ANXIETY NEUROSIS

Evening Star, Issue 22382, 4 July 1936, Page 2

ANXIETY NEUROSIS

[Y.Y., in the ‘ New Statesman.’] I read an article in a newspaper the other clay in which a psychoiogist declared that smoking coo much is a sign of anxietj neurosis. I at once tried fo recall some ot the heaviest smokers I have known in order to test the truth of the statement. Having discovered that, according to some psychologist or other, everybody—however he behaves—is suffering from an “ inferiority complex ” and that everybody—however he behaves—is a “ pathological case,” 1 was suspicious of a new classification which lumped together a large number of my friends and acquaintances as people suffering from “ anxiety neurosis.” Were those retired sea captains 1 used to know, who seemed able to smoke brown Cavendish all day long, secretly tortured by anxiety despite their air of imperturbable calm? They looked like men who could have faced a mutiny or a typhoon without a Hurry of the pulse. Vet it is possible that a square .jaw and a strong and humorous mouth may be no evidence of the absence of anxiety. Some of these seamen, 1 knew, were disturbed about their souls, and some of them—with considerably more reason—about their sons’ souls. That may have been why they smoked all day. Ido not know, but, at least, I cannot bring them forward as witnesses to disprove the statement of the psychologist. . Then there was the head constable in the Royal Irish Constabulary. He began the day by smoking a pipeful of strong tobacco before breakfast. He lived till the age of 80, having never had a day’s illness till just before the end, and he through life with an almost lazy-looking good humour that would remain ' unruffled through a week’s riots. VVhat secret anxiety preyed on him, then, that he smoked all the time when he was off . duty ? Was he, too. troubled, about his soul and his sons’ souls? I do not think so, for he was one of those tolerant, easygoing, optimistic, affectionate parents who do not 1 oet trouble halfway, whether the t ..ibles of to-day or tomorrow or the troubles of life after death. I am convinced that the bead constable at least smoked all day simply because he enjoyed smoking. As for myself, that is another matter. I am 6ne of the people whom the psychologist might confidently call as witnesses. I am a heavy smoker (except that I do not smoke before breakfast), and all my life I have been a prey to anxiety. I cannot have been many, years old when I became exceedingly anxious both about this world and about the next. 1 breathed in anxiety on my nurse’s knee. I learned from her into how very dangerous a world I had been born. The majority of the inhabitants of my country appajjently were men, women, and children who were restrained only by the police from cutting her and my throats. If they had not wished to do so, I gathered, they would have been false to their religion. Certainly, from her brief but pictorial summaries of history, the followers of this religion seemed to be master craftsmen in the most unpleasant forms of murder. Sometimes they would burn you alive, sometimes they would tie you to a cart’s tail and drag you along the ground till you died; sometimes they would bind you to a stake at low tide and leave you there till the incoming, tide drowned you; and sometimes, ijben they were in too much of a hurry to do any of these things, "They would cut your throat. She never actually produced any evidence that any member of our family, or even any neighbour, had been burned alive or left to be drowned by the incoming tide by over-religious fel-low-countrymen or fellow-townsmen; but she showed me some startling pictures of similar events that had happened in other countries and other centuries —pictures that made me decidedly anxious as to what might happen in Belfast if the police got the worst of it in the Falls road. • It might be thought that a brave little boy, hearing of such things, would take a vow that when he grew up he would devote his life to, the task of cleansing his country of this sanguinary religion. I was not a brave little boy, however, and I realised even at thp ago of five that the police were far more capable than I of cracking the criminal skull of the Scarlet Woman. Besides, 1 bad other anxieties—anxieties that' would have lost none of their acuteness even if the Scarlet Woman had been banished from the earth. I was anxious about death—both my own death and the death or other members of my family and (though not quite to the same degree) about what would happen after death. It is true that, according to my nurse s description, the Devil seemed to be almost as wicked a character as the Scarlet Woman; but I never believed for an instant that any of the other members of the would tall into his dutches, and L believed that with luck even I .should be able to outwit him with a last-moment conversion. I am sure that as a child I was much more appalled by the thought of death than by the thought of hell. If I bad known any blasphemous words I should often, as 1 lay in bed and meditated on what had happened in the Garden of Eden, have cursed Eve and her apple, and poor, idiotic Adam for the way in which they had destroyed the chances of the Y. family of living in the North of Ireland for ever. It was not only the thought of death that was appalling. but the thought that we should all die at different times. I used to pray ardently tbat should all die at the same moment. . L . T Burdened with such anxieties, I naturally turned to tobacco at an early age for consolation. One day. when my father was out, 1 went to his study, took down his briar pipe, filled it with the powerful mixture he smoked, lit it, sat down in his armchair, and began to puff. 1 had not been smoking more than a minute or two, however, when 1 became a prey to anxiety that had no relation either to the Pope or to the sin of our first parents. The world swam before me. If au emissary of the ■Pope had just then come into the room and told me that he was going to burn me at the stake I should have said to him if I had been able to articulate: “Go ahead. It can’t be worse than this.” I crept under the desk and lay down to die. . It may have been because of this first failure to find balm for anxiety neurosis in tobacco that 1 continued to live under the curse of anxiety during my boyhood. I became less anxious about the Scarlet Woman; I put the thought of death aside as much as possible; anxieties as to black faces peering through the slit left by the moving blind at the bedroom window and as to the unknown thing that might be lying in wait in the dark drawing room as I went upstairs at night diminished in intensity. But other anxieties took their place. They always do. If you are born anxious you have to be anxious about something. Not that I grew up unhappy. So far as I can judge, a considerable amount of anxiety, as of melancholy, is no preventive of happiness. We sec human beings deliberately playing with anxiety as a form of amusement. As

a boy I paid a shilling or more to see Blondin walking blindfold across a tightrope as high as a-house top. He pretended to stumble as lie stepped on to the > rope and to regain his balance with difficulty. Everybody who watched him must have been in an agony of: anxiety. I certainly was. Yet few of us went home the unhappier for the experience. If human beings regarded anxiety as the enemy of happiness, how greatly diminished the crowds would be at football matches!' Go to a • wellcontested football match if you want to see some of the most anxious and at the same time some of the happiest •people in the world. It may be argued that these minor anxieties are deliberately resorted to in order to enable human .beings to escape from the major anxieties or life. Excessive love of football itself' may be a sign of anxiety neurosis. If so, what is to be done about UP Ought human beings to continue to try_ to forget their profounder anxieties in football and tobacco? Or is there a euro for anxiety that would be hastened if they gave up football and tobacco? Brought up among phantom anxieties, we grow to manhood only to discover that the world is full of real anxieties no less dreadful than the phantoms. This, according to the psychologist, i* exceedingly good for the tobacco trade, but it is good for no one else. ■ If I thought that by giving up tobacco I could acquire the unanxious temperament of Horace’s “ just man ’ I would gladly—or perhaps I should say reluctantly—give up tobacco. The worst of it is that, while anxiety js the cause of excessive smoking, it is not cured by it. As the world smokes more and more it seems to becomeniorg and more anxious. , 0 to be a just _ man in a world so harrowed by anxiety, or, if that is impossible, to own shares in one of the great tobacco firms!