That was the secret of the advances he was enabled to make
in neurology. For purely psychological investigation he had no liking, and
probably no aptitude. Anyone who was privileged to observe his methods of
work at the Salpetriere will easily recall the great master's towering
figure; the disdainful expression, sometimes, even, it seemed, a little
sour; the lofty bearing which enthusiastic admirers called Napoleonic. The
questions addressed to the patient were cold, distant, sometimes
impatient. Charcot clearly had little faith in the value of any results so
attained. One may well believe, also, that a man whose superficial
personality was so haughty and awe-inspiring to strangers would, in any
case, have had the greatest difficulty in penetrating the mysteries of a
psychic world so obscure and elusive as that presented by the
hysterical.[271]
The way was thus opened for further investigations on the psychic side.
Charcot had affirmed the power, not only of physical traumatism, but even
of psychic lesions--of moral shocks--to provoke its manifestations, but
his sole contribution to the psychology of this psychic malady,--and this
was borrowed from the Nancy school,--lay in the one word "suggestibility";
the nature and mechanism of this psychic process he left wholly
unexplained. This step has been taken by others, in part by Janet, who,
from 1889 onward, has not only insisted that the emotions stand in the
first line among the causes of hysteria, but has also pointed out some
portion of the mechanism of this process; thus, he saw the significance of
the fact, already recognized, that strong emotions tend to produce
anaesthesia and to lead to a condition of mental disaggregation, favorable
to abulia, or abolition of will-power.
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