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
Although the mood was throughout one of elation, on the
ninth day in the forenoon she cried at times, wanted to see
her mother, and spoke in a depressed strain (content not
known). A few hours after that she suddenly became quiet.
2. Then for four days (March 14-17) she was markedly
inactive, though at times got out of bed. She looked about
in a bewildered manner, did not speak spontaneously, but
could with urging be induced to make some replies. She did
this now fairly promptly, now quite slowly. Questions were
apt to bring on the bewilderment. Thus, when asked where
she was, she merely looked more bewildered, finally said
“Bellevue--I don’t know,” and questioned who the doctor was
whom she had called by name in her manic state, she said,
with some bewilderment, “Your face looks familiar.” (Where
have you seen me?) “In New York.” She claimed to feel all
right. There was no real affect. She made the statement
that at home she heard voices saying “You will be killed.”
3. Henceforth this bewilderment ceased, and for 16 or 17
days she was essentially inactive for the most part, for a
short time with a tendency to catalepsy and some
resistiveness, and at that time lying with eyes partly
closed. As a rule she said nothing spontaneously, but
replied to some questions, usually with marked retardation,
again more promptly. She constantly denied feeling sad or
worried, repeatedly said she felt “better,” only on one
occasion did she cry a little. When asked to calculate she
sometimes did it very slowly, again fairly promptly. The
simple calculations were usually done without error, the
others with some mistakes. As to her orientation the few
answers obtained showed that at times she knew the name of
the place and the day, again she gave wrong answers
(Bellevue). Once asked on March 23 for the day, she said
April. She wrote her name promptly on one occasion, again
a sentence slowly but without mistakes. Once during the
period she sang at night. Once she suddenly ran down the
hall but quickly lapsed into the dull condition.
On April 4, at the end of this period, she suddenly
laughed, again ran down the hall, said she had done nothing
to be kept on Ward’s Island. But she quickly lapsed again
into the dull state. Later, on the same day, when the
doctor was near, she said, in a natural tone, “Thank God,
the truth is coming out.” (What do you mean?) “That I have
been trusting in a false name and that Miss S. (the nurse)
should not nurse me.” Then she got suddenly duller,
calculated slowly and with some mistakes, 3×17=41, 4×19=56,
and when asked to write Manhattan State Hospital she wrote
(not very slowly) “Mannahaton Hotspalne.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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