Outwitting Our Nerves: A Primer of PsychotherapyJackson, Josephine A. (Josephine Agnes)
Science
Outwitting Our Nerves: A Primer of Psychotherapy
Jackson, Josephine A. (Josephine Agnes)
Nervous system -- Diseases; Psychoanalysis; Therapeutics, Suggestive
=Empty Hands.= Miss Y., a fine woman of middle age, suffering from
extreme fatigue could neither sleep nor eat. She could only weep. She
had spent her life taking care of an invalid girl who had recently
died. Now her hands were empty. Like many a mother whose family has
grown up, she had no outlet for her mothering instinct, and her sense
of impotency expressed itself in the only way it knew how,--through
her body. As there is never any lack of unselfish work to be done, or
of people who need mothering, she soon found herself and learned how
to sublimate her energy in useful activities.
=Defying Nature.= One young man from Wyoming had felt himself obliged
to give up his business because he could neither work nor eat. It soon
cropped out that he and his wife had decided that they must not have
any children. With a better understanding of the great forces which
they were defying, his strength and his appetite came back and he went
back to work, rejoicing.
=Left-over Habits.= Often a state of fatigue is the result of a
carried-over habit. One of my patients, a young girl, had several
years before been operated on for exophthalmic goiter. This is a
disease of the thyroid gland, and is characterized by rapid heart,
extreme fatigue, and numerous other symptoms. Although this girl's
goiter had been removed, the symptoms still persisted. She could not
walk nor do even a little work, like wiping a few dishes. I took her
down on the beach, let her feel her own pulse and mine and then ran
with her on the sand. Again I let her feel our pulses and discover for
herself that hers had quickened no more than was normal and had slowed
down as soon as mine. After a few such lessons, she was convinced that
her symptoms were reverberations for which there was no longer any
physical cause.
Another young girl, Miss L., had had a similar operation for goiter
six years before. Since that time she had been virtually bedridden.
During the first meal she had at my house her sister sat by her couch
because she must not be left alone. By the second meal the sister had
gone, and Miss L. ate at the table with the other guests. That night
she managed to crawl upstairs, with a good deal of assistance and
with great terror at the probable results of such an effort. After
that, she walked up-stairs alone whenever she had occasion to go to
her room. Her heart will always be a little rapid and her body will
never be very strong, but she now lives a helpful happy life at home
and among her friends.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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