Abstract
Psychiatry made a great advance when it began to recognize the psychological meaning of mental symptoms—when it took the stand that it is not enough to establish that a patient has, say, delusions, but that one must relate the content of the delusions to the patient's life experience. Another stride has yet to be made, and that is the recognition of the physiological meaning of symptoms. Mental activity being the manifestation of cerebral activity, mental aberration must signify some aberration in the function of the brain, however normal this organ may appear to the eye. In a case of mental disorder, therefore, just as much as in hemiplegia, one must inquire how the laws of physiology reveal themselves in the signs and symptoms of the disease. To return to the example, it is not enough to show that the content of a delusion represents the patient's thoughts and strivings, but there remains the question: What has happened to his brain to cause his thoughts and strivings to assume the guise of delusions, when in a normal man they merely take the form of fancies? When a deluded patient says he is a very rich man, a certain psychological cause is at work. A healthy man, too, may be worried about money, but, in response to this cause, he merely fancies himself a rich man. The demonstration of a psychological cause, therefore, does not explain the sick man's delusion. All it explains is the content of the delusion; since the patient is worried about money, his delusion deals with wealth rather than some other topic. But it does not explain why the patient has delusions. The explanation of this must lie in some cerebral defect which permits inferior modes of thought to occur in response to certain situations. Psychiatry will not reach its full stature as a science until it regards each mentally sick person and each of his symptoms as a problem in cerebral physiology.
Publisher
Royal College of Psychiatrists
Reference6 articles.
1. BROMIDE DELIRIUM AND OTHER BROMIDE PSYCHOSES
2. Physicians sometimes make the mistake of saying that the highest centres are more highly organized than the lowest. Thus one writer speaks of the control exercised by the highest centres “over automatic and unorganized motor processes.” Another, referring to Jackson's three levels, speaks of the highest as the “third and most highly organized level.” These writers confuse “organized” and “complex.” The highest centres are the most complex, but they are the least highly organized. The most highly organized centre is that in which the con nections between the component parts are most stable, most resistant to interruption. It is that which functions most stably under the widest variety of conditions. On this view (which is, of course, Jackson's) the most highly organized centres are the lowest. Thus the centres for circulation and respiration are so highly organized that they function stably day and night under all but extreme conditions. By contrast, the highest centres are so little organized that their smooth functioning is impaired by relatively slight influences; a little alcohol will prevent the most efficient exercise of one's highest faculties. Were the highest centres the most highly organized, the mind would lack agility and plasticity; people would be unable to adapt them selves to new conditions, to discard outworn ideas for new ones.
3. “Lecture on Neurological Fragments,”;Lancet,1892
Cited by
20 articles.
订阅此论文施引文献
订阅此论文施引文献，注册后可以免费订阅5篇论文的施引文献，订阅后可以查看论文全部施引文献