From the Unconscious to the Conscious 



director and physicians of the clinic undertook an 

 interesting experiment in re-education of speech; 

 they succeeded in getting him to pronounce con- 

 sciously and intelligibly eight to ten words. Unfor- 

 tunately the experiment could not be continued, 

 the patient after twenty days showed a great rise 

 in temperature, acute cephalalgia, and died thirty 

 hours later. The autopsy revealed a large abscess 

 occupying nearly the whole left cerebral hemisphere. 

 In this case also we must ask, How did this man 

 manage to think ? What organ was used for thought 

 after the destruction of the region which, according 

 to physiologists, is the seat of intelligence ? 



' A third case, coming from the same clinic, is 

 that of a young agricultural labourer, 18 years of 

 age. The post mortem revealed three communicating 

 abscesses, each as large as a tangerine orange, 

 occupying the posterior portion of both cerebral 

 hemispheres, and part of the cerebellum. In spite 

 of these the patient thought as do other men, so 

 much so that one day he asked for leave to settle 

 his private affairs. He died on re-entering the 

 hospital.' 



Psycho-physiological parallelism is therefore entirely 

 relative. This is not all. Many other objections arise 

 counter to the classical concept, without going outside 

 commonplace and ordinary psychology. M. Dwel- 

 shauvers has summed up clearly the chief of these 

 objections in his book, Ulnconsdent. 



In the first place the localisations are simply and 

 solely anatomical. 



* To start the cerebral cells of the localised centres 

 into action, presupposes a preliminary excitation, and 

 this excitation arises from a psycho-physiological act 

 which cannot be localised. 



81 



