_Melancholia_ is the inability of the mind to react to any stimulus with
other than gloom and depression.
Melancholia may be of the intellectual type or of the emotional type.
The patient who tells you constantly that he has murdered all his
children, that he is a criminal beyond the power of God to redeem, who
seems chained to his delusions, yet shows no adequate feeling reaction,
no genuine sorrow, we call a case of the intellectual type of
melancholia. Another patient misinterprets every normal reason for
happiness until it becomes a cause of settled foreboding. The mother,
whose son fought safely through the war and is now returning to her,
feels that his coming forecasts calamity for him. He had better have
died in France. She is of the emotional type of melancholia.
_Hysteria_ is a nervous disorder based upon suggestibility, and capable
of imitating most known diseases.
_Insane impulses_ are morbid demands for reckless action beyond the
control of the will.
Example: The impulse to kill, quite regardless of who may be the victim.
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