1st PART
"STRUCTURING OF THE PERSONALITY"
CHAPTER III
"PSYCHOSOMATIC AND THE SELF-AGGRESSION"
The medicine that treats of the effects of our psychic unbalances on the organism is the Psychosomatic, in the chapter of the Self-aggression. She affirms that the man's health, so much physics as psychic, depends on his capacity of comfortable adaptation to the demands of the environment. The organic life establishes a continuous and incessant fight to maintain the balance in the presence of the stimulus received, phenomenon that the science denominates of homeostase. The non adaptation is that brings the disease and the state of interior bad feeling.
That capacity of adaptation is regulated by two physiologic factors that determine the game of our conscious life - the operation of the nervous system and of the glandular system.
The nervous system, as we already saw, is the one that receives the impacts so external, of physical nature, contacted by the senses, as the interns of psychic nature. The brain decodes and interprets, returning an answer that depends on that interpretation.
When reacting, the nervous system stimulates certain glands taking them to liberate hormones that can relax, bringing calm states, or that they can cause tension, bringing disturbing states.
The balanced hormonal regulation is favorable to the defense and the maintenance of the balance of the organism, but the lack or the excess of hormonal production are highly harmful. This discovery of the function of the hormones brought the concept of Psychosomatic Medicine, the most recent chapter of the medicine. It was structured in the third decade of the century XX and, inside of the traditional medicine, is the first line that tries to see the man in his totality. It is advisable, however, to notice, that the Oriental medicine, from millennia, and the homeopathy, since the century XIX, never lost the human being's global vision.
One of the first ones to foresee that the emotion affected the health was William James, when, in 1.884, he said: "Emotion is a state of the mind that manifests through clear alterations in the body." But who was really devoted to the study of the relationship between hormones and the health was Dr. Hans Selye, neurophysiologist, worthy of the Nobel Prize, born in 1.907 in Vienna and rooted in Canada. In 1.936 publishes the theory of the "stress" that comes to prove the participation of the hormones in the installation of the diseases and, with that, he revolutionizes the medicine.
What roused Hans Selye, when he was still medicine student, it was to notice that, in all of the serious diseases, there exist an initial stage that precedes to the emergence of the specific symptom - dirty tongue, pains and diffused stitches, digestive disturbances, loss of the appetite, fever, spleen or liver congested etc. However, the doctors, their teachers, didn't give importance to that phase and they looked forward for the specific symptom to firm the diagnosis. Dr. Hans Selye, through countless researches, verified that that stage that precedes the disease is a somatic picture that he denominated of "somatic syndrome" and that should be consideration of very larger attention.
He began their experiences with mice and he verified that, not only the action of certain substances considered aggressive as, for instance, macerate of ovarian tissue, or of any other organic tissue, as well as caustic substances as the formol, when introduced in the organism of the animals, they always produced a certain organic reaction.
The action of those noxious substances, therefore, the action of an external aggression, always provoked the same pathological picture -an increase of the cortex of the suprarenal, with corticoids increase, involution of the organs thymus lymphatic, which produces the white globules, ulcerations of the mucous membrane of the digestive tract etc. Finally, he got to conclude that these results occurred because of the emergence, in the organism, of certain hormonal principles.
Continuing in the experiences, he verified that there was not need of the introduction of aggressive substances; it was enough to submit the animals to other types of continuous aggression, as for instance, intense cold, heat, physical fatigue, as well as any emotional trauma. For instance, he conditioned the mouse to receive food after certain behavior, let us say, after moving a lever and, then, suddenly, they ceased of presenting the food. Passed certain time of frustrations, when examining the animal, they verified that the picture installed in the organism was exactly the same, the hormones appeared in the sanguine current and the organic alterations were processed.(1)
(1)The diversity between mice has, for years, Dr. Bovet alluring. He likes to quote the so-called Harvard Law which holds that if a laboratory animal is properly stimulated and conditioned, will do anything you want. With a good sport, he cites the following regarding the charge conditioning: a dialogue, a rodent laboratory says to another, with an upper air and satisfied: "I think the lab assistant is already fully trained. Every time I run the maze, it gives me food. "
Transferring these experiences for the man's analysis, he verified that the mechanism was identical, with some added difficulties. When the person is being butt of a real aggression, that produces fear as, for instance, let us say that we are being assaulted, or in the imminence of being run down by a car. In that fraction of second, the organism, through the incentive of the hypophysis, takes certain glands to secrete certain hormones, as corticoids and adrenaline. Those hormones enter in the sanguine current and they will excite the nervous system giving a characteristic picture - palpitation, anguish, paleness and alert state and expectation.
That state that appears is favorable so much for the defense as for the escape. People under that excitement condition practice true prodigies. We witnessed, for instance, a 9 year-old girl's feat that jumped a high wall, escaping from a dog that was biting several children in the courtyard of a school. In no hypothesis that girl would get to jump such wall. We can calculate its height, because it was part of a great boarding school and it separated the girls' recreation from the boys' recreation.
Passed the danger, however, the hormones are eliminated and the organism returns to the normality.
The extraordinary of the discovery was to verify that, before any aggression, of psychological order, as a frustration, an offense, a sensitization of the component factors of the selfhood, as pride, vanity, self esteem, the man gets ready for the defense just as before a real aggression and, then, not getting to remove the cause, because this is of subjective nature, linked to unconscious processes, the individual hides the cause but stratifies the state. To that defense state crystallized - hormones that continue circulating without a real cause - Hans Selye gave the name of "stress". "Stress" has been defined as the sum of the whole wear caused by any type of vital reaction through the body, at any moment; it is, so to speak, a life speedometer.
