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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    sonality or not is merely a question of degree. They tend to organize and to grow and if the process keeps up it is only a ques- tion of time when a new personality will be born. If these states grow largely at the expense of the personal consciousness this latter may finally assume a position of relative inferiority. Sidis' theory of the hysteric state and the hysteric attacks is closely bound up with his therapeutic ideas and really can only be fully understood by taking them into consideration. His principle of treatment is by reassociation of the dissociated states. The secondary state is gradually merged into the upper consciousness so that the cured patient no longer has two indepen- dent states separated by an amnesia but the events of both states are fully known to the personal consciousness. A significant fact is that the cured patient is no longer hypnotizable, which speaks strongly for Janet's position as to the identity of the hysterical and hypnotic states. This cure is brought about through the intermediation of the hypnoidal state—a state Sidis® places between waking and sleep on the one hand and hypnosis on the other. It is, he believes, the primitive rest state of animals and in the higher animals has devel- oped by differentiations into sleep. Under certain conditions, however, hypnosis may develop instead of sleep. The therapeutic value of the hypnoidal state is due to its being the portal to the psychic reserve energy. As we are all possessed of more liver, more kidney, more everything than is necessary for our ordinary needs and are sup- plied with a large surplus to be called on in times of emergency, so it is with psychic energy. Through the utilization of the psychic reserve energy the dissociated systems may be restored to equilibrium.® The main features of Sidis' theory then are—the process of * Sidis: An Experimental Study of Sleep. Jour, of Abnormal Psych., Vol. Ill, Nos. I, 2 and 3, 1908. * Sidis: Studies in Psychopathology. Boston Med. and Surg. Jour., Vol. CLVI, Nos. II, 12, 13, 14 and 15, 1907.