In my work on Psychopathology I lay special stress on the fact that the psychopathic individual has a predisposition to dissociative states. Early experiences and training in childhood enter largely into the formation of such a predisposition. Still, there is no doubt that a sensitive nervous system is required—a brain susceptible to special stimuli of the external environment. This, of course, does not mean that the individual must suffer from stigmata of degeneration. On the contrary, it is quite possible, and in many patients we actually find it to be so, that the psychopathic individual may be even of a superior organization. It is the sensitivity and the delicacy of nervous organization that make the system susceptible to injurious stimulations, to which a lower form of organization could be subjected with impunity.

An ordinary clock can be handled roughly without disturbance of its internal workings, but the delicate and complicated mechanism of a chronometer requires careful handling and special, favorable conditions for its normal functioning. Unfavorable[277] conditions are more apt to affect a highly complex mechanism than a roughly made instrument. It is quite probable that it is the superior minds and more highly complex mental and nervous organizations that are subject to psychopathic states or states of dissociation. Of course, unstable minds are also subject to dissociative states, but we must never forget the fact that highly organized brains, on account of their very complexity, are apt to become unstable under unfavorable conditions. A predisposition to dissociation may occur either in degenerative minds or in minds superior to the average. Functional psychosis requires a long history of dissociated, subconscious shocks, suffered by a highly or lowly organized nervous system, a long history dating back to early childhood.

As Mosso puts it: “The vivid impression of a strong emotion may produce the same effect as a blow on the head or some physical shock.” We may, however, say that no functional psychosis, whether somatopsychosis or psychoneurosis, can ever be produced simply by physical shocks. In all functional psychoses there must be a mental background, and it is the mental background alone that produces the psychosis and determines the character of the psychopathic state.

Fear is an important factor in the etiology of psychopathic affections which include somatopsychoses and psychoneuroses.

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To regard fear as “error,” as do some sectarians, is absurd, and is certainly unscientific. Abnormal fear which is the basis of all functional nervous or psychopathic maladies, is essentially a pathological process affecting the organs in general and the nervous system in particular in as definite a way as the invasion and infection of the organism by various species of bacteria, bacilli, and other micro-organisms which attack the individual during his lifetime.

Like infectious diseases, the deviations, abnormalities, and excesses of the fear instinct are acquired by the individual in the course of his relations with the external environment, and are as real and substantial as are syphilis, smallpox, diphtheria, cholera, and the bubonic plague. To regard them as imaginary or to relegate them to the action of Providence or to heredity is theoretically a misconception, and practically a great danger to humanity.

There is nowadays a veritable craze for heredity and eugenics. Biology is misconceived, misinterpreted, and misapplied to social problems, and to individual needs and ailments. Everything is ascribed to heredity, from folly and crime to scratches and sneezes. The goddess Heredity is invoked at each flea-bite—in morsu pulicis Deum invocare.

Even war is supposed to be due to the omnipotent deity of Heredity. Superior races by their[279] patriotism and loyalty destroy the weak and the helpless, and relentlessly exterminate all peaceful tribes. Such warlike stock comes of superior clay. The dominant races have some miraculous germ-plasm, special “unit characters,” wonderful dominant “units” which, like a precious heritage, these races transmit unsullied and untarnished to their descendants.

Wars, carnage, butcheries make for progress, culture, and evolution. Our boasted civilization with its “scientific” business thoroughness and its ideal of “efficiency” attempts to carry into effect this quasi-evolutionary doctrine—this apotheosis of brute force under the aegis of science. The eugenic belief is really a recrudescence of the ancient savage superstition of the magic virtues of noble blood and of divine king stock.

All nervous, mental, neuropathic, and psychopathic maladies are supposed to be a matter of heredity. If people are poor, ignorant, superstitious, stupid, degraded, brutal, and sick, the eugenists unhesitatingly put it all down to poor stock.

The eugenic remedy is as simple as it is believed to be efficacious: Introduce by legislation “efficient” laws favoring “eugenic” marriage, and teach the masses control of births. The select and chosen stock alone should multiply—the millennium is then bound to come. Such is the doctrine of our medico-biological sages.

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“Scientific” farmers and breeders of vegetables, fruits, and cattle are regarded as competent judges of human “breeders.” Agriculturists and horticulturists set themselves up as advisers in “the business of raising good crops of efficient children.” Bachelors, spinsters, and the childless generally, are specially versed in eugenic wisdom and pedagogics.

All social ills and individual complaints are referred to one main source—heredity. With the introduction of eugenic legislation, with the sterilization of the socially unfit, among whom the greatest men and women may be included, with the breeding of good “orthodox, common stock,” and with eugenic Malthusian control of births, all evil and diseases on earth will cease, while the Philistine “superman” will reign supreme forevermore.

In the Middle Ages all diseases and epidemics, all wars, all social and private misfortunes were considered as visitations of Divine wrath. The fear instinct held sway, terrorizing poor, deluded humanity. In modern times our would-be eugenic science refers all ills of the flesh and woes of the mind to an outraged Heredity. The dark ages had resort to prayers, fasts, and penitence, while our age childishly pins its faith to the miraculous virtues and rejuvenating, regenerative powers of legislative eugenic measures, and to the eugenic Malthusian control of births.

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Our scientists in eugenics gather hosts of facts, showing by elaborate statistical figures that the family history of neurotics reveals stigmata of degeneration in the various members of the family. The eugenic inquirers do not stop for a moment to think over the fact that the same sort of evidence can be easily brought in the case of most people. In fa............