Moral insanity

“ While applying the nomenclature of disease to these exceptional monsters, we need not allow that their atrocities were, at first at any rate, beyond their control. Moral insanity is often nothing more than the hypertrophy of some vulgar passion—lust, violence, cruelty, jealousy, and the like. The tyrant, placed above law and less influenced by public opinion than a private person, may easily allow a greed110 for pleasure or a love of bloodshed to acquire morbid proportions in his nature. ”

“ There are the same structural changes in the evolution of insanity as in that of catarrh. There is a morbid structural basis in minds diseased, the abnormal mentality or morality being merely symptoms of a physical disease. Of all human legacies, structural weakness of the mental or moral sense is the most unfortunate.
I shall say no more about the forms of mental disease than that there is distinctively both intellectual{158} and moral insanity as a direct result of disease of the intellectual and moral centres. ”

“ It has brought out that great doctrine of moral insanity, which has done more to make men charitable and soften legal and theological barbarism than any one doctrine that I can think of since the message of peace and good-will to men. ”

“ The courts of England and the leading authorities in the United States have never departed from this correct rule, that a man is accountable, to some extent at least, for whatever he does willingly and without the influence of delusion.
Moral insanity thus understood, as a derangement of the passions lessening a man’s full mastery of himself, but not destroying it altogether, assumes various forms. ”

“ And on the other hand it thus appears very probable also that a brain partially diseased is liable to be soon affected in the other parts as well. Hence we may suspect that moral insanity is likely to bring on delusional insanity, and vice versa. In fact, I find that a medical expert of note, who had for many years taught that moral insanity was quite a distinct disease and separate from mental insanity, has in his old age changed his mind to some extent on this subject. ”

“ You will notice, gentlemen, that Chief Justice Williams does not deny the existence of every kind of moral insanity. As I explained before, not the will but the passions may really be diseased or insane, and they may prompt the lunatic to commit very unreasonable and even criminal acts. ”

“ This fact, that the germs of moral insanity and criminality are found normally in mankind in the first stages of his existence, in the same way as forms considered monstrous when exhibited by adults, frequently exist in the fœtus, is such a simple and common phenomenon that it eluded notice until it was demonstrated clearly by observers like Moreau, Perez, and Bain. ”

“ It is true that moral insanity is more often found in the descendants of insane, neurotic, or dipsomaniac forebears than in those of criminals, and that the characteristics are manifested at an earlier age than is the case with born criminals, but these differences are not of fundamental importance. ”

“ While formerly insanity had been regarded as a moral sin, the public conscience, thanks to the enlightening work of science, henceforth had to adapt itself to the truth that insanity is a disease like all others, that a man does not become insane because he wants to, but that he becomes insane through hereditary transmission and the influence of the environment in which he lives, being predisposed toward insanity and becoming insane under the pressure of circumstances. ”

“ There is a phase of insanity which may be called moral madness, in which all that is good or even human seems to disappear from the mind, and a fiend-nature replaces it. The sole aim and desire of the being thus possessed is to exasperate, to molest, to destroy, and preternatural ingenuity and energy are often exercised to that dreadful end. ”

“ But as the imagination, an organic power, can be disorganized by an affection of the brain, and by delusion deceive the intellect, thus producing mental insanity, similarly I fully admit that a man’s passions, which are also organic powers, common to us and to brute animals, can become disordered by bodily disease; and the passions, when excited, will strive to drag along the consent of the will, as we all experience. A man whose passions are abnormally influenced by bodily disease, so that he is constantly inclined to act very unreasonably, may well be called morally insane. ”

“ They are absolutely and congenitally incapable of social education, systematically hostile to every moralising influence. Being themselves morally blind, it is their firm conviction that all others are in the same condition; they disbelieve in the possibility of virtue, and being often possessed of considerable intellectual ability, maintain anti-social theories with much skill.
“Moral insanity” does not probably stand for any definite morbid condition. ”

“ Prichard, moral insanity; a state of exaggerated and perverted emo
tion, accompanied by violent and irregular conduct, but unconnected with intellectual aberration; until some phy sical shock is incurred—bodily illness, or accident, or ex posure to physical suffering ; and then the imperfect type of mental disease is converted into perfect lunacy, cha racterised by more or less profound affection of the intellect, by delusion or incoherence. ”

“ Happily however, although this conclusion is one which has been arrived at by a considerable number of physicists, it is one which the common sense of mankind steadily refuses to accept. It is sufficient for the present purpose, that extreme forms of moral evil shade off into mania by insensible degrees; and that ultimately they are capable of producing insanity. If insanity can be produced by moral causes, it follows that a superhuman influence powerful for evil, acting on a degraded moral nature, may be attended with a similar result, and produce such a phenomenon as possession. ”

“ It is against those clear principles of psychology and ethics which are not only speculatively evident, but practically necessary to maintain the fabric of human society. I do not deny that there exists an emotional insanity of another kind, which I will explain further on, but not an insanity of the will, as they understand it, which would excuse a man from the consequences of his wilful acts. ”

“ The aims which chiefly predominate—riches, position, power, applause of men—are such as inevitably breed and foster many bad passions in the eager competition to attain them. Hence, in fact, come disappointed ambition, jealousy, grief from loss of fortune, all the torments of wounded self-love, and a thousand other mental sufferings—the commonly enumerated moral causes of insanity. ”

