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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    suicide, or homicide; some relieving themselves by destroying inanimate objects, others killing themselves in order to get rid of their anxieties and fears, and others attacking, in a blind and desperate manner, persons whom they chance to meet when their terror and distress have rendered their impulses uncontrollable. The deed of violence done, either there is immediate relief, the inde- finable anxiety and confusion of ideas disappearing, and they recognize what they have done; or they continue in a state of excitement, unconscious, or very imperfectly conscious, of the gravity of their acts. When they come to themselves, their memory is uncertain and confused, like that of a person awaking from a terrible nightmare ; they may remember the facts in a fragmentary way when they are recalled to their minds, or may den}* them alto- gether. Let him who would realize, so far as it can be done by a sane mind, the mental state of these afflicted beings, try to recollect the most painful dream which he ever had; let him reflect on its grotesque inconsisten- cies, the blest relief which he experienced when he awoke and found it was a dream, the fragmentary remembrance which he retained of it, and the little desire which he had to live it over again in memory; let him then suppose it to be no dream, but conceive himself to be over- whelmed by the horrible nightmare day after day, and to be, as he surely would be, incapable of even the hope of relief; what cry would then suffice to express his agony and despair save the cry of supreme agony, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me ? —what act save an act of suicide ?