DISCUSSION
DR. SMITH ELY JELLIFFE, New York: Dr. Southard has heretofore launched us upon very large subjects. I can well recall in one of his previous communications the fascinating correlations drawn between structural changes and the character of the psychological signs. In dementia praecox particularly, he has shown us how auditory symptoms group about temporal atrophies and optical signs with the occipital and so forth and so on. He now proposes to thrust us into a larger and much more intricate sphere of activity as to the representation in the cortex of other changes which as he has described are inframicroscopical or inframacroscopical. In other words, there must be some type of correlation between the projection in the cerebral structure of the organ itself which is cerebrally represented and certain mental signs. If I see what Dr. Southard has been thinking about, we are certainly engaged in a very fascinating topic. It is well known from the standpoint of topographical cerebral correlation that the brain is nothing but a series of body symbols, as it were. Adler has entered this field and approaches the problem by saying that the inferior organ, liver, kidney, or what not, is related to a similar defective cerebral representation of the organ, thus introducing into the nemological mechanism the task of compensating for the defective structure. Dr. Southard wishes to try to map out these defects in the cerebral structures and thus reason backwards to the somatic inferiority. I confess he lifts me into ideal regions. Such stimuli are enjoyable and provocative of development.
DR. TOM A. WILLIAMS, Washington, D. C: I conceive Dr. Southard's purpose somewhat differently from Dr. Jelliffe whose thought seems to be somewhat like that of Henry Head when he published his paper in reference to hallucinations, corresponding to various head zones in correspondence with different visceral areas and with special sense organs, eye, ear and so on. I have conceived Dr. Southard as being a direct chemical in line with Folius' pathology researches. If that is the case we have a great many clinical cases which might be underlined with his central thought.
PRESIDENT HALL: It is almost too good to be true if Dr. Southard has really made connections between delusions of personality and the great topic of character. It illustrates the old Hippocratic saw, "God-like is the man who is also a philosopher." Character might almost be called a name for all the mysteries of psychology, and from Mill's ethology and the old phrenologies of temperament that Wundt adopts with slight modifications, we have really made little progress. It seems to me very significant that Dr. Southard should interest himself, as his paper leads one to judge he does, in such problems as Shand's somewhat abstract work, and should seek correlations with legal characterology like that of Roscoe Pound. It would be of great interest to know whether Dr. Southard obtained his differentiations purely from pathological cases or whether, accepting Shand or Pound or both, using their distinctions as apperceptive organs, he unconsciously reads their distinctions into his cases. His paper, at any rate, is a genuine contribution as well as an encouragement to those who seek to correlate the normal with the abnormal.
DR. JAMES J. PUTNAM, Boston: I only want to express my warm sympathy with Dr. Southard's scheme. This careful working out of correlations one would say is a good method of scientific research and must lead to something. I think Dr. Southard would rather avoid the suggestion of CAUSES for the results that he found, but the METHOD appears safe and profitable.
DR. JOHN T. MACCURDY, New York: As another psychoanalyst it gives me pleasure to hear this paper. As a psychoanalyst, and one who has done most of his work with the delusions. of the insane, I must say that I have felt all along that psychoanalysis fails utterly when it tries to account for the manifest content of a delusion. We can trace the psychological stages from the manifest content in varying delusions back to a more or less constant unconscious striving— the latent content. The tendency of this latent content to appear as delusions depends on a defect of adaptation, which must have a physical basis probably of a general nature. The delusions, in many cases, are symbols of the latent content. From a psycho-analytic standpoint, the problem presented in Dr. Southard's paper is "Why is a certain symbol chosen in one case and another in another individual?" It may well be that specific organic factors operate here. One could imagine that the mechanism is purely psychological. In a hepatic condition, for instance, the attention of the patient may be directed to that part of the body which is affected by the pathological process in the liver and that for this reason the ideas which appear refer to generations in that region. At least we may hope for definite and interesting results from elaboration of the method outlined by Dr. Southard's statistics.
DR. SOUTHARD: I am rather astonished and well pleased at the cordial reception of my little statistical work on delusions and upon the elaborate discussion. As to Dr. Hall's question whether my data were collected to prove the a priori contention concerning the correlation of unpleasantness with lesions below the diaphragm, I would say that I expressed a suspicion of this correlation in my paper on "How Far is the Environment Responsible for Delusions," (Journal of Abnormal Psychology, June-July, 1913). I was stimulated to finish my article by the appearance of Shand's book on "The Foundations of Character" and the articles on "Personality" by Prof. Roscoe Pound which have been appearing in the Harvard Law Review.
"Dyslalia Viewed as a Centre Asthenia" was the title of a paper read by Dr.
Walter B. Swift, Boston.[1]
[1] Reserved for Publication.