The psychoneuroses and their treatmet by psychotherapy / by J. Dejerine and E. Gauckler ; authorized translation by Smith Ely Jelliffe.

  • Déjerine, J. (Joseph Jules), 1849-1917.
Date:
[1915], ©1915
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The psychoneuroses and their treatmet by psychotherapy / by J. Dejerine and E. Gauckler ; authorized translation by Smith Ely Jelliffe. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    21/420 (page 1)
    PSYCHOTHERAPY FIRST PART ANALYTICAL STUDY OF FUNCTIONAL MANIFESTATIONS. WE shall study, under the name of functional manifestations, all those persistent symptoms and troubles of which neuropaths complain, and which have been created in these patients without any antecedent lesion of the body. This definition is only provisional. It is made sufficiently broad for the moment not to limit the object of our study. As there is no mechanism, organ, or region of the body which cannot become the seat of a functional manifestation, it would seem necessary for the various parts of the organism to be involved in equal proportions. But there are numerous reasons for the variability of frequency which exists. Without dwelling, for the moment, on the part which education, whether medical or personal, plays in the symp- toms felt by these patients, we must make one statement, large in theoretic consequences, which we will make good later. Some of the functions of the body are completely automatic, and never require any direction from the superior centres. Such is the function of circulation. Others, on the contrary, especially the digestive and genital, and in part the urinary, are functions which, at least in their ultimate accom- plishment, depend upon various mental representations, and call the will into play. There are functions on which the action of the will is felt, but in a purely contingent manner, such as the respiratory function. Finally, even among the functions which do not come under the in- fluence of the will, there are none whose automatism may not be more or less affected by the influence of the emotions. But the fact is not without significance that those very functions which are the most involved are those which are most susceptible to psychic influence. The digestive function has always seemed to us to be the one on which the greatest number of functional manifestations were localized. With it, therefore, we shall commence our study.