MALADAPTATION TO ENVIRONMENT AND PSYCHOPATHOLOGY
The classification of diseases was carried out at a time when the
body was regarded as the whole of man and the mind looked upon as
an unimportant by-product whose influence was negligible. Modern
discovery, however, has radically changed our outlook.
Much mental disease has a physical origin and should not be classified
as mental at all. To this class belong the mental disturbances arising
from disease of or injury to the brain; womb trouble; poisoned blood
conditions and the faulty functioning of the ductless glands, whose
place in our economy is so important and so little understood; and many
other causes of a like nature.
Setting aside this type of disease, with which psychology, strictly
speaking, is not concerned, we find the true mental diseases fall into
a first broad division, those which are congenital and those which are
acquired. In congenital disease an abnormal individual breaks down in a
normal environment, and in acquired disease a normal individual breaks
down in an abnormal environment. In both cases the results are the
same, but treatment and prospect of recovery are very different.
The boundary line between a healthy and diseased mind is not easy
to draw, but we may reckon a mind diseased when it fails to react
normally to its environment; thus, if happenings which should stir us
deeply leave us unmoved, or we are upset by things which should have
no power to disturb us, we may consider our mind is not working well.
Let it never be forgotten, however, that mental disturbance ranges from
irritability, depression, and bad memory, to its extreme manifestations
in the different forms of insanity.
The division between nervous and mental disease is even harder to draw,
but for all practical purposes the sense of reality may be utilised
as a dividing line; as soon as he loses his sense of reality a man
passes the boundary line of insanity. The neurotic knows that there is
something wrong with him, but that the world is all right; the lunatic
believes that he is all right, but that there is something wrong with
the world.
It is the constant aim of the mind to maintain harmonious relations
between the individual and the environment; to secure an adjustment to,
and to make the best of, the constantly varying conditions to which the
organism is subjected. If it fails to do this, the law of the survival
of the fittest comes into action and automatically eliminates the
unfit--those who have failed to adapt themselves to the conditions in
which they live. Failure to adapt may be due to one of two causes: the
individual may be abnormal, or the environment may be abnormal.
Modern social conditions in a civilised community tend to prevent the
automatic elimination of the unfit and to permit them to live on. With
physical failure to adapt, due to malformation or lack of stamina,
we will not deal here, but will confine ourselves to the problem of
adjustment on the mental level.
If there is difficulty in making a mental adjustment to environment
and finding contentment and peace of mind, then the individual is
faced by a peculiar problem, he is allowed to continue his physical
life, but cannot find mental peace. In order to obtain relief from
this intolerable condition, certain devices are unconsciously resorted
to. These devices are of the nature of buffers or shock absorbers, and
provided the individual does not deviate too much from the normal type,
which is adapted to the environment, and that the environment likewise
does not differ too much from the type for which the individual was
designed, then these devices effectually protect his feelings from the
rude shocks of circumstances and enable him to keep his poise and peace
of mind.
If, however, the strain thrown upon the psychic shock absorber
is too great for it adequately to absorb, then the rebound of the
buffer-springs throws the machinery of the mind out of gear and makes
itself felt in nervous and mental disorders. Like physical disease,
mental disease is Nature’s effort at repair which overreaches itself.
This, then, is what constitutes mental disease (the organic insanities
being excluded from this definition)--the reaction of the mind to what
it cannot assimilate. It must not be thought, however, that mental
disorder necessarily means insanity. Any faulty functioning of the mind
comes under the heading of psycho-pathology, and just as the diseases
of the body range from a passing indisposition to some fatal organic
disease, so the diseases of the mind range from irritability and
forgetfulness to the complete collapse of lunacy.