system of dementia præcox.[1] To illustrate my view I will cite this simple example.
A thirty-two-year-old servant had her teeth extracted so as to have a complete new set inserted. During the night following the operation there appeared a marked condition of anxiety. She considered herself damned and lost forever because she had committed a great sin. She should not have had her teeth extracted. People should pray for her that God might forgive her sins. The following morning the patient was again quiet and continued her work, but during the succeeding nights the anxiousness increased. I investigated her antecedent history obtained from her employers in whose service she had been for a number of years. Nothing, however, was known and the patient denied any kind of emotivity in her former life and emphasized with great affect that the extraction of the teeth was the cause of her disease. The disease rapidly progressed and the patient, manifesting all the symptoms of catatonia, had to be committed. Then it was discovered that for many years she had been concealing an illegitimate child, of whose existence even her family had not the slightest knowledge. For a year past the patient had been acquainted with a man whom she wished to marry, but could not fully decide to do so, as she was constantly worried by the fear that her lover would cast her off on learning of her former life. Here, then, was the source of the anxiety, and at the same time it becomes clear why the affect was inadequate to the extraction of the teeth.
The mechanism of transference shows the way to the comprehension of the origin of a delusional assertion. This way, however, is made difficult on account of infinite impediments. The well known oddness of the delusions in dementia præcox barely admits of any analogies. Nevertheless we have essential facts in normal as well as in hysterical psychology to allow of at least approaching the most familiar delusional forms.
- ↑ Godfernaux in his psychological analysis of Magnan's délere chronique à évolution systématique finds at its base mostly an effective disturbance: "In reality the thought of the patient is passive; he orients himself without taking into account all of his conceptions in the direction prescribed by his affective state."
Le sentiment et la pensée, p. 8.
