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Mental state   /mˈɛntəl steɪt/   Listen
Mental state

noun
1.
(psychology) a mental condition in which the qualities of a state are relatively constant even though the state itself may be dynamic.  Synonyms: mental condition, psychological condition, psychological state.






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"Mental state" Quotes from Famous Books



... to choose between them, and not to choose as do the evildoers. The world, as it is, was made by the joint action of the two principles, and they also fixed the alternative fates of men, for the wicked, Hell—the worst life; and for the holy, Heaven—the best mental state. After the creation was accomplished, the two principles drew off from each other, the evil one making choice of evil and of evil works, and the bounteous spirit choosing righteousness, making his strong seat in heaven, and taking for his own those who do good and who believe in him. The Daevas ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies

... quite abnormal intellectual condition. Of this, however, I could myself see no sign. The peculiarity, almost oddity, of some of her remarks, was evidently not only misunderstood, but, with relation to her mental state, misinterpreted. Such remarks Lady Hilton generally answered only by an elongation of the lips intended to represent a smile. To me, they appeared to indicate a nature closely allied to genius, if not ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald

... present. Only to a certain natural extent had he changed. The sudden violent revolutions of his wheel of life, had strengthened his character, though they had temporarily shocked both mind and body. His mental state, during the weeks immediately succeeding his change of residence, was one of blank depression. The hand of inheritance lay heavy on him now. The hypersensitiveness of Sophia Blashkov, during the months before his birth, reproduced itself, with startling similarity, in the youth whose ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter

... a cry that middle-class education ought to receive more attention. He confessed himself very much surprised by the clamour that was raised. He did not think that class need excite the sympathy either of the legislature or the public." Now this satisfaction of Mr. Bazley with the mental state of the middle-class [81] was truly representative, and enhances his claim (if that were necessary) to stand as the beautiful and virtuous mean of that class. But it is obviously at variance with our definition of culture, or the pursuit of light and perfection, which ...
— Culture and Anarchy • Matthew Arnold

... of projecting branches is through knowledge of how she was saved from that lake immersion. Perhaps Paul is sane on all subjects except the murders. Even as to these he may manifest much craft. Such crazed freaks sooner or later will lead to sure exposure. Pierre knows his son's disordered mental state. It is only necessary that both be well watched. Paul's irresponsible craze will do the rest. The 'lay' of this spy can only be surmised. Perhaps these villains are suspected of other crimes. It is improbable that any self-constituted detective ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee

... Recognizing the deplorable mental state to which his uncle was fast sinking, he kept him supplied with wines and cigars, obtained from his friend, Pedro Romero, the gambler. No man can partake of excellent wines and cigars for any length of time without feeling his oats, as the saying goes; and the Colonel ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown

... him, but for years she used to agonize over a fear that father had come back and the keeper had withheld the letter and belied her to him with some devilish story that maddened him and drove him from her. Such a fancy might have come out of her mental state at that time. I believe that Granger left the letter simply to satisfy her. He must have believed my father was dead. He could not have conceived of a man's being lost in that broad country at that season; but my father was a man of hills and farms, all small, ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote

... dropped behind him, I looked expectantly at Roebuck, sweating with fright for his imperiled millions. Probably his mental state can be fully appreciated only by a man who has also felt the dread of losing the wealth upon which he is wholly dependent for courage, ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips

... These Three Potencies are called Substance, Force, Darkness; or viewed rather for their moral colouring, Goodness, Passion, Inertness. Every material manifestation is a projection of substance into the empty space of darkness. Every mental state is either good, or passional, or inert. So, whether subjective or objective, latent or manifest, all things that present themselves to the perceiving consciousness are compounded of these three. This is a fundamental doctrine ...
— The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali • Charles Johnston

