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EDGAR A. POE

A PSYCHOPATHIC STUDY

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644130
8651

Copyright, 1921

by

John W. Robertson

Copyright, 1922

by

John W. Robertson

Mi

8770
English

3-22-923

Haucherbocker
Press
New York

Made in the United States of America

FOREWORD

That reaction originating in our cerebrum when either the impressions received by our five special senses, or our more general conceptions, have to be transferred to our brain cells and transformed into responsive comprehension and action, or that still less understood capacity for memory and the "secretion of thought" which necessarily occurs when our brain cells function, cannot be explained by any definitely established scientific theory. Even less can the brain's unconscious cerebration that underlies the dream state, or even normal auto-hypnotization, be more than surmised.

We remain ignorant of the brain's physiology, and each theorist who attempts to psychologize the process by which he thinks only gropes into the recesses of his own brain and can find no law so comprehensive that it will answer as a general solution of this unsolved problem.

Although the law of conception and function may be the same for all normal brains, it is not possible to predict the reaction of each individual brain under the same stress, especially when that brain either by reason of inheritance or because of acquired irritability becomes abnormally sensitive. Every brain, with its resulting personality, is a · law to itself, and the judgment that may be passed on one, cannot be held true of another with brain cells differently arranged. Were it possible to X-ray the arrangement of these cells, they would differ as markedly as do the individual finger prints.

Given the psychological training that will interpret fundamental facts, one need not be unduly credulous of, or trammelled by the speculative and by no means authoritative treatises on the "newer psychology."

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