Psychotherapy Part 73

Dread of Cats.--One of the most interesting of dreads, very frequently seen and producing much more discomfort than could possibly be imagined by anyone who had not seen striking cases of it, is the dread of cats which has been dignified and rendered more suggestively significant by the Greek designation ailurophobia. While the great majority of individuals suffering from this unreasoning dread of cats are women and usually of a delicate nervous organization, it must not be thought that it is by any means confined to them or has any necessary connection with hysterical symptoms. One of the most striking cases of this dread of which I know personally occurs in a large, rather masculine-looking woman, who cannot abide being in a room with a cat, and who is quite unable to do anything while one of these animals is within sight. Yet she is not at all what would be called timorous and she has more manly than womanly characteristics in every way. She once proceeded to thrash within an inch of his life a small burglar who entered her house and she rather prides herself on being able to protect herself. Nor is this dread necessarily a.s.sociated with any other disturbances of mind or nervous system. Some of the patients I have seen, who confess to suffering from it, were thoroughly sensible, brave little women, able to stand suffering well, not at all hysterical in nature, and who in the midst of worries found time to be thoughtful of others and not to have that selfishness which, even more than physical symptoms, is so apt to characterize hysterical patients.

I have had men confess to me their dread of cats, and while, as a rule, they were of delicate const.i.tution and inclined to be nervous and did not have the phobia to an inordinate degree, there was no doubt that they were extremely uncomfortable whenever a cat was near them. On the other hand, some of them were vigorous, husky men with strong aversions. One of the most marked cases of ailurophobia that was ever brought to my attention was in an army officer who had exhibited bravery in battle on many occasions, and what requires much more strength of mind, calm fort.i.tude in difficult campaigning, yet for whom a cat had many more terrors than the battery of an enemy or even an ambuscade of Filipinos. More cases of this particular {618} aversion seem to occur in clergymen than in other men, yet one of the worst cases I ever saw was in a priest of great moral courage, who had served a pest-house over and over again in smallpox epidemics.

All that can be said about such a dread is that it exists, that it is unreasoning, that some patients have been known by discipline of mind to overcome the abhorrence to a great degree but never quite entirely.

In this regard, however, it must not be forgotten that there are many things abhorrent to human nature that seem impossible to overcome the aversion for, yet discipline does much to relieve them. For instance, the handling of dead bodies so familiar to physicians brings with it an aversion that we never quite get over and which resumes most of its original strength with disuse, but that can be overcome to such an extent as to make pathological work produce very little aversion. Even Virchow, after all his years of occupation with pathological material, confessed toward the end of his life, that whenever he was away from his work for a few months his aversion had to be overcome anew.

_The Spectator on Dreads_.--There might be a tendency to think that these curious dreads came only as the result of the individualistic over-occupation with self and the introspective sophistication of the modern time, but the dread is not confined to our time nor special to it in any way, for we find Shakespeare talking of those who cannot bear a harmless, necessary cat. A number of other writers of different periods refer to it. As in so many other things _The Spectator_ reflects his time in this and so we have a letter with regard to the dread of cats. It would not have been a subject for discussion in one of these popular communications only that the writer felt that a good many people would realize how like it was to things that they themselves knew of. In number 609 the following letter, supposed to be from a correspondent, seems worth giving in full, because it touches on other subjects in which uncontrollable, unreasoning feeling plays a role:

I wish you would write a philosophical paper about natural antipathies, with a word or two concerning the strength of imagination. ... A story that relates to myself on this subject may be thought not unentertaining, especially when I a.s.sure you that it is literally true. I had long made love to a lady, in the possession of whom I am now the happiest of mankind, whose hand I should have gained with much difficulty without the a.s.sistance of a cat. You must know then that my most dangerous rival had so strong an aversion to this species, that he infallibly swooned away at the sight of that harmless creature. My friend, Mrs. Lucy, her maid, having a greater respect for me and my purse than she had for my rival, always took care to pin the tail of a cat under the gown of her mistress, whenever she knew of his coming; which had such an effect that every time he entered the room, he looked more like one of the figures in Mrs. Salmon's wax-work than a desirable lover. In short, he grew sick of her company, which the young lady taking notice of (who no more knew why than he did), she sent me a challenge to meet her in Lincoln's Inn Chapel, which I joyfully accepted; and have, amongst other pleasures, the satisfaction of being praised by her for my stratagem.

