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time, remains without clear articulatory power. When this occurs, the
natural tendency among those treating him—in view of the
demonstrated truth that stammering is the effect of a peculiar state
of mind—is to throw the blame on the patient instead of on the
method. Yet, actually, it is the method that is at fault—or, to be
exact, it is the failure to apply the method, which itself is thoroughly
sound—in such a way as to remove from the stammerer's mind not
only the fear that haunts him and helps to perpetuate his
stammering, but also the ideas in which his stammering originated.
Here we come to the central fact in the whole problem of
stammering—a fact which, when it is widely enough known and
appreciated, is certain to exert a far-reaching influence on the
prevention of stammering, as well as its cure. Until very recently, few
have been aware of this fact except a small group of foreign
investigators, physicians with a psychological training, whose special
business it has been to determine scientifically the possibilities, the
limitations, and the exact procedures to be followed in
supplementing, by wholly mental treatment, the ordinary medical
and surgical treatment of disease. Impressed by the predominance
of the mental factor in stammering, these investigators were
particularly impressed by some of the peculiarities mentioned above
—as, the ability of almost every stammerer to speak well when alone
or when in a state of abstraction. Such peculiarities, they knew from
long experience, bore a strong resemblance to oddities in the
behaviour of victims of hysteria, psychasthenia, or other
psychoneurosis, in all of which disorders there is a tendency for
symptoms to disappear when the sufferer's attention is momentarily
withdrawn from them. Accordingly, it seemed to the investigators
quite possible that, in the last analysis, stammering was not so much
a disease in itself as a psychoneurotic symptom.
They were well aware, for reasons already set forth in these pages,
that psychoneurotic disorders have their origin in emotional
disturbances of one sort or another, which, occurring to a person of
nervous temperament or rendered neurally unstable by a faulty
upbringing, react adversely on the entire organism. Exactly what
happens is that the emotional disturbance—whether it be a fright, a
grief, a worry, or what not—while perhaps completely forgotten by
the victim, so far as conscious recollection is concerned, remains
subconsciously alive in his memory, is ever seeking to emerge again
into conscious remembrance, and, failing to do this, takes its
revenge, so to speak, by the production of disease symptoms
ranging from mere eccentricities of thought and behaviour to
symptoms mimicking those of true organic disease.
Also, the investigators knew that the particular form these mentally
caused symptoms take depends chiefly on the kind of suggestions
received from the sufferer's environment. If he chances, for
instance, to have a relative or a friend who is a paralytic, he may, in
time, develop pseudosymptoms of paralysis himself. Or, if his
nervous equilibrium be sufficiently upset, he may develop them from
merely hearing or reading about them. Whatever the symptoms he
manifests, his malady is curable—precisely as it was produced—by
mental means alone. Often, a counter-suggestion, to the effect that
henceforth the psychoneurotic person will be perfectly well, is
enough to work his cure. Or, permanently curative effects may be
had only when, by special techniques devised for the express
purpose of rummaging through the subconsciousness, the forgotten
memory, or memories, responsible for the psychoneurosis are
brought to light, and the specific suggestion directly or indirectly
made that from that time they will do no harm. Sometimes,
experience has shown, the mere recalling of them to conscious
remembrance is enough to put an end to the disease symptoms they
have caused.
On the view that stammering is similarly a psychoneurotic symptom,
and that, when it fails to yield to treatment by general suggestion, it
is because the subconscious memories underlying it are too intense
to be thus subdued, this group of investigators undertook to treat it
as they would any stubborn psychoneurosis. The outcome of their
experiments has been such that I feel justified in declaring that
science has at last penetrated to the true inwardness of stammering.
These psychologically trained physicians have taken stammerers who
had well-nigh exhausted their hopes and their resources in a futile
quest for normal speech, and, after subjecting them to the searching
methods of psychological analysis, have sent them on their way
rejoicing, either in a perfect cure or in a lasting improvement far
beyond their expectation.
Citing a few instances of actual occurrence, a German member of
the group, Doctor B. Dattner, was once consulted by a stammerer of
thirty-six, who had been burdened by his speech defect from
boyhood. He had first stammered, he told Doctor Dattner, after an
attack of diphtheria, at the age of nine; and he had for some time
been treated on the supposition that the diphtheria had caused a
peculiar kind of throat paralysis.[13] This treatment failing, he had
sought relief by other means, always without more than temporary
benefit. Like many another stammerer, he spoke of the abnormal
dread that harassed him, especially when with strangers, and
expressed the belief that if he could conquer this he would be free
from his stammer.
"Ah, but," Doctor Dattner pointed out, "do you not realise that, after
all, your dread is caused by—not the cause of—your stammer? It has
helped, doubtless, to keep it alive and to aggravate it. But it has not
been the thing that originally made you stammer. That we must seek
elsewhere."
"You mean in the attack of diphtheria?"
"Not at all. I mean in something that happened to you before you
had diphtheria—something which so exceedingly distressed you that
it was continually uppermost in your thoughts, and which finally
worked on you so much that when your nervous system was
weakened by the diphtheria it gave rise to your stammering. Now,
we are going to try to discover what that something was, and, when
we have done so, it will be possible really to cure you. Can you recall
any particularly disagreeable incident of your childhood occurring at
any time before you were ill of diphtheria?"
"No," said the other, after a little reflection, "I think that I was
perfectly happy as a child, and certainly I was treated kindly."
"Just the same, something must have happened at that period to
disturb you very much. Let us find out, if we can, what it was."
To this end, Doctor Dattner now made use of the "free association
method of mental analysis," which consists in requesting the patient
to concentrate his attention on his symptoms, and state without
reserve the thoughts coming to him in connection with them—the
theory being that, if there is any exceptionally distressing idea
underlying them, the current of his spoken thoughts will, soon or
late, reveal it. In the present instance, this method at first brought
forth only trivial and commonplace memory associations. But, after a
time, a reminiscence of intense emotional colouring suddenly
emerged.
It related to an episode of the stammerer's eighth year, shortly
before his attack of diphtheria, when he was pounced upon and
frightened almost into convulsions by a huge black dog. This had
virtually faded from his conscious memory; but now, as he sat in the
quiescent mood enjoined on all patients undergoing psychoanalytic
treatment, it welled up into full recollection, every detail of it being
vividly recalled—the sight of the dog, the emotions of fear and
horror, the hysterical shrieking that followed his escape, the difficulty
his parents had in convincing him that he was unharmed. He used to
lie awake, he remembered, thinking of the dog; he used to dream of
it; the thought of it was always with him.
