Psychotherapy

Some people have special muscular faculties, as, for instance, the power to displace certain tendons and bring them back with a snap which makes a distinct sound. The Fox sisters, to whom we owe the origin of modern spiritism, confessed that this was the way they produced their spirit rapping. Some mediums can, it is said, dislocate the tendon of the flexor longus hallucis onto the edge of its grove and then bring it back with a snap. Others can produce partial toe dislocations which by muscular power are suddenly reduced with a dull noise like the sound of a gloved hand rapping beneath the table.

35

Ueber die Bedeutung der Funktionellen Nervenkrankhelten für die Diagnostik und Therapie in der Gynakologie von Dr. B. Kronig. Leipzig, 1902.

36

"L'Hypnotisme et la Suggestion en Obstétrique," Paris, 1888.

37

Bulletin of the Lying-in Hospital , Vol. V, No. IV.

38

Tomo 1 No. 7, July, 1910.

39

London, 1906.

40

"Subjective Sensations of Sight and Sound, Abiotrophy and Other Lectures," Philadelphia, 1904.

41

See my translation of one of his clinical lectures In The International Clinic for July, 1899.

42

O'Malley and Walsh, "Pastoral Medicine." Longmans, 1906.

43

Proceedings of Manchester Literary and Philosophical Association , 1898.

44

The Twentieth Century Science Series, New York, 1910.

45

New York, 1909.

46

Longmans, London, 1900, page 21.

47

This question of the varying acuteness of smell in different people is very interesting to the psychotherapeutist for diagnosis and therapy. We have a number of striking cases of very acute olfactory power. This is what might be expected since animals whose respiratory and smell apparatuses are very like our own show extreme differences. The extent to which human power to recognize odors can go is marvelous. In his "Thinking, Feeling, Doing," Prof. Scripture says: "I have a case—reported by a perfectly competent witness who lived for years with the person mentioned—of a woman in charge of a boarding school who always sorted the boys' linen after the wash by the odor alone." Personally, I have sometimes wondered whether this power, like that of feeling in the blind, could not be developed. The blind are supposed actually to bring about an evolution in their nerves of feeling. No such thing happens, however. An examination of them by means of an esthesiometer shows that their nerves are no better developed than those of other people, though they may be able to recognize much minuter differences between the "feel" of things and may be able to read raised type, which the seeing cannot. This is all due to a training of their attention to note slight differences in sensation, however, and not to improvement in the nervous apparatus.

48

Curiously enough. Sir Samuel Romilly, in spite of his dread of the dark, committed suicide and went prematurely into the darkness of the beyond, apparently without his usual tendency to precaution.

49

The Century Co., New York, 1908.

50

Personal and Literary Letters of Lord Lytton, edited by Lady Betty Balfour. New York, 1909.

51

International Scientific Series, D. Appleton & Co., New York.

52

Author of "The Present Evolution of Man," "Alcoholism," "A Study in Heredity," etc. Chapman and Hall, London, 1905.

53

McClure's Magazine , February. 1909.

54

Popular Science Monthly , April, 1901.

55

"Statistics of Child Suicide," Transactions of American Statistical Association, Vol. X., pp. 1906-1907.

56

Is life worth living? How old this argument as to suicide is can perhaps best be appreciated from the fact that it is discussed very suggestively in a papyrus of the Middle Kingdom the date of which is probably not later than 2500 B. C, which is now in the Berlin Museum and is recognized to be the most ancient text of its kind that has been preserved in the Nile Valley. I have referred to this in the initial historical chapter. I think that I have more than once turned men's thoughts from the serious contemplation of suicide—always a dangerous thing—by discussing with them this fact that men have at all times in the world's history argued just the same way on these subjects. Men prefer not to resemble the dead ones, and a motive is all that is needed.

57

"Orthodoxy" by Gilbert K. Chesterton, New York, John Lane Co., 1909.

58

, the following lengthy citation is from an article on "Responsibility and Punishment," in the American Journal of Medical Science, 1909.

59

Fordham University Press, 1911.

60

American edition, Appleton, N. Y.. 1860.