Note 244 — Chapter I

See also Alfred Binet, Les Altérations de la Personnalité, Paris, 1892, p. 39: ‘His senses close to outside stimulation; for him, the external world ceases to exist; he lives no more than his exclusively personal life; he acts only through his own stimuli, with the automatic movement of his brain. Although he receives nothing more from outside, and his personality is completely isolated from the surroundings in which he is placed, he may be seen to go, come, do, act, as if he had his senses and intelligence in full exercise.’ This, it is true, is the description of a patient, but what he says of the latter applies equally, with a difference of degree only, to the ego-maniac. Féré has communicated to the Biological Society of Paris, in the séance of November 12, 1892, the results of a great number of experiments made by him, whence it appears ‘that among the greater part of epileptics, hysterical and degenerate subjects, cutaneous sensibility is diminished.’ See La Semaine médicale, 1892, p. 456.