ABSTRACT
After this introduction in may be well to cite the digests of some case histories, in order to show the usual forms, which the involution melancholia reaction assume. It should be borne in mind that, with one exception, these patients were examined about twenty years or more ago, at a time when “psychogenesis” was not much talked about and little effort was made to fill in the psychological picture by stimulating the patient with pertinent questions. The records, therefore, are not so complete as they might be but, on the other hand, they represent evidence secured merely by faithful observation, undirected by any theory. The consistency, with which certain ideas reappear, is, it would seem, all the more striking.
