The Causation and Treatment of Psychopathic Diseases
- Author:
Boris Sidis, A.M.,
Ph.D., M.D. Boston: Richard G. Badger, 1916. Pp. 418.
When we see Dr Sidis heralded by his publisher as the discoverer of “the fundamental cause of psychopathic maladies,” we infer that Dr Sigmund Freud has a rival. Freud in his day was hailed as a discoverer, and he too put forward . one cause, albeit a different one, to which he would reduce all cases of functional mental disorder. Dr Sidis is unkind enough to allude to psycho-analysis as “Freudian twaddle,” but what the Viennese psychiatrist would think of Dr. Sidis we can faintly imagine. That each of these gentlemen has found only one source for the infinite variety of psychopathic aberrations, may give us reason to regard them both with the same doubt.
Dr Sidis’ chief law is fear. He bases his argument upon the resemblances between the physiological accompaniments of the emotion of fear and the symptoms of psychopathic disease. He maps out no less than fourteen principles by which the fear instinct operates to cause psychopatliological states, and cites an immense number of cases in illustration. If these cases were accompanied by an account of the treatment, in so far as it concerned measures other than medical, they might be worthy of the credence we should like to place in them.
As it is, the book will hardly be impressive either to practicing neurologists or to psychologists interested in mental disease, though perhaps it may prove a treasure-house of symptoms for the delectation of the idle contingent who are on their way to becoming nervous invalids. A. T.
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