Abnormal psychology and education

Front matter

NATIONAL LIBRARY OF MEDICINE

THE CONDUCT OF MIND SERIES EDITED BY JOSEPH JASTROW

ABNORMAL PSYCHOLOGY AND EDUCATION

Introduction

The keynote of this volume is the emphasis upon the concepts and conclusions of Abnormal Psychology as aids to the comprehension and control of the educative processes. By way of perfecting his knowledge of human nature as well as his professional equipment, the teacher should be at home in the point of view of the abnormal. He will thus add a dimension to his insight ; and if he has also the gift of the clinical sense, he will recognize and interpret character-traits and symptoms of behaviour in the school room more adequately and more correctly. What applies to teachers is equally true of parents.

There is a justifiable aversion to the term “education,” because of its too close association with the technical business of the school; it must be restored to its full meaning as inclusive of the total processes of psychic growth-control. The concept of education is shaped by the view of the child nature; this determines the educative plan. The close inter-relation of the social-moral growth with the intellectual growth, and indeed, the acceptance of the former as the deeper and the larger factor in formative value, emphasize the bearing of Abnormal Psychology upon education. The point of view presents a double purpose: the one to illuminate the nature of childhood; the other to give

v vi INTRODUCTION insight and direction to the educative processes. These purposes have brought about a movement which promises to exercise a considerable influence upon the educational trends of the near future. The advance guard of the movement is formed by a small company of independent contributors, each with an individual approach to the common viewpoint. Their doctrines are certain to gain adherents rapidly; for the central ideas are in the air. What is needed is to make the movement articulate. Mr. Watts deserves recognition as a worthy pioneer. The progressive educationalist will accept his programme and commend its execution.

Abnormal Psychology is differently centred, differently focussed, than is the study of the insanities—the major and minor liabilities of the mental life to distortion and disaster. Historically and practically, the ministering to a mind diseased provides the dominant motive for the study of the insane. Abnormal Psychology profits by Psychiatry, but conceives its problems with a larger and a different interest, which is directed to the bearing of this knowledge upon the normal mental functions. There is no sharp division between the two expressions of a common nature and function. The abnormal is the normal in distortion and exaggeration; the normal harbours the features of the abnormal in miniature.

Abnormal Psychology includes a larger range of phenomena than find a central place in Psychiatry; it includes the study of the slighter deviations in status, the lapses, the traces, the intrusions of the subconscious, the varieties of irregular functioning, the

INTRODUCTION Vii extremes of temperamental trends—the eccentric, the unbalanced, the genius, the criminal. It expands as distinctively on the side of the concepts which it develops and employs. Though these may find their more complete and dramatic application in the abnormal life, they find a richer and a more “educational” illustration in the normal types of behaviour and composition. This is notably true of the concept of the subconscious, which if rightly conceived rounds out the comprehension of total behaviour and personality in general significance as well as in light of specific mechanisms. It applies to the emphasis upon the deeper life of the emotions and instincts, tracing their importance in the analysis of character, in the composition of motives, as well as in the genesis of the neuroses; it makes plain how indispensable is a healthy emotional life in the maintenance of a proper mental hygiene. It applies to the concept of arrested development, which on the one side sets forth the nature of the defect, of all grades of feeble-mindedness and moral incapacity, and on the other traces similar limitations in the subnormals, who must make what adjustment they can to the social environment in which their lives fall. It applies in a different sense to the superior group, often complicated by special abilities and special liabilities. It applies to the social abnormal phenomena, the frailties of mob action, the suggestibility of contagion, the lowering of the level of response under prejudice and sentiment, as well as to the appeal to the social consciousness for co-operative values. It applies peculiarly to the concepts underlying the delineation of character types, which in

Vili INTRODUCTION some aspects follow the clue of their abnormal and extreme expressions. In all these relations the concepts of Abnormal Psychology take the lead and move away from the special problems of Psychiatry. It is precisely these basic views that bear intimately upon the educative processes, and not only as protection against mental disaster, but as contributing to the insight into everyday character-traits and ordinary motives of behaviour.

The two disciplines, Psychiatry and Abnormal Psychology, proceed with large overlapping interests and the fullest mutual appreciation. They converge upon the problems of Mental Hygiene in which education has a profound stake. The fundamental purpose of this combined approach is to offer to education the benefits of the wisdom of the psychiatrist, the cumulative knowledge of the assets and liabilities inherent in the vicissitudes of abnormal mental functioning. For the same inherent traits which dispose the human mind to abnormal manifestations are equally responsible for the potencies that, when realized, develop into the rich achievements of a well matured personality. To direct the child te the completest expressions of its endowment requires an understanding of the dangers and distortions that are as fundamentally involved in its nature-set limitations, as are the standard and desirable manifestations of the growing organism.

