Responsibility in mental disease / by Henry Maudsley.

  • Henry Maudsley
Date:
1892
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Responsibility in mental disease / by Henry Maudsley. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    minds the extraordinary inconsistencies and the startling inexplicabilities displayed in the thoughts, feelings, and acts of those who dwell therein. (6) Few who have heard the accounts which insane persons sometimes give of the motives which have in- fluenced their acts would venture to say positively that a particular act was unconnected with their known de- lusions, however independent of them it might seem to he. It is not true, in fact, that a madman reasons and acts logically from the false premiss of his delusion; and it is monstrous in theory to assume that a belief which itself exists only in violation of all reason should conform in its action to laws which govern the action of, and are therefore appreciable by, a sound intelligence. If this were so, it would not be difficult to predict exactly from the character of his delusion what an insane person might do, and so to preclude mischief on all occasions. But the difficulty of their care, that which constitutes the chief anxiety in the management of them, is that, although we may know what they think, we cannot foretell what they will do; we may know full well their delusions, but we cannot follow the workings of them in their minds wid foresee their outcome in action: there is an inco- herence between their ideas, and there is an incoherence between their ideas and actions. Locke's well-known saying, that madmen reason correctly from false pre- mises, is indeed far from true of all cases; they often reason insanely from insane premises; they do not do those things which, were their delusions true beliefs, they ouo-ht to do, and they do those things which, were their