“ Of course, so far as this includes moral treatment and management, it has advanced in all civilized countries in a manner calculated, all will admit, to cause the liveliest feelings of satisfaction. Putting aside moral treatment, we cannot boast, it must be confessed, of the same unanimity of judgment. If, however, it must be admitted that as respects details, Tot capita, tot sensus, it will be allowed that, notwithstanding the so many heads, and the as many opinions, the general principles of treatment based upon a just view of the general pathology of insanity, are accepted by all. ”

“ And this abnormal action may itself proceed either from a local lesion of the brain, or from a sympathetic affection due to indisposition in other parts of the human body. I finished by examining the responsibility of an insane man for his actions, and arrived at this practical conclusion, that a victim of delusional insanity should not be held responsible for any acts which he insanely thinks right, but should be held responsible for all his other human acts. ”

“ For this purpose, striking and perilous situations are devised, or circumstances of strong moral excitement, a troubled conscience, partial gleams of insanity, or bodings of imaginary evil, which haunt the soul, and force it into all the agonies of terror. ”

“ In my quality of invalid, I have a title to the considerateness that humanity owes to the weakness or irritation of a man in agony. Who is the friend, who is the good man, that ought not to dread to add affliction to an unfortunate wretch tormented with a painful and incurable malady?" [289] We need not accept this as an adequate extenuation of perversities, but it explains them without recourse to the theory of uncontrollable insanity. Insanity came later, the product of intellectual excitation, public persecution, and moral reaction after prolonged tension. ”

“ A moral development of that sort, I believe, is more likely to predetermine insanity in the next generation than are many forms of actual derangement in parents: for the whole moral nature is essentially infected, and that goes deeper down, and is more dangerous, quâ heredity, than a particular derangement. A mental alienation is a natural pathological evolution of it. ”

“ With them the will-power is oftentimes an element in the recovery, throwing off disease by the determination not to yield to its influence. There is no doubt but that this temperament is more liable to mental derangement than any other; the great emotional intensity and the difficulty of moral control laying the mind open to causes that tend to produce insanity. ”

“ When the child therefore becomes the man, it is not strange that the predisposition, thus formed within him by this moral and physical training, should become more and more developed amid the stirring and troublous scenes of active life, till at length, through the agency of some exciting cause, insanity appears as the accumulated result of all these evil influences. ”

“ Partial Moral Mania—Paranoia—Delusional Insanity.—In this form one or two only of the moral powers are perverted. Delusions are always present, and very frequently are those of persecution. The patient's conduct is dominated by his delusion; thus murder and suicide may be committed. ”

“ There is also often inherited a lack of moral perception and moral sense, causing the individual to do things which make one doubt his sanity; yet he can not be called insane, but really wanders in the border line between mad and bad, which is often worse than insanity itself. ”

“ The study of mental philosophy, of which insanity is a very important part, is, of all studies, provided we are on the road where truth is the guide, the most useful to our moral state. This belief was the first motive which induced me, now more than thirty years ago, to direct my medical attention to this most radically-important, though hitherto-neglected branch of the profession, as well as to whatever seemed best calculated to make me understand the sources of all erroneous and extreme views, and which a series of painful circumstances through life have excited and continually strengthened ”

“ If a man's reason is so clouded or disturbed by insanity as to prevent his understanding the real nature of his act, as regards either its physical consequences or its moral aspect, the case appears to us to come within the forcible words uttered by the late Mr. ”

“ Anything that is brutal, cruel, heathenish, that makes life hopeless for the most of mankind and perhaps for entire races,—anything that assumes the necessity of the extermination of instincts which were given to be regulated,—no matter by what name you call it,—no matter whether a fakir, or a monk, or a deacon believes it,—if received, ought to produce insanity in every well-regulated mind. ”

“ And the want of self-control, the thirst for emotion, when it passes a certain point is, we know, always allied to immorality, is very frequently a form of incipient insanity, and not seldom results in crime. ”

“ The principles of human nature, its moral and physical laws, are illustrated among the insane, as well as sane; and if revolutions and abuses of liberty in the world are the unrestrained re-actions of the spirit of justice in men, against those who have neglected or improperly restrained them; so, in lunatic asylums, improper conduct towards the insane, or too much restraint, has given rise to much of the misdirection and irregularity in the display of their animal spirits ”

“ Yet I am bound to tell you that, even if all you say should happen, it seems to me that to allow what can strictly be considered only as a temporary fit of insanity, would prove a less evil than to render incurable a disease of the mind which reason would soon cut short.”
Thus does a poor philosopher reason when he takes it into his head to argue at those periods during which a passion raging in his soul makes all its faculties wander. ”

“ Where shall we draw the line between the weak but responsible will and the insane will? What degree of opacity between intellect and the world separates the ignorant man from the lunatic? The extremes of sanity and insanity are readily recognisable, but the intermediate degrees are not clear. There is no test to apply to all cases; each must be diagnosed from its peculiar symptoms, but the will of an insane man is always weak. It can not deny or defer the gratification of a desire, nor can it keep up an effort. ”

“ Murderers have assigned as the only reason they themselves could give for their crime, that “the Devil got into them,” and urged the deed. But the insane have, perhaps, no attribute more in common than that of superweening self-esteem. The maniac who has been removed from a garret sticks straws in his hair and calls them a crown. So much does inordinate arrogance characterize mental aberration, that, in the course of my own practice, I have detected, in that infirmity, the certain symptom of insanity, long before the brain had made its disease manifest even to the most familiar kindred. ”