Abnormal Psycho-Somatic Dispositions

Abnormal psycho-somatic dispositions must be distinguished from psychoses properly so called, though by them the use of reason is not wholly disturbed. Three species of these can be distinguished: 1. psychopathies; 2. psychasthenia; 3. neurasthenia.

I. Psychopathies are physical abnormalities which are manifested especially by abnormal acts of the sensitive appetites, especially of the concupiscible appetite. In those who are physically constituted in such a way, the vehemence of the acts of the sensitive appetites is by no means proportionate to the causes which are truly present; therefore the sensitive life dominates in an abnormal way. Very many specimens of psychopaths are distinguished, the principal ones of which are: 1. hysteria; 2. the asocial-criminal specimen. There are added, 3. sexual abnormalities, which, although in themselves they do not belong to psychopathy, are nevertheless akin to it.

1. Hysteria. Its distinctive mark is that those who are affected by hysteria desire to seem, both to themselves and to others, greater than they really are, and they desire that greater and more wonderful things should happen to them than really and ordinarily are accustomed to happen. But hysterical persons, since their wishes are by no means fulfilled in the truth of things, with the help of a lively imagination do this: they seek to become possessors of their wishes in another way. They desire that others be concerned with them, that they themselves be, as it were, the center of all thoughts, that marvelous and wonderful things which increase the liveliness of their imagination happen to them. On account of these things, which are, as it were, certain notes and distinctive marks of hysterical persons, such persons, who occur especially among women, must be treated with every prudence. Thus it can happen that, desiring in an insane way that something marvelous happen to them, they tend toward a sexual relation with ecclesiastics or confessors. Likewise it happens that they invent violence brought against themselves or solicitations proposed to them.

Crises can occur in hysterical persons; then they are shaken by convulsions, or they are as if in a state of sleep and torpor, or they are affected by vehement depression. These things, however, occur only by way of exception, for the essence of hysteria consists in the hysterical complexion itself.

2. The asocial-criminal specimen. These persons plainly lack all higher affections, feel nothing humanely, and are led only by concern for themselves, or egoism. To this specimen of psychopathy the name "moral insanity" is also given.

Corollary. In those whose complexion is affected psychopathically, moral responsibility will often be present only in a diminished way; indeed, in certain psychotic states, occurring extraordinarily, responsibility will be plainly removed.

3. Sexual abnormalities, which consist in this, that the venereal appetite departs from the normal manner, whether with respect to the time of manifesting itself, or with respect to intensity, or with respect to object. It is said:

a) With respect to the time of manifesting itself. Namely, it happens that in children, with respect to the venereal appetite, a precocious maturity, and one of a higher degree, is found; this disposition can indeed render the said children very dangerous for others.

b) With respect to intensity. Namely, some labor under a wholly unbridled and insatiable propensity toward venereal things; if this reaches the extreme degree, in men it is called satyriasis, as if making satyrs, and in women uterine fury or nymphomania.

c) With respect to object. Namely, the venereal passion in some persons is borne toward objects which of themselves are in no way, or not in that way, ordered to venereal sensations. To this are referred: homosexuality, sadism, masochism, fetishism, and exhibitionism.

a) Homosexuality is had when the sexual inclination is borne toward persons of the same sex. In a woman it is called Lesbian or Sapphic love; if it is borne toward boys, it is called pederasty.

b) Sadism, from the Marquis de Sade, who was affected in this way and described his own foul deeds, exists if libido is excited by perpetrating acts of cruelty, for example by piercing a girl with a knife.

c) Masochism, from Sacher-Masoch, who describes these things in works of fiction, is so called if libido is excited by suffering acts of cruelty.

d) Fetishism exists if libido is excited by imagination or handling of things or parts of the body which do not pertain to venereal matters, such as the hand, foot, hair, clothing, etc.

To the aforesaid there is added exhibitionism, which consists in the propensity of a man to exhibit his body or naked genitals to women.

Corollary I. Sexual abnormalities, as we have already suggested, are not yet in themselves signs of a true psychopathy, since they can also be consequences of psychogenic reactions, of which we shall speak in Point III. Therefore it must be seen whether or not symptoms of true psychopathy concur.

