Part 11

"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.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 14: _The New York Medical Journal_, March 21, 1914.]

[Footnote 15: Proceedings of the National Education Association, 1905, p. 871 _et seq._]

[Footnote 16: "Educational Problems," vol. i, pp. 359-360.]

"NIGHT TERRORS"

IX

"NIGHT TERRORS"

Reference 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....