From these several approaches there emerges a general principle which may be spoken of as the “neurological” concept of behaviour. Behaviour thus becomes a matter of nerves. Naturally and properly, from the

INTRODUCTION ix point of view of value for the social-moral life, behaviour is a matter of morals, guided by reason. The goal of education is to make one a reasonable and moral being. It keeps steadily in mind the purpose to rationalize conduct and socialize it, so as to make good and effective citizens. The two formulations are not inconsistent; each is dominant within its proper domain. Yet the two must come to terms; and the claim of neurology must be fairly faced and freely accepted. Without it the possibility of clash is imminent; and the danger of treating as moral defects what are far more truly neurological symptoms is a real one. An imperfect view of the sources of behaviour is doubtless responsible for a good deal of the mistraining that invites moral crises, unfortunate emotional episodes, wrecked careers, and maladjusted individuals. It is the purpose of the movement to which Mr. Watts contributes, to prevent such disaster by a proper co-operation of the diagnostic skill of the neurologist with the wisdom of the sympathetic moralist.

In speaking of the “neurological” concept of behaviour, it is plain that the term is used for convenience only; nor is itexact. Asa fact we know far less of the detailed neural basis of behaviour, than we do of its psychological nature. It would be more accurate to refer to it as the “psycho-biological’’ concept of behaviour. But the term “neurological” has become current and has the sufficient advantage that it refers definitely to a well-established neural basis of action. It keeps in mind that character-traits and behaviour-responses are matters of neural disposition, even though x INTRODUCTION we know little of the precise mechanisms which make the character-traits and behaviour-tendencies of a welladjusted, normal, efficient, contented, individual different from the quite otherwise manifested traits and behaviour of a maladjusted, uncertainly poised, unhappy and futile personality: which makes one child a normal, tractable, average pupil, and the other a difficult, irregular, partly superior, yet generally uncertain problem ; which in different application may make the difference between success and failure. What applies to the larger problem applies to the details. In the wise interpretation of any and all traits and behaviour-responses with a view to guidance and direction, in adjusting the daily tasks and guiding the step-by-step unfoldment of the educative processes, the same principles are directive.

In regard to the special phases of the problem to which Mr. Watts confines attention, brief comments will be sufficient. The first illustration of his thesis relates to the modification of the educative problem introduced by the fact that the pupil is reacting groupwise in a social environment; that his responses are affected from the outset and continuously by the often neglected consideration that he is under social observation, and reacts in or with a group. Whether this complication is desirable or otherwise, need hardly be considered, since it is imposed by necessity and the educative processes must be adjusted to this condition. Yet the herding of children is clearly undesirable. To utilize the advantages and escape the disadvantages of the social milieu of the schoolroom requires tact and

INTRODUCTION bs discernment. The teacher becomes “a high-minded crowd leader.’ He justifies this function because he utilizes the susceptibility of the young to the technique of prestige, suggestion, and imitation to “elevate and energize.” He appreciates that in so doing he is in so far postponing or laying aside the far more valuable method of response by independent reason. Both methods are justified; for the susceptibility to prompt sympathy and social suggestion is needed for many forms of co-operation; moreover, the former is often the more economical method of producing social cohesion and of shaping the individual to his part in the process. It works more directly and promptly than the slower technique of conviction which in some measure and increasingly plays its part. The use of the prestigesuggestion-imitation technique in the political field is widespread and illustrative, likewise in the inculcation of good manners and a social sense of decorum. Furthermore, there is but one time to fix habits, and that is while one is young; and the fixation by prestige and example, partly aided by reflection, works best for that period. That the tendency to be overinfluenced by crowd suggestion to the detriment of personality has its abnormal expression serves to re-enforce its significance as an educational procedure. While this application is in its central tendency social, it receives a sidelight from the “abnormal” approach.

