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Some Abnormal Psychical Conditions in Children

Mr. President and Gentlemen,—The particular psychical conditions with which I propose to deal in these lectures are those which are concerned with an abnormal defect of moral control in children. Interesting as these disorders may be as an abstruse problem for the professed psychologist to puzzle over, they have a very real practical — shall I say social? — importance which I venture to think has been hardly sufficiently recognised. For some years past I have been collecting observations with a view to investigating the occurrence of defective moral control as a morbid condition in children a subject which I cannot but think calls urgently for scientific investigation. It has long been recognized that such a deficiency may occur in association with those disorders of intellect which are ordinarily recognised as idiocy, imbecility, or insanity, and I suppose no one doubts the morbid nature of the moral defect in these cases, whether it be regarded as dependent upon the intellectual failure or not. But there are other cases which cannot be included in this category — children who show a temporary or permanent defect of moral control such as to raise the question whether it may not be the manifestation of a morbid mental state, but who nevertheless pass for children of normal intellect; it is this condition in particular which seems to me to call for careful observation and inquiry. The importance of some more widespread knowledge of these morbid states, if such they be, is very great, and although some of them persist into adult life, at no other period are the opportunities for investigating them so favourable as in childhood; for in early years the influence of environment has not yet become so varied and complicated as to be altogether beyond our gauge, and it is possible to obtain a more or less accurate and detailed history of the whole life of the individual, a point of extreme importance when the question of a congenital deficiency arises, as it will do in connexion with these cases: Moreover, if there be any question of a morbid failure in the development of a mental process, it can best be studied in the child, who is still at the age when, as we shall see, such development should be in progress. Whilst, therefore, I propose to consider generally the occurrence of defective moral control as a morbid condition in children, my particular object in this general survey is to determine what evidence there is on which we can base an answer to this question: Is diminution or defect of moral control in children ever the manifestation of a morbid mental state, apart from any such general disorder of intellect as is ordinarily recognised as imbecility, “feeble-mindedness,” or insanity? And if so, under what conditions does it occur? It is obvious that such a disorder, if it exist, cannot be studied apart from its clinical phenomena, although some light may be thrown or gross anatomical lesions which are associated with it in certain cases.