This process of degeneration and simplification is characteristic of all forms of psychopathic conditions, though it may be more prominent in some cases than in others. The type of mental life becomes lowered and there is a reversion, a sort of atavism, to simpler and more childish experiences, memories, reactions of earlier and less complex forms of mental life. I have laid special stress on this feature of psychopathic reactions in all my works on the subject. What I emphasize in my present work is the fact that psychopathic reactions are dominated by self and fear, which are laid bare by the process of degeneration. The patient in psychopathic states is tortured by his fears, he is obsessed by wishes which are entirely due to his fear and deranged impulse of self-preservation. As the static energy is reached, and with lack of functional energy of the dynamic character, the energy habitually used in the ordinary relations of life, the patient experiences a monotony, a void in his life activity. He has a feeling of distress, as if something is haunting him, and possibly something terrible is going to happen to him or his family. He may have a feeling of some depression, and may suffer from a constant unquenchable craving for new stimulations, run after new impressions and excitements which pale in a short time on his fagged mind. He is restless, demanding new amusements and distractions. He is distracted with fear, conscious and more often subconscious,--which he is unable to dispel or shake off. He seems to stand over a fearful precipice, and he is often ready to do anything to avoid this terrible gap in his life. Life is empty, devoid of all interest; he talks of ennui and even of suicide; he is of a pessimistic, gloomy disposition, his state of mind approaching a state of melancholia. He asks for new sensations, new pleasures, new enjoyments which soon tire him. He is in the condition of a leaking barrel which never can be filled. Psychopathic individuals are in a state of the wicked “who are like the ocean which never rests.” This misery of ever forming wishes and attempting to assuage the inner suffering, this craving for new pleasures and excitements, in order to still uneasiness, distress, and the pangs of the fear instinct with its gnawing, agonizing anxieties, brings the patient to a state in which he is ready to drink and use narcotics. The patient seeks ways to relieve his misery. The patient has used up all his available dynamic energy, and being unable to reach the stores of reserve energy looks for a key or stimulant to release his locked up reserve energies. The patient is unable to respond to the stimuli of life, so he attempts then the use of his static energy. This can only result in producing psychopathic and neuropathic symptoms.