750 ABNORMAL PSYCHOLOGY 



the last months of their lives, when the progress of tuberculosis 

 induces a slight degree of continuous hectic fever. But what I 

 wish to emphasize here is the simple fact that all the symptoms 

 of depression may disappear and give place to an opposite con- 

 dition. 



This is still more evident in the melancholic states of which we 

 have just been speaking. It is known that melancholia may give 

 place to a state of more or less normal excitation in which many 

 of the preceding phenomena are reversed. This is what the older 

 French alienists (Morel, Baillarger), and more recently Ritti, studied 

 under the name of intermittent insanity, circular insanity, and 

 insanity of dual form. This too is what the German alienists are 

 taking up again under the name of depressive insanity, to which 

 they rightly ascribe a great importance. The physiological and 

 the mental conditions presented by these two contrary forms which 

 alternate in the same individual were carefully investigated by 

 Dumas in his work on La tristesse et la joie. It would, in my opin- 

 ion, be most desirable to analyze the states of mental excitation 

 with the same care as has been given to the states of depression. 

 It would be well to discover if the apparent exaltation of mind is 

 real, to determine what pathological phenomena it manifests, and 

 to ascertain whether it can, like depression, become the starting- 

 point of delirium. It is at least certain that depressed subjects 

 believe the ascending oscillation to be possible, that they desire 

 it, and that they make every effort to attain it. Many of the impul- 

 sions are due to this fact. Dipsomania is in reality a crisis of de- 

 pression in which the subject feels the need of being excited by 

 means of a poison whose effects he knows only too well, i. e., by 

 alcohol. And there are many impulsions of the same sort. 



The phenomena which we have just passed in review, are un- 

 questionably of very different sorts; an analysis of their charac- 

 teristics, and a study of the conditions of their development, leads 

 one to distinguish the fatigues, the sleeps, and the emotions from 

 one another. I myself have done enough in the way of distinguish- 

 ing the hysterical from the psychasthenic states, and even of dif- 

 ferentiating their various varieties, to escape the charge of con- 

 fusing them. But however important these distinctions may be, 

 it must be recognized that all of these facts possess certain features 

 in common, which indicate the existence of a general law. These 

 common characteristics, which, I repeat, manifest themselves in 

 very different forms in the different cases, may be divided into 

 three groups. In the first place, there are phenomena of motor 

 visceral or mental agitation; then there are the specific feelings 

 for which I have proposed the name " feelings of incompleteness, 