_Cat Fear and Furs_.--This dread of cats is sometimes exhibited to a surprising degree under rather unexpected circ.u.mstances. For instance, it is not unusual, since the fas.h.i.+on for the longer-haired furs came in, to find that some of these patients cannot wear certain supposedly elegant furs, since they are really dyed catskin. At times this is not suspected until other possible causes for the discomfort have been eliminated. Some women cannot even bear to be near catskins in m.u.f.fs and other such furs, though the imitation {619} may be so good as to deceive any but an expert, and they apparently had no suspicion at the beginning of the presence of cat fur near them. I have been told by a physician the story of a man, poignantly sensitive to cats, who purchased a fur-lined coat and found it quite impossible to wear it because of the sensations it produced in him, though he had no suspicion of any connection between cats and the fur when he purchased it.

_Recognition of Presence_.--Why this dread of cats occurs and, above all, the reason for the ability to know that a cat is near when the animal is concealed and others are not at all aware of its presence, or that its fur should produce a disagreeable sensation, is not easy to decide. Its discussion is suggestive for other forms of dreads, for there are probably like refinements of sensation, normal and abnormal, connected with them. Much has been said about this as a reversion to powers possessed by man in a savage state when there was necessity for guarding against animal attacks. Unfortunately for any such supposition as this, these people, who are most fearful of cats, that is, of the ordinary domestic animal, have no uneasiness in the presence of the huge cats in the menageries--the lions and the tigers.

It is with regard to these that such a specialization of scent would be particularly valuable for men. There seems no doubt but that it is an odor or a sensation allied to an odor, though perhaps below the ordinary threshold of recognition as such, that enables these people to detect the presence of a cat. Dr. Weir Mitch.e.l.l in his article on "Ailurophobia and The Power to Be Conscious of the Cat as Near While Unseen and Unheard," in the _Transactions of the a.s.sociation of American Physicians_, 1905, discusses odor in this connections as follows:

To be influenced by an olfactory impression of which (as odor) the subject rests unconscious, may seem an hypothesis worthy of small respect and beyond power of proof. Nevertheless it seems to me reasonable. There are sounds beyond the hearing of certain persons.

If they ever cause effects we do not know. There are rays of which we are not conscious as light or heat, except through the effects to which they give rise. There may be olfactory emanations distinguished by some as odors and by others felt, not as odors, but only in their influential results on nervous systems unusually and abnormally susceptible. No other explanation seems to me available, and this gains value from certain contributory facts.

We must admit that all animals and human beings emit emanations which are recognizable by many animals and are in wild creatures protectively valuable.

This delicate recognition is commonly lost in mankind, but some abnormal beings like Laura Bridgeman and a perfectly normal lad I once saw, have possessed the power of distinguis.h.i.+ng by smell the handkerchiefs of a family after they had been washed and ironed. In this lad I made a personal test of his power to pick out by their odor from a heap of clean handkerchiefs mine and those of others, the latter two belonging to his father and mother.

I have seen a woman, well known to me, who can distinguish by mere odor the gloves worn by relatives or friends. This lady, who likes cats as pets, is able to detect by its odor the presence of a cat when I and others cannot.

Two French observers believe that they have proved the sense of olfaction to be nine times more acute in women than in men.

So far as the present paper might serve in evidence, I should be inclined to say that the sense of smell was keener in women than in men, but as to this there is extreme diversity of opinion and the whole question awaits further investigation. [Footnote 48]

[Footnote 48: This question of the varying acuteness of smell in different people is very interesting to the psychotherapeutist for diagnosis and therapy. We have a number of striking cases of very acute olfactory power. This is what might be expected since animals whose respiratory and smell apparatuses are very like our own show extreme differences. The extent to which human power to recognize odors can go is marvelous. In his "Thinking, Feeling, Doing," Prof. Scripture says: "I have a case--reported by a perfectly competent witness who lived for years with the person mentioned--of a woman in charge of a boarding school who always sorted the boys' linen after the wash by the odor alone."

