On examination the patient revealed a history full of various
traumas which, from his very childhood until he came under my care,
helped to bring about his psychopathic condition, and developed the
fear instinct to an extraordinary degree.
Physicians had the lion’s share in this special case by their
rearing of the fear instinct, and by their favoring the patient’s
phobias by their examinations, by their prescriptions, and by the
diet and treatment. The patient was in such a panic that he kept
on taking his pulse on the least occasion, was feeling his heart,
stomach, and intestines at every opportunity. The hypertrophied
growth of his morbid self and fear instinct had invaded and
dominated the patient’s whole personality, developed a typical
psychosomatic pathophobia with its recurrent states. The patient
was cured by hypnoidal states.
In the _Trudi_ for 1913 of the University of Moscow, Russia,
Doctor Ribakov made an extensive study of a series of cases of
psychopathic or psychoneurotic asthma, and arrived at a conclusion
similar to my own, although he was no doubt unaware of my work and
publications on the same subject. He came to the same conclusion
as I that the etiology of _neurosis is to be found in fear, which
alone forms the basis of psychopathic neurosis. All other factors,
social, professional, sexual, religious, repressions, conflicts are
only occasions of the disease. It is fear, and fear alone that
forms the pathology of the psychopathic neurotic symptom complex._
A young lady was afflicted with ornithophobia, fear of birds, fear
of chickens. The sight of a chicken set her into a panic. The
patient is very timid, and this timidity can be traced to her early
childhood. When at the age of six, a play-mate threw a live chicken
at her in the dark. The child was terribly frightened, screamed,
and fainted. The mother used to tell her fairy stories full of
adventure, of ghosts, of dragons, and of monsters. This prepared
the patient to react so violently to the sudden attack made by the
flight, struggling, and feel of the chicken in the dark. Since that
time, patient has formed an uncontrollable fear of live birds.
Another patient of mine, a lady of forty-nine years, single,
suffered from potamophobia, a fear of going into rivers, or into
the ocean. When about seven years old she was thrown into water by
one of her elder sisters. She was nearly drowned and was half dead
with fear when rescued. Since then she has been in terror of water,
or rather of rivers and oceans. Several times she made conscious
efforts to get rid of the fear, but the attempts were unsuccessful.
In fact, the more she was forced or forced herself consciously to
get into the water, the greater was the fear. This fear became
all the more intensified, when some of her intimate friends were
drowned in a boat. This fixed the fear which became uncontrollable.
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