Mind and health, with an examination of some systems of divine healing

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Foreword

The study of the influence of mental states upon health has now entered upon the stage of exact investigation by both psychology and medicine. This treatise is an attempt to embody some of the latest results of the psychological study of this important subject and to lay down the fundamental psychological principles governing health and promoting healing.

Inasmuch as there is a strong tendency on the part of religious bodies to make non-medical healing a part of their work, and because this is done without a thorough knowledge of psychology or medicine, there is urgent need for the examination of this professed healing. The question whether divine healing and faith healing are essentially the same as mental or psychic healing, or whether the former are fundamentally different from the latter, is a perplexing question to a great many persons who are interested in the subject.

After a somewhat thorough psychological discussion of the subject of the influence of the mind upon health, including its larger aspects which relate to man as a purposive being, religious ground is entered upon. A painstaking examination is made of various systems of healing of a religious character from the standpoint of present-day scientific mental healing. Both the strong points and the weaknesses of these systems are pointed out.

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In the light of this twofold discussion, there arises the necessity of construction to show the relations of the scientific and religious in a true system of religious healing and to point the way by which, in the best light of scientific thought of to-day, the church may heal.

The work was originally submitted to the faculty of Clark University, Worcester, Massachusetts, as a thesis in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, but it has been greatly elaborated since it was accepted as such. It is not claimed to be final but it is earnestly presented for the careful consideration of all who are interested in this subject which is so vitally related to human welfare. It is especially offered to those, on the one hand, who maintain an exclusive religious healing, and to those, on the other hand, who disdain religious healing of every kind.

Medical men have been freely consulted, and I desire to thank the men of this honored profession who have been so patient and kind in these consultations. Among these men who have volunteered valuable suggestions are Morton Prince, James J. Putnam, Edward Cowles, E. E. Southard, Boris Sidis, Hugo Munsterberg, Isidor H. Coriat, John D. Quackenbos, Adolph Meyer, N. Trigant Burrow, and Tom A. Williams.

Other practitioners and writers upon the subject, who have thrown light upon the discussion, are Elwood Worcester, D.D., and Samuel McComb, D.D., of the Emmanuel Movement; A. B. Simpson, President of the Christian and Missionary Alliance; John Willis, editor of the Christian Science publications; Leander Whipple, founder of " Metaphysical Healing " ; Robert McDonald, D.D., author of " Mind, Religion, and

FOREWORD IX

Health" ; and Samuel Fallows, D.D., author of " Science of Health " and " Health and Happiness."

Special thanks are due President G. Stanley Hall for his admirable introduction and for many kind criticisms and suggestions ; also to Professors W. H. Burnham and Edward Cowles and President E. C. Sanford, for the critical reading of manuscript and important advice.

Thanks are also due to the librarians of the Congressional Library and the Surgeon General's Library, Washington, D.C. ; of Johns Hopkins University Library, Baltimore, Maryland ; of the Boston Medical Library; and particularly to Dr. Louis N. Wilson, Librarian of Clark University, for the freest facilities in the use of library privileges.

E. E. W.

January, 1913.

Contents

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I. Introduction 1

II. The Mind. Consciousness and Subconsciousness.

Introduction

By a general consensus of psychologists, consciousness is now regarded as a matter of degrees. Of these there are very many, from the focus of most intense apperception down toward, if not to, complete unconsciousness. It is probably not too much to say that most psychic operations are not only in the indirect field of attention, but are to a greater or less extent unconscious, and the most interesting and promising lines of research in recent years have been in exploring the latter. One need not agree with the philosophy of Hartmann or even with that of Fechner, with its innumerable thresholds, one above the other, in order to understand the sense in which very much of our conduct, our feelings, and our intuitive processes are not explicable by the old consciousness psychologies and in which subliminal activities make up a large part of those processes that determine interest, affection, conduct, and many forms of health and disease. From the days of Charcot down to those of Janet, Freud, and his associates there has been great progress in understanding many phenomena that were formerly regarded as weird and mystic and perhaps due to the activity of demons, spirits, telepathy, or other mysterious agencies. In the opinion of the writer of this introductory note, enough already has been done utterly to discredit every

