Mental Mechanisms Author:William Alanson White General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1911 Original Publisher: The Journal of nervous and mental disease publishing company Subjects: Psychology, Pathological Medical / Psychiatry / General Psychology / Mental Illness Psychology / Psychopathology / General Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the... more » original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: CHAPTER III THE CONTENT OF CONSCIOUSNESS -- DREAMS -- SYMBOLISM -i-THE PSYCHOSES -- FOLK-LORE The fundamental conception which it will be the object of this chapter to set forth is that every psychic fact must have been preceded by an efficient psychic cause. As we have already had repeatedly emphasized by examples, ideas, or better, mental states do not arise de novo. They must always be the outcome of other mental states from which they necessarily issue. This is so throughout the field of psychology, normal or morbid. It is true even in the realm of the psychoses due to organic changes in the brain. That an alcoholic should have a delirium may well be dependent upon a toxemia, but whether he sees in his delirium snakes or monkeys, visions of his office or of hell must depend upon purely psychic causes, upon the preexisting psychic material which has become involved in the disorder. Whether a paretic is exalted or depressed, whether the exaltation is largely erotic or expresses itself by delusions of great wealth must find its explanation in the mental make-up of the person afflicted, and the character of his psychic trends. The cards may be indefinitely shuffled or arranged in any way, but there are only fifty-two in the pack, and the result whatever it may be, must be conditioned by that fact. With this fundamental conception the psychiatrist, for example, is in a position to remind...« less