For the application to the analysis of personality, the status of the earlier, deeper, subconscious forms of response is the guiding clue. The Freudian position must be met and a definite conclusion reached. For xii INTRODUCTION

Mr. Watts, as for most psychologists who retain a sense of proportion, the leading ideas of the Freudian system are sound and fruitful, while the extreme views and many of the details and implications are equally unscientific and unsupported. The emphasis upon the significance of the early experiences of childhood is a wholesome educational warning. Still more important is the recognition that the child begins life in a state of psychical anarchy, out of which the guidance of experience must gradually form a consistent personality. The nature of this unorganized “complex” of impulses appears in the abnormal varieties of behaviour to which it leads; for this the term “‘complex”’ has been reserved in a special sense. Child behaviour conforms to the type in which these “‘sub-self’’ expressions dominate; they are all strongly anchored to instinctive tendencies ; they operate on the emotional, sub-conscious, only partially reflective plane. Out of them the life of reflection, the habit of reasoned action, is to be slowly developed. The educational bearing is manifest. On the one side, all desirable modes of behaviour must be linked to strong instincts; learn by doing, and give to doing a sufficient motive in an instinctive-emotional appeal. On the other side, the utilization of this driving force, from which all actions—whether blessings or the reverse flow—requires “sublimation,” which is but a Freudian name for a process well enough recognized in older days. It is nothing more or less than finding a “moral equivalent” for strong impulses, an outlet desirable to replace an outlet natural but undesirable. For outlets must be found, and streams of impulse dammed

INTRODUCTION xiii make for later trouble. “The human soul is a battlefield upon which the irrational impulses of the personality strive with the rational and ethical interests of the personality for the supremacy. The educator must justify his vocation by effectually assisting the latter forces to establish such a mastery that the conquered systems of desire will function not as rebels, but as willing citizens in the little kingdom of the mental life.”

The third application is to the problem of the defective, introducing the concept of the subnormal and the unstable, both of which groups may find their representatives in the schoolroom. But this consideration is but a partial factor in their importance. The lessons of defect and arrest—derived from the study of the abnormal—bear directly upon the educational procedure. They have brought into prominence the individual factor out of which has developed—naturally reenforced by many other practical considerations—the technique of Mental Tests. The conclusion that subnormal individuals cease to progress at an early stage of development, and that the “mental age’’ represents the imposed terminus of the genetic process, is a momentous one for education and for psychology alike. It indicates how inevitably tasks must be adjusted to capacity, and how the nature-set limitations must be recognized. It directs attention to the mental level of different orders of learning. It makes clear that working upon and with concrete material is a simpler order of mental functioning than working with the symbols of ideas known as words. It directs attention to the complex factors compositely represented in what we xiv INTRODUCTION call for convenience efficiency. From a different angle, allied considerations have brought forward the difficult cases of personality in which defect is less conspicuous than distortion and perversion and resistances to normal impulses. Yet again it has made clear that the slower mental development of defectives, with their lower barriers, or stages of arrest, makes possible analysis of minute steps in the educative process, that are too hurried and too condensed for ready observation as they take their rapid course in the normally maturing and the bright child. It provides a slowed down genetic “film” of moving pictures showing relations escaping ordinary observation. In these and other aspects, the study of the abnormal contributes directly and indirectly to the insight that must guide the teacher’s course and policy.

Mr. Watts’ plan inciuaes a seected group ot ..ustrations, each contributing a distinctive feature to the total impression. These brief lessons in Abnormal Psychology carry their point and deliver their educational message. They constitute a pioneer venture in what promises to be a richly settled domain.

JosEPH JASTROW

Preface To The Third Edition

The present edition has been improved by the insertion, at the end of Chapter II, of particulars of the Celebration Movement, and by a fuller discussion in Chapter IV of Intelligence Tests. A slight rearrangement of some of the subject matter has been effected, and the opportunity taken to correct several minor faults.

It is hoped that the American teacher, who, no doubt, has begun to tire of the extravagant claims of many psychologists to the possession of secrets about human nature unguessed at by the vulgar, will find this book a sober account of some modern developments. The test of novel doctrine must always be: Does it help us to understand better the things worth understanding? Here we have tried to show that abnormal psychology, which deals with the irrational rather than the rational, the unconscious rather than the conscious, and the defective rather than the sound and whole, has in definite ways helped us to see some of the problems of education in a clearer light.

F, W.