... nerves, upon the bodily tissue. Changes in the mental states will, in this way, frequently produce changed polarization in the physical organs, and thus determine infallibly the matter of health or disease. So, too, the condition of the bodily health will often determine irresistibly the mental state. Whatever bodily changes affect the polarization of the electro-vital medium in any part of the organism, do thereby produce corresponding changes in ...
— A Newly Discovered System of Electrical Medication • Daniel Clark

... inquiry, to this singularly pathetic utterance has been almost universally recognised. Coleridge has himself cited its most significant passage in the Biographia Literaria as supplying the best description of his mental state at the time when it was written. De Quincey quotes it with appropriate comments in his Coleridge and Opium-Eating. Its testimony is reverently invoked by the poet's son in the introductory essay prefixed by him to his edition of his father's works. The earlier stanzas are, however, ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill

... of any sort. Having a latchkey to the front door, he admitted himself and went up to his room at the top of the stairs. Should he lie down and try to snatch a little sleep? he reflected, for his journey and mental state had quite deprived him of rest. Throwing off his coat and vest and removing his collar, necktie, and shoes, he sank on his bed and closed his eyes. But to no effect. His brain was throbbing; his every nerve was as taut as the strings of a violin; cold streams of despair ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben

... the facts before him. So it was he came to cherish those two fancies before alluded to that the ominous birthmark she had carried from infancy might fade and become obliterated, and that the age of complete maturity might be signalized by an entire change in her physical and mental state. He held these vague hopes as all of us nurse our only half-believed illusions. Not for the world would he have questioned his sagacious old medical friend as to the probability or possibility of their being true. We are very shy of asking ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... The value and importance of treatment directed to the mind had, indeed, been long recognized, but in practice it had been subordinated to treatment of the actual and assumed physical disorders to which the mental state of the patient was attributed, and, in the few hospitals where persons suffering from mental disorders were received, means for its application were almost or quite entirely lacking. The establishment of Bloomingdale Asylum for the purpose of ascertaining to what extent ...
— A Psychiatric Milestone - Bloomingdale Hospital Centenary, 1821-1921 • Various

... his present mental state would have seemed to him little short of insanity twenty-four hours before; that it might pass again as it had done before; and a kind of mental frenzy seized him lest it would. He did not want to lose this assurance of One guiding through a world that was so ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz

... horrifying belief, that if I did not meet the crisis that day, I should be self-doomed—that my ear would be nailed to the door-post for ever. The emotions of that moment I cannot fully depict. Hope, fear, dread, terror, love, sorrow, and deep melancholy were mingled in my mind together; my mental state was one of most painful distraction. When I looked at my numerous family—a beloved father and mother, eleven brothers and sisters, &c.; but when I looked at slavery as such; when I looked at it in its mildest form, ...
— The Fugitive Blacksmith - or, Events in the History of James W. C. Pennington • James W. C. Pennington

... the physical to the mental state of the workers. Since the bourgeoisie vouchsafes them only so much of life as is absolutely necessary, we need not wonder that it bestows upon them only so much education as lies in the interest of the bourgeoisie; and that, in truth, is not much. The means of education in England are restricted ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels

... dollars than in a hundred possible dollars—that is, in the mere conception of them. For the real object—the dollars—is not analytically contained in my conception, but forms a synthetical addition to my conception (which is merely a determination of my mental state), although this objective reality—this existence—apart from my conceptions, does not in the least degree ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant

... walking, quite willingly now. The effects of the drug were altering. His muscular strength returned but his mental state underwent a complete change. Always he'd wanted a taste of the purple. For years he'd listened to the orators of the Square, to the conflicting statements of old Krassin. But now he'd see. He'd know the joys of the upper levels; the pleasure cities, perhaps. For one day. But what ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 • Various

... modern novel had its genesis not merely in a contemplative mood, but in contemplation which was forced by the impetuous temper of the times to fail of ever reaching the dignity of thoughtfulness. It was the immature product of an immature mental state; and richly as sometimes it was endowed by every human faculty, by imagination, wit, taste, or even profound thought, it yet never reached the goal of thought, never solved a problem, and, in its highest examples, professed only to reveal, but not to guide, the reigning manners ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various

