Mental mechanisms / by William A. White.

  • White, William A. (William Alanson), 1870-1937.
Date:
1911
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Mental mechanisms / by William A. White. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    CHAPTER III THE CONTENT OF CONSCIOUSNESS—DREAMS—SYMBOLISM —THE PSYCHOSES—FOLK-LORE The fundamental conception which it will be the object of this chapter to set forth is that every psychic fact must have been preceded by an efficient psychic cause. As we have already had repeatedly emphasized by examples, ideas, or better, mental states do not arise de novo. They must always be the outcome of other mental states from which they necessarily issue. This is so throughout the field of psychology, normal or morbid. It is true even in the realm of the psychoses due to organic changes in the brain. That an alcoholic should have a delirium may well be dependent upon a toxemia, but whether he sees in his delirium snakes or monkeys, visions of his office or of hell must depend upon purely psychic causes, upon the preexisting psychic material which has become involved in the disorder. Whether a paretic is exalted or depressed, whether the exaltation is largely erotic or expresses itself by delusions of great wealth must find its explanation in the mental make-up of the person afflicted, and the character of his psychic trends. The cards may be indefinitely shuffled or arranged in any way, but there are only fifty-two in the pack, and the result whatever it may be, must be conditioned by that fact. With this fundamental conception the psychiatrist, for example, is in a position to remind us of the chemist or the astronomer. If there is a hiatus in the logical connections of the different steps in a psychosis, like the chemist he can with confidence look for an element to fill the space. If there is a disturbance somewhere along the line he may expect, like the astronomer, to find a hith- erto unknown source of energy to account for it. Our assumption then is that every psychic fact has an efficient