Morbid Impulses from the Medico-Legal Standpoint

Abstract

The study of morbid impulses is very important because of the graves consequences to which they may lead from social and medicolegal standpoints. Such a study presents multiple interesting features. First of all, the underlying basis upon which these morbid states develop. Since Morel the question of heredity began to play the most important role in the domain of mental pathology. It finds its corroboration also in the study of Mendelian laws of heredity.3 Morbid impulses constitute episodic manifestations in the life of neurophatic individuals. What is neuropathy ? Under this term is understood a pathological state of an individual whose psychophysical resistance is constitutionally diminished; in other words, it is a condition which is a deviation from the normal type of humanity. In such a person there is an interruption of harmonious equilibrium existing between various functions of cerebrospinal centers; the co-operation and adaptation of the latter are incomplete. There is an ataxia of thought, of sentiment, of will, of psychomotor functions. According to the parts involved these patients form several groups which are only apparently different from each other, but under which is hidden the same individuality, viz., the neuropath. The most important characteristic features in neuropathic inddividuals are found in their psychical sphere. The development of their intellectual faculties is irregular and there is a want of equilibrium in these faculties. Such individuals are only partial, incomplete beings. They may have a remarkable memory but cannot fix their attention. Their mental instability is sometimes extreme. At the same time they may be apathetic and present paroxysms of great excitability. They may be eccentric, dreamers, with romantic tendencies. They are emotional, timid, extremely sensitive, impressionable, suspicious, egotistic, haughty and may be affected with moral perversity of the gravest