Body: | Discourse of the Nature, Causes, Kinds, and Cure of Enthusiasm
(Enthusiasmus triumphatus)
Henry More
1656 AD
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Introduction:
In 1656 AD, Henry More described those who hear voices as self
deluded with their own conceited imaginations. If alive today, he would
never attribute the cause of such schizophrenia to a malfunctioning brain
with some mythical chemical imbalance. Instead more correctly understood
that the spirit and its imaginations were the etiology of delusion, not the
body! Hearing the voice of God or an angel was known right up to the 19th
century as "Enthusiasm" "For Enthusiasm is nothing else but a misconceit of
being inspired ... The Origin of such peremptory delusions as mankind are
obnoxious to, is the enormous strength and vigour of the Imagination". More
believed in the inspiration of the Bible and that God, angels and the devil
talk to men, but he was able to easily know the difference between the real
thing and self delusion. Notice the key words he uses over again: conceit
(narcissism and selfishness), fooled, deceived, imagination, believing a
lie, carnal reasoning, delusions. "And a further instance may be in mad or
Melancholy men, who have confidently affirmed that they have met with the
Devil, or conversed with Angels, when it has been nothing but an encounter
with their own fancy. Wherefore it is the enormous strength of Imagination
. . . that thus peremptorily engages a man to believe a lie." More
correctly understood that schizophrenics were in their own created fantasy
world that blurred with the real world. Even dreams while sleeping became
reality. "for he takes his dreams for true Histories and real Transactions
... We shall now enquire into the Causes of this Distemper, how it comes to
passe that man should be thus be fooled in his own conceit ... she has
quite lost her own judgement and freedom, and can neither keep out nor
distinguish betwixt her own fancies and real truths." More understood that
these self deluded people, prided their own judgement to be superior to all
outside rational thinking. "as in the case immediately before named, does
naturally bear down the Soul into a belief of the truth and existence of
what she thus vigorously apprehend; and being so wholly and entirely
immersed in this conceit, and so vehemently touched therewith, she has
either not the patience to consider any thing alledged against it, or if
she do consider and find her self intangled, she will look upon it as a
piece of humane sophistry, and prefer her own infallibility or the
infallibility of the Spirit before all carnall reasonings whatsoever". More
viewed these people as self deluded in their spirits not physically sick in
their bodies. (Discourse of the Nature, Causes, Kinds, and Cure, of
Enthusiasm (Enthusiasmus triumphatus), Henry More, 1656 AD)
"Some observations obtained in the course of recent neuroimaging
studies of schizophrenics support the interpretations I am suggesting. Let
us recall that Julian Jaynes claimed that the experience of hearing voices
(auditory hallucination) is "just like hearing actual sound." (The Origin
of Consciousness, Julian Jaynes, chapter 4) If that were so, the
cerebral-physiological processes accompanying the hallucinating person's
experience would be similar to those accompanying normal hearing; which is
exactly what researchers using neuroimaging technics to study brain
activation in hallucinating patients expected to find. Instead, they found
changes in the region of the brain activated during speaking. "Broca's area
is a surprise," commented Jerome Engel, a neurologist at the University of
California at Los Angeles, "since that's where you make sounds, not where
you hear them. I would have expected more activity in Wernicke's area,
which is where you hear." (Scientists trace voices in schizophrenia, D.
Goleman quoting J. Engel, New York Times, Sept 22, 1993 p C2) ... This
suggestion is supported not only by the neuroimaging evidence cited, but
also by the familiar clinical observation that when a (hearing) person who
has auditory hallucinations is engaged in oral activity, such as eating or
speaking, his imaginary voices become less noticeable or stop altogether."
(The Meaning of the Mind, Thomas Szasz, 1996 AD, p 126, 127)
"In this, after Casaubon's the second treatise on enthusiasm, More
made three points which when later developed had great influence in
psychiatry. First he suggested that mental illness arose from 'the enormous
strength of the Imagination' so that 'the Soul . . . can neither keep out
nor distinguish betwixt her own fancies and reall truths' - hence the
similarity between insanity and dreams. This clash between the 'inward
sense' and the 'outward Senses' became in Freudian terminology the conflict
between unconscious fantasies and wishes and reality; and the capacity for
'reality testing' as it is now called is still considered, rightly or
wrongly, the dividing line between neurosis in which only part of the
personality is involved and psychosis involving the whole personality.
