Inhibition (psychology)

“ Sense of unreality is one of the commonest psychic alterations through which customary sensation states are displaced by unnatural and usually distressing ones.
Morbid inhibition is an abnormal, negative activity of the will.
Sometimes a patient will try pitifully to express some thought or feeling; the desire to explain is there, but will is blocked in action. Or the patient attempts to dress, makes repeated new beginnings, but cannot succeed. We say, “He is inhibited.”
An obsession is an idea which morbidly dominates the mind, constantly suggesting irrational action. ”

“ We know also of central inhibitions, such as fear, distress, pain, acting as so many inhibitions on the peripheral organs and serving to arrest functioning activity. Similarly in mental life, complex as it is, the highly organized psycho-physiological systems, with their concomitant moments consciousness, still fall under the same general physiological laws of inhibition. ”

“ Woe to the man who uses up his surplus stock of brain-inhibition too near the bitter end, or too often!... The physiological word inhibition can be used synonymously with the psychological and ethical expression self-control, or with the will when exercised in certain directions. It is the characteristic of most forms of mental disease for self-control to be lost, but this loss is usually part of a general mental affection with melancholic, maniacal, demented, or delusional symptoms as the chief manifestation of the disease. ”

“ It is the absence of scruples, of consequences, of considerations, the extraordinary simplification of each moment's mental outlook, that gives to the explosive individual such motor energy and ease; it need not be the greater intensity of any of his passions, motives, or thoughts. As mental evolution goes on, the complexity of human consciousness grows ever greater, and with it the multiplication of the inhibitions to which every impulse is exposed. But this predominance of inhibition has a bad as well as a good side ”

“ Only a slight impulse is necessary to immediately put the mechanism in motion. The same thing may take place in us passively through strong affects. We can be forced to certain action by affects; at first there is great inhibition, but later, on account of numerous repetitions of the affect, the inhibition becomes less and finally the reaction succeeds promptly even on a very slight impulse. ”

“ If a movement feels agreeable, we repeat and repeat it as long as the pleasure lasts. If it hurts us, our muscular contractions at the instant stop. So complete is the inhibition in this latter case that it is almost impossible for a man to cut or mutilate himself slowly and deliberately—his hand invincibly refusing to bring on the pain. And there are many pleasures which, when once we have begun to taste them, make it all but obligatory to keep up the activity to which they are due. ”

“ It seems that the specific cause of the fit in these cases is something that permeates the entire organism; something that comes and goes; that grows rapidly in intensity, exerting a pernicious influence on the patient by making him act out of harmony with his normal state, until the limit is reached and the mind loses its direction and control. The power of inhibition being finally destroyed, the nervous storm breaks with great force and violence. ”

“ Whether there is a nerve wave, the reaction-time worker has as favorable an opportunity to determine as anyone, and we have a right to expect him to do something along this line. The relations of the form of the nerve impulse to the rhythm of vital action, to fatigue and to inhibition are awaiting investigation. Some of the most important unsettled points of psychology depend upon those aspects of neural activities which we ordinarily refer to as phenomena of inhibition, and which the psychologist is helpless to explain so long as the physiological basis and conditions are not known. ”

“ Well, just such pressure and such inhibition are what consciousness seems to be exerting all the while. And the interests in whose favor it seems to exert them are its interests and its alone, interests which it creates, and which, but for it, would have no status in the realm of being whatever. We talk, it is true, when we are darwinizing, as if the mere body that owns the brain had interests; we speak about the utilities of its various organs and how they help or hinder the body's survival ”

“ As these fancies, however, could be easily demonstrated to be derived from the unconscious crude ones, which appeared during his attacks, we are safe in assuming that one factor at least in the production of an attack was the lifting of some inhibition which kept the cruder ideas from entering consciousness except in a form in which they could be objectively viewed and so logically arranged. ”

“ At the very simplest words there appear obstructions and other disturbances which can be explained only by the fact that the stimulus word has excited a complex. But why should it be difficult to reproduce easily an idea which is closely connected to a complex? The emotional inhibition must be cited as the main hindering cause. The complexes exist mostly in a state of repression. As a rule one deals with most intimate secrets which are anxiously guarded and which one either does not wish to expose or is unable to do so. ”

“ Dynamically, however, that may mean only this: that the associative processes which make Z triumph are really the stronger, and in A's absence would make us give a 'passive' and unimpeded attention to Z; but, so long as A is present, some of of their force is used to inhibit the processes concerned with A. Such inhibition is a partial neutralization of the brain-energy which would otherwise be available for fluent thought. But what is lost for thought is converted into feeling, in this case into the peculiar feeling of effort, difficulty, or strain.
The stream of our thought is like a river. ”

“ The adult has more inhibition, the child more activity and responsiveness; the adult's inhibition stands him in good stead at the outset, but the child's activity enables him to catch up shortly in so simple a problem as this little maze. ”

“ Action from impulse in all these directions may take place from a loss of controlling power in the higher regions of the brain, or from an over-development of energy in certain portions of the brain, which the normal power of inhibition cannot control. The driver may be so weak that he cannot control well-broken horses, or the horses may be so hard-mouthed that no driver can pull them up. Both conditions may arise from purely cerebral disorder ... or may be reflex.... The ego, the man, the will, may be non-existent for the time. ”

