PSYCHIATRY IN THE FUNCTIONAL PSYCHOSES 293 



fields of sight, hearing, and touch, including under the latter the 

 kinesthetic senses as well as pressure, heat, and cold; he speaks of 

 these as the senses that mediate the "life of relation" with the world 

 outside our own bodies, the "physical group of senses." Taste, 

 smell, pain, the general and organic senses --all having little exter- 

 nal reference are not mentioned at all in physics, except incident- 

 ally. The method of psychology on the other hand, while not essen- 

 tially different, has broader outlines; its phenomena are various 

 conscious experiences, including all those with which physics sets 

 out, but also experiences involving pain, organic and general sen- 

 sations, feelings, emotions, memories, images, volitions, processes of 

 reasoning -- and everything that belongs to such experience. Physics 

 dealing with outer experiences only practically works with terms 

 derived exclusively from the kinesthetic and a part of the dermal 

 and visual experience in its spatial function; these are the senses 

 capable of perceiving matter in motion, and the physicist in using 

 their terms excludes reference to the other senses of the physical 

 group, sight, hearing, and touch. Psychology deals with both inner 

 and outer experiences. 



This general view of mental physiology has a special value for 

 psychiatry which it is possible here only to indicate. The conception 

 of a relation between conscious experiences and outer physical phe- 

 nomena implies an organism, with its special "physical group of 

 senses " in touch with the outer contacts, acting as a medium of trans- 

 mission between the two; this medium may be conceived as form- 

 ing also a somatic group of senses in the paths of communication. 

 But this mechanism of transmission does not afford, even normally, 

 open ways without friction or obstruction; to its reports of contacts 

 with the outer "life of relation" it adds the multitude of returns with 

 all their variations from its own physical workings, and for this 

 process the same mechanism of kinesthetic and other senses, in a 

 new grouping with others, including the organic and general sensa- 

 tions, is used. In abnormal as well as normal conditions these returns, 

 however imperfect, stand for the truth and the whole truth in con- 

 scious experience; in health we think as little as possible of the 

 medium of transmission, and in all conditions of well-being or ill- 

 being we can only describe our organic feelings in general terms. We 

 do not recognize for the most part the sources of these sensations, 

 yet they have a controlling influence upon our minds. These con- 

 siderations indicate three groupings of the functions of the sensory 

 mechanisms of conscious experiences: (1) the physical group of 

 senses of the outer "life of relation;" (2) the somatic group of senses 

 of the inner life --our conscious experiences of our own bodies; 

 (3) the central psychical life, which includes both of the other groups 

 of conscious experiences, besides those belonging distinctly to its 



