or less quickly driven out. It becomes a distant dream, and the dream which enchains the patient wholly or in part, and often for life, has now the attributes of reality. We normal persons, who have to do entirely with reality, see only the products of disordered fancy, but not the wealth of that side of the mind which is turned away from us. Unfortunately only too often no further knowledge reaches us of the things which are transpiring on that other side, because all the bridges are broken down which unite this side with that.
We do not know to-day whether these new views are of universal or only of limited validity; the more carefully and perseveringly we examine our patients, the more we shall meet cases, which, despite apparent total imbecility, will yet afford us at least some fragmentary insight into the obscurities of the psychical life. This life is far removed from that mental poverty which the prevailing theories were compelled to accept.
However far we are from being able to understand fully the concatenations of that obscure world, at least we may maintain, with complete assurance, that in dementia praecox there is no symptom which can be described as psychologically baseless and meaningless. The most absurd things are in reality symbols of ideas which are not only generally understandable, but also universally operative in the human heart. In insanity we do not discover anything new and unknown, but we look at the foundation of our own being, the source of those life-problems in which we are all engaged.
Part II
The number of psychoanalytic investigations into the psychology of dementia praecox has considerably increased since the publication of my book upon the subject.[1] When, in 1903, 1 made the first analysis of a case of dementia praecox, there dawned on me a premonition of the possibilities of future discoveries in this sphere. This has been confirmed.
Freud first submitted a case of paranoid dementia to
- ↑ “The Psychology of Dementia Praecox.”