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form of the old belief that either disembodied spirits or telepathic agencies have anything to do in this field. He is convinced that all forms of belief in these must now be abandoned and that scientific psychology must take its stand squarely upon the conviction that nothing whatever occurs in the world of mind that has not its sufficient and adequate natural causation — a view long accepted in the realm of physical, but long discredited in that of psychic, phenomena. It is these new insights and convictions that have given a great and new zest the world over to the study of all kinds of borderline phenomena, have brought to the foreground of interest such formerly discredited topics as sleight-ofhand performances, table tipping, rapping, witchcraft, mind and faith cures, Eddyism, Emmanuelism, Dowieism, Christian Science, mental, divine, and metaphysical healing, and have suggested new relations between psychology, medicine, and religion.

The author of this book has devoted years of patient study to the various phenomena in these fields and has attempted to give a rational and coherent explanation of them according to the principles of modern science. He has sought to maintain a sympathetic attitude towards all those who believe in the power of the mind over the body, and he seeks to show that those who discredit this, as certain medical writers are still prone to do, omit a fact of human nature of profound theoretical and practical significance. This critique, on the other hand, is no less searching and impartial as to those who maintain the sufficiency of purely psychic agencies to effect cures or to explain a large class of phenomena that illustrate relations between the mind and body. It is thus the comprehensiveness of his studies and the

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attempted judiciousness of his point of view that in my opinion give this volume its own place and value and that will serve, I hope, to diffuse a more sane, wholesome, and impartial viewpoint in this field. With many recent books, precisely this breadth and harmonizing tendency have generally been wanting. The writer sees the profound significance of the new psycho-analytic methods and results in their bearing upon the manifold and complex facts in his domain. One need not, and indeed perhaps no one would, entirely agree with all the conclusions of any author on all the topics treated here, but I see no reason why religion, which in past ages has always exerted such a profound influence upon all matters of health and disease, cannot rehabilitate for itself from the material herein described its old function of healing, which, when it is complete, will have profound significance on the future fate and function of the Church.

CHAPTER I Introduction

Psychotherapeutics has been firmly established both as a science and an art. Specialists employing its principles in well-established practice are now recognized in the scientific world. They may differ in theory upon points in etiology and therapeutic procedure, but that they have grasped some of the fundamental principles of the science and art is proved by their general success. Puzzling and baffling cases of mental and bodily derangement must be left to the care of the specialist, with his sharper intuition and maturer experience ; but it is possible to give a scientific account of these principles in a way to put their general application within the reach of every intelligent mind.

The use of psychotherapeutics by religious bodies is a noteworthy characteristic of the present day and the tendency of this direction is growing at a considerable rate. And rightly so, for it is one of the recognized offices of religion to minister to all the needs of man, and while the ministration to certain of these needs has been undertaken by other professions or agencies, there remains in the minds of men the conviction that religious ministrations ought to be to the whole man : that the churches and other religious bodies have not measured up to their obligations in this matter; and that the time has come when they must now address themselves to this work in a conscientious, intelligent manner.

By such insistence no encroachment on the ground of the medical or any other profession is intended. It is to get back on ground that the religious body must occupy to her own integrity and peace of mind but which she has, to a considerable extent, abandoned. This ground is (1) the healing of many complaints which yield to a proper religious appeal ; (2) the arrest of troubles in their incipient stages which a strong, hearty mental and moral appeal can correct ; (3) the instruction in sound principles of mental and moral health and of the avoidance of ill-health ; and (4) an enabling appeal to the strong and well to stand firm under their present burdens and even to add thereto. It is with this fourfold division of the true ground of religious service to the needs of men that we shall concern ourselves in this treatise.

Religious bodies are giving much attention to the healing side of their work to-day especially in large centers of population and in the mission fields, particularly the foreign. Here the aim is always to have installed the latest devices and methods of the best modern medical practice in suitably adapted buildings ; but it is well understood that this means a large outlay for such religious bodies in adequate salaries for properly trained medical men, in properly equipped buildings, and in all the instruments, devices, and agencies that belong to twentieth-century medical science ; hence the widespread establishment of such agencies is prohibited. It is not our purpose to call attention to all methods and means of cure that can be legitimately practiced in a religious way.

