The science of life : fully illustrated in tone and line and including many diagrams

HUMAN BEHAVIOUR AND THE HUMAN MIND

of memories takes place. There seems to be no psychological method of curing established cases ; beyond a certain point there is no return. Yet it is clear that mania and melancholia are only exaggerations of what We may see in normal people. We all, even the most equable of us, have moods of elation and energy, of depression and self-reproach ; we may know them to be irrational, but they dominate us and our feelings. In the moody man these oscillations are more marked ; and when circumstances or temperament aggravate matters still more, the man becomes “impossible” in daily life and must be shut up. Then there are people who all their lives long show abnormal energy and self-assurance ; they are not maniacs, but the stuff of which maniacs are made. We envy them their untiring flow of hopeful activity—until we notice that their performance does not keep pace with it. Self criticism is painful, but it is necessary for real achievement. The activities of such ~ sub-manics ’’ are not fully logical. When this trait is exaggerated it passes over into the insane flow of ideas so characteristic of the chronic maniac, whose “ conversation ” is often a mere string of phrases held together by accidental associations, sometimes by mere associations of sound.

So, too, we all know the gentle, slow, patient men who are halfway to melancholia ; they are no good where speed or bluff or quick decision is wanted, but they are often excellent at the routine work of the world.

The maniac breaks out in rage at each trivial thwarting and may maim and slay. But have we not heard of choleric business men who tear the telephone attachments from the wall? And has not the temper of the retired colonel grown proverbial ? The normal man with tendencies to melancholy often commits suicide when circumstances go against him. He differs from the melancholic who must be watched all the time, but only because the melancholic catches at ridiculously trivial pretexts for his suicidal attempts.

Here is another patient of a different type. This woman has been in the asylum for many years ; for years she has spent all her waking hours sitting huddled in one position, continuously moving her hands and arms in a peculiar stereotyped way. These movements turn out to be an imitation of a cobbler stitching boots. She cannot be made to utter a word, and never shows the least interest in anything that goes on around her. She is completely shut up in her self ;

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her life has narrowed to one compulsive action.

Her past history is simple; she was engaged to be married when her lover suddenly broke it off. As a result of the shock she soon passed into the state in which she has remained ever since. The young man was a shoemaker by trade; and the stereotyped movement as of cobbling shoes may be a symbol of her preoccupation with the hopes of love and marriage which circumstances so violently destroyed.

Usually, when inner longings come into conflict with hard reality, and the impulses from which the longings spring can find no other outlet, it is the unsatisfied desire which is repressed or split off. But in this case it is reality which has been repressed ; the woman lives an inner life that is totally unreal.

This loss of contact with reality is the most constant symptom of insanity. In mania and melancholia it is the emotional tone which is out of contact with reality. In this woman, reality is simply shut out from making any contribution to mental life and growth ; the particular way in which it is here shut out is by the sufferer turning inwards, as it were, and living a dream.

This turning inwards into self and away from outer reality is the essential feature in a great number of kinds of insanity which are now generally grouped together under the title of schizophrenia, or mind-splittingthe splitting being not, however, that which we have discussed as dissociation, but a more radical divorce between inner and outer, self and reality, wish and_ experience. And the most common of such disorders is that which is called dementia precox, precocious loss of mind, in which the symptoms usually begin to appear about the time of puberty. The disorder generally first manifests itself in moodiness and depression, reluctance to work, over-preoccupation with self, long fits of day-dreaming now and then broken by emotional outbursts. Gradually the sufferers grow less and less interested in the world about them, sit idle and refuse to work, and develop delusions, fixed ideas, or queer actions. Like manic-depressive insanity, dementia precox is psychologically incurable once it is fully established. Once committed to an asylum, patients continue their progress towards imprisonment in self. The delusions, the dreams, and the actions, abraded, as it were, by constant repetition and not fed by new experience from without, tend to become more stereotyped and often degenerate into. mere symbols, or hints

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