Susceptibility

“ I will to move my hand; the hand obeys my will, so rapidly, that the motion, though truly subsequent, seems almost to accompany my volition, rather than to follow it. In conformity with the definitions before given of power and susceptibility, the one as implying a reference to something consequent, the other a reference to something antecedent, I should be inclined to consider the sensation which follows the presence of an external object as indicating a mental susceptibility of being so affected;—the production of muscular motion by the will, as indicating a mental power. ”

“ But whatever may be the arbitrary division or arrangement which we may form either of our sensations themselves, or of the organs that are previously affected, the susceptibility of the mind, by which it is capable of being affected by the changes of state in our mere bodily organs, must be regarded as, in every sense of the word, of primary value in our mental constitution. ”

“ Sensitiveness denotes an especial delicacy of sensibility, ready to be excited by the slightest cause, as displayed, for instance, in the "sensitive-plant." Susceptibility is rather a capacity to take up, receive, and, as it were, to contain feeling, so that a person of great susceptibility is capable of being not only readily but deeply moved; sensitiveness is more superficial, susceptibility more pervading. ”

“ Finding the lethal weaknesses of an organism, an apparatus, or a society is described as a process of trial and error. But the outcome is guaranteed: mortal susceptibility is assumed to be a universal trait. No one and nothing is perfectly immune, utterly invulnerable, or beyond extermination. ”

“ Conduct, normal or abnormal, being the resultant of the conflict of conscious and subconscious impulses and inhibitions, the internal secretions as controllers of the susceptibility of the brain cells to impulses and inhibitions, must be held accountable for a portion at least of the chemical reactions behind crime. ”

“ At the extreme negative pole of susceptibility we find persons who believe firmly that other persons have psychic power over them, and who are consequently more or less afraid of such persons 67and of their influence. This belief and fear operates in the direction of making such persons peculiarly sensitive and impressionable to such influence, and thus easily affected by psychic induction. ”

“ Just as the direct excitability of the nervous system has progressed in the history of the race, so has its capacity for receiving imprints; but neither susceptibility nor retentiveness is its monopoly; and, indeed, retentiveness seems inseparable from susceptibility in living matter. ”

“ An easy method of testing our susceptibility is by holding some active medicinal substance between the hands while sitting at ease (without knowing what the properties of the substance are) , and holding other active substances at different times, to compare the effects which they produce upon the constitution. After such experiment, if the effects should in any case be greater than we desire, the influence should be removed by dispersive passes on the hands and down the arms.
JOURNAL OF MAN FOR 1888. $1. ”

“ What is sensibility in the philosophical sense? in popular use? 2. What does sensitiveness denote? 3. What is susceptibility? How does it compare with sensitiveness? 4. How are susceptibility and sensitiveness discriminated in physics?
EXAMPLES.
The —— of the external surface of the body is a special endowment adapted to the elements around and calculated to protect the interior parts from injury. ”

“ From these varying degrees of susceptibility, or affinity, there seems to arise another consequence, namely, that more than one person may see the same object, and yet see it differently, and I mention this particularly, because it is one of the objections that unreflecting persons make to phenomena of this kind, second sight especially. ”

“ Larger numbers of tests will be necessary before it is possible to state how many factors are needed. A curious feature of the case should not pass unnoticed. Many or all of the factors for susceptibility must be assumed to be dominant. ”

“ Susceptible persons are more affected by a change of tone than by unexpected words, and Arthur had the susceptibility of a nature at once affectionate and vain. ”

“ It is obviously unsafe to draw general conclusions from distribution data on a small scale. Diphtheria appears to creep about very slowly, as a rule, from place to place, and from one part of a large town to another; it forsakes one district and appears in another; occasionally it attacks a fresh locality with great energy, presumably because the local conditions are exceptionally favourable, which may be due to the soil or, possibly, to the susceptibility of the inhabitants, who are, so to speak, virgin ground. But through it all personal infection is the chief means of spread. ”

“ As there is but one nerve-center of a disease, so is there but one remedy.
The system has always a tendency to resist, by reaction, the morbific cause which disturbs it. The similar stimulates reaction. When you put your hot hand into hot water, and take it out and wipe it dry, by the law of reaction it becomes cool. So, if to the frost-bitten ear or hand you apply snow or ice, by the law of reaction the frozen part burns under its stimulus. The power of resistance, which is reaction, is the strength of the constitution, or is the constitution itself. ”

“ Thus, the reaction to danger, which may be regarded as natural to the healthy man, a reaction characterised by complete absorption in the immediate task by which the danger may be averted, would be impossible if complete suppression, not only of any tendency to the reaction of flight, but also of any trace of the emotion of fear which is its normal conscious accompaniment, did not occur. ”

“ If we examine things narrowly, and analyse the sensations of the mind in the first period we shall find some other feelings, which cannot come under the denomination of fear. A dejection will be observed, a sadness, an uneasiness and anxiety; these symptoms more or less apparent, seem to indicate that the active principle which presides over our preservation, is threatened with some imminent danger, and as it were feels the presence and influence of a cause ready to attack health and life in a manner the more alarming, as it shews itself less by external signs. ”

