Even if anatomical leisons or organic symptoms were constantly present, science ought not to imagine the psychological standpoint could advisedly be neglected, or the undoubted psychological relationship be given up as unimportant. If, for instance, carcinoma were to prove an infectious disease the peculiar growth and degenerative process of carcinomatous cells would still be a constant factor requiring investigation on its own account. But, as I have said, the correlation between the anatomical findings, and the psychological picture of the disease is so loose that it is extremely desirable to study the psychological side of it thoroughly.
Part I
Psychiatry is the stepchild of medicine. All the other branches of medicine have one great advantage over it—the scientific methods can be applied; there are things to be seen, and felt, physical and chemical methods of investigation to be followed: the microscope shows the dreaded bacillus, the surgeon’s knife halts at no difficulty and gives us glimpses of most inaccessible organs of vital importance. Psychiatry, which engages in the exploration of the mind, stands ever at the door seeking in vain to weigh and measure as in the other departments of science. We have long known that we have to do with a definite organ, the brain; but only beyond the brain, beyond the morphological basis do we reach what is important for us—the mind; as indefinable as it ever was, still eluding any explanation, no matter how ingenious. Former ages, endowing the mind with substance, and personifying every incomprehensible occurrence in nature, regarded mental disorder as the work of evil spirits; the patient was looked upon as one possessed, and the methods of treatment were such as fitted this conception. This mediaeval conception occasionally gains credence and expression even to-day. A classical example is the driving out of the devil which the elder Pastor Blumhardt carried out successfully in the famous case of Gottlieb in Diltus.[1] To the honour of the Middle
- ↑ Bresler, “Kulturhistorischer Beitrag zur Hysterie.” Allg. Zeitschrift für Psychiatrie, Bd. LIII., p. 333. Zündel, “Biographie Blumhardts.”
