tionship, faith and certitude disappear when the power of attention disappears."
As shown by this citation, much depends on attention as conceived by Masselon. The more general features of the catatonic condition he summarizes as "apathie, aboulie, perte de l'activité intellectuelle." A brief consideration of these three abstractions teaches that fundamentally they mean the same thing, and indeed, Masselon in his work always tries to find that word or simile which would best express the innermost essence of his correct feeling. However, scarcely any concept of human language should be so broad; indeed, there is no one who has not already been impressed by some school or system with the biased limits of meaning. We can best find out what Masselon conceives as the essence of dementia præcox by listening to the wording of some of his statements: "The habitual state is the emotional apathy … these disturbances are intimately connected with the disturbances of intelligence: they are of the same nature … the patients do not manifest any desires … all volition is destroyed … the disappearance of desire is connected with all the other disturbances of mental activity … a veritable weakness of cerebral activity … the elements of the mind show a tendency to live an individual life not being any more systematized by the inactive mind."[1]
In Masselon's work there is a mixture of many things and views that he feels belong to one root which, however, he is unable to find without obscuring his work. Nevertheless, in spite of his shortcomings, Masselon's researches contain useful observations. Thus he finds a striking resemblance between dementia præcox and hysteria in the marked self-distractibility of the patient by everything possible and especially by his own symptoms (Sommer's optical fixation), and also in exhaustibility and capricious memory. German critics have reproached him for this discovery, but certainly unjustly when we consider that Masselon means only the reproductive ability. If a patient gives a wrong answer to a direct question it is taken by the German school as by-speaking (Vorbeireden) as negativism; in other words, as active resistance. Masselon, however, considers this as an inability to reproduce. When superficially considered it
- ↑ Masselon: l. c., p. 62, 71, 135, 140.
