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Updated: June 4, 2025
Consequently, he says, one can observe the external features of stupor in all akinetic catatonics, in marked depressive retardation, when there is a lack of interest, affect or will, in autism, with twilight states, as a result of negativism or, finally, when numerous hallucinations distract the patient’s attention into a world of fancy.
The stupor symptoms gradually gave way to the typical indifference, negativism, obscenity, filthiness and inexplicable conduct of dementia præcox. At the beginning, however, the condition was superficially similar to that of a benign stupor, it being only on careful observation that other symptoms were noted. Rose S. Age: 23. Admitted to the Psychiatric Institute April 5, 1905.
NEGATIVISM. The next of the cardinal symptoms to be considered is negativism. This term, which is often loosely used, we would define as perversity of behavior which seems to express antagonism to the environment or to the wishes of those about the patient. Naturally it is only in the minor stupors that we see it in well-developed form as active opposition and cantankerousness.
Refusal of food, refusal of sleep, negativism, irritability, and violent fits of temper, vomiting, diarrhoea, morbid flushing and blushing, habit spasms, phobias all controlled not by reproof or by medicine, but by good management and a clear understanding of their nature. The hygiene of the child's mind is as important as the hygiene of his body, and both are studies proper for the doctor.
The hysteric who is resisting the suggestion which is intentionally given to her is sometimes surprisingly trapped by a half-hidden suggestion, perhaps not spoken to the patient herself at all but spoken in a low voice to a colleague in the room. Sometimes we have to trick those who suffer by "negativism," that is by an obstinacy which exaggerates that of the ordinary stubborn man.
Sometimes a more or less stable condition persisted for months, in which there was no stupor in a literal, clinical sense but when apathy, inactivity, interference with the intellectual functions and negativism all existed. Had these been the only states observed in these patients, there might have been some ground for doubt as to the diagnosis.
The negativism and refusal to go to stool are the outcome of the nervous unrest, not its cause. Again, the nervous child, like the adult neuropath, very often improves for the time being with every change of scene and surroundings.
Here also, just as in the refusal of food, a further stage of "negativism," that is, of active resistance with crying and struggling, is reached, so that complaint may be made by the mother that defæcation is painful. The same negativism may be shown in micturition, and mothers will give distressing accounts of the suffering of the child during the passing of water.
But the deep stupor was interrupted again for a day by grunting and screaming of “murder.” This is certainly indicative of a compulsive death idea and retrospectively she spoke of having refused food in order to die. The latter seems to indicate some connection between her negativism and death.
The next step in regression is marked by the spoiled-child conduct, interest being so self-centered as to lead to autoerotic habits and the perverse reactions which we call negativism.
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