"Precisely," said Doctor Dattner, drily. "And, you see, the thought of
it is still with you, for look how graphically you have described it all.
The trouble is that it has been leading an independent existence, as
it were, in the depths of your mind, with all its original emotional
intensity. Your stammering, I can assure you, has been nothing more
than the external manifestation, the symbol, of its continuing
presence, and of the deadly power it has had over you—sensitive,
impressionable child that you must have been. But I can also assure
you that your stammering will now come to an end; for we have not
only found its cause in the subconsciously remembered shock of
your boyhood, but we have actually removed that cause by the very
fact of recalling it to your conscious recollection and, consequently,
finding a normal outlet for the repressed emotions."
Altogether, it had required just six hours of psychoanalysis, at the
rate of about an hour a day, to recover this horror-encrusted
memory of the stammerer's childhood. But, with its recall, and
strikingly validating Doctor Dattner's confident prediction, he once
more began to enjoy the blessing of a facile, flowing speech.
In another case—treated by the American neurologist, Doctor Coriat,
who has made extensive use of psychoanalytic methods—the patient
was a man of middle age, who stammered not only when he spoke,
but even when he wrote, repeating letters and syllables in anything
he tried to put on paper. He had been to two stammering schools
and had been discharged from both as cured, but each time had
speedily relapsed.
As in the case of Doctor Dattner's patient, psychoanalysis
demonstrated that the causal agency of his stammering was a
lingering subconscious remnant of distressing emotional states
experienced in childhood. Only, in this instance, the distressing
states related, not to an unexpected, stupefying fright, but to painful
reveries indulged in as a child, and occasioned by certain unpleasant
stories he had been told regarding the end of the world and the fate
of the sinful.
"These," he recalled, "took complete possession of my mind. I
became convinced that the end of the world could not be long
delayed, and I was in an agony of terror. Constantly I kept asking
myself what I should do to escape destruction. I knew I was a bad
boy—very bad. Nothing could atone for the sins I fancied I had
committed. But I kept my fears to myself; I did not dare confide
them to others. Night and day I worried about them, picturing to
myself the terrible happenings of the approaching time of doom."
Until psychoanalysis brought them up to the surface of
consciousness, he had long ceased to think of these foolish
imaginings of childhood. He had as entirely forgotten them as
though he had never entertained them. But, as the event showed, it
was their malign influence, working on a nervous system already
infirm by defects of inheritance, that had produced a psychoneurosis
which, in his case, had taken the form of a speech disorder through
the suggestions unconsciously absorbed by watching his mother,
who likewise suffered from a peculiar variety of stammering.
Another of Doctor Coriat's patients—a young woman—impressed
him, from the day of her first visit, with her extreme timidity and
self-consciousness. Both were so pronounced as to be abnormal,
and he immediately suspected that they, in common with her
stammering, would be found linked with subconscious memories of
occurrences that had tended to deprive her of proper appreciation of
her abilities and rights. She proved a good hypnotic subject, and,
knowing that in hypnosis long-forgotten events are easily recalled,
Doctor Coriat questioned her as to her previous history.
"Can you remember," he asked her, "just when it was that you began
to stammer?"
"It was when I was a very little girl."
"Had any one or anything greatly frightened you before then?"
"Yes."
"What was it?"
"It was my father."
Then followed, in answer to further questions, a long series of
reminiscences of the severe discipline imposed on her in earliest
childhood by her father, a stern, hard man. As she related them, she
seemed to feel again all the emotions that they had provoked—the
shame, grief, fear, doubt, longing for sympathy. Literally, she lived
through them anew, and to the trained understanding of the
physician it was evident that she had never really forgotten them—
although, in the waking state, she was able to recall her childhood
only vaguely—but had subconsciously dwelt on them all her life, to
the wrecking of her self-confidence, as well as the causing of her
troubles of speech. Only by completely blotting them out, through
psychotherapeutic means, could her restoration to health be
effected.
Similarly, it has been found that emotional disturbances are at the
bottom of stammering when it develops, not in childhood, but in
adult life. A particularly instructive case, because of the insight it
affords into the ingenuity with which the expert psychoanalyst gets
at the truth in even the most complicated cases of functional
nervous or mental disorder, is one that was successfully handled by
Doctor A. A. Brill, already mentioned in these pages, a pupil of the
pioneer Austrian psychoanalyst, Doctor Sigmund Freud. Doctor Brill's
patient was a man who, after an early life untroubled by speech
defect, had begun to stammer from no discernible cause, and had
been stammering for a number of years before he consulted the
New York specialist. Several weeks of psychoanalysis elicited nothing
that would account for his trouble, and Doctor Brill was in much
perplexity, until he one day noticed that the words on which his
patient chiefly stammered were words beginning with or containing
the letter "k." It occurred to him that this letter might have some
significant association in the stammerer's mind, but the latter denied
that it could have.
However, after psychoanalysis had proceeded further, Doctor Brill
learned that there had been an event in the patient's life, though
occurring some little time before the development of the
stammering, that had made a most painful, even agonising,
impression on him. He had been engaged to a young woman who
had eloped with his closest friend; and this had so wrought on him
that he had vowed never to utter her name again.
"And what was her name?" asked Doctor Brill.
The stammerer stared at him and burst into a violent tirade.
"Haven't I just told you," he cried, "that I have taken an oath never
to speak it? What business is it of yours, anyway? What bearing can
it have on my trouble of speech?"
"Only this bearing—that it may be the means of curing you. Come,
now, I am sorry you have taken an oath, because you will have to
break it and tell me the name."
"I'll die first."
With this he seized his hat and dashed out of the doctor's office in a
frenzy of indignation. Doctor Brill did not see him again for a month.
Then he returned, repentant. He would tell the name, he said, on
condition that Doctor Brill did not write it down in the detailed record
which, as is customary, he was making of the case. To this a prompt
assent was given, and the troublesome name was as promptly made
known. As Doctor Brill had expected, it began with K. He then said,
leaning forward and showing his sheet of notes:
"See, I have kept my promise. I have called her Miss W. And, now,
we'll soon have you quite well."