LonDon

TMTBODUCTION. ok les

Preface To The Third Edition

CHAPTER

I. THE Score or ABNORMAL PsyCHOLOGY

5.8;

§ 2.

i. Tue

The Pre-scientific View of Mental Abnormality

Normal and abnormal—Historical sketch— Witch burning—The era of imprisonment —Modern curative methods

The biological view—The psychological approach—Psychology, experimental and abnormal—Normal and abnormal—The nature of abnormality—A biological definition—Crowd: psychology—Ethical definitions—The defective mind—Scope of abnormal psychology

Crowp AT ScHooLt: Its ContTROL AND EDUCATION

The Mob-mind and the Group. mind

Mob-mind and corp rated etn management—The mob-mind—tThe irrationality of the crowd—A definition of “crowd” —Characteristics of the crowd-mind— Mob, group, community

XVil

PAGE

XVill

CHAPTER

6 2)

§ 3.

§ 4.

Suggestibility, Sympathy and Imitation—(the Herd Instinct)

Suggestibility, sympathy, imitation—The threefold aspect of mind—The spread of sympathy—McDougall’s view of sympathy —Instinct and intelligence—The class, a group not a mob—Crowd management— Suggestibility and intelligence—Berillon’s view of suggestibility—McDougall’s view of suggestibility—Prestige suggestion

Crowd-Management . . .

Early work in education—Habit tbh tion—Right and wrong suggestion—Reinforced tendencies—The art of suggestion —The danger of indiscriminate publicity —The art of propaganda—Prestige suggestion—The teacher as crowd leader— Greek patriotism—The power of music— Music in the school—Commemoration days—The right use of suggestion—Attributes of the good teacher—The teacher’s prestige—The importance of habit—Habit and health—‘Why do the volts rise?”— Irritation and energy—Limits of suggestibility—-The development of reason

School celebrations—The work of Dr. F. H. Hayward

III. PsycHOPATHOLOGY AND THE DEVELOP-

Sis

MENT OF PERSONALITY ‘ The Reality of the Subconscious .

Older views of subconsciousness—Modern views of the mind—The concept of “subconsciousness”—Subconscious _activity— Genius and the subconscious—The facts of hypnosis—Post-hypnotic suggestion— Determining tendencies in association— Examples of pre-determined association— Forms of memory

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75 75

CHAPTER

§ 2.

§ 3.

§ 4.

§ 5.

§ 6.

Mental Dissociation . . .

Multiple personality—Reactions of interest—Somnambulistic consciousness—Emotional interference—Correction and reproof — Hypnotic “personalities” — The cause of multiple personality

The Cause of Mental Dissociation Psychasthenia and hysteria—Theories of Janet and Freud—The “complex” — “Complex” and “sentiment’”—Tendency to rationalization—Post-hypnotic suggestion—Rationalization and the complexes —A method of sane self-criticism—Discipline and self-discipline

Historical Résumé ;

Origins of modern psychotherapy—Charcot’s discoveries—Janet’s theory of disintegration—Freud’s new method—Catharsis and abstraction—Origins of psychoanalysis—Psychoanalysis and hypnotism— A Freudian analysis—The role of repression—The “unconscious’”—Freud’s “compromise” theory

Dreams and Their Significance “Dream” theories—Freud’s view of the dream—Condensation and displacement— “Unconscious” and “preconscious”

Jung’s view of the unconscious—Symbolism in dreams—Importance of early childhood—Throng methods of discipline —A dream analysis—Regression—River’s view of regression—The dream as a parable—Analysis by Jung’s method

Psychoanalysis and “Word Association”

Word association — "Transference — - The word association method—An experiment in word association—An experiment—The secret of sanity — Sublimation — Early childish tendencies—Instinctive tendencies —Moral equivalents xx CHAPTER

IV. THe PsycHoLoGy OF THE DEFECTIVE

§ 1.

§ 2.

§ 3.

§ 4.

Minp: Its INFLUENCE UPON TEACHING METHODS

The Psychological Roeatenatit of Mental Defect

The defective mind—Great Fea hos neers—The psychological method—Seguin as psychologist

The Measurement of Defect .

Measuring mental defect—Types of defect—Standard measurement—Intellectual defect—Value of practical instruction— Differentiation of curricula—Specialized curricula—Intelligence tests—Origin of intelligence tests—Improvement of the Binet tests—Performance tests—Defects in the “improved” methods—The basis of intelligence tests—Specific ability tests— Defects in intelligence tests—Ability, general and specific—Intelligence and intellectual ability—Present position of tests

The Classification of Defectives .

Types of defect—Defect as arrested development—lIdiots, imbeciles, morons—Criteria of capacity—Obscured defect—The moral defective—Crystallized infancy—A hierarchy of ability

Historical Survey of Methods Em-

ployed in Educating Defectives The savage of Aveyron—Hard’s psychological method—Speech training should begin early—Sublimation of tendencies— Psychic blindness—Sense training—Seguin and his methods—Physical education —Development of bodily control—Sense development—Influence of music—Speech training—Individual occupations—Learning to write—Self-realization—Results of Seguin’s work—The Montessori method—

PAGE

CHAPTER

§ 5.

