Psychiatric Quarterly
by Mr.
Benjamin Malzberg and Dr. H. M. Pollock, one person out of every twenty-two has to be
placed in an asylum at some time or other. In the whole of the United States, the hospitals
care for almost eight times more feeble-minded or lunatics than consumptives. Each year,
about sixty-eight thousand new cases are admitted to insane asylums and similar
institutions. If the admissions continue at such a rate, about one million of the children
and young people who are today attending schools
and colleges will, sooner or later, be confined in asylums. In the state hospitals there
were, in 1932, 340,000 insane. There were also in special institutions 81,580 feeble-
minded and epileptics, and 10,930 on parole. These statistics do not include the mental
cases treated in private hospitals. In the whole country, besides the insane, there are
500,000 feebleminded. And in addition, surveys made under the auspices of the National
Committee for Mental Hygiene have revealed that at least 400,000 children are so
unintelligent that they cannot profitably follow the courses of the public schools. In fact,
the individuals who are mentally deranged are far more numerous. It is estimated that
several hundred thousand persons, not mentioned in any statistics, are affected with
psychoneuroses. These figures show how great is the fragility of the consciousness of
civilized men, and how important for modern society is the problem of mental health.
The diseases of the mind are a serious menace. They are more dangerous than
tuberculosis, cancer, heart and kidney diseases, and even typhus, plague, and cholera.
They are to be feared, not only because they increase the number of criminals, but chiefly
because they profoundly weaken the dominant white races. It should be realized that
there are not many more feeble-minded and insane among the criminals than in the rest of
the nation. Indeed, a large number of defectives are found in the prisons. But we must not
forget that most intelligent criminals are at large. The frequency of neurosis and
psychosis is doubtless the expression of a very grave defect of modern civilization. The
new habits of existence have certainly not improved our mental health.
Modern medicine has failed in its endeavor to assure to everyone the possession of the
activities which are truly specific of the human being. Physicians are utterly incapable of
protecting consciousness against its unknown enemies. The symptoms of mental diseases
and the different types of feeblemindedness have been well classified. But we are
completely ignorant of the nature of these disorders. We have not ascertained whether
they are due to structural lesions of the brain or to changes in the composition of blood-
plasma, or to both these causes. It is probable that our nervous and psychological
activities depend simultaneously on the anatomical conditions of the cerebral cells, on the
substances set free in the blood by endocrine glands and other tissues, and on our mental
states themselves. Functional disorders of the glands, as well as structural lesions of the
brain, may be responsible for neuroses and psychoses. Even a complete knowledge of
these phenomena would not bring about great progress. The pathology of the mind
depends on psychology, as the pathology of the organs on physiology. But physiology is
a science, while psychology is not. Psychology awaits its Claude Bernard or its Pasteur. It
is in the state of surgery when surgeons were barbers, of chemistry before Lavoisier, at
the epoch of the alchemists. However, it would be unjust to incriminate modern
psychologists and their methods for the rudimentary condition of their science. The
extreme complexity of the subject is the main cause of their ignorance. There are no
techniques permitting the exploration of the unknown world of the nervous cells, of their
association and projection fibers, and of the cerebral and mental processes.
It has not been possible to bring to light any precise relations between schizophrenic
manifestations, for example, and structural alterations of the cerebral cortex. The hopes
of Kroepelin, the famous pioneer in the maladies of the mind, have not materialized. The
anatomical study of these diseases has not thrown much light on their nature. Mental
disorders are perhaps not localized in space. Some symptoms can be attributed to a lack
of harmony in the temporal succession of nervous phenomena, to changes in the value of
time for cells constituting a functional system. We know also that the lesions produced in
certain regions of the cerebrum, either by the spirochetes of syphilis or by the mysterious
agent of encephalitis lethargica, bring about definite modifications of the personality.
This knowledge is vague, uncertain, in process of formation. However, it is imperative
not to wait for a complete understanding of the nature of insanity before developing a
truly effective hygiene of the mind.
