Nervous Breakdown (Psychology Revivals)

Its Cause and Cure

W. B. Wolfe, W. Wolfe

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781138930711
• eBook ISBN: 9781317396659
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Originally published in 1934, excerpts from the original preface read: "A Nervous breakdown is a terrifying experience. When it occurs, the patient, his family, and often his friends are panic-stricken. No one knows just what to do with the patient, and the patient is incapable of helping himself. … What should be done? If you think you have a nervous breakdown, it is your first duty to consult a competent and reputable physician, preferably your family doctor, and get a thorough and complete physical examination. If you cannot find any evidence of physical or organic disease, ask your doctor to recommend a reputable psychiatrist or medical psychologist. …This is a compact manual of help and self-help." Today this book can be read and enjoyed in its historical context.

CHAPTER ONE

OF CAUSES

What is a Nervous Breakdown?—How a Nervous Breakdown Originates—The Basic Laws of Human Nature—Fear and Ignorance: Fundamental Causes of Nervous Breakdown—The Critical Situations of Life—The Sense of “Face”—How We Maintain Our “Face”—Nervous Breakdown as a “Face-Saving” Device—How the Nervous Breakdown Works—Why the Nervous Breakdown Fails to Save “Face”—How a Nervous Breakdown is Cured—Looking Forward

EVERYONE knows what a knock-out is. A prize-fighter takes a terrific punch on the chin. He lies unconscious in the ring while the referee slowly counts him out. The prize-fighter has been so badly hurt that his body cannot function normally. Nature in her infinite wisdom has suspended his vital activities to keep him from killing himself. While the pugilist lies prostrate and insensible to the world about him, nature is carefully restoring his physical equilibrium. However ignominious the knock-out may be from the prize-fighter’s personal point of view, it is a life-saving device so far as nature is concerned. The prize-fighter considers his knock-out as if it were a physical disaster. If he were only as wise as nature, he would understand that his knock-out is an emergency measure, designed to save him from the untoward results of his own physical folly.

A nervous breakdown may be described as a personality knock-out. In the arena of life we are sometimes exposed to sudden or intolerably severe shocks. In a physical knock-out the body alone gives up the struggle. In a nervous breakdown the whole personality declares a moratorium of normal activities, and both body and soul join in a cry for help. Both the knock-out and the nervous breakdown are merciful provisions of nature. The physical knock-out warns the prize-fighter that he has overstepped his physical powers of endurance. The nervous breakdown is a similar warning that you have broken the basic laws of human conduct.

When a prize-fighter is knocked out it denotes one of two things: either he does not know how to fight, or he has been matched against an opponent who is overwhelmingly superior. If you have a nervous breakdown it also signifies one of two things: you have not learned how to live, or you have suddenly been exposed to such overwhelming experiences that your personality has not been able to withstand the strain. Is a nervous breakdown a sign of weakness? Not at all. You have put up a good fight, but the odds were too heavy against you. Sometimes a weakling goes through life without ever having a breakdown, simply because he has never been subjected to a critical test. A strong man and an able fighter, on the other hand, may succumb to the onslaught of a gang of ruffians. Psychologically, the nervous breakdown indicates only one thing: your personality has been subjected to a strain too great for you to bear. Nature has warned you and given you respite. The breakdown is a definite indication that you are still functioning, and have within you the material for recovery.

HOW A NERVOUS BREAKDOWN ORIGINATES

We human beings have been living on this earth for some millions of years. Our animal ancestors preceded us by many more millions of years. The first living cell probably appeared on the earth billions of years ago. The cells that make up the human body are very similar to those primitive one-celled animals which were the ancestors of all living things. In the course of those billions of years of evolution from amoeba to man, the cells of our bodies have acquired a profound wisdom. We are not always aware of this primitive wisdom of our bodies. The sagacity of the cell lies outside our knowledge and consciousness, and if the cells of our bodies performed only the functions that we know they perform, in all probability we could not live more than a few minutes. We become conscious of this wisdom of the body only when we transgress the laws of normal living.

