Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 11.djvu/118

 TH. EIBOT, LES MALADIES DE LA PERSONNALITE'. 107 laid under contribution. The result is a very ingenious essay which goes some way towards solving one of the most difficult problems in psychology. M. Eibot sets out with a brief statement of his psychological standpoint. This is emphatically the standpoint of the biologist. To our author conscious mental activity is an incidental ap- pendage to a sum of nervous processes, which constitute the real basis of mind and personality. The deepest ground of self- consciousness is thus a physiological fact, namely, the unity of the bodily organism and the representation of the several func- tions of the organism by the nerve-centres. Agreeably to this general conception, M. Eibot begins his review of the different disturbances of the feeling of personality with those that he calls " organic ". Here there are phy- sical changes to which the perversion of the feeling can be directly referred. The consideration of slight disturbances in normal life, due to depressions, &c., of the vital functions, leads on naturally to the discussion of the graver perturbations which occur in mental disease. In dealing with these, the author refers to the well-known facts of double personality. In this connexion, too, he describes the modifications of the feeling in the case of double monsters and ordinary twins ; though he might, I imagine, have made the bearing of the facts on his theory clearer than he has done. We next come to "emotional disturbances " (les troubles affectifs). Here the immediate cause of the perversion of self-consciousness is an alteration in the feelings ; but since these, in many cases at least, have definite physical conditions (e.g., that of the subject of castration), it is not easy to distinguish this group of disturbances from the first. The outcome of this section is that " we always come back fatally to the organism". It is true that the author tells us that the personality results from two factors (a) the con- stitution of the body with the tendencies and feelings which translate it, and (&) memory. But it is evident that by " memory " is meant here simply the organised memory of the bodily feelings themselves. Indeed M. Eibot, in another passage, takes pains to oppose the contention of metaphysicians that the consciousness of personality is based on memory in the ordinary sense of that term. After the emotional come the " intellectual " disturbances. The account of these strikes me as less complete than the other chapters. The author in magnifying the role of the bodily feel- ings, seems to underestimate the influence of the intellectual factor. Some of the facts properly belonging to this division of the subject are not referred to at all : e.g., the temporary substitu- tion of a fictitious personality by a sustained effort of imagination. Dickens and other novelists had the power of assuming the personality of their characters, without any alteration of their ccensesthesis. Here, too, we miss a reference to the effect of