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Boanthropy is a psychological disorder in which a human believes themselves to be a bovine. [1]
| | This article lacks ISBNs for the books listed.(July 2017) |
Boanthropy is a psychological disorder in which a human believes themselves to be a bovine. [1]
King Nebuchadnezzar II of the Neo-Babylonian Empire is sometimes attributed with boanthropy based on the description in the Book of Daniel which says that he "was driven from men, and did eat grass as oxen". [2] Carl Jung would subsequently describe 'Nebuchadnezzar...[as] a complete regressive degeneration of a man who has overreached himself'. [3]
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According to Persian traditions, the Buyid prince Majd al-Dawla has a delusion that he is a cow, making the sound of a cow and asking to be killed so that his flesh could be consumed. He was cured by Avicenna. [4]
Psychologists generally group Boanthropy, along with other forms of zoanthropy, into the diagnosis of Clinical lycanthropy. Other conditions frequently, but not universally, found in patients include schizophrenia, psychotic depression, and bipolar disorder. [5] [6]
It has been suggested that hypnosis, suggestion and auto-suggestion may contribute to such beliefs. [7] [8]
Dreams may also play an important part. Jung for example records how a stubborn woman 'dreamed she was attending an important social occasion. She was greeted by the hostess with the words: "How nice that you could come. All your friends are here, and they are waiting for you." The hostess then led her to the door and opened it, and the dreamer stepped through – into a cowshed!'. [9]
Freud had long since noted 'cases in which a mental disease has started with a dream and in which a delusion originating in the dream has persisted'. [10]
R. D. Laing offers an autobiographical account of a brief reactive psychosis in which the protagonist had a 'real feeling of regression in time...I actually seemed to be wandering in a kind of landscape with – um – desert landscape – as if I were an animal, rather – rather a large animal..a kind of rhinoceros or something like that and emitting sounds like a rhinoceros'. [11]
Eric Berne considered the first years of life as a time when the child 'is dealing with magical people who can perhaps on occasion turn themselves into animals,' and thought that even in later life 'a great many people have an animal...which recurs again and again in their dreams. This is their totem [12] – something which may offer a route back for early regressive identifications.
Derogatory cultural identifications of people 'like cattle, with their eyes always looking down, and their heads stooping to the earth, that is, to the dining table...they kick and butt at each other with horns and hoofs that are made of iron' [13] go back at least as far as Plato; while the 'direct identification of woman and cow' [14] in folk humor offers another potential source for delusional identification. Anthropological evidence such as 'a Burmese buffalo dance in which masked dancers are possessed by the buffalo spirit' [15] would seem to confirm such totemic/cultural influences.[ improper synthesis? ]
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Medical explanations suggested for apparent boanthropy include porphyria and general paresis caused by late-stage syphilis. [2]
Psychosis is a condition of the mind that results in difficulties determining what is real and what is not real. Symptoms may include delusions and hallucinations, among other features. Additional symptoms are incoherent speech and behavior that is inappropriate for a given situation. There may also be sleep problems, social withdrawal, lack of motivation, and difficulties carrying out daily activities. Psychosis can have serious adverse outcomes.
A delusion is a false fixed belief that is not amenable to change in light of conflicting evidence. As a pathology, it is distinct from a belief based on false or incomplete information, confabulation, dogma, illusion, hallucination, or some other misleading effects of perception, as individuals with those beliefs are able to change or readjust their beliefs upon reviewing the evidence. However:
Ideas of reference and delusions of reference describe the phenomenon of an individual experiencing innocuous events or mere coincidences and believing they have strong personal significance. It is "the notion that everything one perceives in the world relates to one's own destiny", usually in a negative and hostile manner.
Psychology is an academic and applied discipline involving the scientific study of human mental functions and behavior. Occasionally, in addition or opposition to employing the scientific method, it also relies on symbolic interpretation and critical analysis, although these traditions have tended to be less pronounced than in other social sciences, such as sociology. Psychologists study phenomena such as perception, cognition, emotion, personality, behavior, and interpersonal relationships. Some, especially depth psychologists, also study the unconscious mind.
Schizoaffective disorder is a mental disorder characterized by abnormal thought processes and an unstable mood. This diagnosis requires symptoms of both schizophrenia and a mood disorder: either bipolar disorder or depression. The main criterion is the presence of psychotic symptoms for at least two weeks without any mood symptoms. Schizoaffective disorder can often be misdiagnosed when the correct diagnosis may be psychotic depression, bipolar I disorder, schizophreniform disorder, or schizophrenia. This is a problem as treatment and prognosis differ greatly for most of these diagnoses.
A thought disorder (TD) is a disturbance in cognition which affects language, thought and communication. Psychiatric and psychological glossaries in 2015 and 2017 identified thought disorders as encompassing poverty of ideas, neologisms, paralogia, word salad, and delusions—all disturbances of thought content and form. Two specific terms have been suggested—content thought disorder (CTD) and formal thought disorder (FTD). CTD has been defined as a thought disturbance characterized by multiple fragmented delusions, and the term thought disorder is often used to refer to an FTD: a disruption of the form of thought. Also known as disorganized thinking, FTD results in disorganized speech and is recognized as a major feature of schizophrenia and other psychoses. Disorganized speech leads to an inference of disorganized thought. Thought disorders include derailment, pressured speech, poverty of speech, tangentiality, verbigeration, and thought blocking. One of the first known cases of thought disorders, or specifically OCD as it is known today, was in 1691. John Moore, who was a bishop, had a speech in front of Queen Mary II, about "religious melancholy."
