It is quite probable, too, that there is a mere disintegration of the personality without its destruction by an organized trend; such a one is certainly impossible to demonstrate in many cases.
Here, too, it is easier to observe than to measure, and there is no telling now if the degree of personal integration for very complicated reactions will ever be brought under experimental control; for the lower psychomotor levels of reaction, however, there is considerably better hope.
I will quote two instances of the way in which this disintegration of personality is spoken of by the cases themselves. It is not often clearly expressed, dementia præcox cases being commonly inaccessible. First in the case of a young woman of twenty-five, with nothing very definite appearing in the previous history. At various times in the psychosis she makes such utterances as these:
My mind seems to be in layers like strata in geology. . . . Something seems to push my mind into channels I don't want it to be in. . . . I don't know why I think of these things. I seem to be bound to find out a lot of things I am not interested in, as if some one was teasing me. It makes me feel frightened, as if I was changing to something else. It is like the difference between a good and a bad person. All at once I seem to wish somebody would die. I don't mean it, of course, but I can't keep it down. . . . If I could gather up a good will it would be all right. Instead these vague ideas seem to be wandering all around as if you were going through a sort of labyrinth. . . . I can't say anything I want to. It is like going through a river where there are a lot of weeds and they get in your way and you can't get through. . . . I seem to be imagining a lot of things. I can 't get my mind together. . . . I seem all of a sudden to sink right down into deep thoughts as though I were covered up in a snow-bank. Whether it is a loss of the train of thought or of the spirit I don't know—it seemed as if my mind had been crushed back and I had lost control. . . . I try to use my mind but there is no thought there; it is empty. Somebody takes my mind away every two seconds. . . . If they want something to experiment on let them take a rabbit. I want my intellect.
And a young man of about thirty, of shut-in personality, and of somewhat coarser mental fiber than the previous case, expresses himself in this way, with more delusional coloring, the disconnected fragments of his own personality being rationalized as "spirits."
