Collected Papers on Analytical PsychologyJung, C. G. (Carl Gustav)
Science
Collected Papers on Analytical Psychology
Jung, C. G. (Carl Gustav)
Psychoanalysis
It should be added that the patient was not superstitious, and in
her healthy days had never particularly interested herself in the
supernatural. During the whole course of treatment, which ended on the
14th November, great indifference was evinced both to the illness and
the cure. Next spring the patient returned for out-patient treatment
of the headache, which had come back during the very hard work of
these months. Apart from this symptom her condition left nothing to
be desired. It was demonstrated that she had no remembrance of the
attacks of the previous autumn, not even of those of the 19th September
and earlier. On the other hand, in hypnosis she could recount the
proceedings in the cemetery and during the nightly disturbances.
By the peculiar hallucination and by its appearance our case recalls
the conditions which V. Kraft-Ebing has described as "protracted states
of hysterical delirium." He says: "Such conditions of delirium occur
in the slighter cases of hysteria. Protracted hysterical delirium is
built upon a foundation of temporary exhaustion. Excitement seems to
determine an outbreak, and it readily recurs. Most frequently there
is persecution-delirium with very violent anxiety, sometimes of a
religious or erotic character. Hallucinations of all the senses are
not rare, but illusions of sight, smell and feeling are the commonest,
and most important. The visual hallucinations are especially visions
of animals, pictures of corpses, phantastic processions in which dead
persons, devils and ghosts swarm. The illusions of hearing are simply
sounds (shrieks, howlings, claps of thunder) or local hallucinations,
frequently with a sexual content."
This patient's visions of corpses, occurring almost always in attacks,
recall the states occasionally seen in hystero-epilepsy. There likewise
occur specific visions which, in contrast with protracted delirium, are
connected with single attacks.
(1) A lady 30 years of age with _grande hystérie_ had twilight states in
which as a rule she was troubled by terrible hallucinations; she saw her
children carried away from her, wild beasts eating them up, and so on.
She has amnesia for the content of the individual attacks.[3]
(2) A girl of 17, likewise a semi-hysteric, saw in her attacks the
corpse of her dead mother approaching her to draw her to her. Patient
has amnesia for the attacks.[4]
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