He is threatened, he is guilty, he is
doomed, he is annihilated, he is lost. His mind is fixed as if in a
cramp on these feelings of his own situation, and in all the books on
insanity you may read that the usual varied flow of his thoughts has
ceased. His associative processes, to use the technical phrase, are
inhibited; and his ideas stand stock-still, shut up to their one
monotonous function of reiterating inwardly the fact of the man's
desperate estate. And this inhibitive influence is not due to the mere
fact that his emotion is _painful_. Joyous emotions about the self also
stop the association of our ideas. A saint in ecstasy is as motionless
and irresponsive and one-idea'd as a melancholiac. And, without going as
far as ecstatic saints, we know how in every one a great or sudden
pleasure may paralyze the flow of thought. Ask young people returning
from a party or a spectacle, and all excited about it, what it was. "Oh,
it was _fine!_ it was _fine!_ it was _fine!_" is all the information you
are likely to receive until the excitement has calmed down.
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