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All muscles of the limb then stiffen, making the member rigid. Sometimes the negativism is expressed by quite isolated symptoms, such as stiffness in the jaw muscles alone. One patient showed no opposition except by holding her urine for two days. Another kept her eyes constantly directed to the floor.
In this helpless condition the other factors which tend to develop what we have called negativism have full play.
There was no negativism and no affect, although the latter appeared so soon as contact began to be established. When well she had a complete amnesia for the onset of the psychosis. Leroy attributed the recovery, in part at least, to the thorough attention given the patient.
This added factor leads to an exaggeration of all the unfavorable psychic tendencies which have made their appearance, and the intrapsychic struggle goes on with increased vigor. The Theory of Schizophrenic Negativism. Translated by William A. White. Nervous and Mental Disease. Monograph Series, No.
All the explanations which one may gather from the patients’ own utterances, mainly retrospective, seem to point to negativism expressing a desire to be left alone. The appearance of perverse behavior in aimless striking or mere muscular rigidity seems to be an example of dissociation of affect.
Consequently, even if we regard the breath holding as resistiveness, it would still be related to her idea of dissolution. Her negativism went beyond ordinary limits in that it affected the expression of the face.
There is no fear that we shall thereby make the child unduly disobedient. We have already, in another chapter, decided that negativism is not strength of will on the part of the child which must be broken, but is the result of constant attempts to oppose his nature, and the consequent nervous unrest.
And he is not really naughty, only irritable and restless from the thwarting of his natural impulses, and unable to express his thoughts and desires. Negativism will not often confine itself to meal-times. It will show clearly in all the actions of the child, and to get him to eat well and freely we must so change our management of him that negativism disappears or at least diminishes.
Here one might quote Laura A. once more, whose resistiveness when stuporous was intense but who in her manic spells expressed her negativism in a definite idea, “I don’t want my face washed.” To summarize, then, we may say that negativism is apparently the result of a desire to be left alone, and that muscular resistiveness is a larval exhibition of the same tendency.
We have already mentioned the symptom of negativism and noted its occasional occurrence as an accompaniment of mental disorder in adult life, and its frequency among children who are irritable or irritated. Similarly, we may cite the digestive neuroses of adult life to explain the common refusal of food and the common nervous vomiting of the second year of life.
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