Mental Confusion

MENTAL CONFUSION. – A characteristic state proper to amentia (v.), occurring as a consequence of acute and chronic intoxications or of the severe ideational disorder produced by violent emotional traumas. Ideas lose their clarity or their relations of logical correlation, calling one another to mind through links of simple contiguity. Ratiocinative and critical activity is more or less abolished, so that mental activity often unfolds in conditions of absurdity similar to those of a dream, even to the point of a dissociation of the personality such as to abolish every form of thought. In the course of such vague and chaotic mental activity, the individual afflicted with m. c. must be considered incapable of establishing a logical relationship with those around him and devoid of moral responsibility.