disequilibration

Most people can suffer the reverses of fortune, the accidents of life, and the griefs of loss of friends and relatives, without mental disequilibration.

This only means that the predisposition to mental disequilibration is so strong that but very little is required to disturb the intellectual equilibrium.

Their queerness in other ways has usually been recognised by their friends and by their family physician before the incident which calls attention to this special form of disequilibration occurs.

Only the most careful examinations of the previous life of the patient, the investigation of childish tendencies and habits at school, and the incidents of boyhood and youth will sometimes enable the expert to recognise the constant existence of symptoms of mental disequilibration, the decided manifestation of which leads to serious events in after life.

A man of known erratic tendency, with the craving for theatrical effects deeply ingrained in his nature, with a personal history not entirely free from even more serious manifestations of mental disequilibration, and with a family history of more than suspicious character as regards the mental qualities of his ancestors, committed the crime.