Personally, I have sometimes wondered whether this power, like that of feeling in the blind, could not be developed. The blind are supposed actually to bring about an evolution in their nerves of feeling. No such thing happens, however. An examination of them by means of an esthesiometer shows that their nerves are no better developed than those of other people, though they may be able to recognize much minuter differences between the "feel" of things and may be able to read raised type, which the seeing cannot. This is all due to a training of their attention to note slight differences in sensation, however, and not to improvement in the nervous apparatus. ]

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Dread of the Dark.--The discipline suggested with regard to overcoming the dread of heights must be applied to any of these dreads if patients are to be made comfortable. They can form the opposite habit and by refusing to yield to their fears can do much to lessen them.

Nearly everyone who is unaccustomed to sleeping in a dark house alone has dreads that come over him when he first tries to do it. Every noise is exaggerated in significance and the creaking of stairs and rattling windows and doors and the wind through the trees are all made significant of something quite other than what they are. Nearly everyone knows, however, that this can be overcome simply by refusing to pay any attention to the idle fears that come over us as a consequence of the tension due to loneliness, and after a time, sleeping in a strange room and a strange house in the dark is not a difficult matter. It is harder for some people to accomplish than others, but it is impossible for none. Here is the lesson that all the sufferers from dreads must learn. Gradually, quietly, persistently, they must resist the dreads that come over them, must deliberately, without excitement, do the opposite to that suggested by their apprehension, until habits are formed that enable them to accomplish without discomfort what was before a source of even serious ill-feeling.

The dread of darkness that so many people have is usually supposed to be cowardice. It is not, however, in most cases, but is due to idiosyncrasy or to certain special physical factors in the environment. If children have been brought up so that when they were small a light has been constantly s.h.i.+ning in their eyes, even though only a dim light, it will often be difficult to accustom them to be quite comfortable in the dark. Much depends on habit in this matter. I have known men, who, when they came from Ireland, feared the darkness of the coal mines very much and their dread was increased by the awful horror of possible ghostly appearances, since so many accidents had taken place where they worked. After some years, however, they were quite placid about it and would calmly go into the mine as fire bosses at three and four in the morning, long before others were to go in, examining absolutely dark pa.s.sages by the mile, with no human being near them and with the creaking of the pillars, the dripping of water, the rumbling of the sides and the occasional fall of a small particle from the roof, besides the noises of rats to add to the disturbing factors. Like going up on a high building, one may get entirely accustomed to it so as scarcely to notice it at all.

When the fear is allowed to take hold of one, however, and no effort is made to overcome it, it may prove quite seriously disturbing. The unaccustomed, however, means more than anything else in this matter.

Sometimes, {621} indeed, people have a dread of the dark that seems to be inborn and that apparently cannot be overcome, that, like the fear of cats or of lightning, may be quite beyond rational control. Hobbes, the English philosopher, was so perturbed by darkness that he kept a light in his bedroom all night. I know this to be the case in a clergyman who had been quite undisturbed about darkness until he was awakened one night by a burglar. He demanded "who's there?" and received as answer without further parley a bullet that fortunately struck only the head of the bed, but so close that it singed him. The burglar escaped, but the clergyman was never afterwards able to sleep without a light. Rousseau, the French philosopher, was also much afraid of darkness. Ordinarily it is presumed that superst.i.tion has something to do with this fear and that the victim of it has ghosts in mind or at least dreads spirit manifestations. Neither Hobbes nor Rousseau, however, was likely to be timorous about ghostly visitants.

It was with them a physical idiosyncrasy.

a.s.sociated with dread of darkness is the fear of finding some one in a dark room whose presence may startle us. Sir Samuel Romilly, famous for his labors for the reform of the English criminal law, and who must be considered one of the great humanitarians of the nineteenth century, had this dread to an acute degree. It went so far that whenever he slept in a strange place he carefully examined all the possible hiding-places in the room and in wardrobes or closets connected with it and, as a last precaution, never failed to look under the bed. He did this even when he was in his own house.

[Footnote 49] This, however, is not so unusual, even among men, as might be thought. Most women who sleep alone want to investigate under the bed and in a hotel closets and wardrobes and even bureau drawers are likely to be examined. Habit in this regard may make one quite miserable and over-solicitous. I have had patients whose sleep was seriously disturbed by the remembrance that they had not looked under the bed and who feared to get up and light a light to do so lest there should be someone there. Indeed, the idea of putting their feet on the floor before the light had come to rea.s.sure them seemed quite out of the question.

