CHAPTER IV.
Dementia Præcox and Hysteria.
a parallel.
To write an exhaustive comparison between dementia præcox and hysteria would be possible only if we knew more thoroughly the disturbances of the association activities of both diseases, and especially the affective disturbances in normal individuals. At present we are far from this. What I intend to do here is to recall the psychological resemblances based on the preceding discussions. As a later treatment of the association experiments in dementia præcox will show, an antecedent comparison between dementia præcox and hysteria is necessary in order to understand the manifestations of the associations in dementia præcox.
1. The Disturbances of the Emotions.
The more recent investigators of dementia præcox (Kraepelin, Stransky and others) group the emotional disturbances about the central point in the picture of the disease. On one side one speaks of emotional dementia, and on the other of an incongruity between ideation and affect (Stransky).
I do not speak here of terminal dementia as seen in the terminal stages of the disease which can hardly be compared to hysteria (they are two totally different diseases), but I limit myself to the apathetic conditions during the acute stages of the disorder. The emotional apathy so striking in many cases of dementia præcox has a certain analogy to the "belle indifférence" of many hysterics who describe their complaints with smiling serenity, thus giving a rather inadequate impression, or speak with equanimity about things which should really profoundly touch them. In Contributions VI and VIII of the "Diagnost. Assoz.-Stud." I endeavored to point out how the patients apparently speak unemotionally about things which to them are of the most intimate significance. This is especially striking in analyses where
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