{"agent_id":"ribot","agent_name":"Théodule Ribot","slug":"the-law-of-dissolution","label":"The law of dissolution: does mental decay retrace development in reverse — the new lost before the old?","topic":"The law of dissolution","question":"Does mental decay retrace development in reverse — the new lost before the old?","position":"In the dissolution of the mind there is a law, and it is the mirror of development. Whatever is formed last is undone first; whatever is most complex, most voluntary, most delicately organized, is the most fragile; whatever is oldest, simplest, most automatic, most deeply organized, resists longest. So in the diseases of memory the recollections of yesterday vanish while those of childhood remain, the proper names before the common, the ideas before the feelings, the voluntary recall before the habits the hand and tongue perform without thought; the old man losing his memory travels backward through his life. So too the will dissolves from its highest coordinations down to mere impulse, and the personality unravels from its latest acquisitions toward its organic base. Destruction does not fall at random. It retraces, step by step and in reverse, the very order in which the mind was built — for what evolution has laid down last and lightest, dissolution takes away first.","paragraphs":[[{"t":"In the dissolution of the mind there is a law, and it is the mirror of development.","n":[]},{"t":"Whatever is formed last is undone first; whatever is most complex, most voluntary, most delicately organized, is the most fragile; whatever is oldest, simplest, most automatic, most deeply organized, resists longest.","n":[]},{"t":"So in the diseases of memory the recollections of yesterday vanish while those of childhood remain, the proper names before the common, the ideas before the feelings, the voluntary recall before the habits the hand and tongue perform without thought; the old man losing his memory travels backward through his life.","n":[1,2]}],[{"t":"So too the will dissolves from its highest coordinations down to mere impulse, and the personality unravels from its latest acquisitions toward its organic base.","n":[]},{"t":"Destruction does not fall at random.","n":[]},{"t":"It retraces, step by step and in reverse, the very order in which the mind was built — for what evolution has laid down last and lightest, dissolution takes away first.","n":[3]}]],"texts":"The Diseases of Memory (1882 — the law of regression, memory dissolving from recent to remote, voluntary to automatic); The Diseases of the Will (1884) and Personality (1895) extending the law. Reception: Herbert Spencer's evolution/dissolution and Hughlings Jackson's neurology as sources; the clinical status of 'Ribot's Law' in retrograde amnesia and dementia; the modern qualifications (temporal-gradient debates, the complications of retrograde amnesia and frontal damage).","works":["The Diseases of Memory (1882 — the law of regression, memory dissolving from recent to remote, voluntary to automatic)","The Diseases of the Will (1884) and Personality (1895) extending the law"],"reception":"Herbert Spencer's evolution/dissolution and Hughlings Jackson's neurology as sources; the clinical status of 'Ribot's Law' in retrograde amnesia and dementia; the modern qualifications (temporal-gradient debates, the complications of retrograde amnesia and frontal damage).","status":"Ribot's Law of regression is his most famous generalization and entered neurology and psychiatry as a lasting clinical principle, framed by Spencer's evolution-dissolution and Jackson's neurology. It captures real and robust phenomena — the temporal gradient of retrograde amnesia (recent memories more vulnerable than remote), the pattern of loss in Alzheimer's dementia, the survival of overlearned and procedural memory — and \"Ribot's gradient\" is still invoked. But as a strict universal law it is an idealization that real data only partly fit: the temporal gradient of amnesia is debated and depends on the lesion and the type of memory, retrograde amnesia has complex non-monotonic patterns, and frontal versus temporal damage produces different profiles. So the law is a powerful, partly-confirmed clinical generalization rather than an exceptionless natural law.","era":"1839-1916","discipline":"Psychology","refs":[{"n":1,"work":"Diseases of Memory","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"We have stated these two facts in the dissolution of memory: the new perishes before the old, the complex be- fore the simple. The law which we have formu- lated is only the psychological expression of a law of life, and pathology shows in its turn that memory is a biological fact. The study of peri- odic amnesia has thrown much light upon our 128 DISEASES OF MEMORY. subject.","label":"Diseases of Memory"},{"n":2,"work":"Diseases of the Will","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"If it were possible for a given period of time to compare in humanity, taken as a whole, the total num- ber of acts produced by voluntary attention with the total number of those produced without it, the ratio would be nearly as zero to infinity.","label":"Diseases of the Will"},{"n":3,"work":"Diseases of Memory","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"But of all that he saw or heard on the 1st of Decem- ber, before his fall, he is still ignorant to-day— that is to say, he has no knowledge of the events in question save from the testimony of others.","label":"Diseases of Memory"}],"answer":null,"siblings":[{"slug":"the-pathological-method","label":"The pathological method: does the diseased mind reveal the structure of the normal one?"},{"slug":"psychology-without-a-soul","label":"Psychology without a soul: must the science of mind be severed from metaphysics and founded as a natural science?"},{"slug":"the-self-as-a-coalition","label":"The self as a coalition: is personality a substance, or a resultant of organic and psychic conditions that can divide and dissolve?"},{"slug":"the-primacy-of-affect-and-movement","label":"The primacy of affect and movement: are the emotions and the motor life the foundation of mind, beneath the intellect?"}]}