and interpretations.[1] The unconscious shows a special tendency towards new speech formation. (See the "Himmelssprachen" of the classical somnambulists, and especially the interesting creations of Helene Smith.)[2]
Regardlessness, narrow-mindedness, and an inaccessibility to persuasion, we find both in the normal and pathological spheres, especially when accompanied by affective causes. Under certain conditions there need only exist a firm religious or other conviction to make a person careless, cruel and narrow-minded. There is no necessity to assume for this an emotional dementia. On account of their excessive sensitiveness hysterics become egotistic and inconsiderate, and in this manner they torment themselves as well as their fellow beings. For this, too, there need be no dementia, it is simply a blinding through the affect. Indeed I must here again repeat the already often-mentioned restriction, namely, that between hysteria and dementia præcox there is only a resemblance of the psychological mechanism, but no identity. In dementia præcox these mechanisms reach much deeper perhaps because they are complicated by toxic effects.
The silly behavior of the hebephrenic finds its analogy in the Moria states[3] of hysterics. I had under observation for some time a hysterical woman of high intelligence who frequently suf-
- ↑ Forel's patient (Arch. f. Psych., XXXIV) was forced to make many such interpretations, thus, for example, she interpretated the name Vaterlaus as "pater laus tibi." A patient of mine complained of the allusion which was made by means of the food. He had lately found in his food a linen thread (Leinenfaser). He guessed that it referred to Fräulein Feuerlein (an earlier acquaintance) with whom however he had certainly had no intimate relations. One of my patients complained one day to me that he could not understand what "a green figure" had to do with him. He got this idea because they put chloroform into his food (chloros, forma).
- ↑ In examinations of unconscious writing ("Psychographie") it can especially be well observed how the unconscious plays with the presentations. The words are not seldom written in a reversed sequence of letters or there are singular conglomerations of words in otherwise clear sentences. Under constellations of spiritualistic convictions attempts are made towards formation of a new language. The most prominent medium known is Helene Smith (comp. Flournoy, Des Indes à la Planète Mars). Similar manifestations I have reported in my work: Zur Psych, u. Path, sog. occulter Phänomene.
- ↑ Fürstner: Arch. f. Psych., Bd. XXXI.
