Psychotherapy: Including the History of the Use of Mental Influence, Directly and Indirectly, in Healing and the Principles for the Application of Energies Derived from the Mind to the Treatment of DiseaseWalsh, James J. (James Joseph)
Science
Psychotherapy: Including the History of the Use of Mental Influence, Directly and Indirectly, in Healing and the Principles for the Application of Energies Derived from the Mind to the Treatment of Disease
Walsh, James J. (James Joseph)
Mental healing
To put it all in a few words, the neuroglia cells of the gray
substance of the brain represent an insulating and switching
apparatus for nerve currents. They are an insulation apparatus when
in a state of contraction, a switching and insulating apparatus when
in a state of rest. It is to be remarked, then, that according to
this theory the contraction of brain cells does not take place, as
in Duval's theory, during intellectual rest, but, on the contrary,
during the state of activity of the cerebral cortex. It is much more
probable that the action of cells coincides with the active stage of
intellection than that brain cellular activity--that is,
contraction--should correspond with psychic rest.
The application of some of these theories enables us to understand
just how short-circuiting may come about, how many of the curious
phenomena of memory happen, and what are the effects, as well as the
causes, of attention and distraction of attention and of diversion of
mind. It is particularly the latter portion of Ramon y Cajal's theory,
with regard to attention and the more or less voluntary though
unconscious and usually indeliberate control of blood supply to
various portions of the brain, that is of special interest. If the
neuroglia cells, whose end plates are attached to blood-vessel walls,
become over-contracted or lose their power of relaxation or of
contraction, many of the curious phenomena of over-tiredness in
neurotic conditions, and the lack of the power of concentration, and
sufficient attention to things, can be readily understood. In a word,
the theory enables us to translate many expressions that are vague and
indefinite, from terms of mind into terms of the physical basis of
mind--the anatomy and physiology of the brain.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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