 - Depuis l'Antiquité, le
bâillement n'a que fort peu
intéressé tant les philosophes,
les psychologues ou les physiologistes que les
enseignants, les moralistes ou les
médecins. Tous les êtres vivants
des oiseaux à l'homme, depuis la vie
intra-utérine à la mort ont
été reconnus comme
bâilleurs. Bien qu'il procure souvent un
bien-être à celui qui bâille,
il est de règle de chercher à le
masquer. Hippocrate l'a noté dans sa
liste des comportements naturels. Aristote y a
consacré quelques mots. Boerhaave en a
attribué l'origine au cerveau. Haller a
noté ses rapports avec l'audition, la
circulation et le sommeil des
bébés. Darwin a mentionné
son lien avec les émotions. Des auteurs
plus contemporains lui ont attribué un
rôle dans la respiration et l'odorat. En
1962, Ashley
Montagu a essayé de corriger la
faiblesse des connaissances de sa cause en
proposant son déclenchement pas
l'élévation du CO2 et notant ses
effets sur la circulation
artério-veineuse
intracrânienne. Le bâillement a
intéressé quelques neurologues qui
ont remarqué son association avec
l'épidémie d'encéphalites
léthargiques apparue après
l'épidémie de 'grippe espagnole'
dans les années 20, l'existence de
bâillements
en salves, son association avec l'épilepsie
et bien sûr l'hystérie.
Un écrit de 40 pages, retrouvé
à la cour de Frédéric Le
Grand au XVIII°, l'évoque comme
stimulant face à l'ennui, et argue de ce
constat pour condamner l'oisiveté, sujet
qui inspira également Blaise Pascal. ou
William James. Dans la monde
Hindou, bâiller en public demeure un
blasphème....
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- Since antiquity yawning has attracted a
moderate interest among philosophers,
psychologists, physiologists, as well as
educators, moralists and physicians. Organisms
from birds to men and from the womb to the
deathbed were found to be displaying it. While
sometimes satisfying to the producer, its
display is offensive to the lay observer.
Hippocrates had it on his lists of useful
'natures.' Aristotle dropped a few words on the
matter. Boerhaave elevated its function to the
intellect of animals. Haller has commented on
its relation to the acoustic system, blood-flow,
and baby sleep. Darwin mentioned it in
connection with emotional behavior. Some modern
authors praised its beneficial effects on
respiration and smell. In the 1962, Ashley
Montagu tried to correct the contemporary
failure to explain the behavior by the fact of
raised CO2 and arterial
compression. It also interested some
neurologists, especially in its association with
the encephalitis
lethargica in the 1920s, with 'spasmodic
yawning,' with epilepsy,
not to speak of hysteria.
As to boredom or its stimulus, a 40-page
dissertation survives from the court of
Frederick the Great of the 18th century
condemning idleness, a subject that also
inspired Blaise Pascal and William James. But in
the Hindu world,
public yawning was a religious offense...
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INTRODUCTION Of all imaginable subject
titles appealing to the attention of editors,
readers or audiences, this may well be the most
self-defeating. The very mention of a yawn is
like an invitation to boredom, almost as
powerful as its actual display in public or
intimacy, on podium, stage or screen. "Yawning
is so catching" wrote the great Scotsman
neurologist Robert Whytt in 1751. "as frequently
to go round a whole company" and again in 1764,
referring to it in the pervasive context of
reflex action: "There is still a more wonderful
sympathy between the nervous systems of
different persons" (Whytt. 1768). "Like a donkey
urinates when he sees or hears another donkey do
it, so also man yawns seeing someone else do it
" according to Aristotle (Zirnara, 1580). More
infectious. perhaps, than smiling, and in sharp
contrast to the latter, it lacks the stamp of
shared appreciation. Worse than a scornful
smile, it is in fact socially unacceptable, in
part for being so low on the evolutional scale
of behavior, half way between a reflex and an
expressive movement . (Barbizet, 1958; Provine,
1986). Man shares it not only with the primates
and cetaceans, but with smaller brained animals
such as dogs, cats and rats, possibly with
genera evolutionary even lower. Turtles and
birds have been caught in the act (Ack-ernian
l990, Heusner 1946, Lehmannn 1979, Lewy 1921).
