Benign Stupors: A Study of a New Manic-Depressive Reaction TypeHoch, August
Science
Benign Stupors: A Study of a New Manic-Depressive Reaction Type
Hoch, August
Manic-depressive illness; Stupor
There were strikingly few allusions to the plainly sexual.
She spoke of being married to the doctor, and even went so
far as to say that they belonged together in bed. On
another occasion she called him “darling.” Once she
reported that it was said that she was going to have babies
and babies and babies. These references were, however,
quite isolated, so that the erotic formed a very small part
of her productions.
Delusions of death, we have seen, are the most constant
content of true stupors. In this case they were present but
distinctly in the background. She spoke quite frequently of
being in Heaven. She also talked of being crucified. Once
she said “I died but I came back again.” This last
utterance was rather significant in that frankly accepted
ideas of death were unusual; for instance, she would say
sometimes, “I think I am in Heaven, again not. It confuses
me, but I know I am in Heaven.”
In general, then, her ideas were, on the whole, not at all
typical of stupor but much more like those met with in
other manic-depressive conditions. Correlated with this was
an unusual mood picture. Quietness and apparent apathy of
the patient were interrupted by little bursts of emotion,
and throughout the psychosis there was a coloring of
perplexity. Not only was this last objectively noticeable,
but she spoke very frequently of it and always in
connection with the inconsistency of the ideas in her mind
which puzzled her. For instance, in speaking to the doctor
she said “I think of you as Bill (her husband’s name)
sometimes--I get confused thinking of Bill as God, doctor,
lawyer, priest.” Again, referring to her husband, she made
these curious statements: “They seemed to speak of him as
being in the wrong--the right--it seems that the right
devil is the wrong one for me--they say he is not the right
one for me; they say he went wrong from the time we were
married.” Again, she said that she did not know who her
father was, and went on: “It puzzles me, this father
business, I knew my father at home and my father in
Heaven.” Again, “Which God do you mean? Did you say God or
father?” A hint as to how this subjective confusion made
the environment seem uncertain comes from the statement,
“You looked like the devil and yet you were God.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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