Fundamentals of a Neo-Jacksonian conception of psychiatry and neurology: Henri ey's "organo-dynamism"

Abstract

Since the Spencerian views on evolution were applied by Hughlings Jackson to the field of neurology as a hypothesis to increase the comprehensibility of the existing facts, these views have been expounded in psychopathology and neurology as an explicit Jacksonism (by Ribot, Head r Monakow and Mourgue, Levin, etc.), or implicity in disguised forms, (by Janet, Kretchmer, Bleuler, Baruk, Delay, etc.). In none of these im plicit or explicit approaches an overall comprehensive, and all invading attempt had been undertaken, and particularly in reference to psychiatry the far reaching consequences of Jackson's views had never been fully investigated. Since his collaboration with Claude 2 , his book on "Hal lucinations and delusions" 4 , and particularly after the publication of his monograph on Jacksonism with Rouart 5 , Henri Ey has endeavored to propose, through the modification of the Jacksonian theme, a compendious and coherent system which could, while containing the major trends of contemporary psychopathology, surpass them 6 > 7 > 8. His originality rests on his elaboration of the evolutionary theme, and its application to all fields of psychopathology-• in short, a pan-Jacksonism. In the follow ing argument, as the essential net of a working hypothesis, Ey tries to summarize this new approach which he has called "órgano-dynamism": "...Abandoning the Cartesian dilemma which strangles the very notion of mental disease, psychiatry should be neither mecanicist nor psychogenetist, because mental disease is neither an aggregate of mechanical symptoms without human signification, nor a simple variation of behavior under the influence of psychologic or social causes. The mental disease is a form of psychic activity conditioned by an organic process. In this respect it is analogous to a dream which is liberated by sleep" 7 d. Working quite closely with Henri Ey, it seemed to me relatively es sential to bring forth his system of psychiatry, which has not been, so far as the knowledge of the present writer goes, well appreciated in Anglo-Saxon countries. To avoid all doctrinal vagueness and absolutism, enwraped in tautological "calembours", I shall try to present "organo-dynam-* M.D., Kansas (U.S.A.