Corollary II. Concerning moral responsibility: if symptoms of true psychopathy are present, the things that have been said about those who are affected psychopathically hold good (cf. corollary, n. 54). If the said symptoms are absent, much discretion is still needed for rendering a judgment concerning the imputability of those who are borne with the greatest force into venereal matters. For it seems that credence often cannot be given to the testimony of those themselves who suffer these things; for sometimes they falsely think that they acted voluntarily, although from other indications it appears that this is not true. A more secure judgment indeed is formed concerning those who live piously; the difficulty is much greater in those who care little for piety.

II. Psychasthenia is a state of soul whose distinctive marks are consciousness of culpability and anxieties, increased in an abnormal and vehement way. Many scrupulous persons are to be counted among these.

Corollary. With respect to acts which are placed under the influence of these affections, for example imprecations or pollutions, moral responsibility will be diminished or plainly removed.

III. Neurasthenia is a morbid state of soul whose distinctive mark is fatigue and weariness of the entire nervous system together with the greatest irritability of the sensitive life; therefore neurasthenic persons can remain masters of themselves with greater difficulty.

First case. 1. Certain persons, in whom neither piety nor the study of virtue is lacking, during the day abstain rather easily from every depraved action; but at night, after they have retired to bed, they seem to indulge an evil habit. For they are accustomed not immediately, but after a long delay, to be overcome by sleep; or certainly, after some hours, released from sleep, they experience nocturnal wakefulness. During those parts of the night which they spend sleepless, they are vexed by impure phantasms, they feel nervous excitations, until they have brought on pollution by masturbation. Moreover the frequency of these acts varies, since some defile themselves twice in a month, others almost every night, indeed several times in the same night. If any have not done the evil exterior act, they, from the very omission of the act, are shown to be immune from mortal sin, although they have experienced a completed temptation in which they seem to themselves to have had complacency.

After pollution has been procured, some immediately grieve and do penance, while others remain with tranquil mind.

Some spontaneously confess themselves guilty; others, on the contrary, think that, although awake, they can scarcely use their disturbed mind, and are placed in an unusual condition. Yet they are not relieved from fear of sin, and they readily protest that they doubt about the matter and do not wish to resolve it. Depraved practices of adolescence are for the most part to be blamed as the cause. Yet it also happens that, after an innocent youth, this vice takes its beginning from adult age.

Concerning the just estimation of the cause and concerning a prudent manner of acting, what shall we say?

a) First, the confessor must inquire whether they truly perpetrated these things while awake, or while half-asleep and in an almost somnambulant condition. If some hallucination or deception is discerned; if some absurd error (for example, that now they can indulge these things without sin) or strange reasons demonstrate imperfect wakefulness, these persons are to be judged without ambiguity to be immune from grave guilt. And, in doubt, those to whom the presumption is favorable are rather to be excused.

But for those who, being awakened, practice such things, certain points favor them and certain points are contrary. In their favor are the pure character of their daily life, the best habit of the will, and that inefficacy, as you might call it, of prayer, if before lying down and in the temptation itself they have poured forth prayers. Yet contrary considerations are the state of wakefulness and the struggle itself from which they departed conquered. For there is question of persons who are even healthy. Is not the daily purity itself partly explained because, on account of nocturnal satisfaction, the appetite has been made more remiss? Then in bed heat and a more convenient position stimulate the flesh; but phantasy, released from daily cares, lies more open to temptations. Moreover a good will, prayers poured forth for a long time without manifest utility, are observed also among those who are accustomed to sin during the day, among whom even not a few will say that while they are pressed by temptation they are affected in various ways, and that an entirely external sin, indeed one perpetrated with an accomplice, does not seem mortal to them. For there is in us a lesser aversion from a disorder which is admitted without injury to another; and in the heat of concupiscence the body and disposition are affected in a peculiar way and are almost changed. And since in all there is per se a great propensity to such acts, we cannot here appeal to the ineluctable force of a perverse instinct.