But on his next visit the patient was in despair. He was, he
protested, stammering worse than ever. Words that had never given
him any trouble before were now almost unpronounceable by him.
On investigation, it turned out that they were, one and all, words in
which the letter "w" had a place.
"At last," said Doctor Brill, "we know for a certainty what has made
you stammer. It was the foolish oath you took, which served to
sustain in your mind the memory of the terrible experience you went
through on account of your faithless sweetheart. Vowing never to
utter her name, yet thinking constantly of her, you have
unconsciously made it difficult for you to utter even words in which
the most prominent letter of that name—its initial—occurs. And,
now, since she has become Miss W. to you, as well as Miss K., you
are stammering on words with "w," as well as words with "k." We
must free you from the torment of that vow and of the pent-up
emotions that go with the forbidden name, and then you will never
stammer more."
To this mode of dealing with stammerers could anything be in
stronger contrast than the brutal Dieffenbach technique? The latter
exemplifies, if in an extreme form, the folly of attempting—as is so
often done, even to-day—to treat stammering on a basis of
imperfect observation. The former shows the happy results that may
be obtained when it is attacked in the light of thorough investigation.
No; it is neither by the surgeon's knife nor by the use of mechanical
appliances or physiological devices that stammering is to be really
conquered, but by intelligent application of the wonderful remedial
measures which modern medical psychology has worked out.
Stammering, to recapitulate, is not at bottom an anatomical or
physiological trouble. Its individual peculiarities, varied as they are,
all tend to prove that it is a mental malady, symptomatic of a
psychoneurosis having its origin in subconscious emotional states.
The rôle that heredity plays in it is merely to provide the soil in
which it can flourish. Of wholly mental causation, it is curable by
mental means, whether by faith in the efficacy of any method of
treatment, however intrinsically worthless that method may be; by
"suggestions" of a general character; or, if needful, by specific recall
and eradication of the "forgotten memories" that underlie it.
Lest, however, I raise hope unduly, I would at once add that not
even the most expert practitioners in psychoanalysis, or in any other
psychological mode of treating stammering, are justified in
guaranteeing an absolute or an "approximate" cure in every case.
Experience is showing that the "emotional complexes" responsible
for stammering are, in many cases, so deep-seated—and often so
entangled in later complexes—that it is virtually impossible to get at
them by any present-known method of mind tunnelling. And, in
many other cases, the process of psychoanalysis is so slow and
tedious that the stammerer is all too likely to lose heart and abandon
the effort at cure.
Consequently, in respect to stammering, prevention becomes of
more than usual importance. And the prevention of stammering, I
trust I have already made amply clear, rests chiefly with parents. It
is again primarily a question of guarding the young from needless
emotional stresses, of early training to foster in children calmness,
courage, self-confidence; so that, when inevitable shocks and trials
come, they will have no power to overwhelm the mind and give birth
to stammering or any other neurotic evil.
FAIRY TALES THAT HANDICAP
 VIII
FAIRY TALES THAT HANDICAP

"EVERY ugly thing told to the child, every shock, every fright given
him, will remain like minute splinters in the flesh to torture him
all his life long."
Thus said the famous Italian scientist, Angelo Mosso, a good many
years ago. The facts of more recent research into the psychology
and psychopathology of childhood, as reviewed in the preceding
chapters, vindicate Professor Mosso's statement to an extent and in
ways undreamed of by him. Nor is it only the emotionally disturbing
things seen, heard, or experienced by children that may have a
decisively adverse influence on their development. Harm may
similarly and equally be done by the books and stories they read,
even to the extent of provoking or accentuating nervous maladies.
Particularly mischievous in this respect, because of their wide
reading by children, are certain fairy tales which many parents—nay,
I might say, nearly all parents—consider quite suitable for young
readers.
You smile incredulously at the suggestion that a fairy tale could
possibly affect a child harmfully. Still more preposterous seems to
you the idea that the harmful effects of fairy tales—if such harmful
effects actually occur—may be carried over into adult life. But, listen:
To the Doctor Brill of the letter "k" stammering case just narrated,
there once came a young man of twenty-eight, afflicted with a
strange and alarming malady.
"Doctor," he said, "I want your candid opinion as to what is the
matter with me. Physically I feel well, but mentally I am badly off. In
fact, I fear I am insane, and dangerously so. For a long time I have
been tormented by a strange desire to bite and stab people and to
torture them in all sorts of ways. I yearn for the times when
everybody carried the dirk and dagger and could kill when offended.
As yet I have restrained my mad impulse, but I am in terror lest I
give way to it. Is there anything you can do to help me?"
The mere fact that he thus clearly recognised and candidly
confessed his mental state was in itself a hopeful sign. But Doctor
Brill was well aware that it might be extremely difficult to cure him,
perhaps impossible. Everything would depend, in the first place, on
whether the young man were actually insane or merely the victim of
a psychoneurotic obsession. If the latter, there was a possibility of
his being cured, provided the subconscious region of his mind could
be explored with sufficient thoroughness to get at and root out the
ideas underlying and responsible for his dangerous obsession.
Satisfying himself that it actually was a case of psychoneurosis,
Doctor Brill began the work of mental exploration. And, knowing that
submerged ideas are pretty sure to reveal themselves, directly or
indirectly, through the character of a person's dreams, he began by
directing the young man to make a written record of his dreaming.
"Whenever you have a dream," he told him, "I want you to write it
down as soon as you awake, and bring me an account of it."
Before long, Doctor Brill was in possession of a remarkable collection
of dreams, many of which, as he had expected, were of an
exceedingly unpleasant character. Analysing these dreams, a curious
fact at once became evident—namely, that the patient's mental life
was largely occupied with imaginings that related, not to the world
of everyday existence, but to the people and events of mythology
and fairy tale.
Always, too, in his subconscious imaginings, ideas of death and
violence were uppermost. During the dream-analysis he recalled
with special vividness such themes as the beheading of Medusa, the
cruelties of Bluebeard, and the freezing to death of Eva, heroine of
Bryant's "Little People of the Snows." Even trivial details in the
settings of these and similar fairy tales were remembered and
brought out in his dream-associations with a fulness that astonished
the patient himself. Dr. Brill comments:
"He was very imaginative, so that the harrowing adventures enacted
by fairies, genii, and Greek deities, on which he was constantly fed,
were deeply interwoven with his own life, and he built up for himself
a strange, archaic world. He liked to be alone, and often wandered
away from his companions, to act through, in his own way, the
adventures of which he had just heard or read.
