23. Critique and Indications of Treatments in Schizophrenia

The insulin-shock and metrazol treatments of schizophrenia, with emphasis on psychological aspects.

“…Schilder's patients described the first signs of the aura as a feeling of " electricity playing all over their bodies," or as an impression that the room was ',' filled with dazzling white light." Others have described the aura as an " infernal chill," " sinking slowly into a hole," "the anxiety of feeling one's self going " (20). Several of our patients reported vertigo in which the room seemed to revolve, and one of them thought the walls were coming down on her.…”

“…In comparing these figures with those of Miiller it must be borne in mind that Miiller's data include social, as well as full, remissions. Both Miiller and Malzberg, as well as Humbert and Friedemann (20), report more favorable prognosis under insulin treatment for the catatonic and paranoid types than for the hebephrenic type. Malzberg reports the same trend, though with generally lower remission rates, for untreated cases.…”

Shock Therapies as Intensification of the War against Madness in Hamburg, Germany: 1930–1943

“…Similarly, the recovery of patients from their seizures was often accompanied by a kind of "infantile regression in their verbal expressions and gestures, beginning with the most primitive ones like thumb-sucking and calling frequently for "mamma" (even when hostile maternal complexes were present), then reaching out for support and behaving as if struggling for life, both in the state of torpidity and in the awakening." 70 As theoretical considerations developed at the beginning of this article suggest, this part of shock treatment could be interpreted as a sign of an inevitable submission to psychiatric power.…”

“…52 Humbert and Friedemann described this feeling as a "falling into non-existence," which invoked in the patient "the primitive complex of the association of life-death … that appeared to have cumulative effects." 53 Psychiatrists who studied the impact of fear agreed on the fact that the "animal-like expression of fear" was a sign of a kind of fear articulated at a lower biological level, and they differentiated this kind of fear from that consciously expressed by patients, which often led them to resist treatment. As two researchers asserted, a patient "suddenly and in the course of a few seconds after the injection of [Cardiazol] receives a terrific assault upon his entire economy including [his] consciousness and his instinct of self-preservation.…”