The unconscious : $b The fundamentals of human personality, normal and abnormalPrince, Morton
Science
The unconscious : $b The fundamentals of human personality, normal and abnormal
Prince, Morton
Psychology, Pathological; Subconsciousness
Another example of this idea and of the way it induced a psychosis is
the following: She had an intense dislike to hearing the sound of
running water. This sound induced an intense feeling of _unhappiness
and loneliness_. This feeling was so intense that whenever she heard
the sound of running water she endeavored to get away from it. The
sound of a fountain or rainwater running from a roof, for example,
would cause such unpleasant feelings that she would change her
sleeping room to avoid them. Likewise drawing water to fill the
bathtub was so unpleasant that she would insist upon the door being
closed to exclude the sound. She could give no explanation of this
psychosis. It was discovered in the following way: She had been
desirous of finding out the cause, and we had discussed the subject. I
had promised that I would unravel the matter in due time, after the
other phobia had been cured. I then hypnotized her and, while she was
in hypnosis and just after we had completed the other problem, she
remarked that a memory of the running water association was on the
verge of emerging into her mind. She could not get it for some time,
and then, after some effort, it suddenly emerged. She described it as
follows: “It was at Bar Harbor. She was about eight years of age.
There was a brook there called Duck Brook. The older girls used to go
up there on Sundays for a walk with the boys. I went with them one
Sunday, accompanied by the governess, and was standing by the brook
with a boy. It was a very noisy brook, the water running down from the
hillside. While I was standing by the brook, watching the running
water, the boy left me to join the other girls, who had gone off. I
thought that was the way it would always be in life; that I was ugly,
and that they would never stay with me. I felt lonely and unhappy.
During that summer I would not join parties of the same kind, fearing
or feeling that the same thing would happen. I stayed at home by
myself, and when I refused to go it was attributed to sullenness. They
did not know my real reasons. Ever since I have been unable to bear
the sound of running water, which produces the feeling of unhappiness
and loneliness, the same feeling that I had at that time. I thought
then that it was all my fault, because I was ugly.” It was then
tentatively pointed out at some length to the subject that as she now
knew all the facts which had been brought to the “full light of day,”
etc., she, of course, would no longer have her former unpleasant
emotions from the sound of running water. Hereupon, to put the
question to the test, I reached out my hand and poured some water from
a caraffe, by chance standing by, into a tumbler, letting the water
fall from a height to make a sound. At once she manifested discomfort,
and sought to restrain me with her hand. Plainly the setting had to be
changed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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