inadequate we have to represent to ourselves the mechanisms existing in every normal person, which always tend to repress the unpleasant and to bury it as deeply as possible.
The explosive excitements in dementia præcox may be brought about in the same way as the explosive affects in hysteria. Every person treating hysteria is acquainted with the sudden affect and acute exacerbations of the symptoms. Frequently we are confronted with a psychological riddle and deem it sufficient to note "patient is again excited." But a careful analysis always discovers a clear reason for the excitement; now it is a careless remark from those about her, now a certain letter, or the anniversary of a critical event, etc. To liberate the complex, a mere nuance, perhaps only a symbol will suffice.[1] So also in dementia præcox, by careful analysis one may frequently find the psychological thread leading to the cause of the excitement. Of course we do not find this in all cases, the disease is too opaque for that, but we have absolutely no reason to suppose that no sufficient connections exist.
That the affects in dementia præcox are probably not extinguished but only peculiarly transposed and blocked, we see on rare occasions when we obtain a complete catamnestic view of the disease.[2] The apparently senseless affects and moodiness are subjectively explained by hallucinations and pathological fancies which can with difficulty or not at all be reproduced during the height of the disease because they belong to the complex. If a catatonic is constantly occupied by hallucinatory scenes which crowd themselves into his consciousness with elemental force and with a much stronger tone than the external reality, we can then without any further explanations readily understand that he is unable to adequately react to the questions of the physician.
- ↑ Thus Riklin mentions the following instructive example: A hysterical patient periodically vomited all milk she took. The analysis during hypnosis showed that while patient lived with a relative he once assaulted her sexually as she went to the stable to fetch some milk. "Ibi homo puellam coagere conatus est, ut semen, quod masturbatione effluebat, ore reciperet." During the week after the hypnosis patient nearly always vomited what milk she took, though she had total amnesia for the hypnosis. Analytische Untersuchungen der Symptom und Assoziationen eines Falles von Hysteric. Psych.-Neurol. Wochenschr., 1905.
- ↑ See Forel: Autobiography of a case of acute mania, and Schreber: Denkwürdigkeiten eines Nervenkranken. Mutze, Leipzig.
