prehension is generally disturbed only during periods of excitement. Apprehension and retention, or impressibility and retentiveness, are for the most part only passive processes which take place in us without the expenditure of a great amount of energy, just as mere hearing and seeing when unaccompanied by attention.
From Weygandt's idea of "apperceptive dementia" (Janet—abaissement du niveau mental) one can in a measure deduce the origin of the above mentioned symptoms (automatism, stereotypy, etc.); but we are unable from this to understand the individual multiformity of the symptoms, their capriciousness, the peculiar content of the delusions, hallucinations, etc. Many investigators have already attempted to solve this riddle.
Stransky[1] examined dementia præcox from the clinical point of view. Proceeding from Kraepelin's idea of "emotional dementia," he asserts that by this conception two things are understood. Firstly, poverty or superficiality of emotional reactions, secondly an incoordination between the same and the content of consciousness dominating the psyche.[2] In this fashion Stransky differentiates the content of Kraepelin's idea, showing that clinically one sees more than the "emotional dementia." The striking incongruity between idea and affect which we can daily observe in dementia præcox, is a more frequent symptom during the development of the disease than the emotional dementia. The incongruity between idea and emotional tone forced Stransky to accept two separate psychical factors, the noöpsyche and the thymopsyche. The former idea embraces all pure intellectual, the latter the affective processes. Both these ideas nearly correspond in Schopenhauer's psychology to intellect and will. In the healthy psyche there is naturally a constant, very fine, simultaneous, coördinated action of both factors. But as soon as incoördination steps in, it corresponds analogically to ataxia, and we then have the picture of dementia præcox with all its disproportionate and unintelligible affects. So far the
- ↑ Stransky: Zur Kenntniss gewisser erworbener Blödsinnsformen, 1903. Jahrb. f. Psych., Vol. XXIV, p. 1.
- ↑ Jahrbuch. f. Psych., XXIV, p. 28.—Idem: Zur Lehre von der Dementia præcox. Zentr.-Bl. f. Nervenheilk. u. Psych., XXII Jahrg.—Idem: Zur Auffassung gewisser symptome der Dementia præcox. Neurol. Zentr.-Bl., 1904, Nr. 23, u. 24.—Idem: Über die Dementia præcox. Wiener mediz. Presse, 1905.
