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.
50/68 page 44
![whose notions of the external world but little remained. One clay he was employed in ]Mcking peas. Tliough inexpert, and naturally right- handed, he employed only the left hand. Once the right hand came forward as though to take its share of the work, but hardly had it touched the peas when the other hand came down upon it, seized it and gave it a hard squeeze. The patient's countenance meanwhile bore an expression of anger and he repeated in a tone of authority, 'No, no.' His body trembled and shook with passion and it was plain that a violent struggle was going on within him. On another occasion he had to be tied down in an armchair. His countenance grew clouded, and seizing his right hand in his left, he exclaimed : ' There 1 It is all your fault; on your account they have tied me here,' and he struck the offend- ing hand again and again. Nor were such occurrences exceptional. Many times it was observed that on the right hand quitting its habitual state of inactivity the patient checked it with the left. He would become angrv and excited, and would beat it with all the strength he had. * Some demented patients blame their fellow patients for the noise they them- selves make, and complain of being dis- turbed by their cries. Finally, we will quote the case, observed by Hunter, of an old man, whose faculties were very much impaired. He always referred to the present time the occurrences of his early life. Though he was capable of acting correctly upon certain impressions, and of referring them to the portions of the body affected by them, he habitually at- tributed his own sensations to those around him. Thus he would tell his keeper and the attendants that he was sure they were hungry or thirsty. But when food or drink was offered him, it became apparent that this absurd idea had been suggested to him by his- -own feeling of hunger and thirst, and that the word thev referred to himself, not to others. He had frequent violent fits of coughing, after each of which he would rerume the thread of his conversation, first expressing in appropriate and sym- pathetic terms his concern on account of his friend's complaint. It grieves me, he would say, to see you suffering from so troublesome and so distressing a cough. t Little by little all these cases steadily advance toward absolute incoordination and complete incoherence. They come * Descourtis, Op. cit., p. 37. t Hunter, quoted by Winslow, Obscure Diseases e/ the Brai?i. p. 278. to resemble congenital imbecility that has never been able to reach the mean level of human personality. In the gradual and progressive coordination which con- stitutes normal man, the idiot has met with arrest of development. In him the evolution has not preceded beyond the early stages: it has made provision for the physical life and some few elementary manifestations of the psychic life; but the conditions of an ulterior development are lacking. We have now in conclusion to consider this fact of coordination as the groundwork of personality. But we must first attempt a rapid classification of the perturbations of per- sonality of which we have given so many illustrations, all so different from one an- other that it might seem, impossible to refer them to a few fundamental types. Though in the normal state the bodily sense (coensesthesis) undergoes different changes in the course of one's life—in the evolution which goes on from birth to death—this change is usually so slow, so continuous, that the assimilation of new sensations proceeds little by little, and the transformation is brought about in- sensibly, so producing what we call iden- tity, i.e., apparent permanence amid inces- sant variations. Nevertheless all serious maladies, as well as all profound changes (puberty, change of life) import more or less of indecision: between the new state and the old there is not immediate fu- sion and as it has been well expressed, at first these new sensations present themselves to the old Me as an extrane- ous Thee. But should the general bod- ily sense (coena'Sthesis) be modified sud- denly; should there be a large instanta- neous influx of unwonted states, then the fundamental element of the Me is com- pletely transformed : the individual is parted from his prior personality, and he appears to himself like another. More usually there is a period of disturbance and incertitude, and the break is not in- stantaneous. When the morbid state has become fixed, one or other of these three principal types of diseases of per- sonality will be presented: I. The general bodily sense is changed completely. The new state serves as basis for a new psychic life (new ways of sensing, perceiving, thinking, hence a new memory). Of the former Me there remain only the completely organized processes (language, manual dexterity, power of walking, etc.), activities that are](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21074409_0050.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
