Distraction

“ We speak of distracting a man’s attention, when we call him off from looking at one thing to make him look at something else, and we call anything which interrupts us in our business, or puts a thought suddenly out of our heads, a distraction. ”

“ That such parties in their fitts of Distraction may devour such things as they vomit up, or at least put them into their mouths. But they that are by might easily see that, distracted people doing things carelesly and openly. ”

“ With the immortal spark of thought,
By the friction process brought
Of concentration
And distraction;—
The darkness burns
With a million tongues,
And now I spy
All past, all distant things as nigh. ”

“ For as the distraction of the mind, amongst other outward causes and perturbations, alters the temperature of the body, so the distraction and distemper of the body will cause a distemperature of the soul, and 'tis hard to decide which of these two do more harm to the other. ”

“ There are several ways of overcoming a distraction. First, greater energy may be thrown into the task one is trying to perform. The extra effort is apt to show itself in gritting the teeth, reading or speaking aloud, and similar muscular activity which, while entirely unnecessary for executing the task in hand, helps by keeping the main stream of energy directed into the task instead of toward the distracting stimuli. ”

“ That fall hath troubled his brains, and they are never settled, till the new creation come to put all right again, and compose the heart of man. I say, all other distractions are but particular, in respect to particular things, but there is a general distraction over all mankind, in reference to things of most general and most eternal concernment. ”

“ Mischief and disorder.—An especially difficult kind of distraction to control is the tendency to restlessness, mischief, and misbehavior which prevails in certain classes or on the part of an occasional pupil. ”

“ Every one knows what attention is. It is the taking possession by the mind, in clear and vivid form, of one out of what seem several simultaneously possible objects or trains [Pg 404] of thought. Focalization, concentration, of consciousness are of its essence. It implies withdrawal from some things in order to deal effectively with others, and is a condition which has a real opposite in the confused, dazed, scatter-brained state which in French is called distraction, and Zerstreutheit in German. ”

“ This is why the most eminent intellects have always been strongly averse to any kind of disturbance, interruption and distraction, and above everything to that violent interruption which is caused by noise ”

“ He shows how much he suffers from this dislocation and distraction in himself; while the affections, leaving the mean and middle way of temperance, tend towards the one and the other extreme, and so are wafted on high or towards the right, and are also transported downwards to the left. ”

“ His actions are distractions, But then his distractions can be traced back to a definite, positive cause. They are no longer cases of absence of mind, pure and simple; they find their explanation in the presence of the individual in quite definite, though imaginary, surroundings. ”

“ Once the soul looked contemptuously on the body, and then that contempt was the supreme thing:—the soul wished the body meagre, ghastly, and famished. Thus it thought to escape from the body and the earth. ”

“ If the irritation acting upon the one is stronger than the force of will which should excite the other to activity, the reflex motion will take place in spite of what is called 'best intentions,' whether the occasion be a start of alarm, a desire to yawn, laugh, or weep at unfitting times, a scream, an angry gesture, or even a blow bestowed upon the object whence proceeds the incitement to wrath. ”

“ The generous liquid life may inspire the brain and blood with noble impulse and vital force, or it may be sinned away and drained out of the system until the jaded brain, the faded cheek, the enervated young manhood, the gray hair, narrow chest, weak voice, and the enfeebled mind show another victim in the long catalogue of the degraded through lust. ”

“ To the great majority of thinking men, it will appear as if I were going about to prove that pain was an evil, by advancing arguments in proof of the necessity of Anatomy. But I have good reasons for believing, that certain persons who talk loudly about the horrors of disinterment, are quite unaware of the nature or object of that science, which they would consent to sacrifice at the shrine of an ill-directed, if even a praiseworthy feeling. ”

“ Malice, Envy, Doubt, Falsehood, Ignorance, Lust, Cupidity, Fear. All these make for Destruction, which is the strong purpose that moves them all. Each of these is divided and subdivided into myriad motives of disintegration, many of which disguise themselves before daring to enter the consciousness of man. ”

