Stigma

“ We have seen how branding was ordered for one young miscreant to put on him an ineffaceable stigma; and not infrequently one can meet both men and women with a hand lopped off, or even an eye gouged out, as a merciful substitute for their true deserts upon the gallows. ”

“ Was it wonderful, therefore, that, finding himself suddenly face to face with the very one whom he knew must be the guilty person—the only person, in fact, who could clear him of the stigma under which he suffered, that question filled his mind to the exclusion of all others? ”

“ Surely never, or rarely indeed, has our fair little country produced so degenerate a son. No, no!—wild, volatile, thoughtless, reckless, we may be called—but that stigma is undeserved. We love the little isle that it has pleased God to make our motherland. ”

“ When one, even though guilty, is openly and directly reproved for a misdeed, the stigma often raises a rebellious spirit, which either suggests a hundred justifiable reasons for his [21] action or begets a defiant mood, driving him to persist in his evil courses. ”

“ The stigma which, not altogether undeservedly, attaches to pastoral as a whole has tempted critics to confine their attention to the more notable examples of the kind, and to treat these as more or less sporadic manifestations. Thus they have failed, on the whole, to appreciate the relation in which these works stand to the general pastoral tradition, which was mainly carried on in works of little individual interest. ”

“ A social stigma still attaches, despite all our efforts to abolish it, to mental disorders and has, to a certain extent, been transferred to those that study and treat patients manifesting these disorders.
(2) The organization of our general education is very defective since it fails to make clear to each student man's place in the universe and any orderly view of the world and man ”

“ They feel a stigma, thus fixed on their character, so confirming the prejudices of the world, and so encouraging that distressing and fatal look of suspicion towards them, that they are forced to feel that no one reposes any faith in them; and if this feeling does not ultimately destroy all comfort and confidence, all order and stability within them, it must very much weaken that concentration of energy so necessary to the successful exercise of all mental operations ”

“ Nor could there be any disgrace so lasting, even to the third and fourth generation, as the stigma an outraged community would place upon the renegade who refused her aid and comfort. An unprogressive, quixotic life if you will—a life without growth and dominant personalities and lofty responsibilities and God-given rights—but oh! ”

“ Above all, when the reader is referred to p. 42, and is apprised of the crime for which this wretched man at last suffered the extreme penalty of the laws there is so much reason to conclude he had long outraged, it will not be thought unjust that the stigma should at length, in the pages of history, be removed from one of his victims to himself. ”

“ Law and prejudice surrounded a great share of the work with notions of stigma and hopelessness and weirdness—while to those who see the facts in terms of life problems there can be but few more inspiring tasks than watching the unfolding of the problematic personality, seeking and finding its proper settings, and preventing the clashes and gropings in maladjustments and flounderings of fancy and the faulty use and nutrition of the brain and of the entire organism. ”

“ To be sure one must free himself from the theoretical prejudice that one has to deal with abnormal brains of degeneres and deséquilibrés, in whom the freedom of overthrowing the common psychological laws of the association of ideas is a stigma, or in whom a preferred idea without any motive may grow intensively excessive, and another without psychological motives may remain indestructible. ”

“ The stigma attaches itself to children and their marriage connexions. Its outward symbol is an inability to look in the face any of the dead person’s family. This avoidance is ceremonial. In private and after dark all may be good friends after a decorous interval. ”

“ Mental illnesses are among the most misunderstood disorders. As a result, many of our citizens experience unnecessary pain. Stigma-a by-product of fear and misunderstanding-places an unwarranted burden on those with mental disorders and their families. It is of particular concern that the stigma associated with these problems often discourages people from seeking the help they need. ”

“ The most startling of these phenomena, however, are those known as stigmatization, when the combined power of fervent, exalted faith and an over-excited imagination produces actual marks of injuries on the body, although no such injuries have ever been inflicted. ”

“ One is tempted: to think that they value morals as affording a legitimate outlet for their desire to inflict pain: the sinner is fair game, and therefore away with tolerance!
Let us follow an ordinary human life from conception to the grave, and note the points where superstitious morals inflict preventable suffering. I begin with conception, because here the influence of superstition is particularly noteworthy. If the parents are not married, the child has a stigma, as clearly undeserved as anything could be. ”