We are to confine ourselves to the domain of psychotherapy in the religious field. We do this first of all because the very science of psychotherapy is the carefully studied out principles with which every religious minister or worker is more or less familiar in his work but as principles especially applied to mental and bodily healing and health. It has been surprising and gratifying to see how quickly the principles of psychotherapy have been recognized by religious workers, when presented systematically to them, even in instances where there had been no knowledge or study of them as such. In their own ministrations they had been constantly using these means. Yet it is equally and indeed more surprising that very few of the scores of such workers whom the writer has addressed in the regular meetings of the religious bodies with which they were connected, were using these principles with the mind and body in view with the distinct aim of ridding them of their ills.

Before we pass to some necessary technical discussion which is necessary as a foundation for our later thought, we would call attention in this introductory chapter to some more general phases of the subject of psj^chotherapy : its definition, history, principles established, principles in dispute, schools or systems, its recognition at the present time, its adaptability in its present forms for religious use and the satisfaction and joy of such use. Our discussion of these points must necessarily be brief.

Definition of Psychotherapy

Psychotherapy, properly speaking, means the curing of a mental ailment ; it also means the use of mental measures in effecting that cure. A broader use of the term, however, is usually understood, but for such use the word " psychotherapeutics" is preferred by some, which means the treatment of the sick by influencing the mental life. The psychical or mental means may be used alone or may be conjoined with other methods of treatment. It is now generally recognized that whatever other means are used, it is, to a greater or less extent invariably present. It affects other methods of treatment very considerably.

Psychotherapy is sharply to be separated from psychiatry, the treatment of mental diseases. As the term psychotherapy implies, mental illness too is open to mental treatment, but many diseases of the mind are beyond the reach of psychotherapy alone, and, on the other hand, diseases which are not recognized distinctly as mental, come within the scope of psychotherapy. The psychotherapist aims to set levers of the mind in motion and work through such means towards removal of the ailment. To-day, psychotherapy is successfully grappling with the greatest possible variety of these disturbances of mind and body.

In the light of some of the most recent research, psychotherapeutics is an analysis and a synthesis of certain mental states. It is really the splitting up and the joining together of certain abnormal states. It is a science of education by building up judgment, discrimination, mental flexibility, self-control, and self-direction through study, practice, and imitation of good models. It is the construction of new habits and the remodeling or replacement of old ones ; the study of interests with a view to their development or replacement by training up more useful ones; and the control of attention : the essence of self-control and selflaunching. It must be established by its own right on a basis of accurate diagnosis, careful records, and scientifically describable methods of cure.

History of Psychotherapy

The history of psychotherapeutics is another instance of a reputable science springing from sources of marked credulity, superstition, and sophistry. Chemistry may be traced back to alchemy ; astronomy to astrology. The facts of psychotherapeutics have been known by man in all ages and stages of his life upon this globe, but in a crude way and often more in a way to curse his life than to bless it. All nations possess some lines of its knowledge and features of its art. Anthropologists recognize such knowledge in a large way. Psychologists have traced its history. Robert Means Lawrence, M.D., in his Primitive Psychotherapy and Quackery, Boston, 1910, and George Barton Cutten, Ph.D., in Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing, New York, 1911, treat such facts in some detail. For other works on the history of psychotherapy, the reader is referred to our Bibliography. We can give only a brief sketch of this history, our purpose being to mark transition points in its development.