Consider, for example, the small boy who eats green apples. He unwittingly commits a sin against nature. It isn’t a religious or moral sin, but a hygienic sin, a sin against the wisdom of the body. The wise old cells, tissues, and organs of his body broadcast a protest. We call that protest a stomach-ache. Although the stomach-ache is very annoying to the small boy, it is really a very favourable reaction on the part of his body. It shows that the cells of his stomach are on the job, protesting against the poison contained in green apples. If the small boy continued eating the green apples without being warned that he was committing a hygienic sin, he might eat himself into his grave. We sympathise with the youngster, but we are happy that he is the richer for this valuable experience.

In the course of these millions of years of evolution as human beings, we have not only acquired a certain physiological wisdom but also a psychological wisdom which is usually outside our conscious knowledge or understanding. Sometimes we commit psychological sins against our own humanity. We are ignorant of the fact that we are breaking a basic law of human nature when we commit these psychological sins, just as the small boy is completely ignorant of the fact that he is breaking a hygienic law when he eats the tempting green apples. The result is that we experience feelings of fear, depression, or anxiety. In the psychological sphere these anxiety feelings or depressions are comparable to the stomach-ache in the purely physiological sphere. They are the signals of warning, danger signs, that originate in the profoundest depths of our unconscious personalities.

In bygone ages it used to be believed that a human being was made up of two parts: his body and his soul. Modern science teaches us that this idea is no longer acceptable. We know that body and soul are just two different ways of looking at the same thing, the indestructible unity which we call the personality. We cannot divide the personality, although we can look at it from several points of view for the sake of convenience. Any human being is an indestructible unit moving toward a goal of security and happiness. You cannot divorce his body from his mind, his intellect from his emotions, his glands from his feelings, his bodily structure from his psychological conduct. Body and soul are simply different aspects of this same goal-seeking unity, the individual, the personality.

Thus it may happen that the small boy who eats the green apples may, under certain circumstances, suffer more from shame and remorse than from his stomach-ache, just as the mature business man, who somehow has run foul of the laws of human nature, may suffer from a headache or from sleeplessness, rather than from anxiety or depression. In some cases the cells of the body become the loudspeakers for the soul, and in other cases the reverse happens. It amounts to this: you break one of the laws of hygiene. Nature will give you a warning signal. The signal may come from the body, or it may come from the mind. Sometimes it comes from both simultaneously. If you stop transgressing the natural law, the signal will stop. If you do not stop, the signal will become more intense. If you persist despite nature’s warnings, nature will knock you out. A nervous breakdown is a psychological knock-out.

You have a nervous breakdown. I wish there were a better word to describe it, because a nervous breakdown is not really a breakdown, and it has practically nothing to do with your nerves. Let us say, for the time being, that you have declared a personality moratorium. As soon as you recognize this important fact you are immediately in possession of ten important sets of facts: 1. You have transgressed the laws of nature, but you have put up a good fight, attempting to have the last word. Nature has given you a personality knock-out to save you from the consequences of your own folly. This does not mean you are a weakling. It means simply that no man can pit his private opinion against nature and win. 2. Nature has given you a warning signal that you may no longer disregard. 3. The damage is not too great to repair. If it were, you would not be reading this book. 4. There is some mistake in your strategy of life which has brought you into conflict with nature and reality. 5. The warning signal which nature has given you may be annoying, but you should be happy that you have perceived it. The sooner you learn you are on the wrong road, the quicker and the easier your recovery will be. 6. In the face of the overwhelming evidence of a mistaken strategy of life, the sensible thing to do is to examine the pattern of your life and discover just what mistakes you have made. 7. The less time you waste complaining about your symptoms or indulging in orgies of self-pity, the better. Every minute spent in complaining delays your cure just so much. 8. It is folly to try your old strategy of life all over again. A nervous breakdown is a sign of a basic mistake. If you do the same thing all over again, but try to do it more intensely, you will get another personality knock-out for your pains. You cannot beat nature. 9. As soon as you have learned where you have made your mistakes, begin training consciously toward a normal goal. Your symptoms will disappear as if by magic as soon as you have begun the work of personality reconstruction. 10. You are not too old nor too weak to begin over again. Much of what you have learned in the course of your life is still useful, although you have abused that knowledge in the past by applying it to false ends. The fact that you have a nervous breakdown indicates that you have ample powers of resistance. It isn’t too late to be normal.

