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
=The Emotions Again.= It seems impossible to discuss any psychological
principle without finally coming back to the subject of emotions. It
truly seems that all roads lead to the instincts and to the emotions
which drive them. And so, as we follow the trail of suggestion, we
suddenly turn a corner and find ourselves back at our
starting-point--the emotional life. Like all other ideas, suggestions
get tied up with emotions to form complexes, of which the
driving-power is the emotion.
If we look into our emotional life, we find, besides the true
emotions, with which we have become familiar in Chapter III, a great
number of feelings or feeling-tones which color either pleasurably or
painfully our emotions and our ideas. On the one hand there are
pleasure, joy, exaltation, courage, cheer, confidence, satisfaction;
and on the other, pain, sorrow, depression, apprehension, gloom,
distrust, and dissatisfaction. Every complex which is laid away in
our subconscious is tinted, either slightly or intensely, with its
specific feeling-tone.
=Emotions--Tonic and Poisonous.= All this is most important because of
one vital fact; joyful emotions invigorate, and sorrowful emotions
depress; pleasurable emotions stimulate, and painful emotions burden;
satisfying emotions revitalize, and unsatisfying emotions sap the
strength. In other words, our bodies are made for courage, confidence,
and cheer. Any other atmosphere puts them out of their element,
handicapped by abnormal conditions for which they were never
fashioned. We were written in a major key, and when we try to change
over into minor tones we get sadly out of tune.
There is another factor; painful emotions make us fall to pieces,
while pleasant emotions bind us together. We can see why this is so
when we remember that powerful emotions like fear and anger tend to
dissociate all but themselves, to split up the mind into separate
parts and to force out of consciousness everything but their own
impulse. Morton Prince in his elaborate studies of the cases of
multiple personality, Miss Beauchamp and B.C.A., found repeatedly that
he had only to hypnotize the patient and replace painful, depressing
complexes by healthy, happy ones to change her from a weak, worn-out
person, complaining of fatigue, insomnia, and innumerable aches and
pains, into a vigorous woman, for the time being completely well. On
this point he says:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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