Correspondence

Correspondence

Boris Sidis, Ph.D., M.D.

The Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 1907, 2, 187-188.

Next to the question of the spread of tuberculosis there is none which is of greater importance in medicine and sociology than that of the etiology of insanity. Religion as one of the causes assigned by the statistician is, I think, generally discredited at the present, except as admitting that in the highly emotional forms it may act as an exciting cause for some neuroses, very acute and more nearly allied to hysteria than to true insanity of a chronic character.

But if we admit as having at least equal and probably much greater influence on the formation of morbid associations and fixed ideas, the present psychic doctrines of healing and pseudoreligious cults, can this class of emotions and ideas be kept so far in the background? Will not the differences between the teachings of the different sects be brought out most sharply by a knowledge of what may be coincidences, but which also look very much like logical results? Such are some which have come within the observation of the writer within a short time or have been noted in the public prints.

A young man, the son of a Christian Science mother, himself a "reader" had betrothed to another, was a well marked case of dementia praecox. In the hospital he alleviated the sufferings of his fellows by' reading to ,them from the Bible of the sect. His friends wisely, but very inconsistently as it seems to me, took away his books apparently with excellent results.

A woman for many years a zealous Christian Science "reader" developed the idea that she had been reduced by hypnotism to absolute moral or spiritual nothingness, had been mentally destroyed beyond hope or possibility of redemption. She had been under the care of a Christian Science nurse who read to her from the Bible of the sect. Although able to control herself perfectly for a purpose, she never admitted a moment relief of her misery, walking the floor for hours denouncing, the authoress of her woe. It was impossible to ascertain at this time whether she had repudiated her former doctrines or simply despaired of their efficacy in her own case. She was successful in her suicide, evidently planned for a long time.

At about this time occurred the suicide of a prominent Christian Science "reader" the sister of a man even more eminent who also escaped her nurse.

Then also appeared in the papers the report of a "mind reader and healer" who had so firmly impressed her followers with her doctrines that they would not believe in her death, although she had left directions for her cremation.

And at last comes the announcement which to disbelievers seems a strange thing to come from such source, that the foundress herself has for years suffered from the terrors of a belief (which her "next friends" call a "delusion" but which is shared by many of her disciples as part of the doctrine) in the possibility of a hostile and destructive influence by evil-minded persons even n the minds of true believers, a malignant animal magnetism.