Psychotherapy Part 26

Heart Training.--In recent years we have learned that training is not only good for the external muscles and enables them to do more work without discomfort, but that it is particularly beneficial to the heart muscle whenever that organ can respond to it favorably. At all of the heart cures in recent years, exercise of some kind or another is one of the important features and the failure of physicians generally to secure as good results while pursuing all the other methods followed at these cures, seems to show that exercise was probably the most important factor. Nauheim is the typical heart cure and there, besides the resisted movements in the bath, there is the graduated exercise of the walks around the town, all of which, owing to the situation, lead up hill. Walking up hill, even though it be a gradual ascent, might seem to be the worst possible exercise for heart patients, yet it proves eminently beneficial.

Respiratory Training.--Shortness of breath is often a bothersome symptom, especially for stout people, and prevents them from taking necessary exercise. When it cannot be traced directly to some affection of the heart or of the circulatory apparatus, it is usually due to lack of exercise. Much can be done for it by deliberate training. In the modern time, with elevators so common, people seldom have to walk up-stairs, and consequently one of the modes of exercise that was particularly likely to furnish some training in deep breathing is absent. Any one who has seen the shallow breathing of many of the patients who come to Nauheim and how much it has improved by the gradually increased walks up the hills around the valley, will appreciate how much training in deep breathing means. This exercise of the diaphragm will often give benefit besides in making the bowels more regular, and in getting rid of the acc.u.mulation of fat in the abdomen, which is one of the mechanical causes of the interference with the diaphragm and consequent shortness of breath.

Training the Appet.i.te.--Just as training may be used for the sensory and motor systems that are external, so it may also be used for many internal functions a.n.a.logous to these. There are a great many people who eat too little. They are the nervous, irritable persons with no fund of reserve energy to draw on when anything happens, and who are in their years before middle life likely to be the victims of infectious disease. They suffer much from lack of proper covering in the winter time and from a certain protection that is afforded to the nervous system generally by being up to weight. Often their under-weight is a life-story, and occasionally it is a family matter.

When {217} they suffer from neurotic symptoms a gain in weight nearly always does them good. They complain that when they increase their diet they have uncomfortable feelings. This is only what is to be expected, since the muscularis of their stomach--much more important than its secretory function--has not been accustomed to as much exercise as is now being demanded of it.

On the other hand, for those who are over-weight, training in eating less is the one important therapeutic factor. If their diet is cut down suddenly, they soon become discouraged. If there is a gradual reduction of food quant.i.ties, variety being allowed, so that they may eat practically everything they have been eating before, the system gradually accommodates itself to less and less food. This is the only sensible way of bringing about reduction in weight. It requires constant attention over a long period, but it can be done with excellent success.

In the same way the bowels may be trained to perform their work regularly. Habit means probably more with them than any other factor.

Our digestive tract, however, is largely dependent on habit. We get hungry three times a day or twice a day, according to the custom that we have established. Countries differ radically in the matter, and nearly always, when a man goes from one country to another in early years, he changes to the habits of the new country, though if he comes after middle age he usually clings to those that he is used to.

Training to Stand Pain.--There are many painful conditions, especially involving the muscles in the neighborhood of joints, that are worse on rainy days and are spoken of as rheumatism, that can be very much improved by training in the use of muscles. As men grow older and gain in weight, the lack of exercise in their sedentary lives incapacitates their muscles for activities of many kinds. The consequence is that where most strain is put upon them, in the neighborhood of joints, they readily become tender and painful. It is this cla.s.s of cases particularly that is benefited by irregular pract.i.tioners of all kinds. Mental healing, osteopathy, Eddyism, the many liniments, rubbings and manipulations prove beneficial. What is needed is training in the use of muscles so as to enable them to do the work that is required of them without discomforting reaction. This is particularly true for the leg and foot muscles. Exercises that strengthen the muscles of the calf and of the thigh, and particularly such as require free movement of the foot, are almost sure to relieve these patients of many annoying symptoms. Pains around the ankles and in the knee and hip, worse in rainy weather, disappear as a consequence of such gradually increased use of these muscles as gives them increased nutrition and power. This subject is discussed more fully under Foot Troubles and Painful Conditions of the Knee.

