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.
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![slay ' the other,' whom he supposes to lie hid in the left side of his body. Hence he calls ' the other' the left D while he himself is the right D . This patient soon fell into dementia.* A case reported by Langlois exhibits a still lower grade. The man G is imbecile, loquacious, with no hesitation in utterance, no paralysis of the limbs, and no disturbance of the cutaneous sensibility. Though he talks continually he does but repeat the same stereotyped phrases. He always speaks of himself in the third person, and almost every morning greets us with ' G is sick, he must go to the infirmary.' Often he goes upon his knees, and gives himself a sound pummeling; then bursts out laughing, and rubbing his hands exclaims,' G has been bad, he has had to do penance.' Often he will take up his wooden shoe, and beat him- self violently on the head, or he will bury his nails in his flesh, or will scratch his face. These fits of rage come on suddenly, and while he is disfiguring himself his counte- nance is expressive of anger, but it wears a look of satisfaction, as soon as he has done correcting the other. At times when he is not overwrought by these imaginary resent- ments, we ask him 'Where is G .''' ' Here he is,' he answers, striking his breast. We touch his head, asking whose that is. ' That,' he answers, ' is the pig's head.' ' Why do you beat it so ?' ' Because I must punish the pig's head.' ' But you just now struck G .' 'No. G is not a bad boy to-day : it is the pig's head that has to be beaten.' For many months we asked him the same questions, and the answers were ever the same. Generally it is G that is displeased, but sometimes it is the other, and then it is not the head that is punished. t A certain subject of general paralysis, in a condition bordering on dementia, used to be continually giving himself advice, or reproaching himself. Mr. G , he would say, you are aware that you have been placed' in this institu- tion, and here you are. We tell you that we have no hope whatever of you, etc. As the general paralysis progressed his words became less intelligible, but in his raving this conversation with himself could always be made out. Sometimes he both asked the questions and answered them. When dementia had reached almost the last degree, he kept up the same practice. He would cry out, and show signs of agi- tation, but immediately growing calm would say in a low voice, and with a sig- * Jaffe, Archiv fiir Psychiatric, 1870. t Annales Medice-PsychologiqueSy vol. VI., p. go. nificant gesture, Won't you be still; speak low. Then he would answer, Yes, I am going to speak low. Once we found him very busy, making all the motions of tasting [wines, etc.], and spitting out. We asked him, ' You are amusing yourself, Mr. G } ' ' Which ? ' was his reply, and then he relapsed into incoherence. This reply, repeated here literally, may seem to be the result of chance, but it accords so well with the duality so long observed in this patient, that we have deemed it worthy of men- tion. I In the following case the dissolution of personality is presented in a new aspect; the individual has no consciousness of a portion of himself, which is become for- eign to him, or hostile. We have already, while speaking of hallucinations, seen the patient coming by degrees to embody his hallucinations, and finally giving them objective existence. In the demented the case is more serious. The acts and states that are perfectly normal for a per- son of sound mind and that have none of the morbid or imaginative characters of hallucination, are for the subject of de- mentia something external to himself, nor is he conscious that he is himself their cause. How may we account for this curious situation without supposing a profound change in the coenassthesis, and that certain portions of the body are no longer represented—or sensed—in the ruined brain. The sense of sight remains, as experience proves, but the patient sees his own movements as an external, an antagonistic phenomenon which he at- tributes neither to himself nor to others ; which he notices passively without more ado, because his internal sensations being effaced and his reasoning power reduced to impotence, there is no means of cor- recting this incoordination. Then we have the case of a general paralytic in the period of dementia, whose speech was almost unintelligible, and of t Descourtis, Du Fonctionncmeni des Operations Cereirales. et en partic^^lie7■ de lenr Dedoiihlement dans Ics Psychopathies, Paris, 1883, p. 33. Possibly this second personality which advises and admon- ishes the other is only the purely passive reproduc- tion of the phrases addressed to the patient by his physician or his attendants. It may be remarked that not seldom the demented speak of themselves in the third person. The same is seen in young' children, and it has been accounted for by the fact that their personality is not yet formed. In my opinion we have here simply imitation. The in- fant is used to hearing such remarks as these : Paul has been bad, he must get a whipping', etc. He thus learns to speak of himself in the same way. Is the use of the third person by some sub- jects of dementia a sign of reversion ?](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21074409_0049.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