THE BASIC LAWS OF HUMAN NATURE

What are the basic facts of human nature that you must take into consideration in planning for happiness, security, and a sense of well-being? Here you are on a crust of earth, subjected to certain atmospheric, climatic, chemical, biological, historical, economic, and social conditions. The following laws of human nature have proved themselves to be fairly constant and unchanging. The future may add new laws or subtract from the old ones. You are living in the present and for the present they will give you a good working philosophy of conduct. Incorporate these laws into your life and you will not make any tragic mistakes.

1. Human beings must work or starve. If they do not have to work to live, they must busy themselves to keep from dying of sheer boredom.

2. No human being is alone in the world. His conduct, therefore, must always take the welfare of his fellow men into consideration. If a man is interested only in himself, and he isolates himself from his fellow men, he not only transgresses a basic law of human nature, but denies himself all opportunities of attaining personal significance. All human values are basically social values.

3. Human beings are divided into two sexes to facilitate the propagation of the race. If a human being is not interested in members of the opposite sex, the sexual equilibrium of nature is disturbed. It is folly to deny one’s sexuality.

4. Human beings are endowed with minds in order to help them solve the foregoing complicated problems of work, leisure, society and sex. The solution of these problems is a full-time job for the normal mind. To divert the human mind from the solution of these real problems, and to occupy it with meta-physical or occult problems, is one way to prepare for a nervous breakdown.

5. The human infant is the weakest creature in the world.

6. The mind of the child develops faster than his body. The human infant is unique among all living things in this one respect: he is the only living thing that experiences a sense of his own inadequacy. The young of other animals are weak. The human child knows he is weak, long before he can do anything about it.

7. While the feeling of inferiority is a universal experience for all human beings, no human being can bear to remain inferior. All human beings strive to grow, to become strong, superior and secure.

8. The pattern of any individual’s life is a pattern of compensation for the inferiority feeling experienced in childhood. Nature has endowed us richly with compensatory mechanisms, both physical and psychological. The strategy of any individual’s life is directed toward a goal of security, superiority, and well-being. Human happiness consists in the perception of progress toward this goal.

9. The individual human goal of security and happiness is an unconscious goal. It is fixed in our unconscious minds in early childhood, long before the development of our mature critical faculties, and, therefore, it often lies beyond the bounds of human attainment. To strive for an unattainable goal, a goal of godlikeness, a goal of superhuman attainment, is to court a personality disaster.

10. The attainment of security, well-being, superiority, and human happiness, is the goal of life. Happiness, however, is not an object, and cannot be pursued as an object. Happiness is an attribute of the good life. The good life consists in the conscious mobilisation of your faculties and talents for the attainment of a conscious goal of compensation. This goal must lie within the boundaries of human attainment, and must encompass the correct solution of the problems of work, leisure, sex and society. To attempt less than this goal is to remain a victim of an intolerable sense of inferiority. To attempt more is to transgress the laws of reality, and to risk a personality disaster.

If you analyse these ten laws of human nature you will see that there are really two sets of facts contained in them. The first set applies to mankind in general, and has to do with the maintenance of the human race. The second set applies to you, as an individual, and the laws of your personal development. Society expects you to become a contributing, co-operative member. You, of course, have private goals and ends, because you are human, and because you once felt the inferiority of being a child in a grown-up world. Your chief personal goal is to transform the “minus” situation of your childhood into a “plus” situation of security, satisfaction and self-esteem. The best and perhaps the only way to do this is to arrange your life in such a way that your pattern of compensation shall simultaneously contribute to the happiness and security of the social group in which you live.

