Page:Jung - The psychology of dementia praecox.djvu/117

Rh If a strong complex exists, there results a cessation of progress adapted to the environment, and associations gyrate altogether about the complex. This is generally so in hysteria where we meet the strongest complexes. The progress of personality is suspended and a great part of the psychic activity is spent in dressing the complex in every possible form (symptom-actions). It is not in vain that Janet calls attention to the general disturbances of the "obsédé," of which I will mention the following: "l'indolence, l'irrésolution, les retards, la fatigue, l'inachèvement, l'aboulie, l'inhibition, etc." If a complex succeeds in fixing itself, monotony results, especially the monotony of external symptoms. Who does not know the stereotyped and tiring complaints of hysterics? the obstinacy and invincibility of their symptoms? Just as a constant pain will always call forth the same monotonous plaintive sounds, so will a fixed complex gradually stereotype the whole mode of speech of the individual, so that we can finally know that day after day we will receive with mathematical accuracy the same answer to a certain question.

In these processes we find some of the normal prototypes for the stereotypy of dementia præcox. When we examine the