Page:The Modern Treatment of Mental and Nervous Disorders.djvu/20

— 18 — smoothly together, so as to issue in thought and conduct exactly adapted to the circumstances in which it lives. This, of course, corresponds to the biological conception of "adaptation to environment."

Every normal mind naturally falls short of this ideal, but the mind of the victim of nervous disorder falls very far short indeed. It is, in fact, in a condition which is the exact reverse of the ideal, because in it the harmony of the whole is destroyed, the constituent elements jangle and jar one against the other, and its forces, so far from pulling smoothly together, pull in opposite directions. This lack of internal harmony is expressed technically by the term "mental conflict." Because of the internal conflict the issue of a thought and conduct exactly adapted to the circumstances in which the mind lives is no longer possible. There is a failure of adaptation to the environment, because there is a failure of internal adaptation in the economy of the mind, and the mind has become a house divided against itself. This is the mental state which corresponds to the popular notion of worries, anxieties and so forth.

An example will help to make clear the nature of the condition just described, and we may select for this purpose a picture frequently to be seen in certain types of "shell shock." The soldier is tortured by memories of the terrifying events he has experienced, he cannot bear to think of these events, and he tries to avoid anything and everything which might recall them to him. Thus he will not read the newspapers, because the news they contain would inevitably rekindle the forbidden memories; if his comrades talk