ABSTRACT
Many disorders of mental life are due to injury or disease of the brain. Others arise through the incapacity of the personality to cope with the problems and difficulties he encounters, his inability to adjust himself to his environment. In disorders of the latter kind the tissues of the body, including the brain and all the nervous system, may be healthy; but there is some lack of balance, of harmony and co-operation between the parts. The perfectly healthy organism is a functional unity, a system of many functions harmoniously integrated, each in due subordination to the whole system. In the disorders of this second class, commonly called functional disorders, there is some excess of one function, or some failure of integration, some falling away of one or more functions out of the control of the whole system, or some conflict of one part against the rest of the system.
