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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    mental decay. It is no wonder that the thoughts of child- hood then come back to the mind, and that the dying man sometimes babbles in words which he had never used in his riper years; and those who would make much of these expressions when they are of a religious character, would do well to reflect that they are attending upon a patholo- gical scene, and to take heed lest they found conclusions agreeable to themselves upon the phenomena of mental decay. In these conditions of mental decay a man may lose the consciousness of personal identity, and it were much to be wished that metaphysicians who lay such great stress on the unity of the ego, and make so much use of it in their systems of philosophy, would explain, from their point of view, the phenomena of disordered identity. Surely a mind, even though manifesting itself through broken glimpses in a damaged brain, should not lose its consciousness of personal identity—should not be ignorant whose mind it is. To the physiologist, who sees in the unity of the ego simply the full and harmonious action of the different parts of the mental organisation, it can cause no surprise that, when the defacing action of decay has destroyed centres of thought and paths of association, there should be a break of the harmony of function and a disruption of the unity of consciousness. The wonder would be if it were otherwise. It would seem quite natural that as mental function flickers irregularly and finally ceases before organic actions cease, there should be a loss of consciousness of identity before, through the death of the