[Footnote 49: Curiously enough. Sir Samuel Romilly, in spite of his dread of the dark, committed suicide and went prematurely into the darkness of the beyond, apparently without his usual tendency to precaution.]

Dreads Connected with Water.--Strange as it may seem, water const.i.tutes a source of dread for some people. We have the records of it in the peculiarities of great men and it is not unusual to meet it in common life. Dropping water is a source of disturbance for most people. It is quite impossible for the majority of men and women to go on writing or reading with any comfort if water is dropping near them.

Dropping water, when one is trying to go to sleep, is one of the worst of awakeners. The Chinese are said to put people to death in horrible torture by having a drop of water fall at regular intervals on their heads. Robert Boyle, the great father of chemistry and a very sensible man in many ways, is said to have been thrown into convulsions by the sound of water dropping from a faucet. The splas.h.i.+ng of water on some people is a poignant source of torture. I have had a woman patient who could not go to services where there was a sprinkling of water, for it seriously disturbed her and gave her a sense of depression that would not be overcome for some time. Peter the Great, though the father of the {622} Russian navy, and though he pa.s.sed many years of his life in Holland, used to shudder at the sight of water, and if, when out driving, his carriage pa.s.sed near a stream or over a bridge, he would close the windows and be overtaken with terror that brought the perspiration out all over him.

Dread of Death.--The fear of death is one of the dreads that bothers young as well as old, and, curiously enough, as its inevitable approach becomes more certain, men are p.r.o.ne to dread it more. Long ago Sophocles said:

None cleave to life so fondly as the old,

-- and this has remained true for all the centuries since. A young man is quite ready to throw his life away, but the old man hesitates and even in the midst of suffering, if it is not absolutely continuous, craves that death shall not come. Sophocles' great rival, the elder Greek dramatic poet AEschylus, had said:

How far from just the hate men bear to death Which comes as safeguard against many ills,

-- but his message was only for those with the character to face the worst. One may reason with the dread of death, however, and patients can be given motives from philosophy, literature, religion and experience that will help to relieve, though it will not entirely cure them. Shakespeare said in "Julius Caesar":

Cowards die many times before their deaths.

The valiant never taste of death but once,

-- and people may be aroused to appreciate this.

_Fear of Early Death_.--Many fear that if they have shown symptoms of delicacy of const.i.tution at some time in life or suffered severely from some serious disease, that they are not likely to live long and, above all, that they are almost sure not to be able to accomplish anything worth while in life. The old proverb is "a healthy mind in a healthy body." This is, however, the ideal. There are very few ideals realized in life. Just because a man has a weak body is no argument at all that his mind may be weak and some of the world's finest work has been accomplished by men whose bodies were always delicate.

Metchnikoff is the apostle of old age to our generation, but it is he, also, who has pointed out that many distinguished workers in science, in poetry, in art, men who have left a precious heritage in succeeding generations, were delicate all their lives. He cites such typical examples as Fresnel, the great French physicist; Giacomo Leopardi, the distinguished Italian poet; Weber and Schumann, the great German musicians, and Chopin, the Polish composer and pianist, all of whom did work that the world would not willingly miss, in spite of delicacy of health and weakness of body which shortened their lives.

Intellectual power is not dependent on bodily energy and accomplishment is not a question of years of work, but intensity of work.

It would not be difficult to add many other names to those mentioned by Metchnikoff. Naturally his thoughts recurred to men of distinction on {623} the Continent, but in English-speaking countries we have a number of typical examples of strong minds doing fine work in weak bodies. Robert Louis Stevenson is the best remembered by our generation. Elizabeth Barrett Browning, delicate all of her life, a neurasthenic during the precious adolescent years that are supposed to mean so much for future accomplishment, always an invalid to some degree at least, did some of the best work that was given to any woman to do during the nineteenth century. J. Addington Symonds, the historian of the Renaissance and of Italian literature, is another striking example of a man who had to do his work under great physical difficulties, yet who left a long bookshelf of large volumes after him as the product of the hours that he could cheat from caring for his health. Henry Harland, whose recent death all too young was a blow to the English-speaking world, is another striking example. The names of such men and women and their stories must be made familiar to people who are themselves delicate in health and who fear for their future and, above all, are despondent about the possibility of ever doing anything worth while.

