upon
the highest functions of self-government.

Whatever be the disorders you may consider, aboulias, hysterical
accidents, psychasthenic obsessions, periodical depressions,
melancholics, systematized deliriums, asthenic insanity, you will always
find a number of facts resulting from this general perturbation.

In plenty of cases, the acts, far from being diminished, appear
exaggerated; the patient moves about a great deal, he accomplishes acts
of defense, of escape, of attack, he speaks enormously, he seems to
evoke many remembrances and combine all sorts of stories during
interminable reveries. But pray examine the value and the level of all
these acts; they are mere gestures, shocks of limbs, laughter, sobs,
reactions simply reflex or perceptive, in connection with immediate
stimulation, with inhibition, without choice, without adaptation by
reflection. The thoughts that fill these ruminations are childish and
stupid, just as the acts are vulgar and awkward; there is a manifest
return to childhood and barbarism. The behavior of the agitated
individual is well below that which he should show normally. It is easy
to explain these facts in the language we have adopted. The agitation
consists in an activity, more less complete, in inferior tendencies very
much below those the subject should normally utilize.

It is that in reality the agitation never exists alone, it is
accompanied by another very important phenomenon which it dissimulates
sometimes, I mean the depression characterized by the diminution or the
disappearance of superior actions, appertaining to the highest level of
our hierarchy. It is always observed that with these patients certain
actions have disappeared, that certain acts executed formerly with
rapidity and facility can no longer be accomplished. The patients seem
to have lost their delicacy of feeling, their altruism, their
intelligent critique. The stopping of tendencies by stimulation, the
transformation of tendencies into ideas, the deliberation, the endeavor,
the reflection; in one word, both the moral effort and the call upon
reserves for executing painful acts are suppressed. There exists visibly
a lowering of level, and it is right to say that these patients are
below themselves.

The two phenomena, agitation and depression, are almost always
associated in neuroses as well as in psychoses. It is likely that their
union depends upon some very general law, relating to the exhaustion of
ps