ver, as a psychobiological reaction.
If this be a sound view, similar tendencies should appear in everyday
life, the psychotic phenomena being merely the exaggerations of a
fundamental type of human and animal behavior. Shamming of death in the
face of danger and animal catalepsy come to mind at once, but since we
know nothing of the associated affective states we should be chary of
using them even as analogies. We are on safer ground in discussing
problems of human psychology.

It is evident that there are psychological parallels between the stupor
reaction and sleep, while future work may show physiological
similarities as well. Apathy towards the environment, inactivity and a
thinking disorder are common to both. But sleep reactions do not occur
in bed alone. Weariness produces indifference, physical sluggishness,
inattention and a mild thinking disorder such as are seen in partial
stupors. The phenomena of the midday nap are strikingly like those of
stupor. The individual who enjoys this faculty has a facility for
retiring from the world psychologically and as a result of this psychic
release is capable of renewed activity (analogous to post-stuporous
hypomania) that cannot be the result of physiological repair, since the
whole affair may last for only a few minutes.

In everyday life there are more protracted states where the comparison
can also be made. When life fails to yield us what we want, we tend to
become bored--a condition of apathy and inactivity, forming a nice
parallel to stupor inasmuch as external reminders of reality and demands
for activity are apt to call out irritability. A form of what is really
mental disease, although not called insanity, is permanent boredom, a
deterioration of interest, energy and even intelligence by which many
troubled souls solve their problems. A sudden withdrawal from the world
we call stupor. When the same thing happens insidiously, the condition
is labeled according to the financial and social status of the victim.
He is a bum, a loafer, a mendicant or, more politely, a disillusioned
recluse. Frequently this undiagnosed dement has satisfied himself with a
weak, cynical philosophy that life is not worth while.

It is but a step from valueless life to death and the same tendency
which makes the patient fancy he is dead, leads the tired man to sleep,
the poet to sigh in verse for dissolution, and the myth maker to
fabricate rebirth. The religions of the world are full o