Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-l7hp2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T00:36:26.027Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Folie à Cinq: A Clinical Study

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2018

A. Kamal*
Affiliation:
Baghdad University, Iraq

Extract

Ever since the clinical entity of “Folie à Deux” was first introduced (Lasègue and Falret, 1877), a great number of clinical and theoretical studies have appeared in the literature dealing with this relatively rare and interesting mental syndrome. In the English medical literature, up to date, 93 cases of “Folie à Deux” have been reported (Gralnick, 1942), a further 17 cases of “Folie à Trois” (Wolff, 1957; Dewhurst and Eilenberg, 1961), one case of “Folie Imposée à Quatre” (Ropschitz, 1957), one case of “Psychosis of Association” involving a mother and three sons (Page, 1942) and one case of “Folie à Quatre” involving four members of a family (Gralnick, 1943), have also been reported. I personally recorded one example of “Folie à Trois” at the Lebanon Hospital for Mental Diseases in 1947, involving a mother and her two daughters, and another interesting case of “Folie à Deux” in Baghdad (1961) involving a young boy who broke down under the influence of his spiritualist cousin. During the course of the boy's illness the cousin broke down herself into an acute delusional state. Both patients eventually recovered completely.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1965 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Dewhurst, W. C., and Eilenberg, M. D. (1961). “Folic à trois.” J. Ment. Sci., 107, 486490.Google Scholar
Gralnick, A. (1942). “Folie à deux: the psychosis of association.” Psych. Quart., 16, 230263.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Greenberg, H. P. (1954). “Folie à deux: an historical and clinical study.” Guy's Hosp. Rep., 103, 381392.Google Scholar
Lasegue, G., and Falret, J. (1877). “La folie à deux ou folie communiquée.” Ann. Mid. Psychol., 17, 321.Google Scholar
Mayer-Gross, W., Slater, E., and Roth, M. (1960). Clinical Psychiatry. London: Cassell and Co. Ltd.Google Scholar
Page, L. G. M. (1942). “The psychosis of association.” J. Ment. Sci., 88, 545549.Google Scholar
Ropschitz, D. H. (1957). “Folie à deux.” Ibid., 103, 589596.Google Scholar
Wolff, S. (1957). “Folie à trois: a clinical study.” Ibid., 103, 355363.Google Scholar
Submit a response

eLetters

No eLetters have been published for this article.