Claicalo Sunday Tribune

Fear-In Crisis ItMay Helpor Harm

{Continu.d from page on.,}places, for instance, which mostpeople unaccustomed to altl-tudes feel. At certain crucialmoments when a steady headand hand are vital, the uncon-trollable dizziness of fear gripsthe novice mountain climberand greatly increases the dan-ger of his falling.However, a Ruman being has

more acquired traits than In-stinctive traits, and so most ofhis fears are either conditionedreflexes or neurotic complexes. Aconditioned reflex is merely anacquired subconscious reactionto a stimulus, such as the jerk-ing away of a hand from an ap-proaching red hot poker. It dif·fers .from an instinct in that itwas aequtred by experiencerather than having arisen spon-taneously like the chicken's In-stinctive fear of strangers on itsfourth day.A neurotic complex is a con-

dition of mental abnormality inwhich certain unreasoning, sub-conscious impulses strongly In-fluence a person's consciousmind. When it takes the formof fear, the victim fully realizeshe is afraid and thinks about ityet can't understand why he isafraid. One of the best knowncomplexes is the inferioritycomplex, in which a person forsome reason unknown to him-self feels inferior to others-butthis does not necessarily involveactual fear.A fear of water is a fairly

common neurotic complex gen-erally caused by a person's hav-ing been frightened by beingducked in water as a smallchild. Although such a personfeels terrifled at the thought ofhaving to swim, he can't remern-ber his early ducking. If hecould recall it clearly, he wouldprobably get over his trouble.

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The reason that human fearsare more apt to be reflexes andcomplexes than instincts, where-as fear in primitive animals islargely instinctive, is that thehuman brain is made very dif-ferently from that of the loweranimals. The diagram on pageone s how s how the humanbrain, unlike that of other ani-mals; has a very greatly de-veloped cerebrum. The cere-brum is the seat of consciousthought, decision, and memory.It consists of vast numbers ofnerve cords coming fro m allover the body, and it is some-how affected as impulses passthrough these nerve cords. Thisaffection we know as memory,which is an essential part ofany highly developed conscious-ness. But the cerebrum not onlyremembers things, it proflts byexperience. Being a sort of tele-phone exchange of incoming andoutgoing nerve impulses, it canmake or break connections be-tween these nerve cords.There is also. a lower part of

the brain called the thalamus,which an experimenter (appro-priately named Mr. Head) dis-

Demon

••Th. bUitinctive and paralysingdr.ad of high plac..... This c1bnb.rin Y.llo_ton. park .vid.ntly ha.

conquer.d that f.ar,

covered to be the essential een-ter of the emotions, includingfear. But there are various eon-necting channels between thissmall vestibule of the brain andthe large cerebrum above it,which channels greatly complt-cate matters for the emotions.As the drawing suggests, Im-pulses travel to and from eer-tain thought regions of the eer-ebrum. If the object of frightis cats, for example, there willbe channels of communicationbetween the fear headquartersin the thalamus and the cer~bral locality in which thoughtsof cats occur. But the thoughtof cats will undoubtedly beclosely associated wit h otherthoughts, such as thoughts of

or Defender?dark hallways or bloo·dyscratches. These allied thoughtsmay soon, in turn, be as closelyinvolved with the fear as theoriginal thought.Thus the fear emotion may be

aroused in any n u m b e r ofroundabout ways, e i the r byawareness of the original causeof fear (cats) as sensed throughthe outward organs of sense, orby merely thinking of it, or bythinking of some allied idea (asa dark hallway), or by outward-ly sensing such an allied thing.Even if the victim of a fear suc-ceeds in permanently repressingall thought of the thing feared,as is often the case, he will con-tinue to be troubled by it. For,while he may isolate certainthoughts (as for example with-in the dotted area in the draw-ing), keeping them out of hisconsciousness, they are still inhis brain and still influencinghis fear headquarters in certainlittle understood ways. Also themany allied ideas are still freeto arouse his fear and the factthat he may have forgotten theoriginal and real cause of thefear makes it all the harder forhim ever to get rid of it.

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A good illustration of thetrouble resulting from fear reopression is revealed in the worldwar records of neurotic casesamong B r i tis h and Frenchtroops. In the early part of thewar especially the r e was amarked preponderance of suchcases among the British. This,according to Prof. William Mc·Dougall, eminent modern psy·chologist, resulted from the Brit·ish tradition which taught allboys to believe that to feel or toexpress fear is cowardice; whilethe more realistic French tradi-tion permitted French youths tobe franker about their emotions.The poilu could joke about hisfear, treating it as a naturalweakness and taking. pride inthe fact that his courage couldsurmount such an obstacle. Butthe less fortunate Tommy hadto repress all fear and in manycases he was so ashamed ofseeming afraid that the fear ofexpressing fear became a greatadditional s t r a i n on his mo-rale.To make matters worse, after

his natural and inevitable fearhad been .repressed from hisconscious thoughts, it would lin-ger in his subconsciousness se-cretly clamoring for expression.Often this expression came inthe for m of dreams - violentnightmares in which the poorsoldier had to writhe in thethroes of all the emotions. hehad been trying to. evade. Some·times it came in the form of apronounced physical reactionagainst something mentally as-sociated with the original causeof fear.One soldier who had repressed

his extreme dread of being bay-oneted in the stomach, suddenlydeveloped the idiosyncrasy ofcollapsing in a semt-ramt at thesight of a certain kind of wristwatch. He had no idea of, thecause of his peculiar maladyand was m u c h worried andashamed of it until investiga-tion and close questioning dis·closed that his original fearcame from once seeing a dead

A f.ar of wat.r i. a fairly common n.urotic complex generally cauaed by a fright.ning .xperi.nce, .uch a.b.ing duck.d wh.n a child or haYing n.arly drown.d. Fear ia .tched on the fac. of thi. woman b.ing r•• cued

after h.r coUap•• at the fini.h of an aquatic race. (Auodatecl Pr.. photo.)