A starting point, from which time we may ser an increasingly intelligent attitude toward the subject is the life and work of Friedrich Antony Mesmer (1733- 1815), a Viennese doctor. Mesmer had been preceded by Paracelsus (1490-1541), a physician who accepted astrology with its theory of the influence of the stars on men and who believed also in the influence of the magnetism of the magnet and of men on men ; and by others, including Von Helmont, the chemist (1577-1644), who believed that the magnet represented the universal principle by which all natural phenomena might be explained. This principle being in the human body also was an important factor in health and disease. The subject of magnetic influence residing in the human body was further discussed in pretentious treatises and exploited publicly. The Scotchman Maxwell (1581- 1640) was a firm believer in sympathetic cures and assumed a vital spirit of the universe which related all bodies. It appears, however, that he was aware of the great influence of imagination and suggestion. Santanelli in Italy asserted that everything material possesses a radiating atmosphere which operates magnetically. He, too, recognized the great influence of imagination. About the year 1771 Father Hell, a Jesuit and professor of astronomy at the University of Vienna, became famous through his magnetic cures and invented steel plates of a peculiar form which he applied to the naked body as a cure for several diseases. In 1774 he communicated his system to Mesmer.

It was due to Mesmer, however, that the subject was pressed upon the attention of the public and was forced to investigation by sober scientific thought. Mesmer read freely the books that had been written upon the subject. He took his medical degree in 1766. He studied in his dissertation the influence of the planets upon human bodies. In this he maintained that the sun, moon, and fixed stars, through the medium of a subtile and mobile fluid which pervades the universe and associates all things together in mental intercourse and harmony, cause and direct in our earth a flux and reflux

±1N ± JXKJ U U ^ 1 IL^N in the sea, atmosphere, and all organized bodies. This influence was particularly exercised on the nervous system and produced two states which he called intension and remission, which seemed to him to account for the different periodical revolutions observable in several maladies. Eight years later he met Father Hell and was astonished at the success of some experiments with his metallic plates. Soon after this he stumbled upon his theory of animal magnetism. After this he no longer used the magnet in healing. He came to the conclusion that the magnetic is almost the same as the electric fluid and that it may be propagated in the same manner by means of intermediate bodies. Not only steel, but paper and a great many other materials, also men and dogs, in short everything he touched, he claimed to have rendered magnetic to such a degree that these substances produced the same effects as the loadstone on diseased persons ; also to have charged jars with magnetic matter in the same way as is done with electricity. About this time he was nominated a member of the Academy of Bavaria.

He went to Paris in 1778 and constructed the baquet, an oak chest or tub, with appendages of iron, which was magnetized by him and which was supposed to transmit the magnetism for healing. This is vividly described together with the scenes which occurred in connection with it in Le Collier de la Heine by Dumas pere; also briefly, by Cutten in his Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing. Patients now flocked to him. He had many pupils. He was violently opposed. Such a sensation did he create that it has been said no theological controversy in the earlier ages of the Catholic Church was ever conducted with greater bitterness.

He was called a quack, a fool, and a demon, while his friends were as extravagant in his praise as his foes in their censure. At various periods the French Academy appointed carefully chosen commissions to examine the theories and practice of Mesmer, and finally refused to have anything to do with " Mesmerism/' as the treatment was now called. "But," as Dr. Hamilton Osgood states, " through good and evil report, by means of an occasional scientific man and shoals of charlatans, animal magnetism lived and refused to die." After the commission which investigated Mesmer 's immediate claims had reported, he left Paris and returned to his own country, where he was little heard of during the remainder of his life.

After Mesmer came the Marquis de Puysegur, who, by means of passes, in strictest faith, magnetized a large tree and rods of glass. To this tree and these rods his clients had recourse for relief for their ailments. The concourse of his patients was so large as to be unmanageable. He recognized the likeness between the magnetized state and that of somnambulism, so that he designated this state " artificial somnambulism." He also modified the conditions of inducing this state, and simple contact or spoken orders were substituted for the use of the baquet. The effect was therefore milder, and instead of hysteria and violent crises accompanied by sobs, cries, and contractions, there was peaceful slumber. He recognized the rapport between operator and subject and amnesia on awakening and other phenomena now well known, but he still held to the mesmeric theory of a universal fluid which saturated all bodies, especially the human body.

