Читать книгу Benign Stupors: A Study of a New Manic-Depressive Reaction Type - August Hoch - Страница 7

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An important "catatonic" symptom is a tendency to sudden, impulsive, unexplainable acts. Such actions occur occasionally in benign stupors and, since we attempt an understanding of the reaction as a whole, an effort should be made to study these phenomena as well. The cases chosen showed persistent, quite affectless, yet very impulsive attempts at self-injury. They characterized the first of the three cases throughout, were present in one stage (the second) of the second patient, while in the last for one day there was behavior which can be similarly interpreted.

Mention has been made of the prominence, approaching universality, of the death idea in stupor. This is a subject to be discussed in length presently, but for the present we may say that there may be a delusion of death with dramatization of that state or a mere abandonment of the mental activities of life. It is but a step from corpse-like behavior to suicidal attempts, psychologically speaking, yet this transition necessarily modifies the clinical picture, since one necessitates inactivity and the other activity. Secondarily, other atypical clinical features appear, as will be seen.