"He himself traced the selection of his profession—that of an actor—
to these boyish actions when he tried to imitate the fleet-footed
Mercury, some character from fairyland or the "Arabian Nights," or
some savage Indians. He thus imagined himself flying, and
beheading monsters above the clouds, or penetrating to the centre
of the earth in the form of some wicked magician, all the time
passing through the most harrowing scenes. By a process of
condensation, he fused ancient characters and episodes with
persons and actions of reality, but his fancies usually began with
some god-like or demon-like myth and gradually descended to
human beings.
"During the first few weeks of the analysis he was in the habit of
merging into a dreamy state while reproducing associations, and
often became so excited that the work had to be temporarily
interrupted."[14]
It was unnecessary to seek much further for the explanation of the
obsession of torture. In large part, at all events, this was quite
evidently the expression in consciousness of the gruesome images
with which the patient's mind had been filled by the tales told him in
his childhood. Though faded from conscious remembrance, they had
remained with him subconsciously, to influence for evil the current of
his conscious thoughts. Or, to put the matter tersely: Had tales of
cruelty and violent death not been told him in his early days, he
might never have been afflicted in manhood with his morbid
longings to inflict pain.
Of course, if this case stood by itself it would be of no great
significance. But the fact is that during the past few years—or since
physicians began to appreciate the part played by childhood
impressions in causing mental and nervous disease—evidence has
been accumulating to indicate that the almost universal custom of
telling fairy tales to children does entail grave risks to their character
and their health. The child of normal nervous constitution is likely to
be affected only in character; the supersensitive, neurotic child may
be hurried, by the tales he hears or reads, into some more or less
serious mental or nervous malady.
Let me hasten to add that this does not mean that the fairy tale
should be entirely banished from the literature of childhood. It
means only that parents should exercise more discrimination than
they usually show in selecting fairy tales for their children. The
rightly chosen fairy tale is indeed an almost indispensable aid in the
early education of children, for reasons that are admirably
summarised by an American educator, Mr. Percival Chubb, in these
words:
"One value in fairy stories for the young is that they embody and
commemorate the man-child's first rude assertion of the lordship of
mind, and subserve the development of a later sense of spiritual
freedom and autonomy. Another is that they are expressive, as all
art is expressive, of the idealistic hunger at the heart of men. Again,
as forms of art, they select and co-ordinate those facts which bring
out the spiritual meanings of life. That is, they release from the
unsifted materials of experience the imprisoned 'Soul of Fact.' And
not only do they embody the basic moral insights and interpretations
of childish man, but they express the simple and larger emotions,
and so feed the heart of the child. They quicken, too, the
imagination—that master-faculty without which the sympathy which
is man's highest and richest endowment fails of fruition. They are an
aid to culture by giving an outlook upon all nations and kindreds, all
countries and conditions of life. Finally, along with their allied forms
of literary invention, the myth, saga, fable, and so on, they are a
condition to understanding the innumerable allusions with which the
literature of the world is studded."[15]
All this is assuredly the function of the fairy tale, but frequently it is
frustrated by the kind of fairy tales children are allowed to read. For
one thing, the imaginative faculty is scarcely stimulated in a healthy
fashion when the mind is led to dwell constantly, as in the case of
Doctor Brill's patient, on thoughts of cruelty and pain. Nor can the
fairy tale be said to have exerted a healthy influence in such a case
as that represented by a little girl who was brought for treatment to
another medical psychologist, and whose morbid irritability,
disobedience, and crying spells were, by psychological analysis,
traced to an excessive jealousy of her brother. In the course of the
analysis the discovery was made that the girl had frequent dreams
of seeing both her mother and her brother cruelly treated. In one
dream, witches shut her mother in a cave to starve to death, and
threw her brother into a large caldron of boiling water, leaving her to
perish miserably.
"This dream," the little girl naïvely explained to the physician who
was analysing her mental states, "is just like the fairy tales I read."
Other dreams of cruelty were likewise found to be drawn from the
reading of unpleasant fairy tales. So that, although in this case
jealousy was undoubtedly the chief cause of the nervous condition
for which treatment was required, fairy tales also played a part in
directing the course of the little girl's morbid thinking and her
difficult behaviour. Warned by this revelation of the dream-analysis,
her physician made it a point to notify her mother that unless steps
were taken to change the girl's reading matter she might develop
traits of character—harshness, coldness, indifference to the
sufferings of others—that would handicap her throughout life.
Or, instead of causing an abnormal harshness, the fairy tale
abounding in gory elements may breed an equally abnormal timidity,
passing sometimes beyond the category of a character defect to that
of positive disease. A typical instance is found in the experience of a
young New York boy.
"Our son," his parents told the physician, to whom they took him for
treatment, "has suddenly become excitable and nervous, afraid to go
outdoors alone, and still more afraid to sleep alone. If left to himself
after having been put to bed, he often wakes out of a sound sleep,
shrieking for us. When we go to him he seems dazed, and for some
moments does not recognise us. But he cannot tell us what has
frightened him, and in the morning does not remember his alarm."
From this brief description the physician at once recognised that he
had to deal with a case of what is technically known as pavor
nocturnus, but better known to the lay public as "night terrors."
Having had a thorough training in medical psychology, he was well
aware that night terrors are grounded in disturbing experiences of
the waking life. Accordingly, he questioned the parents closely.
Insistently they denied that anything had occurred to cause their son
undue anxiety or alarm. Then the physician resorted to psychological
analysis of the boy's mental states and, before long, made the
discovery that his mind was full of frightful images of giants,
wizards, and slimy monsters. Promptly he summoned the father and
mother to a conference, and asked them:
"Have you been reading or telling fairy stories to your boy lately?"
"Why, yes," the mother replied. "He is passionately fond of them,
and I tell him some every day."
"And what, may I ask, are the stories that you tell to him most
frequently?"
"'Jack the Giant Killer' is one. He is also particularly fond of 'The Boy
Who Did Not Know How to Shiver.'"
