540 P8TCH0L0OT. 



haustion of nervous energy always lessens the inhibitory power. Who 

 is not conscious of this ? ' Irritability ' is one manifestation of this. 

 Many persons have so small a stock of reserve brain-power — that most 

 valuable of all brain-qualities — that it is soon used up, and you see at 

 once that they lose their power of self-control very soon. They are an- 

 gels or demons just as they are fresh or tired. That surplus store of 

 energy or resistive force which provides, in persons normally constituted, 

 that moderate excesses in all directions shall do no great harm so long 

 as they are not too often repeated, not being present in these people, 

 overwork, over-drinking, or small debauches leave them at the mercy 

 of their morbid impulses without power of resistance. . . . Woe to the 

 man who uses up his surplus stock of brain-inhibition too near the bitter 

 €nd, or too often ! . . . The physiological word inhibition can be used 

 synonymously with the psychological and ethical expression self-control, 

 or with the will when exercised in certain directions. It is the charac- 

 teristic of most forms of mental disease for self-control to be lost, but 

 this loss is usually part of a general mental affection with melancholic, 

 maniacal, demented, or delusional symptoms as the chief manifestation 

 of the disease. There are other cases, not so numerous, where the loss 

 of the power of inhibition is the chief and by far the most marked 

 symptom. ... I shall call this form 'Inhibitory Insanity.' Some of 

 these cases have uncontrollable impulses to violence and destruction, 

 others to homicide, others to suicide prompted by no depressed feel- 

 ings, others to acts of animal gratification (satyriasis, nympho- 

 mania, erotomania, bestiality), others to drinking too much alcohol 

 (dipsomania), others towards setting things on fire (pyromania), others 

 to stealing (kleptomania), and others towards immoralities of all sorts. 

 The impulsive tendencies and morbid desires are innumerable in kind. 

 Many of these varieties of Insanity have been distinguished by distinct 

 names. To dig up and eat dead bodies (necrophilism), to wander from 

 home and throw off the restraints of society (planomania), to act like a 

 wild beast (lycanthropia), etc. Action from impulse in all these direc- 

 tions may take place from a loss of controlling power in the higher re- 

 gions of the brain, or from an over-development of energy in certain 

 portions of the brain, which the normal power of inhibition cannot 

 control. The driver maybe so weak that he cannot control well-broken 

 horses, or the horses may be so hard-mouthed that no driver can pull 

 them up. Both conditions may arise from purely cerebral disorder .... 

 or may be reflex. . . . Thee^'o, the man, the will, may be non-existent 

 for the time. The most perfect examples of this are murders done 

 during somnambulism or epileptic unconsciousness, or acts done in the 

 hypnotic state. There is no conscious desire to attain the object at all 

 in such cases. In other cases there is consciousness and memory 

 present, but no power of restraining action. The simplest example of 

 this is where an imbecile or dement, seeing something glittering, appro- 

 priates it to himself, or when he commits indecent sexual acts. Through 

 disease a previously sane and vigorous-minded person may get into the 



