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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    centrifugal or revolutionary force giving the expansive impulse of new ideas and a centripetal or conservative force working in the restraining influence of habit; the resultant of their opposing actions being the determina- tion of the path of the evolution of mind. Add to the eccentric impulse the ardent enthusiasm and pas- sionate energy with which a belief is maintained and propagated, the self-sufficing faith which overcomes incre- dulity, gradually gaining disciples, and we have an explana- tion of the resemblance which has been noticed between the prophetic inspiration of genius and the mania of in- sanity. For the insane temperament may, according to the direction of its development, conduct its possessor to madness, or make him the originator of some new thought or new thing in the world; the faith and labour with which he labours in the achievement of his aim actually saving him from the madness from which he might otherwise have suffered. Here as elsewhere we must have regard to the external circumstances as well as to the internal fact in the determination of the result: we shall sometimes find one member of a family who has had an active career in a suitable track, go on through life without ever breaking down into mental derangement, while another whose cir- cumstances have not been favourable becomes hoplessly insane. Those who devote themselves specially to the study and treatment of insanity are sometimes charged, not always unjustly, with the disposition to confound eccentricity with insanity, and to detect disease where persons not so biassed fail to perceive anything abnormal. Eccentricity