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Psychosomatic Medicine 5:27-38 (1943)
© 1943 American Psychosomatic Society

The Dynamics of the Selective Inhibition of Specific Functions in Neurosis

A Preliminary Report

ALEXANDER WOLF M.D.1

1 Department of Neurology, College of Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia University

Limitations put upon particular functions during the nursing period are followed by inhibitions of those functions in maturity when the organism is under stress. The tabulated results show clearly that the animals deprived of vision in infancy experienced great difficulty in responding to a visual stimulus under the strain of adult competition. Similarly, the animals deprived of hearing in the nursing period experienced considerable difficulty in responding to an auditory stimulus under the strain of competition. However, the rats whose vision was interfered with in infancy were able to respond easily in the auditory situation, and the animals whose hearing was originally disturbed showed no difficulty in responding to the visual stimulus. By contrast, the change from the buzzer to the light as a conditioning signal produced no remarkable alteration in the responses of the control animals. The rats that reacted well to the visual stimulus continued to do so in response to the auditory stimulus.

Integrated capacity to cope with reality is maintained until a rat reaches a competitive impasse. At this point mature responses disintegrate. The animal retreats to an immature previously conditioned response which formerly secured mastery over the environment. In the process of withdrawal it loses adult functions which were undeveloped in the nursing period. An analogy can be drawn with human neurotic behavior in which adults lose highly developed skills in retreating to out-moded but previously serviceable forms of adaptation and are left with inadequately evolved and incoordinate resources. The experiment illustrates the dynamics of the selective inhibition of particular function.

Note:
New York. Since Sept. 1942, in the Medical Corps, Army of the United States, Fort Hays, Columbus, Ohio






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Copyright © 1943 by the American Psychosomatic Society