United States or United Arab Emirates ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


There was also persistent marked resistance towards any interference, sometimes merely passive or quite often, especially at first, with wriggling or severe scratching of her own body. There was often with this evidence of irritation or she moaned. Again she was described as quite affectless. One of the most striking features throughout a large part of the course were her suicidal attempts.

Her replies revealed the fact that she was essentially affectless and that her intellectual processes were interfered with, even to the extent of paragraphic writing. We have, therefore, here again features similar to those of the preceding cases.

He speaks, for instance, of the visits of relatives waking the patient up. His only real group isBenommenheit,” which he separates out as a true clinical entity. This seems to correspond roughly with ourPartial Stupors.” It is essentially an affectless, thinking disorder, usually acute, sometimes chronic, occurring among schizophrenics.

Finally, we know that, in spite of the fact that stupor is an essentially affectless reaction, certain influences may produce smiles or tears, or, above all, angry outbursts, which again can hardly be interpreted otherwise than by assuming that those influences have temporarily produced a change in the clinical picture, in the sense of lifting the patient out of the depth of the stupor.

Later she slapped another patient. Again she began to talk about wishing to go to the grave. Calls Dr. M. “Uncle John.” December 30: Talks either about wanting to die, or wanting to go to Heaven, or wanting to go to Ireland, all this as usual in an affectless way. Calls Dr. M. “Uncle John.” Keeps shoutingTake me to Ireland.”

An importantcatatonicsymptom is a tendency to sudden, impulsive, unexplainable acts. Such actions occur occasionally in benign stupors and, since we attempt an understanding of the reaction as a whole, an effort should be made to study these phenomena as well. The cases chosen showed persistent, quite affectless, yet very impulsive attempts at self-injury.

The latter spoke, during the stupor, of being inCalvary,” “the hereafter,” orHeaven.” We have seen that these stupors were essentially affectless reactions and we can therefore say that, so far as these two cases are concerned, the ideas thus formulated were not associated with any affect.

The idea of wealth was rarely expressed, also the idea of marriage was much in the background, but prominent ideas were those of death, Heaven, killing herself, going to Ireland all of which she produced in an affectless way. It should be added that she persistently wet and soiled during this, as well as in the first period. Then followed three months of greater inactivity.

December 8: When her mother visited her she saidIt is about time you come I thought you were dead.” Has walked down the halllookingfor her dead cousin. When asked if she wanted to see her brother, said, “Ain’t he dead?” December 12: Cries out in an affectless tone like a huckster, “Father MacN., take me to Heaven,” repeating this over and over.

She was also more in contact with her environment than many stuporous patients are, for, not infrequently, she would look at what was going on about her. Her apathy was also broken into in a marked degree by her active resistiveness, which was sometimes accompanied by plain anger. It seems that a prospect of death may occur in other instances in a totally affectless state.