The Phantom Chains

New Zealand Listener, Volume 31, Issue 781, 9 July 1954, Page 4

The Phantom Chains

HERE can be few people who do not once or twice in a lifetime receive a copy of a "chain" letter. It is an odd experience, a little disconcerting, to feel the distant pull of a psychopathic disturbance. An obvious reaction is to burn the letter immediately, but this does not seem to be done as often as it should be: the dreary effusion, generally alleged to have been written in the first place by a soldier on active service, is copied out the requisite number of times and sent off anonymously to friends and acquaintances or perhaps, a twinge of conscience intervening, to strangers picked from a telephone directory. It would be charitable, though possibly incorrect, to suppose that a chain letter received recently by a patient in Wellington Hospital was sent inadvertently. There may well be people silly and heartless enough to extend this sort of lunacy to persons in hospital. If so, they should take notice of what was said by the Director-General of Health, Dr. J. Cairney: "Patients can easily be upset and, whether ill or convalescent, can have their recovery retarded if a chain letter should call on them to do something they cannot do, especially if the letter contains a threat that failure to carry out its instructions may result in bad luck." Nearly all of us are superstitious in some degree, though our treatment of omens and portents is usually half-frivolous and apologetic, and is often no more than a thin credulity surviving from childhood. One rule of the game, however, is surely a refusal to involve other people in our private nonsense. Chain letters are nasty: first, because they are anonymous, and secondly, because they appeal to weaker feelings. The image of the gunner, or the airman’s widow, is intended to

suggest loneliness. Sympathy is linked to patriotism; and then, to complete the effect, we are warned that fortune will smile or frown in the next few days in accordance with what is done to the letter. Simple-minded people who sit down to copy it out may be able to convince themselves that they cannot bear to break the chain of hope and friendship forged laboriously by that lonely person so far away. Their real motive, however, is a secret fear of the bad luck said to be waiting for the nonconformist. If they could realise that the author of the letter is probably living in the next suburb, and that the "message" is either mischievous nonsense or the expression of a mild neurosis, they would be better able to see that the "chain" could have no effect in their lives, good or evil. Instead of that, they help to prolong a fantasy or a fraud, and a few more people are exposed to the nuisance. If they can be so intimidated, presumably while in good health and spirits, they should be able to understand that a sick person is even less likely to be armed against superstition. The uneasiness which drives a man or woman to send on the letter-‘"just in case"’-can become, in a patient’s mind, a sick and nameless dread, attaching itself to the anxiety which may already be part of the illness. Behind it is felt the pressure of all those other minds, transmitting a purpose that may be mysterious but powerful. Even the effort to overcome an irrational fear, and to see the matter sanely, may be an untimely strain. These things should not be allowed to happen. The best way to stop them is to give an anonymous letter the treatment it deserves-a_ swift journey to the cleansing fire. Very little strength is needed to break a chain which exists only in weak imagination.