Problems of to-day from the point of view of a psychologist / by Hugo Münsterberg.

  • Hugo Münsterberg
Date:
1910
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Problems of to-day from the point of view of a psychologist / by Hugo Münsterberg. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    17/336 (page 1)
    V I THE FEAR OF NERVES T3EF0RE and since Mollere’s Immortal comedy, he who fancies himself to be the victim of a disease and suffers from Imaginary symptoms has always been the target of merry jests. But In modern times we see the more serious aspect of the case. On the one side, we know that to Imagine symptoms of disease can be Itself the expression of an abnormal state. And, above all, on the other side, to think oneself Into the role of the patient can be the starting-point for serious disturbances. By a kind of auto-suggestion, the healthy man becomes really 111 If he fixates his mind on the symptoms which he be- lieves he feels. This curious and by no means harmless state may befall not only Individuals, but whole nations, whole generations. Society to-day, and especially the so- cial body of America, Imagines Itself to be the pitiable victim of a miserable disease: general nervousness. Indeed, It Is a dogma of our generation, not that this or that man suffers from neurasthenia or other nervous diseases, but that our whole nervous make-up has become worse; that nervous troubles are on the Increase; that our entire social life has become neurasthenic, and that we I