Historical Terminology
Michael Farrell in Psychosis Under Discussion, 2017
The expression ‘mania’ has been linked to many prefixes to describe the form that the frenzied interest or activity takes. ‘Monomania’ concerns a driving obsession for one subject, ‘mono’ being Greek for ‘single’. ‘Nymphomania’, deriving from the Greek ‘nymph’ meaning ‘bride’, refers to morbid and uncontrollable female sexual desire. From the Greek ‘dypsa’, meaning ‘thirst’, comes the expression ‘dypsomaniac’, someone craving alcohol. ‘Megalomania’ refers to delusions of grandeur. ‘Erotomania’ signifies a morbid feeling of desperate love. In ‘micromania’ (the Greek ‘micros’ means ‘small’), the individual is convinced that he or she, or part of him- or herself, is reduced in size. ‘Pyromania’, from ‘pyro’ meaning ‘fire’, refers to manic fire setting.
Making readers care
Rebecca A. Bitenc in Reconsidering Dementia Narratives, 2019
However, even this reversal of norms and normality undergoes a further twist in the house mother’s final address. Her discourse is full of contradictions. It exposes her cruelty, sardonic nature, and apparent megalomania. And yet, in the fashion of the court jester, the fool who also speaks truth, Johnson makes her a mouthpiece for criticising care home environments that are, in other ways, worse than or at least as bad as the one she manages. In contrast to the house mother’s theatrically and ‘over-the-top’ immoral acts of ‘care,’ the deplorable conditions in other institutions, she describes, seem plausible, even likely. At once self-absorbed and selfish, the house mother at times seems to show a real interest in her charges. It thus becomes difficult not to be at least partially persuaded by her argument. She draws an image of mental homes in which people are ‘put away … simply because they are old’ and where they are ‘stripped of their spectacles, false teeth/ everything personal to them’ (198). Her own ‘care,’ by contrast, provides her patients with ‘constant occupation, and/most important, a framework within which to establish/ – indeed, to possess – their own special personalities’ (198). However, her means of allowing these personalities expression consist in nurturing petty rivalries among the residents, or giving them reasons to complain.
Philosophical fragments on science
Joachim P Sturmberg, Carmel M Martin in The Foundations of Primary Care, 2018
Socrates was executed not for saying what things were or should be, but for seeking practical indications of where some reasonable approximation of truth might be. He was executed not for his megalomania or grandiose propositions or certitudes, but for stubbornly doubting the absolute truths of others.
The de Clérambault syndrome: more than just a delusional disorder?
Published in International Review of Psychiatry, 2020
Gaia Sampogna, Francesca Zinno, Vincenzo Giallonardo, Mario Luciano, Valeria Del Vecchio, Andrea Fiorillo
The ancient descriptions of erotomania syndrome can be found in the works by Hippocrates, Plutarch, and Galen. In the sixteenth century, the French physician Bartholomy Pardoux (1545–1611) in the book ‘Disease of the Mind’ differentiated between ‘insane love’ (erotomania) and ‘uterine furors’ (nymphomania). In 1623, Jacques Ferrand described clinical cases of patients affected by ‘maladie d’amour’ or ‘melancholie erotique’. In the early eighteenth century, erotomania was described as a general disease caused by unrequited love, while subsequently it was considered an excessive physical love (defined as nymphomania or satyriasis). Esquirol (1838) defined erotomania as a chronic mental disorder (namely ‘monomania’) characterised by an excessive love for an object, either known or imaginary. At that time, erotomania was conceptualised as a form of ‘partial madness’, being a disease of the imagination accompanied by an error of judgement. In 1921, Kraepelin coined the term ‘paranoic megalomania’, emphasising the delusional component of erotomania.
Perspectives on Recovery-Oriented Care in Mental Health Practices: Health Professionals Experiences
Published in Issues in Mental Health Nursing, 2023
Kim Jørgensen,, Mathias Søren Hansen,, Trine Groth,, Morten Hansen, Bengt Karlsson,
Not all users experience themselves as ill but experience, for example, pressure from relatives who wanted them admitted. It is predominantly experienced as a well-known challenge that many users do not see a purpose for hospitalisation and are not motivated to be admitted. This makes it more difficult to collaborate on the treatment and to motivate the user to participate in treatment and activities.I had a young man(patient) who was hospitalised for the first time. He had never been ill before but displayed very severe megalomaniac delusions. The family was shocked but involved. He was incredibly angry upon admission and did not want contact with family or any treatment, either medical or hospitalisation. There was a lot of coercion involved in terms of treatment and deprivation of liberty, but we achieved a very good relationship with him and re-established contact with the family (nurse).
The Dog Who Barks and the Noise of the Human: Psychoanalysis After the Animal Turn
Published in Studies in Gender and Sexuality, 2018
In the “Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis” (1916–1917), Freud famously declared psychoanalysis to be the third great blow to human self-love delivered at the hands of science. First, the Copernican revolution revealed that “our earth was not the centre of the universe but only a tiny fragment of a cosmic system of scarcely imaginable vastness” (Freud, 1916–1917, pp. 284–285). Then Darwin and his contemporaries undermined the ground upon which “the human” had asserted a fundamental difference from “the animal.” And now, psychological research has tripled down, giving “human megalomania” its “third and most wounding blow” (Freud, 1916–1917, p. 285). The ego, Freud wrote, “is not even master in its own house” (p. 285). In passages such as these, we get a glimpse of a psychoanalysis beyond the human–animal boundary. It might also be a psychoanalysis that chastens fantasies of mastery (Singh, 2017) and welcomes the dis-ease of the unheimlich, the unhomely home (Freud, 1917, p. 142; see also Freud, 1919). Nevertheless, the force of anthropocentrism and the will to reduce and master the disturbance of the alien (Laplanche, 1992, p. 66) return again and again in Freud’s body of work, as when he consigned human animality to a prehistoric past, linked it to the baser instincts that human civilization needs to overcome, or presented wildness as a force to be tamed and, even, exterminated (Freud, 1930).
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