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Psychosomatic Medicine 19:89-98 (1957)
© 1957 American Psychosomatic Society

Human Camouflage and Identification with the Environment

The Contagious Effect of Archaic Skin Signs

JOOST A. M. MEERLOO M.D.

A comparison is made between passive camouflage and its unobtrusive contagious action upon animals and men.

Archaic communication may be defined as the rudimentary remnants of animal signals originally used as warning signs for fellow creatures to flee or to hide, as means of mood conveyance or to transmit a state of alarm. Communication as a behavioral reply to an external event is the forerunner of our speech and verbal communication. This phylogenetic, older system of warning and communication still plays an important role in the symbolic function of organs and the way disease is used as a disguise or an appeal for help and pity. In regression and disease man's rudimentary alarm system becomes activated. Examples of such signs are given, such as fear melanosis, fainting, goose flesh, and several types of dermatoses. The comparative study of these rudimentary sign systems may open a new approach to the understanding of symptoms.

Submitted on July 12, 1956






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Copyright © 1957 by the American Psychosomatic Society