“ This predominance of inhibition has a bad as well as a good side; and if a man's impulses are in{438} the main orderly as well as prompt, if he has courage to accept their consequences, and intellect to lead them to a successful end, he is all the better for his hair-trigger organization, and for not being 'sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought.' Many of the most successful military and revolutionary characters in history have belonged to this simple but quick-witted impulsive type. Problems come much harder to reflective and inhibitive minds. ”

“ It illustrates strikingly, however, the law of the inhibition of instincts by habits—for, once broken through with a given person, it is not apt to assert itself again; and habitually broken through, as by prostitutes, with various persons, it may altogether decay. ”

“ In accounting for the inactive thinker, we have to remember, first, that some inhibition of immediate action is often necessary, in order to have time to think the matter over; this prudent attitude becomes a habit with some individuals. ”

“ This clearly indicates that B and C in themselves have opposed A and inhibited it in some degree, but that only the summation of their inhibition could serve really to exclude A.” This is certainly correct and may perhaps be more frequently made use of when it is necessary to judge how much an individual would have done at one and the{247} same time, and how much he would have done unconsciously. An approximation of the possibilities can always be made. ”

“ The inhibition of even, unhampered self-expression is always observed.
In tics, it must be noted, there is regression to more inefficient and inferior methods of response and adaptation, the types of activity being of a somatic and psychic nature. Following the regression and owing to constant repetition and habit formation there is a gradual fixation to certain methods of response which become the lines of least resistance and this is followed by progression and development of the general picture to other tics and psychic symptoms. ”

“ In short, it appears that though much has been said and done upon the general subject of psychical inhibition, experimental inquiry into the inhibitory effect of one idea upon another—abstraction made, as far as possible, of all volitional influence—virtually introduces us to a new phase of the subject. ”

“ Few people who have not expressly reflected on the matter realize how constantly this factor of inhibition is upon us, how it contains and moulds us by its restrictive pressure almost as if we were fluids pent within the cavity of a jar. The influence is so incessant that it becomes subconscious. All of you, for example, sit here with a certain constraint at this moment, and entirely without express consciousness of the fact, because of the influence of the occasion. ”

“ But if we abstract from any such implication, and conceive of such force as the term inhibition seems to connote, as restricted to the associated neural or physiological processes, no unwarranted assumptions need be imported by the term into the facts, and the definition may, perhaps, suffice. ”

“ Such interference was supposed always to be due to external influences of various kinds, potent for the time, in the organism. We have learned, however, that inhibition is one of the important functions of the nervous system. ”

“ Every unit forms part of a hierarchy in which it controls lower, and is itself controlled by higher, elements of the hierarchy. Control or inhibition belongs to the essence of nervous activity, and the lesson suggested by the study of sensation and reflex action is that the suppression by which experience becomes unconscious is only a special variety of the process of inhibition, common to every phase of animal activity. ”

“ Can we, it may be asked, speak of psychical inhibition at all? Does one conscious state exercise pressure on another, either to induce it, or to expel it from the field? 'Force' and 'pressure,' however pertinent to physical inquiries, are surely out of place in an investigation of the relations between the phenomena of mind. Plainly a distinction has to be made if we are to carry over the concept of inhibition from the domain of nervous activity to the conscious domain. Inhibition cannot, it should seem, have the same sense in both. ”

“ Nervous Inhibition.—The mind can actually inhibit certain of the involuntary processes of the body by thinking about them, and, above all, by dwelling on the thought that they are going wrong. This becomes easier to understand when we recall how, in the same way, we may disturb many habitual and more or less unconscious actions that we have grown accustomed to. ”

“ Among the great modern discoveries in physiology is that of the existence of a distinct centre of inhibition, as the restraining influence over the heart is called.
“The centre of inhibition plays a terrible part in the history of cowardice and of unsuccessful love. No man can be brave without blood to sustain his courage, any more than he can think, as the German materialist says, not absurdly, without phosphorus. The fainting lover must recover his circulation, or his lady will lend him her smelling-salts and take a gallant with blood in his cheeks. ”

“ Mental inhibition, generally, needs dividing into self-control and, say, auto-control. Where one man may self-control himself by an effort of will, another man, in the same predicament, might auto-control himself instinctively, without a conscious effort of will. ”

“ This would explain why the associations of a new starting-point inhibit the associations of a former one; for as the motor nervous impulses tend to work themselves out into action, the reaction of the previous impulse will be suppressed by those of a new impulse which enters, by the conditions of these experiments, an attentive consciousness. Thus the prepotent impulses to action are the conditioning factors in mental inhibition. ”

“ Response to the earlier stimulation may have had painful consequences and so the rule or habit in this situation is changed. We call this ability the power of inhibition, and it is dependent on the fact that the nervous system carries memories or records of past experiences. 42At this point the determination of action no longer comes exclusively from outside sources but is located within the organism itself.
Preliminary to any self-determined act of behavior there is always a stage of examination and deliberation which we may call the definition of the situation. ”

“ In all such cases a momentary irritation, a natural feeling of chagrin, such as we all feel when thwarted or disparaged, instead of being inhibited in its nascent state when inhibition is most powerful, so that the reaction to it may be reduced by deliberation to rational proportions, is, by the diminished resistance of the will and the consequent overaction of the lower centers, permitted to become fixed or to express itself in a grossly exaggerated manner. ”

“ Thus habits are formed. Each repetition fixes it more firmly and makes more difficult the forming of a new manner of reaction to that stimulus.
Every sensation and thought tends thus to express itself in action. The little child is therefore especially susceptible to suggestion. Inhibition is the intervention of a second thought or stimulus which sends a counter impulse that prevents the action. ”