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The object of this paper is to harmonize certain psychic functions with physiological and integrative functions of the nervous system. The older neurological, descriptive and static psychiatric studies seem unable to penetrate into the more subtle problems of the pure psychoses. Their service lies better in drawing parallelelisms between anatomical structures and regional functions of the nervous system. These studies, and the researches attending derangements of metabolism which cause psychoses, have great value in discriminating the organic and intoxication factors in the psychoses. However, the pure psychoses, as psychogenetic problems, require an entirely new interpretation, a special technic and an unbiased attitude of mind to understand and feel their existence and true value as causes of abnormal behavior; and we wish to show that certain psychic functions producing psychoses are in harmony with more recent interpretations of the functions of the nervous system.
Habits are a very important factor in the regulation and evolution of behavior, through the cultivation of stability and resistance, but they only train, and organize limited resources of reaction. Habit formation is only possible when the instinctive and emotional functions are capable of modification. When emotions are intensely generated they always cause more or less prolonged derangement of the habitually used modes of psychomotor expression. Habits, as the usual psychomotor channels of expression, though often conducive to a vulnerable status of the