A case of traumatic neurosis, illustrating successful psychotherapy / by Tom A. Williams.

  • Williams, Tom A. (Tom Alfred), 1870-
Date:
1909
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Licence: In copyright

Credit: A case of traumatic neurosis, illustrating successful psychotherapy / by Tom A. Williams. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    syncope and convulsions being capable of easy pro- duction either directly by suggestion or indirectly via an emotion. Everyone surely must be familiar with the pallor, cold flashes and syncope of fear and the blush of shame, as well as the convulsive attack of the tantrums of childhood. To invoke a hypothetical splanchno-neurosis to explain such every day phe- nomena shows great ignorance of well-known data concerning the emotions. The illustration he uses to enforce a long settled thesis that some hysterical phenomena at least are psychogenetic is unfortunate at least; for the ex- ample he gives is that of the tics, the full description of which Meige and Feindeir long ago showed to be quite different to hysteria; and as a member of the national hospital staff* has translated their book, the knowledge it conveys should be common prop- erty. As gratuitous and discredited for lack of evidence is his hypothesis that hysterical symptoms must be explained by local modifications, by cerebral anemia due to vaso-motor instability. Science is very far indeed from such hypothesis; and any premature adherence thereto on the part of clinicians only hin- ders the advance of the real knowledge gained by a study of phenomena, by making them unconsciously distort the facts to conform to an explanation Avhich appears scientific because physiological. The knowl- edge of neurological diagnosis needed to exclude defi- nite organic perturbations of the nervous system, and an acquaintance with the modern work of Charcot’s followers, indicate that there is only one fact cer- tain and indisputable about the reactions of hysteri- cnls, and that is that they are 'susceptible to pro- duction by suggestion and of removal by sugges- tion-persuasion.”*