Lecture II

But the same irregularity of reciprocal action can also arise if the upper process does not take place in the proper way and occurs in such a way as to overstrain the upper organisation. This is the opposite, and in some sense, the negative of the lower processes. It is not that the upper processes are over-stimulated; they cease, as it were, before the mediating action of the heart transmits them to the lower sphere. This type of irregularity is too strong spiritually, too organically-intellectual, if I may use such a term, and shows itself as Neurasthenia. This is the other pole. We must keep these two irregularities of the human organism clearly before us—they remain still in the realm of mere functions, they are two defects, expressed respectively in the upper and the lower sphere. And we shall gradually have to learn that the human polarity tends towards either the one or the other deficiency.