Responsibility in mental disease / by Henry Maudsley.

  • Maudsley, Henry, 1835-1918.
Date:
1874
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Responsibility in mental disease / by Henry Maudsley. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    of delusions, liallucinations or illusions, there were unques- tionably others who were driven by an instinctive impulse, a blind instantaneous impulse, independent of the will, and who acted without passion, without delusion, without motive. To this condition, the monomanie sans delire of Pinel, he gave the name of monomanie instinctive, dis- tinguishing it, in the first place, from true monomania, monomanie intellectuelle, in which there was delusion, and, secondly, from monomanie affective or moral insanity. It is rather unfortunate that the word monomania has thus come to be used in two senses—first, as denoting fixed delusion, and, secondly, as denoting the form of mental derangement in which, without delusion, the patient is possessed with an insane and perhaps irresistible impulse to homicide, suicide, or other act of violence. To avoid the confusion thereby occasioned, I shall speak of the latter under the name of impulsive insanity avoiding also the word instinctive, that it may not be thought I attribute to man a natural instinct to do murder. There are very few persons engaged in the study and treatment of insanity who have not, like. Esquirol, begun by doubting the existence of cases of real impulsive in- 1 sanity; there are none who, after having had a large enough experience, have not, like him, been compelled to abandon their doubts. To those who judge by the ex- perience of a sane self-consciousness, and so prejudge the facts, it seems an inconceivable state of mind, or, at any rate, it seems inconceivable that a person in such a state of mind should not have the power to control the insane impulse ; to those who form their conclusions from obser-