1. Adaptability is essential to life and health. 2. There is no neurosis without a psychosis. 3. Suggestion may be a powerful factor for health. 4. What we attend to determines what we are. 5. Thought substitution is possible. 6. Habit is a conserver of effort. 7. Will is a saving power. CHAPTER VIII VARIATIONS FROM NORMAL MENTAL PROCESSES DISORDERS AND PERVERSIONS Life would be a very simple proposition if the mental machinery always worked right. But this is peculiarly subject to damage both from without and from within. From without it may be damaged by the toxins of food, as in the acute toxic psychoses; by the poison of drink, as in the alcohol-produced psychoses, such as acute alcoholic hallucinosis; by lack of muscular exercise, resulting in a deficient supply of oxygen to burn up the accumulated toxins from energy-producing foods; by the infections, which may result in the infection-exhaustion psychoses; by wrong methods of education, and by surroundings which demand too severe a mental strain in the struggle toward adjustment. These damages from without we class roughly as environmental. From within the mental workings may be injured by emotional dominance; by bad habits of thinking and feeling and doing--often the result of wrong methods of education; by defective heredity; by undeveloped will; by the insanities. These danger sources from within we might classify as self-produced and hereditary. There may be disorders of any or every function of the intellect, disorders of feeling, and perversions of will. Some of the most commonly met we list below. Disorders of the _Functions_ of _Intellect_. / Hyperesthesia (exaggeration of sensation) { as found in neurasthenia, or in mania. { Anesthesia (absence of sensation) { as in the numbness of hysteria; in sensory { paralysis. Disorders / Retardation of < as in dementia and melancholia. Sensation \ "Clouding" or dulness { as in simple depression. { Perversion { as in dementia and melancholia. Sweet may taste \ sour; fresh food may smell decayed. / Hyperesthesia (exaggeration) { as in neurasthenia or mania. { Anesthesia Disorders { as in hysteria or paralysis. of { Retardation Perception { as in dementia and melancholia. / "Clouding" or dulness (being < as in simple depression. dependent \ Illusion on sensation { found in normal mind--easily corrected; is always { found in many insanities. disturbed { Hallucinations with it). { frequently met in the infection-exhaustion psychoses, { in dementia, in paranoia, in acute \ hallucinosis of alcoholism.