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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    find them quite inaccessible by the usual avenues; we must take our bearings anew, draw up a new ground plan—the old one will not suffice. Our patients live a mental life all their own, even talk their own language which is incomprehensible to us. If we are to gain access to them we must learn the avenues of approach. No atten- tion may be paid to ordinary efforts at conversation but the use of a complex indicator may open the flood gates so that all there is left for us to do is to listen. The differences between the sane and the insane, however, are only differences of degree, not of kind. Every process that we may divine in the insane mind has its counterpart in the sane. This is especially well seen in the manifestation of complexes that are dormant or submerged. In the insane these buried complexes determine largely the symptoms of the mental disorder, while in the sane they are often at the bottom of the moods, the disposi- tion, the make-up, in short the character of the individual, and it is the organized constellations that determine his actions along conventional lines, lines prescribed by training and custom. A study of the conventions and customs, the folkways, would be very instructive in showing us the methods by which these buried constellations operate. They would show, for example, that reactions directed by them are not amenable to reason—in this respect resembling the obsessions of the psychasthenic. For example, to show respect we uncover our heads, the Orientals uncover their feet. Why is this? The reason for it lies buried in history, the foundation for their reaction has long since been hidden by a complicated and bewildering superstructure. The foundation being inaccessible it would be quite impossible to change the custom by an appeal to reason which does not reach to the root of the matter; it is not the avenue of approach. This example reminds one of another much nearer home and more familiar. It might be facetiously referred to as the bipolar variation of modesty. I refer to the changed feeling of shame