The Connection of Body with Mind - Mental Diseases : Part 5

The Story of the Mind
by James Mark Baldwin

(Page 9 of 14)

Defects of Will - Aboulia. - A few words may suffice to characterize the great class of mental defects which arise on the side of action. All inability to perform intentional acts is called Aboulia, or lack of Will. Certain defects of speech mentioned above illustrate this: cases in which the patient knows what he wishes to say and yet can not say it. This is the type of all the "partial" Aeolians. There may be no lack in determination and effort, yet the action may be impossible. But, in contrast with this, there is a more grave defect called "general" Aboulia.

Here we find a weakening of resolution, of determination, associated with some lack of self-control showing itself frequently by a certain hesitation or indecision. The patient says: "I can not make up my mind," "I can not decide." In exaggerated cases it becomes a form of mania called "insanity of doubt." The patient stands before a door for an hour hesitating as to whether he can open it or not, or carries to its extreme the experience we all sometimes have of finding it necessary to return again and again to make sure that we have locked the door or shut the draught of the furnace.

With these illustrations our notice of mental defects may terminate. The more complex troubles, the various insanities, manias, phobias, etc., can not be briefly described. Moreover, they are still wrapped in the profoundest obscurity. To the psychologist, however, there are certain guiding principles through the maze of facts, and I may state them in conclusion.

First, all mental troubles involve diseases of the brain and can be cured only as the brain is cured. It does not follow, of course, that in certain cases treatment by mental agencies, such as suggestion, arousing of expectation, faith, etc., may not be more helpful here, when wisely employed, than in troubles which do not involve the mind; but yet the end to be attained is a physical as well as a mental cure, and the means in the present state of knowledge, at any rate, are mainly physical means.

The psychologist knows practically nothing about the laws which govern the influence of mind on body. The principle of Suggestion is so obscure in its concrete working that the most practiced and best-informed operators find it impossible to control its use or to predict its results. To give countenance, in this state of things, to any pretended system or practice of mind cure, Christian science, spiritual healing, etc., which leads to the neglect of ordinary medical treatment, is to discredit the legitimate practice of medicine and to let loose an enemy dangerous to the public health.

Moreover, such things produce a form of hysterical subjectivism which destroys sound judgment, and dissolves the sense of reality which it has taken modern science many generations to build up. Science has all along had to combat such wresting of its more obscure and unexplained facts into alliance with the ends of practical quackery, fraud, and superstition; and psychologists need just now to be especially alive to their duty of combating the forms of this alliance which arise when the newer results of psychology are so used, whether it be to supplement the inadequate evidence of "thought-transference," to support the claims of spiritualism, or to justify in the name of "personal liberty" the substitution of a "healer" for the trained physician.

The parent who allows his child to die under the care of a "Christian Science healer" is as much a criminal from neglect as the one who, going but a step further in precisely the same direction, brings his child to starvation on a diet of faith. In France and Russia experimenting in hypnotism on well persons has been restricted by law to licensed experts; what, compared with that, should we say to this wholly amateurish experimenting with the diseased? Let the "healer" heal all he can, but let him not experiment to the extremity of life and death with the credulity and superstition of the people who think one "doctor" is as good as another.

Second, many experts agree that diseases of the mind, whatever their brain seat may be, all involve impairment of the Attention. This, at any rate, is a general mark of a deranged or defective mind. The idiot lacks power of attention. The maniac lacks control of his attention. The deluded lacks grasp and flexibility of attention. The crank can only attend to one thing. The old man is feeble in the attention, having lost his hold. So it goes. The attention is the instrument of the one sort of normal mental activity called Apperception, and so impairment of the attention shows itself at once in some particular form of defect.

Third, it is interesting to know that in progressive mental failure the loss of the powers of the mind takes place in an order which is the reverse of that of their original acquisition. The most complex functions, which are acquired last, are the first to show impairment. In cases of general degeneration, softening of the brain, etc., the intelligence and moral nature are first affected, then memory, association, and acquired actions of all sorts, while there remain, latest of all, actions of the imitative kind, most of the deep-set habits, and the instinctive, reflex, and automatic functions, This last condition is seen in the wretched victim of dementia and in the congenital idiot. The latter has, in addition to his life processes and instincts, little more than the capacity for parrot-like imitation. By this he acquires the very few items of his education.

The recovery of the patient shows the same stages again, but in the reversed direction; he pursues the order of the original acquisition, a process which physicians call Re-evolution.

Copyright 1902 by D. Appleton and Company.

About the Author

James Mark Baldwin (1861-1934) was an American philosopher and psychologist who was educated at Princeton under the supervision of Scottish philosopher James McCosh. He made important contributions to early psychology, psychiatry, and to the theory of evolution.