Well then, it is to that mechanism of reacting generating straining hormones that work as internal aggressors, provoking organic reactions, symptoms and even lesions, that the psychology gives the name of self-aggression. The name, in itself, is descriptive: It is I that attack myself with the form how I interpret the events.
Any emotional reaction produces hormones, they are synchronized systems. To be promoted or to be dismissed can cause physiologically the same reactions - muscular tension, outlying temperature, blood pressure, heart acceleration. The difference is in the emotional level.
According to the type of liberated hormone, it can provoke a general state of tension or of relaxation which, consequently, are going to generate corresponding psychological states. We should agree, however, that rare are the times when we confront ourselves with real dangers; rare are the occasions when we should arm for the defense, because almost all of the aggressions that we receive in the modern world, are not properly aggressions of physical order, but of psychological order. In spite of the real dangers be there imminent, disasters in the traffic, assaults etc., however, even not happening at every moment, a lot of times even during a lifetime, they put us under a certain expectation, phenomenon that is of psychic nature.
Seemingly, the aggressions not real they seem to come from outside because they are provoked by our fellow creatures' behavior, offenses, slanders, backbitings, injustices, or by the impositions of the life, but, nevertheless, under a deeper analysis, they end being self-aggressions because it is my psychological state, my interpretation, that take my organism to react in a tensional form.
Besides the unconscious problem that can generate "stress" and that, probably, deserve a specialized care, there exists that category of stimulus linked to the selfhood - selfishness, vanity, self-esteem, pride, jealousy, envies, attachment, rage etc. and that unchain self-aggression.
Let us forget the unconscious on which we don't have control and to fix in those linked to the selfhood, verifying how much we are bombed by them. Those values we can detect through a self-analysis, we can turn them conscious and to address our reactions.
Dr. Hans Selye affirms: "Every unnecessary tension provokes a wear. We should struggle for the highest practical ends, but never to oppose resistance any in vain".
If we got to isolate us emotionally of the problems and tried to solve everything with humility, honesty, impartiality and justice, measuring the relationship between cause and effect, if we got to be at sidelines and to apply the following process: analysis of the situation, use of the reason to discern the right of the wrong, capacity of addressing the reaction at the expense of the willpower, we would get rid of a high percentage of useless self-aggressions. I should become so impartial to the point of being capable to judge if the stimulus is just or unjust, and of having self-control to ponder: if unjust, I don't take knowledge although I can take providences, in case that it is necessary to solve a situation. If fair, I should have the enough humility to reformulate.
This proposal of self-control is not easy, but our health and our happiness depend on that. I cannot change the events that surround me, nor the people with which I live together, but I can change my form of reacting, considering that the convulsed reaction doesn't solve, on the contrary, it harms any resolution.
It is very significant the illustration presented by Caio Miranda: "Certain Hindu disciple went to complain to his guru that their school friends mistreated him for being of inferior breed, to which the Master answers: My Son, if you throw a stone to a window and this has window pane, we will expect that the glasses will be broken producing great noise and material damages. If, however, the window doesn't have glasses, the stone will pass without causing damages. The disciple should be as the window without glasses. Take off your self esteem, your pride, your vanity, that are not the trueness of your nature and nobody will ever get to humble you or to get you hurt.
Another wise thought is this of Huberto Rhoden: "The badly that the other ones do to me doesn't do me any badly, but the badly that I do to the other ones, that yes is the one that does me badly."
The "stress", in other words, this form of reacting generating hormones, is responsible for the diseases of the modern civilization - neurosis, infarcts, ulcers, hypertension, headaches, fatigues, nervous breakdown etc.
If we observe our daily life, we will see that we are eternally in "stress" state, in other words, of unnecessary tension. We are permanently in defense state, as if ready to react to an external aggression: - alarm clock, traffic, transport, competitions, bureaucracy, boredom, badly understandings, monotony, and hurry of the century XX. A great American psychologist, specialist in this "stress" subject, in a lecture here in Brazil in l.978, he counted curious cases of executives behavior like that type Caxias. He said that a customer got to use two shavers in the morning to win time. In a statistical work, he affirms that those men never arrive to the top of the career because they die before, once the "stress" is the disease that more puts term inside to the man's life of this modern civilization.
We need to learn to live together with the difficulties. There is need that we adapt ourselves to the tensions and pressures of the daily life.
The people arrive to the "stress" state, not due to an overpowering accumulation of real displeasures, not for great shocks as deaths, loss of the job etc., but for not having learned how to maneuver the ordinary amount of disappointments peculiar to a human lifetime.
Many grow up and they don't reach enough maturity. Maturity implicates in capacity of maintaining serenity, resignation, courage, determination and happiness in situations that would take an immature person to the apprehension, terror, anxiety or frustration.
Dr. Hans Selye, the discoverer of the "stress", advises: "Sleep early, wake up early; program pleasant things. Discover that the world has fascinating things. Walk, hear music, have a hobby, practice sport. Don't defend the hurry. Make friends."
As we have great difficulty to detect in us the unbalancing aspects, because, for us, our reactions seem always appropriate and fair, in the next chapter we will introduce some of the ingenious artifices that we use to cover our internal flaws.
Without this auto-judgment capacity, it would be of no use to know the self-balance techniques, because they would be just in the mental area, of the knowledge, and they would never fill out their purpose, which is the one of the movement of our internal factors.