"Well, madam," said the physician, gravely, "I must ask you either to
stop telling him fairy tales or to choose for him fairy tales with less
gruesome elements in them. He is a boy of nervous temperament,
and, figuratively speaking, he has been poisoned by the fear-images
that are so abundant in the stories he has heard. Take him out into
the open air, turn his thoughts to other things, and be more discreet
in your choice of reading matter for him. Unless you do this, there is
danger that he will yet suffer from something far more serious than
night terrors."
The truth of this last statement may be concretely re-enforced by
another citation from recent medical experience—the case, not of a
young boy, but of a man of thirty, who came to Doctor Brill with a
remarkable story.
"Ever since my boyhood," he related, "I have fainted at seeing
blood. Now I feel weak and dizzy, and sometimes I faint outright, at
anything which merely brings into my mind the thought of blood. I
am afraid to talk to certain people because they are likely to speak
about accidents which make me think of blood. The sight of a man
who looks like a doctor suggests an operation, and at once I feel
faint. On one occasion I fainted away while my blood pressure was
being taken. It was not that I was afraid of having my blood
pressure taken; it was simply that the word 'blood' brought on the
usual attack. You do not appreciate the difficulty I have in telling you
all this. Every time I mention the word to you I have to get a grip on
myself. I fear I must seem very weak and foolish, but I cannot
overcome the horror I feel. Unless you help me, I do not know what
I shall do. I cannot go on this way indefinitely."
In answer to Doctor Brill's questions, he insisted nothing had
occurred in his life that could give rise to his "phobia," or morbid
dread of blood. He had been in no bad accident, had undergone no
serious surgical operation, had witnessed no sanguinary scenes of
any sort.
"Nevertheless," Doctor Brill assured him, "there is a logical reason
for your abnormal fear. It is evidently buried deep in your mind; but
there are ways of getting at it, and get at it we must."
Psychological analysis, patiently carried on for many days, ultimately
brought the truth to light. His phobia, it appeared, had its real
starting point in early childhood, and, not least, in certain
sensational fairy stories read to him by a nurse when he was quite
young—stories which he himself continued to read at a later age.
"These bloody and horrible stories," to quote Doctor Brill, "made a
strong impression upon him. He would form fancies about them on
going to sleep at night, substituting himself for the hero."
"Bluebeard" was one story that especially impressed him. Another
was a charming tale about a false princess who was rolled in a
barrel, into which long pointed spikes had been driven.
As he grew older, there had been the usual fading from memory of
these stories and the imaginings to which they had given rise. But,
subconsciously, they had never been forgotten, and out of them
there had gradually developed the obsessive and seemingly
inexplicable dread of blood.
In another case, the "Bluebeard" story responsible for the night
terrors of a sensitive little girl, remained so indelibly fixed in her
subconsciousness that in adult life she often had nightmares, in
which, to her great distress, she was attacked by men who were
"frightful looking on account of their blue beards." Even more
impressively illustrative of the permanence and possible ill effects of
tales of the horrible heard in early life is the case of a man fifty years
old, who had to receive medical treatment because he "could not fall
asleep without living through—for at least an hour, sometimes even
longer—some distorted story from fairy books or mythology."
That common phobia of childhood, fear of the dark, is often
traceable to fairy tales, and, in many cases, persists in some degree
through later life. Let me quote, on this important point, the
testimony of a Washington physician, Doctor T. A. Williams, who has
made a special study of nervousness in childhood:
"Morbid fears are a great distress to many people. They have nearly
always arisen in early childhood, and have been inculcated by
injudicious nurses, tales of goblins and fairies being most prolific in
this respect.
"The ineradicability of fears, when inculcated in early childhood, is
clearly illustrated by a Southern lady who, even in advanced age,
dared not go alone into the dark, although she had long ceased to
believe in the stories which had made her afraid to do so. She
realised this so forcibly that she would not permit her three
daughters to be told any of the alarming stories which most
Southern children learn. This resulted in the girls never having
known what it meant to be afraid of the dark. Indeed, it was the
habit of their school fellows to send them off into dark and eery
places to show off their powers."
And, from one of the most experienced psychiatrists of the United
States, Doctor W. A. White, superintendent of the great Government
Hospital for the Insane, at Washington, we have this emphatic
statement as to the general relationship between fairy tales and
mental diseases:
"You will find, not infrequently, that the precipitating factors in
psychoses come from the books of fairy tales which your children
are allowed to feed upon."
Of course, as already intimated, a mental overthrow from the
hearing or reading of fairy tales presupposes an undue
impressionability on the victim's part. But how are parents to
determine whether or no their children's psychic make-up is such as
to render them immune from the possible mind-enfeebling effects of
"horror tales"? And, in any event, let me repeat with all the
emphasis at my command, there is reason to believe that no child
can escape some stunting or distorting of character if brought up on
a diet of ultra-sanguinary fairy tales.
As I write these lines, a stupendous war is raging in Europe with a
ferocity that appals the outside world. Especially atrocious is the
policy of one of the embattled nations, formerly regarded as a leader
in modern civilisation. To attain its ends, this nation has violated
treaty obligations as though they were of no consequence whatever;
it has ruthlessly slain innocent noncombatants, even the citizens of
neutral countries; wherever it has been victorious, it stands accused
of vile brutalities. In its attitude towards its own soldiers it has
displayed an almost incredible callousness, hurling them to certain
destruction with cold-blooded nonchalance.
Beholding all this, the people of other lands marvel and question.
That, in the twentieth century, even under the stress of war, a
civilised nation should thus revert to barbarism seems to baffle
explanation. For myself, however, I am convinced that at least a
partial explanation is to be found in the fact that the offending
nation is one among whom the myth, the legend, and the fairy tale
have pre-eminently flourished.
In the stories which distinguished scholars have eagerly assisted to
make available to the youth of this nation, indifference to human
suffering and human life are too often conspicuous elements. Too
often they are tinged by more than a suggestion of bloodthirstiness,
cruelty, and the principle of revenge. When the childish mind has
been fed upon these, stimulated by them to unhealthy fancies, and
re-enforced in those instincts inherited from the primitive, which it
should be the business of education to weaken and repress, is it to
be wondered at that, in the crisis of war, there has been a veritable
relapse to primitive savagery?
