[9] SIEFERT: "Ueber die Geistesstörungen der Strafhaft." Halle a. S. 1907. [10] BONHOEFFER: "Klinische Beiträge zur Lehre von den Degenerationspsychosen." Halle a. S. 1907. [11] BRATZ: "Dass Krankheitsbild der Affect-Epilepsie." _Aerzt. Sachverst._ Berlin, 1907. XIII. 112-116. [12] STURROCK: "Certain Insane Conditions in Criminal Classes." _Journal of Mental Science_, 56. 1910, p. 653. [13] BIRNBAUM: "Psychosen mit Wahnbildungen und wahnhafte Einbildungen bei Degenerierten." Halle a. S. 1908. CHAPTER II THE NATURE AND TREATMENT OF THE PSYCHOSES OF PRISONERS Those who still believe in an exclusively materialistic theory of mental disorder must find it extremely difficult to maintain their doctrine in the face of the many incontrovertible facts brought to light through modern research in the field of psychopathology. The modern trend in psychiatry is distinctly in the opposite direction. We no longer today insist upon material changes in cells and tissues for every psychotic phenomenon, but rather endeavor to investigate mental life, be it normal or abnormal, from the biologic point of view. We are being constantly confronted with the undeniable fact that whatever may be the physical substratum of mental disorder, it does not aid us in understanding the peculiar expression which a given psychosis chooses to assume. Why it is that one paretic greets us with the exalted mien of his grandiose delirium, while another spreads about him the gloom of a depressive delirium--the changes in the pyramidal cells do not explain. There must be, then, factors other than material ones which determine this. Mental life, after all, expresses itself in a series of reactions destined to result in a proper adaptation to environmental conditions, and the causes which determine a given reaction may be psychic as well as physical in nature. Indeed, in the realm of psychopathology we see indubitable evidence of the predominance of psychic causes of mental disorder over physical ones, and the subject under discussion here further emphasizes this. The problem of the prison psychoses, although extensively discussed in psychiatric literature in the last half century, is far from being solved, and for this and many other reasons deserves further attention. The psychotic manifestations of prison life are of sufficient frequency to deserve some definite place in our nosological tables; they develop in a milieu artificially created by society, and if this milieu is responsible for the production of mental disorder, it is of the utmost importance, both from a preventative and curative standpoint, to investigate the causes operative here, and lastly, these psychoses concern individuals who form one of the most important problems society has to deal with, and any light which the study of psychotic conditions in these individuals may throw upon the general problem of crime and the criminal, should be very much welcomed.