ABSTRACT
The object of the clinical researches which are reported in this book, was to gather data from which deductions might be drawn as to mental mechanisms resulting in the symptoms of manic-depressive insanity. A complete study of symptoms would involve, of course, an understanding of the way in which they subsided, as well as the method of their growth, but it was deliberately neglected. Therapeutic imvestigations and experiments to be anything more than random gropings must be based on hypotheses, which, in turn, are developed logically from a theory of the conditions to be remedied. Our attention was therefore directed solely to the problems of psychogenesis. If symptoms be understood, it is conceivable that the disease which they manifest may also be grasped, and it is only on knowledge of a disease as a whole that rational therapy can be based.