The discovery of the causes of mental diseases would be more important than that of
their nature. Such knowledge could lead to the prevention of these maladies.
Feeblemindedness and insanity are perhaps the price of industrial civilization, and of the
resulting changes in our ways of life. However, these affections are often part of the
inheritance received from his parents by each individual. They manifest themselves
among people whose nervous system is already unbalanced. In the families which have
already produced neurotic, queer, oversensitive individuals, the insane and the
feebleminded suddenly appear. However, they also spring up from lineages which have
so far been free from mental disorders. There are certainly other causes of insanity than
hereditary factors. We must, therefore, ascertain how modern life acts upon
consciousness.
In successive generations of pure-bred dogs, nervousness is often observed to increase.
We find among these animals individuals closely resembling the feeble-minded and the
insane. This phenomenon occurs in subjects brought up under artificial conditions, living
in comfortable kennels, and provided with choice food quite different from that of their
ancestors, the shepherds, which fought and defeated the wolves. It seems that the new
conditions of existence, imposed upon dogs, as well as upon men, tend to modify the
nervous system unfavorably. But experiments of long duration are necessary in order to
obtain a precise knowledge of the mechanism of this degeneration. The factors promoting
the development of idiocy and insanity are of great complexity. Dementia praecox and
circular insanity manifest themselves more especially in the social groups where life is
restless and disordered, food too elaborate or too poor, and syphilis frequent. And also
when the nervous system is hereditarily unstable, when moral discipline has been
suppressed, when selfishness, irresponsibility, and dispersion are customary. There are
probably some relations between these factors and the genesis of psychoses. The modern
habits of living hide a fundamental defect. In the environment created by technology, our
most specific functions develop incompletely. Despite the marvels of scientific
civilization, human personality tends to dissolve.
Chapter V
INWARD TIME
1
T
HE
DURATION
of man, just as his size, varies according to the unit used for its
measurement. It is long when related to that of mice or butterflies. Short in comparison
with the life of an oak. Insignificant, if placed in the frame of the earth's history. We
measure it by the motion of the hands of a clock around the dial. We liken it to the
passage of those hands over equal intervals, the seconds, the minutes, the hours. The time
of a clock corresponds to certain rhythmic events, such as the earth's rotation on its axis
and around the sun. Our duration is, then, expressed in units of solar time and consists of
about twenty-five thousand days. For the clock which measures it, a child's day is equal
to that of its parents. In reality, those twenty-four hours represent a very small part of the
child's future life, and a much larger fraction of that of its parents. But they may also be
looked upon as a minute fragment of an old man's past existence and a far more
important part of that of a nursling. Thus, the value of physical time seems to differ
according to whether we look back to the past or forward to the future.
We have to refer our duration to a clock because we are immersed in the physical
continuum. And the clock measures one of the dimensions of this continuum. On the
surface of our planet, those dimensions are discerned through particular characteristics.
The vertical is identified by the phenomenon of gravity. We are unable to make any
distinction between the two horizontal dimensions. We could, however, separate them
from each other if our nervous system were endowed with the properties of a magnetic
needle. As for the fourth dimension, or time, it takes on a strange aspect. While the other
three dimensions of things are short and almost motionless, it appears as ceaselessly
extending and very long. We travel quite easily over the two horizontal dimensions. But
in order to move in the vertical one, we must use a staircase or an elevator, an aircraft or
a balloon, for we have to contend with gravity. To travel in time is absolutely impossible.
Wells has not divulged the secrets of construction of the machine which enabled one of
his heroes to leave his room by the fourth dimension and to escape into the future. For
concrete man, time is very different from space. But the four dimensions would seem
identical to an abstract man inhabiting the sidereal spaces. Although distinct from space,
time is inseparable from it, at the surface of the earth as in the rest of the universe, when
considered by the biologist as well as by the physicist.