For this reason, this will be our conclusion. Such persons in general and per se cannot be excused: what a wakeful man has done, he must be presumed to have done while master of himself. Nevertheless signs of lesser fault can be had: a disposition which from other sources appears badly tempered or hysterical; the speed with which the action followed the thought; great disturbance of mind from the beginning, which allows only a slight space or opportunity for deliberating; great temptations during the day, which have been strenuously overcome.

It will also help to question them as to with what conscience they acted, with what moral reflection, with what persuasion of free choice. I mean a persuasion that is spontaneous and, as it were, immediate, not one obtained by a longer reasoning or by another's counsel. For guilt will be absent from him whom conscience of its own accord has absolved.

The supply of a certain judgment will not so rarely be lacking. But since the morality of the act done depends entirely on subjective consent, and therefore is not affected by our opinion, there is here no place for probabilism; and by a similar obligation we must flee the proximate occasion of certain and doubtful consent.

A prudent manner of acting. The confessor must diligently take care that these persons be protected at the same time from excessive security and from dejection of mind: he who thinks himself empty of fault and he who loses heart both cease to strive against the habit. Wherefore the confessor should neither be severe in absolving relapsers of this kind, since the difficulty of resistance and their general good will render them at least worthy to be treated with great kindness and mercy, and to be strengthened with much patience in a vigorous struggle; nor will he induce them to judge themselves innocent. For that persuasion often lacks a sufficient argument, while confidence is accustomed to increase the force of concupiscence and to impel toward more and more rash acts. The confessor will not call them away from frequent, indeed daily, Communion, or from the celebration of sacred things; yet regularly he will not permit them to perform sacred things or be refreshed by the Eucharistic banquet without sacramental confession. For besides the power of sacramental grace, frequent detestation of the thing and renewal of purpose are among the best means of amendment; and the very inconvenience of approaching a confessor can call the mind away from spontaneous propensity. Yet what remains of doubt in judging the guilt itself allows you more easily to think that there is present a lack of a confessor which excuses access to holy Communion, with only an act of contrition set before it. But it is evident that those are to be gravely corrected who during the day, by reading lascivious things, shameful conversations, and morose delectation, as it were prepare evening excitations. Nor does it now cause a light detriment if, by reading, imagining, or thinking again, especially in the evening, soft and tender affections are fostered, although they are not strictly shameful. Therefore the confessor should strive both to find these things out and to cut them away. It will be very useful, besides, that these persons exercise the will in every way toward strength and greatness of mind. Often, especially in the evening, let them join an express and serious purpose with prayer; let them procure for themselves the firm execution of any purpose; and let them not remain long hesitant in deliberating. Let them read writers and frequent companions who are firm in mind. Let them season daily acts with a certain salt of mortification, so that thus the body may be exercised toward obedience, and the will toward command. Nor are physical means to be neglected: abstinence from food and drink in which there is an excitatory force; the use of a harder bed; a certain tempered fatigue of the body; mental occupation (yet in the evening after supper, they are to be dissuaded from intense labor, as also from every excessive weariness or anxiety of mind); indeed certain medicines (lupulin, bromides, hydrotherapy, suggestion). Wherefore, if it can be done, it will be very useful that an upright and skilled physician together with the confessor contribute his work to the treatment.

More easily, as is evident, there is to be excused a certain nervous motion (say, a tighter joining of the legs, rigidity of the body), which, in the midst of excitation, can be explained by the nerves themselves or by a brief distraction of mind, than exterior acts which require either walking or handling with the hands: as if they strive to embrace solid bodies, or have committed masturbation properly so called.

Another case. There are some who, after intervals, for a long time are driven as if by physical necessity toward venereal pleasure. You would say that they as it were need this satisfaction. They are pressed by a continual invitation until, after a struggle, sometimes prolonged through several days, by a sinful act they are restored to peace and quiet.

This kind of men is often affected by a nervous and hysterical disease. Nor rarely do women experience such things at that age at which they are accustomed to become sterile (menopause).

Yet not all are placed in a morbid state. But all are worthy of the greatest mercy. And indeed it can happen that, after a long struggle, they have been made almost impotent in mind, and, raving for an hour, have completed the evil thing. But, this case excluded, or per se, they do not seem to be deprived of free choice. Therefore let the confessor be kind and courteous; let him command them to be of good courage; let him take care that they apply moral and physical medicines, and let him not deny frequent absolution.

