Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id VAA04459 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Wed, 1 Nov 2000 21:35:05 GMT Message-ID: <3A008BCB.4383C248@fcol.com> Date: Wed, 01 Nov 2000 16:31:55 -0500 From: "Robert G.(Bob) Grimes" <grimes@fcol.com> Organization: Grimes & Grimes Consulting X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.72 [en]C-CCK-MCD compaq (Win98; U) X-Accept-Language: en To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk Subject: Re: old paper, but unnoticed (on this list) References: <2D1C159B783DD211808A006008062D3101745AC4@inchna.stir.ac.uk> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
The subject always reminds me of an incident while in the university
studying clinical psychology. My close friend's father was a pharmacist
and he worked afternoons in the pharmacy. I would visit often and many
times sit at the soda fountain and sip a coke while discussing a myriad
of things.
One day I was in the midst of speaking about some adventures that I had
in W.W.II on the island of Saipan. It involved finding bodies and
equipment in the jungle and in the caves, being shot at occasionally by
Japanese soldiers who had not surrendered but were still in the hills.
Suddenly I noticed the young soda jerk, who was listening intently,
becoming visibly ill. He was swelling over his face and his eyes were
swelling so much they were closing on him so he almost couldn't see. My
subject matter happened to be particularly gruesome because of the
experiences and I silently concluded that my remarks had occasioned the
hives reaction we were witnessing in such a dramatic fashion. I said
nothing about this to the young teenage soda jerk but we took him back
to the pharmacy and gave him a good dose of sodium glutamate, as I
recall. His hives reaction commenced subsiding almost immediately and
he looked almost as if a balloon had been punctured as his swelling
visibly reduced in front of us.
Later I spoke to my friend who had witnessed this and who had suggested
the sodium glutamate (he later became a full time physician), telling
him that I suspected the teenager's identification with the bloody
terminology, etc., had induced a "fear reaction" that caused the hives
reaction. Well, he agreed but, of course, we had no proof. So, as is
my experimental wont, several days later I repeated the same type of war
tales in front of the youngster and, again, we saw the same reaction.
This is the true test of a psychosomatic reaction and must sadly
confess that I repeated the experiment a couple of more times for other
psychology students who didn't believe us when we discussed the case.
Fortunately, the young man identified us as the folks who cured his
reaction rather than the folks who caused it, and he was always glad to
see us.
You all are probably familiar with folks becoming nauseated and ill
because of the subject matter of a conversation and their extreme
identification reaction to the words as if they were the real thing.
Unfortunately, when witnessing such things back at that time I must
confess to also reproducing the same effect later on the same subjects.
Such reactions are really not unusual if one thinks of circumstances
which "turn men or women on sexually," usually the same type of
identification reaction where they identify "words" with the real thing
and have a sexual response. Most of us used such techniques during our
"sporting" days as youths.
So, having been exposed to many folks with different types of
psychosomatic diseases I have also concluded that those same illnesses
are probably frequently caused by similar responses. When one also adds
in such hard to define things as pheromone affects, etc., it gets very
difficult to deny such relationships, especially if one can reproduce
them at will, cruel as that may sound.
When a student and becoming convinced of such relationships I confess to
doing experiments on what I considered susceptible subjects and had a
very high rate of success. Needless to say, it also aided my romantic
escapades at that time, too. Sometimes we even asked complete strangers
questions about such relationships to "prove a point." I well remember
overhearing a gentleman who, like me, was waiting to be seated in a
restaurant, mention that he suffered from ulcerative colitis. I had
some ideas about some of the causes of such symptoms and made on like I
had met him previously, confirming my lie by asking him, "You do have a
blonde wife, don't you?" He confirmed that he did and almost remembered
my fake prior meeting, but he did confirm my statistical conclusion at
the time, strange that it was, that a large preponderance of men with
that illness "had blonde wives." Sadly again, my stats were startlingly
accurate at the time with those I tested the conclusions on...
Sometimes it is difficult to use such anecdotal conclusions for other
than subjective background conclusions but I must confess that both
myself and my friend had great results with it at the time. It served me
very well during psychotherapy sessions where the confidence of the
subject was of great value. Sometimes, I was amazed when they would ask
me if "I could read minds!" But when a subject has that response they
will accept your guidance and conclusions with great confidence and
determination to follow your instructions.
But, the important thing to remember is that we always dealing with
physical facts, even if we do not know the scientific etiology of the
disease or disorder, and the subject is truly "hurting" or in discomfort
or has a real threat to their well-being, even if there is a dearth of
pathological evidence to support the conclusions, regardless of the
psychosomatic contribution...
Those conclusions served me well over many years of working with people
who were troubled or having difficulty.
Cordially,
Bob
-- Bob Grimeshttp://members.aol.com/bob5266/ http://pages.hotbot.com/edu/bobinjax/ http://www.phonefree.com/Scripts/cgiParse.exe?sID=28788 Jacksonville, Florida Bob5266@aol.com robert.grimes@excite.com bobinjax@hotbot.com
Man is not in control, but the man who knows he is not in control is more in control...
Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore....."
=============================================================== This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing) see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Wed Nov 01 2000 - 21:36:37 GMT