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The Data of Alienism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 February 2018

Extract

If I fix a square peg into an oblong hole, the fact that they do not fit is instantly perceptible; but it is manifest that the. several percepts of the peg and of the hole must precede the perception of the relation of non-adjustment subsisting between them. Furthermore, if I want to determine how much the peg lacks in size, I must measure separately both the peg and the hole before I can calculate the amount of the hiatus between them. What is true of this simple case of adjustment is true of the complex case of the adjustment of the organism to its environment. However rapid and apparently immediate may be the cognition that a patient is insane—is unadjusted to his environment—yet that cognition must be preceded by a previous knowledge both of the organism itself and of the environment with which his adjustment has failed. The truth of this statement, which is involved in the definition of Insanity, may not be at once apparent, but a little consideration will render it clear. It is manifest that before pronouncing a man insane, we must first know something about him, but that we must also take into account his environment is, perhaps, not so self-evident.

Type
Part I.—Original Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists 1882 

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References

* The law is here stated nearly in the form, and I think almost altogether in the sense which was arrived at by the great biologist whose recent loss the world deplores. Mr. Herbert Spencer states it differently, as follows:—“Understood in its entirety, the law is, that each plant or animal produces other of life kind with itself, the likeness consisting not so much in the rapetition of individual traits as in the asumption of the same general structure.” It appears to me, however, with much deference to this great thinker, that the form in which I have stated it is more in harmony, not only with the actual facts, but with Mr. Spencer's own expansion (using this term in the mathematical sense) and illustration of the law. Google Scholar

* The italics are mine. Google Scholar

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