Literary Notices. clxvii 



thought can be interpreted as follows : "I can no longer feel my hand, 

 I can no longer move it, my arm is heavy," etc. These ideas have 

 the greatest importance and determine not only the hysterical malady 

 in general but also the particular form which the accident takes. 



M. Moebius says, an opinion tends more and more to become 

 established; hysteria is a psychical disorder and the modification 

 which characterizes it is a diseased state of the mind. 



Moebius says : We may consider as hysteria all the pathological 

 modifications of the body which are caused by representations. 



M. Strumpell says: — What is called nervousness from a scientific 

 point of view is a disposition essentially spiritual and not corporeal, 

 certain very strong representations, certain associations of ideas 

 very easily become the starting point of accidents corporeal in ap- 

 pearance. 



Instead of purely physical definitions, then, a new definition is 

 substituted which seeks to group symptoms about a moral phenomena 

 "hysteria is a uniform group of maladies by representation." , 



THE DUALISM OF PERSONALITY. 



M. Oppenheim and Jolly have very justly criticised the attempt 

 of Moebius to make an inclusive definition of hysteria by extending 

 the explanation that hysterical accidents depend upon certain fixed 

 ideas to all hysterical accidents. 



1. A great number of hysterical accidents clearly indicating the 

 existence of hyperaesthesia, of tic douloureaux, of paralysis, of 

 spasms seem to have no relation whatever with any idea or imagina- 

 tion of the subject. There are, in reality, two categories of hysterical 

 accidents, which are easily differentiated from tic douloureaux or 

 spasms. The one occurs when the subject thinks upon them ; they dis- 

 appear' when the subject is inattentive or asleep ; they can easily be 

 attached to an idea, but the other are produced even when the subject 

 does not think upon them ; the spasm persists in spite of preoccupation, 

 sometimes in spite of sleep. 



2. Hysteria presents an attack. This attack affords complex 

 ensemble of convulsions, cries and words. These regularly occurring 

 attacks seem to depend upon some physical phenomenon, tor they are 

 independent of the thought of the subject. 



3. The more distinctly moral accidents, somnambulism and de- 

 lirium, are not the result of a fixed idea, clear and simple. The 

 subject does not know what passes in his delirium, and he does not 

 think upon them. 



