rom an old pain or an old
disability whose cause has long since disappeared, but which is
stamped on the mind and believed in as a present reality. Since the
sensation is as real as ever, it is sometimes very hard to believe
that it is not legitimate, but if the person is intelligent, a little
explanation and re-education usually suffices.
=Twenty Years an Invalid.= Mr. S., from Ohio, had spent much of his
time for twenty years going from one sanatorium to another. There was
scarcely a health resort in the country with which he was not
familiar. The day he came to me he felt himself completely exhausted
by the two-block walk from the car. He explained that he could
scarcely listen to what I was saying because his brain was so fagged
that concentration was impossible. When asked to read a book, he
dramatically exclaimed, "Books and I have parted company!" I set him
to work reading "Dear Enemy" but it was not a week before he was
devouring the deeper books on psychology, in complete forgetfulness of
the pains in his head. Playing golf and walking at least six miles
every day, he rejoiced in a new sense of strength in his body, which
for twenty years he had considered "used up." He is now doing a
man-sized job in the business and philanthropic life of his home city.
=Brain-fag.= This feeling of brain-fag is one of the commonest nervous
symptoms; and almost always it is supposed to be the result of
intellectual overwork. Some people who easily accept the idea that
physical work cannot cause nervous breakdown can scarcely give up the
deep-rooted notion that intense mental work is harmful. Intellectual
effort does give rise to fatigue in exactly the same way as does
physical exertion, but the body takes care of the waste products of
the one just as it does those of the other. Du Bois says that out of
all his nervous cases he has not found one which can be traced to
intellectual overwork. I can say the same thing, and I know no case in
all the literature of the subject whose symptoms I can believe to be
the result of mental labor.
The college students who break down are not wrecked by intellectual
work. In some cases, one strong factor in their undoing is the strain
and readjustment necessary because of the discrepancies between some
of their deepest religious beliefs and the truth as they learn it in
the class-room. The other factors are merely those which play their
part in any neurosis.
=Re-educating the Teacher.=
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