Pathological Weeping

It is not my intention in this paper to deal with all the aspects of pathological weeping, but to limit myself to clinical observations on certain forms of pathological weeping in which the weeping was apparently related to underlying childhood disturbances of urination.

In an earlier paper1 I undertook to scrutinize the relations between weeping, vision and urination as they appear in the normal development of infants. The significant facts were as follows: tears appear at about four to six weeks of age, at about the time of the first focusing of the eye and probably the first awareness of muscle tension preceding urination. As early as six to seven months, a sex difference in urination is noted in that girls tend to develop longer intervals between urinations and are more readily trained to the pot than are boys. This corresponds in time to the development of directed eye-hand movements and to the beginning of the sitting-up period. It seems probable that the greater frequency of male urination at this time is due to the greater exposure—and consequent chance stimulation—of the male genital, especially in its being touched or handled more frequently by the male infant himself as it is brought into visual range by the sitting posture. From then on it seems that urination is a more complex, sensitive function in the male than in the female child, eliciting in the