Classics in Psychology

Robert H. Wozniak - Bryn Mawr College

John Hughlings Jackson: Evolution and Dissolution of the Nervous

System (18817; Collected 1932)
In 1824, Marie-Jean-Pierre Flourens provided the first experi-mental demonstration of localization of function
in the brain: a motor center in the medulla oblongata and stability and motor coordination in the cerebellum.
By 1842, he had articulated a clear distinction between sensation and perception and localized sensory
function in several related sub-cortical structures. For a combination of empirical and philosophical reasons,
however, Flourens was firmly opposed to cortical localization of function and committed to a view of the cortex
as the unitary, undiffer-entiated seat of higher mental processes. 154 This was a position that was widely
shared.
It was not until the 1870s that views concerning the nature of cortical function began to change. For this
change to occur, the intellectual ground had to be prepared. This involved the abandonment of a fixed faculty
approach to mind in favor of a balanced sensori-motor, evolutionary associationism. These advances came
through the respective contributions of Alexander Bain and Herbert Spencer. 155 Prior to Bain,
associationisms commitment to experience as the source of knowledge led to the neglect of movement in
favor of the analysis of sensation. Drawing heavily on the work of physiologists such as Johannes Mller, 156
Bain brought the new physiology of movement into conjunction with an associationist account of mind.
Action, he wrote, is a more intimate and inseparable property of our constitution than any of our sensations,
and in fact enters as a component part into every one of the senses, giving them the character of compounds
. 157
Herbert Spencer offered students of the brain an evolutionary view to which sensori-motor and hierarchical
organization in the brain as a whole were simple corollaries. For Spencer, evolution consisted of gradual and
continuous change from homogeneity to heterogeneity, from relative unity and indivisibility to differentiation
and complexity, from relative rigidity of organization to relative flexibility. Nowhere in the process of evolution
were there radical discontinuities; principles describing lower levels of an evolving system were also
characteristic of higher levels. And just as evolution was an increase in differentiation, complexity, and
flexibility, dissolution involved return to relative lack of differentiation, simplicity, and stereotypy.
The broad implications of these evolutionary conceptions for the theory of brain function were clear. The brain
was the most highly developed physical system known and the cortex the most developed level of the brain.
As such, it must be heterogeneous, differentiated, complex, and flexibly organized. Furthermore, if the cortex
was a continuous evolutionary development from sub-cortical structures, the sensori-motor principles that
governed sub-cortical localization must hold for the cortex as well. Finally, if higher mental processes were
the end product of a continuous process of development, pathology in higher brain centers could lead to
dissolution of function.
In the late 1870s and 1880s, these implications were elaborated in striking fashion in a series of papers
published by John Hughlings Jackson. 158 The most famous of these, including Jacksons Croonian Lectures
on Evolution and Dissolution of the Nervous System, appeared between 1881 and 1887 and were collected
together for the first time in 1932 in the second volume of Jacksons Selected Writings. 159
As Jackson put it in the introduction to the first of these papers, he had long thought that Herbert Spencers
hypothesis of dissolution( would) enable us to develop a science of disease of the nervous system. 160 His
goal, therefore, was to illustrate Spencers doctrines of nervous evolution, by the reverse process of nervous
dissolution, as this is effected by pathological processes. 161
And for Jackson, pathology was very broadly construed to include exceptional mental states of any kind,
not only cases specially described by alienists, but delirium in acute non-cerebral disease, degrees of
drunkenness, and even sleep with dreaming. 162 Indeed, it was a hallmark of Jacksons work that his general
theory of the functional architecture of brain systems could be used to elucidate not only exceptional mental
states of the sort just listed but even the effects of nervous diseases as varied as muscular atrophy,
hemiplegia, paralysis agitans, epilepsy, chorea, and aphasia.

