University of Virginia Library

ABSTRACTS

THE PSYCHIC FACTORS IN MENTAL DISORDER. Milton A. Harrington, Am. Jour. of Insanity. Vol. LXXI, No. 4, p. 691.

The writer has taken the scheme of the instincts which William McDougall has given in his book, entitled "An Introduction to Social Psychology" and has attempted to show how it may be used in studying the problems of mental disorder. The paper falls into three parts. In the first part McDougall's conception is presented, modified, however, so that it may be better fitted to the needs of the psychiatrist. Briefly it is as follows:

Man has instincts as well as the animals and all his mental activity is due to impulses coming from these instincts. An instinct may be defined as an innate specific tendency of the mind which is common to all members of any one species and which impels the individual to react to certain definite kinds of stimuli with certain definite types of conduct, without having first learned from experience the need of such conduct. For example, there is an instinct of pugnacity which impels us to attack that which injures us or interferes in any way with the attainment of our desires, an instinct of flight which impels us to seek escape from danger, a parental instinct from which come the impulses that lead us to protect and care for our young. But, beside impelling the individual to react to certain definite kinds of stimuli with certain definite types of conduct, an instinct, when stimulated, gives rise in every case to an emotion which is characteristic of it. For example, with the instinct of pugnacity, we have the emotion of anger; with that of flight, the emotion of fear; with the parental instinct, the emotion of love or tender feeling. An instinct, therefore, is regarded as a mechanism made up of three parts:

First, an afferent or cognitive part, through which it is stimulated.

Second, an affective part through which it gives rise to the emotion which is characteristic of it.

Third, an efferent or conative part through which it gives rise to a characteristic type of conduct.

McDougall gives a list of about twelve instincts, each with

its accompanying emotion. These he regards as primary and the source of all thought and action.

Considering the instincts from the standpoint of evolution, one may assume that they first developed in extremely low forms of life in order to produce the few and simple reactions of which animals low in the scale are capable. One might almost say in regard to such primitive organisms, that for each situation an instinct is provided and the situation calls forth its appropriate reaction almost as automatically as the pressing of an electric button causes the ringing of a bell. But, as animals rise higher in the scale, the kinds of conduct required become more varied and complex. For example, an impulse from the flight or fear instinct, in the lower animals, will always produce some simple reaction such as flight or concealment. But, in man, the forms of conduct, to which it gives rise, may be extremely varied. Thus in one case a man may be impelled to run away, in another to work hard at some disagreeable task in order to escape the harm which might result if he failed to do so. This capacity to direct the instinctive forces into various forms of activity, we call the capacity for adjustment and we may assume that it depends upon the operation of certain mechanisms which we may call the mechanisms of adjustment. The mind may, therefore, be regarded as made up of certain instincts from which come the impulses that give rise to all our mental reactions and certain mechanisms of adjustment by which these impulses are directed into the most useful forms of activity.

This conception of the human mind enables us to form some idea of how a mental disorder may arise from purely mental causes; for it is obvious that conditions may sometimes arise when the mechanisms of adjustment will prove inadequate to the demands made upon them, when they will be unable to control the instinctive forces or find for them satisfactory outlet and, as a result, these impulses will escape by undesirable channels, giving rise to forms of thought and action which we recognize to be abnormal. To show that this theory may be successfully applied to explain the facts of abnormal psychology, the analysis of an illustrative case is presented. This case, which is worked out in considerable detail, forms the second section of the paper. It is the case of a young man who, partly owing to inherited tendencies and partly to environment, developed during early life certain habits and

characteristics which, when he approached maturity and the sexual instinct awoke to its full activity, caused the impulses from this instinct to be directed into wrong channels, giving rise to a psychosis which took the form of a catatonic stupor.

The conception of mental disorder here presented inevitably leads to certain views regarding the causes which give rise to it. Since mental health is dependent on capacity for adjustment being equal to the demands made upon it, mental disorder must always be due to failure to maintain this relationship between capacity and needs. The causes of insanity must therefore be of two kinds:

First, those which make the task of adjustment so difficult as to overtax the capacity.

Second, those which lessen the capacity so that it is unequal to the demands made upon it.

The third section of the paper is a brief discussion of what these causes are and how we should deal with them.

Author's Abstract.

A STUDY OF SEXUAL TENDENCIES IN MONKEYS AND BABOONS. By G. V. Hamilton. Journal of Animal Behavior, September-October, 1914, vol. 4, No. 5, pp. 295-318.

The writer asserts that the work and problems in sexuality in human beings place upon the animal behaviorist an obligation to lay the necessary foundations for a scientific and thoroughly comprehensive investigation of sexual life. This has led him to formulate the following two problems in animal behavior: (1) Are there any types of infra-human primate behavior which cannot be regarded as expressions of a tendency to seek sexual satisfaction, but which have the essential objective characteristics of sexual activity? (2) Do such sexual reaction-types as homosexual intercourse, efforts to copulate with non-primate animals and masturbation normally occur among any of the primates, and if so, what is their biological significance?