“ All the brood of negative, fearful, selfish, hateful thoughts manifest themselves in physical conditions. Stigmata or marks upon the body, caused by fear or desire, are quite common in the annals of medical science and psychology. ”

“ The calyx consists of 2 small sepals : the corolla of 4 petals cruciately placed, one or both of the outer ones saccate at the base, the inner ones callous below and coloured at the apex, where they cohere and inclose the anthers and stigma. The stamens are united in two parcels, and placed opposite the outer petals, each parcel composed of a centre perfect, two-celled anther, and 2 one-celled, imperfect or half, anthers; very rarely all separate. Ovary superior one-celled, ovules horizontal. Style filiform, Stigma with two or more points. ”

“ Indeed, such a vast array of mental and physical traits are enumerated as stigmata—the marks of the beast—as to paralyze the thoughtless, and to make the judicious grieve. Our mental traits we can ofttimes conceal from public view, our moral traits we always conceal, but many of our physical characteristics cannot, alas, be wholly hidden. Dr. Nordau enumerates many physical stigmata, all interesting, but perhaps the most prominent, most visible one, is the degenerate malformation of the ear. ”

“ In almost all cases, relatives would be met with who were undoubtedly degenerate, and one or more stigmata discovered which would indisputably establish the diagnosis of ‘Degeneration.’ Of course, from human consideration, the result of such an inquiry could often not be made public ”

“ It has been objected to this doctrine that, of a thousand individuals taken at random, there is perhaps not a single one who does not show one or more of the stigmata, so that the whole human race would be included in the alleged class of degenerates. ”

“ But it is entirely superfluous to stigmatize such people; and I have excised these just but unnecessary judgments. It is sufficient that the reappearance of such persons has been made improbable, if not impossible. ”

“ To be sure, when an unusual number of stigmata are presented by an individual, we feel disposed to suspect that the abnormal condition is not confined to his bones and peripheral organs alone, but is probably so deep-seated as to involve his nervous system as well. But on the basis of these stigmata alone we are quite unable to decide whether he is an imbecile, a degenerate criminal, a pervert, a genius, or only an average man, with an undue burden of physical infirmity ”

“ Degeneracy betrays itself among men in certain physical [17] characteristics, which are denominated ‘stigmata,’ or brand-marks—an unfortunate term derived from a false idea, as if degeneracy were necessarily the consequence of a fault, and the indication of it a punishment. ”

“ When you dissect the remaining thirds, you mentally check off many a respectable and amiable person as incapable of forming any independent opinion; others you secretly stigmatize as gossips, shallow-minded, or spiteful; and the circle of responsible people becomes gradually narrower and narrower. Hardly a score do you credit with sound judgment and discriminating sense. ”

“ In any given case the {263} possibility of the occurrence of an attack of what is really the assumption of a secondary personality must be judged from the circumstances, from the previous history of the individual, from the family traits, and from certain stigmata as narrowing of the field of vision and the like, which go to show the existence of a highly neurotic constitution. ”

“ By this mental bondage morbid sympathy is clearly and definitely distinguished from all subordinate degrees of this instinct, however closely allied the imitation of a disorder may seem to be to that of a mere folly, of an absurd fashion, of an awkward habit in speech and manner, or even of a confusion of ideas. Even these latter imitations, however, directed as they are to foolish and pernicious objects, place the self-independence of the greater portion of mankind in a very doubtful light, and account for their union into a social whole. ”

“ Why should we assume the faults of our friend, or wife, or father, or child, because they sit around our hearth, or are said to have the same blood? All men have my blood, and I have all men's. [218] Not for that will I adopt their petulance or folly, even to the extent of being ashamed of it. But your isolation must not be mechanical, but spiritual, that is, must be elevation. At times the whole world seems to be in conspiracy to importune you with emphatic trifles. Friend, client, child, sickness, fear, want, charity, all knock at once at thy closet door, and say, "Come out unto us." ”

