ZEITSCHRIFT FÜR PSYCHOLOGIE UND PHYSIOLOGIE DER SINNESORGANE. Vol. II.
No. 3.
CONTENTS:
ZUR PSYCHOLOGIE DER SPRACHE. By Robert Sommer.
ZUR THEORIE DES RAEUMLICHEN VORSTELLENS MIT RUECKSICHT AUF EINE
NACHBILDLOKALISATION. By C. S. Cornelius.
DIE SEELENFRAGE. By J. Rehmke.
LITTERATURBERICHT.
Professor Grashey, now of Munich, formerly of Würzburg, has published in the Archiv für Psychiatrie (Vol. XVI, p. 654 ff.) an interesting case of a peculiar kind of aphasia. A man whose name is Voit, 32 years old, engaged for menial service in the brewing business, received an injury on the head. He was treated at the psychiatric clinic of Würzburg by Professor Grashey and dismissed as cured, yet five years after the accident he was again submitted to the professor's investigations and it was found that he was suffering from "amnestic aphasia." He could not remember the name of anything for a few seconds. Professor Grashey drew the following conclusion from Voit's case: "There is an aphasia which is based neither upon the functionary inability of certain centres nor upon the interruption of commissural connections, but exclusively upon a diminution of the sense-impressions, which causes a disturbance of apprehension and association." Voit was unable to name any object shown him unless he could spell it with the assistance of his hands, legs, or even his tongue. By writing only could he find the names of objects. Dr. Sommer objects to Professor Grashey's interpretation of the case and shows convincingly from the symptoms, as represented in the Archiv für Psychiatrie by Grashey himself, that whenever Voit was prevented from making writing gestures (which was done by holding his hands and legs immovable and by ordering him to show his tongue so that he could not employ it for writing on the roof of his mouth) he could never find the name of any object. Accordingly it is no case of amnesia; Voit actually has only one way left for finding words, that is by spelling them. Now it is generally supposed, that we first see an object, and recognise it at the centre of vision. The nervous irritation is thence transmitted to the centre of language; the sight of a knife evokes in the centre of speech the word knife and we suppose that the spoken or heard word will in the centre of writing awaken the motor stimuli of spelling the word. The present case proves that if this be the rule there are exceptions to it and Dr. Sommer proposes the question, How can we explain the case? It is strange that the man is not deprived of concepts; so long as he is prevented from writing he is only deprived of naming things or concepts. He never failed to recognise similar things as belonging to the same class, but so long as he was tied at tongue and limb, he could never find their common name. For instance a guitar and a trumpet were shown him while he was bound, as it was called. When asked, Do they belong together? he nodded emphatically. (He had to answer by nods because he had to show his tongue.) When asked, Do you know their names? he shook his head and could never find their names until he was allowed to make writing gestures with either one of his limbs or his tongue. In this way he recognised and classified things correctly, but he never named them except by spelling the names. Such things or pictures of things shown him were the following:
Guitar—trumpet—: musical instruments.
Gun—canon—: arms.
Sickle—watering-pot—: utensils.
Lantern—lamp—: lights.
Palace—barn—: buildings, etc.
Dr. Sommer says: "Suppose that those parts of the brain the loss of which according to modern experiments and pathological observations cause a loss of memory-pictures, are thought of as motor apparatuses, the destruction of which has a similar effect as in the present case, the binding which prevented Voit from spelling: in this case amnesia might find an explanation without the crude materialistic assumption that they are localised in the injured cells." Dr. Sommer only throws out the hint without finding space to explain himself. Yet it appears to us that whether amnesia is produced by the destruction of the centres or of their supposed motor apparatuses that the one is not less and not more crude materialism than the other. The problem it appears has nothing to do with materialism, but with the mechanism of the brain. The fibres of association seem to work in Voit's brain in the opposite direction to what we should expect. The normal path is apparently interrupted. The sight of an object does not evoke its name. Yet are there not innumerable fibres of association which may reach the desired end—in this case the pronunciation of the name—in a roundabout way? There must be, for the facts prove it. One thing in the case of Voit is patent. When Voit finds the names by writing them, he apparently knows the written word, he cannot pronounce it, because he does not know the spoken word, the centre of spoken words being the seat of the injury. He has a concept of the thing, he could write it, but he cannot pronounce it. The roundabout way leads through a province not directly accessible to consciousness. The written word is not in the same immediate contact with consciousness as the spoken word. That this is so we know from actual and daily experience. Who has not tried to assure himself of the correct spelling of a word by writing it down and thus leaving the test to the unconscious memory of the motions of our hand?
C. S. Cornelius discusses the theory of spatial conception with special reference to a localisation of after-images. He takes the position that we are in relation to the outer world through sensation only, rejecting all assumptions of innate ideas, of a special space sense, etc. "Sensation," he says, "is an intensive state. The conception of space-relations can originate only by a multiplicity of sensations which through the qualitative contrasts affect each other and arrange themselves in a certain order beside each other. The vertical and horizontal conception height and breadth, are easily explained, but depth, the third dimension of space affords some difficulty." Th. Lipps denies the existence of an apprehension of depth, yet Cornelius maintains that it actually exists. He explains it in the same way as the vertical and horizontal space-conceptions as originating from muscle sensation.