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Inability in Delirium to Name the Physician's Vocation on Command, with Retention of the Ability to Name it Spontaneously: An Illustration of Hughlings Jackson's Law of “Reduction to a More Automatic Condition”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 February 2018

Max Levin
Max Levin*
Affiliation:
Baltimore, Maryland
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Extract

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In talking to delirious patients I have observed a curious and characteristic phenomenon: the patient, in spontaneous conversation, addresses me as “Doctor”, yet when the very next moment I ask him my vocation he cannot answer correctly. I propose to show that this is not merely a capricious phenomenon without meaning, but that it demonstrates the soundness of one of Hughlings Jackson's most important principles. I have observed the phenomenon in no less than nine cases of delirium, and more than once in several. Three cases will serve as examples.

Type
Part I.—Original Articles
Information
Journal of Mental Science , Volume 85 , Issue 358 , September 1939 , pp. 1043 - 1046
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1939 

References

∗ Bracketed figures refer to volume and page of the Selected Writings of John Hughlings Jackson, 1931-32 (Hodder & Stoughton, London).

† “Automatic “and” voluntary “are inverse terms. See my paper,“Degrees of Automatic Action: Some Psychiatric Applications of Hughlings Jackson's Concept of 4 Reduction to a More Automatic Condition’”, Journ. Neurol. and Psychopathol., 1936, xvii, p. 153.

∗ This is meant as an anatomical and not a morphological statement; see Jackson's distinction between these (I, 239, footnote; II, 155, 473).

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