The Origin and Nature of Emotions [24]
struggle of organic forms with one another. We are now, as we were then, essentially motor beings, and the only way in which we can meet the dangers in our environment is by a motor response. Such a motor response implies the integration of our entire being for action, this integration involving the activity of certain glands, such as the adrenals (Cannon), the thyroid, the liver, etc., which throw into the blood-stream substances which help to form energy, but which, if no muscular action ensues, are harmful elements in the blood. While this motor preparation is going on, the entire digestive tract is inhibited. It thus becomes clear why an emotion is more harmful than action.
Any agency that can sufficiently inspire faith,--dispel worry,-- whether that agency be mystical, human, or divine, will at once stop the body-wide stimulations and inhibitions which cause lesions which are as truly physical as is a fracture. The striking benefits of good luck, success, and happiness; of a change of scene; of hunting and fishing; of optimistic and helpful friends, are at once explained by this hypothesis. One can also understand the difference between the broken body and spirits of an animal in captivity and its buoyant return to its normal condition when freed.
But time will not permit me to follow this tempting lead, which has been introduced for another purpose--the proposal of a remedy.
Worries either are or are not groundless. Of those that have a basis, many are exaggerated. It has occurred to me to utilize as an antidote an appeal to the same great law that originally excited the instinctive involuntary reaction known as fear-- the law of self-preservation.
I have found that if an intelligent patient who is suffering from fear can be made to see so plainly as to become firmly convinced that his brain, his various organs, indeed his whole being, could be physically damaged by fear, that this same instinct of self-preservation will, to the extent of his conviction, banish fear. It is hurling a threatened active militant danger, whose injurious influences are both certain and known, against an uncertain, perhaps a fancied, one. In other words, fear itself is an injury which when recognized is instinctively avoided. In a similar manner anger may be softened or banished by an appeal to the stronger self-preserving instinct aroused by the fear of physical damage, such as the physical injury of brain-cells. This playing of one primitive instinct against another is comparable to the effect produced upon two men who are quarreling when a more powerful enemy of both comes threateningly on the scene.
The acute fear of a surgical operation may be banished by the use of certain drugs that depress the associational power of the brain and so minimize the effect of the preparations that usually inspire fear. If, in addition, the entire field of operation is blocked by local anesthesia so that the associational centers are not awakened, the patient will pass through the operation unscathed.
The phylogenetic origin of fear is injury, hence injury and fear cause the same phenomena. In their quality and in their phenomena psychic shock and traumatic shock are the same. The perception of danger by the special senses in the sound of the opening gun of a battle, or in the sight of a venomous snake, is phylogenetically the same and causes the same effects upon the entire body as an operation under anesthesia or a physical combat in that each drives the motor mechanism. The use of local anesthetics in the operative field prevents nerve-currents from the seat of injury from reaching the brain and there integrating the entire body for a self-defensive struggle. The result, even though a part of the brain is asleep and the muscles paralyzed, is the same as that produced by the interception of the terrifying sound of the gun, or of the sight of the dangerous reptile, since the stimulation of the motor mechanism is prevented.
By both the positive and the negative evidence we are forced to believe that the emotions are primitive
Any agency that can sufficiently inspire faith,--dispel worry,-- whether that agency be mystical, human, or divine, will at once stop the body-wide stimulations and inhibitions which cause lesions which are as truly physical as is a fracture. The striking benefits of good luck, success, and happiness; of a change of scene; of hunting and fishing; of optimistic and helpful friends, are at once explained by this hypothesis. One can also understand the difference between the broken body and spirits of an animal in captivity and its buoyant return to its normal condition when freed.
But time will not permit me to follow this tempting lead, which has been introduced for another purpose--the proposal of a remedy.
Worries either are or are not groundless. Of those that have a basis, many are exaggerated. It has occurred to me to utilize as an antidote an appeal to the same great law that originally excited the instinctive involuntary reaction known as fear-- the law of self-preservation.
I have found that if an intelligent patient who is suffering from fear can be made to see so plainly as to become firmly convinced that his brain, his various organs, indeed his whole being, could be physically damaged by fear, that this same instinct of self-preservation will, to the extent of his conviction, banish fear. It is hurling a threatened active militant danger, whose injurious influences are both certain and known, against an uncertain, perhaps a fancied, one. In other words, fear itself is an injury which when recognized is instinctively avoided. In a similar manner anger may be softened or banished by an appeal to the stronger self-preserving instinct aroused by the fear of physical damage, such as the physical injury of brain-cells. This playing of one primitive instinct against another is comparable to the effect produced upon two men who are quarreling when a more powerful enemy of both comes threateningly on the scene.
The acute fear of a surgical operation may be banished by the use of certain drugs that depress the associational power of the brain and so minimize the effect of the preparations that usually inspire fear. If, in addition, the entire field of operation is blocked by local anesthesia so that the associational centers are not awakened, the patient will pass through the operation unscathed.
The phylogenetic origin of fear is injury, hence injury and fear cause the same phenomena. In their quality and in their phenomena psychic shock and traumatic shock are the same. The perception of danger by the special senses in the sound of the opening gun of a battle, or in the sight of a venomous snake, is phylogenetically the same and causes the same effects upon the entire body as an operation under anesthesia or a physical combat in that each drives the motor mechanism. The use of local anesthetics in the operative field prevents nerve-currents from the seat of injury from reaching the brain and there integrating the entire body for a self-defensive struggle. The result, even though a part of the brain is asleep and the muscles paralyzed, is the same as that produced by the interception of the terrifying sound of the gun, or of the sight of the dangerous reptile, since the stimulation of the motor mechanism is prevented.
By both the positive and the negative evidence we are forced to believe that the emotions are primitive