sums up the value of reading as an intellectual exercise in a way that would not be gratifying to those who, in recent years, have apparently accepted the doctrine that in much reading there is much information and, therefore, much education. He says:

It is possible to read books to pa.s.s examinations without the higher qualities of the mind being called into play. Indeed, I doubt if there is any process in which the mind is more quiescent than in reading without interest. I might appeal to the widespread habit of reading in bed as a prevention of insomnia as a proof of this.

Social Duties.--So-called social duties are, in this respect, very like reading. When we meet new people who are interesting, we get diversion of mind in their company. When the people with whom we are, however, already familiar, and perhaps most of them a little tiresome, then what is presumed to be a social diversion becomes merely a bore, all the problems of the day obtrude themselves, of real rest there is none, and re-creation can scarcely be possible. Nearly the same thing is true of the present-day theater, after we have become used to its offerings. A serious play, well constructed and with life's problems touched deeply, may grip us and take us out of ourselves, const.i.tuting a complete and magnificent diversion. For a limited number of people music accomplishes this purpose. Unfortunately, the number is very limited, and for those for whom music is the greatest diversion, it sometimes const.i.tutes in itself a poignant source of mental exhaustion. Music may be a very trying thing, especially for women, and for those who have souls extremely sensitive to its manifold effects.