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
_F. H._ The mother and two brothers were living and said to
be normal. The father died of apoplexy when the patient was
seven.
_P. H._ The patient was sickly up to the age of seven, but
stronger after that. It is stated that she got on well at
school, though she was somewhat slow in her work. She was
inclined to be rather quiet, even when a child, a bit shy,
but she had friends and was well liked by others. After
recovery she made a frank, natural impression. She was
always rather sensitive about her red hair. She began to
work a year before admission and had two positions. The
last one she did not like very well, because, she alleged,
the girls were “too tough.”
Three weeks before admission she came home from work and
said a girl in the shop had made remarks about her red
hair. She wanted to change her position, but she kept on
working until six days before admission. At that time her
mother kept her at home as she seemed so quiet, and when
the mother took her out for a walk she wanted to return,
because “everybody was looking” at her. For the next two
days she cried at times, and repeatedly said, “Oh, I wish I
were dead--nobody likes me--I wish I were dead and with my
father” (dead). She also called to various members of the
family, saying she wanted to tell them something, but when
they came she would only stare blankly. For a day she
followed her mother around, clung to her, said once she
wanted to say something to her, but only stared and said
nothing.
Four days before admission she became quite immobile, lay
in bed, did not speak, eat or drink. She also had some
fever.
The patient herself, when well, described the onset of her
psychosis as follows: She knew of no cause except that her
brother, some time before the onset (not clear how long),
was run over by an automobile and had his foot hurt. She
claimed that while still working she lost her ambition,
lost her appetite, did not feel like talking to any one;
that when she went out with her mother it merely seemed to
her that people stared at her. The day before she went to
the Observation Pavilion her cousin came to see her, and
she thought she saw, standing beside this cousin, the
latter’s dead mother. She also thought there was a fire,
and that her sister was sweeping little babies out of the
room. Then, she claimed, she felt afraid (this still on the
day before going to the Observation Pavilion) because she
had repeated visions of an old woman, a witch. This woman
said, “I am your mother, and I gave you to this woman
(i.e., patient’s real mother) when you were a baby.” She
also was afraid her mother was “going away.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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