“ My whole inventive faculty, my poetry and rhetoric, had cast themselves on this diseased spot, and threatened, precisely by means of this vitality, to involve body and soul into an incurable disorder. In this melancholy condition nothing more seemed to me worth a desire, nothing worth a wish. An infinite yearning, indeed, seized me at times to know how it had gone with my poor friends and my beloved, what had been the result of a stricter scrutiny, how far they were implicated in those crimes, or had been found guiltless. ”

“ We have made men and women come together on the grounds of this superficial likeness and commonalty—their mental, and upper sympathetic consciousness. And so we have forced the blood to submission. Which means we force it into disintegration. ”

“ When we remember that this same fictitious indifference characterized the typical grand seigneur of old France, and when we also remember that indifference may be rapidly transformed into insolence, and insolence into cruelty, we may well look grave at the symptoms which we can watch around us. The dreary ennui of the heart, ennui that revolts at truth, that is nauseated by earnestness, expresses itself in what we call slang, and slang is the sign of mental disease. ”

“ How deplorable that social affections, which contribute so much to make life pass agreeably, should be liable to a wild upbreak from perhaps some trivial cause, not in itself worthy of a moment’s regard, and only rendered of consequence by the sensitiveness of pride and a deference to false and worldly maxims! ”

“ I say a great trial—always assuming human indulgence for that disease of the blind heart which led me where I found myself, which makes me what I am. I did not feel lightly the pang of parting with my birthplace. I did not esteem lightly the sacrifice of business, comfort, and distinction which I was making; and of that greater cause of suffering, supposed or real, of the falling off in my wife's affection, the agony is already in part recorded. ”

“ Even in the best of patients one can find glimpses into the depths of the psychopathic soul which is nothing but the immense egotism of the beast, worsted in the struggle for existence, tortured by the agonizing pangs of the fear instinct.
In the vanity, conceit, arrogance, and overbearing attitude towards others, friend or stranger, as well as in the total indifference to the suffering of his intimate friends and acquaintances, we once more find the expression of that terrible selfishness which obsesses the psychopathic patient. ”

“ I am smitten with silence when trouble and difficulty assail me, and I have an intolerable instinct against asking for the sympathy and commiseration of others; whereas those better accustomed than myself,—as I have shown you,—how readily are they able to requisition your sympathy, to appropriate wholly your pity, and to confiscate your possessions, your theories, and your ethics! ”

“ Humanity is thus taught him by sympathy: where is this sympathy placed?—in the nerves: the nerves are the communicants with outward nature; the more delicate the nerves, the finer the sympathies; hence, women and children are more alive to sympathy than men. Well, mark me: do not these nerves have attraction and sympathy—-not only with human suffering, but with the powers of what is falsely termed inanimate nature? ”

“ Psychoanalysis and Christian Science are the rage. The victims hide behind the veil of sickly, psychopathic “Love.”
The writings and accounts of the patients are full of introspection about health, and about the minutiae of their feelings in the various parts of their body. Some of the patients with a literary turn keep on writing volumes about the most minute symptoms of their troubles to which they happen at any moment to be subject. ”

“ When the deterioration of personal moral life and social instincts is well under way, degeneration of other functions sets in,―the patient gives himself over to excesses, to all kinds of debauches, and indulges in the different forms of abnormal sexual practices. ”

“ The blood vanished from her cheeks, her lips became blue, and big drops of perspiration stood out on her brow. Filled with restless fears, and with despair in her heart, she felt as if her very soul was held in a vice! ”

“ Not that it is difficult to account for the deception itself. No instinct is more fundamental and irresistible than that of concealment. The primary fear of molestation or harm in which it originates becomes, in a social state of sophistication and artifice, fear of exposure. With increased development, such complex and opposing factors as pride and shame, avarice and generosity, ostentation and modesty, lead us to hide things. We hide all sorts of things, good and bad; faults, virtues, deficiencies, accomplishments, hoardings, and charities. We hide from ourselves as well as from others. ”