Emotion and Insanity

S Thalbitzer, Thalbitzer, S

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781136299599
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Health Care Delivery

First published in 1999. This is Volume XVII of nineteen in the Abnormal and Clinical Psychology series. Written in 1926 through this study is the general conclusion at which the author has been enabled to arrive by a study of the manic-depressive psychosis. Demonstrating that within we find every kind of feeling represented —even the most complicated—and on a more elaborate scale, so that each particular feature appears with greater clearness. Secondly there is a description and analysis of mixed forms at various levels, of those mental states in which different feeling-elements are in operation simultaneously and with opposite and contrasted effects, so that the elements are set off one against another.

INTRODUCTION

 

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

WHEN an oculist or a kidney-specialist opens a book on the physiology of the eye or the kidney, he will always, except in matters of detail, share the general views of the author as to the function and product of the organ under discussion; for, as a rule, author and reader have the same premises. The point of view of each is based on the same broad foundation of general physiological training which they have acquired by their medical education and practice.

It is quite otherwise with the mental specialist, who hopes, by the study of a psychological work, to get some help towards the explanation of mental phenomena whether they are the result of a diseased or of a healthy brain. Only too often the mental specialist has the impression that between him and the psychological writer there yawns an impassable gulf. It is as if each were speaking a language of his own, incomprehensible to the other. They lack the common basis which is necessary for mutual understanding. As a rule the mental specialist stands (and ought to stand firmly) on a foundation of general physiological knowledge which he has acquired through his medical training and his experience as a doctor and which has, as it were, become part of him; the psychological writer, on the other hand, has usually quite different premises. The explanation is not difficult to find.

From early times mental phenomena have been the object of burning interest and fantastic speculation on the part of human beings. Ancient philosophers buried themselves in psychological studies and drew up wise systems and classifications; and psychology had already made considerable progress when the beginnings of a really scientific physiology first appeared. Psychology, therefore, had a great advantage over this comparatively young science.

In the course of time, as it was gradually recognized that even mental phenomena correspond to the activity of a material organism, the human brain, psychologists certainly were not unwilling to take physiology into their service, but as a rule they did so only when its conclusions did not conflict with the prevailing psychological views of the time. In the latter event, psychology, by virtue of its seniority and its wide scope, exercised a tyranny in the province of cerebral physiology which cannot be said to have wholly disappeared even to-day. It is certainly now generally recognized that the brain, as an organ of the body, must be subject to the same main physiological laws as all other organs, and as a necessary consequence psychology must abandon its isolation and take its place as one branch of the physiology of the whole body. Yet physiological writers are constantly found approaching psychological questions (i.e. questions of brain physiology) with a nervous caution and uncertainty which is chiefly caused by the fear of taking a purely physiological view of the brain (i.e. of mental processes) and thereby offending current psychological opinion. As a rule physiologists prefer to avoid the subject, in order not to arouse the watchful jealousy of the psychologists, which allows no one who is regarded as an outsider to approach a province which they consider theirs and theirs alone, and in which they desire at all costs to maintain their supremacy.

About the middle of the last century, at a time when psychology seemed to have proceeded as far as was possible along the paths which it had hitherto followed, an attempt was made to open up a new avenue to the understanding of the activity of the human brain; and thus arose the science called psycho-physics. Its object was to try to throw light on the operations of the human brain by measuring all the results of psychic activity which were regarded as capable of measurement. The direct and true descendant of this psycho-physics is the psycho-physiology of the present day.

The exponents of this science have in past years produced an immense literature and a vast store of material in the form of measurements of the functioning of the sense-organs, of associative processes, of the use of the muscles, of vaso-motor organic changes under varying conditions, etc.; and in this way there has been produced much raw material, valuable in part perhaps and sometimes interesting, and recorded to some extent in curves and charts. Whether the gain corresponds in any measure to the time and labour involved may certainly be regarded as doubtful.

Of course it will always be interesting to record by means of charts and curves anything in this province that is measurable, but it must be remembered that only comparatively peripheral phenomena can be explained by this means, while the essence of the matter, namely, what happens in the central organ, will certainly remain for ever beyond the reach of mathematical treatment. Certain exponents of psycho-physiology have not realized this, and attempt, often by means of quite arbitrary interpretations of their for the most part highly ambiguous curves and charts, to arrive at far-reaching and quite untenable conclusions about the activity of the brain. Thus, insufficiently grounded in physiology and indifferent exponents of psychology as psycho-physiologists have unfortunately often proved themselves, they have brought their science into discredit among psychologists who think on physiological lines. They have often been so blindly devoted to their experiments and their curves, that they quite fail to notice if their results contradict the facts which lie plainly before them in daily life, or are at cross purposes with universal and established physiological truths.

