psy. Indifference and stolidity may exist with those
milder degrees of regression which do not conflict with one's critical
sense, and hence may be present without any false ideas. The next stage
in regression is that where the idea of death appears. Although not
accepted placidly by the subject, its non-acceptance is demonstrated by
the idea being projected--by its appearance as a belief that the patient
will be killed. This notion of death coming from without has again two
phases, one with anxiety where normality is so far retained that the
patient's instinct of self-preservation produces fear, and a second
phase where this instinct lapses and the patient so far accepts the
idea of being killed as to speak of it with indifference. The next step
in regression is marked by the spoiled-child conduct, interest being so
self-centered as to lead to autoerotic habits and the perverse reactions
which we call negativism. When death is accepted but mental function has
not ceased, the latter is confined to a dramatization of death in
physical symptoms or to such speech and movements as indicate a belief
that the patient is dead, under the water, or in some such unreal
situation. Finally, when all evidence of mentation in any form is
lacking, we see clinically the condition which we know as deep stupor
and which we must regard psychologically as the profoundest regression
known to psychopathology, a condition almost as close to physiological
unconsciousness as that of the epileptic.

Naturally we do not see individual cases in which all these stages
appear successively, each sharply defined from its predecessor. To
expect this would be as reasonable as to look for a man whose behavior
was determined wholly by his most recent experience. Any psychologist
knows that every human being behaves in accordance with influences whose
history is recent or represents the habit of a lifetime. At any given
minute our behavior is not simply determined by the immediate situation,
but is the product of many stages in our development. Quite similarly we
should not expect in the psychoses to find evidences of regression to a
given period of the individual's life appearing exclusively, but rather
we should look for reactions at any given time being determined
preponderantly by the type of mentation characteristic for a given stage
of his development. As a matter of fact, we see in psychoses,
particularly in stupor, more sharply defined regressions t