Advanced suggestion (neuroinduction) / by Haydn Brown.

  • Brown, Haydn, 1864-1936.
Date:
1921
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Advanced suggestion (neuroinduction) / by Haydn Brown. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    ready to burst forth into irregular action on slight excitation than they would be normally, both in the daytime and at night. Emissions in the psychas¬ thenic are as often as not of the nature of obsessions; the patient has not only a tendency to find worry in anything he can, but he is further harassed by psychical conflict, by the failure to stop either the emissions or the masturbation, having learned that the latter is the cause of the former. I should like at this stage to offer my reply to the question—as yet not definitely answered by anyone, as far as I can find—as to whether a slight amount of masturbation is harmful to anyone or no. My firm opinion is that the practice should be viewed as on a par with morphia-taking—in this respect, that little is constantly inviting to more; but it is further harmful under a law which I feel justified in stating, as being helpful in a study of psychology, that negatives tend to beget negatives, once there is the least disequili¬ brium. Normally a balance obtains between positive and negative mental tendencies; any addition to the mass of the negative tendencies is likely to diminish the mass of positive tendencies. We shall therefore find in every case that masturbation is an “arc” which tends to drag in other “arcs ”; indeed, it begins to do so at its initiation, all the more because of the sense of wrong-doing and the secrecy under which it is carried out. T have hardly ever seen a case in which this sort of confession has not been made during analysis : “ I have always felt that it was wrong.” The reason for