... for quite other reasons. It may be a quite wholesome pleasure, but it is not the high aesthetic pleasure which the people who experience it generally believe to be the richest and most vivid of all pleasures because it is experienced by a mental state that is more eager and masterful than any other. Nor is our judgment acute when we praise a poet's work because it chimes with unexpected precision to some particular belief or experience of our own or because it directs us by suggestion to something dear to our personal affections. Again ...
— The Lyric - An Essay • John Drinkwater

... I know it. You're worse'n a born fool. You're sufferin' from acquired idiocy, which is the mental state folks find themselves in when they refuse to learn by experience an' profit by example. I've always claimed you ain't got no more imagination than a chicken, an' I'll prove it to you right now. Here you are, braggin' about how you're goin' to salvage that bark but givin' ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne

... French soldier was struck in the head with a bullet and left on the field for dead, but subsequently showed sufficient life to cause him to be carried to the hospital, where he finally recovered his general health, but remained in a mental state very similar to that of Professor Goltz's dog. As he walked about the rooms and corridors of the soldiers' home in Paris he appeared to the stranger like an ordinary man, unless it were in his apathetic manner. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various

... assumption, however, is not well founded. Once switched on, the radio frequently stays on, and children are then allowed to continue listening far too long. Consequently, they not only lose part of their essential sleep, and sometimes even the mental state conducive to sleep, but they hear radio programmes not intended ...
— Report of the Special Committee on Moral Delinquency in Children and Adolescents - The Mazengarb Report (1954) • Oswald Chettle Mazengarb et al.

... resource left me all day is to chat with Filomena, to whom Maria has entrusted the nursing of me. Every evening I read with her; yesterday she had her fourth lesson, and could almost read straight off. Her complexion and the lower part of her face are like a child's; her undeveloped mental state reveals itself, thus far, in her appearance. I told her yesterday, as an experiment, that there were five continents and in each of them many countries, but she cannot understand yet what I mean, as she has no conception of what the earth looks ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes

... a severe thrust from a sharp branch brought an acute appreciation of her position, if not of her mental state. Night had fallen. The stars were out. She had stumbled over a low ledge. Evidently she had wandered around, dazedly and aimlessly, until brought to her senses by pain. But for a gleam of campfires through the cedars she would have been lost. It did not matter. She was lost, anyhow. What ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey

... was not to be evaded or counteracted by any mere mental state, was the increasing drain on his slender purse for household expenses, to meet which the remittance he had received from the clerical charity threatened to be quite inadequate. Slander may be defeated by equanimity; but courageous ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot

... of the letters I received from men who are probably in as bad a mental state as they seem to think Schrank is," ...
— The Attempted Assassination of ex-President Theodore Roosevelt • Oliver Remey

... those not actually imaginary may at least be brought about through fears that are the results of abnormal delusions. And where such diseases are combated by mental forces of the right sort, a cure can be effected in many instances. In numerous cases, also, it is well to remember that the mental state is the actual cause of disease. You become blue, hopeless and to a certain extent helpless. You see nothing in the future. Life is dull. Ambition, enthusiasm, have all disappeared. It would not be at all difficult ...
— Vitality Supreme • Bernarr Macfadden

... appeared always to gaze beyond, and far beyond—you would have said out of this world. Then, the paleness of her face—its haggard aspect having vanished as she recovered flesh—and the peculiar expression arising from her mental state, though painfully suggestive of their causes, added to the touching interest which she awakened; and—invariably to me, I know, and to any person who saw her, I should think—refuted more tangible proofs of convalescence, and stamped her as ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte

... had eaten his fill. He was even gorged from his latest kill. But in the moment he looked at Lip-lip his hair rose on end all along his back. It was an involuntary bristling on his part, the physical state that in the past had always accompanied the mental state produced in him by Lip-lip's bullying and persecution. As in the past he had bristled and snarled at sight of Lip-lip, so now, and automatically, he bristled and snarled. He did not waste any time. The thing ...
— White Fang • Jack London

