¹ St Thomas Aquinna teachen that angels, both good and bad, can propose intelligible truth to man under the similitudes of sensible things. This simply means that the angels can convey ideas to us by writing, speaking and by any kind of sign. St Thomas goes on to say that the power to reproduce these similitudes is due exclusively to the angels power over the local-motion of corporeal things. (S.T. I, 110). By the last phrase is meant the angels’ power to move material things from one place to another. And so, he concludes, both a good and a bad angel by their own natural power can move the human imagination.

If the power of angels is confined to the movement of material things, how can we conclude that they have, thereby, power also over the imagination?

‘Corporeal nature’, St Thomas says, ‘obeys the angel as regards local movement so that whatever can be caused by local-movement of bodies is subject to the natural power of the angels. Now it is manifest that imaginative apparitions are sometimes caused in us by the local-movement of animal spirits or humours By the ‘movement of animal spirits or humours he means that a disturbance or local movement (i.e., locomotor activity) of glandular secretions, through angelic agency, can have a reflex influence on our imagination.

He repeats this a little further on: ‘An angel changes the imagination, not indeed by the impression of an imaginative form in no way previously received from the senses (for he cannot make a man born blind imagine colour), but by the local-movement of … humours’. In other words, the devil cannot impress upon our imagination the picture of something we have never previously experienced. He can only revive a past experience in the imagination through his power over our bodily organs.

² We have deliberately excluded all reference to Collective Unconsciousness.

³ May I remind you once again that I am saying ‘the devil can’ and not ‘the devil actually does’. Temptations as we have seen may have other sources, to wit, the world and the flesh. In any case the remedies suggested later on are valid.

⁴ You will notice I have underlined Catholic. Associations of nominal Catholics are sometimes far from being desirable.

⁵ Automatic writing may only be from the subconscious. Note how many literary men attribute their work to a secondary personality, e.g., Barrie and ‘McConnachie’. Clairvoyance and telepathy are now dignified in psychology by being called ‘extra-sensory perception’, and are being increasingly studied by psychologists of repute, especially at Cambridge. It is suggested that these are merely natural powers which people have in varying degrees.

⁶ ’If we want to reject a thought, we should rather turn to another. This is not difficult, if we can distract ourselves with fascinating reading or outer activity. If neither is possible, we must turn to an attractive thought-complex, the best being some harmless reverie. Such thoughts should not be of abstract matters demanding close concentration, nor should they be too narrowly limited, otherwise the interest they provide is too fleeting and quickly exhausted and the thought to be suppressed perseveres. In fighting against thoughts, we ought particularly to guard against anxiety and excitement, as they act precisely in the same way as the just-mentioned defence-gestures. (That is a ‘No!’, a “Begone!” possibly combined with an additional defensive in the form of a gesture.) For this reason, intense and long-continued prayer is not to be recommended at such times’. (Johannes Lindworsky, S.J., Psychologie des Aszese. trans. Emil Heiring. p. 39).

⁷ ‘With complete conviction’. Some psychologists do not believe that people can practice auto-suggestion convincingly by themselves, unless they fully realise the interdependence of mind and body.

⁸ On this subject no contemporary psychologist or psychotherapist, in my opinion, speaks with the sane, measured and authentic voice of Jacobson as he explains his methods and lays before us his findings. There can be little doubt of the validity of his conclusions. Let me quote the following:

‘Because of reflex connections, the nervous system cannot be quieted except in conjunction with the muscular system, In fact it becomes evident that the whole organism rests as the neuromuscular activity diminishes’. (Progressive Relaxation. p. xii.)

‘To be excited and to be relaxed are physiological opposites’. (Ibidem. p. xv.)

‘According to the present clinical and experimental experience up to date. if the patient is shown how to relax the voluntary system there tends later to follow a similar quiescence of the vegetative apparatus: Emotions tend to subside as he relaxes’. (p. 82).

‘The subject learns to localise tensions when they occur during nervous irritability, and excitement and to relax them away. It is a matter of nervous re-education… Many have never observed the connection between tenseness and nervous excitement, or between relaxation and nervous calm’. (pp. 40, 41.)

‘Present results indicate that an emotional state fails to exist in the presence of complete relaxation of the peripheral parts involved’. (e.g., esophagus in fear, forehead and brow in anxiety.) (p. 218.)

In addition to showing us the interdependence of muscular tension and the emotions Jacobson has demonstrated scientifically that ‘imagery diminishes with advancing relaxation of muscles’. The value of this in dealing with impure images is obvious; and although he stresses that visual images only disappear with complete ocular relaxation, the general mascular relaxation he advises, as well as the simpler and more convenient methods of others, sufficiently reduces the intensity of these images by dispersing the emotional condition that caused them.

The main feature of Jacobson’s work is careful and untiring scientific inquiry. He pats before us observable scientific data and measurements:

‘The results of electrical measurements agree with and confirm the findings that relaxation of specific muscular processes ipso facto does away with specic mental activities. Physiology thus provides a method which can be turned to clinical use where it is desired to control certain types of imagination ore motion, including worry and excessive dental activity’. (p. 345).