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
=Another Kind of Association.= One of my women patients illustrates
another kind of association-mechanism, based not on proximity in time
but proximity of position in the body. This woman had complained for
years of "bladder trouble" although no physical examination had been
able to reveal any organic difficulty. She referred to a constant
distress in the region of the bladder and was never without a certain
red blanket which she wrapped around her every time she sat down.
During psycho-analysis she recounted an experience of years before
which she had never mentioned to anybody. During a professional
consultation her physician, a married man, had suddenly seized her and
exclaimed, "I love you! I love you!" In spite of herself, the woman
felt a certain appeal, followed by a great sense of guilt. In the
conflict between the physiological reflex and her moral repugnance,
she had shunted out of consciousness the real sex-sensation and had
replaced it with a sensation which had become associated in her
subconscious mind with the original temptation. Since the nerves from
the genital region and from the bladder connect with the same segment
of the spinal cord, she had unconsciously chosen to mix her messages,
and to cling to the substitute sensation without being in the least
Conscious of the cause. As soon as she had described the scene to me
and had discerned its connection with her symptoms, the bladder
trouble disappeared.
=Afraid of the Cold.= Patients who are sensitive to cold are very
numerous. Mr. G.--he of the prunes and bran biscuits--was so afraid of
a draft that he could detect the air current if a window was opened a
few inches anywhere in a two-story house. He always wore two suits of
underwear, but despite his precautions he had a swollen red throat
much of the time. His prescription was a cold bath every morning, a
source of delight to the other men patients, who made him stay in the
water while they counted five. He was required to dress and live like
other folks and of course his sensitiveness and his sore throat
disappeared.
Dr. B----, when he came to me, was the most wrapped-up man I had ever
met. He had on two suits of underwear, a sweater, a vest and suit
coat, an overcoat, a bear-skin coat and a Jaeger scarf--all in
Pasadena in May!
Besides this fear of cold, he was suffering from a hypersensitiveness
of several other varieties. So sensitive was his skin that he had his
clothes all made several sizes too big for him so that they would not
make pressure. He was so aware of the muscles of the neck that he
believed himself unable to hold up his head, and either propped it
with his hands or leaned it against the back of a chair.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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