conditions of distraction. As Janet[1] maintains, the foundation of hysterical anaesthesia is the loss of attention. He was able to prove in youthful hysterics “a striking indifference and distracted attention in the whole region of the emotional life.” Misreading is a notable instance, which illustrates hysterical dispersion of attention most beautifully. The psychology of this process may perhaps be viewed as follows: during reading aloud, attention becomes paralysed for this act and is directed towards some other object. Meanwhile the reading is continued mechanically, the sense impressions are received as before, but in consequence of the dispersion the excitability of the perceptive centre is lowered, so that the strength of the sense impression is no longer adequate to fix the attention in such a way that perception as such is conducted along the motor speech route; thus all the inflowing associations which at once unite with any new sense impression are repressed. The further psychological mechanism permits of only two possible explanations: (1) The admission of the sense impression is received unconsciously (because of the increase of threshold stimulus), in the perceptive centre just below the threshold of consciousness, and consequently is not incorporated in the attention and conducted back to the speech route. It only reaches verbal expression through the intervention of the nearest associations, in this case the dialect expression[2] for this object. (2) The sense impression is perceived consciously, but at the moment of its entrance into the speech route it reaches a territory whose excitability is diminished by the dispersion of attention. At this place the dialect word is substituted by association for the motor speech image, and it is uttered as such. In either case it is certain that it is the acoustic dispersed attention which fails to correct the error. Which of the two explanations is correct cannot be cleared up in this case; probably both approach the truth, for the dispersion of attention seems to be general, and in each case concerns more than one of the centres engaged in the act of reading aloud. In our case this phenomenon has a
