The obsession described by the writer of a recent article in "The Daily News"—The Fear of Open Spaces"—is not at all uncommon, and is perfectly well known to medical science under the name of agraphobia—''fear of space." I am acquainted with a number of people with exactly ithe same obsession, who will every day of their lives skirt round two sides of a London square rather than cross diagonally says a Medical Special ist. They find comfort in the shelter of the houses, and terror on leaving the friendly shadows for more than a few yards But there are a far larger number of people who have the opposite kind of fear: the fear of closed spaces—"claustrophobia."" They cannot remain in a room. oven in their own homes, with the door shut; and their bedroom door cannot be closed if they are to sleep. Nothing will induce them to enter the Tube; and even the Underground has its terrors.
It is quite clear that it is tracable to some experience,. almost certafaly, connected with' fear, in childhood.
Let me give an example from my own practice. A patient had a very real fear of a hot day. Physically he was not affected by het; but mentally he was in a Panic.
It was discovered that as a young child he had been compelled to sleep alone in the dark for months at a time in a lonely attic, where he lay awake almost always until dawn, so paralysed with fect that this normal function of sleep could not overcome his conscious dread of the dark. Years have passed, and, as a man, he has naturally risen above any fear of darkness. But, by a curious process of reversal, which is quite well known and understood in psychology, the latent fear has attached itself to the opposite of darkness—the light which came at dawn to end his agony and give him sleep.
The cure is based partly on the fact that exposure of the cause, with its associations and com: plications, and a full and frank discussion of all the ramifications of thought linking it up to adult life, will, so to speak, drain away all the pent-up abnormal energy connected with it, and in so doing bring relief. Partly, too, the cure is brought about by supplying to the mind positive ideas of mental dominion, on the theory that an individual has the right to decide what shall or shall not come into thought.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.