THE MORBID ''SENSE OF INJURY^ 597 



give and take injuries. But there remains a large excess of this 

 " injured " feeling which can not be so explained, or which is dis- 

 proportionate to its cause or entirely gratuitous, and is thus shifted 

 into the field of morbid psychology. This only is here treated — 

 the morbid sense of injury. 



It seems to find an easy entrance to the mind from a mere 

 feeling of being ill used or stinted in sympathy to the entertain- 

 ment of serious grievances or persecutory ideas. In certain tem- 

 peraments it is marked. On so-called " blue " days we are con- 

 stantly moved to a " sense of injury " from fancied aloofness of 

 our friends. Madam Lofty slights us, and our jaundiced imagi- 

 nation has it that she has heard something detrimental and dislikes 

 us. But lo! to-day, when the liver is released, madam smiles 

 sweetly, and never heard a thing. 



So in suspicious people. They entertain a chronic state of 

 mind, by which the acts of others are given an invidious construc- 

 tion. They anticipate ill will, carrying the chi'p on the shoulder. 

 Of two constructions of a given situation, they leap to the more 

 offending. Some take on the vindictive attitude as a result, ap- 

 proaching that type of insanity known as paranoia, of which Gui- 

 teau and Prendergast were conspicuous examples; others are 

 humiliated, as a consequeiice approaching the melancholia type 

 of insanity, each illustrating again how the sane and insane states 

 are paralleled. Many come to bear the outward marks — the stig- 

 mata of this mental attitude, approaching sometimes the " asylum " 

 face, like that of the insanely suspicious Rousseau. We all know 

 such faces, with their hard, set expressions, as if forever sealed 

 against any tender of good will. 



By a curious fact, those who invite ill will seem often to get 

 it. Society, based on a reciprocity of faith, seems to have no smiles 

 to bestow upon the misanthrope. It bids him, " Laugh, and the 

 world laughs with you." It so comes to pass that many of them 

 acquire some real ground for their " sense of injury," and in the 

 long run that real quarrels are precipitated from this atmosphere 

 of suspiciousness. Indeed, this is the psychology of most quarrels. 

 The effect of imaginary grievances comes in turn to be the cause 

 of real ones. Thus into an incident between two persons, one of 

 them mistakenly reads an affront to himself. He retaliates, and 

 the other person, unconscious of having done anything to evoke 

 any hostility, finds himself affronted, and in his turn retaliates. 

 By this time real grievances have come, and the quarrel is on. 

 Balzac, that master analyst, in alluding to friendship, in one of 

 his stories, says: "It died " (the friendship) "like other great pas- 

 sions — by a misunderstanding. Both sides imagine treachery. 