“ An eminent English physician has also communicated to a leading English magazine a belief that fear directly attacks the individual molecules of the body and causes a disarrangement, a relaxing, a letting-go condition of the molecules in their relation to adjoining molecules, and that the relaxed condition is that in which disease originates. He states that there are means of communication within the body that are as direct and distinct as are the wires that convey the electric fluid from point to point, and that they connect the brain or nervous centers with each pair of molecules. ”

“ One may, therefore, ‘take’ a disease and be unaware of any exposure. The subconsciousness has been unwittingly trained to fear, and accept it; and it is this quality, rather than the mere inert matter of the body, that succumbs. Matter is never the actor, but is always acted upon. ”

“ Can matter, or what is termed that, resuscitate without mind? We say that certain combinations of gases, secretions, acute or morbid, material causes, produce disease; but if the body causes disease and the body is matter, can matter cure what it causes? Remember mortal mind prescribes the drug and administers it; plans the hygiene and puts the body in motion under it. Not a gas accumulates a secretion or combination occurs unless mind does it. ”

“ There is a physical order ruled by physical laws. If those laws are obeyed, strength, health, sanity result; but if they are disobeyed, the consequences, which are inevitable and self-perpetuating, are weakness, disease, insanity. ”

“ The lesson to be learned when this situation confronts physician and patient is that of organic limitation. The vital organs are capable of function only within bounds, beyond which. are danger and possible death. Safety rests in natural processes alone; danger lies in tonics and in food.
A general classification of the symptoms of disease tending to limit certain signs to certain ailments can never be made with accuracy. ”

“ Dissociated, subconscious states, when affected by the impulse of self-preservation and the fear instinct, tend to become parasitic, and like malignant growths may suck the life energy of the affected individual. ”

“ I am conscious myself of a weight at my heart and a feeling of impending danger—ever-present danger, which is the more terrible because I am unable to define it.
And have I not cause for such a feeling? Consider the long sequence of incidents which have all pointed to some sinister influence which is at work around us. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We already saw that the trembling and the palsy make it incapable of flight or defence; we have also convinced ourselves that in the most decisive moments of danger we are less able to see [or to think] than when we are tranquil. In face of such facts we must admit that the phenomena of fear cannot all be accounted for by 'selection.' Their extreme degrees are morbid phenomena which show an imperfection in the organism. ”

“ The second stage of the fear instinct is the possibility of a pathological state, and, if persistent, leads directly to the third stage with consequent paralysis and danger of destruction. The first stage of fear is fully normal, helpful, and self-defensive. The second stage is harmful, but with the possibility of recovery and restitution of normal function. The third stage leads to destruction and death. ”

“ As these cases are much more common, and these views of much more importance than mankind, or even medical men imagine; and as many who possess a susceptible constitution of mind, similar to those whose cases I have described, are living in the world in this fearful and continual state of mental excitation, and of course, may be on the verge of the same precipice, it is right they should be warned of the danger to which they expose themselves. ”

“ If, now, we study our examples of suppression on the sensori-motor level, we find that they lead us in the same direction. The crude, immediate, and, as it were, unreflecting reactions of protopathic sensibility, which need suppression in the interests of the later and more delicate reactions of epicritic sensibility, are just such as we associate with instinct. ”

“ There is, therefore, fact for theory to be built on—viz., the possible adaptation of the human constitution to injurious influences, an adaptation which, whilst impairing general vigour, often produces immunity from rapid death. ”

“ Also there will be several Invasions at one time, as Plague, and War, amongst neighbouring and adjoining Creatures or Parts. But this is to be observed, That the sensitive corporeal motions make all diseases, and not the Rational, although the Rational are many times the occasion, that the sensitive do move into such or such a disease; for all those that are sick by conceit, their sicknesses are caused by the rational corporeal motions. ”

“ The last example is rather more significant because when the whole complex appears mistakes are more remote than when merely one or another “safe” symptom permits the appearance of the word in question. What is safe to one mind need not be so to another, and the notion as to the certainty of any symptom changes with time and place and person. Mistakes are especially possible when people are so certain of their “safe” symptoms that they do not examine how they inferred from them. This inference, however, is directly related to the appearance of the word. ”

“ The stimuli that arouse movements of escape are of two sorts: those that directly cause some irritating sensation, and those that are simply signs of danger. The smaller avoiding reactions--flexion reflex, coughing, etc.--are {143} aroused by stimuli that are directly painful or irritating; whereas flight, cowering, etc., are mostly responses to mere signs of danger. A "sign of danger" is usually seen or heard at some distance, not felt directly on or in the body. ”

“ Disease occurs when the sum of vital force which tends to neutralize all causes of disturbance, (in other words, when the resistance offered by the vital force) is weaker than the acting cause of the disturbance. ”

“ According to my view hysteria is primarily due to the activity of a danger-instinct, to the coming into action of an instinct whose primary function is protection from danger. I have now to consider whether the hysteria of civil practice can also be referred to danger, or whether it is the result of the transference of the reaction from a connection with the danger-instincts to some other instinct. ”

“ The danger-instincts, as they may be called, are not only fundamental, but they are far simpler both in their nature and their effect than the instincts which are concerned in continuing the species or maintaining the harmony of society. ”

“ In the sketch I have just given of the modes of reaction and associated mental states which make up what I have called danger-instincts, the feature I wish especially to emphasise is the suppression of affect which certainly accompanies the manipulative activity of Man, and has been assumed to accompany the immobility of the lower animals. ”