Journal of Mental Science (1930) 76: 780-802. doi: 10.1192/bjp.76.315.780
© 1930 The Royal College of Psychiatrists
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The Psychobiological Constitution of the Weak-Minded*

E. B. Strauss, M.A., D.M.Oxon., M.R.C.P.Lond., Late Voluntary Assistant Physician in the Marburg University Psychiatric and Neurological Hospital

From the Marburg University Psychiatric and Neurological Hospital and the Schwachsinnigen-Anstalt, Hephata bei Treysa

* Thesis accepted for the degree of Doctor of Medicine, Oxford University.

ABSTRACT

(1) 110 cases of endogenous oligophrenia in males over the age of puberty, and presenting on casual inspection a normal physical exterior, were examined.
(2) Anthropometry and somatoscopy, carried out in accordance with the principles laid down in Kretschmer's Körperbau und Charakter, and Medizinische Psychologie, showed that in 100% of these cases the basal physical habitus was complicated by lesser or greater degrees of dysplasia. The most prominent dysplastic stigmata were of a dysgenital nature.
(3) The degree of intellectual defect in each case was evaluated and tabulated against (a) physique and (b) temperament. The results suggest that there is no correlation between intelligence and either of these two factors.
(4) An investigation into the family histories of our cases reveals the extreme frequency of morbid inheritance in oligophrenia. The existence of defects of various kinds in the parents is so striking that it seems likely that such defects are to be reckoned amongst the determinant or causal factors in the genesis of oligophrenia.
(5) Each patient was assigned to a temperamental group. The results showed that the ordinary physique-temperament ratio does not apply in these cases, temperaments which are apparently cyclothyme-cycloid appearing in excess in persons with anomalous physique.
(6) In order to explain the above-mentioned anomaly (vide supra No. 5), a phylogenetic theory of the genesis of temperament is tentatively offered in outline. According to this hypothesis, the patients presenting apparently cyclothyme or cycloid temperaments are in reality fixated at an undifferentiated psychic level, which is normal in babies, in very young children, and in adults of backward races. These temperamental categories would possibly be better designated as proto-cyclothyme and proto-cycloid.
(7) If we accept this classification, Table XII should read as follows (Table XIII); and the other tables in which temperament figures should be accordingly modified.