The play-way—Desire and cognition— Individual occupations—Limitations of sense training—The deaf and the blind— The value of the humanities—Importance of language training

The Emotional Defective . .

Emotional defect—Individual and community—The importance of the home— Emotional instability—Mental age and delinquency—Self-discipline—The task for the future

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ABNORMAL PSYCHOLOGY AND EDUCATION

Chapter. I The Scope Of Abnormal Psychology

§ 1. The Pre-Scientific View of Mental Abnormality

It is our intention in this book to take up the study of some of the recent advances in abnormal psychology with the object of discovering how far they have significance for the teacher. A complete account of the subject must be sought elsewhere. Our method is selective. We have omitted to discuss many interesting topics that might make the thoroughgoing psychologist think the book more useful, and have preferred to deal with such matters only as would seem to affect the work of school and classroom.

Abnormal psychology is the somewhat precocious offspring of the recent happy union of medicine and general psychology, those two sciences which divide the task of providing a knowledge of the ways and means whereby humanity may continue to keep itself sound in body and sane in mind. According to the view of many, the scope of the psychology of the abnormal should be limited merely to the investigation of the phenomena of psychopathology. Now, it is seriously to be questioned whether this limited view of the scope I of the subject is the most profitable one. But it is beyond doubt that the deliberate and systematic study of the subject, however delimited, for the sake of the light it may throw upon the functioning of the normal mind, is quite a modern undertaking. A few brief remarks will serve to make this point clear.

The conception of the study of the abnormal as an aid to the understanding of the normal was naturally impossible while the obvious and more startling differences between normal and abnormal minds obscured their fundamental similarities; indeed, as long as the abnormal was thought to comprise factors at once mysteriously incomprehensible and unique, so long was the serious and disinterested study of the subject held to be a matter suitable merely for the occupation of the more eccentrically minded among philosophers, littérateurs, and doctors. It is noteworthy, therefore, that all the terms used in the pre-scientific period to denote abnormal qualities and conditions of mind were terms which stressed the facts of difference between the abnormal and the normal, and the appearance in English of the word “ab-normal” itself, indicating some relation at least with the normal, between the years 1830 and 1840, may well seem to herald in its origin and first use a more comprehensive view and a treatment of mental anomalies more in accordance with the dictates of common sense.*

1In the Dictionary of Medicine compiled by Hoblyn in 1835, the term “abnormal” does not appear, but a variant of the term, namely, “anormal,” makes its maiden appearance in print instead.

THE PRE-SCIENTIFIC VIEW 3

Until almost as late as our own times, it was the universal custom to explain unusual types of mind among men and women by reference to the agency of gods or of demons, just as the manifestations under notice were of a benevolent or a malevolent character. The sacred writings of many peoples may be made to yield abundant examples of this method of explanation. The Jews, for example, depicted King Saul in his periods of ungoverned fury as the prey of an alien and malignant spirit, and King Nebuchadnezzar during his seven years of madness as a victim of the vengeance of a god whom he refused to acknowledge. The Greeks, on the same principle, ascribed the insanity of Ajax and Orestes, of Lycurgus and Cambyses, either to the spleen or to the arbitrary judgment of the offended gods. The Buddhist writings, the Vedas and the Brahminical law books, also abound in examples of similar unhappy visitations of the doom of the supernatural powers upon the children of men. Indeed, we need go no farther than our own European history to find comparatively recent examples, as notably in the cases of Joan of Arc and Anne Askew, in the causation of whose abnormal-mindedness friends detected the finger of God and enemies that of Satan.

In consequence of the prevalence of such beliefs which were well-nigh universally held for many centuries, very little progress took place in the treatment and cure of abnormal-mindedness, and beyond the usual priestly attempts at exorcism, nothing disturbed the orthodox procedure—which was to deify, illtreat, or destroy, according to fashion or prejudice, those whom it pleased men to regard as mad.