But though we should not expect too much from modern psycho-physiology, there is another science closely related to psychology, the results of which, especially in the last few years, seem to have influenced psychology only in a small degree, but will certainly in the future form a very important source for it; I refer to modern psycho-pathology or psychiatry, the science of mental diseases. Here and there in psychological work we certainly meet an attempt to use the practical knowledge of this science; but as soon as psychologists venture on to psycho-pathological ground, they grope about as a rule in an amazingly dilettante fashion. This is not a reproach; it is in itself quite intelligible. For modern psychiatry, even though a new science, has already covered so wide a range that it alone is sufficient to demand a man’s complete service.

There is danger in the fact that the psycho-pathological conditions which have most strongly attracted the attention of psychological writers are the hysterical ones; for among mental diseases there is probably hardly any group which needs greater care and psychiatric experience in analysis than the hysterical, if we are not to be completely misled. While psychological writers cannot for the most part be considered competent to venture into the province of psychiatry and profit by its experiences, it cannot be maintained that the contrary holds good. It is true that as far as weight of erudition and extensive reading in the specifically psychological sphere are concerned, the psychiatrist cannot as a rule compete with the professional psychologist; but what he lacks in the way of theory he can make up to a very considerable extent by practice. It is the daily and constant duty of the mental specialist to penetrate into the mental life of human beings; he is in reality the practical psychologist par excellence, or at any rate he can find in his daily life the conditions under which he may become so. Moreover, the work of the mental specialist naturally leads him, even outside the hospital and the consulting room, to adopt almost involuntarily the same observant and scrutinizing attitude towards those whom he meets in ordinary life as he does every day towards his patients. And the knowledge and understanding of normal mental life is naturally just as important for the mental specialist as the knowledge of the activity of the healthy eye or the healthy kidney is for the oculist or the kidney-specialist. On the other hand, it will be obvious that the knowledge of various abnormal mental conditions can be of great value for the understanding of the corresponding normal states. That the knowledge of pathological states may often be profitably used to throw light on corresponding normal conditions is a point of view which is not new or surprising to doctors. We all know how deeply indebted our normal anatomy and physiology are to pathology, and this holds good not least of cerebral and neuropathology.

What should we know of many of the centres now definitely established in the cerebral cortex, or of their tracts to and from the periphery, had we not learnt to understand them by investigating cases of degeneration of those tracts, brought on by abnormal processes? What should we know of the position of the various reflex tracts if they had not been established by the examination of pathological cases? That it is possible similarly to profit by the study of certain kinds of mental diseases in order to arrive at an understanding of the corresponding normal mental conditions, I shall endeavour to show in the following pages.

Psychologists, then, far from being justified in refusing, as many of them do, to accept the conclusions of psychiatrists under the pretext that they understand only abnormal conditions, ought rather to look upon the psychiatrist’s knowledge of abnormal conditions also as an advantage which he has over them. The psychologist who rejects the psychiatrist’s contributions to the elucidation of psychological problems under the pretext that he understands only abnormal mental life is as false in his judgment as the anatomist or physiologist who denies to the oculist or kidney-specialist the right to join in the discussion of the normal structure and function of the organ in question. When I plead in the preceding paragraphs so strongly for the right of the psychiatrist to take a part, and even a very important one, in the discussion of psychological questions, it is not because psychological as well as psycho-physiological works have not already been written by psychiatrists; but in almost all works of this kind with which I am acquainted the authors seem from the outset to be prejudiced in favour of the system and point of view of one or another psychological school. The moment they take pen in hand to treat of a psychological subject, they seem to lose sympathy with their original mother-science, and to forget the foundation acquired through their medical training in the knowledge of fundamental physiological laws which hold good wherever we find the functioning of the living organ.