N.B. Those who experience propensities of this kind are to be dissuaded from entering religion, and especially from seeking the priestly state. Indeed, where fault seems certain and sufficiently frequent, they are per se positively to be forbidden to undertake the priesthood, since they do not have a sufficiently proximate aptitude for fulfilling the duties of due chastity.

General observation. There are several cases which a prudent confessor will have to commit to the divine judgment, while at the same time taking care that he add strength to souls and obtain from all the greatest resistance which can be hoped for. With physicians, indeed, he will admit fault diminished by depraved habits, by propensities and diseases of mind, yet not so that he rashly pronounces all the sick immune from grave guilt. And this, at least to healthy persons, he will strongly inculcate: that there is no habit which cannot be overcome by a constant will. Cf. on the same argument Noldin, Principia, n. 61, 62 and the authorities alleged by him.

Distinction of each forum. In this matter one must also observe what difference there is between the civil penal forum and the forum of conscience. Belgian laws, for example, among the conditions of a delict require that it be committed by a man who is of sound mind. Wherefore, since no one is of sound mind who labors under a definite psychological disease, all who are affected by a habitual disease are accustomed to be excused from every delict. Let there be, for example, a man affected by a delirium of persecution (delire de la persecution): in the penal forum he will go away immune, even if he has committed a delict in a way which has nothing in common with his own subjective error. Although recently dispute has begun concerning another way by which society may effectively be protected from harmful men whom it refuses to condemn.

I. Psychological liberty is taken away or diminished by various diseases, which are called diseases of the mind because, on account of badly affected centers of the brain or sensitive powers, the higher faculties are impeded in their action.

Organic diseases are found in a material lesion of the organ, while no lesion appears which betrays functional diseases.

The kinds of diseases are apparently two, since some are manifested by direct weakness of the higher powers, others by the impulse of the lower. But the impulse itself is so great because it is not restrained by the weakened higher faculties; so that in reality there is one kind of diseases.

II. Phrenetics are deceived by hallucinations. Wherefore in every delirium, even if it seems partial (monomania), they lack all liberty. The demented, by incurable imbecility and dullness of mind, are deprived of the use of free choice. The command of obsessions and impulses can be invincible. Yet impulses which conspire with natural concupiscence are not easily to be pronounced invincible; and occasions sometimes can and must be avoided freely. Aboulia can excuse from fulfilling certain positive duties. Nor is liberty combined with epileptic agitation, even masked agitation; nor with the true hypnotic state (concerning which new investigations are being made). Neurasthenics also can rather easily be excused when because of weariness they neglect certain duties.

III. There occur also troublesome cases of persons who, being generally affected toward the good, either perpetrate indecent things at night or, after certain intervals, feel a prolonged impulse toward venereal satisfaction until they have yielded to it. The confessor must act prudently, so that the sick may fall into worse things neither by despair nor by false security. Let him strive to obtain the greatest resistance possible. But he will have to commit many things to the divine judgment.

Moral excuse on account of morbid difficulties is often only partial, while in the external forum the same excuses not rarely liberate the badly affected completely from penalties.

I. Various pathological states. - Causes of nervous agitation, not rarely occurring in present times, which more or less impede human liberty and moral life, are pathological states or diseases of the mind, which are so called not because the soul or spiritual faculties can be sick in themselves, but because, on account of badly affected organs of the body, specifically centers of the brain and sensitive faculties, they are impeded in action, either transitorily or permanently. Now those who labor under such a morbid state are commonly called abnormal. These are distinguished according to diverse genera, according to their diverse illnesses, the principal of which are numbered here:¹

