Volume 1

Aphasia and kindred disorders of speech / by Henry Head.

  • Head, Henry, 1861-1940.
Date:
1926
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Aphasia and kindred disorders of speech / by Henry Head. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    emission there is no feeling of translation, no bias against the proposition making its appearance in one rather than in the other language. Once uttered, however, in one particular language its use in the other is ac¬ companied by a feeling of translation, a bias which not infrequently destroys its freedom of use. Not only does introspection show the necessity of some such hypo¬ thesis, but the phenomena of aphasia cannot be understood without it. For although the process standing directly behind internal and external speech is distinctly affected in the majority of cases of aphasia, it may be less affected than internal and external speech because it is not so definitely verbalised. It is more automatic and aroused by the incoming stream of impressions. Moreover, it serves more closely in the processes of thought than internal and external speech. He says1: For the perception (or recognition or thinking) of things, at least in simple relations, speech is not necessary, for such thought remains to the speechless man. Words are required for thinking, for most of our thinking at least, but the speechless man is not wordless; there is an automatic and unconscious or subconscious service of words. It is not, of course, said that speech is not required for thinking on novel and complex subjects, for ordering images in new and complex relations, and thus the process of perception in the speechless, but not wordless, man may be defective in the sense of being inferior from lack of co-operation of speech; it is not in itself a fault, it is left unaided. In many persons the processes of thought are accompanied in part at any rate by internal, and in some, especially the less educated, by external speech. But internal and external speech are not necessary to perfect logical thought, whilst the process called by Jackson “subject- proposition” forms an essential portion of the act of thinking. Behind this “ subject-proposition ” stands that mental process included by Jackson under the name of “image” or “symbol”; this forms the subject of the next section and completes his views on speaking and thinking. §6. “IMPERCEPTION” AND THE CONDITION OF THE “IMAGES IN A SPEECHLESS PATIENT No aspect of this work exhibits Jackson’s peculiar insight more clearly than his treatment of the mental processes which stand behind the birth