Secondly, More used Hobbes's notion of a `Trayn of Thoughts unguided', that
is unconscious mentation, to explain the development of mental illness and
why 'men become mad and fanaticall whether they will or no'. Thirdly, his
suggestion that there may be a 'healing and sanative Contagion as well as
morbid and venemous' was demonstrated in practice in asylums in the
nineteenth century when the salutory influence on the insane of the healthy
minds of attendants was discovered and developed." (300 years of
Psychiatry, Richard Hunter, 1963, p151)
Discourse of the Nature, Causes, Kinds, and Cure, of Enthusiasm
(Enthusiasmus triumphatus), Henry More, 1656 AD
Henry More (1614-1687)
MA Cantab., Fellow of Christ's College, Cambridge, theologian and
philosopher
Enthusiasmus triumphatus, or, a discourse of the nature, causes, kinds, and
cure, of enthusiasme; written by Philophilus Parresiastes, 1656 London &
Cambridge, Morden pp. 2, 4-6, 27-8, 56-7
IMAGINATION VERSUS REASON
The Etymologie, and varietie of the signisications of this word Enthusiasme
I leave to Criticks and Grammarians, but what we mean by it here, you shall
fully understand after we have desined what Inspiration is : For
Enthusiasme is nothing else but a misconceit of being inspired ...
We shall now enquire into the Causes of this Distemper, how it comes to
passe that man should be thus befooled in his own conceit: And truly
unlesse we should offer lesse satisfaction then the thing is capable of, we
must not onely treat here of Melancholy, but of the Faculties of the Soul
of man, whereby it may the better be understood how she may become
obnoxious to such disturbances of Melancholy, in which she has quite lost
her own judgement and freedome, and can neither keep out nor distinguish
betwixt her own fancies and real truths . . . If . . . the inward sense...
were so strong as to bear it self against all the occursions and impulses
of outward objects, so as not to be broken, but to keep it self entire and
in equall splendour and vigour with what is represented from without, and
this not arbitrariously but necessarily and unavoydably . . . the Party
thus affected would not fail to take his own imagination for a real object
of sense: as it fell out in one that Cartesius mentions, (and there are
several other examples of that kind) that had his arm cut off, who being
hoodwinkt, complained of a pain in this and the other finger, when he had
lost his whole arm. And a further instance may be in mad or Melancholy men,
who have confidently affirmed that they have met with the Devil, or
conversed with Angels, when it has been nothing but an encounter with their
own fancy. Wherefore it is the enormous strength of Imagination . . . that
thus peremptorily engages a man to believe a lie. And if it be so strong as
to assure us of the presence of some external object which yet is not
there, why may it not be as effectual in the begetting of the belief of
some more internal apprehensions, such as have been reported of mad and
fanatical men, who have so firmly and immutably fancied themselves to be
God the Father, the Messias, the Holy Ghost, the Angel Gabriel, the last
and chiefest Prophet that God would send in to the world, and the like? For
their conceptions are not so pure or immaterial, nor solid or rational, but
that these words to them are alwayes accompanied with some strong Phantasme
or full imagination; the fulnesse and clearnesse whereof, as in the case
immediately before named, does naturally bear down the Soul into a belief
of the truth and existence of what she thus vigorously apprehend; and being
so wholly and entirely immersed in this conceit, and so vehemently touched
therewith, she has either not the patience to consider any thing alledged
against it, or if she do consider and find her self intangled, she will
look upon it as a piece of humane sophistry, and prefer her own
infallibility or the infallibility of the Spirit before all carnall
reasonings whatsoever . . . Now what Custome and Education doth by degrees,
distempered Fancy may do in a shorter time. But the case in both is much
like that in dreams, where that which is represented is necessarily taken
for true, because nothing stronger enervates the perception .. .
The Origin of such peremptory delusions as mankind are obnoxious to, is the
enormous strength and vigour of the Imagination; which Faculty though it be
in some sort in our power, as Respiration is, yet it will also work without
our leave, as I have already demonstrated, and hence men become mad and
fanatical whether they will or no .. .
The mention of Dreams puts me in mind of another Melancholy Symptome, which
Physitians call Extasie, which is nothing else but Somnus prceter naturam
profundus, the causes whereof are none other then those of natural sleep,
but more intense and excessive; the effect is the deliration of the party
after he awakes; for he takes his dreams for true Histories and real
Transactions. The reason whereof, I conceive, is the extraordinary
clearness and fulness of the representations in his sleep, arising from a
more perfect privation of all communion with this outward world, and so
there being no interfareings or cross-strokes of motion from his body so
deeply overwhelmed and bedeaded with sleep, what the imagination then puts
forth of her self, is as clear as broad day, and the perception of the soul
is at least as strong and vigorous as it is at any time in beholding things
awake and therefore Memory as thoroughly sealed therewith, as from the
sense of any external Object .. .
Whether it be in any mans power to fall into these Epilepsies, Apoplexies,
or Ecstasies when he pleases, is neither an useless nor a desperate
question : For we may find a probable solution from what has been already
intimated; for the Enthusiast in one of his Melancholy intoxications (which
he may accelerate by solemn silence and intense and earnest meditation)
finding himself therein so much beyond himselfe, conceits it a sensible
presence of God, and a supernatural manifestation of the Divinity, which
must needs raise that passion of Veneration, and most powerful Devotion,
which consists of Love, Fear, and Joy . . . how can they then . . . fail to
cast him into Tremblings, Convulsions, Apoplexies, Extasies, and what not;
Melancholy being so easily changeable into these symptomes ? .. .
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Send us your story about your experience with modern Psychiatry
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