In some degree, moreover, all the warring nations have been bred
on fairy tales, and, in some degree, all have exhibited the same
tendency to the cruel ways of primitive man. Throughout the world a
fairy tale reform is needed for the development and maintenance of
a true civilisation.
But, mark you, it is a reform that is needed, not a banishment of the
fairy tale. As some one has well said, a child who never hears a fairy
tale is developing a tract in his soul that, in later life, will grow
barren. More than this, cases are on record indicating that unless the
child's instinctive craving for the romantic and the ideal is satisfied
by well-chosen fairy tales, he may gratify this craving in ways that
shock his elders.
I will give one instance, by way of concrete illustration. For
knowledge of this I am indebted to President Hall, of Clark
University, and I give it in President Hall's own words:
"Two immigrants in New York brought up their daughter, born here,
on a diet of literal truth, and tabooed fiction, poetry, and imagination
as lies. She was bright, at twelve had never read a fairy tale or a
story book, but was continually dreamy and ardent-souled, with a
great passion and talent for music. Her mother once told her that
she might, perhaps, play some time to the President. Soon after, at
the dedication of Grant's Tomb, she saw Mr. and Mrs. McKinley. One
day, soon afterwards, she rushed in, breathless, saying that they had
visited her school, heard her play, might adopt her, would give papa
a place in Washington, and so on; but Mrs. McKinley was out of
funds, and her husband was in Washington.
"Accordingly, Gertrude's father drew a hundred from his fortune of
fourteen hundred dollars in the bank and sent it by his daughter,
who brought back costly flowers. Upon more excuses, more money
was loaned, and more presents were sent to Gertrude's parents—a
canary, a puppy, a diamond ring. Gertrude conversed intelligently on
political topics, and her father gave up his position, as he was about
to accept a five-thousand-dollar job in Washington.
"Then came the crash. Gertrude had never met the President or his
wife, but had made lavish presents and had bought many articles,
which she had stored with a neighbour; and, to her parents' especial
horror, had laid in a large stock of fairy tales and other fiction."
With justification, President Hall adds: "This points a moral against
the pedagogic theory that would starve the imagination."[16]
In truth, the cultivation of the imaginative faculty by means of the
fairy tale is one of the great opportunities of parenthood. Only see to
it that the fairy tales employed for this purpose do not reek of
brutality and gore, of treachery and cunning.
And see to it that elements like these are not unduly conspicuous in
any other kind of tales you put into the hands of your children. Give
them no books to read, tell them no stories that may react on a
sensitive mind to the development either of callousness or fear. Be
careful even with regard to the tales you tell your children in the
course of their religious education. Dwell on the rewards of
goodness rather than on the punishments of sin. In the religious
instruction of the young, as in all other instruction, over-emphasis on
the grim and the terrifying may have unfavourable consequences,
persisting to the end of life.
Recall, if you please, the case of the overworked Boston young man,
mentioned in "Psychology and Parenthood" (p. 273). Obsessed with
an idea that he had committed "the unpardonable sin," he was
surely drifting to some institution for the insane, when he was
fortunate enough to come under the care of a physician familiar with
the new psychological discoveries and methods. Recall this young
man's autobiographical statement, given to his physician, after the
latter had helped him back to health:
"My abnormal fear certainly originated from doctrines of hell which I
heard in early childhood, particularly from a rather ignorant elderly
woman who taught Sunday-school. My early religious thought was
chiefly concerned with the direful eternity of torture that might be
awaiting me if I was not good enough to be saved."
You are careful as to the food you give your child's body. Be no less
careful as to the food you give his mind.
"NIGHT TERRORS"
 IX
"NIGHT TERRORS"

R EFERENCE has already been made more than once, though only
in an incidental way, to the childhood malady of pavor nocturnus,
or "night terrors." In any book like the present one the subject of
night terrors is deserving of detailed discussion. Not only do night
terrors constitute a real handicap of childhood, but also they
constitute a handicap, the seriousness of which is not yet
appreciated by many people, and the true nature of which is as yet
known to exceedingly few. In some quarters, indeed, there has been
a disposition to minimise this malady, because it usually is
"outgrown" by the eighth or ninth year. But, in reality, its effects—or,
rather, the effects of the condition of which it is a sign—may, and
often do, continue through life. Fortunately, the new knowledge that
psychology has gained concerning it enables parents to frustrate its
evil consequences and, in most cases, to prevent its occurrence.
At bottom, night terrors are almost identical with the nightmares of
adult years. They are, to put it precisely, juvenile nightmares, with
the added feature of profound disturbance in the waking state. The
one real point of difference between night terrors and nightmares is
that the former indicate a greater degree of nervous strain. The child
who is a victim of night terrors generally has an hour or so of quiet
sleep after going to bed. Then he wakes, shrieking for his mother.
When the parents, alarmed, rush to his room, they are likely to find
him out of bed, crouching behind a chair, or in the corner. His eyes
are staring and full of horror. He seems not to recognise his parents,
though he will eagerly clutch at them for protection. After a few
minutes the attack passes off, he quiets down, returns to bed, and
sleeps soundly until morning, when, as a rule, he has no conscious
remembrance of his fears of the night before.
While the night terror is at its height the child may have ghastly
hallucinations, representing a continuance in the waking state of the
dream-images that have distressed him. Also, instead of leaping out
of bed, he may merely sit up, or may find it impossible to move at
all, as is the case with many adults when coming out of a nightmare.
A Chicago physician, describing his experiences as a child, relates:
"When I was five years of age, and during the sixth year, I suffered
from nightmare. I sat up in bed and fancied I saw a monkey come
down the chimney and fasten itself to my shoulder and bite me, and
terrify me so that I would scream out. My older sister would then
come, wake me up thoroughly, and satisfy me that it was but a
vision.
"Other nights I would feel a sense of oppression, ringing in ears, a
sensation of perceiving something very small, which, gradually at
first, and then rapidly, assumed enormous proportions and vast
whirling speed, and which, I imagined, whirled me off with it—a
buzzing in my ears, probably. Then would I feel that animals—rats—
would creep over me and press heavily upon me, and I could neither
move hand nor foot, nor speak."
