own, the other that of some one else; only the former can be accounted for as due to the incipient stimulation of his own speech centers, the other is probably auditory.[1] This interpretation is supported by the interesting fact, established by Pierre Janet, that some patients can themselves speak during their verbal hallucinations, while others can not. Again, only of the latter class must we hold that the motor memories are necessary to speech.[2] Indeed, there is a characteristic difference between the two classes–a difference first pointed out, it seems, by Baillarger–i. e., with those patients who are able to speak without interrupting the voice which they hear, we have a hallucination of objective speech: they hear what they think is a real voice outside them. While the other class have a hallucination of internal speech. They declare that there is some one inside them, speaking to them. Séglas holds, with evident truth, that these latter hallucinations are ‘psycho-motor’[3] in their seat, while the ‘objective’ kind are auditory. (2) There are cases of motor aphasia due to impairment of hearing, the motor centers being intact, i. e., cases of auditory verbal amnesic aphasia.[4] (3) We recognize and understand words which we are unable to pronounce and which we have never written; this recognition must be by aid of visual or auditory images. The part played by the visual and motor memories respectively, in my own case, is seen in the fact that when I wish to speak in any language but English, the German words come first into my mind; but when I sit down to write in a foreign language, French words invariably present themselves. This means that my German is speech-motor and auditory, having been learned conversationally in Germany,
- ↑ See case of Charcot quoted by Ballet, Le langage intérieur, p. 64, also cases in Séglas, Les troubles du langage chez les aliénés, p. 126.
- ↑ Cf. Revue Philosophique, Nov. 1892, p. 520, and Séglas, loc. cit., p. 117 and p. 145. A case is reported of a patient who could stop his internal voice by holding his breath (Annales psychol., Jan., ’93, p. 103).
- ↑ Séglas, loc. cit., p. 147; Janet, loc. cit., who advocates the expression “kinaesthetic verbal” instead of “psycho-motor,” as applying to this hallucination of internal speech.
- ↑ See cases collected by Ballet, loc. cit., pp. 91–92; also Bastian’s case, Brain as Organ of Mind, p. 642; cf. also Paulhan, Revue Philosophique, XXI, pp. 37 ff.