Of far greater value for psychologically minded psychiatrists is the tendency within psychology to base itself, without being hoodwinked by psycho-physiology and its pseudo-exact method, on careful observation and close study of the diverse experiences of daily life. One of the most eminent living exponents of this Psychology of Experience is the Danish philosopher Höffding, to whose point of view I shall often refer in the following pages. Höffding’s power of observation is usually so reliable and his view, especially of psychic phenomena, is so simple and close to life that it is doubtful whether any other psychological method can find such support in physiology. Without the physiological premises which can probably be given only by medical training, Höffding conceives psychical phenomena, their constitution and their history, in such a way that his conception of them involuntarily harmonizes in almost every detail with a physiological method of regarding the brain and its function. But while Höffding, in various points, still observes a certain caution in the conclusions which he draws from the almost complete parallelism between his psychological observation and a physiological conception of the activity of the brain, the present author aims at drawing the natural and necessary conclusions unhesitatingly and completely. And it will certainly prove possible in this way to reach a clearer understanding of human mental life in certain directions, especially those manifestations of it which we call moods, feelings and emotions.

PSYCHOLOGY

CHAPTER II

PSYCHOLOGY

IT is to empirical psychology that we owe the familiar distinction between three different sides or elements in mental activity. In every psychical process, in every concrete mental product, we always find these three essentially different elements: intellectual activity, feeling and will. According to whether the first, second or third of these elements is the predominating one, the concrete psychical products are classed as intellectual processes, affective states and manifestations of will. A division into three mental elements is natural also in a consideration of the brain from the physiological point of view and is also confirmed by the findings of psycho-pathology.

A more thorough investigation of these circumstances considered in conjunction with certain pathological facts about the brain, will, however, as we shall presently see, necessitate a shifting of the dividing line which has hitherto been drawn by psychologists between elementary intellectual activity and that side of mental life which is actively directed outwards.

A

Feeling is the psychical element which is recognized as pleasure or displeasure (un-pleasure) according to its positive or negative direction. A more exact definition of these opposites (pleasure and displeasure) cannot be given, because feeling as a psychical element cannot be further analysed or traced back to anything simpler. It must suffice to indicate the psychical processes in which feeling is the predominating element and which we call affective states.

These fall naturally into three groups: moods, feelings and emotions. The dividing line between these groups is uncertain; the difference between them is chiefly a difference of quantity and is based on differences in intensity, suddenness and duration. Affective states of comparatively little intensity which begin slowly and die down gradually and yet as a rule last for a considerable time, are called Moods. Feelings are distinguished from moods principally by their greater intensity; and, lastly, Emotions are distinguished from the preceding affective states by their sudden appearance, their considerable intensity, their comparatively short duration and rapid cessation.

From this it is obvious that it is often a matter of opinion which of the three groups should include those affective states which lie between them. Further, the dividing lines between them are obliterated by the inaccuracy of ordinary speech and a lack of shades of expression; a word like gladness, for example, is used as often of an affective process as of a feeling or a mood. In any case, however, an exact division between these three types of affective states is unimportant for the present investigation.

Within the different groups of affective states each single process is characterized partly by the intellectual elements which it contains, partly by the impulses to movement and action which are included in it, but chiefly by the different way in which pleasure and displeasure mingle and conflict with one another in each single affective state.

As we shall see in what follows, it is only very seldom (if indeed ever in adult and developed individuals) that we find pure unmixed states of pleasure and displeasure. The higher the intellectual development of the individual, the more nuances and facets will there be as a rule in his feelings. This rich variety of shading in the element of feeling is, however, due entirely to the varying ways in which the opposites pleasure and displeasure combine and conflict with one another.

Wilhelm Wundt, who was chiefly responsible for the present psycho-physiological school in Germany, and whose teaching held sway in German psychology for almost half a century, advances in his works* the theory that there are three dimensions of feeling. Besides the ‘dimension’ pleasure-unpleasure, Wundt thinks that he can distinguish two other dimensions in which the psychical phenomenon of feeling can move—namely, the dimension of excitation and quiescence and the dimension of tension and relaxation; and he tries to illustrate this idea by means of a drawing in which two of these dimensions are represented as two lines on the plane of the paper intersecting one another at right angles, while the third is imagined to run from front to back on a plane which cuts that of the paper vertically.

Now it is significant that Wundt in ascribing these three dimensions (or the ability to move in them) to the psychical phenomenon feeling, uses only a diagram, a comparison which he h...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Half Title
• The International Library of Psychology
• Title Page
• Copyright
• CONTENTS
• PREFACE
• CHAPTER I. Introduction
• CHAPTER II. Psychology
• CHAPTER III. Psychiatry and Psychology
• CHAPTER IV. Physiology
• INDEX