Inhibition

“ 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. ”

“ The question is not whether the pleasure to be gained is greater than the pain, but whether the desire for the object at which we aim is greater than the inhibitory effect of the pain which we have to face. If the inhibition is greater than the desire, the latter yields to the inevitable, slackens, and ceases to strive. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It may be taken as a sign of displeasure and scorn when anything in a dream is presented in a reversed form, or when the truth is presented very openly and in a striking way. The feeling of inhibition, which is so common, signifies a conflict of the will, the struggle of opposing motives. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Henceforth, however, thwarting and inhibition will be understood as temporary interruptions of an outgoing reaction which would have eventuated had the environment contained the stimulus to which the organism was attuned to respond. As we say in common speech, a desire is not satisfied by being denied, and from our every-day experience we know that great aggravations produce as much scheming as do our easiest successes. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ A systematic training of the power of inhibition is indeed the fundamental factor in all psychotherapeutic treatment when the disturbance is in the volitional sphere, but the inhibition is secured most safely by reënforcement of the antagonistic attitude. From these volitional variations on the one side, from the ideational disturbances on the other, only a few steps lead to those dissociations of the personality which are characteristic of many graver cases of hysteria. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Inhibition of certain phases or elements of some of the tendencies is necessary for the most valuable development of the individual, but the entire loss of any save one or two would be disastrous to some form of adult usefulness or enjoyment. The method by which valuable elements or phases of an original tendency are fixed and strengthened is the general method of habit formation and will be taken up under that head in Chapter IV. When the modification involves definite inhibition, there are three possible methods,--punishment, disuse, and substitution. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But inhibition comes in with varying degrees of power to prevent habit from assuming absolute control of the subject, with many exceptions familiar to the student of psychology. It interrupts the tendency to direct and immediate transition from sensation or emotion into volition and offers opportunity for reflection. This is the only way in which a man can escape being the victim of any present state of mind, and in which he gains power to guide himself by the future rather than by the present moment. ”

“ 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. ”

“ When, however, the opposing or contesting mental set is based on a fundamental impulse and accompanying instinct, such as the impulse of self-preservation and the fear instinct, a total inhibition is not always possible, even a compromise may not be successful, because the mental set is in association with the core of the individual,—namely self-preservation. ”

“ This lack of inhibition, which characterizes the dozing hours, represents the state of mind in which people are who have no interest in their occupations, and who have ceased to find recreation in the ordinary pleasures of life, when pain of any kind comes to them. ”

“ He never could decide the conflict between the present enjoyment and the future possible good except for the inhibition exercised by the idea of the latter upon the tendency to a mechanical realization of the former. Inhibition is thus an antagonistic force against the direct agency of stimuli and sensations to produce muscular activity, and thus establishes more or less of the equipoise necessary for deliberation and the formation of ideational motives. ”

“ Some things we know of them, that their action for example is largely one of restraint, of inhibition—that, in part at least, they act like the brakes on a machine, powerful brakes that can arrest the headlong course of primitive impulse. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The Power of the Will or Inhibition.—The conduct of mankind is chiefly governed by the emotions, instincts, and impulses. Spencer traces all human action to the [Pg 241] desire for pleasure in the large and philosophic sense of the term. If this be so, then the education and hygiene of the emotions and impulses must be of the very highest importance in the life of each individual and in the social world. The question arises, and it is all important, can those inhibitory centers be so developed in youth, and so cultivated in life, that they can act as antagonists to what is morbid? ”

“ As life becomes more complex, inhibitions increase; [370] the thresholds of stimulations of a complex system rise in proportion to its complexity. With the rise of evolution there is a tendency to increase of inhibitions, with a consequent lock-up of energy which becomes reserve. Now there are occasions in the life of the individual, under the influence of training and emotional trauma, when the inhibitions become unusually intense, tending to smother the personality, which becomes weakened, impoverished in its reactions, and is unable to respond freely to the stimuli of its environment. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The concept now suggested by many facts is that inhibition is irradiation or long circuiting to higher and more complex brain areas, so that the energy, whether spontaneous or reflex, is diverted to be used elsewhere. ”

“ An incontinent response to every suggestion offered indicates the breaking down of that power of inhibition or refusal 123that is our natural defence against the reception of material we cannot digest, and looks toward weakness, instability, and mental decay. ”

“ This result is very much to be desired, because when will checks impulses which are only accidentally harmful, it diverts a force which might be spent on overcoming outward obstacles, and if the impulses checked are strong and serious, it actually diminishes the vital force available. A life full of inhibitions is likely not to remain a very vigorous life but to become listless and without zest. ”

“ Such a formation of checks and inhibitions is just what takes place in the training and the education of the individual and the race. Every psycho-physiological system or moment entering into relations with other systems and moments is bound in the course of its associative activity to form inhibitions to its function by the direct influence of external or internal excitations. In other words, there is a rise of threshold due to inhibitory associations. ”

“ One mode of emotional excitability is exceedingly important in the composition of the energetic character, from its peculiarly destructive power over inhibitions. I mean what in its lower form is mere irascibility, susceptibility to wrath, the fighting temper; and what in subtler ways manifests itself as impatience, grimness, earnestness, severity of character. Earnestness means willingness to live with energy, though energy bring pain. The pain may be pain to other people or pain to one's self—it makes little difference; ”

“ Who can tell the countless temptations to evil which flow in from a neglected, disordered, deranged nervous system,—temptations to anger, to irritability, to selfishness, to every kind of sin of appetite and passion? ”

“ Unhealthiness of will may thus come about in many ways. The action may follow the stimulus or idea too rapidly, leaving no time for the arousal of restraining associates—we then have a precipitate will. Or, although the associates may come, the ratio which the impulsive and inhibitive forces normally bear to each other may be distorted, and we then have a will which is perverse. The perversity, in turn, may be due to either of many causes—too much intensity, or too little, here ”

“ In the last two chapters I have considered three of the more important means by which the human organism attempts to solve the conflict between re-aroused instinctive tendencies and the forces by which they are normally controlled. I have considered the healthy solution by the reinstatement of suppression, the ineffectual attempt at solution by witting repression, and the solution in which modification of an ancient form of reaction to danger is substituted for that which is the more natural mode of response in Man. ”

“ But as present pleasures are tremendous reinforcers, and present pains tremendous inhibitors of whatever{445} action leads to them, so the thoughts of pleasures and pains take rank amongst the thoughts which have most impulsive and inhibitive power. ”

“ The development of mental pathologies to the point where they need clinical attention has of late enforced a widespread consciousness of some of the evils of suppression of impulse. The studies of psychiatrists have made clear that impulses driven into pockets distil poison and produce festering sores. An organization of impulse into a working habit forms an interest. ”