The fear instinct in its primitive state is anterior to all
experiences of danger, pain, and suffering, as is the case in
most of the lower animals. In the higher animals where memory
is developed, the fear instinct is associated with some form of
representation, however vague, and then fear becomes posterior to
experience. In man both forms of fear are present. The anterior
form is specially found in children, while in adults the posterior
form is, under normal conditions, predominating. The primitive
anterior type of the fear instinct is by no means absent, in fact,
it is more overpowering, its effects are overwhelming when it comes
forth from the subconscious regions to which it is confined, and is
manifested under conditions of lowered vitality.
When the strata of dynamic energies are passed and the strata
of reserve energies are reached, the reserve energy not being
accessible, the fear instinct is elemental, fundamental, while the
fear of pain and of some definite representation of danger, or of
suffering is a secondary consequence. People may suffer from pain,
disease, and even danger, and still have no fear, while others may
have never experienced the pain or disease, and still be obsessed
by intense pangs of fear. Fear is _sui generis_, it is at the
foundation of animal life.
The fear instinct may be awakened directly by a sensory stimulus,
when, for instance, one finds himself in darkness and feels some
creeping, slimy thing, or when attacked suddenly with a club or a
knife. The fear instinct may again be aroused by an expectation, by
something to which his dynamic energies cannot respond adequately,
while the reserve energies are in abeyance, such for instance
as the expectation of some threatening event either to himself
or to the objects bound up with his life existence. When one is
threatened with some misfortune, with torture, death, or with a
mortal disease, or with a serious operation, or when confronted
with great danger against which his energies prove inadequate, in
such cases the fear is ideational. These types of fear may in turn
be either conscious or subconscious.
We may thus classify the fears as follows:
{ Conscious
I. Sensory {
{ Subconscious
{ Conscious
II. Ideational {
{ Subconscious
The fear of the etherized or chloroformed patient is entirely
of the subconscious type. It is the arousing of subconscious
fear which, from the nature of the case, cannot be reached and
alleviated that gives rise to functional psychosis and neurosis.
From this standpoint it may be said that _psychopathic diseases
are subconscious fear states, in other words functional psychosis
or neurosis is essentially a disease of subconscious activities_.
This is, in fact, confirmed by my clinical experience and by my
psychopathological research work.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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