Psychotherapy by Hugo Münsterberg (world of reading .TXT) 📕
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- Author: Hugo Münsterberg
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Of course it may readily be acknowledged that this method does not allow a sharp demarcation line between its various factors. It cannot be denied that an element of straight suggestion may be included. The man whom I train in the forming of a new antagonistic motor response feels it of course all the time also as a silent suggestion to overcome the old disturbance. It is thus to a certain degree impossible to say where the effect of the discharge ends and where that of the hidden suggestion begins. Yet there certainly cannot be any doubt that this revival of the first experience and its improved discharge works directly towards the removal of the troublesome symptom.
Abnormal fear is also the essential factor in most cases of stammering. The patients usually know it themselves. For instance, a lawyer writes to me:
"I have been a stammerer the greater part of my life and have visited every stammering school in the country, but the relief obtained has been temporary and in most cases I was not benefited at all. I am convinced that stammering is due wholly to an abnormal mental condition, which consists of an unreasoning fear that takes possession of the individual when he attempts to utter certain sounds. It is simply a lack of confidence inspired by numberless failures to articulate properly and is not caused by any organic trouble, because, taking my own case for example, I can at times talk as fluently and easily as anyone. I am firmly convinced that stammering can be cured by hypnotic suggestion. If you could get me in the hypnotic state and suggest to me repeatedly that from thenceforth I would have easy fluent speech, I feel absolutely certain that such would be the case."
Or an engineer writes to me:
"At times I stammer very badly. In an ordinary conversation it is scarcely perceptible, but it is almost impossible for me to make an explanation or relate an incident or tell an anecdote. I began to stammer when I was about seven years of age—I am twenty-nine now—and continued until I was seventeen, when I broke myself of it by reading aloud. It came back on me about a year ago, at which time I was laboring under a very severe nervous strain on account of business matters. I have since tried to break myself of it in the way that I did at first, reading aloud, but have been unable to do so. Can it be cured by hypnotic treatment or suggestion? Can any hypnotist of ordinary ability do it?"
I should affirm this question, which is one of the most frequent put to the psychotherapist. And yet, if I myself have entirely given up the cure of stammerers in recent years, it was not only because there was little chance to learn anything new scientifically from it but also because it was ultimately disappointing, as the severe cases cannot be cured entirely. Every hypnotist can quickly secure a strong improvement. In even new cases I found an almost surprising improvement in the first two weeks, an improvement which stirs up the most vivid hopes of the sufferers. Then the improvement becomes slower and finally it stops before a complete cure is reached. The patient notices it and it easily works back on his emotion and thus begins again to disturb the speech, unless a very careful continuous counter-suggestion is given. Slight disturbances, to be sure, can be removed entirely. The essential point will always be to suggest to the stammerer the full belief that he is able to speak every word and that he is able to speak it in every situation. But where there is a limit for improvement, we must take for granted that the disturbing fear is only superadded to an organic trouble. In such cases, probably the inability of certain nervous paths was primarily irreparable. These inabilities then became the source of discomfort and of fear and this fear added greatly to the disturbance. Hypnotism then quickly removes that part of the disturbance which had been superadded by the mental emotion but it cannot remove that primary factor, the objective inability, and every cure thus finds its limit there.
Near the field of emotions stand also the many varieties of sexual abnormities and perversities. I abstain from discussing any special cases but it may be said that suggestive treatment is in this region powerful to an almost surprising degree. Even homosexual tendencies which go back to the beginnings of the memory of the individual yield, as my experience shows, in a few weeks, if again the suggestion is not so much directed towards the suppression as to the creation of the antagonistic reaction, that means in this case, of the normal sexual desire.
Both ideas and emotions, of course, lead to actions. Moreover we always insisted that the resulting action is an essential part of the psychophysical situation and that every mental experience has to be characterized as a starting point for action. Yet this factor of activity and of attitude sometimes stands in the foreground. The controlling idea is then the idea of an end of action, the predominant emotion, the emotion anticipated from a certain activity. Typical for that are those disturbances in which an abnormal impulse or an abnormal desire awakes perhaps a desire for ruinous drugs like morphine or cocaine or an impulse to criminal deeds, like stealing. But the disturbances of the psychomotor factor are not less present when the central complaint is a lack of energy, the most frequent symptom of the neurasthenic; and our whole discussion has made it clear that a mere lack of attention belongs to the same category.
Of course, the abnormal impulse is psychophysically not different, whether it leads to a legally important result like the impulse to kill or leads to an indifferent result. The subjective suffering may be the same in both cases. The starting point of the impulse may be any chance experience. The psychasthenic may pick up such impulses from any model for imitation or from any haphazard report. It may be entirely freakish and yet beyond conscious control.
A physician had read in a well-known book on hysteria about a case in which a girl was troubled by a constant effort to move the big toe in her shoes. This idea worked on him as a suggestion for several months. At my advice he fought it by auto-suggestion. He brought himself into a slightly drowsy state by staring into a crystal ball and assuring himself by spoken sentences with monotonous repetition for a long while that he has perfectly the power to hold the toe at rest. From the second day only a slight kinæsthetic sensation remained; the movement itself disappeared.
Or a more unusual case.
A young lady once noticed in a man a different color in the two eyes. It gave her an uncanny feeling, together with the natural impulse to compare the two eyes. Accordingly she shifted her own eyes from one eyeball to the other in the man's face. The accent which this shifting impulse had received by the disagreeable feeling evidently forced her to repeat this movement with everyone. At first it became half a play, but soon a disturbing habit and finally an intolerable impulse. Whenever she talked with anyone, she lost control of her eyes and was obliged to enter into a kind of pendulum movement from eye to eye. The situation became so unendurable that the thought of suicide began to occur to her. I hypnotized her four times, suggesting to her complete indifference as to the face of those with whom she spoke and at the same time certain new habits of fixation. The impulse lost its hold and when I saw her last, it had completely disappeared.
By far more frequent than such neutral impulses are the desires, for instance, of the alcoholist. On the whole it may be said that psychotherapy can gain its easiest triumphs in the field of alcoholism and a wide propagation of psychotherapeutic methods and of a thorough understanding of psychotherapy would be fully justified, even if no other field were accessible but that of the desire for alcoholic intemperance. The moral disaster and economic ruin resulting from alcoholic intemperance, the physical harm to the drinker and to his offspring is so enormous, and the temporary cure of the victim is so probable that the movement certainly deserves most serious interest. Yet I speak of temporary cure and I refer here especially to the restriction with which I introduced the psychotherapeutic methods in general. They do not deal with diseases but with symptoms; and they certainly do not deal with constitutions, but with results of the coöperation of constitution and circumstances. That the given constitution may be brought anew under conditions which again stir up similar symptoms is always possible, and just with alcoholism the danger lies near unless beneficial influences remain in power. Certainly no one has a right to neglect such psychotherapeutic aid simply because relapses are possible. Even a temporary relief can be a great blessing. Moreover, the temporary relief is the safest basis to work towards the prevention of a recurrence of the evil. Only in two directions is further restriction needed. Psychotherapeutic methods are in my opinion of very small avail in cases of periodic drinkers. Such periodic attacks of patients who have not even a desire for alcohol in intervals between the attacks, intervals which may last a quarter of a year, are related to epilepsy. It seems that constant hypnotic influence during the interval has a certain power to reduce the periodic impulse. I personally have not seen any special improvement from it. The second restriction would be that the drinker has to be under
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