There is another large class of correspondents, which is not to be
blamed, and which is one of the most interesting contributers to the
psychologist's files. People write long discussions of theories which
they build up on peculiar happenings in their minds. The theories
themselves may be entirely illogical, or at least in contradiction to
all acknowledged science, but such letters are interesting, because
they disclose abnormal mental states. Here it is not real insanity;
but all kinds of abnormal impulses or ideas, of psychasthenic
emotions, of neurasthenic disturbances, of hysteric inhibition, are
the starting points, and it is only natural that such pathological
intrusions should bewilder the patient and induce him to form the
wildest theories. Again, he may believe in the most improbable and
most fantastic connection of things, but this is due to the
overwhelming power of disturbances which he is indeed unable to
explain to himself. I have a whole set of letters from women who
explain in fantastic theories their magical power to foresee coming
events; and yet it is not difficult to recognize as the foundation of
all such ideas some well-known forms of memory disturbance. Commonly
it is the widespread tendency of women to accompany a scene with the
feeling that they have experienced it once before. They are few who
never have had it, especially in states of fatigue; many have it very
often; and some are led to trust it and to become convinced that they
really experienced the scene, at least in their minds, beforehand.
This uncanny impression then easily develops into untenable
speculations on the borderland of normal intellect. The letters which
approach those of the insane most nearly come from persons who try to
work out a theory to account for hysterical experiences which break
into their normal life. Sometimes the most absurd explanations must be
acknowledged as justified from the standpoint of the patient. A woman
wrote to me that she had the abnormal power to produce railroad wrecks
by her mere will, while she was lying at home in bed. She wanted me to
hypnotize her in order to relieve her from this uncanny power. She had
elaborated this thought in full detail. She did not know, what I found
out only slowly, that in hysterical attacks at night, for which every
memory was lost the next morning, she used a stolen switch key to open
a switch, because she was angry with a railway official. I will ignore
all such cases with an abnormal background here and confine myself to
the healthy crowd.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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