The reference to the buzzing in the ears is typical of the attitude that
until lately has been taken by almost all physicians in respect both to
adult and to juvenile nightmares. For that matter, it still is the
attitude of those physicians who are not familiar with the findings of
medical psychology. Nightmare to them, whether in the old or in the
young, is altogether a question of physical causation. As they see it,
one need not look beyond bodily conditions of some sort to
understand the nightmares of adults and the night terrors of
children. Accordingly, treatment by sedatives, dieting, and hygienic
measures has been the rule. Unfortunately, this by no means always
succeeds in bringing about the desired result, although such
measures undoubtedly do benefit the general health.
Seemingly, to be sure, they are especially successful in the case of
night terrors. But it is significant that, even if left untreated, night
terrors seldom persist beyond the period of childhood. Then,
however, those who have had them show a tendency, in many
cases, to be troubled by unpleasant dreams, often taking on the
character of most distressing nightmares. The frequency of these
may, or may not, be diminished by the usual treatment of a dietetic
sort. On the other hand, observation has shown that many persons
afflicted with the indigestion and other physical conditions commonly
held responsible for nightmares are not troubled by nightmare at all.
As one observer puts it, even a person whose stomach is half
destroyed by cancer may commit all sorts of dietary indiscretions
and not suffer from nightmare in the slightest.
Evidently, then, physical conditions do not of themselves account for
nightmares and night terrors. One must look elsewhere for their
ultimate cause. This is what the medical psychologists have done,
and, doing this, they have discovered that the children who are
troubled by night terrors are always children of a sensitive nervous
organisation who have been subjected to emotional stress. A child
may be nervously highstrung, yet entirely escape night terrors,
provided his mind be kept free from emotional upheavals. But let
anything occur to disturb him emotionally in an excessive degree
and he at once becomes likely to suffer, not only from night terrors,
but also—as it has been a prime purpose of this book to impress
convincingly on every reader—from nervous affections of a more
serious kind. He may even have "day terrors," seeing imaginary and
terrifying objects as vividly as the child who wakes in panic from a
distressing dream.
For example, a boy of eight was sent to the Washington neurologist,
Doctor T. A. Williams, to be treated for general nervousness, and, in
particular, for a tendency "to see things where there is really nothing
to be seen." Doctor Williams found the boy to be so nervous that it
was hard for him to sit still and to keep from wriggling excitedly
about in his chair. Questioned as to his hallucinations, he said that
these were mostly of a snake. He could not describe the imaginary
snake, except to say that its head was like an eel's. It seemed to
come from nowhere, and presented itself to his astonished gaze with
a suddenness that caused him to scream and run. His father gave
Doctor Williams the additional information that these hallucinations
were experienced only when the boy was alone, and that, though his
day terrors were not followed by night terrors, he would not go to
bed unless some one were in the room with him.
Questioning his little patient more closely, Doctor Williams next
learned that he had a veritable horror of being alone at any time. As
long as somebody was in sight, he could enjoy his games, and would
readily run errands. Left alone, the imaginary snake, or some
hallucinatory wild beast, was almost at once seen by him. Further
inquiry brought out the significant fact that this fear of solitude had
actually been implanted in the boy by over-anxiety on his mother's
part.
His horror of being alone was paralleled by her dread of having him
out of her sight. She was continually thinking, and talking, of risks
he would incur if he were allowed to be by himself. In this way she
had unconsciously infected him with a "fixed idea" that something
dreadful was sure to happen to him unless older persons were at
hand to protect him. This fixed idea preying on his unusually
impressionable mind, and keeping him in a constant state of
emotional strain, was the decisive factor in the production of his day
terrors. In proof whereof it need only be added that his
hallucinations and general nervousness ceased to trouble him soon
after corrective training was begun, supplemented by treatment by
"suggestion" to rid him of the abnormal fear of being alone.
Fortunately, though I might detail a number of other cases of day
terrors, this affliction is of rare occurrence, compared with night
terrors. And, from the point of view of the medical psychologist, it is
only to be expected that such should be the case. As explained by
Doctor Williams, in a passage which gives a clear idea of the
mechanism of night terrors:
"If I say to a small boy that a bear will eat him up, the effect upon
his emotions entirely differs, whether I make the remark with
portentous gravity and horror, or whether I say it with bubbling
joviality as, evidently, a huge joke. In the first eventuality, the boy
will rush to my side in terror and try to be saved from the bear, and
a phobia is in course of construction; with the latter proceeding, the
boy will laugh consumedly, and it would not take much to make him
enter the cage and strike the bear. But, even when terrified, a child
feels a refuge in the protection of his elders during the day, when
they are rarely absent....
"At night, however, the child is alone, and his little consciousness
cannot find the support of others. Before the kaleidoscope of his
dreams pass the various images and accompanying emotions of his
waking life, so that if any of these images has become linked with
fear it is certain to bring with it terror, as it surges into dream in the
night, and the child jumps up, awakened, in panic, finding no one
near, upon whom to lean."[17]
In many a case of night terrors, no great psychological skill is
required to detect the influence of emotional stress as the prime
factor in causing the alarming attacks. In one instance that has
come to my knowledge, a seven-year-old girl was brought to a
physician, with a history of both night and day terrors. She was
subject, her mother said, to attacks of loud screaming, during which
she seemed dazed and in an agony of fear. The attacks sometimes
lasted ten minutes, and immediately afterwards the girl generally fell
into a heavy sleep. Her night terrors were of the usual sort, except
that on the occasion of the first attack she was in such a panic that
she opened her bedroom window and threw herself out of it. Luckily,
it was early evening, and her mother, walking in the garden beneath
her window, was able to catch her and save her from harm.
"She had gone to bed as usual," the mother said, in detailing this
episode, "and seemed to be quite well, though I remember I
thought she looked a little wild about the eyes. For an hour she slept
quietly. Then, as I later learned, she woke up moaning, jumped out
of bed, and made for the window."
"And," asked the physician to whom the child had been taken, "had
anything out of the way occurred to her that day?"
"Nothing."
"Are you sure of that?"
"Well, nothing of real account, at all events. I have been told that
somebody jokingly said to her that if she were not a good girl a
black man would come to her room and carry her off. But this did
not seem to disturb her much at the time."
