The Ego, or Personality. 939 



is chiefly, if not exclusive!}', an acquired habit. There ma)' be a small 

 basis of heredity in it which is nothing more than the acquired habit of 

 our predecessors stamped in our tissues, but it is chiefly the habit of 

 associating the sensorium with the skin by means of touch sensations, 

 that has finally come to identify the two as a consolidated unity. But 

 when such association is broken up, this feeling of identity is destroyed, 

 and the patient looks upon his personal parts as foreign. They consti- 

 tute to him, as they do to any other observer, a machine, or a " that." 



There are also cases of derangement of the sense of personality, 

 arising from direct disturbances of the brain. "In the congestive 

 period of general paralysis, " the brain receives too great a supply of 

 blood, and too much stimulation. The tissues become abnormally 

 erected. The patient may then have too exalted an opinion of himself 

 and his importance possibly thinks himself king, prince or pope, and 

 possessed of boundless wealth, &c. 



Then, there are the diseases of the other extreme, in which the blood 

 supply to the brain is arrested, and torpor and stupidity result. In a 

 patient affected with melancholia and prolonged stupor, ending with 

 death, Lnj's found the cerebral substance totally deprived of blood. 

 Loss of consciousness in epilepsy is due to local or general stoppage of 

 circulation of the blood within the brain. When it is general, total un- 

 consciousness ensues ; but when local, the stupor is partial, like som- 

 nambulism, and the patient may act in a strange manner, and perform 

 extravagant or even criminal acts unconsciously. 



All diseases of the internal sense organs constitute a greater or less 

 disturbance of the ego. In fact, they cause its reconstruction on an in- 

 ferior plan. 



Maudsley thus sums up his conclusions from such phenomena as 

 these : ' < The lesson of them is, that the consciousness of self, the 

 unity of the ego, is a consequence, not a cause ; the expression of a full 

 and harmonious function of the aggregate of differentiated mind-centers, 

 not a mysterious metaphysical entity lying behind function and inspiring 

 and guiding it ; a subjective synthesis or unity based upon the objec- 

 tive synthesis or unity of the organism. As such, it may be obscured, 

 deranged, divided, apparently transformed. For every breach of the 

 unity of the united centers, is a breach of it ; subtract any one center 

 from the intimate physiological co-operation, the self is pro tanto 

 weakened or mutilated. Obstruct or derange the conducting function 

 of the associating bonds between the centers so that the}' are disso- 

 ciated or disunited, the self loses in corresponding degree its sense of 

 continuity and unity. Stimulate one or two centers, or groups of cen- 

 ters, to a morbid hypertrophy, so that they absorb to them of the men- 

 tal nourishment" ( blood) "and keep up a predominant and almost ex- 