There may be a training in bearing discomfort which is of great value to over-sensitive patients. Some nervous patients seem to suffer merely from their ordinary physiological functions. These are the patients who abuse the drugs that are supposed to bring relief. There is just one mode of treatment that is successful with them: they must be told to bear their discomfort for a while without seeking drug relief, but always securing freedom from discomfort by means of attention to other things, until gradually they have succeeded in diverting their minds from the concentration of attention on their functions which is causing their disturbance. The whole programme {218} need not be outlined to them or they will perhaps have a revulsion of feeling against it that will make its accomplishment impossible. They can, however, be made to stand their discomforts for a time with the promise that it is for the best, since there will be eventually an improvement.

Intellectual Faculties.--Nearly every one of our faculties can be trained to do much better work than we have any idea of if we only are willing to take the trouble and give the attention. I have often shown people who came complaining of loss of memory that if they wanted to train themselves to remember they could do so. The memory probably cannot be bettered any more than can the sense of touch in the blind man, but by attention to minute details, in the concentration of the mind on certain subjects, it can accomplish results that seemed quite impossible before. All systems of improving the memory are founded on this method of concentrating attention on what one wishes to remember and connecting it with other things that we know by experience are readily remembered.

CHAPTER V

OCCUPATION OF MIND

Two cla.s.ses of patients frequently apply to physicians for relief from various discomforts. They are, first, people who have no regular occupation and who often are in what is supposed to be the happy position of being able to do just what they please. The second cla.s.s consists of those who take their occupations too seriously, so that they never get away from them and, as a consequence, disturb their physical functions. The feelings that these two cla.s.ses complain of--for, when a.n.a.lyzed, their symptoms prove really to be uncomfortable feelings--can usually be "bothered" away and, if not entirely forgotten, made to disappear when the patients become deeply interested in something other than their usual occupation. The first cla.s.s of patients needs occupation of mind; the second needs diversion of mind, and that subject will be taken up in another chapter.

Uncomfortable Sensations, Their Location and Causes.--These pains and aches, as patients call them, though it is well to remember that they are only discomforts, senses of unequal pressure, of constriction, or perhaps only unusual feelings, or consciousness of sensation, may occur in every part of the body. Perhaps they are most commonly complained of in the head. Many of the so-called headaches that are more or less continuous consist of these senses of pressure or of constriction over a particular part of the skull. Sometimes there may be a sense of pressure at the back of the eyes. Very often there is a feeling of heaviness at the back of the head that makes the patient feel as if relief would come if the head were allowed to drop forward and if sleep could be thus obtained. Every other portion of the head, however, even within the cavities, may have some of these uncomfortable sensations. In some persons, there is a tightness in the throat. In others, there is a feeling of fullness of one cheek and the dread that they may not be able to use it properly in talking.

Sometimes the uncomfortable feeling is within the nose. Not infrequently the discomfort is in the ear.

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All of these may be due to local conditions which need to be corrected, but in most cases nothing is found locally, or at most there is some functional disturbance so slight that, though it is shared by a great many people in our climate, others do not complain of it at all. It seems evident, therefore, that the discomfort must result from the sensitiveness of the individual emphasizing the significance of some slight disturbance.

Every portion of the body may suffer from these discomforts. The upper part of the back, especially below the base of the neck, is a favorite location in men, and particularly in those who bend over a desk. The lower part of the back is affected in such men as tailors and cutters who stoop incessantly at their work. In women, the lower part of the back is likely to suffer, and this is usually attributed to genital conditions, but constipation may play quite as large a role as the genital organs. Some of the stooping occupations of women, at the sewing machine or dressmaking, or even harder occupations, as sweeping, washing, and the like, may also be responsible. The commonest source of discomfort is, perhaps, the upper left-hand quadrant of the abdomen. This seems to be due to the distention of the stomach, either by gas or by liquid. Vague discomforts may occur around the umbilicus, often due to the presence of gas, with or without borborygmi.

Generally the local condition is only an occasion, and the real cause of the complaint is the lack of occupation of mind and consequent concentration of attention on any organ whose function happens to be disturbed sufficiently to make one conscious of its action.

_Lack of Occupation_.--For all of these cases the most important therapeutic factor is occupation of mind and diversion of attention.

In our time, social conditions allow a large number of people to have very little occupation. For instance, many women of the well-to-do cla.s.ses have absolutely nothing that they must do. Various phases of this are discussed in previous sections.

