Mind and sight
Bad vision , as I said, is a consequence of the abnormal state of the psyche. Glasses can sometimes neutralize the effect of this condition on the eyes and, by delivering more comfort to a person, to some extent improve his mental abilities. But we do not change the basic state of this psyche and, turning it into a bad habit, can worsen it.
It is easy to show that among the abilities of the brain, deteriorating with visual impairment, there is also a memory. Since a significant part of the educational process consists in the accumulation of facts, and all other mental processes depend on the person's assimilation of these facts, it is easy to understand how little is achieved by simply dressing glasses on a person experiencing "problems with their own eyes."The extraordinary memory of primitive man was attributed to the fact that due to the lack of suitable means of recording, he had to rely on his memory, which, accordingly, was strengthened. But from the point of view of the well-known fact-the connection of memory with vision-it would be more reasonable to assume that the memory of primitive man was good for the same reason as his acute sight, namely, thanks to the relaxed calm state of his psyche.
The memory of the primitive man, as well as the acuity of his vision, can be found among civilized people, and if the necessary studies were carried out, it would undoubtedly be discovered that they always meet together. A similar unity was observed in the case that I recently met in my research. One girl was examined with such astounding eyesight that she could see the companions of Jupiter with the naked eye. This fact is proved by her sketch of the scheme of their arrangement, which exactly corresponded to the schemes made by people using the telescope.
Equally amazing was her memory. She could repeat the whole content of the book word for word after reading it the same way as they say, did Lord Macaulay. A girl without a teacher in a few days learned Latin more than her sister, who had 6 diopters of myopia and spent a few years in Latin. She remembered that she ate in a restaurant five years ago and even named the waiter's name, the house number and the street where it all happened. The girl also remembered what she wore on this occasion and what other people were wearing. It was also correctly called any other event that somehow aroused interest in it. Her family's favorite entertainment was to ask her about the menu and how people were dressed in those or other cases.
It was found that when the eyesight of two people is different, the possibilities of their memory differ exactly to the same extent. Two sisters, one of whom usually had good vision, expressed by a 20/20 record, and the other 20/10, showed that the time they needed to memorize the eight stanzas of the poem varied in almost the same ratio as their vision. The first girl, whose vision was 20/10, learned 8 stanzas in 15 minutes, the other, with a vision of 20/20, it took 31 minutes.
After the palming, the girl with normal vision learned another 8 stanzas in 21 minutes, while her sister was able to shorten her time for only 2 minutes. In other words, the psyche of the latter was already in a normal or almost normal state, which could not be significantly improved by palmming, while the first girl, whose psyche was under some stress, managed to achieve through the palming of relaxation and, therefore, could improve her memory.
The memory of even one person with differences in vision of the two eyes can vary depending on whether both eyes are open or the best eye is closed.
Memory can not be increased any more than vision can be strengthened. We remember without effort, just as we see without effort. The more we try to remember or see, the less we are able to do it.
Things that we remember are things that arouse our interest in them. The reason that we have difficulties in studying these or those disciplines is that they bother us. When we are bored, our eyesight deteriorates. Boredom is a state of mental stress, in which the eyes normally can not function.
The girl with a keen eye, of whom we spoke above, could recall from memory the books she was interested in. But she was extremely displeased with mathematics and anatomy, and not only could not learn them, but she became a myopic when the thought of them came to her mind. She could read letters a quarter of an inch tall from 20 feet in low light, but when asked to name 1-2-inch figures in good light from 10 feet, half of them she called wrong. When she was asked to fold a deuce with a three, she called first the number four before she decided that it would still be five. At the same time, while she was doing this unpleasant thing, the retinoscope showed that she was a myopic. When I asked her to look into my eye with an ophthalmoscope, she could not see anything there, although in order to notice the details of the fundus, a much lower degree of visual acuity is required than is required to see Jupiter's moons.
One short-sighted girl, in contrast to this case, was fervent with love for mathematics and anatomy and achieved brilliant results in them. She has learned with the same ease how to use an ophthalmoscope, just as that girl with acute eyesight has learned Latin. Almost immediately the girl was able to see the optic nerve and note that the center of the retina is lighter than the periphery. She saw light-colored lines( arteries) and lines darker( veins).At the same time on the blood vessels she could see light strips. Some ophthalmologists will never be able to see it, and in general no one can do it without having a normal vision. Her vision, therefore, should at this point in time become normal. The sight of this girl, although not normal, but still was better than for letters.
In both cases, the ability to learn and the ability to see went side by side with interest. The girl could read a small photocopy of the Bible, word-for-word re-read, could see the satellites of Jupiter and then draw a diagram of their location because all these things were interesting to her. But she could not see the fundus as well as the letters. She could not see even half the number of digits from the number of letters seen. The reason for this was that these things were uninteresting and boring to her. But when she was told that it would be a good joke to surprise her teachers who always reproached her for lagging behind in mathematics, having been praised on the approaching exam, she was so interested in this subject that she managed to learn enough material and gain as many as 78 points. For another girl, letters were unpleasant. Most of the objects did not interest her, which led to a lag in them and the habitual transformation into a myopic. But when she was asked to look at objects that aroused intense interest in her, her vision became normal.
In short, when a person is not interested in anything, his psyche goes out of control, and without mental control a person can neither study nor see anything. When vision becomes normal, not only memory, but also all other mental abilities of a person improves. People who get rid of poor vision often find that the ability to do their job has improved.