Human yawning may be taken as a display of
disrespect or criticism, impolite: this makes it
an early item on the list of things for children
to refrain from in public or at least to hide
that gaping niouth with a shielding hand.
-
- No such control pertains to babies. Angelo
Mosso wrote in 1901 in his basic book on
fatigue, "Babies yawn and stretch themselves
even in the very first days of life" (Mosso.
1904). Even some fetuses have been observed to
yawn when their intrauterine behavior was
screened with ultrasound. In some instances,
they begin to do it from the 11th postmenstrual
week on: opening the mouth widely, then closing
it quickly while retro-flexing the head and
sometimes elevating an arm, (De Vries et al.,
1982. 1986). On the other hand, when neonates
(from 11 to 21 days old) have been noted to
imitate some experimenters open mouths, tongue
and lip protrusion, and even sequential finger
movements, they have not been found to mutate
yawning as such (Gardner & Howard, 1970;
Meltzoff & Moore, 1977). The issue has
remained controversial, however (Provine, 1989).
For, "yawning though it may be a reflex becomes
contagious only during the second year because
before that stage the correspondence between the
visual model and the child's own movements has
not been grasped" (Piaget, 1951).
-
- Most textbooks on physiology and psychology
deal only briefly with this basic element in the
repertoire of animal and human behavior (Lewy,
1921; Barbizet, 1959 Siegal, 1974; Askenasy,
1989). Its seeming unimportance may be the cause
here. But in 1872. Darwin did devote a few lines
to it as an "Expression of the Emotions in Man
and Animals" (Darwin, 1955). Already in 1837, he
is said to have given it as a paradigm.
-
- PURPOSE What purpose lies in this
grotesque display of a mouth opening to its
maximal width, in association with a diaphragm
contracting to an uncommon degree, expanding the
lung for an excessive intake of air, aided by a
spasmodic elevation of the pharynx blocking the
custonnary gentle nasal airways? We are faced
with a paradoxical combination linking an
attempt to turn off the weariness of having to
be awake, tied in with the presentation of an
ugly offeinsive spectacle. Not to speak of
stretching our skeletal muscles, closing our
eyes to the point, occasionally, even of
shedding tear or two. Albrecht von Haller's
observation that we lose some of our hearing
during the act was analyzed by an otologist in
1953: a wide opening of the Eustachian tube
raises the air pressure in the middle ear
(Laskiewicz, 1953). Boerhaave thought it raised
brain power, ou the grounds of reports that
lions and tigers yawn and stretch before the
chase (Trautmann, 1901, p. 17).
-
- In 1974, four letters to the editor appeared
in The New England Journal of Medicine under the
jolly heading "Why the Yawn" The first writer
expressed a mixture of slight irritation,
amusement and interest in the subject, because
of a domestic experience. "Yawning remains a
mystery" he started out. Nevertheless, as his
wife had been yawning one day, her deep
inspiration had allowed her to detect the odor
of gas escaping from an extinguished pilot. Was
yawning then protective, a danger signal or a
protective mechanism enhancing the sense of
smell (Siegal. 1974)? The first correspondent in
the next issue agreed that it was protective by
overcoming hypoventilation, as in postoperative
alveolar collapse (Twiest, 1974). The second
letter in this issue quoted Ashley Montagu who
12 years earlier had maintained that it was a
form of behavior that has defied all attempts to
explain it.Montagu's intent to correct this
situation had been based on his concept of a
'critical consciousness': reduced by monotony
often associated with raised CO, and compression
of the external and internal carotid and the
carotid bodies. . . . This state of normal
active awareness and relatedness would be
reactivated by a good yawn, with 'adaptive
stretching of the jaw and other muscles'
(Montagu. l962). Oxygen would reach the alveoli
'more directly the correspondent added, thanks
to stretched bronchial muscles and stimulation
of vagus nerve endings, putting off sleep'
(Friedel. 1974). The last entry stressed,
besides the salutary stretching of limbs, the
contraction of the pterygoid muscles, venous
plexuse and diaphragm. A contributing to
increased venous return. But this writer too was
still puzzled: why, was it 'catching' (Bhangoo,
1974)? Might we answer that the victims of the
contagion must be predisposed by a touch of
boredom they are already sharing, if only
unconsciously?
