We create things with our beliefs where, in reality, there is none. The wind moves the branches of threes where by chance hangs a white rag. We create a white-robed goblin who sighs and moans. We add further details to it. A story finally developed that curdles the blood of children and draws adults close together round the fire in a winters evening. A good story-teller makes you feel and see things that he creates with his imagination.
Formerly there were paid story-tellers and jokers in the courts of Kings in the medieval period just as there are poets and painters now-a-days paid by the State. Among the different types of stories, ghost stories appear to be very popular. Fairy stories probably come next. “Arabian Nights” has been translated into all the languages of the world and is still one of the most favourite books for children as well as for adults. It is always new and entertains the successive generations of men and women although the writer of it died hundreds of years ago.
It satisfied the cravings for romance and adventure of the human heart which reality cannot. One likes to fight with a dragon or an ogre to rescue the beautiful princess and clasping her to his heart, to soar through the sky in moonlight among clouds on a winged horse. Marvellous idea! but silly. Yes one likes to be a fool sometimes. Otherwise stories which are offered by the foolish would not touch ones heart so much. Jokes, puns, nonsense storiettes have similar popularity.
This only proves that one lives more in his imagination and fantasy than in reality. “One does not live by bread alone,” He is happy with a certain group of his ideas and beliefs and feels miserable with certain other fantasies. None of them are real. He sees the picture of a woman and writes poetry about it. He falls in love with it, hangs it in his bedroom and secretly kisses it.
He thinks too much about it and feels happy in its presence. It is practically a custom everywhere to keep the pictures of dead men and women whom one loves, in one;s room. One wonders. What is there to make so much of a song about a photograph, because a photograph, after all, is not a living person.
But alas! happy imaginations are rate. They are far too small in comparison with the unhappy ones which make you feel rotten and nasty. Since sex is one of the most important aspect in ones life and since social codes continually try to curb it and direct it, the most horrible and the most unreal beliefs cluster round it.
All these false beliefs and superstitions are defence- reactions of the mind, manufactured to prevent the sex instinct from running into anti-social channels. And because masturbation is one of the most anti-social practices, a group of horrifying beliefs are specially attached to it to prevent the individual from indulging in it.
The real physical loss in masturbation is a few C.C.S of albuminous material with spermatozoa unit. We can hardly call it a loss, because we give out plenty of other albuminous and mucoid materials daily with the waste products of our body. Such small loss, if loss at all it be, can never bring about any ill effects physically. Besides, during the first year of married life, a young man has sex-relations with his young and new wife very frequently, as much as once every night and occasionally even more than that.
If the loss of albuminous material from the body is taken into account, there appears to be considerable “loss” in such cases. Yet I have never seen a newly married man or woman losing weight and becoming ill. On the contrary most of the persons that I know of have gained in weight during the first year or two of marriage.
The “loss”-idea of semen from the body does not bear scrutiny. It seems to be mere superstition. If you begin investigating the truth of this belief from facts available, what is proved is exactly the opposite of what people believe. It appears that this “loss” instead in injuring the health of persons, actually improves it.
But the mental aspect of masturbation is entirely different. If you believe in a ghost and see something which you think might he a ghost, you get palpitation, dyspnoea and sweating. These disturbances of circulation, respiration and vasomotor system are definite physical changes occasioned by such a belief. If you are perpetually afraid of ghosts, these will be perpetual disturbance of these vital physiological processes of the body, a condition which may, even in few weeks, bring about a complete breakdown of ones health.
I have discussed the effects of the mind on the body in one of the previous issues of this journal. A belief generally crates disturbances of emotions like love, hate, fear, anxiety, jealousy etc. in the mind. Any emotional disturbance upsets the endocrine balance of the body. A few of such endocrine changes we know. Anger, for instance, causes increased secretion of adrenalin from suprarenal glands. All the endocrine glands of the body are inter-related with one another and the disturbance of one influences the secretion of the other.
This endocrine disharmony, occasioned by strong emotional changes, influences profoundly the feeling of well-being and later the general health of the body. Sometimes, when the emotional shock is very profound, the break down of the body is rapid, The death of beloved one may so shocking to a person that he may himself succumb in the course of a few days or weeks.
One speaks of a death due to “a broken heart.” It is not poetry, but a fact. This in only a figurative way of speaking about the effects of a severe mental shock, because most of the emotions are felt physically in the region of the heart. There are numerous case on record where a person dies shortly after the death of a beloved one. Among domesticated animals one observes the same thing. The death of an animal a few weeks or even days after the death of its mate, is very common. Animals are not poets and consequently poetical ideas are not likely to influence them.
Yes, an emotional disturbance occasioned by beliefs can kill a man slowly or quickly according to the strength of it, just as it can revive and restore him. [ Refer to the footnote to Sec, 17, of Organon” Ed.] And what a host of superstitions are attached round sex as the centre, particularly round masturbation. There is the inevitable guilt-feeling due to it and the fear of exposure.
The horrors and evils of masturbation, handed down through generations of strange traditional; beliefs, have their usual places in a mans mind. The quack-literature, the religious dogmas of fanatical priests, the prayers to save the should of the sinners, the lectures, the books depicting the glories of ascetism, in short, all this clumsy chaos of superstitions and faiths pushing everybody to eternal perdition and hell-fire without any apparent reason, are a mans poor legacies.
The masturbation guilt is universal, just as masturbation itself is practically universal. I have never known a man in the course of my analytic practice, where he has to tell me all the hidden secrets of his life, who does not early masturbation guilt. This strong emotional upsetting, resulting in a feeling of smallness due to guild influences in a feeling of smallness due to guild, influences the physical health considerably. He becomes has also been said, it was evident that I would have to work it out “by main strength and awkwardness.” But is this true? Let us see.
The first rubric to take in a case like this is “Consumption.” Why? Because the remedies it contains have been found useful in “Ulceration of the lungs” in degree corresponding with that indicated rank in the rubric. Hence that alone is helpful in the repertorial working out.
Take Kali carbonicum for instance. Hahnemann tells us that “persons suffering from ulceration of the lungs can scarcely get well without this anti-psoric.” Well here it is in the largest type in this rubric of “consumption.” giving thus extra weight to the remedy at the start; but, as I have often said, the rest of the symptoms must confirm or this pre-eminence.
Another reason for taking this rubric of Consumption” first it is the cause of the young womans illness. This sounds like heresy, but it is not, for I admit there are deeper causes at work in such a case. It is an account of the way the repertory is constructed, and intended to be used, that this pathological grouping in various rubrics occurs. It is really a recognition, by Boenninghausen, of the special cause of this, and other, affections, as they are known today.
They are given thus for the purpose of covering not only the cause but in some instances location as well, as for example chicken-pox, measles (rubeola) scarlet fever, small-pox, erysipelas, etc. The exciting cause, whether one calls it bacillus or not is best covered in this way. Thus the rubrics are all expressions of concrete facts, hard and fast facts, not speculative at all. This patient had tuberculosis. That was a fact according to modern diagnostic standards.
