Clinical psychiatry : a text-book for students and physicians / abstracted and adapted from the 7th German edition of Kraepelin's "Lehrbuch der Psychiatrie" by A. Ross Diefendorf.

  • Kraepelin, Emil, 1856-1926.
Date:
1912
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Clinical psychiatry : a text-book for students and physicians / abstracted and adapted from the 7th German edition of Kraepelin's "Lehrbuch der Psychiatrie" by A. Ross Diefendorf. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    have destroyed valuable papers, etc. Other closely alhed disturbances are the feelings of discomfort which arise whenever individuals are compelled to come into any sort of relations with others, as in erythrophobia, morbid blushing. While fear has been designated as sadness with inner tension, simple dejection is defined as sadness with inhibi- tion ; in other words, anguish with a feeling of insufficiency. The basis for this emotional state is found in the sorrow arising in the person himself, which impresses itself upon all of the experiences of life. As the result of this, the entire past seems but a series of misfortunes and failures; the present is troubled and dark, and the future dubious; all sorts of sad thoughts and forebodings arise, which may lead to delusional ideas of self-reproach and persecution, but the most painful is the feehng of desolation. Patients feel neither pleasure nor sorrow; indeed, they do not re- spond emotionally to any of the impressions of the outer world. One patient expressed himself by saying that he felt like a cinematograph. To be sure I see things well enough, but I don't feel them. The normal pleasure in mere existence gives place to a feeling of weariness of life. The alteration of the tone of feeling which is characteristic of some of the circular depressive phases of manic-depressive insanity as a rule is accompanied by a retardation of thought and action. The patients regard their condition as the most agonizing; they feel as if they were inwardly dead, had become heartless and morally desolate. They frequently entertain ideas of physical alteration. In reaUty these patients are not without feeling, as may be judged from their occasional attempts at suicide. The retardation may suddenly give place to excitement. Sadness with excitement is occasionally observed in manic- depressive insanity, occurring either as an independent