... appearing years after its contraction, occur especially in the shape of disorders of the blood-vessels and of the nervous system—apoplexy, paralysis, insanity and locomotor ataxia for example; and these but too often appear after the man has acquired a family that is dependent upon him for support. The mental state of the husband and father whose bread-winning capacity is suddenly abolished through the natural result of his ...
— Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls - War on the White Slave Trade • Various

... beauty is restful, peace-giving and peace-bringing, but so, also, are neatness and order. Orderliness helps to fit one for work. There is undoubtedly some connection between surroundings and one's mental state. In themselves disorder and confusion are irritating. The sight of a dirty child crying in the doorway of an untidy house suggests some connection between the wretchedness of the child and the squalor ...
— A Girl's Student Days and After • Jeannette Marks

... with which other minds are affected by thinking of it. As when we say of any one that he is generous. The word generosity expresses a certain state of mind, but being a term of praise, it also expresses that this state of mind excites in us another mental state, called approbation. The assertion made, therefore, is twofold, and of the following purport: Certain feelings form habitually a part of this person's sentient existence; and the idea of those feelings of his, excites the sentiment of approbation in ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill

... system, that it became necessary to engage the attention of patients who were inclined to escape, and also of the much larger number who might wander away without any such definite purpose, so as to keep them under control and supervision. It did not require much study of the mental state of the patients, nor indeed much attention of any kind on the part of their attendants, to insure their safe custody, when the conditions of their life were either to be locked within their wards, to be confined within the high walls of airing-courts, ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke

... The mental state varies with the degree of deprivation of the internal secretion of the thyroid. In the worst cases it is repulsively vegetable. Even the intelligence common to the higher animals is wanting. The cretins of the "human plant" kind, as ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.

... however; an "unconscious emotion" would be practically a contradiction in terms. Not but that a person may be angry without knowing it. He may be {119} "unconscious of the fact" that he is angry; which simply means that he is not introspectively observing himself and analyzing his mental state. But it is impossible that his organic state shall be all stirred up and his mental state meanwhile perfectly calm and intellectual. In short, an emotion is a conscious stirred-up ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth

... quite follow the pattern we usually expect from such cases as this. His extreme physical disability has drastically modified the course of his mental development, and, at the same time, made it difficult for us to make any analysis of his mental state." If only, he added to himself, she had followed the advice of her family physician, years ago. If she had only put the boy under the proper care, none of this ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett

... during this desolate period furnish a striking picture of his manner of life and his mental state. We see in them his most prominent characteristics strongly marked. Not even the painfulness of the writer's situation ever clouds his intrepid and vigorous spirit. Lively and gallant sallies of humour to his female friends, sagacious judgments ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 4: Joseph de Maistre • John Morley

... philosophic, but had too much heart to be a rationalist; too much imagination for an anti-supernaturalist. He was a mystic pietist; religion blending with poetry coloured his whole mind; revelation, nature, and art, were for him one and indivisible. And this I believe to have been the mental state of the son while yet under the parental roof. The sequel will show a change; the incertitude of speculation could not be sustained, and so anchorage was sought within an "Infallible Church." Yet for the right reading of a character curiously subtle and complex, it is needful to realise the fact ...
— Overbeck • J. Beavington Atkinson



Words linked to "Mental state" :   psychological condition, psychotic belief, depersonalization, irritation, depression, abulia, frame of mind, elation, hallucinosis, delusion, spell, annoyance, mental health, status, condition, enchantment, psychic trauma, aboulia, cognitive state, fugue, anhedonia, disassociation, dissociation, nerves, mental disease, identity crisis, psychopathy, depersonalisation, trance, psychological science, psychological state, anxiousness, psychology, botheration, mental illness, morale, anxiety, agitation, nervousness, hypnosis, trauma, vexation, state of mind



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