{"agent_id":"charcot","agent_name":"Jean-Martin Charcot","slug":"traumatic-paralysis-and-the-dynamic-lesion","label":"Traumatic paralysis and the dynamic lesion: can an idea produce a bodily disease?","topic":"Traumatic paralysis and the dynamic lesion","question":"Can an idea produce a bodily disease?","position":"There are paralyses with no lesion the scalpel can find — paralyses produced by a trauma, a fright, an idea fixed in the mind and cut off from the will. I call the cause a dynamic lesion: a functional derangement of the nervous system set going by a psychical shock, as real in its effects as any severed nerve, though it leaves no mark on the tissue.","paragraphs":[[{"t":"There are paralyses with no lesion the scalpel can find — paralyses produced by a trauma, a fright, an idea fixed in the mind and cut off from the will.","n":[1]},{"t":"I call the cause a dynamic lesion: a functional derangement of the nervous system set going by a psychical shock, as real in its effects as any severed nerve, though it leaves no mark on the tissue.","n":[2,3]}]],"texts":"The studies of traumatic and hysterical paralyses without organic lesion — the \"dynamic lesion\" produced by shock, emotion, or idea. Reception: Freud's elaboration into the psychogenesis of the neuroses; Janet's dissociation; the whole subsequent tradition of psychosomatic and conversion disorder.","works":["The studies of traumatic and hysterical paralyses without organic lesion — the \"dynamic lesion\" produced by shock, emotion, or idea"],"reception":"Freud's elaboration into the psychogenesis of the neuroses; Janet's dissociation; the whole subsequent tradition of psychosomatic and conversion disorder.","status":"This is, against my own organic instincts, the most fertile idea I reached — that an idea can paralyse a limb. I did not develop its psychological mechanism; that was left to my pupils. But the recognition that a functional, psychically caused disorder is a genuine disease stands, and it is the bridge from my neurology to their psychology.","era":"1825-1893","discipline":"Psychology","refs":[{"n":1,"work":"Lectures on Diseases of the Nervous System, Series III","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"I demonstrated to you moreover tliat tliis paralysis could be produced seg- ment by segment in subjects undor liypnotism, either by means o£ verbal suggestion, or by tlie traumatic action of a blow on tlie slioulder, wiiicb constituted, as oiie miglit say, a véritable traumatic suggestion.","label":"Lectures on Diseases of the Nervous System, Series III"},{"n":2,"work":"Lectures on Diseases of the Nervous System, Series III","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"Tins problem, bristling with difïiculties of every kind, we must now proceed to face. I do not promise you, be it understood, a solution on ail points, but in endeavouring to reach our aim we shall perhaps encounter glances at truths whose practical conséquences ought not to be disdained. To arrive at the point to which I wish to lead you, I shall PSYOHIC PARALYSES.","label":"Lectures on Diseases of the Nervous System, Series III"},{"n":3,"work":"Clinical Lectures on Certain Diseases of the Nervous System","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"May it not be simply an instance of fortuitous coincidence? In support of the proposition which I affirm^ valid reasons are not lacking. Let us take^ first, the argument derived from con- siderations outside of hysteria itself.","label":"Clinical Lectures on Certain Diseases of the Nervous System"}],"answer":null,"siblings":[{"slug":"the-grande-hyst-rie","label":"The grande hystérie: is hysteria a fixed neurological disease, or an artifact of the Salpêtrière?"},{"slug":"hypnosis","label":"Hypnosis: is it a pathological state peculiar to hysterics, or a general effect of suggestion?"}]}