It is true that at one period of history there were indubitable signs of the dawn of an era of intelligent methods of treatment for the more socially obnoxious classes of the abnormal as represented, for example, by the madman and the lunatic. The later Greeks and the wiser among the Romans came to regard the abnormally-minded person as deserving of care and pity, rather than of contempt and ostracism. An attempt at systematic attention, and a method of dieting which was unquestionably an improvement on the older method of “cure’’ by hellebore, was introduced, but it was not allowed to develop to any extent, for after the break-up of the Roman Empire in the west Christendom became overshadowed by the black clouds of superstition, and, as far as mental abnormality was concerned, for a thousand years ignorance and credulity reigned supreme. Sometimes, in moments of faith and enthusiasm, saints from among the abnormal were created and adored, but oftener, in the longer intervals of suspicion and distrust, the darker passions burst through into expression and were responsible for the untimely death in Europe alone of thousands of unhappily eccentric women, who were burned or otherwise put to death as witches.

From 1645 to 1647 a witch-finder named Matthew Hopkins succeeded in getting a hundred and twenty women burned as witches in Essex, Norfolk, and Suffolk. Lecky, in his history of Rationalism in Europe, says, in the course of a survey of the age of superstition,

THE PRE-SCIENTIFIC VIEW 5

“At Toulouse, the seat of the Inquisition, four hundred persons perished for sorcery at a single execution, and fifty at Douay in a single year. Remy, a judge of Nancy, put to death eight hundred witches in sixteen years. The executions which took place at Paris were, in the words of an old writer, ‘almost infinite.’ In Flanders, the persecution of witches raged throughout the whole of the sixteenth and the greater part of the seventeenth century, and every variety of torture was employed in detecting the criminals. In Italy, a thousand persons were executed in a single year in the province of Como; and in other parts of the country the severity of the Inquisitors at last created an absolute rebellion. The same scenes were enacted in the wild valleys of Switzerland and of Savoy. In Geneva, which was then ruled by a bishop, five hundred alleged witches were executed in three months.”

In England, the laws which penalized “witchcraft” were repealed in 1736, but even when the burning of abnormally-minded women as witches became the exceptional rather than the general practice throughout Christendom, those persons who were unfortunate enough to lose their reason, or suffered conspicuously from marked mental disturbance or derangement, were shut away from any form of care, and imprisoned with the vilest of criminals in the dark and filthy dungeons characteristic of the older times, to be kept there like dangerously wild animals and loaded with chains. In 1815 the unhappily celebrated lunatic Norris was seen by many members of Parliament at the Bethlem

Hospital, in London—where he languished in all for eighteen years—with a collar of iron on his neck, a belt of iron about his body, and fetters of iron on his hands and feet.

Burdett, in his Hospitals and Asylums of the World, wrote in 1891 as follows: “It is very difficult, no doubt, for the present generation to realize that less than forty years ago the treatment of the insane in this country { England] was horrible in many respects, and previous to that time was so brutal and inhuman as to make us hesitate to recall the actual facts.”

Fortunately, by the end of the eighteenth century a better method of treatment was beginning to make its effects felt. Pinel and Esquirol in France, and Connelly of Hanwell in England, were earning well-merited fame as the champions of a more humane and altogether wiser method of treatment. It was Pinel who struck off the fetters of his imbecile patients and set them to work in freedom in the fields. He is the representative forerunner of the modern psychiatrist, and it is in his day and no earlier that we must look for the beginnings of the science of Abnormal Psychology.’

2 Professor George Roberston writes to me with respect to the innovations of Pinel:

“The work of Pinel at the Salpétriére in striking off the chains of the insane was not an isolated act, on his part, of humanity to the insane nor a sudden resolve. It was the result of several years of humane endeavour in the private asylum of Dr. Belhomme as is indicated by several pamphlets he wrote, so early as 1787. The government of France, moreover, had decided as the result of several Commissions of Enquiry and Reports to institute Reforms, and they selected as their agent for this par-

In the first edition this work of Pinel was wrongly attributed to Spanish influence, and I gladly accept correction.

It should not be forgotten, however, the nineteenthcentury biologist played a not unimportant part in the genesis of the new science; it was he who dragged into the light of investigation those organic anomalies and abortions which had been relegated by the medieval philosophers and doctors into the limbo of obscurity, and it was he who was able to point to the stranger factors which were operating in the organic world as providing valuable clues to the nature of the normal behaviour, and to the comprehension of the methods of the development of life in general. With the acceptance of the Darwinian hypothesis in biology, the abnormal was at once seen to be no more than the normal, functioning in an accidental or exaggerated form, or in unusually favourable or unfavourable circumstances. ticular purpose, Pinel. This resolve and this appointment, however, did not prevent the government from obstructing him when he instituted his reforms.