Evening star., 1939-08-03
Of Stars, Men
And Atoms
Notebook Of Science Progress:
In Field, Laboratory
And Study
By Thomas r. Henry.

>'NS'S~o At' AAS'P ~
A voice out Of the haunted darkness
of schizophrenics brain-the brain OF
an exceptionally intelligent man who
has analyzed his own behavior during
lucid intervals of nine-year psychosis
is introduced to American PSYCHE
artists by the William A. White PSYCHE
atric Foundation in the current issue of
its journal
This "Johnathon Lang"-the name is
a eudonym-advances the strange hy-
pothesis of psychic infection" as an ex-
planation Of the strange emotional be-
havior OF victims OF the most prevalent
of all maladies of the mind and the one
which, up to a few months ago, was con-
sidered the most hopeless.
Perhaps the outstanding characteristic
OF schizophrenia is the lack of adequate
emotional response to ordinary stimuli.
This Is only apparent, says this psy-
chotic. The trouble is that the emo
tions seem to have gotten into control
OF some force within the mind itself.
The schizophrenic, he says, feels the
same emotions as other people but in
someWay is incapable of the nervous
system discharge which constitutes the
expression of an emotion, such as laugh
ing. weeping, demonstrations of anger,
etc.
Ordinarily this follows involuntarily
an emotion -arousing stimulation. What
actually happens in the case of the
psychotic person, he says, is that this
expression of emotions is set off not
by events Of the outside world, although
they may be felt deeply, but by events
within the self, invisible and inaudible, to
everybody else, which seem to depend
on no outside stimulus.
The most remarkable of these in his
own experience. he says, are thoughts
out loud" Voices seem to arise from the
depths Of his own mind. They are in
dependent of his will. They are not
preceded by appropriate chains of
thought-or even by any thought at
all.
1t is to such voice, he says, that the
nervous system reacts with an emotional
expression which seems completely il
logical to any one else who cannot be
aware OF the stimulus which caused 1t.
There are also times, he says, when
the emotional expression actually pre-
cedes its inner stimulus. The same
agent, he holds, must be responsible for
both the stimulus and the expression
and IS able to produce them in any
order it pleases.
The nervous system is generally re-
garded as a purely mechanistic system
OF action and reaction. Some stimulus
acts upon one set of nerves and another
set of nerves reacts with the appropriate
emotional expression, words, thoughts,
etc. But no energy can come out which
is not put in. Thus, presumably, the in
tenslty of. an emotional expression will
be in proportion to the intensity of the
stimulus which caused it.
But this man in a lucid period as
suredly experiences emotions for which
there has been no stimulus from the out
side world. Something has gotten inside
himself which does not belong there.
Says the writer: The intricate inter-
relations between affective and hallu-
clnary phenomena seem to require the
postulation Of some common organiza-
ton factor responsible for both They
seem to demand the existence of some
agent which selects both the affect and
the hallucination and is responsible for
the initiation of both according to an
order selected by it.
The writer would suggest only that
since to produce the phenomena which
he experienced there must have been
an innervation of the sympathetic and
other divisions of the nervous system
along with associated organs, the fac
tor is presumably some type of agent
capable OF releasing an energy discharge
sufficient to stimulate the nerves and Or
gans. This organizing factor is not the
self of the experiencing Individual The
organizing is not done in the central
conscious field, and there is no volitional
discharge connected with the initiation
OF either the affect or the hallucination.
Because of the complexity and vari-
ability OF the experienced phenomena,
the writer is led to doubt that the fac
tor producing the affects and the hallu-
cinations is derived from the mechanism
of some function of the human organ
ism itself 1t seems to him that it is
best explained as some form of energy
system which releases discharge stimu-
latlng selected nerves or organs of the
patients organism. He suggests the pos
sibility that this energy system may
have been an originally foreign one
say some system of atoms of charged
gasses-Which has penetrated the hui
man organism and lodged itself in the
brain is possibility that should not
be neglected. This may be termed 'psy-
chic Infection"
His hypothesis is further supported,
he maintains, by the fact that the emo
ton experienced may be exactly oppo-
site in type to that which would be ex-
pected. Thus the thought out loud"
may be insulting in character but the
emotion which follows it may be one of
pleasure.
The strange report is presented by the
Foundations psychiatrists not as offer
ing valid explanation of the malady
but as an exceptionally clear descrip-
ton of what is actually experienced in
the disordered mind itself-something
which very few psychotics are able to
present.
Agrees With Otto Simon
On Dickens.
To the Editor of Tho Stor.