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Depersonalization Phenomena in Obsessional Personalities and in Depression

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2018

G. Sedman
Affiliation:
University Department of Psychiatry, Manchester Royal Infirmary
G. F. Reed
Affiliation:
University Department of Psychiatry, Manchester Royal Infirmary

Extract

It is claimed that there is an association between the occurrence of depersonalization and obsessional personality (Mayer-Gross, Slater and Roth, 1960). The above authors in their textbook quote Shorvon (1946), who found that in his sixty-six cases of depersonalization (forty-six female, twenty male, with an age of onset distribution of twenty under 20 years, thirty between 20 and 30 years, sixteen between 30 and 40 years), no less than 88 per cent. showed obsessional traits in their personalities. Shorvon excluded involutional depression and severe psychotics from his case material. Mayer-Gross commenting on the above paper stated, “While obsessional personalities are preponderant among his cases, he apparently only included a few cases of cyclothymic temperament. In the latter this symptom is frequent, in fact one-third of my own patients were of this type.” He (1935) had in fact drawn attention to the relatively large numbers of extraverted hypomanic characters, who were subject to depersonalization (one-third of his twenty-six cases), but he also found seven out of twenty-six with obsessional personality. (Mayer-Gross found a striking uniformity of age at the beginning of the syndrome, average 26.6 years, distribution two under 20, eighteen between 20 and 30, six between 30 and 40 and a preponderance of women, twenty out of twenty-six.) On the other hand Anderson (1936) found an incidence of 30 per cent. of depersonalization in a series of fifty cases of depression of later life, drawing attention to the often-remarked upon association between depersonalization and depression.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1963

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