¹ Theologians are accustomed to treat of these in the doctrine concerning human acts. We have taken the principal things from Vermeersch, Prummer, and Tanquerey; Salsmans also has excellent things in the work Geneeskundige plichtenleer and in the article Abnormalen in den biechtstoel, in Pastor Bonus, Aug. 1927. Besides, the following can be compared: P. Janet, Les Obsessions et la Psychasthenie, Les Nevroses, Nevroses et idees fixes; Dr. Raymond, Nevroses et Psychasthenie; Rauh and Revault, Psychologie appliquee a la morale; Ribot, Les maladies de la volonte; Grasset, Demifous et demiresponsables, Psychisme inferieur, La responsabilite des criminels; Axenfeld and Huchard, Traite des Nevroses; Pitres and Regis, Les Obsessions et les Impulsions; Van Velsen, Hypnotisme, suggestion, psychotherapie; Francotte, La raison et la folie (Rev. des Q. scient., d. 27); Vigouroux, Traite de medecine, t. III; Dubois, Les psychonevroses et leur traitement moral; Pere Raymond, Le guide des nerveux et des scrupuleux; Eymieu, Le gouvernement de soi-meme (vol. 2); Surbled, La morale dans ses rapports avec la medecine et l'hygiene, t. III; Boule, Questions de responsabilite (N. R. Theol. 1910); D'Agnel and d'Espiney, Direction de conscience et Psychotherapie des troubles nerveux; Capellmann-Bergmann, Pastoralmedezin (Latin and French versions); Familler, Pastoral-Psychiatrie; Bessmer, Storungen im Seelenleben, Die Grundlagen der Seelenstorungen, Seelische Hilfe bei Nervenleiden, Die Krankhaften Hemmnisse der Willensfreiheit (in Stimmen); Schloss, Propadeutik der Psychiatrie (French version); Huber, Die Hemmnisse des Willensfreiheit; Krieg, Die Wissenschaft der speziellen Seelensorge; Romer, Psychiatrie und Seelesorge (an excellent work although the author is Protestant); Weber, Zwangsgedanken und Zwangszustande in pastoral-psychiatrischer Beurteilung; Tummers, De nieuwere richting in de strafwetenschap; Van der Hoeven, Psychiatrie (where sometimes there are positivist conceptions); Roels, De Psychologie van den wil; Schimm Van der Loeff and Barnhoorn, Zielsziekten en hunne verpleging; Antonelli, Medicina pastoralis; Gemelli, De scrupulis, psycho-pathologiae specimen, etc., etc.

1. Phrenesis, in which the sick put forth false judgments that are radically incurable, because they are deceived by perpetual or temporary hallucinations, or have disturbed associations of imagination, so that their psychic life can be equated with the life of those dreaming. Hence in delirium (even if it is monomania, or hallucination circumscribed to one topic) they are not free; during intervals of delirium nothing of itself impedes liberty.

2. Obsession so occupies the mind that the obsessed person is bound to think or do certain things. It disturbs practical judgment sufficiently, so that more often room is left only for light fault, and mortal sin can scarcely be given in them. But, besides perpetual obsessions, there are others which are generated only in certain circumstances; whence outside the state of obsession, the sick are held by the precept of fleeing occasions of morbid excitation toward committing dishonorable things, and if they freely violate this, they are guilty.

To obsession are reduced phobias, fixed ideas, and more intense scruples.²

² Concerning remedies and education against obsession and phobias, cf. Prummer, Th. M., I, n. 95; and Vermeersch, Th. M., I, n. 85.

3. Blind impulses or invincible propensities can exist in a morbid state, whether they immediately obtain an act that is not deliberate, or overcome fruitless resistance, so that the act is nevertheless elicited. Hence some are merely mechanical or motor, which often are without affection, as, for example, in an idiot; others are psycho-mechanical or even merely psychic, which occur with more distinct perception and stronger affection, and often leave partial liberty.

All suppose a suggestible person, for his passive docility depends on the intensity of a certain phantasm which rather easily generates an insuperable motion. Thus some are known to be prone to lies, others to internal blasphemies, others to suicide or homicide, others to thefts, drunkennesses, or fires, according as they labor under kleptomania, dipsomania, pyromania. Yet with these must not be confused those who from habit are thieves, drunkards, liars, etc.; for these certainly are not abnormal, but sinners from malice.

It is not easily discerned whether the impulses are truly irresistible, but it must be judged from all circumstances whether liberty is only diminished or taken away. The latter can easily be supposed a) if the action cannot be explained by natural concupiscence, b) if after the evil action the soul has remained quiet and content, c) if something is done which one otherwise altogether abhors; yet liberty is not always taken away. Hence those things can be applied which are handed down in the Treatise on Human Acts concerning violence, fear, and concupiscence.

