ABULIA. - From the Greek privative à and βουλὴ "will"; a. is a pathological alteration of the will, consisting in a more or less notable diminution of the normal volitional processes (as in states of ordinary indecision) or even in their total abolition.
1. MEDICINE
By most scholars the pathogenetic mechanism of a. is held to depend on two fundamental elements, which may act simultaneously or separately: poverty of ideation and lowering of affective tone. By this it is meant that if a. is considered or called a "disease of the will," it is not that the volitional faculty, a spiritual power, is injured in a direct and intrinsic manner; but that in its free play it is weakened or paralyzed by diseases or by modifications of the organism and of the sensitive faculties, both cognitive and affective.
Various forms of a. are distinguished, each of which must be connected with different morbid manifestations: a) a. from defect of attention and reflection: for example, in an adult the passions are so strong, the feelings so inflamed, that they explode without any possibility of resistance (explosive a.); b) a. from defect of decision: one discusses or examines without ever coming to the point; hence an excess of analysis (fixed ideas of the scrupulous, of the manic, of the fearful); c) a. from incapacity or grave difficulty in passing to action (velleities, desires to act, which fade at the first effort or the first discomfort or the slightest contrariety, pliancy to all the winds that blow in the environment in which one lives).
These different forms of a. are more or less grave and therefore the inaction, which represents their outward manifestation, is more or less accentuated in the individual diseases of which a. is one of the symptoms (neurasthenia, hysteria, epilepsy, amenia, melancholic syndromes, dementia praecox, senile dementia, etc.).
To these different expressions of degree and gravity of a., another must be added, known by the name of moral a. This consists in a more or less accentuated impotence of the will in the face of moral action. The person so affected, although having a clear knowledge of good and evil and of duty, whose obligatory character he feels, is not able to commit his energy to doing good. The volitional powers are as if paralyzed and yield without struggle in the face of difficulties and instincts that superimpose themselves on the development of ethical action.
2. MORAL EVALUATION
If a. is total (idiocy, dementia praecox, etc.), it removes all responsibility and all imputability; if instead it is partial, it diminishes responsibility and imputability, especially when external actions are involved; however, one remains fully responsible for those groups of actions which do not fall within the field of this partial a. Moreover: one can be responsible, if not for the individual actions of a total or partial a., at least for their origin and their cause (voluntary in cause): a., for example, provoked by culpable habits, such as the abuse of alcoholics, aphrodisiacs, opium, etc., at least dimly foreseen. It is not always easy to judge the responsibility of the abulic; at times it may even be impossible; God alone can know it and weigh it.
A. can sometimes be incurable (hereditary a. or a. dependent on incurable organic diseases); but in most cases it can diminish enough to permit a normally moral life, and can even disappear. The treatment will be at the same time both physical and psychological, variously dosed according to the extent and the diversity of the cases.
Bibliography5 works
Antonino Pio Gaeta