The diseases of personality / by Th. Ribot ; tr. from the French by J. Fitzgerald.
- Théodule-Armand Ribot
- Date:
- 1887
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: The diseases of personality / by Th. Ribot ; tr. from the French by J. Fitzgerald. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.
41/68 page 35
![Being ignorant of the causes, we can view only the surface, the symptoms, the states of consciousness, with the signs which interpret them. Talce then a state of consciousness (with its organic conditions) having this special character of being local, i. e., one that has the fain:;est possible relation to the physical and psychic organization. To make my meaning clear by antithesis, take a vio- lent, sudden emotion: it reverberates everywhere, stirs the whole life, physical and mental: there is thorough diffusion. Our case is the reverse of this. Organi- cally and psychically, it has but few con- nections, and these precarious, with the rest of the individual. It is outside, like a foreign body lodged in the organ- ism, and not sharing in its life. It does not enter the general sensibility (coen- cesthesis) which maintains and unifies the whole. It is a cerebral phenomenon almost without a support, like the thoughts imposed by suggestion in hyp- notism. What gives force to this at- tempt at an explanation is the fact that the morbid state, unless it be removed by nature or by medical treatment, has an irresistible tendency to expand and grow strong at the expense of the origi- nal personality, which begins to decline, preyed upon by this parasite. Neverthe- less, in this case it retains its original character : it does not constitute a dupli- cation of personality but an alienation. I offer this effort toward an explana- tion only as an hypothesis, well aware that our ignorance of the organic condi- tions of the phenomenon makes defini- tive proof impossible. In presenting this explanation I have had to anticipate what will later be said with regard to ideas, and which will perhaps furnish us with new arguments in favor of our hypothe- sis. We come now to speak of recent ex- periments on hallucinations; these, in conjunction with other facts, have led certain authors to offer an explanation of double personality so simple as to be palpable, so to speak. These authors show first the functional independence of the two hemispheres of the brain, and thence infer that from their synergy results equilibrium of the mind, but from their disaccord sundry perturba- tions and finally scission of the psychic individual. There are here two dis- tinct questions that are clearly recog- nized by many of the authors we are about to quote, but which have been coia- founded by others, A physician of note as a psychologist. Sir Henry Holland, was the first to study in 1840, the brain as a double organ, and to suggest that certain mental aberra- tions might be due to ill-regulated action of the two hemispheres, seeing that, in some cases, the one seems to correct the perceptions and the feelings of the other. In 1844 Wigan went farther, holding that we have two brains, not one brain, and that the corpus callosum, instead of being a bond of union between them, is a wall of separation.* Later prog- ress in brain anatomy yielded more posi- tive results, showing the inequality in weight of the two lobes of the brain, their constant asymmetry, differences in the topography of the cortex, etc. Bro- ca's discovery of the seat of aphasia was a new argument of great value. It was further supposed that the left hemisphere might be the principal seat of intelligence and will, while on the right hemisphere would devolve more especially the life of nutrition (Brown-Sequard). I condense this account, which else might be long, to come at once to hallucinations. The occurrence simultaneously of contradic- tory hallucinations—joyous and sad— attracted the attention of observers. There was something better than obser- vation, too—experimentation ; and hyp- notism made this possible. The hyp- notized subject has three phases: the lethargic, characterized by nervo-mus- cular excitability; the cataleptic, pro- duced by raising the eyelids of the sub- ject ; the somnambulic, caused by pres- sure on the vertex. If during the cata- leptic state we lower the right eyelid, we thereby act upon the left brain, and determine a lethargic state of the right side only. Hence the subject finds him- self as it were divided in twain: he is hemilethargic on the right side, hemi- cataleptic on the left. I take from Richer's well-known work an account of what takes place. I set upon a table a pail o£ water, a basin, and soap. As soon as the patients eye is drawn to these objects, or her hand touches one of them, apparently quite of her own ac- cord she ]:)Ours water into the basin, takes the soap, and washes her hands with scrupulous * Wigan, The Duality of Mind Prov'cd by the Strticture^ Fu?ictions, and Diseases of the Brain, and by the Phenometia of Mental Derangement, and shoivn to be Essential to Moral Responsibility. London, 1844. This ill-compacted work does not bear out the promise of its title.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21074409_0041.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