4. Abulia renders the will powerless to will efficaciously that which is desired, whether it remains idle, or, as if unwillingly, is compelled to seek or flee certain things against its practical judgments. In the first case, the sick person is often excused from certain positive duties, because liberty is at least sufficiently diminished; in the second case, what has been said concerning impulses holds.

Abulia, however, is sometimes not universal, but limited to certain acts or certain times. Besides, it can be voluntary and free in the cause, when someone knowingly and freely has induced this state, e.g., by constantly abdicating the will without sufficient reason.

5. Neurasthenia is a pathological state consisting in habitual fatigue of the nervous system from an organic or psychic cause, in which the nerves appear weakened and exhausted, so that the agent, although master of himself, labors under the greatest inconstancy and is greatly depressed physically and morally. Wherefore liberty is diminished, though not taken away. Hence the sick can rather easily be excused when, yielding to weariness, they neglect certain positive precepts, especially merely ecclesiastical ones, as an excessive burden. Nevertheless, of themselves they are to be judged to sin if, because of sadness, they seek shameful delights to which the illness itself does not impel.

6. Hysteria, although its cause is disputed, also carries with itself disorder and disturbance of the nervous system, but much graver than neurasthenia. It consists in an immense morbid suggestibility, from which sensibility is diminished or for a time extinguished in certain parts of the body (anesthesia), while in others it is rendered much more intense (hyperesthesia); there also arise motions of the body more or less disordered, and also vivid hallucinations or vehement passions which are very unstable and greatly impede the free exercise of the will, as also right judgment and moral sense. Hence in practice, only from all circumstances, and from the declaration of hysterical persons themselves, can it be known how much liberty remains in them. Yet hysterical agitation (crise, acces de grande hysterie) cannot be combined with grave guilt.

7. Still graver is larvate or hidden epilepsy, which impels one to perpetrate various strange, shameful, atrocious things: to inflict injury, blasphemies, shameful conversations, striking, homicide, etc.; not indeed constantly, but with longer intervals interposed, without the sick person retaining memory of all these things. Epileptic agitation or crisis certainly cannot be combined with grave guilt. But outside times of frenzy the mind is sane and perfectly free; unless sometimes a transitory psychic disturbance comes upon it.³

³ Speech is not instituted concerning hypnotism, because it is not an illness, but a phenomenon induced by an extrinsic cause.

All the aforesaid disturbances, even if they affect affection or the will, seem to draw their origin from an obscuring or diminution of intellectual cognition.

II. Conjectural signs of invincible inclination, by which it can more or less be discerned whether someone has yielded to an ineluctable inclination, are taken from various circumstances, especially taken together:

1. if on several occasions, and as if instinctively and swiftly after the manner of a mere instrument, he has placed some action, without any proper advantage, sensible delight, or satiation of a base instinct;

2. if he acted from a certain nervous anxiety or unrest which, when the action has been performed, immediately falls and becomes quiet; while on the contrary in a tranquil and quiet state he never acts thus;

3. if sincerely, and without any dissimulation, he wonders at his own operation, and spontaneously affirms himself conscious that he acted under the impulse of a certain violence;

4. finally, if he seems infected by hereditary blemish, by which, namely, his parents or blood-relatives also seem to labor under the same pathology.

Especially, in the matter of chastity and lust, there is sometimes given an abnormal propensity, as if invincible, toward sexual delight, namely sexual hyperesthesia or erotism, which according to the different sex is called satyriasis or nymphomania. Different species of this are numbered:⁴

⁴ Concerning these, our Questions concerning Chastity and Lust, pp. 99-102, can be compared.

a) a most vehement propensity to procuring self-abuse, especially among certain young persons of either sex;

b) exhibitionism, or an inclination to display in public the sexual parts or operations, every shame having been left behind;

c) homosexuality or uranism, that is, a perverse inclination toward the same sex, and as it were insensibility toward the other sex;

d) sexual perversion, by which venereal delight is procured from those things which are not by nature fitted to procure it. This is manifested in sadism, by which they inflict violence and torments on others to procure sexual delight for themselves; in masochism, by which, on the contrary, with a view to the same delight, they wish to undergo violence and torments; in fetishism, by which lust is excited by the sight or imagination of indifferent things (hair, shoes, cloths, etc.) which the mind conceives as associated with sexual things. In healing this, it is necessary to break apart that association and, as far as possible, erase it from memory.

