From the Unconscious to the Conscious 



2. THE THEORY OF MORBIDITY 



Another general explanation which, although still 

 less logical and more vain and arbitrary than the first, 

 has had, and still has much currency, is the explanation 

 by morbidity. 1 



One hesitates to avow it, but it is this poverty-stricken 

 explanation to which the majority of psychologists 

 to-day are not afraid to appeal. According to them 

 everything which, from the psychological point of view, 

 departs from the average, must proceed from disease. 

 They would have subconscious powers to be morbid 

 products; hypnotism, akin to neurosis; multiple per- 

 sonality, a pathological disintegration of the Self; 

 supernormal phenomena, symptoms of hysteria; and 

 as for the works of genius, they are simply results of 

 madness. 



At the base of all these morbid manifestations they 

 always discover an essential pathological cause ' degen- 

 eration.' This factor of * degeneration ' is the more 

 convenient in that it is elastic; it is supposed to rule both 

 ordinary and hysteriform neuropathic cases (inferior 

 degeneration), and the manifestations of genius (superior 

 degeneration). 



Thus everything that from the intellectual point 

 of view is either above or below the normal, must be 

 the result of disease. 



The label ' morbid ' is affixed with more or 

 less discretion or indiscretion by different schools of 

 psychiatry; 2 but its use is nearly general. 



Dr Chabaneix speaks of auto-intoxication and over- 

 pressure among the predisposed : * The more an organ 

 works,' he writes, ' the more it develops, and at the 



1 The chief psychological review in France is entitled : Revue de 

 Psychologie NormcUe et Pathologique. 



1 Mental therapeutics; treatment of insanity. 



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