Atlanta tri-weekly journal. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1920-19??, 1923-01-25
THE WISH TO BE ILL
By H. Addifgton Bruce

" EALTH is obviously so great a blessing
| II that it would seem incredible that any
/ Il IA one could entertain wish to be ill
| Yet it is fact that not few people do enter
tain such WISH and that it often is respon-
sib1e for those maladies of many symptoms
| known as the psychoneuroses, or functional
nervous and mental disorders.
| More than this it also is fact that failure
to cure psychoneurotic patients is at times
! due to nothing but their wish to be i'll. Which
is something that needs to be more generally
appreciated than it now is even by practitioners
! who undertake the treatment OF the psycho-
neurOtic.
When, for example, of two persons display
inc similar nervous symptoms one is cured by
some such method as the Coue method OF self
suggestion, while the other is helped not at
all. it will not do to jump at the conclusion
that lack of faith in suggestion accounts for
the failure in the second case.
It may be that lack of faith is to blame.
lack of faith being the thing that undoubtedly
prevents the recovery of many neurotics who
place themselves in the care of suggestionists.
But it may also be that the healing sugges-
tons are Intellectual because the nervous
symDtoms confer such real or fancied advan-
tages that subconsciously at any rate, there
is strong discrimination to be rid of them.
This acts as lack of faith would act to set
I'D resistance too powerful to be overcome
by the most skllfully administered sugges'
tons And so long as the subconscious wish
to be i'll is present, all methods Of treatment
will likewise be unayailing.
Proof that a wish to be i'll actually causes
illness and prevents recovery may be adduced
from many sources.
Most impressive of all, because of the vast
ness of the scale on which it was exhibited, is
ILL., h fTOr fbn WA
announcement of the ending of hostilities was
the signal for the restoration to health OF
thousands of victims of "shen shock
No longer was there danger of their being
subjected to the horrors of service at the front.
The motive which had subconsciously caused
them to take refuge in historical mutism or
blindness or paralysis was removed. Forth
with their psycho-neurotic symptoms dlsap-
peared, and they were we'll again.
And if it be objected that since the war
psychoneurotic maladies have developed in
many of those who took Part in it, the answer
is that here again, in appreciate proper
ton of instances, may be found proof of the
action of subconscious wish to be i'll.
Indeed, neurologsts familiar with the ILL
ness-producing power of subconscious wishing
to be ill predicted the occurrence of a large
number of~what they call compensation neu-
roses" AS is we'll known, special provision
was early made for the care of disabled SOL
diers Illness under this condition confers a
positive advantage men who feel them
selves unequal to the competitions of life,
whether as a result of war stresses or because
of innate deficiencies.
Illness, still further, confers an advantage
on all unwilling to work, or SO constituted
that they unhappy unless regarded by
their fellows with sympathetic interest. And,
most Enthusiastically, it advantages persons who,
having been involved in some accident, can en-
ter claim for compensation. 1t is no mere
coincidence that paralytics often recover from
their paralysis as soon as damage claims have
been adjusted.
This. understand clearly, does not mean that
they have deliberately simulated illness. They
have really been i'll, but from an illness that
never would have afflicted them had there
not been in them an unfortunate pre-dispOsi-
ton to react psycho-neurotically, to conditions
which subconsciousy seem to them advanta-
geous.
Hence the value of psychoanalysis as COM
pared with treatment by simple suggestion in
many cases of nervous invalidism. Hence too,
the value of honest self-analysis, directed to
answering the question. Am 1 nervously i'll
because, without being conscious of it, I at
heart wish to be ill?"
Copyright 1929