- [...]
- PSYCHIATRIAC ASPECTS Primarily it
was, like spasmodic sneezing, seen in the course
of hysteria (Oppenheim, 1908; Lewy, 1921). But
hysteria has largely lost any actuality since
the first quarter of our century. Back in 1869,
Brochin, keeping an open mind in his extensive
encyclopedic article, devoted a few lines to
hysterical yawning. It either introduces. he
says, or terminates such attacks as it is also
apt to precede epileptic seizures: here it
represents "a useful warning." In hysteria,
catalepsy and somnambulism yawning appears as
'la crise finale.' very frequent attacks may
even constitute a disease sui generis. In girls
with irregular menses, 'it seems hysterical to
us' (Brochin, 1869).
-
- From the vast supply of cases at the
Salpêtrière late in the 19th
century, Gilles de la Tourette was able to
collect only six women presenting episodes of
hysterical paroxysmal or protracted yawning.
Their age ranged from 17 to 30 years. In one
such case, Charcot himself counted eight yawns
per minute, 480 per hour, 7200 in 15 hr -
finally stopped by the patient falling asleep.
Some of these cases also displayed coughing,
choreatic movements, or clonic contractions
merging into a convulsive seizure (Gilles de la
Tourette, 1891-1895).
-
- Meige and Feindel, in their classic
monograph on tics ( 1902), also found it most
common in hysteria. rarely also as the aura of
an epileptic fit, but in its most intractable
form in meningeal affections and in cerebral and
cerebellar tumors (Translated by Kinnier Wilson
in 1907 this anticipates his own statement to
that effect quoted above.). Meige
also quoted Saenger
who, in 1900, recorded the case of a 29-year old
nonhysterical woman who used to suffer from
"apparently idiopathic... attacks of yawning and
stiffness in the arms, followed by rapid
contractions of the tongue lasting for about a
minute... probably a species of tic" (Meige
& Feindel, 1902).
-
- On the other hand, boredom, which causes it,
became a fashionable subject on the European
continent covering over two centuries from the
Enlightenment to Existentialism. A 40-page
Dissertation sur l'Ennui, without any authorship
given, was presented to the Académie des
Sciences et Belles Lettres and published by G.
J. Decker in Berlin in 1768. As French in those
days was the official and social language at the
Prussian court, it was presumably authored by
one of its members close to King Frederick II,
the Great, sponsored or possibly even authored
in part by himself. A piece of propaganda, it
concluded \vith an appeal to work: Work- made to
relax us from our pleasures as pleasures are
made to relax us from our work... This,
Gentlemen, is the areat art to make oneself
useful to society, the fatherland, to oneself...
Duties... In these sparks of true genius you
will recognize, Gentlemen, your AUGUST
PROTECTOR. In Him every man recognizes a
model.
-
- At the outset, the thesis claimed that
boredom has never been analyzed... although it
has become a matter of fashion and good breeding
(bon ton) (p. 3)... Yawning is just purely
physical ennui (discomfort); if it sometimes
accomparues psychological discomfort (ennui
moral. this is the case rather accidentally than
necessarily... (p. 5) It is not just inaction or
indifference... It is the soul in spite of
itself... (p. 16) [Amon- physical causes he
mentions] slow digestion... nerves
[concluding that it is] an impenetrable
mystery... an incurable nervous disease... (pp.
19-21). The English have no word for it, their
'low spirit' is too weak, 'spleen' too strong..
.- (p. 27). [The OED indeed dates 'boredom'
from 1852].
- The author's conclusion, as we have seen,
makes idleness the universal cause of ennui. He
quotes La Rouchefoucault: -Work of the body
delivers us from she suffering of the mind; this
makes the poor happy" (p. 3 1 ). We are only 21
years away form the French revolution; the
aristocratic aphorism îtself was then a
century old.
-
- In the preceding century, Blaise Pascal,
that unique genius combining a fundamental
mathematician and moralist, physicist and
philosopher, highlighted our subject in his
Pensées of 1670. He piled up the
analogies:
- Ennui. - Nothing is as unbearable to man as
complete rest, without passion, without
business, without diversion, without employment.
