(22) A contraction or relaxation of the throat-muscles and of the vocal
chords generally was not infrequently noticed. The tendency to swallow
is spoken of. The throat is felt often to be "concave" when certain
bad feelings are sufficiently pronounced. A contraction in the mucous
membrane, with teeth on edge, such as one would experience in eating
something sour, is frequent. A twitching of the ears, squinting of the
eyebrows, and a "heavy feeling" through the neck and chest occur often,
or again a pressing hard of the tongue against the roof of the mouth.
(23) Forms suggested a shrinking in the volume of the face, sometimes
of the crown of the head, and even of the whole head.
(24) Upright or horizontal ovals especially provoked the impulse to
imitate the figure itself, either with the lips or with the hands and
arms. When the feeling was particularly strong, all these impulses
often occurred together and appeared mutually to reënforce, or to
intensify each other.
(25) Horizontal ovals gave one the feeling of being "flattened out,"
coupled with an impulse to adjustment altogether unlike the sprightly,
alert, airy feeling aroused by the "trim," upright figures.
(26) Occasionally when the irregular shapes were presented directly
after a subject had been enjoying one of the perfect figures, that
side of his face or body corresponding to the distorted portion of
the figure was felt to be in an abnormal and unpleasant position.
This "caving-in" or "bulging-out" sensation, which accompanies the
unpleasant feeling, happens when the whole muscular system at the time
for the subject seems inert or externally controlled.
All these sensations of bodily processes, taken from the introspective
descriptions given by the subjects, are distinctly reported by them
as very faint. They by no means detect them in every experience, nor
do they always seem to the subject himself to _mean_ the whole of
the feeling as experienced. Neither did any one subject find all the
concomitant processes recorded above. Subject H failed throughout the
whole period to detect anything whatsoever, except slight tendencies
to frown, smooth the brow, or to open wide the eyes. This subject was
unable to detect any special differences in his feelings, either in
variety or in amount. For him neither soft red nor brilliant yellow
was either exciting or soothing. They were and always remained for him
more or less vaguely pleasant, and this description for him was both
ultimate and exhaustive.
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