The Psychology of Dementia Praecox

Secondly, the Roller-Neisser view seems to presuppose that beyond consciousness, the whole psyche ceases. From French psychology and from experiences with hypnotism, we learn that this is not the case.

Thirdly, if I understand correctly, by “pathological irritations lying under the threshold of consciousness,” Neisser means cell processes in the cortex. This hypothesis goes too far. All psychic processes are correlates of cell processes, according to both materialistic conceptions and the doctrine of psycho-physical parallelism. It is therefore not singular that psychic processes in catatonia should be correlates of a corresponding physical series. We know that normal psychical processes originate under the constant influence of numerous psychological constellations which, as a rule, are unknown to us. Why should this fundamental psychological law suddenly vanish in catatonia? Is it because the ideational content of the catatonic is foreign to their consciousness? Is it not the same with our dreams? And yet no one will assert that dreams originate directly from the cells without psychological constellations. Whoever has analyzed dreams according to the method of Freud knows what an enormous influence these constellations have. The appearance of strange ideas in consciousness without any demonstrable connections with former contents of consciousness is not an unheard-of thing in either the psychology of the normal person or the hysteric. The “pathological fancies” of catatonics have rich analogies in the normal and in hysterics. What we lack is not so much comparative material, but the key to open the psychology of catatonic automatism. It seems to me in general rather daring to assume something toto cœlo original Latin: "entirely; by the whole heaven" new and absolutely foreign in natural science.

In dementia præcox, where numberless normal associations actually still exist, we must expect that, until we learn to know those very fine processes which are really specific, the laws of the normal psyche will long continue to be manifest.