As a rule, it is useless to try to relieve these discomforts by anodynes. Many an opium habit has been formed by a turning to opium in such cases. The coal tar products are greatly abused here, for they do not bring relief to queer feelings nor to a sense of pressure or discomfort; they rather add to depression. What they are efficacious for is acute pain. The coal tar products relieve even toothache or neuralgia, as well as a real headache, but I have had patients tell me over and over again that the continuous headaches from which they suffered were not relieved in the slightest degree by phenacetin or acetanilid. Occasionally one hears of hyoscine or hyoscyamus suggested for these conditions, but they are quite as useless and as much contraindicated as opium or the coal tar products. As a rule, these headaches are relieved by lying down; they disappear during sleep. The real indication for treatment, however, is found in the fact that all of these vague discomforts are much better or even disappear when the patient is intensely occupied, or at least pleasurably engaged.

What these people need is occupation that really catches their interest and takes attention from themselves. One of the most striking expressions of this truth that we have comes from the poor, sad, mad poet, Cowper:

Absence of occupation is not rest; A mind quite vacant is a mind distressed.

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And surely poor Cowper, himself the victim of depression, saved from himself only by the suggestion that he should put into poetic form the thoughts that came so abundantly to him, could well understand the depth of wisdom in his couplet. The story of Cowper's life is enough of itself to encourage physician and patient to persevere in the effort to lift depression by occupation, since the fruits of that occupation may prove so valuable.

_Mental Short-Circuit_.--The minds of these people must do something, and since there is nothing really occupying for them to do, in a very expressive modern phrase, they are doing their possessors. As we suggest elsewhere, the nearest simile is that of the short-circuiting of a dynamo. Mental energy is exerted harmfully within the machine instead of in doing work.

See what happens in these cases when by some chance the women, or the men, who complain almost constantly are suddenly deprived of the means which enabled them to live an aimless life. The physician often has patients who have been in affluence but after a financial panic are in straitened circ.u.mstances. It is interesting to note what an excellent tonic effect, in younger people always, in older people very often, the change of life has on these chronic valetudinarians. Sometimes this is attributed to the simpler life which they lead when poorer, occasionally to the lack of responsibility, or other similar reason.

Nearly always it is easy to see that the real cause of the improvement in health is the occupation of mind with serious interests outside of self.

Regulation of Life.--In the matter of occupation, and especially occupation of mind, the formation of habits and the training of the will are extremely important. In his book on "The Education of the Will," which was so popular that it went through over thirty editions in France, M. Jules Payot [Footnote 25] emphasizes the necessity for deliberately arranging the details of life so that time shall not hang heavily on the hands, he reverts to certain rules of life of the old religious orders, and to the habits advised by spiritual directors. He counsels that every one should make an examination of the day's happenings at the end of it, in order to see just where the failures lay and in what accomplishment was made. At the end of this old-fashioned examination of conscience, he counsels that a set of resolutions for the next day be made and an arrangement of work for various times, so that even more may be accomplished.

[Footnote 25: English translation by Dr. Smith Ely Jelliffe.

New York, 1909.]

M. Payot further suggests that a certain time be given up to reflection, or as he calls it, meditation, on the significance of life and on the consideration whether something valuable is being made of it. Without this he insists that it is easy to let one's self slip into habits of life in which absolutely nothing is accomplished for self or others. If there is no real accomplishment, then pleasure soon palls, because pleasure has a place only as an interval in the midst of labor and as a relief from effort. These reversions to the old modes of life and thought of the monastic communities show how little of real advance there is in life, and what excellent conclusions serious men came to even in the distant past. Certainly for many of the leisure cla.s.s in modern times only the use of periods of reflection and the examination of {221} results obtained will serve to prevent that utter waste of time which leads to the intense dissatisfaction that is often reflected in the general health.

Thought for Others.--After forgetfulness of self, the most important factor in psychotherapeutics is thoughtfulness for others. Ordinary diversions are quite insufficient to occupy most people. One must have a serious occupation that appeals deeply, and then diversions of mind will be useful for purposes of recreation. Pleasure, so-called, if pursued not as an interruption from work but for its own sake and without serious occupation, palls, and after a time its votaries find life is scarcely worth living. The pursuit of pleasure as the sole interest of life is one of the most fruitful resources of depression, discouragement and neurotic symptoms with which modern physicians are brought in contact. The only way to be sure of having compelling interests is to be so much occupied with other people that one forgets self.

Yet mere flippant excitement and superficial entertainment is nothing but a cheap counterfeit of what is needed. Voluntary effort is needed, and this is the field where the psychotherapist must put in his most intelligent effort. There is no one for whom there is not a chance for work in our social fabric. The prescription of work has not only to be adjusted to the abilities, the knowledge, and social conditions, but has to be chosen in such a way that it is full of a.s.sociations and ultimately of joyful emotions. Useless work can never confer the greatest benefits; mere physical exercises are therefore psychophysically not as valuable as real sport, while physically, of course, the regulated exercises may be far superior to the haphazard work in sport. To solve picture puzzles, even if they absorb the attention for a week, can never have the same effect as a real interest in a human puzzle. There is a chance for social work for every woman and every man, work which can well be chosen in full adjustment to the personal preference and likings. Not everybody is fit for charity work, and those who are may be entirely unfitted for work in the interest of the beautification of the town.

