Author Description

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1921 edition. Excerpt: ... chapter vi The Nature Of The Neuroses And The Psychoses There were two conclusions reached in the last chapter with which the matter of this chapter must be approached. One was a conclusion of fact, namely, that the region of psychopathology lies midway between the psychological and the social strata: the other was a conclusion of method: namely, that all of the facts of a given level of organization cannot be expressed in terms of a lower level, but can only be resumed in terms of the higher level. In other words a neurosis or a psychosis can only be understood if it is possible to describe it in psycho-sociological terms. The symptoms of mental disease display themselves in conduct, they are expressed in hopes and fears, in delusions and obsessions and none of these can be understood in terms, for example, of metabolism. There may be, it is true, various physiological and structural disorders and defects which are related to the mental disease but they are in no sense causes but only correlates; they are coexistent and in time of origin often contemporaneous but they cannot be considered as causes because they do not include the supposed effect, that is the mental illness; they are only parts of the picture. Mental reactions are total reactions in the sense that they are the expression of the tendency of the individual as a whole, they express the final result of the integration of the action systems and no part of the reacting individual can possibly include the explanation for such a total response any more than the written word can be adequately explained by one of the letters composing it. In the same sense the total reaction can only be fully understood by understanding all its parts, its structure, how it is composed, but in the...