PSYCHIATRY IN THE FUNCTIONAL PSYCHOSES 289 



The elaborate researches of many observers in recent years con- 

 cerning the nature of the muscular sense, the senses of touch, pain, 

 and temperature, and their special mechanisms, strengthen the 

 common fact that their sum contributes to the effects upon mental 

 feeling-tone. They are in their nature productive in part of the 

 organic sensations. Ribot 1 has studied, more than any one else, 

 the psychology of the emotions and the logic of their mental and 

 physical reactions; he describes the presentations in the conscious 

 mind of organic sense as constituting a vast aggregate of impres- 

 sions arising from within the organism and continually flowing 

 towards the superior nervous system; it is this region of sub- 

 ject consciousness that gives the consciousness of being, the 

 sense of personality. The sensations from the special senses are 

 intermittent, of high intensity, and small in volume compared 

 with the voluminous though faint, continuous, and all-pervading 

 commotion produced by the organic sensations. These are intense 

 enough, however, to be susceptible in health of psychical interpret- 

 ation as a sense of well-being; from their disorders and intensi- 

 fication comes the sense of ill-being. These are the long recognized 

 changes of coenesthesia. Professor James has shown the intimate 

 relation of the emotional tone to bodily states; and Professor Ladd 

 makes clear the usefulness to psychiatry of a study of the affec- 

 tions and emotions in their relations to the train of ideas, and to 

 the different bodily organs; also the reflex effect of the changes in 

 these organs upon both the feelings and the ideas. 



Underlying all these physiological phenomena of the living 

 organism is the primary attribute of irritability. All the functional 

 phenomena being influenced, within normal limits, by changes 

 of irritability in the central, peripheral, sensory, and motor mech- 

 anisms, and these changes being dependent upon the processes 

 of nutrition and metabolism, and upon conditions of use and dis- 

 use, rest and fatigue, etc., the alterations of functional efficiency 

 in the associated reactions of mind and body make the study of 

 cellular physiology imperative for psychiatry. Some of the most 

 commonly observed and characteristic symptoms in mental dis- 

 eases may be referred to such functional disorders in the physical 

 organism. 



Physiology and its Relation to Psychology, continued 



The healthy organism being fully constituted in structure and 

 function for its work, when put in use begins immediately to be sub- 

 ject to modes of action which are the effects of its own activities; in 

 other words the living organism acquires functional characteristics 



1 Ribot, Th., Diseases of the Personality, and the Psychology of the Emotions. 