Hereupon, the situation became clear to the physician. It was
evident that, subconsciously if not consciously, the thought of the
supposed danger, acting on a mind none too well organised by
inheritance—there was epilepsy in the family—had acquired
sufficient force to bring on the attack of nocturnal panic and the
subsequent attacks of day and night terrors. Probably, moreover, this
was not the first time that statements of a fear-inspiring character
had been made to the child, so that this last "joke" might well serve
to agitate her excessively.
Compare with this the case of a four-year-old boy, whose night
terrors were accompanied by a strange hallucination that he saw the
devil, and that the devil was trying to catch him. Every night for
several weeks he would wake after one or two hours of sleep, would
leap from bed with a shriek, and run wildly around the room, calling
on his mother to save him and to drive the devil out of the house.
Impressed by the recurrence of this hallucination, the physician in
charge of the case questioned the boy's mother as to a possible
explanation for his believing the devil was chasing him. Reluctantly,
the mother confessed that one day when her little son had been
unruly she had warned him that if he did not behave the devil would
come for him. It was the night after she had thus foolishly
threatened him that he had his first attack of pavor nocturnus.
Armed with this knowledge, the physician began a course of
treatment which effected a cure in a week. It properly included
tonics and dieting to overcome the indigestion and other physical
ailments caused by the strain of nervous excitement. But its principal
feature was treatment by suggestion, to dislodge from the boy's
mind his morbid fear of the devil.
Anything which causes the instinct of fear to function abnormally
may act with decisive force in bringing on night terrors. The telling
of ghost stories and other gruesome tales of the supernatural has
been productive of much harm in this respect. And, as brought out
in the preceding chapter, cases of night terrors have similarly been
traced to the hearing or reading by children of fairy tales containing
elements of the horrible. The child that is supersensitive may be so
impressed by these elements as to brood over them and, in waking
reverie, apply them to himself. Thus they get fixed in the mind, to
disturb and alarm it, and, eventually, to find expression in dreams of
so unpleasant a character that night terrors may be a result.
With the night terrors left untreated psychologically, subsequent
nervous ailments, perhaps lifelong invalidism, may further penalise
the hapless victim of parental thoughtlessness. I am reminded of a
certain patient of Doctor Sidis's, a woman afflicted with neurotic ills
up to the age of sixty, and, when she first consulted the New
England specialist, displaying a most complicated set of disease
symptoms. She had kidney trouble, stomach trouble, frequent
headaches, insomnia, and general nervousness. In especial, she
suffered from an obsessive fear of becoming insane. This fear, at
times, was so extreme that she would walk up and down her room
night after night, "like an animal in a cage," to use Doctor Sidis's
expressive phrase. Repeated examinations by different physicians
had failed to bring to light any evidences of organic disease of
stomach, kidneys, or brain, and a diagnosis of hysteria had finally
been made. Consequently, it became Doctor Sidis's special task to
endeavour to get at these latent memory-images that had acted with
disintegrative power on the mental and bodily processes, recall them
to conscious remembrance, and, by suggestive treatment, rob them
of their disease-producing potency.
Step by step, by a method of psychological analysis of his own
invention, he took his patient back through her life history. He found
that, in middle life, she had had several distressing experiences, but
none of them adequate to account for her hysteria. Always, there
remained an obscure element which did not become clearly outlined
until, in the course of the analysis, childhood memories began to
emerge. Then it appeared that there had been a period of night
terrors, the source of which was definitely traced to a shock
experienced at the age of five. At that age, through some
mischance, the patient had been allowed to spend some time with
an insane woman who was in a maniacal state.
Of a sensitive nervous organisation to begin with, she was
overwhelmed by this experience. She could not get the image of the
insane woman out of her mind, and the fearful thought kept coming
again and again to her, "Do little girls ever go insane?" Then
followed the night terrors, to be "outgrown" in due course. But the
analysis revealed that, though the memory of her experience with
the insane woman had gradually faded from conscious recollection,
it had never been subconsciously forgotten. Even now, fifty-five
years later, she still saw this woman in her dreams. It was the
baneful influence of this shock that had given rise to her obsessive
fear of insanity and had prepared the ground for the condition of
abnormal suggestibility making possible the hysterical imitation of
organic kidney and stomach disease. As was proved by the outcome
of Doctor Sidis's psychotherapeutic treatment.
Now the question comes: If night terrors are so portentous a
danger-signal, how prevent the development of the mentally
disturbed and nervously strained condition which they indicate? This
question has, perhaps, been sufficiently answered in previous
chapters. Here I would simply reaffirm that emotional control is the
great object to be kept steadily in view. It is, indeed, significant that
night terrors are most likely to appear in children having a nervous,
excitable father or mother. The emotionality, the chronic worrying
and anxiety of the parent infect the child by the power of psychic
contagion and make him fall an easy prey to any disquieting
experience.
And if, despite well-ordered moral training and the benign influence
of a good parental example, the child shows a tendency to develop
night terrors—what then? Well, here is how one psychologically
enlightened parent nipped in the bud a fear-bred condition that
might have resulted in night terrors or in some specific nervous
ailment of the waking life:
"For several weeks my boy, three and a half years old, had been
visiting the zoölogical garden every afternoon, in the company of a
French maid of exceptionally forceful character, and apparently free
from the superstitiousness of the average nurse. For a long time all
went well, until one evening the boy began to cry soon after he was
left for the night. At this unusual occurrence, I mounted the stairs
and inquired the cause of the boy's trouble.
"He said there were lions in the house and that he did not want to
stay alone, as he was afraid they would eat him. The source of the
idea had been that the lions had roared more loudly than usual on
that particular afternoon, and he had been much impressed,
standing for some time quite motionless before the cage, though
terrified. I soon convinced the boy that the lions had to remain in
their cages, and could not get out; hence, there were none in the
house, so that there was no occasion to fear. Of course, it was first
necessary to give him the feeling of security gained by embracing
me; and, secondly, to begin the conversation by talking of something
else—I have forgotten what.
"In this way the state of terror was dismissed, and the feeling of
protection was induced before we returned to the subject of the
lions. Then we made rather a joke of the funny roaring of the lions
before we had finished, and he finally lay down, with the solemn
purpose to go to sleep and think, as I suggested, of the tramcars
and motors passing outside his open window. It was all very simple
substitution, but it was the prevention of what might have become a
serious fear-psychosis if injudiciously handled."[18]
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