“ Turning a street corner, we encounter suddenly a bitter wintry blast; we feel at once an arrest upon our movements. An ill odour, a painful contact, a grating noise, a disagreeable spectacle, have all the same immediate efficacy. The proper, the direct consequent of an incursion of pain, is suspended activity. Not only is this second law conformable to observation, it is the implication, the obverse, of the previous law connecting pleasure with increased activity. ”

“ Must he answer? He wanted to drift on and on——
“Can you tell me where the pain is?”
Pain? Oh, yes, there had been pain—but he wanted to drift. He opened his eyes again reluctantly; again the pain clutched him. ”

“ Phrases like "to sit on thorns," "to be on pins and needles," "to drain the cup of misery to the dregs," show with graphic power the folly and curse of worry. Why should one sit on thorns, or on pins and needles? If one does so accidentally he arises in a hurry, yet in worrying, one seems deliberately, with intent, to sit down upon prickles in order to compel himself to discomfort, distress, and pain. Is there any wisdom, when one has the cup of misery at his lips, in deliberately keeping it there, and persistently drinking it to the "very dregs"? ”

“ Grose, that first scared Sunday, my flash of something it would scarce have done to call light. Here at present I felt afresh—for I had felt it again and again—how my equilibrium depended on the success of my rigid will, the will to shut my eyes as tight as possible to the truth that what I had to deal with was, revoltingly, against nature. ”

“ There seemed a tension in the air—as if something was going to snap. Doubtless you have often felt it—a sensation as though pins and needles were pricking you all over. As though you wanted to scream—to cry out—against an uncertain sensation that gripped you. ”

“ In the distress which had come like a cloud over the sunlight of his spirits, so gayly anticipative a few hours previous, they flung a wordless challenge to the battling instinct in the man, and he accepted it with the thought that the best balm for troubled minds is strenuous bodily action. ”

“ A halt, and a deliberate disregard, emphasized by general talk about some unrelated matter, will often result in a gradual loosening of the tension, mental and muscular, and the beginnings of unwilling movement. ”

“ The conclusion to which I am tending is that the definition [p. 79] of dissociation, which will make the term of most service to psychology and pathology, is: one which lays special stress on the feature of alternate consciousness. ”

“ If we bear in mind that emotion means discharge of force, an adequate explanation of such phenomena in a great many instances, at least, is to be found in the principle of conflict and dissociation. The conflict is between the impulsive forces of the emotions pertaining either to antagonistic instincts or to sentiments organized within different systems. With the excitation of emotion, instincts and sentiments which have opposing conative tendencies are inhibited, repressed, or dissociated, 501and with them the systems with which they are organized. ”

“ Frightfully bruised, you lie annihilated in the midst of a chaos of nameless pains; then, little by little, thought follows the vertigo. As sight becomes accustomed to distinguishing the objects in the gloom, you begin, so to speak, to recognise yourself in your despair. ”

“ The natural consequence is restlessness, agitation, anger, indecision, etc. The dissociation of personality, with the outcropping of the “b mood,” follows—a conflict due to the excitation of certain childhood complexes, conserved in the unconscious and embracing sentiments in which are incorporated the instinct of self-subjection or abasement. This “b mood” is a study in itself. ”

“ What one misfortune or disaster in the book of embryotic evils, that could unmechanize thy frame, or entangle thy filaments! which has not fallen upon thy head, or ever thou camest into the world—what evils in thy passage into it!—What evils since!—produced into being, in the decline of thy father's days—when the powers of his imagination and of his body were waxing feeble—when radical heat and radical moisture, the elements which should have temper'd thine, were drying up ”

“ The return to nature you dream of is simply the fall downward into the dirt out of which a rational and spiritual manhood has grown. I feel and know this in spite of your handsome face and the fine ring of your voice.”
“Dirt. Dirt!” he mused. “Yes, I was in the dirt once, was born in it, the dirt of poverty and superstition and fears of laws here and hereafter. But I awoke at last, and shook it off, washed myself in knowledge and stood erect. I am a man now, with the eye of a king, conscious of my power. I look a lying hypocritical world in the face. ”

