HOME TREATMENT.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 290, 7 December 1932, Page 13

HOME TREATMENT.

IMPERATIVE IDEAS AND OBSESSIONS. There is a form of mental derangement not uncommon which requires very early treatment if it is to be cured. This is the' usually harmless but very uncomfortable possession of the mind by one idea, in fact an obsession. One person is afraid of being included in a crowd, as in a theatre audience, or the congregation in a church, and may faint from this unreasonable fear. Another will feel it necessary to count the patterns on the wallpaper, or the numbers of houses, or feel compelled to step only on certain parts of the pavement. Others can not look down from a high place, as the edge of a cliff, and fear they may throw' themselves down; or they are impelled to touch certain things they are passing or have passed, and must go back for that purpose; or are driven, as it wore, to read and re-read the names over shops, or study carefully the names of streets. They may dread having touched, something dirty or risked infection, and may carry this dread to extremes; Some feel they cannot eat food they had not themselves cooked, or fear to be poisoned.. These forms of imperative ideas may be divided into two, namely; fears and impulses. Among the latter is a doubt if one has done a thing rightly and an impulse to do it over again; or an impulse to do or say some foolish thing one knows to be unwise or foolish, and connected with impulse are certain tricks, tricks of gesture, of walk or dress; and amongst the fears ar<> fears of ghosts, robbers, or of being in the dark. No such obsessions should be neglected. Any sign in a child of an unusual or abnormal fear or impulse should be quickly (and perhaps artfully) checked. The child fearing the dark should be first taken, and then ! sent, into a dark room to fetch some article left there. Tricks with movements of hands or feet should be reproved, restlessness should be met by occupation. To bo fully master of oneself is to be wholly sane; on the other hand, fairs and impulses undirected by the will are errors of the mind, and are on the fringe of actual disease. "I can't help it," in regard to these things, is the cry of weakness, and must be countered by, "I will, I will stop it." Face, the thing you feir, and prove yourself fearless. Conquer the senseless impulses and throw your incubus into the limbo of mental rubbish. Tremblings and nervous palsies may be beyond control, and need another mind to assist the will, but even then there must be voluntary effort and a wish for control.