Observations placeholder

As described in Illustrations Of The Influence Of The Mind Upon The Body In Health And Disease, Designed To Elucidate The Action Of The Imagination - Daniel Hack Tuke, M.D., M.R.C.P.,

PART II. THE EMOTIONS.

CHAPTER VI. GENERAL PSYCHOLOGICAL AND PHYSIOLOGICAL PRINCIPLES.

THE EMOTIONS.

When our desires are gratified, there results mental pleasure — Joy. When, on the contrary, they are disappointed, there arises mental pain — Grief or Sorrow. Such are emotions as regards their quality, but they vary also in their quantitative character. Again, they may be manifested in very different degrees of intensity and force, from the slight ripple to the resistless wave ; and lastly, they may differ in their persistence. It is obvious that, as these characters vary, the influence of the emotions upon the body will be modified.

It is well pointed out by Mr. Haweis in the "Contemporary" for December, 1870, that Emotion proper "consists of infinite varieties of mental temperature ; that upon these atmospheres of the soul depend the degree and often the kind of actions of which at different moments we are capable ; and that, quite apart from different ideas, the emotional region may be dull, apathetic, eager, brooding, severe, resolute, impulsive, &c."

He shows that each of these states may exist and pass away without being clothed with any appropriate set of ideas ;
" of course in a thousand instances they are so attached ; for, as thought is always seeking emotion, so is emotion always seeking thought ; and the atmospheres of the soul may be said to be constantly penetrated by crowds of appropriate thoughts, which take their peculiar colour and intensity only upon entering the magic precincts of Emotion."

PART II. THE EMOTIONS.
CHAPTER VII. INFLUENCE OF THE EMOTIONS UPON SENSATION.

1. Thought strongly directed to any part tends to increase its vascularity, and consequently its sensibility. Associated with a powerful emotion, these effects are more strikingly shown. And, when not directed to any special part, an excited emotional condition induces a general sensitiveness to impressions — an intolerance of noise, for example, or cutaneous irritation.

2. Thought strongly directed away from any part, especially when this is occasioned by Emotion, lessens its sensibility. As the activity of the cerebral functions during deep intellectual operations excludes consciousness of the impressions made upon the sensory nerves generally, so an absorbing emotion effectually produces the same result.

3. The emotions may cause sensations, either by directly exciting the sensory ganglia and the central extremities of the nerves of sensation, or by inducing vascular changes in a certain part of the body, which excite the sensitive nerves at their peripheral terminations.

4. There is no sensation, whether general or special, excited by agents acting upon the body from without, which cannot be excited also from within by emotional states affecting the sensory ganglia ; such sensation being referred by the mind to the point at which the nerve terminates in the body.