PSYCHASTHENIA 



parts most frequently anected are 

 the tips of the elbows and the 

 fronts of the knees, and after 

 these the scalp. Recurrence of the 

 condition after it has disappeared 

 is very common. In the early 

 stages, arsenic and salicin ad- 

 ministered internally have proved 

 useful, and in some cases ad- 

 ministration of thyroid gland has 

 been of service. Attention to diet 

 is important, alcohol being avoided 

 and red meat partaken of sparingly. 

 For local treatment, hot baths, 

 containing a teaspoonful of bi- 

 carbonate of soda to ttie gallon, 

 are helpful. Prow. So-ria-sis. 



Psychasthenia. Disorder of 

 the mind due to abnormal psycho- 

 logical processes. It is character- 

 ised by obsessions, the patient 

 feeling compelled to perform use- 

 less and illogical acts in order to 

 prevent some calamity happening, 

 though he recognizes the absurdity 

 of his conduct. Spasmodic move- 

 ments of the muscles are another 

 symptom. Some authorities use 

 the term in a wider sense to 

 include neurotic disorders which 

 appear to be mainly constitutional 

 or inherited. "See Insanity ; 

 Neurasthenia ; Neurosis. Pron. 

 sikasthenia. 



Psyche (Gr., soul). In classical 

 mythology, a maiden so beautiful 

 that she aroused the envy of Aph- 

 rodite, who sent Cupid to inspire 

 her with love for the meanest of 

 men. Cupid, however, fell in love 

 with her beauty himself, but left 

 her owing to the machinations of 

 her jealous sisters. Psyche then 

 set out to look for Cupid, and 

 after long wandering was united to 

 her lover and became immortal. 

 The story of Psyche is beautifully 

 told by Apuleius (q.v. ). It is an 

 allegorical representation of the 

 human soul, which eventually finds 

 complete happiness by purification 

 through trouble and sorrow. Pron. 

 Psy-kee. See Colour Printing, 

 colour plate ; Cupid. 



Psychical Research. Term 

 denoting the scientific study of the 

 more obscure and unexplained 

 activities of the human spirit (Gr. 

 psyche), or of spirit in general. It 

 became current about 1882, when 

 the society for psychical research 

 was founded by Henry Sidgwick, 

 F. W. H. Myers, E. Gurney, and 

 others for the serious study of 

 thought transference, apparitions 

 and haunted houses, hypnotism, 

 trances, clairvoyance and spiritual- 

 istic phenomena. Modern men of 

 science, with few exceptions, dis- 

 missed all these things as belonging 

 entirely to the realms of super- 

 stition and fraud. The founders of 

 the society took another view. 

 They held that the persistent 



belief of mankind in supernormal 

 occurrences must have been kept 

 cilive by some facts, and they de- 

 termined to submit those facts to 

 sober scientific inquiry. 



Time has already justified the 

 society in respect of part, at least, 

 of its programme. Hypnotism, 

 once left to .the quacks and daring 

 showmen, has been definitely an- 

 nexed by science, and is recognized 

 as a legitimate therapeutic agency. 

 Automatic writing, in which the 

 hand of the scribe writes, without 

 his will, matter of which he may 

 have no conscious knowledge, has 

 been proved to be a genuine pheno- 

 menon, and, taken with the facts 

 of hypnotism, has largely suggested 

 the idea of the unconscious self, 

 which plays so important a part 

 in the latest psychology. The 

 " thought reading " of the popular 



Psyche as depicted by Lord Leighton 

 in his painting The Bath of Psyche 



Tale Qalltrn. London 



PSYCHICAL 



entertainer is probably nothing 

 but clever trickery ; nevertheless 

 most workers in this field agree 

 that genuine telepathy i.e. the 

 influence of mind on mind apart 

 from the recognized channels 

 of communication actually takes 

 place. Careful investigation has 

 also produced evidence that the 

 ancient belief in the power of cer- 

 tain persons to detect water and 

 minerals by a divining rod is not 

 without foundation. 



Visions and Apparitions 



The careful inquiries of the 

 society leave little, if any, room for 

 doubt that many persons in a per- 

 fectly normal state of mind and 

 health, but perhaps endowed with 

 special sensibility, have from time 

 to time seen visions or apparitions 

 of friends or strangers, sometimes 

 living, sometimes dead. The re- 

 cords contain many apparently 

 well-substantiated cases in which 

 the phantasm has occurred at or 

 near the time of death of the per- 

 son seen, or when he was in criti- 

 cal danger, and' a certain number 

 in which the actual details of the 

 event were presented. And it is 

 difficult to brush away the evidence 

 that in some instances apparitions 

 " haunt " definite places. "The 

 establishment of the facts is one 

 thing, their interpretation another, 

 and an extremely difficult one. 

 Some inquirers would explain them 

 by telepathy from the living or the 

 dead, or by the emergence into con- 

 sciousness of knowledge previously 

 unconscious ; others have in- 

 dulged in the speculation that there 

 may be a " cosmic reservoir " in 

 which, so to speak, all human ex- 

 periences are stored, and from 

 which they may be drawn again in 

 favourable circumstances. 



Interest in psychical phenomena 

 naturally centres upon the ques- 

 tion how far they yield trust- 

 worthy evidence of survival after 

 death. Apart from the study of 

 alleged phantasms of the dead, 

 inquiry into this most obscure 

 subject has taken two main 

 directions. The first is the study 

 of the utterances of " trance- 

 mediums," of whom Mrs. Piper is 

 the best known, which often pur- 

 port to give communications from 

 the dead to their living friends. 

 The difficulty here is to exclude 

 the possibility that the medium, 

 even without intended fraud, may 

 make use of conscious or uncon- 

 scious knowledge, of indications 

 given unwittingly by the visitors, 

 or of telepathic communications 

 from living persons. The second 

 direction is the study of cross- 

 correspondences between auto- 

 matic writings. In some instances 

 automatic writers, unknown to one 



