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This unique approach to the psychic problems of general paresis is prefaced by a short but meaty discussion of the ideas of Nissl, Kretsch-mer, Bayle, Baillarger, Voisin, Meynert, Kraft-Ebing, Anton, Kaufmann, Kraepelin, Mendel, Charcot, Käcke, Dreyfus, Hoche, Jaspers, Ewald and many others concerning the relationship between lesions, constitutional factors and psychic developments characterizing the disorder.
The observations of Hollós of paretic patients disclose both regressive and compensatory features. As in other psychoses the numbers preferred and perseverated by different patients in their megalomanic delusions have definite meanings, and their significance may be traced to its origin, loss of potency is compensated for by grandiose sexual ideas of procreation and size of genitalia, preformed phantasies are utilized to advantage, the critical faculty suffers infantile regressions, the passage of time is suspended and memory for the initial lesion is often repressed together with all insight into their condition.
Many mannerisms, expressions and ideas of paretic patients are explained by analogies from the rites and customs of primitive peoples, and in fact Hollos has shown that the classical psychoanalytic interpretations are applicable throughout; however, the theoretical considerations offered by Ferenczi are of particular interest. He refers to the mental symptoms of paresis as a “Cerebral Pathoneurosis” and these manifestations correspond to the “psychical dominance over the narcissistic libido dynamics mobilized through cerebral lesions.” Above all other organs of the body, the brain maintains an especially high narcissistic possession of