“ Dissection and disinterment are both forgotten and forgiven, when agony distorts the features of a beloved sufferer, or when death seems to be impending over him; and when that science which but for Anatomy (and in the present state of things but for disinterment) could not exist, is ready at hand to relieve from torture, or to snatch from death. ”

“ At last I began to wonder whether those earth-shaking beasts had not been an evil dream, and was just venturing to stretch out a cramped leg, and rally myself upon my cowardice, when, without warning, at my elbow rose the most ear-piercing scream of rage that ever came from a living throat. ”

“ When the nerves once break, how breaks the character with them! How many ascetics, withered and soured, do we meet in the world, who but for one shock to the heart and form might have erred on the side of meekness! ”

“ This was followed by a sinking sensation, as if the body had resigned itself to passive dissolution, and then came, with electric rapidity, a succession of the most cruel agonies ever endured by mortal man. ”

“ If they stir up incitements to grief, or anger, or rage, they can tell whether they have taken root in the heart by the movements of the body, and visible disturbances, when, for instance, they have noticed him either groaning silently, or panting with indignation or changing colour ”

“ She was cuddling up to him, her voice quavering, her hand stroking his cheek, in a curious effort to combine affection and punishment at the same time. Duer felt nothing but wrath, resentment, discouragement, failure. ”

“ This I may call the foundation of the modern system of discarding; it has been adopted by all the best players with whom I am acquainted.
For the sake of having a short and easily remembered rule, however, it is the fashion to say, “Discard originally from your strong suit when the adversaries lead trumps.” [27] “No doubt you will be right in your discard in most cases, but this aphorism does not truly express the conditions.” (Query, then why use [41] it?) .... ”

“ This action of opposing forces with regard to the more primitive aspects of the mind is termed Repression Repression and so far as it manifests itself in consciousness finds its most usual expression in the emotions of disgust, anger and fear. ”

“ The truth that recklessness brings distress, fully acknowledged though it may be, remains inoperative. The mere cognition does not affect conduct—conduct is affected only when the cognition passes out of that intellectual form in which the idea of distress is little more than verbal, into a form in which this term of the proposition is developed into a vivid imagination of distress—a mass of painful feeling. ”

“ She heard the crunching of heavy feet all around her, whispering made hoarse by breath exhausted, movement across rock and scrub, retreating steps.
For an interminable time she sat there alone in the hot sun, drenched to the skin in sweat, listening, thinking, striving to find a reason for this lawless outrage. ”

“ Some unknown disturbance must have been excited in my brain, one of those disturbances which physiologists of the present day try to note and to fix precisely, and that disturbance must have caused a profound gulf in my mind and in the order and logic of my ideas. ”

“ A small thing, a word, a look, may often put out the spark which is about to light the destructive train. How few [Pg 394] there are in this world of jealousy and contention, who are ready to utter that word, or bestow that look, and how many who will fan the spark of strife into a blaze, or will at least let it alone, and take no pains to put it out. ”

“ Thus a hostile situation, an intensely disagreeable situation, may be met with energy: viz. planning, constructive flight, destructive action, or it may be met with a deënergization, confusion, paralysis, hopeless anger. It may cause an intense inner conflict with high constant emotions, fatigue, incapacity to choose the proper action, and the peculiar agony of doubt. ”

“ I felt pleasant in punishing them, telling them straight to their faces the truth about themselves, what sort they were. Is everyone who dares tell the truth mad? I assure you, gentlemen experts, that I was altogether conscious that, when striking, I felt the contact of my hand with a live body experiencing pain. ”

“ Just as we feel no particular pleasure when we breathe freely, but a very intense feeling of distress when the respiratory motions are prevented,—so any unobstructed tendency to action discharges itself without the production of much cogitative accompaniment, and any perfectly fluent course of thought awakens but little feeling; but when the movement is inhibited, or when the thought meets with difficulties, we experience distress. ”