III. As regards imputability and responsibility, the Determinists and Criminalists are not to be heard, who hold almost all malefactors as irresponsible sick persons, nor many physicians or cultivators of Psychiatry, who too easily deny the liberty and imputability of actions. But on the contrary, the better among them affirm not only that liberty generally is not extinguished, but also that the greatest influence is exercised by the soul upon the body, notwithstanding the latter's native propensity; and therefore in curing mental illnesses they are accustomed to use suggestion or moral persuasion, and indeed acknowledge the beneficial influence of the priest. Besides, for the greater part men are healthy, not abnormal; the latter constitute an exception.

Hence for practice let it be noted:

1. abnormal persons remain perfectly free in relation to other matters in which they are not abnormal;

2. in those matters about which they labor under abnormal affection, liberty and imputability are often attenuated and diminished, yet not in such a way that what is mortal always becomes venial;

3. generally, however, liberty is not extinguished; wherefore this is not to be supposed, but on the contrary sufficient liberty is presumed to be present;

4. even if liberty is greatly diminished or extinguished, this can be, and rather often is, voluntary in the cause: for the more conscious they are of invincible propensity, the more they are bound to flee occasions and circumstances of morbid excitation by which they are carried to dishonorable things;

5. in the case in which responsibility is greatly diminished or almost extinguished, this is not to be said to penitents, because it would increase their concupiscence and induce them to more rash acts, so that now, without any rein or restraint, they would rush into vice: namely, despairing of resisting, they would think that all things are now permitted to them.

Wherefore confessors judge imprudently who immediately from a few indications conclude to grave abnormality, and much more who therefore conclude to inculpability and excuse; they act still more imprudently if, for the sake of consolation, they reveal this to such penitents.

And thus especially in the matter of chastity, in relation to those who have an extraordinary erotic constitution (whether native, or adventitious from readings, spectacles, disordered loves), by which they are assiduously pressed by the lust of untamed flesh, so that the smallest spark produces a great fire which is accustomed to be extinguished only when passion has been fulfilled; they are filled with thoughts and phantasms and are agitated by vehement temptations of the flesh, and finally break forth into the deed. Such persons:

a) generally and of themselves cannot be excused, especially if they have come to the deed; nor even, if their responsibility is doubtful, can the aforesaid commotions and actions be permitted to them under the pretext that probably they are not formal sins: for it is not licit to expose oneself to the proximate danger of consent, even doubtful consent, but formal sin must certainly be avoided. This is, namely, a case in which systems of probability cannot be applied, but the safer way is to be chosen;

b) hence, as often as they at least have broken forth into the deed, they are rather to be presumed guilty, and then regularly they should not be permitted to approach holy communion without previous confession;

c) besides, unless they diligently use all natural and supernatural means, they are not capable of living chastely;

d) whence let the confessor pity them and help them with fatherly solicitude and great patience; therefore let him give courage to them for fighting, urge them to flee diligently all dangers of chastity, to pray frequently and renew a good purpose of resistance, to frequent the sacraments, to mortification in food, drink, and sleep, and also to use other physical means or certain medicines.

e) generally let him be kind toward them in conceding absolution, even if they are recidivists, because of their intrinsic fragility; yet if they were also in occasions, they would have to be treated more rigorously because of their proclivity to pleasures.

IV. As regards care and medical treatment, it must be noted: those who are abnormal in an acute degree are simply to be committed to a trustworthy and Catholic psychiatrist physician; for others the confessor can contribute to healing by rational persuasion and suggestion, so that, namely, obsessions, fixed ideas, and harmful impressions may gradually be diminished and erased from the mind. For this, divine help having often been invoked,

1. let him excite the confidence of the penitent: for it is necessary that the latter wish to be healed and understand that this must be procured by his docile submission and education of the will;

2. let him proceed with great kindness and at the same time inflexible firmness;