Analogous Mechanism in the Formation of Symptoms in Organic and Functional Disorders: K. Goldstein. Bulletin of the Forest Sanitarium, I, 1942, pp. 28–36.

Goldstein reports on a patient with a brain lesion who, among other symptoms, showed a behavior very similar to that of the typical compulsion neurotic, i.e., if occupied with a certain activity, he was entirely obsessed by it. As long as possible, disturbing influences were not perceived at all, and then misunderstood or misinterpreted according to the prevailing interest. The patient was unable to stop his activities voluntarily. Whatever he did, was done in a somewhat automatic, stereotyped, inanimate way.

Goldstein is of the opinion that this 'tendency to adhere to a once adopted mental set, to perseverate in a process and to repeat' is characteristic of all primitive acts. In normal persons these characteristics disappear as the personality progresses and the functions become centralized. In both organically sick persons as well as compulsion neurotics this centralization is disturbed by an 'isolation' of certain individual functions which explains the similarities in the clinical pictures. The differences are explained by the different basic causes of the disturbing 'isolation'.