ABSTRACT
Some observations, in small numbers unfortunately, demonstrate the existence of a similar weakness in automatic individuals: these people manifest their weakness in a way that is visible, when it exists both physically and mentally. If the phenomena of automatism are only due to weakness, they must exist in healthy people as well as the ill. A woman who is normally strong and sensible can at times fall into a state of irritable weakness with characteristic distraction, systemic anesthesia, and suggestibility. A man who would ordinarily resist any false ideas can take on a narrow and suggestive mind when in a state of fatigue, sleep, or intoxication. The entire history of madness, as argued by Baillarger, and after him many alienists, is but the description of psychological automatism left to itself, and this automatism, in all its manifestations, depends on the present weakness of synthesis which is mental weakness itself, psychological misery.
