Furthermore, if the patient, as described by Schreber, perceives other persons in his environment as fleeting shadows of men, we can again understand that he is unable to react adequately to the stimuli of reality, that is, he reacts adequately, but in his own way.
The lack of self-control or the inability to control the affects is characteristic of dementia præcox. We find this defect wherever there is a morbidly enhanced emotivity, especially in hysteria, epilepsy, etc. The symptom only shows that there exists a marked disturbance of the ego-synthesis, that is, there exist powerul autonomous complexes which no longer submit to the hierarchy of the ego-complex.
The lack of affective rapport so characteristic of dementia præcox we also freqauently meet in hysteria, where we are unable to chain the personality and penetrate into the complex. In hysteria, to be sure, this is only temporary, because the intensity of the complex is rather fluctuating, but in dementia præcox, where the complex is stable, we can get an affective rapport only for the moment if we get the power to penetrate into the complex. In hysteria we gain something by this penetration, but in dementia præcox we gain nothing, for immediately thereafter we are again confronted by the personality of dementia præcox just as cold and strange as before. Under certain circumstances one may by means of analysis even cause a flaring up of the symptoms. In hysteria, on the contrary, a certain loosening takes place when the analysis is over. Whoever has penetrated into the mind of a hysteric by means of analysis knows that he has thereby gained a moral power over the patient (this is also true of confessions among normal individuals). But in dementia præcox, no matter how thorough the analysis may be, everything remains as before. The patients cannot enter into the mind of the physician, they adhere to their delusional assertions, they attribute hostile motives to the analysis, they are, and in a word, they remain uninfluenced.
2. Characterological Abnormalities.
The characterological disturbances claim an important position in the symptomatology of dementia præcox, though one can really not speak of "dementia præcox character." Yet one
