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
_Sensory disturbances._ On the sensory side the effect of emotions,
particularly unpleasant ones, in awakening “thrills” and all sorts of
sensations in different parts of the body is a matter of everyday
observation. _Nausea_, _dizziness_, _headache_, _pains_ of different
kinds are common accompaniments. Such reactions, however, largely vary
as idiosyncrasies of the individual, and are obviously not open to
experimentation or measurement. Whether they should be spoken of as
physiological or aberrant reactions is a matter of terminology. They
are, however, of common occurrence. In pathological conditions
disagreeable sensations accompanying fear, grief, disgust, and other
distressing forms of emotion often play a prominent part, and as
symptoms contribute to the syndromes of the psychosis. The following
quaintly described case quoted by Cannon from Burton’s Anatomy of
Melancholy is as good as a more modern illustration: “A gentlewoman of
the same city saw a fat hog cut up; when the entrails were opened, and a
noisome savour offended her nose, she much disliked, and would not
longer abide; a physician in presence told her, as that hog, so was she
full of filthy excrements, and aggravated the matter by some other
loathsome instances, insomuch this nice gentlewoman apprehended it so
deeply that she fell forthwith a vomiting; was so mightily distempered
in mind and body that, with all his art and persuasion, for some months
after, he could not restore her to herself again; she could not forget
or remove the object out of her sight.” Cannon remarks: “Truly, here was
a moving circle of causation, in which the physician himself probably
played the part of a recurrent augmenter of the trouble. The first
disgust disturbed the stomach, and the disturbance of the stomach, in
turn, aroused in the mind greater disgust, and thus between them the
influences continued to and fro until digestion was impaired and serious
functional derangement supervened. The stomach is ‘king of the belly,’
quotes Burton, ‘for if he is affected all the rest suffer with him.’”
Such cases could be multiplied many fold from the records of every
psychopathologist. I happen by chance to be interrupted while writing
this page by a patient who presents herself suffering from a phobia of
fainting. When this fear (possibly with other emotions) is awakened she
is attacked by nausea and eructation of the gastric contents, and, if
she takes food, by vomiting of the meal. (Owing to a misunderstanding of
the true pathology by her physician, her stomach was washed out
constantly for a period of two years without relief!)
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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