Our last point is a corollary to the claim we have just made. It has been
the sport of iconoclasts for many years to discount all religious beliefs as
psychopathic. This is not the forum where the problem of science versus
religion may be discussed but these cases have certain features which should
warn us to be wary of such generalizations. We have seen that religious
formulations have been used to embody crude fancies. That does not preclude
the possibility of the formulations having an actual basis. A flag may gain
its importance to a given individual because it symbolizes for him his
native land but that does not prove that the flag has not an existence of
itself. This, however, is a matter of logic and not of psychiatry. Let us
now grant that all religious formulations have an unconscious origin. But
there still remains a wide gulf between patients such as we have been
describing and the devout church-goers. The former show in their productions
how their religious ideas arise, their egocentric quality is patent, they
manifestly are but thin cloaks for selfish wishes. The latter, however,
never in consciousness connect their religious formulations with their
subjective creations. To the true believer his God is as objective a
reality as is the electron of the physicist. Finally, real religious faith
has a pragmatic value. Granting it be only a theory it nevertheless produces
results in conduct. This is in sharpest contrast to religious delusions.
They never lead to sustained effort, they bring with them no social
potentiality. They exist for the comfort of the patient alone.
To sum up: We have endeavored to establish the claim that delusions in
dementia praecox which takes the form of objective speculations rather than
subjective experiences are an evidence of a milder psychotic reaction and
hence warrant a prognosis of chronicity rather than deterioration. From the
cases presented we argue that scattering of thought arises from a failure to
formulate underlying fancies in an objective way; that the insanity of ideas
depends not on themselves but on the critical judgment of the age which
produces them, and lastly that there are essential psychological differences
between creeds and religious delusions.
SOCRATES IN THE LIGHT OF MODERN PSYCHOPATHOLOGY
BY MORRIS J. KARPAS, M. D.
Assistant Resident Alienist, Psychopathic Department of Bellevue Hospital of
New York
(Read before the Vidonian Club, New York, October 16, 1914.)
"CONSCIOUSNESS had reached this point in Greece, when in Athens, the great
forum of Socrates, in whom subjectivity of thought was brought to
consciousness in a more definite and more thorough manner, now appeared.
But Socrates did not grow like a mushroom out of the earth, for he extends
in continuity with his time, and this is not only a most important figure in
the history of philosophy--but perhaps also a world famed personage."
Hegel.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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