The Monist, Vol. 3, 1892-1893 : $b A quarterly magazineVarious
Philosophy
The Monist, Vol. 3, 1892-1893 : $b A quarterly magazine
Various
Philosophy -- Periodicals
As regards the classifications of amnesia M. Sollier censures that of M.
Ribot as being neither openly psychological nor openly clinical, and of
taking successively as bases the extent of an observed phenomenon, its
evolution, its location in time. Moreover, from a clinical standpoint
it has led to a joining together of totally incongruous disorders. M.
Sollier therefore rejects it, and contents himself with adopting first of
all, with M. Falret, the natural classification of general amnesia and of
partial amnesia. Moreover, in taking account of the systematising of lost
remembrances, he proposes to make a distinction as to the two varieties
of systematised (functional) and of non-systematised (organic) amnesia,
considered from the purely psychological standpoint, p. 59. We should
thus have, firstly, the classification of general amnesia, including
(A) true organic amnesia (destruction of the centre of mental images),
and, under the classification of the systematised, (B) functional,
or apparent, amnesia (imperfect performance of the functions of the
centres): this latter subdividing into two groups, (_a_) amnesia with its
varieties (_a´_) simple, (_b´_) retrogressive, (_c´_) progressive, and
(_b_) paramnesia: (_a´_) that of locality, (_b´_) that of exactness; to
which it is proper to add (_c_) dysmnesia, which is organic-functional.
Secondly, the classification of partial amnesia whether systematised or
not, which may be either organic or functional. M. Sollier abandons,
moreover, every pathological or etiological classification as being
exceedingly unsatisfactory. In the presence of a patient, he justly
remarks, the physician can only employ semiology.—I will not enter
here into the details of the inquisitor-like investigation entered
upon by the author. I must even proceed without stopping through the
observations intended for medical men, which form the second part of the
work, but I judge that every reader will also find therein many facts
which may prove of interest. After having read it, one is more impressed
than ever with the importance and delicacy of the motive forces of the
memory, in noting the frequency and the varieties even of its sources of
weakness. M. Sollier has the credit of pointing them out—in the shape
of “defects in synthetical power” and in “will power”—in the sources of
weakness where one had not been accustomed to look for them. It would be
interesting, he thinks, to find out what part amnesia may perhaps take in
the pathogeny of certain nervous disorders, and the influence which it
has on their evolution. Specialists for the insane might find therein a
new subject of study, and psychology will profit, on the other hand, by
that which clinical experience offers it. Is not its main object to learn
to understand life as a unit at the same time that it analyses it as a
diversity?
* * * * *
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