Page:Homo-sexual Life by William John Fielding (1925).pdf/49

 of fear to painful contact stimuli, this authority states they are quite like the fear reactions to horrible, painful hallucinated stimuli. The mechanism of the terrifying dream, for instance, like the hallucination, is first an effective disturbance due to the repressed autonomic tensions becoming released by the relaxation of self-control (as in sleep). During sleep indigestible food will cause increased effort on the part of the stomach and intestines. This produces consciousness of unpleasant sensory images which may coalesce into a horrible perception, like black dots forming a picture. This horrible image, in turn, causes the fear reaction. "The next stage would be to compensate by awaking, by flight or counter-attack. When the erotic, hallucination is felt to be an external reality, and no defense is found, panic ensues."

The panic may be more or less serious, lasting from a few hours to several months. The disturbances to the physical processes and the bodily economy as a whole, attending such dissociations of personality, may be very serious. All these ill results, under the given circumstances, are traceable to fear.

The definite physiological effects of this uncontrolled emotion—fear—are increased blood-pressure and pulse-rate, increase of adrenin and thyroid secretions, increase of blood sugar and decrease of the digestive and assimilative properties of the stomach and intestines; also decrease of heterosexual potency, and pronounced increase of trial and error movements of the skeletal appartusapparatus [sic]—hence, restlessness, irritability, insomnia, etc.