Page:Jung - The psychology of dementia praecox.djvu/102

78 catatonics is still greater. Suggestibility often limits itself entirely to a motor sphere, resulting only in an echopraxia and often only in an echolalia. Verbal suggestion can rarely be carried out in dementia præcox, and even if it succeeds the effects are uncontrollable and as if accidental. There are always a number of strange elements mixed together with the normal suggestibility in dementia præcox. Nevertheless there is no reason why catatonic suggestibility, at least in its normal remnants, could not be reduced to the same psychological mechanism as in hysteria. We know that in hysteria the uncontrollable part of the suggestive effects is to be sought for in the autonomous complexes, and there is nothing against this being the case in dementia præcox. A capricious behavior similar to the one shown in suggestion is seen in dementia præcox in relation to other psycho-therapeutic measures, such as transfer, discharge, education by example, etc. That improvement in old catatonics when transferred to new sufroundings depends on psychological causes is shown by the fine and very valuable analyses of Riklin.

The lucidity of consciousness in dementia præcox is subject to all possible forms of obscuration; it may change from perfect clearness to the deepest confusion. Through Janet we know that in hysteria the fluctuation of lucidity is almost proverbial. In hysteria we are able to distinguish two kinds of disturbances, momentary and persisting. The momentary disturbance may be a slight "engourdissement" of a few seconds duration, or it may be a momentary hallucinatory and ecstatic invasion likewise of very short duration. In dementia præcox we know the abrupt obstructions, the momentary "thought-deprivation," and the lightning-like hallucinatory incursions with bizarre impulses. The lasting disturbance of lucidity in hysteria we know in the form of somnambulistic states with numerous hallucinations or in the form of "lethargic" (Lowenfeld) or cataleptic conditions. In dementia præcox it is shown in the form of persisting hallucinatory phases with more or less marked confusion and in stuporous states.

Attention in dementia præcox is, so to say, regularly disturbed, but the same disorder also plays a great part in the realms of