n we try to change
over into minor tones we get sadly out of tune.
There is another factor; painful emotions make us fall to pieces,
while pleasant emotions bind us together. We can see why this is so
when we remember that powerful emotions like fear and anger tend to
dissociate all but themselves, to split up the mind into separate
parts and to force out of consciousness everything but their own
impulse. Morton Prince in his elaborate studies of the cases of
multiple personality, Miss Beauchamp and B.C.A., found repeatedly that
he had only to hypnotize the patient and replace painful, depressing
complexes by healthy, happy ones to change her from a weak, worn-out
person, complaining of fatigue, insomnia, and innumerable aches and
pains, into a vigorous woman, for the time being completely well. On
this point he says:
Exalting emotions have an intense synthesizing effect, while
depressing emotions have a disintegrating effect. With the
inrushing of depressive memories or ideas ... there is suddenly
developed a condition of fatigue, ill-being and disintegration,
followed after waking by a return or accentuation of all the
neurasthenic symptoms. If on the other hand, exalting ideas and
memories are introduced and brought into the limelight of
attention, there is almost a magical reversal of processes. The
patient feels strong and energetic, the neurasthenic symptoms
disappear and he exhibits a capacity for sustained effort. He
becomes re-vitalized, so to speak.[29]
[Footnote 29: Prince: _Psycho-therapeutics_, Chap. I.]
In cases like this the needed strength and energy are not lost; they
are merely side-tracked, but the person feels as weak as though he
were physically ill.
BODILY RESPONSE TO EMOTIONAL STATES
=Secretions.= Let us look more carefully into some of the
physiological processes involved in emotional changes. Among the most
apparent of bodily responses are the various external secretions.
Tears, the secretion of the lachrymal glands in response to an
emotion, are too common a phenomenon to arouse comment. It is common
knowledge that clammy hands and a dry mouth betray emotion. Every
nursing mother knows that she dares not become too disturbed lest her
milk should dry up or change in character. Most people have
experienced an increase in urine in times of excitement; recently
physiologists have discovered the presence of sugar in the urine of
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