FEAR AND IGNORANCE: FUNDMENTAL CAUSES OF NERVOUS BREAKDOWN

There are a great many unhappy people in the world. Most of their unhappiness is quite unnecessary. Much of the avoidable unhappiness of human beings, as you may have surmised, originates in the conflict between the individual’s desire for personal superiority and society’s demand that each individual conform to and co-operate in the social task. Analyse an unhappy life, and you will usually find that the unhappy man has either set his goal of security and satisfaction beyond the pale of human attainment, or beyond the bounds of social approval. The unhappy man is haunted by a persistent sense of inferiority which he has failed to compensate in a socially approved fashion. Because of this persistent inferiority complex he refuses to be “just another average man”. He wants to play the part of God, and therein lies the fundamental basis of his unhappiness. But the desire to play God is essentially no more than ignorance of the delights of being human, and fear of the responsibilities of social co-operation.

Ignorance is the mother of fear; fear in turn breeds egoism, isolation, and abnormal demands for security and personal superiority. Egoism, isolation and illogical desires for the guarantee of complete security, in their turn, lead to unsocial conduct. A certain amount of egoism, isolation and lack of social co-operation is tolerated by society at large. Beyond that limit conflicts between the egoist and society are unavoidable. It is just at this point of unavoidable conflict that the nervous breakdown occurs in the struggling egoist, who feels that adjustment to the laws of social co-operation is beyond his power.

In this brief history of the nervous breakdown I cannot describe in detail the many origins of fear and ignorance. The most usual of these are physical or organic handicaps, competition with brothers or sisters, the widespread struggle for domination between the sexes, the social, economic, religious, or racial situations in which the individual finds himself in a hated minority group, and especially the unfavourable emotional influence of parents and teachers. Sometimes it is the parents’ hate, neglect, undue authority, or nagging that does the damage to the child. The “great expectations” of parents, their vanity, and particularly their pampering, coddling, and over-solicitous protection of their children, are all capable of fostering the child’s inferiority feelings. These untoward parental attitudes lay the basis for a life of dependence, isolation, uncooperativeness, conflict, and unhappiness. The indispensable pre-requisites of a happy life are courage, social co-operation, and spiritual independence. Any factors in the life of the child which damage the development of these qualities almost inevitably lead to discouragement, hopelessness, and an uncontrolled striving for personal superiority. Thus is laid the basis for a future nervous breakdown.¹

THE CRITICAL SITUATIONS OF LIFE

If we are correct in our analysis of the causes of the nervous breakdown, it would follow logically that a nervous breakdown might be expected to occur at a period of greater strain, or in some critical situation in which courage, social co-operation, independence, and a well-developed sense of self-esteem were indispensable requisites of success. Clinical evidence supports this logical conclusion. No nervous breakdown is an accident. In many of the cases of complete nervous breakdown that occur in maturity, moreover, we discover a history of minor breakdowns in the previous crises of the patient’s childhood, adolescence, and early adult life. Had these minor breakdowns been understood and correctly interpreted, the proper training for normality might have been instituted, and the subsequent breakdowns forestalled or entirely prevented. The case histories of men and women who suffer from nervous breakdown indicate that almost every nervous breakdown has some antecedent history of premonitory anxieties and failures. And there is every evidence to indicate that, almost without exception, nervous breakdowns occur most frequently in certain typical “critical” situations. These are the dangerous corners on the highroad of life.

Life becomes critical to some individuals in the very first days of existence. A child is born with organic defects that immediate...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• AUTHOR’S PREFACE
• CHAPTER ONE OF CAUSES
• CHAPTER TWO OF SYMPTOMS
• CHAPTER THREE OF CASES AND CURES—PART I
• CHAPTER FOUR OF CASES AND CURES—PART II
• CHAPTER FIVE OF CASES AND CURES—PART III
• CHAPTER SIX PLAIN WORDS TO PATIENTS
• CHAPTER SEVEN OF CREATIVE SELF-REALISATION