Unfortunately, Jackson never published a systematic account of his theory. The historian of psychology who
goes in search of Jacksons views will find bits and pieces of the theory scattered about among his writings.
For the sake of exposition, the major principles will be laid out here with some systematicity; but this was not
characteristic of Jacksons own work.
The first principle of Jacksons theory was continuity of sensori-motor function at all levels of the nervous
system. As Jackson put it, the cerebral centres are, like all lower centres, reflex. The more recent doctrines
of evolution of necessity imply that all nervous centres, even the highestthe substrata of consciousness
are (also) sensori-motor. 163
The second principle was that of the evolution and dissolution of brain systems. One of the best statements of
this principle appeared in Jacksons Croonian Lectures: Evolution, he wrote, is a passage from the most to
the least organised; that is to say, from the lowest, well organised, centres up to the highest, least organised,
centresfrom centres comparatively well organised at birthto thosewhich are continually organising
through lifeEvolution is a passage from the most simple to the most complexa passage from the most
automatic to the most voluntarythe highest centresare the least organised, the most complex, and the
most voluntaryDissolutionis a process of undevelopmentfrom the least organised, from the most
complex and most voluntary, towards the most organised, most simple, and most automatic. 164
According to the third principle, the nervous system is a representing system. 165 Parts of the body were
represented by different centers. In keeping with the sensori-motor hypothesis, Jackson argued that Even the
centres for mind represent parts of the bodyThe whole nervous system is a sensori-motor mechanism, a
coordinating system from top to bottom. 166
The fourth principle, which followed directly from the second and third, was that of the hierarchy of cerebral
centers, divided into lowest, middle, and highestto indicate different evolu-tionary levels. 167 A lowest
centre, in Jacksons view, is one which represents some limited part of the body most nearly directlyA
middle centre represents over again inmore complexcombinations what many or all of the lowest have
represented in comparatively simple combinationsThe middle centres are re-representativeThe highest
centresrepresent over again in more complexcombinations, the parts which all the middle centres have
re-represented, and thus they represent the whole organism; they are re-re-representative. 168 A corollary of
this principle was that the depth of dissolution in pathology would reflect the hierarchical level of the affected
center.
How this effect was manifested, however, would depend not only on depth of dissolution (severity of the
pathology) but on whether the symptomatology was viewed in terms of its negative or positive aspect. And
here we have the last of Jacksons major principles, that of the fundamental duality of all pathological states.
Each such state, in Jacksons view, was characterized by both negative and positive symptoms. Negative
symptoms were those directly caused by the pathological condition as it worked its effect in higher centers;
positive symptoms were those indirectly caused by removal of the influence of the higher centres. 169
The source of this duality, of course, was the nature of patho-logical dissolution itself. When the influence of
higher brain centers was removed (through disease, injury, exhaustion, temporary inhibition), the activity of the
next lower centers, normally under the control of the higher centers, was liberated. This led, in Jacksons
phrase, to a reduction to a more automatic condition 170 frequently characterized by overactivity of the lower
centers.
Jacksons most famous application of his evolutionary theory of brain systems was to the analysis of the postseizure disorders of epilepsy; and for the purpose of illustrating his theory, this application will be briefly
described. For Jackson, the epileptic discharge (a sudden and excessive discharge of certain nervous
arrangements, the cells of which are abnormally highly unstable 171 ) led to temporary exhaustion of
associated nerve fibers in the highest centers of the brain. Depending on the strength and rapidity of the
epileptic discharge and the consequent exhaustion of the relevant higher centers, three degrees of depth of
nervous dissolution might be observed.
In the least severe condition, the positive symptom was epileptic ideation, a somewhat dream-like state of
reverie. The negative symptom, attending the ideation, was a certain mental confusion and removal of
consciousness from reality. The patient as Jackson put it, tells us that he becomes dim to his surroundings
172
. In moderately severe dissolution, the positive symptom was action of different kinds and of different
degrees of elaborateness; 173 the negative symptom was loss of consciousness. The patient in this condition
exhibited a behavior pattern somewhat akin to somnambulism. Finally, in the most severe cases of
dissolution, the patient continued to exhibit the operation of vital processes such as respiration and circulation
(the positive symptom) but persisted in a coma (the negative symptom). While the patho-logical discharge of
epilepsy directly produced the negative symptoms, it had, as Jackson wrote, done nothing to the nervous

arrangements concerned in the positive state, except in the indirect way of removing controlby exhausting
their higher, or controlling, nervous arrangements. 174
While Jacksons specific contributions to our understanding of the etiology, course, and treatment of
neurological disorders such as epilepsy were of great importance, it was his evolutionary, hierarchical,
systemic, sensori-motor conception of cerebral function that was of greatest interest. How influential it was in
its day is somewhat difficult to say. In his discussion of perception in The Principles of Psychology, William
James, always alive to evolutionary, systemic thinking, referred to Jacksons theory as masterly and as
involving principles exactly like those which I am bringing forward here; 175 but for most late 19th century
psychologists, still burdened with a mechanistic metaphor for both the nervous system and consciousness,
Jacksons views may well have been hard to fathom.
154

Flourens, M-J-P. (1824). Recherches exprimentales sur les proprits et les fonctions du systme
nerveux, dans les animaux vertbrs. Paris: Crevot; the second edition was published in 1842.
155

Bain, A. (1855). The Senses and the Intellect. London: John W. Parker and Son; Spencer, H. (1855). The
Principles of Psychology. London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans. For a superb analysis of these
advances and of their relationship to the work of Jackson among others, see Young, R.M. (1970). Mind, Brain
and Adaptation in the Nineteenth Century. Cerebral Localization and Its Biological Context from Gall to Ferrier.
Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970; for a general discussion of the work of Bain and Spencer, see the essays on
these authors in this volume.
156

Mller, J. (183440). Handbuch der Physiologie fr Vorlesungen. Coblenz: Hlscher.

157

Bain, op. cit., p. 67.

158

18351911. For biographical information on Jackson, see Clarke, E. (1973). John Hughlings Jackson. In
C.C. Gillispie (Ed.). Dictionary of Scientific Biography (Vol. 7). New York: Scribners, pp. 4650.
159

Jackson, J.H. (1932). Selected Writings of John Hughlings Jackson (2 Vols.). Edited by J. Taylor. London:
Hodder and Stoughton; all page references to quotations from Jackson are keyed to the Selected Writings.
160

Ibid., Vol. 2, p. 3.

161

Ibid., Vol. 2, p. 6.

162

Ibid., Vol. 2, p. 5.

163

Ibid., Vol. 2, p. 6.

164

Ibid., Vol. 2, p. 46.

165

Ibid., Vol. 2, p. 41.

166

Ibid.

167

Ibid.

168

Ibid.

169

Ibid., Vol. 2, p. 6.

170

Ibid., Vol. 2, p. 8.

171

Ibid., Vol. 2, p. 21.

172

Ibid., Vol. 2, p. 13.

173

Ibid., Vol. 2, p. 11.

174

Ibid., Vol. 2, p. 16.

175

James, W. (1890). The Principles of Psychology (2 vols.). New York: Henry Holt, Vol. 2, pp. 1256.

Extracted from Classics in Psychology, 18551914: Historical Essays

ISBN 1 85506 703 X
Robert H. Wozniak, 1999
Classics in Psychology, 18551914 Historical Essays - Contents