Dr. E. E. Southard, Boston, read a paper entitled, "Data Concerning
Delusions of Personality."[*]
[*] Published in this number of the Journal, p. 241.
DISCUSSION
DR. SMITH ELY JELLIFFE, New York: Dr. Southard has heretofore launched us
upon very large subjects. I can well recall in one of his previous
communications the fascinating correlations drawn between structural changes
and the character of the psychological signs. In dementia praecox
particularly, he has shown us how auditory symptoms group about temporal
atrophies and optical signs with the occipital and so forth and so on. He
now proposes to thrust us into a larger and much more intricate sphere of
activity as to the representation in the cortex of other changes which as he
has described are inframicroscopical or inframacroscopical. In other words,
there must be some type of correlation between the projection in the
cerebral structure of the organ itself which is cerebrally represented and
certain mental signs. If I see what Dr. Southard has been thinking about,
we are certainly engaged in a very fascinating topic. It is well known from
the standpoint of topographical cerebral correlation that the brain is
nothing but a series of body symbols, as it were. Adler has entered this
field and approaches the problem by saying that the inferior organ, liver,
kidney, or what not, is related to a similar defective cerebral
representation of the organ, thus introducing into the nemological mechanism
the task of compensating for the defective structure. Dr. Southard wishes to
try to map out these defects in the cerebral structures and thus reason
backwards to the somatic inferiority. I confess he lifts me into ideal
regions. Such stimuli are enjoyable and provocative of development.
DR. TOM A. WILLIAMS, Washington, D. C: I conceive Dr. Southard's purpose
somewhat differently from Dr. Jelliffe whose thought seems to be somewhat
like that of Henry Head when he published his paper in reference to
hallucinations, corresponding to various head zones in correspondence with
different visceral areas and with special sense organs, eye, ear and so on.
I have conceived Dr. Southard as being a direct chemical in line with
Folius' pathology researches. If that is the case we have a great many
clinical cases which might be underlined with his central thought.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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