Only it has to be work; mere automobiling to charity places or talking in meetings on problems which have not been studied will, of course, be merely another form of the disorganizing superficiality.

The hysterical lady on Fifth Avenue and the psychasthenic old maid in the New England country town both simply have to learn to do useful work with a concentrated effort and a high purpose. From a long experience I have to confess that I have seen that this unsentimental remedy is the safest and most important prescription in the prescription book of the psychotherapist.

_Care of Children_.--Probably the most important therapeutic factor in the cure of the ills which come to unoccupied women is the finding of some occupation that will absorb their hearts as well as their intellects, that is, satisfy their feelings as well as appeal to their intelligence. That very acute observer and kenner of her s.e.x, Mrs. St.

Leger Harrison, who is Charles Kingsley's daughter and writes under the pseudonym of "Lucas Malet," said in "Sir Richard Calmady": "Feed their hearts and the rest of the mechanism runs easy. I have known disease to develop in a perfectly healthy woman simply because the heart was starved." For most women the only thing that will entirely satisfy the heart or keep it from hunger is children. Fortunately an interest in other people's children can, under certain circ.u.mstances, be almost as satisfying as in one's own.

_Interest in Others_.--Probably the best possible occupation that a childless woman can have is the care of others. Charity in one form or another satisfies the emotions as well as creates interest and gives varied occupations. Even the frequent disillusions that are encountered in charity work only add variety {222} to the experience, and do not discourage those who have the real charity instinct. For women particularly, as we have said, some charity that brings them much in contact with children is the surest preventive of over-occupation with themselves and over-emphasis on their feelings and sufferings. Many a woman in our large cities owes her freedom from the neurotic symptoms to which her sisters are subject, to her interest in tuberculous children. There is just enough of suffering to arouse all the pity of the visitor, without so much of anguish as would deter the more delicate from being interested in the work.

_Touch with Real Suffering_,--For patients who think they have much to suffer, yet whose complaints are all of subjective feelings of oppression and depression, there is no better remedy than to come in touch with real suffering. I have known not a few neurotic young women, who were preparing for themselves years of suffering by over-attention to little pains and aches, saved to a life of usefulness and even happiness by having to nurse near relatives through the last stages of fatal cancer. When these neurotic persons are brought intimately in touch with real suffering, have their sympathies aroused, and see how well human nature can bear pain when it has to, and yet not be impatient, nor wish to end it all, then a renewed life comes over them and they cease to be preoccupied with themselves.

_Sympathy as a Remedy_.--In former days, when hospitals were not so well provided and trained nurses non-existent, all forms of suffering had a wider appeal and aroused more active sympathy than at present.

It is true that patients, in both hospitals and homes, suffered from the lack of trained nursing, and that was an even greater disadvantage. But it is, nevertheless, too bad that more actual touch with suffering does not come to people now, for nothing is so sure to make little ills disappear as the sympathy aroused by the sight of real suffering. Certainly, our cancer cases might well be a strong therapeutic factor for many of the neurotic ills of the world. They are, of course, deterrent to many people. It would seem to add needlessly to human suffering for some of the delicate to have to be in contact with what is one of the most awful afflictions that flesh is heir to. If death and suffering were not inevitable, we might try to save people from the suffering which sympathy entails. But there is no avoiding them; soon or late they are sure to come to everyone. The upbuilding of character, consequent upon intimacy with them, is of great value, and really brings so much of contentment to people who are over-worried about little things that it is worth while to recall how valuable this sympathy for suffering is in psychotherapy.

I have spoken of this phase of occupation as if it referred only to women. There are many men of whom one may well say that they need more human sympathy in their lives and that if they had it their supposed ills would drop from them, or seem so slight as to be quite negligible. Over and over again, I have seen men who had become too occupied with themselves lose their pains and aches in an interest in some real charity. Charity, however, not philanthropy, is the secret.

The sitting on a board of trustees of a charitable inst.i.tution may mean little though even this usually has its good effect; but close contact with the poor, intimate personal relations with other human beings who are in suffering, are quite as necessary for men over-occupied with themselves as for women.

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