These gradually creeping changes are very distinctly seen in obsessive ideas (see Cont. VIII). Janet, too, speaks of the gradual changes of obsessive processes.[1]
There are, however, stereotypies or rather stereotyped automatisms which from the very beginning do not show any psychic content by which they can be understood even symbolically. I am thinking especially now of the almost muscular manifestations of automatism, like catalepsy, or certain forms of negativistic muscular resistances. These exquisite catatonic symptoms, as has been already shown by many investigators, we also find in organic disturbances, such as paralysis, brain tumors, etc. Brain physiology, especially the well-known experiments of Goltz, teach that in vertebrates when the cerebrum is removed a condition of automatism par excellence results. Forel's experiments with ants (destroying the corpora quadrigemina) shows that automatism results when the greatest (and most differentiated?) part of brain tissue is removed. The debrained animal becomes the well-known "reflex machine," it remains either sitting or standing in a certain preferred attitude until it is forced by external stimuli to a reflex action. It is certainly a somewhat daring analogy when some cases of catatonia are compared to such reflex machines, although they frequently appeal to one as such. But when we go somewhat deeper and consider that in this disease a complex occupies almost all the associations, holding them persistently, that this complex is absolutely unassailable by psychological stimuli, that it is, as it were, split off from all external influences, it would then seem that the before mentioned analogy is of somewhat greater significance. The complex on account of its intensity lays claim to the brain activity in its greatest extent, so that a great number of impulses belonging to other spheres become dissipated. It can then be easily understood that on account of the predominance, the congealing of a complex, a con-
- ↑ Janet, l. c., p. 125. A female patient says: "Formerly I used to look back in memory in order to know whether I ought to reproach myself for something, in order to reassure myself about my conduct—but now it is not at all the same thing. I always recall what I have done a week or two weeks ago, and I see the things exactly, but I have absolutely no interest in seeing them."
In this example the deviation from the content proper is especially noteworthy.