In nature, time is always found united to space. It is a necessary aspect of material
beings. No concrete thing has only three spatial dimensions. A rock, a tree, an animal
cannot be instantaneous. Indeed, we are capable of building up in our minds beings
entirely described within three dimensions. But all concrete objects have four. And man
extends both in time and in space. To an observer living far more slowly than we do he
would appear as something narrow and elongated, analogous to the incandescent trail of a
meteor. Besides, he possesses another aspect, impossible to define clearly. For he is not
wholly comprised within the physical continuum. Thought is not confined within time
and space. Moral, esthetic, and religious activities do not inhabit the physical continuum
exclusively. Moreover, we know that clairvoyants may detect hidden things at great
distances. Some of them perceive events which have already happened or which will take
place in the future. It should be noted that they apprehend the future in the same way as
the past. They are sometimes incapable of distinguishing the one from the other. For
example, they may speak, at two different epochs, of the same fact, without suspecting
that the first vision relates to the future, and the second to the past. Certain activities of
consciousness seem to travel over space and time.
The nature of time varies according to the objects considered by our mind. The time
that we observe in nature has no separate existence. It is only a mode of being of concrete
objects. We ourselves create mathematical time. It is a mental construct, an abstraction
indispensable to the building up of science. We conveniently compare it to a straight line,
each successive instant being represented by a point. Since Galileo's day this abstraction
has been substituted for the concrete data resulting from the direct observation of things.
The philosophers of the Middle Ages considered time as an agent concretizing
abstractions. Such a conception resembled more closely that of Minkowski than that of
Galileo. To them, as to Minkowski, to Einstein, and to modern physicists, time, in nature,
appeared as completely inseparable from space. In reducing objects to their primary
qualities--that is, to what can be measured and is susceptible of mathematical treatment
--Galileo deprived them of their secondary qualities, and of duration. This arbitrary
simplification made possible the development of physics. At the same time, it led to an
unwarrantably schematic conception of the world, especially of the biological world. We
must listen to Bergson and attribute to time a reality of its own. And give back their
secondary qualities and duration to inanimate and living beings.
The concept of time is equivalent to the operation required to estimate duration in the
objects of our universe. Duration consists of the superposition of the different aspects of
an identity. It is a kind of intrinsic movement of things. The earth revolves on its axis
and, without losing its primary qualities, shows a surface which is sometimes lighted and
sometimes darkened. Mountains may progressively change their shape under the action
of snow, rain, and erosion, although they remain themselves. A tree grows, and does not
lose its identity. The human individual retains his personality throughout the flux of the
organic and mental processes that make up his life. Each inanimate or living being
comprises an inner motion, a succession of states, a rhythm, which is his very own. Such
motion is inherent time. It can be measured by reference to the motion of another being.
Thus, we measure our duration by comparing it with solar time. As we inhabit the surface
of the earth, we find it convenient to place in its frame the spatial and temporal
dimensions of everything found thereon. We estimate our height with the aid of the
meter, which is approximately the forty-millionth part of the meridian of our planet. In a
like manner, the rotation of the earth, or the number of hours ticked off by a clock, is the
standard to which we refer our temporal dimensions or the flow of our time. It is natural
for human beings to use the intervals separating the rising of the sun from its setting as
the means to measure their duration and organize their lives. However, the moon could
serve the same purpose. In fact, to fishermen dwelling on shores where the tides are very
high, lunar time is more important than solar time. Their way of living, and the hours
reserved for sleeping and eating, are determined by the rhythm of the tides. In such
circumstances, human duration is fitted into the frame of the daily variations of the sea-
level. In short, time is a specific character of things. Its nature varies according to the
constitution of each object. Human beings have acquired the habit of identifying their
duration, and that of all other beings, with the time shown by clocks. Nevertheless, our
inner time is as distinct from, and independent of, this extrinsic time, as our body is, in
space, distinct from, and independent of, the earth and the sun.
2
Inner time is the expression of the changes of the body and its activities during the
course of life. It is equivalent to the uninterrupted succession of the structural, humoral,
physiological, and mental states which constitute our personality. It is truly a dimension
of ourselves. Imaginary slices carved from our body and soul through such dimension
would be as heterogeneous as the sections made by anatomists perpendicularly to the
three spatial axes. As Wells says in the
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