Paul Eugen Bleuler was a Swiss psychiatrist and humanist most notable for his contributions to the understanding of mental illness. He coined several psychiatric terms including "schizophrenia", "schizoid", "autism", depth psychology and what Sigmund Freud called "Bleuler's happily chosen term ambivalence".
Delusional misidentification syndrome is an umbrella term, introduced by Christodoulou for a group of four delusional disorders that occur in the context of mental and neurological illness. They are grouped together as they often occur simultaneously or interchange, and they display the common concept of the double (sosie). They all involve a belief that the identity of a person, object, or place has somehow changed or has been altered. Christodoulu further categorized these disorders into those including hypo -identification of a well-known person, and hyper -identification of an unknown person. As these delusions typically only concern one particular topic, they also fall under the category called monothematic delusions.
Clinical lycanthropy is a rare psychiatric syndrome that involves a delusion that the affected person can transform into, has transformed into, or is, a non-human animal. Its name is associated with the mythical condition of lycanthropy, a supernatural affliction in which humans are said to physically shapeshift into wolves. The term is used by researchers mostly in the broader sense of transformation into animals in general.
Biological psychiatry or biopsychiatry is an approach to psychiatry that aims to understand mental disorder in terms of the biological function of the nervous system. It is interdisciplinary in its approach and draws on sciences such as neuroscience, psychopharmacology, biochemistry, genetics, epigenetics and physiology to investigate the biological bases of behavior and psychopathology. Biopsychiatry is the branch of medicine which deals with the study of the biological function of the nervous system in mental disorders.
Totem and Taboo: Resemblances Between the Mental Lives of Savages and Neurotics, or Totem and Taboo: Some Points of Agreement between the Mental Lives of Savages and Neurotics, is a 1913 book by Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, in which the author applies his work to the fields of archaeology, anthropology, and the study of religion. It is a collection of four essays inspired by the work of Wilhelm Wundt and Carl Jung and first published in the journal Imago (1912–13): "The Horror of Incest", "Taboo and Emotional Ambivalence", "Animism, Magic and the Omnipotence of Thoughts", and "The Return of Totemism in Childhood".
Abraham Arden Brill was an Austrian Empire-born psychiatrist who spent almost his entire adult life in the United States. He was the first psychoanalyst to practice in the United States and the first translator of Sigmund Freud into English.
In psychoanalytic theory, regression is a defense mechanism involving the reversion of the ego to an earlier stage of psychosexual development, as a reaction to an overwhelming external problem or internal conflict.
Ludwig Binswanger was a Swiss psychiatrist and pioneer in the field of existential psychology. His parents were Robert Johann Binswanger (1850–1910) and Bertha Hasenclever (1847–1896). Robert's German-Jewish father Ludwig "Elieser" Binswanger (1820–1880) was founder, in 1857, of the Bellevue Sanatorium in Kreuzlingen. Robert's brother Otto Binswanger (1852–1929) was a professor of psychiatry at the University of Jena.
A spectrum disorder is a disorder that includes a range of linked conditions, sometimes also extending to include singular symptoms and traits. The different elements of a spectrum either have a similar appearance or are thought to be caused by the same underlying mechanism. In either case, a spectrum approach is taken because there appears to be "not a unitary disorder but rather a syndrome composed of subgroups". The spectrum may represent a range of severity, comprising relatively "severe" mental disorders through to relatively "mild and nonclinical deficits".
In medicine, a prodrome is an early sign or symptom that often indicates the onset of a disease before more diagnostically specific signs and symptoms develop. More specifically, it refers to the period between the first recognition of a disease's symptom until it reaches its more severe form. It is derived from the Greek word prodromos, meaning "running before". Prodromes may be non-specific symptoms or, in a few instances, may clearly indicate a particular disease, such as the prodromal migraine aura.
Grandiose delusions (GDs), also known as delusions of grandeur or expansive delusions, are a subtype of delusion characterized by extraordinary belief that one is famous, omnipotent, wealthy, or otherwise very powerful. Grandiose delusions often have a religious, science fictional, or supernatural theme. Examples include the extraordinary belief that one is a deity or celebrity, or that one possesses extraordinary talents, accomplishments, or superpowers.
Childhood schizophrenia is similar in characteristics of schizophrenia that develops at a later age, but has an onset before the age of 13 years, and is more difficult to diagnose. Schizophrenia is characterized by positive symptoms that can include hallucinations, delusions, and disorganized speech; negative symptoms, such as blunted affect and avolition and apathy, and a number of cognitive impairments. Differential diagnosis is problematic since several other neurodevelopmental disorders, including autism spectrum disorder, language disorder, and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, also have signs and symptoms similar to childhood-onset schizophrenia.
The diagnosis of schizophrenia, a psychotic disorder, is based on criteria in either the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or the World Health Organization's International Classification of Diseases (ICD). Clinical assessment of schizophrenia is carried out by a mental health professional based on observed behavior, reported experiences, and reports of others familiar with the person. Diagnosis is usually made by a psychiatrist. Associated symptoms occur along a continuum in the population and must reach a certain severity and level of impairment before a diagnosis is made. Schizophrenia has a prevalence rate of 0.3-0.7% in the United States.
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