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CHAPTER I

PSYCHOPATHIC REFLEXES

            THE profound influence of the central nervous system, more especially of the cortex with its mental processes, on bodily activities, on glandular, circulatory, and visceral functions, is now firmly established by psychophysiological and psychopathological research work. As Darwin puts it: “The manner in which the secretions of the alimentary canal and of certain glands, as the liver, kidneys, or mammae are affected by strong emotions, is an excellent instance of the direct action of the sensorium on these organs.” The heart is extremely sensitive to sensory and ideosensory stimulations. Claude Bernard has shown how the least excitement of sensory nerves reacts through the pneumogastric nerve on the heart. The vasomotor system is directly acted on by the sensorium.

            Early investigators (Bidder, Schmidt, Richet) observed the fact that the sight of food causes the secretion of gastric juice. Pavloff in his experiments has shown that the central nervous system acts on the secretions of the stomach through the vagi nerves that innervate its glandular activity. Pavloff made a gastric fistula in the dog, then exposed the esophagus, opened it, and sewed the cut end to the edges of the wound. Food taken by the mouth fell out through the opening, but an abundant secretion of gastric juice was observed. There are two moments in the process of secretion: (1) The psychic moment, the perception of food and, (a) the chemical moment. According to Pavloff, the psychic moment is the more important.

            By the term “unconditional reflex” Pavloff means to indicate the response which the animal with a fistula in the secretory glands reacts by secretion to a normal stimulus, such as bread, meat, and other food. By “conditional reflex” Pavloff indicates the reaction made by the operated animal to a stimulus artificially associated with the unconditional reflex. Thus during the time the animal is fed, a light is flashed or a whistle is sounded or various figures are shown to the animal, as Doctor Orbeli has done. After a series of repetition, twenty, thirty, or a hundred, the animal reacts with secretion to that artificially associated stimulus. When another stimulus is in its turn associated with that of the conditional reflex, the result is not an increase, but a total inhibition of the conditional reflex.

            Savadsky modified the conclusions of the previous investigators, but he affirms the fact that an intense stimulus completely annihilates the secretion of the conditional reflex, such as is due to scratch stimulus, for instance, while a weak stimulus produces a lesser effect. He finds that the external stimulus inhibits the condition of the nerve centres. In summarizing the work of previous investigators in Pavloff’s laboratory, Orbeli says: “Vasiliev and Mishtovt have shown that any phenomenon indifferent in itself may not only become a source of a new conditional reflex, but may become a special inhibitory agent in relation to the existing conditional reflexes. This quality of the nervous system to work out special cases of inhibition makes the conditional reflexes a delicate index of reactions of the organism to its external environment.”

            On the strength of experiments performed on the visual reactions of the dog, Orbeli comes to the same conclusion with Vasiliev, Mishtovt, Babkin, and Savadsky.

            Similarly in the experiments carried on in my laboratory on the galvanic reflex, I find that the results coincide with Pavloff’s experiments on inhibition. In a letter to me Pavloff writes that he is at work on the higher activities of the brain of the dog, studying mental reactions by the methods of conditional reflexes. According to Pavloff, mental life, however complex, can be studied successfully by the reactions of glandular secretions.

            An intimate relation exists between the functions of the central nervous system on the one hand and the sensory, motor, glandular, and visceral functions on the other. This vital relation, though unobtrusive to the casual observer, stands out clear and distinct in the domain of certain nervous and mental disturbances, such as hysteria, hystero-epilepsy, larval epilepsy, neurasthenia, psychasthenia. All such conditions are mental disturbances, conscious or subconscious, and are termed by me psychopathies, or recurrent mental states. Recurrence of the symptom complex is pathognomonic of psychopathies, or briefly, of neurosis. This essential trait of recurrence, found in neurosis, is a reversion to a low type of mental life. I refer all those who are interested in the subject to my work on the moment consciousness, studied from a psychobiological standpoint in my recent volume, The Foundations of Normal and Abnormal Psychology.

            In psychopathic affections the disturbance consists in the formation of non-adaptive associations of central neuron-systems with receptors which normally do not have as their terminal response the particular motor and glandular reactions.

            In Pavloff’s experiments the flow of saliva or of gastric juice in the dog with the fistula could be brought about by association with blue light, with the sound of a whistle, by a tickle, a scratch, or by various diagrams, squares, circles, as in the experiments of Orbeli. What holds true in the case of conditional reflexes in regard to saliva and gastric juice, also holds true of other conditional reflexes formed by psychopathics. The mechanism in psychopathies is the same which Pavloff and his disciples employ in the formation of various conditional reflexes in the case of the dogs. All kinds of abnormal reactions of a morbid character may thus be formed in response to ordinary stimuli of life.

            Emotions are specially subject to associations of a morbid or psychopathological character. The physiological effects of emotions may be linked by associative processes with ideas, percepts, and sensations which are ordinarily either indifferent or give rise to reactions and physiological effects of a type opposite to that of the normal. Milk may excite nausea, a rose induce disgust, red paint produce fainting, while the croak of a crow, Limburger cheese, over ripened game, the smell of garlic and asafoetida may be enjoyed with delight.

            The reactions of muscle and gland are like so many electric bells which by various connections and combinations may be made to ring from any sensory button or receptor, as Sherrington would put it. An object, however harmless, may become associated with reactions of anguish and distress. This holds true, not only of man, but also of the life of the lower animals.

            Associations and reactions, motor, circulatory, glandular, however abnormal, formed by young animals, persist through life. This holds specially true in the case of the higher and more sensitive animal organisms, such as the mammals. All training and formation of peculiar reactions, such as various tricks, habits, scare-habits, scare-pain reflexes depend entirely on this plasticity of the nervous system to form new associations, or as Pavloff and his school put it, to form conditional reflexes and inhibitions in regard to glandular secretions as well as to other psychophysiological reactions.

            Psychopathies are essentially pathological affections of associative life. Psychopathic maladies are the formation of abnormal, morbid “conditional reflexes” and of inhibitions of reactions of associative normal life activity.

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