ABSTRACT
It is a commonplace of everyday life that our intellectual operations concerned with problems which interest us are more accurate and keen than is the operation of our minds when forced to attend to that which bores us. This is probably due to the greater concentration of attention that goes with greater interest. In spite of the simplicity of this principle, little use has been made of it practically in psychiatry, yet in some conditions it is apparently a psychological factor of primary importance. For example, it is not difficult to show that the deterioration of intelligence in epileptic dementia is rigidly correlated with a loss of interest 1 . The same principle is capable of explaining some of the anomalous features in many attacks.
