Boris Sidis

“ With the setting in of the process of dissolution the scientist, the professor, the student loses by degrees the lately acquired wealth of knowledge, the complex and delicately balanced conceptual structure of scientific relationship; the more remotely related to the original nucleus of sense experience is the first to become shaken and tumble down. When the degenerative process has gone far enough, the original meagre nucleus of sense-experience becomes disintegrated in its turn. ”

“ The musician, the virtuoso loses the power of infusing harmony, life, and emotion into the play; the painter loses control over his brush, the singer over his voice; the watchmaker, or the mechanician is unable to regulate the fine movements of the spring, the wheels of the delicate mechanism, and the mechanic is unable to handle his instruments. Drawing deteriorates, writing is impaired and defective. ”

“ The more intense a stimulation is, the more extensive is the process of disaggregation, the higher mounts the moment-threshold giving rise to the different phenomenon of psycho-physiological and psycho-motor dissociation. ”

“ Old habits become inveterate, habits formed in childhood and perpetuated can hardly be eradicated, while those that are formed later in life become more easily dissolved. Complex habits formed in late life, relating to moral life and social intercourse, become dissolved at the first onset of the process of mental degeneration, while habits formed early in life, such as handling spoons, fork, and plate or dressing and buttoning the coat long resist the degenerative process. ”

“ The depth of the congenital mental degeneration is from moral to social, then to sex, and last to food instincts. In the imbecile, only the moral, social, and intellectual activities are affected, the imbecility being according to the depth of the degeneration, the other instincts are more or less normal. In the idiot and cretin the process of degeneration has gone still deeper and sex and food instincts with their psycho-physiological functions and psychomotor adjustments become affected, the idiocy being in proportion to the gravity of the affection. ”

“ A habit of long standing is well organized, and it is often extremely difficult, if not impossible, to control.
Food instincts, sex instincts, social instincts, and personal moral life from an ascending series both as to time of appearance in the history of the species as well as complexity of structure and function. Food instincts in time and simplicity precede sex instincts, and sex instincts in their turn precede social instincts which antecede personal, moral life. ”

“ Food instincts are more stable than sex instincts, sex instincts are more stable than social instincts which are more firmly organized than a highly unified personal life, guided by a moral ideal. The structure and functions of the system of alimentation remain unchanged for ages; the sex instincts may become slightly modified for some period of time; the functions relating to social life vary from generation to generation, while the moral life guided by the moral ideal is highly individualized and personal. ”

“ When the deterioration of personal moral life and social instincts is well under way, degeneration of other functions sets in,―the patient gives himself over to excesses, to all kinds of debauches, and indulges in the different forms of abnormal sexual practices. ”

“ Moral life is the first to be affected. Social instincts, follow, while disturbances of sex and food instincts set in very late in the course of the pathological process of disaggregation and degeneration. ”

“ Under the influence of strong stimulation such as mechanical and chemical agencies, and psychic affections, such as intense emotions of fear, anger, grief, anxiety, or worry, the degenerative process of disaggregation sets in, affecting first the higher aggregates and then with the continuity and intensity of the stimulations the process descends deeper and deeper affecting less complex aggregates, finally reaching the simplest aggregates of moments. The higher types of moments degenerate and fall to lower and lower stages of consciousness. ”

“ He learns the delicate adaptations of grasping small objects and the fine adjustments of producing a series of highly complex and extremely delicate motor reactions, such for instance as one finds in the handling of instruments, reading, writing in the execution of musical pieces, in singing, and piano playing. All these motor reactions as they become more complex and delicate are further and further removed from the organized nucleus. ”

“ To produce a straight line or to draw a circle becomes impossible. Involuntary tremor is predominant, a tremor, the rhythmical regularity of which becomes fully manifested in senile degeneration, and which is also observed, though without its rhythmical regularity, on the very eve of mental life, in infancy. ”

“ In phylogenesis the best and most firmly organized instincts survive, while in ontogenesis those habits are consciously or unconsciously selected which are most firmly established and are best adapted to the given end. At the same time the older an instinct is, the more thoroughly organized it becomes, the more is it enabled to withstand the onslaught of external hurtful stimuli. ”

“ In certain forms of mental alienation, such as melancholia and paranoia, the patient becomes suspicious of others, of his near and dear ones, becomes cruel and revengeful, sometimes ending by attacking his own friends and near relatives, and committing homicide. ”

“ These grasping motor reactions are at first crude and inexact. The distance of objects is often mistaken, and the child stretches his hand to fetch distant objects, while small objects cannot be picked up; the hand often goes in the wrong direction and objects are often dropped, because the reactions are not exact and steady. Still these grasping movements form the nucleus for the formation of new and more complex strata of motor reactions. ”

“ Even in the lighter forms of psychic degenerative forms that lie on the borderland of mental alienation, such, for instance, as are present in the various forms of psychopathic maladies we still find that the same relation holds good. ”