ABSTRACT
There are probably no conditions to be met with among the benign psychoses, which represent such a multiplicity of symptoms as those grouped together under the heading of “Manic States”. We see murderous rages and diplomacy, infectious gaiety and irritability, volubility and silence. It is our task to show that these, and all typical symptoms, are related etiologically and, that no matter how great may be the superficial variations, all manic states possess in common the same type of ideas, pathognomonic of the group. Further, we shall try to show that elation, flight of ideas, 1 distractibility and over-activity—the cardinal symptoms—are an accompaniment of a definite motif, furnished by the dominant ideas of the psychosis.
