Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 9.djvu/155

 TH. KIBOTS MALADIES DE LA VOLONT& 143 terrified at the sight of an open space of any extent, as one of the larger ' places ' of Berlin. Another curious variety of this disorder is the ' doubting mania ' (Grriibelsucht). The patient cannot resolve to act because he imagines a heap of improbable and often absurd contingencies. This state of nascent and instantaneously inhibited impulse is characterised by an excep- tional degree of the phenomenon known as the consciousness of effort, about the real nature of which the author makes some suggestive remarks. The next chapter deals with the second class of volitional disorders, those arising by excess of impulse. Here again are two subdivisions ; for the carrying out of the impulse may (1) be instantaneous and automatic, apart from consciousness, or (2) occupy some time, involving a full measure of consciousness, and a conflict more or less prolonged. The first class of cases is typified by the instantaneous following out of an impulse to say some- thing disagreeable or obscene, sometimes observable in hysterical patients. Here the higher centres of the brain are disabled, and so their inhibitory action on the lower centres disappears. Such impulsive actions answer to the energetic reflexes of a decapitated animal. In the second class of cases the patient is aware of the sudden access of a powerful impulse, >'.y., to a homicidal act, and feels his inability to resist the torrent, sometimes asking aid of others. M. Eibot discusses the question whether this last variety of disturbance of the normal ratio between impulse and rational motive, the lower reflex and the controlling activity of the higher centres, is due to the weakening of the latter or to the strengthening of the former, and is inclined to think that in different circumstances sometimes the one and sometimes the other is the cause. In a special chapter the author deals with enfeeblements, congenital and acquired, of voluntary attention. Here we have the counterparts of disturbances of voluntary action, which fact by the way serves in an interesting manner to illustrate the close parallelism between voluntarily attending to a thing, and volun- tarily doing a thing. Thus in some cases there is an exaggerated intellectual activity, a superabundant flow of images so that the power of intellectual control is baffled. In others, again, there is a want of the energy implied in the act of concentration. M. Ribot argues that voluntary attention is nothing but " an artificial, unstable, and precarious imitation of spontaneous atten- tion ". The real force in attention is feeling, and when this fails attention flags. Here then, too, we find that the voluntary is based on and rooted in the involuntary. The next chapter is headed " The Reign of Caprices ". It deals with that condition of instability or constant fluctuation of desire and purpose, vhich presents itself most distinctly in the case of hysterical patients. Here the conditions of volition, of choice, are almost entirely wanting. There is no combining,