Licence: In copyright
Credit: Attention / by W.B. Pillsbury. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Leeds Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Leeds Library.
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![CHAPTER XVIII ATTENTION IN PATHOLOGY AND IN DEVELOPMENT MUCH evidence in favour of the physiological theory which was advanced in an earlier chapter is to be found in the phenomena connected with the degeneration of attention and allied processes in certain pathological cases. There is very frequently a dropping out of some of the normal factors in the control of attention which serves to make clearer the nature and to emphasise the importance of the effect which they ordinarily exert in mind. These disturbances range in extent from the temporary lack of re- straint which we see in dreams and in the ordinary waking suggestion to the most complete derangements of all mental phenomena found in insanity. We can of course mention but a few, and shall attempt to select those which throw into highest relief the conditions of attention that we have been discussing, rather than attempt a general treatment of the changes of attention in mental diseases. Perhaps the most striking of all these cases, and those which bring out most clearly the relative independence of the systems of control, are the so-called alternations of person- ality. A favourite theme for the modern novelist is the man who contains within himself two separate selves, who changes from one individual to another, with loss in the one state of all memory of the other and with a correspond- ing change in his mental attitude and habits of action. The classic instance is Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Many cases very similar to this have been subjected to care- ful scientific study. So, for example, Dr. Azam [*] found](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21523630_0310.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
