Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 5, 2025
We should therefore appreciate the need of early recognition and treatment of tics and fixed habit movements, especially since there is a tendency to spread, for the tics to multiply, and for mental symptoms and reactions of a hysterical and psychasthenic nature to appear, if they do not already exist or have not existed before the onset of the tic.
Only it has to be work; mere automobiling to charity places or talking in meetings on problems which have not been studied will, of course, be merely another form of the disorganizing superficiality. The hysterical lady on Fifth Avenue and the psychasthenic old maid in the New England country town both simply have to learn to do useful work with a concentrated effort and a high purpose.
Of course the interest of the psychologist as such remains always related to the psychological factor, but the relation of the psychological factor itself to the total disturbance may be of most different character. If I diagnose or treat the fixed idea of a psychasthenic, the psychological factor itself represents the disturbance.
For instance, I treated a woman who suffered from psychasthenic obsessions, fearing all the time that something would happen to her child. I did not give any direct attention to the fact that she had had for years a painful disease of the bladder for which she was constantly treated by a specialist.
The psychasthenic who in such a half-dozing stage assures himself that he will no longer be afraid of going over a bridge or hearing a thunderstorm or will feel a disgust for whiskey or will have the energy for work, has a certain chance that such autosuggestions become reality the next morning.
The habits range from the queer desire to bite one's nails to the quick that is so common in children and which persists in the psychasthenic adult, to the odd grimaces and facial contortions, blinking eyes and cracking joints of the inveterate ticquer.
We have after all the same psychasthenic state before us when the obsession has impulsive character, from the mere abnormal impulse of lying, or making noise in a quiet place or crying in the dark, or touching certain places, to that of stealing, indecent speech, arson, and perhaps even murder. The symptoms might easily be mistaken for those of graver diseases.
The abnormal individual is always weak in obeying his ideas and carrying out his impulse because there is a dissociation of idea centers and his mind becomes mixed in its responses and he cannot make for a true, harmonious expression on all of the planes of mind within himself this is the condition of the neurasthenic and psychasthenic, and he needs some mind stronger than his own to hold his ideas true to what he knows to be true.
Even slight neurasthenic and psychasthenic disturbances remain too often in complete power when the patient is fully convinced that they originated with an emotional excitement which has long since lost its feeling value or that it resulted from a chance suggestion picked out from indifferent surroundings.
Even in slight psychasthenic disturbances, the psychotherapeutic influence is not always successful, especially if there is no time for full treatment. But it is very interesting to see how even in such cases the symptom is somehow changing, almost breaking to pieces. It becomes clear that a protracted effort in the same direction would destroy the trouble completely.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking