Emotion and Insanity

Abstract

DR. THALBITZER'S book is a psychological essay the material for which is provided by a study of the manic-depressive psychosis. It is a brief attempt to explain certain mental phenomena on a physiological basis. The author first considers the generally accepted division of mentation into the psychical elements of thinking, feeling, and willing, a classification which he rejects in favour of that of intellectual activity, feeling, and psycho-motor innervation. He thus defines the mind as that which thinks, feels, and acts. It is with the element of feeling that this book is mainly concerned. It is submitted that this function must, like the other two specific functions of the mind, have its own centre in the brain, a postulation which involves Dr. Thalbitzer in a very damaging and convincing criticism of Lehmann's dynamic theory of emotion. The suggestion that this localisation is in the occipital lobes, and the evidence offered in support of it, do not carry so much conviction, but they are comparatively minor points.

Emotion and Insanity.

S. Thalbitzer. Translated by M. G. Beard. (International Library of Psychology, Philosophy and Scientific Method.) Pp. x + 128. (London: Kegan Paul and Co., Ltd.; New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., Inc., 1926.) 7s. 6d. net.