This is when he feels his nothingness, his
deprivation, his insufficiency, his dependency,
his impotence, his emptiness. Forthwith and from
the bottom of his soul he will bring up ennui,
blackness, sadness, grief, resentment, despair
(Pascal, see Béguin, 1953).
-
- Going back to the early Christian era with
Seneca in Rome, to St. John Chrysostomus, bishop
and one-time hermit in the 14th century, to
acedia of medieval monks, was taedium vitae. It
pervaded the French literature in the 19th
century from Chateaubriand to Baudelaire,
Flaubert and Laforgue (Sagnes, 1969). And it
culminated in JeanPaul Sartre's existentialist
Nausea of 1938. This closely composed novel in
autobiographical form contains a paragraph: I am
bored, that is all. From time to time I yawn so
widely that tears roll down my cheeks. It is a
profound boredom. profound, the profound heart
of existence (p. 157). And this other passage:
The only real thing left in me is existence
which feels it exists. I yawn, lengthily
(Sartre, 1964, p. 170).
-
- The Russian 19th century paradigrn of
inertia is "the disease of Oblomovka,"
personified in Ivan Goncharov's famous fictional
non-hero Oblomov. First published in 1858, the
novel of that name contains such passages
as:
- 'Presently it will be twelve o'clock. yet
you are sprawling about on your back!'. . . 'l
was just about to rise,' said Oblomov with a
yawn. 'Yen have come too early in the morning,'
suggested Oblomov with a yawn. As a matter of
fact, he did read a page... . That done, he laid
it down and yawned (Goncharov, 1858, pp. 49, 51,
59; See also pp. 138 & 241).
- William James defined boredom as:
Attentiveness to the passage of time itself The
odiousness of the whole experience comes from
insipidity, for stimulation is the indispensable
requisite for pleasure in experience and the
feeling of bare time is the least stimulating
experience we can have.
-
- Contributors to the psychiatric literature
seem largely to have 'repressed' the subject of
yawning. To boredom only a few references exist.
In the James Strachey Standard Edition of
Freud's work we find Breuer briefly referring to
it, explaining 'these unpleasurable feelings' as
an 'increase in normal intracerebral excitation'
a 'surplus quantity of energy' (Freud, 1955).
The paradoxical statement is based on the
classical theory revived in the late 19th
century concept of Beard's neurasthenia, using
the analogy between the brain or mind with a
machine having at its disposal, or producing, a
given amount of 'energy.' For Breuer, a factor
in the 'development of hysteria' was an
'intolerance of monotony and boredom.' As the
nervous system 'at rest liberates an excess of
excitation' (p. 240), that 'surplus' determines
this 'incapacity to tolerate a monotonous life
and boredom.' (Such reasoning would eliminate
the parallel between boredom and fatigue.)
-
- In a more recent psychoanalytical
investigation, The Trauma of time, the author
rates boredom 'a common complaint' He quotes
Grotjahn (1942) calling it "an ego starvation"
and Fliess (1961), finding in it a
'claustrophobic element'while Greenson (1953)
detected "strong oral fixations." He also arees
that 'oral or phallic problems are predisposing
to boredom' (Schiffer, 1978). Another
psychoanalytical inquiry associates boredom with
depersonalization, calling lemptiness its
extrerne form' to which 'narcissistic
personalities are particularly susceptible.'
Other terms used in this connection are
helplessness, anger, depression, prohibited
wishes and repressed sexual wishes (Hartocollis,
1983). Already, in the early 19th century
"habitual" yawning was associated with people of
low intelligence, with inactive minds and
lacking in initiative, and who were described as
lazy, soft. weak, indolent, timid, indifferent
and melancholie, but also wily, crafty,
defective and criminal (Lepelletier, quoted by
Trautmann, 1901).
-
- This brings us back to the oral
aggressiveness of yawning. It finds a surprizing
parallel in the experimental field, including
the sexual aspect. Thus two Nigerian Patas
monkeys, a male and female, produced what looked
like yawning when they were exposed to mirrors,
either fixed or hand held. They would also lick
and chew them. The male displayed penile
erection or masturbation at the same time.
Yawning was repeated up to 23 times in rapid
succession and would gradually diminish to a
total of 67 yawns in 10 minutes as the mirror
was losing its sense of novelty (Hall,
1962).