Puysegur used the elm tree, but the Chevalier de

Barbarin successfully magnetized people without paraphernalia. He sat by the bedside of the sick and prayed that they might be magnetized ; his efforts were successful. He maintained that the effect of animal magnetism was produced by the mere effort of one human soul acting upon another, and when the connection had once been established, the magnetizer could communicate his influence to the subject regardless of the distance which separated them.

About this time numerous magnetic societies were founded in the principal cities of France. In Germany animal magnetism was recognized on the upper Rhine and in Bremen. In 1796 Lavater exhibited the magnetizing processes to several doctors in Bremen and it became a somewhat noted center.

Moll in his Hypnotism calls attention to two different tendencies which can be distinguished at this period : one critical and scientific, the other mystical. While the first had the preponderance in the beginning, later on the latter came to the fore and led to the downfall of magnetism. There was early dislike of magnetism in Germany, but in spite of this, it maintained itself for the first twenty years of the nineteenth century.

In England magnetism seems to have arrived in 1788. In that year public lectures were given by Dr. Mainandus, a pupil of Mesmer. Other lectures were given which attracted considerable attention.

After the death of Mesmer there was an abandonment of the " universal fluid" theory for a more subjective standpoint. In 1814-1815 Abbe* Faria came from India to Paris and gave public exhibitions, publishing the results of some of his experiments. He seated his subjects in an armchair, with eyes closed, and then cried in a loud, commanding voice, " Sleep.'' Heused no manipulations and had no baquet, but he boasted of having produced five thousand somnambulists by this method. He took the ground that the state was caused by an unknown force but rested on the subject himself. He agreed with the generally accepted theory that all is subjective. Bertrand and Noizet, although inclined to animal magnetism, paved the way for the doctrine of suggestion. In 1820 experiments were begun in the Paris hospitals. A commission appointed by the Paris Academy of Medicine in 1826 after six years of labor pronounced a favorable opinion on animal magnetism, but the Academy, evidently, was not convinced. In 1837 another commission was appointed and its report was largely negative.

In Germany after 1820 the belief in magnetism declined more and more ; the cognate phenomena also received hardly any attention. This retrogression was caused as much by the rise of the exact natural sciences as by the unscientific and uncritical hankering after mystical phenomena, which could not but repel serious investigators. Up to 1840, however, mesmerism held its advocates in the persons of thoughtful inquirers who allowed themselves to be influenced neither by the passion for the wonderful nor by the attacks of the principal opponents of magnetism and who sought to defend their position in a thoroughly scientific manner. Moll supports Osgood in the latter's statement already quoted when the former says, "It maybe emphatically insisted that a series of philosophers have believed firmly and persistently in the reality of the phenomena."

The more science drew back, the more shameless became the cheating and the fraud, although in Germany there were fewer attempts to make money by it than in France. The abuse grew so strong that the Catholic Church several times came forward to interfere. The more the extravagance and cheating increased, the less inclined were serious-minded persons to interest themselves in these matters.

In England in spite of the efforts of the London physicians Elliotson and Ashburner, magnetism could get no footing. A succession of investigators and writers, however, actively pursued the matter. Experiments were made in clairvoyance. When the French magnetizer, La Fontaine, exhibited magnetic experiments in Manchester in 1841, Braid, a doctor of that place, interested himself in the question, and with this name there opens a new era in our subject.

We may halt here for a moment, in tracing the history of our subject, to understand more perfectly its significance and to see just how it stands. Moll points out that the historical development begins with the popular opinion that, in the first place, there are certain men who can exercise a personal influence over others, and that, in the second place, by means of certain manipulations peculiar psychical conditions can be called forth. At this point we see the first flashes of the scientific development. We see to a certain extent a combination of the two processes just mentioned. It is found that special manipulations can call forth a changed mental condition; it is shown that when a man calls this out, it is not by virtue of any peculiar and mysterious unknown power, animal magnetism, as was formerly supposed.

Attention to the subject seems to lead off into two paths: one scientific, the other mystical. We do not have data as yet in our survey of the subject up to this point to appreciate the true significance of this bifurcation, but we shall meet it again, and not infrequently, and it will afford us some important conclusions.

