These habitual words and phrases--and many more instances may be
cited--are analogous to the mannerisms exhibited during concentration of
the attention on the performance of certain acts. They cannot be
considered tics unless reproduced at other times as well. Moreover,
while the use of such terms may be overdone, it can hardly be said to be
unreasonable. However irritating their effect, they indicate simply an
exuberance of style and a degree of inattention, not a grave mental
shortcoming.
Of a less trivial nature is a curious anomaly that consists in the
complication of speech by the introduction of meaningless expressions
uncontrolled by the will. This is a functional defect very much akin to
the tics.
A distinguished medical colleague was in the habit of muttering the word
_cousisi_ as he talked.[128] Séglas described similar occurrences as
"stereotyped acts of speech." One of the Salpêtrière patients used to
close every sentence with the phrase "in all and for all." Another's
opening remark was always "Araken-Doken-Zoken." It is permissible to
regard many of the neologisms imagined by the insane as examples of
stereotyped speech. A patient, for instance, who suffered from delusions
of persecution, said he was being pursued by the Evil Eye
("_reluquets_"--_reluquer_, to leer at). With the eventual disappearance
of the association linking the original idea to the neologism, the
patient may no longer be capable of explaining the meaning of the
phraseology he has invented, but in the case of those whose mental level
is more nearly normal the coining of new words need not be more than a
sort of eccentricity, which is generally accompanied, however, by other
indications of instability. We may remind ourselves of O., with his
"vertigos" and "para-tics."
But if, finally, words or phrases escape the subject's lips at moments
of silence, with whose imperious and unexpected emission he is powerless
to cope, then we are dealing with true tics of speech. Their
investigation has been conducted by Guinon with great analytical skill.
At the upper end of the ladder among exclamations we meet words
involuntarily and senselessly repeated, in a loud tone of voice, to
the accompaniment of tics and grimaces. These expressions fall
naturally into two groups that require to be rigorously
differentiated.
In the first of these the words uttered may be simply anything;
each patient may have his own, and so their number is absolutely
limitless. Occasionally one is in a position to discover in the
antecedents of the case the reason for the choice of a particular
word in preference to another, as in the instance of the man whose
involuntary ejaculation, "Maria!" was the echo of a passion he had
conceived years before for a young girl of that name.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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