-
- Since the 1960s, following a new impetus, a
considerable amount of work bas been devoted to
the biochemical provocation of yawing in animals
(Provine, 1960). Again this was usually
associated with penile erection, e.g., in rats.
when potassium chloride was electrophoretically
applied to their occipital cortices to trigger
cortical spreading depression (Huston, 1971).
The same reaction was obtained in rabbits after
intraventricular infusion of ACTH (Bertolini et
al. 1969, Baldwin et al. 1974), and after
intraperitoneal injection of physostigmine and
pilocarpine in infant rats (Urba-Holmgren et al.
1977; Goldberg, 1983). Oxytocin injected into
the paraventricular nucleus of the hypothalamus,
or the CA field of the hippocampus of rats had
the same effect (Melis et al. 1983). Dopamine,
activated by apomorphine has been another
operative stimulus (Mogilnicka & Klimel
l977, Yamada & Furakawa, 1980). This
reaction has been blocked with narcoleptics
(Gilbert. 1988). The cholinergic and
dopaminergic effects also with bromocriptine,
blocked by overdoses, keep being confirmed
(Ushimaja et al. 1988).
-
- Again clinicaliy, in humans, opiate
withdrawal with naloxene has been shown to
produce 'it' (Fleminc, 1979; Nemeth-Coslett
& Griffiths. 1986). After combining naloxone
with electroconvulsive therapy, yawning
persisted for a full week (D'Mello et al. 1988).
A thirty-year old woman taking Imipramine 150mg
twice daily ended up yawning about twice daily
for tive to fifteen minutes and gradually ceased
doing it when the dose was reduced and finally
discontinued (Goldberg, 1983).
- Returning, finally, to the aspect of
transmission, or echokinesia (Charcot's term,
quoted by Meige, 1907) in a fairly recent letter
to the Lancet - again one in a quartet on our
subject the writer suggested that this may have
a group cohesive function for animals that hunt
in packs or protect themselves in herds (Weller,
1988). According to the French "One good yawner
will create seven; even dogs watching their
owners do it have been alleged to imitate them
(Trautman. 1901, pp. 37,49).
- Leonardo da Vinci - to emphasize some of the
effects of painting over those of poetry - told
this brief story: "An artist painted a picture
that whoever saw it at once yawned, and went on
doing so as long as he kept his eyes on the
picture. which represented a person who was also
yawning" (Richter, 1939). Whether or not such a
daring picture was ever exhibited during the
Renaissance, Leonardo illustrates here the
preponderantly visual contagiousness of the
habit. In a recent experiment, one quarter of
the students made to read about it were also
induced to yawning (Provine, 1986).
- The author suggested that we are dealing
here not with a 'true' (i.e.. intentional)
imitation, but an act that 'only mimicks
imitation' (Provine. 1989).
-
- After noticin-g on a few occasions a person
yawning on a streetcar shortly after having
myself indulged in the act, and doubtine that
the other person had observed me, I once asked
such a coyawner whether in tact he had just seen
me do it. By denying that he had confirmed my
suspicion that there might be a remote
possibility - hard to support on rational
grounds that the germ of yawning could even be
contagious by something like telepathy! It may
be argued that boredom (or fatigue) is sornewhat
endemic on vehicles of public transportation,
hence merely coincidental.
-
- A FEW ORIENTAL ASPECTS So much for
the West. In the Hindu world, yawning is or was
a religious offense. As an apology, you must
snap your thumb and fingers together and
pronounce the name of Raina. Not to do so would
be a sin as great as murder. Another
interpretation was that part of your soul may
escape. Clap a hand before your mouth and say
-Marayan - Good God! Analogous Islamic beliefs
were expressed by Abu-Horeira who had the
Prophet declare that while God loves a sneeze he
hates a yawn. It is provoked by the devil who is
mocking you. Worse than an offense to others, it
is a curse on you (Saintyves, 1921).
-
- POSTSCRIPT To end, however, in this
negative vein may be unfair. For no matter which
of the contradictory physiological explanations
are to be accepted, and no matter how offensive
the social aspects, a modicum of personal
satisfaction cannot be denied to a good
yawn.
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