One librarian of about 70 years old, forty of them wearing glasses, discovered that after he reached normal sight without glasses, he was able to work faster and more accurately, fatiguing with less than before. In busy periods of time, or when there were no assistants, he worked for weeks from 7 am to 11 am and claimed that he felt less tired after finishing work than before the beginning of the morning. Earlier, although he did not work more than his colleagues, his work always tired him very much. The librarian also noticed an improvement in his mood. He had worked in the library for a long time and understood much more in business than his colleagues. Therefore, he was often approached for advice. These disturbances before his vision became normal, greatly annoyed him and often spoiled the mood. However, later they did not cause him any irritation.
In another case, when vision became normal, it was possible to calm down the symptoms of psychosis. A doctor came to me, which many neurologists and ophthalmologists have already examined. But he came to me not because he had some confidence in my method, but simply because he no longer had anything to do. He brought with him a fairly large collection of glasses issued to him by different doctors. At the same time, there were not two identical ones among them. He told me that he had worn glasses for many months, but all was unsuccessful, so he stopped wearing them, which obviously did not hurt him. Life in the open air also could not help him. On the advice of a number of well-known neurologists, he gave up even a couple of years of his medical practice to spend this time on the ranch. But this holiday did not give him any good either.
I checked his eyes and found no organic lesions in them and no refraction anomaly. Nevertheless, his vision with each eye was three-fourths normal, he suffered from double vision and all kinds of unpleasant symptoms. He saw some people standing on his head, and little devils dancing on the roofs of tall houses. He also had a number of other illusions of vision, too numerous to be described here. At night, his vision deteriorated so much that he could hardly find his way. Walking along the country road, he assured that he sees it better when he takes his eyes far away from her, looking at the road with the edge of the retina instead of its center. At various intervals of time, he suddenly, without loss of consciousness, was subjected to an attack of blindness. This made him very anxious, because he was a surgeon with a large and profitable medical practice, and he feared that this could happen during the operation.
His memory was very weak. He could not recall the color of the eyes of his family members, although he had seen them every day for many years. He did not remember either the color of his house, the number of rooms on different floors, nor other details. He remembered the faces and names of patients and friends with difficulty or could not do it at all.
It was very difficult to treat this man, mainly because he had an infinite number of erroneous ideas about physiological optics in general and his own medical history in particular. He insisted on discussing all these thoughts of his own and believed that while discussions were going on, he would not achieve any success. Every day and every time he talked and argued for hours. His logic was amazing, seemingly irrefutable and, nevertheless, completely wrong.
His eccentric fixation was so high that when he was looking at an angle of 45 degrees away from the big "C" on the checklist, he saw this letter as black as when looking directly at it. The tension was terrible and led to a strong astigmatism. But the patient did not realize this, and to convince him that there is something abnormal in this symptom, it was not possible. If he still managed to see a letter, he claimed that he should see her as black as she really is, because he does not suffer from color blindness. Eventually, he nevertheless learned to look away from one of the small letters on the checklist and see it worse than when he was looking directly at her. In order to achieve this, he spent 8 or 9 months, but when he managed to do it, he said that the sensation at the same time was as if a great load had been removed from his psyche. Throughout his body he felt a sense of peace and relaxation.
When he was asked to remember something black, closing his eyes and covering them with his hands, he said that he could not do it. He saw any colors, but not black, which should usually be seen when the optic nerve of a person is not an object of exposure to light. However, in college, he was a passionate player in football, which enabled him, after all, to discover that he can remember a black soccer ball. I asked him to imagine that this ball was thrown into the sea and that he was being carried away, becoming smaller and smaller, however, without losing the intensity of the black color. He was able to do it, and the tension began to swim with the football. As soon as the time has passed, the latter has decreased to the point size in the newspaper, the tension has completely disappeared. The relief lasted exactly as much as the patient recalled the black point, but since he could not remember it all the time, I advised him to apply another method of achieving continuous relief. He consisted in voluntary( arbitrary) deterioration of his vision. The patient strongly opposed this plan."Oh my God!"He exclaimed." Is not my vision bad enough to make it even worse? "
However, after a week-long dispute, he agreed to try this method, which produced very good results. After he learned to see two or more light sources where there was only one, making an effort to see the point above the light source and at the same time trying to see the light source itself as well as looking directly at him, he learned to avoid the unconscious tension thatcaused double and multiple images. More of his similar extra images did not bother. Similarly, managed to get rid of other illusions.
One of his last misconceptions, which had to be eliminated, was his conviction that in order to remember the black, an effort was needed. His logic in this matter was difficult to overcome, but still, after a lot of shows, he managed to convince himself that for relaxation it is not necessary to exert any effort. As soon as he realized this, his vision and state of mind immediately improved.
Ultimately, he improved his vision to 20/10 or more. However, despite the fact that he was 55 years old, he read the font diamond from a distance of 6 to 24 inches. His night blindness disappeared. Attacks of day blindness also stopped. He still managed to tell me what color eyes his wife and children have. One day he said to me: "Doctor, I am grateful to you for what you did for my vision, but no words can convey the feeling of gratitude that I feel for you for what you did for my psyche."
Several years later he called me to let me know that he had no relapse.
From all these facts it is clear that all kinds of vision problems are much closer than they usually think are connected with the psyche and that it is impossible to resolve them with any convex, concave or astigmatic lenses.