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PASTORAL PSYCHOLOGY
follow that all those who become the victims of mental contagion
have such a predisposition or are, in the ordinary sense of the
term, insane.
The very powerful effects of suggestion must be taken into
account in this connection. Suggestibility is not itself a symptom
of mental disease, but a religious movement of revival is usually
initiated by people who have the ability to heighten the
suggestibility of their followers, even if they do not employ artificial
means to do so; and morbidly heightened suggestibility supplies
the conditions under which mental contagion occurs. Its effects
are usually ephemeral, and may be harmless to those whose
mental stability is normal; but they can be disastrous for the less
well-balanced; and unhappily it is these who are most
susceptible to suggestion. |
That mental contagion is a real phenomenon, though our
knowledge of it is very meagre, is evidenced by the so-called
‘induced psychoses’. These are forms of insanity produced by
the transference of mental disease from those who suffer them to
other people in their vicinity. For example, a member of a
family who is suffering from paranoia with delusions of
persecution can, by his behaviour, infect his relatives with his own ideas
so that they participate in his insanity. When he is removed
from his home, the other members of the family recover from
the effects of his suggestions, unless they are themselves victims
of the physical disease that produced the insane behaviour in
the first patient. Here again individual receptivity determines
what the permanent effect of the morbid influence will be.
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