RELATIONS OF ABNORMAL PSYCHOLOGY 743 



of the following night. The mother who has just lost a child is sur- 

 prised to find that she does not dream of her loss, although that 

 subject has occupied her mind all day long. The memory of the lost 

 child may appear in her dreams, but not until some months or some 

 years afterwards. These authors furnish different explanations of 

 this fact, which need not be discussed here. Let us remark, however, 

 that the oblivescence of recent experiences is well known under the 

 name of retrogressive amnesia. In this disturbance, as in dreams, 

 events reappear in memory only after they have long since been 

 experienced. 1 By way of summary, we may say that dreams are 

 characterized by a narrowing of the field of consciousness, by con- 

 tinuous and by retrogressive amnesia. 



Other phenomena which are equally semi-normal and semi- 

 pathological, appear in the emotions. When an individual finds 

 himself suddenly placed in a position to which he is not already 

 adapted by previous habituation, when he lacks the time or the 

 strength required to adapt himself to the new conditions, he ex- 

 periences certain forms of physical and mental perturbation which 

 are of prime importance. In this country where the James theory 

 of the emotions was developed, I need not discuss the emotional 

 value of the visceral excitations. The increase of heart-beat and of 

 respiration, and the spasms of the digestive organs, are well-known 

 features of the state of emotion. It is also known that hunger assumes 

 an exaggerated form in emotion, a phenomenon which in all prob- 

 ability gave rise to the custom of feasting at funerals. These 

 internal excitations extend to the muscles of the members, and in 

 many emotions one may observe an indefinite repetition of violent 

 and useless movements, grimaces, and convulsive contortions of all 

 sorts. Numerous authors have been pleased to find in these inco- 

 ordinated movements a trace of more or less complete acts which 

 are inhibited in their initial stages in the modern subject; that is, 

 to regard them as vestigial products of movements which attained 

 complete execution when our human or animal ancestors were 

 exposed to similar conditions of stimulation. Stanley Hall's and 

 Dewey's investigations of anger give us a great deal of information 

 upon this point. Moreover it frequently happens that the tics, the 

 various forms of tetanus, and the impulses to flee or to cry out, 

 remain undeveloped in the presence of emotional states. 



But we must not confine ourselves to the peripheral manifesta- 

 tions of emotion. The weak point of the famous theory is to be found 

 in the dictum that "We are sorry because we cry" #n objection 

 which has been urged by many authors (Irons, Gardiner, Soury, 

 Dearborn. Sherrington, Baldwin, and others). Side by side with 

 1 Cf. N&vroses et idfes fixes, pp. 149, 192. 



