Even in periods of calm, the universally noted psychological traits reveal a sombre, morose, irritable, but above all, irascible disposition—the “choleric” character par excellence. In the paroxysmal period, we find the symptoms of anger carried to extremity: “The patient” (I borrow Schüle’s description) “throws himself on his surroundings with a blind rage, a bestial fury; he spits, strikes, bites, breaks everything he can reach, shouts and storms. His face is congested, his pupils are sometimes contracted, sometimes—and more frequently—dilated, the conjunctivæ are much injected, the look is fixed; there is abundant salivation, pulsation of the carotid, acceleration of the pulse.” Where is the starting-point of these discharges of fury, and by what mechanism are they produced? The authorities are not at one on this question, some attributing the principal share in this activity to the bulb, others to the brain. Recently an auto-intoxication of the nervous centres has been admitted. However, all this is only indirectly concerned with psychology. In the ensuing period of stupor, the acts of blind violence usually leave no trace in the memory; for it is a sort of psychological law that the intensity of consciousness should vary inversely as the intensity of the movements produced.
2. Mania presents many varieties. Let us take the typical form, acute mania, the nearest to anger. After a period of incubation, during which melancholia prevails, a violent reaction takes place, in sudden paroxysms. The maniacal state may pass through all degrees, from simple excitement to fury. Externally, it shows itself, in its milder form, by continual goings and comings, by an incessant craving for motion, a possibility of performing active exercise without feeling fatigue; in the intense form, we have the symptoms of rage already described: congestion of the vaso-motor system, redness of the face, violent palpitations of the heart, foaming at the mouth, furious and destructive impulses, etc. Internally the case is analogous; it is “chaos in motion” (Esquirol): and as the principal external symptom consists of motor disturbances, the principal internal symptom consists in an intellectual exuberance, a flux of ideas so disorderly and rapid that they succeed each other by no fixed rule, and the laws of association seem to be suspended, and speech, in its impetuous course, betrays the swiftness and discontinuity of thought. But there is besides, though not always, an expansive humour, a state of satisfaction, a feeling of pleasure scarcely in accordance with the rest. Many, after recovery, declare that they never felt so happy as during their illness.
The cause of this unexpected tendency to joy has been much discussed. Some attribute it to the superabundance of ideas, and consequently assign to it an intellectual origin. This is a fresh example of intellectualist prejudice which sees but a single effect in the modifications of the emotional life. Besides, as Krafft-Ebing remarks (vol. ii., sec. 1, chap. 2), in delirious fever-patients there is a flow of ideas without accompanying joyousness, and, inversely, alcohol may produce gaiety without accelerating the course of thought; and, accordingly, this author admits—and rightly, as it seems to me—that these two phenomena, viz., increased intellectual activity and pleasurable feeling, are subordinated to a deeper cause; they have their functional basis in an easier expenditure, and a deceptive sense of power and vigour, depending on pathological over-activity.
These two morbid forms, which have their psychological prototype in anger, suggest one remark. They are not evoked by any external excitement, such as the sight of an enemy, injury, or disobedience. Their cause, whatever it may be, is internal; it sets going a pre-established mechanism identical with that of anger (violent and disordered movements, vaso-motor phenomena, etc.), and the psychic state which follows is anger, or an analogous emotional form, with or without a concomitant state of pleasure. This seems to me a new argument in favour of James’s and Lange’s theory.
Epileptic and maniac rages are not the only ones to be entered under the heading of anger; there is besides these a group of irresistible impulses of a destructive character which ought, psychologically, to be included in the same class. With a difference, however: in the epileptic and maniac, the physical and psychical symptoms constitute a complexus similar or analogous to the normal form, and only to be reckoned as pathological on account of the want of adaptation and rational motives, while the irresistible impulses are only partial manifestations—disaggregated forms of anger.
Among overpowering tendencies we can only examine at present those which concern the offensive instinct. I therefore eliminate those grafted on another stem (dipsomania, erotomania, kleptomania, etc.) and those which, by their nature, are inoffensive, ridiculous, or puerile (the incessant craving for travelling, for counting, for discovering the names of men and things), and confine myself to those which have the violent and destructive character of anger, such as the impulses to wound, kill, destroy, or set on fire (pyromania). The fatal impulse to suicide will be studied under another heading (Chap. V.). It is needless to describe these violent impulses separately, or to recapitulate observations which may be found almost anywhere; a sketch of the characteristics common to all will be sufficient.
1. They pass through a physiological period of incubation, marked by palpitations and vaso-motor disturbances, rushes of heat to the head, headaches, præcordial anxiety, insomnia, agitation, fatigue, malaise, and undefined suffering. 2. The entrance into the psychological period is marked by the appearance of a fixed idea. Why one rather than another? This question will be examined later. The fixed idea, reigning as a tyrant in the consciousness, gives an aim to the tendency, determines its orientation. Some maintain that there are such things as purely intellectual fixed ideas, with no emotional accompaniment. Others think that the fixed idea always includes in some degree an emotional state. I share this second opinion, since every fixed idea is the beginning of an impulse. 3. The third period is that when it passes into action, sometimes sudden, more often preceded by a violent struggle between the overmastering impulse and the arrestive power of the will.[[142]] There are some cases where the fixed idea never passes beyond the second stage; these are abortive forms, of incomplete development. The passage into action is the rule, it being a psychological law that every intense representation of a movement or an act is the beginning of a movement. The act, whatever it may be, is accomplished, and there results a feeling of satisfaction, peace, and relief.
As regards those destructive tendencies which are to anger what phobias are to fear, a problem presents itself, the only psychological problem: that of their origin or cause. This question I divide into two: How do they arise? How do they take a determinate direction?
I. To explain the origin and appearance of irresistible impulses, most writers have recourse to the hypothesis of degeneration. As it is also called in to explain the converse phenomenon of phobias, it becomes necessary to be a little more precise. Without entering for the moment on the discussion of the different interpretations of this vague word, degeneration, let us take it as synonymous with dissolution or regression.
The ideal of heredity, as a conservative principle, is to transmit under a healthy form a healthy organisation, i.e. (so far as our subject is concerned), one with harmonious and convergent tendencies. If dissolution is total, we have the idiot, or the dementia patient. If it is partial, we have a breach of equilibrium in favour of one or more tendencies. This disaggregation is not fortuitous; it has a retrogressive character, it is a return to the reflex movements. It approaches the character of the animal, the idiot, or the imbecile; it goes back to that stage of psychic life when the will under its higher form, the arrestive power, was not yet constituted.