hence they are frequently used in dementia præcox as defensive and conjuring formulæ. A precocious dement under my care, whenever the doctors refused to grant him anything, threatened them with the following words: "I grand duke Mephisto will lave you treated with blood revenge for Orang-Outang-representance." Others use the "power-words" to conjure the voice.[1] (See, e. g., Schreber's "Denkwürdigkeiten.")
This embellishment is also expressed in gesture and writing; the latter, as is known, is especially decorated with all kinds of peculiar flourishes. We find a normal analogy to this, for example, in young girls who, out of capriciousness, imitate an especially marked or original script. Precocious dements frequently have a characteristic writing. The contrasting tendencies of their psyche are in a way expressed by their script, which is sometimes low and flowing, now precipitous, now large and now small. The same thing can readily be observed in temperamental hysterics, where one may demonstrate without any difficulty that the script variations begin at a complex. In the normal we also observe disturbances associated with complexes.
The tendency to embellishment is of course not the only source of neologisms. A great many originate from dreams and especially from hallucinations. Not seldom we meet with analyzable speech contaminations and sound-associations, the origin of which can be explained according to principles treated of in the receding chapters. (For excellent examples see Schreber.) The origin of the "word-salad" can be explained by Janet's conception of the "abaissement du niveau mental." Many patients who are somewhat negativistic and refuse to consider the questions show "etymological " inclinations, inasmuch as instead of answering they disjoint the question and eventually furnish it with sound-associations. This is nothing else than a transference and concealment of the complex. They do not wish to consider the questions and direct themselves therefore to the sound manifestations. (For the analogy of not taking up the stimulus word see Contr. VIII Diagnost. Assoz.-Stud.) There are many indications besides to show that the sound features of speech are more striking to precocious dements than to other patients, since they so frequently occupy themselves with word-dissection
- ↑ Resembles the "Conjurations" of Janet (Les Obsessions).
