It is quite probable, too, that there is a mere disintegration of the personality without its destruction by an organized trend; such a one is certainly impossible to demonstrate in many cases.
Here, too, it is easier to observe than to measure, and there is no telling now if the degree of personal integration for very complicated reactions will ever be brought under experimental control; for the lower psychomotor levels of reaction, however, there is considerably better hope.
I will quote two instances of the way in which this disintegration of personality is spoken of by the cases themselves. It is not often clearly expressed, dementia præcox cases being commonly inaccessible. First in the case of a young woman of twenty-five, with nothing very definite appearing in the previous history. At various times in the psychosis she makes such utterances as these:
And a young man of about thirty, of shut-in personality, and of somewhat coarser mental fiber than the previous case, expresses himself in this way, with more delusional coloring, the disconnected fragments of his own personality being rationalized as "spirits."