Abstract
In creating his Psychophysiological Theory, Jan Mazurkiewicz transplanted John Hughlings Jackson’s method into the field of psychiatry. Like his precursor, he distinguished four evolutionary levels, but this time with regard to mental activity. According to Mazurkiewicz’s approach, disease is the reverse of evolution. Doing damage to the highest evolutionary level, it allows evolutionarily lower levels to take control of the patient’s psyche. Distorted by the etiological factor, the lower mental levels manifest as mental disease. In his Psychophysiological Theory, Mazurkiewicz distinguishes three types of dissolution: intra-level dissolution (psychoneuroses), slow dissolution or dissociation proper (schizophrenia), and rapid, delirium-like dissolution (impaired consciousness). Kaczyński noted that, based on an in-depth analysis of the phylogenetic and ontogenetic development of the successive evolutionary levels of the nervous system, Mazurkiewicz transposed the principles of the Jacksonian concept of hierarchical evolution – dissolution. Within a dozen or so years from birth to maturity, the process of evolution of mankind is recapitulated, with the speed of lightning, in an individual – from instincts, which are phylogenetically the oldest, to the highest functions of the frontal lobes. The present paper makes mention of research conducted at Lublin’s Department of Psychiatry which expands on Mazurkiewicz’s theory.
Schizophrenia as a process of mental dissolution