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Show CHARACTER IN THE INSANE. A. Deeply Interesting: Study, Though, at Times Attended With Sadness. If it is deeply interesting to 6tudy character among the insane, it is also at times both saddening and humiliating. We often lock with indulgence upon what we call harmless vanity or a natural nat-ural love of admiration in a rather frivolous friv-olous girl, but look at the same girl when by some accident or misfortune the mental balance is overthrown. Now she believes and does not hesitate to say that she is perfectly beautiful, has an exquisite figure, is in every way charming charm-ing and attractive and that every man who sees her immediately falls violently in love with her. It is only an absurdly exaggerated sense of self importance that produces the re y common delusion delu-sion that the patient is a king or a queen, even a deity. Again a natural humility and a tendency tend-ency to self depreciation are frequently frequent-ly exaggerated by disease into the de lusion that the patient is an object of dislike and contempt to every one, that he has committed some crime, and that consequently he is beyond redemption and is regarded with horror by all around him. If he is of a religious turn of mind, he believes himself to be eternally eter-nally lost and sinks into a state of chronic chron-ic melancholy and apathy. On the other hand, a natural self reliance, no longer controlled by common sense, expands into a belief that the patient has done-and done-and can do feats beyond the power of any mortal man. Hospital. |