Dread of Insanity.--People who have relatives who are already sufferers from such severe forms of insanity as require asylum treatment are often likely to be much disturbed over the possibility that they themselves should become insane. Of course, there is no doubt but that these people are much more liable to suffer from insanity than others, but their worrying over the matter is sure to do them harm rather than good. There are quite enough sources of worry in life without the additional one of dread of a future event that may not occur, and this must be made as clear to them as possible. The people who have no obligations on them, who have nothing to do that they feel they have to do, are especially likely to suffer from such obsessions. The best possible relief for them is afforded, not by the effort not to worry about their dread, which usually has exactly the opposite effect and emphasizes their fear by the constant effort which they make to put it aside, but by getting something else to interest them. This must not be merely a pa.s.sing interest, if possible, but a serious attraction of some kind that fully occupies the mind. A hobby is an excellent thing for this, but alas! a hobby must be cultivated for many years, as a rule, to become powerful enough to bring relief in such serious matters.

Occasionally the thought of the insane asylum or the sight of an inst.i.tution of this kind pa.s.sed even at a distance in the train is enough to give some people a fit of depression that may last for some time. The thought of going to visit their ailing relatives is enough to make them even more depressed. I have sometimes found that in chosen cases, especially among women and those of sympathetic disposition, the apparently heroic remedy of making them visit their relatives in the asylum was excellent for them. It is the usual rule for people who are themselves sane to consider that it is the greatest hards.h.i.+p of asylum confinement for the patients to be a.s.sociated with those whom they recognize to be insane. Exactly the opposite effect is the usual result. To be among people, many of whom are more irrational than themselves and some of whom are quite beside themselves, proves a stimulus and an encouragement. Contentment has been defined by a cynic as the feeling that things might be worse.

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DREADS OF MEN OF GENIUS

The insane are particularly p.r.o.ne to suffer from dreads, so that some people argue from their dreads to the thought of insanity. It is quite a mistake, however, to think of dreads as necessarily connected with insanity in any way. They are irrational though they will commonly be found to be dependent on some special physical condition. This is usually some exaggeration of attention to a sensation natural enough in itself but disturbing when dwelt on to such a degree that it produces a much greater reaction in these individuals than in other people. These dreads have existed in all sorts of people. It is said that they are more frequent in the highly intellectual, especially in the cla.s.s known as geniuses, and they are often said to represent the definite evidence of a relations.h.i.+p between genius and insanity. I have always felt, however, that they are quite as common among ordinary people who have no genius and no signs of it as among the so-called geniuses. They are not so much spoken of by ordinary people, however, because they are rather ashamed of them. Genius, on the contrary, is quite willing, as a rule, to exploit its peculiarities for the benefit of the public, or what is even more true, its peculiarities are remembered and commented on as details of history.

With this in mind the following paragraph from Dr. Dorland's book on "The Ages of Mental Virility" [Footnote 50] deserves to be recalled. He has gathered a number of examples that are very interesting:

[Footnote 50: The Century Co., New York, 1908]

Fear has played an important role in the development of the antipathies of the great--fear that was often groundless in its origin and inexplicable in its manifestation. The unaccountable fear of dogs is not so common as ailurophobia, although it is said that De Musset cordially detested them, and Goethe despised them, notwithstanding, forsooth, he kept a tame snake. Much more frequent is the fear of spiders, centipedes, and other insects. Charles Kingsley, thorough naturalist though he was, entertained an unconquerable horror of spiders, even the common house spider; Turenne became weak when he saw a spider; while the author of the "Turkish Spy" once a.s.serted that he would far prefer, with sword in hand, "to face a lion in his desert lair than to have a spider crawl over him in the dark." Lord Lauderdale, on the contrary, while declaring that the mewing of a cat was "sweeter to him than any music," had a most intense dislike for the flute and the bag-pipe; and Dr. Johnson was so fond of his cats that he would personally buy oysters for them, his servants being too proud to do so.

There are curious contradictions to be found in these matters.