Of importance at this point, we may call especial attention to the fact that notwithstanding the abuses and extravagances to which the influence is capable of being put, there is a sober class of men who believe these facts are deeply significant for human welfare and are well worth careful study and patient investigation.

Significant, too, is the fact that howsoever aberrant the theory and construction of the facts, results for weal are won by practitioners.

The period we now enter upon, the primal scientific, is an interesting and fruitful one. As we have stated, it begins in 1841, when James Braid, a Manchester physician, heard La Fontaine, a French magnetizer, lecture in his own city. At first Braid considered " hypnotism/ ' a term which he invented for the induced mental state of sleep, to be identical with the mesmeric states, but he soon gave up this view. He was of the opinion that the two conditions were only analogous, and he left mesmerism in an independent position by the side of hypnotism. He was acquainted with the cataleptic phenomena and certain suggestions and used hypnotism therapeutically; in particular he used it to perform painless surgical operations.

At first a skeptic, he began experimenting and proved that fixity of gaze had in some way such an influence on the nervous system of the subject that he went off into a sleep. He showed that an assumed attitude changed the subject's sentiments in harmony with the attitude and that the degree of sleep varied with different persons, and with the same person at different times. He also noted the acuteness of the senses during hypnosis and that verbal suggestion would produce hallucinations, emotions, paralysis, etc. Interested in therapeutics, his experiments on different diseases were frequent and valuable.

In spite of his illumination of the true causes of hypnotism, Braid did not attempt to elucidate the physiological and psychological mechanism of the phenomena, nor, strangely enough, did he apply suggestion to the treatment of disease. His reported cases were subjected to hypnotism and manipulation alone. The recoveries, however, were due to unconscious suggestion, for in hypnotizing his patients, Braid did so with the belief which his patients shared, or of which they were aware, that their ailments would be relieved.

In 1848 a New Englander, Grimes by name, who, some writers assert, knew nothing of Braidism, appears to have arrived at about the same conclusions as Braid. He showed that most of the hypnotic phenomena could be produced in the waking state in some subjects, by means of verbal suggestion. He published and practiced his procedures under the title of Electro-Biology. His practice was imitated by other men, none of whom were scientific.

A little later various distinguished men in England, among them Bennett, Alison, Carpenter, Gregory, Dugald Stewart, and others, published experiences which bore witness to the truths of Braidism.

In Paris Azam of Bordeaux, who wrote in 1860, and Broca made some experiments following Braid's method, and several times performed some painless operations by this means. They did much to arouse scientific interest in the subject. Broca discussed hypnotism before the Academie des Sciences.

It could not be said, however, that any general interest was aroused by these investigations and their publication, and we have to come to another personality, a little French doctor, to whom, it may be truthfully said, our modern psychotherapy owes its real birth ; this is the now fairly well-known name of Liebeault. Dr. A. A. Liebeault began his career as a struggling country doctor, and after long and careful experimentation opened a public dispensary in the town of Nancy and announced that he would treat free of charge all who would submit to be hypnotized. As soon as it was discovered that hypnotism as administered by him hurt nobody and benefited many, his rooms were thronged with patients. After a medical examination to determine the exact nature of the disease, he induced the hypnotic state by gentle methods of speaking. He was not always successful, but he did succeed so often that he became widely talked about. He published his book Le Sommeil Provoque in 1866, which is even to-day very well worth reading. It was the most important treatise upon hypnotic suggestion which, up to that time, had yet appeared. It was Liebeault who first fully and methodically recognized the value of suggestion. It was through Liebeault that Bernheim and many other investigators were induced to turn to the study of the subject. Bernheim in his book De La Suggestion et de ses Applications a la Therapeutique shows that this patient pioneer, ignored and scouted by his medical brethren, during the twenty-five years in the course of which alone and almost gratuitously, by means of hypnotic suggestion, he treated more than 15,000 patients of the poorer classes, had, by his cheerful persistence, by his faith in himself and in his method of treatment, won the merit of undying fame. " To-day," says Bernheim, " magnetism like alchemy is dead, but just as chemistry is the child of alchemy, hypnotic suggestion has been born of magnetism."