Clinical psychiatry : a text-book for students and physicians / abstracted and adapted from the seventh German edition of Kraepelin's 'Lehrbuch der Psychiatrie' by A. Ross Diefendorf.
- Diefendorf, A. Ross (Allen Ross), 1871-1943
- Date:
- 1907
Licence: In copyright
Credit: Clinical psychiatry : a text-book for students and physicians / abstracted and adapted from the seventh German edition of Kraepelin's 'Lehrbuch der Psychiatrie' by A. Ross Diefendorf. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.
58/628 page 36
![paresis, and other deterioration processes, in which the train of ideas may shrink down to a few phrases, or even a few words which are repeated over and over. These phrases, in contrast to the persistent ideas of the catatonic, are not senseless, but actually express the content of the patient's consciousness. The following is an example:— Frazier went away this morning, will be back soon. Didn't ask him what time he'd come home. Frazier is working up in the lot at something. I was up in the lot yesterday. I forget what I went for. Frazier is talking of selling the place. He asked me what I cared about it. Father is going over there to-day. Father don't care for the farm. He didn't speak to me; he is downhearted. He should bring up his boys to work upon it. Frazier don't have time to work. He don't stay home much. I would advise them to have a place and keep it. If I get well I will keep it, if I can. The boys would like to have some farm. They won't stay in a place. Frazier don't like to work on the farm. [Patient hears a woman coming up the hall.] Some woman I hear coming. If she was on a farm, she wouldn't handle much money. If they sell the place, the children will starve for hunger. [Patient looks at her hand.] I am all blacked up. I have been out on the farm a good deal. If he sells the place, the little children will starve for hunger, etc. Circumstantiality is the interruption of the course of ideas by the introduction of a great multitude of non- essential accessory ideas, which both obscure and delay the train of thought. The disturbance depends upon a defec- tive estimation of the importance of the individual ideas in relation to the goal ideas. The goal may, indeed, be ultimately obtained, showing some real coherence, but only after many detours. The simplest form of circum- stantiaHty appears in the prolixity of the uneducated, who are unable to arrange their general ideas in accord- ance with their importance, and show a tendency to adhere to details. Some even have difficulty in distinguishing](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21295621_0058.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
