begin to understand why the patients reacted in such a manner. In dementia præcox we are at present unable to penetrate deep enough so that the relations remain unknown, and we therefore assume an "ataxia" between noö- and thymo-psyche. Thanks to analysis we know that in hysteria there is no "ataxia," but only an oversensitiveness, which, as soon as we know the pathogenic ideational complex, becomes clear and intelligible.[1] Knowing how the incongruity is brought about in hysteria, is it still necessary that we should accept a totally new mechanism in dementia præcox? In general we know by far too little about the psychology of the normal and hysteric[2] to dare to accept in such an untransparent disease as dementia præcox, a totally new mechanism unknown to all psychology. One should be economical with new principles of interpretation. It is for this reason that I repudiate the clear and ingenious hypothesis of Stransky. As a compensation for the above, we possess a very excellent experimental work by Stransky[3] which gives us the foundation for the understanding of an important symptom, namely, the speech disorders.
The speech disorder is the product of the main psychological disturbance. Stransky calls it "intrapsychic ataxia." Whenever there is a disturbance at the points of contact of the emotional life and ideation, as in dementia præcox, producing thereby in the normal thought the lack of orientation by a controlling idea (Liepmann), there must result a stream of thought resembling flight of ideas. As Pelletier has shown, the laws of association predominate against the influence of direction. If it is a question of a process of speech there must result an increase in the purely superficial elements of connection (motor speech association and sound reactions), as was shown in our associa-
- ↑ An hysterical woman, for example, one day merged into a deep and persistent depression "because the weather is so dull and rainy." The analysis, however, showed that the depression set in on the anniversary of a very sad and important event in the life of the patient.
- ↑ Binet (Les altérations de la personnalité, p. 89) approximately remarks: Hysterics are for us only subjects of choice, exagerating phenomena that one must necessarily find in some degree among a crowd of other persons who are not at all tainted, even slightly, by the hysterical neurosis.
- ↑ Stransky: Über Sprachverwirrtheit.