The author presents a list of the subjects (monkeys and baboons) employed in his study; gives a description of the environmental conditions in his laboratory which is in the midst of a live oak woods In Montecito, California, about five miles from Santa Barbara; gives a list of the types of situations that were arranged

by the observer or encountered by the subjects in consequence of their spontaneous activities, and under each description of a typical situation one or more detailed descriptions of typical responses thereto; and finally offers the classification of sexual tendencies as expressions of reactive tendencies observed.

The author then enters into a discussion of the use of the term reactive tendency, and explains that this term, according to his definition, is meant to explain something more specific than an inclination to direct activity toward one of a limited number of general ends, and to include both the innate and the acquired features of an individual's reactive mechanism.

He then presents his conclusions which I shall here include in full and verbatim, because of the fact that these findings should prove of great importance, especially in the light of Freud's theories of infantile sexuality. The author states that "At least two, and possibly three, different kinds of hunger, or needs of individual satisfaction, normally impel the macaque toward the manifestation of sexual behavior, viz., hunger for sexual satisfaction, hunger for escape from danger and, possibly, hunger for access to an enemy.

"Homosexual behavior is normally an expression of tendencies which come to expression even when opportunities for heterosexual intercourse are present. Sexually immature male monkeys appear to be normally impelled toward homosexual behavior by sexual hunger. The fact that homosexual tendencies come to less frequent expression in the mature than in the immature male suggests the possibility that in their native habitat these animals may wholly abandon homosexual behavior (except as a defensive measure), on arriving at sexual maturity.

"Homosexual behavior is of relatively frequent occurrence in the female when she is threatened by another female, but it is rarely manifested in response to sexual hunger.

"Masturbation does not seem to occur under normal conditions.

"The macaque of both sexes is apt to display sexual excitement in the presence of friendly or harmless non-primates.

"It is possible that the homosexual behavior of young males is of the same biological significance as their mock combats. It is clearly of value as a defensive measure in both sexes. Homosexual alliances between mature and immature males may possess a

defensive value for immature males, since it insures the assistance of an adult defender in the event of an attack."

MEYER SOLOMON.

AN EXPERIMENTAL STUDY OF STUTTERING. By John Madison Fletcher. American Journal of Psychology, April, 1914; Vol. XXV, pp. 201-255.

This paper is a dissertation submitted to the faculty of Clark University, Worcester, Mass., in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. It is thus from the Psychological Laboratory of Clark University.

This interesting study of Fletcher includes some general remarks in the introduction, the question of differentiation and definition, the physiological aspects (including breathing, vocalization, articulation and accessory movements), psychophysical changes (including volumetric changes, changes in heart rate and galvanic changes), a consideration of the interpretation of the results, the psychological relations (including emotions, attitudes, imagery, responsibility for Aufgabe, psychoanalysis, and association), heredity and conclusions. A valuable bibliography is added, and seven illustrative plates complete the paper.

Fletcher would reserve the word "stammering" for mispronunciation or incorrect speech, this stutter being anatomical (due to malformation of one or more organs of articulation) or developmental (due to incorrect functioning of the organs of articulation resulting in certain cases of immaturity, such as lisping). Stammering, in this sense, is of no psychological interest. The reviewer is in favor of employing the terms "stammering" and "stuttering" synonymously, as is the practice in England and America. The writer (Fletcher) finds that he cannot accept the Freudian interpretation of stuttering which has been offered by a number of different members of that school.

Although the entire paper is of interest and of value to the student of psychopathology, the purposes of this review can best be served by citing the following conclusions of the author: The motor manifestations of stuttering are found to consist of asynergies in the three musculatures of speech—breathing, vocalization and articulation. Certain accessory movements, which tend to

become stereotyped in each individual and which consist of tonic and clonic conditions of other muscles not involved in normal speech, accompany these asynergies. The type of asynergy and more particularly of accessory movements differ so widely that it is impossible to state that any special form of breathing, or articulation, or of vocalization is the fundamental factor in stuttering. Disturbances of pulse rate, of blood distribution and in psychogalvanic variations, appearing before, during and after the speaking interval, and the intensity of which varies approximately with the severity of the stuttering, accompany the motor manifestations of stuttering. The essential condition in stuttering is the complex state of mind, the quality rather than the intensity of these feeling states governing the rise of stuttering. Such feeling states as fear, anxiety, dread, shame, embarrassment, in fact, those feelings that tend toward inhibition and repression, are most likely to precede stuttering, and probably operate in a vicious circle as both cause and effect. The permanent condition of nervousness thought to be characteristic of stutterers should be regarded as effect rather than cause. The states of feeling that have to do with the production of stuttering vary in degree from strong emotions to mere attitudes or moods, the latter being often so slight in degree that it is difficult for the subject to report their presence. Stuttering also seems to be affected by the quality of mental imagery, by attention and by association. The affective and emotional experiences associated with the pronunciation of sounds rather than the nature of the sounds themselves determine the rise of stuttering. The author's final remarks are: "Stuttering, therefore, seems to be essentially a mental phenomenon in the sense that it is due to and dependent upon certain variations in mental state. Hence the study of stuttering becomes a specifically psychological problem; and it seems evident that a detailed analysis of all the various aspects of the phenomena of stuttering will furnish important contributions to general psychology."

MEYER SOLOMON.