1

soldier witb. a bayonet plerc.nhis stomach. And on the sol·dier's wrist was a watch. AI·though the patient had eltmi-nated from his conscious mindthe thought of the bayoneting,the closely allied thought of thewrist watch had meanwhile de-veloped direct channels of con-tact with the fear headquartersin his thalamus, with the resultthat the watch had become justas potent a tinder to his fearemotions as the bayoneting everwas-and more difficult to cir-cumvent.A curious thing about fear is

the fact that the human bodyprotects itself against the ex-treme agony of the emotion by asort of mental anesthesia. Thecase of Major Redside is a goodexample. While in Bengal thisBritish hunter one day stumbledon a rock and dropped his car-tridge belt as he was crossing astream. It was a serious slip,because he was in the heart ofa region infested with tigers.Worse still, shortly after he hadthrown away his wet ammuni-tion he discovered that he wasbeing stalked by a large tigress.With no bullets in his rifle

he was naturally very fright-ened and started back towardthe stream pale of fa c e andsweating profusely. But beforehe had gone twenty paces, theemboldened tigress charged outof a thicket, seized him, anddragged him about a quarter ofa mile awa~ to where her threecubs were. There, however, shedid not kill him. Instead sheplayed ••cat and mouse" with

him for an hour or more-thateVidently being the natural wayfor feline mothers to train theiryoung.The amazing thing about Maj.

Redside's nightmarish expert-ence though, was the fact (ashe remembered afterwards) thathe lost all fear after he· wasonce in the clutches of thegreat beast. By the time hiscompanions arrived on the-sceneand rescued him he had creptaway fro m the tigress morethan a dozen times, only to be

All fear ia not ilUltincti.,.e..nc.. Val.ri. Hobaoll'.

h.rprnlo

r•• ult of horrifying exp.ri·.on picture .c.n. r•• ulta from

nt a•. a prison.r.

F.ar r.pr •••• d oft.n· find•• xpr•• -• i o.n in horrifying nightmar••.Bori. ll:arloff portrays a .oldi.rmadd.n.d by unae.n dange,..

dragged back each time whilethe cubs looked Ion and playful-ly tried to copy mamma. By hisown account, however, he hadfelt ••comparatively calm com-pared with half an hour in adentist's chair," and could re-call every detail clearly. He reomembered the sunshine and thelook in the tigress' eyes and theterriflc mental effort of tryingto crawl away, as well as a fullrealization of the extreme dan-ger he was in. Yet he had ••nofear, no dread," and remainedfully conscious the whole time,being miraculously rescued be-fore he had received any veryserious wounds.

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To return to fear complexes,one kind w h i chis commonenough to deserve mention is arepressed fear of things associ-ated with sex, and which is mostfrequently found in young' girlswho have at an early age beenmade to feel that sex is dan-gerous, disgusting, and a totallydreadful subject. If this Infiu-ence is not counteracted, thegrowing girl is apt to try to reopress thoughts of sex, whichlater may result in an opposi-tion in her adolescent mind be-tween the forces of desire andthe fear of consequences, be-tween desire and conscience or,more broadly, between ••ego-ism" and ••idealism." At bestthe girl is almost certain to mis-interpret nor m a I happeningsthat conflict with her acceptedtaboo and which, therefore, mayin turn induce further complex-

nd all manner of unreason-ng anxieties.A young married woman liv-

ing in the tropics experiencedan extreme and uncontrollablefear of storms. Taken in handby a psychiatrist, it was discov-ered that her sex instinct wasstrong and that she had hadvarious experiences relating tosex in her early teens all ofwhich tended to make her reogard sex as something violent,mysterious, cruel, and terrible.One man whom she had led ontoo far threatened to strangleher, she said.After she had at last success-

fully repressed her sex fear, thefear attached itself to a phenom-enon that had very similar at-tributes to her mind. For, as thepatient herself later said, ••Sud-den violent gusts of emotion,and the sudden onslaught of atropical storm - they seem somuch alike, bursting suddenly,sweeping all before them andleaving an exhausted wreck be-hind."It was only after the woman

had been made to understandthe full symbolic signiflcance ofthe storm as a substitute fearfor the fear she had repressedthat her trouble completely van-ished. Which fact reaffirms themarvelous truth that virtuallyany kind of fear can be con-quered by looking it straight in .the eye and letting ••familiaritybreed contempt."

NEXTWEEK: Th. Conqu.ringof F.ar,

Red Mass-A Colorful Ceremony

(A•••••• photo.)

Roman.Catholic judges Ime.l at r.d mau in W•• tmin.t.r cath.dral at op.ning of Micha.lma. law .itting. in London.

MARKING the end of the summerholiday and the opening of theMichaelmas law sittings, Catho-

lie judges of England's higher courts wtllassemble Tuesday in Westminster cathe-dral for the annual red mass.Attired in their wigs and robes, the

jurists will kneel together as they have

for years past. (This picture was taken atlast year's service.) Following mass theywtll join other judges in the law courtsand march in solemn procession throughthe central hall.The red mass is so called because of the

red vestments worn by the celebrant, orpriest. These vestments are used in

masses of the Holy Ghost, usually cele-brated at the opening of courts, legislativeassemblies, and schools.Westminster cathedral is not to be con-

fused with Westminster abbey, site of therecent coronation ceremonies. The cathe-dral is a Roman Catholic church locatednear the abbey.