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The Phenomenology of Obsessions in Depressive Psychosis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2018

N. L. Gittleson
N. L. Gittleson*
Affiliation:
Middlewood Hospital, Sheffield, 6
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Extract

There is a general view that the content of obsessions occurring in the course of depressive psychosis is frequently aggressive, homicidal or suicidal. Prichard (1835), Esquirol (1838), Marc (1840), Maudsley (1895), Heilbronner (1912), Gordon (1925 and 1950), Muncie and White (1937), Henderson (1937), Bowlby (1940), Lion (1942), Oltman and Friedman (1943), Stengel (1945), and Skoog (1959) all express this view on the basis of single anecdotal case reports or series of fewer than ten cases. The largest reported series is that of Vurpas and Corman (1933) who described 27 cases (2 organically based) of homicidal obsessions in depression. Only 3 cases (Nos. 10, 24 and 27) exhibited obsessions before the depression and this is too small a number to serve as a control group.

Type
Research Article
Information
The British Journal of Psychiatry , Volume 112 , Issue 484 , March 1966 , pp. 261 - 264
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1966 

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