Csontvary (1853-1919), the great Hungarian painter was retrospectively diagnosed by psychiatrists as having paraphrenia expansiva or schizotypal personality disorder, respectively. He conducted a double life: beside his regular, productive artistic and private life, he also had a long lasting, secrectly kept mystical connection with higher powers, in his own words "perhaps God". However, his handwritten diary drafts suggest that he was suffering eventually from an affective disorder. We analyzed the 400 pages of this diary as well as 200 pages of an antology with testimonies of his contemporaries. Using the data of some of the Csontvary literature comprising over 500 references, we analysed his life events focusing on the data and episodes, looking for putative psychopathological, including affective manifestations. We could define a total of 39 events relative to our topic. 6 episodes turned out to be just normal. In 4 cases we could not define their exact nature, because of insufficient data. 29 out of the 39 events, along with 24 testimonies of contemporaries seemed to be pathological, demonstrating clearly the features of an affective disorder, such as elevated mood, euphoria; ego- diastole; impulsive behaviour; rapid thinking and speech; a tendency to logorrhea and graphomania; increased mental and psychomotor activities; megalomania; a decrease in judicial faculty but no complete loss of it; and occasionally some tendency to incoherence. Our results suggest the presence of sporadic and minor affective manifestations . However, we found only one questio nable episode of a depression. This can be due to the fact that for long periods of time the painter lived in isolation thus hiding an eventual depression. This new approach, the possibility of an affective disorder in the painter's history can help us to better understand some open questions concerning his life and work. However, it also seems clear that his pathological manifestations did not significantly impact his dominantly integral mental health nor the extraordinary high level of his artistic achievement. Keywords: analysis of life events; testimonies of contemporaries ; a dominantly integral mental health ; rare and minor affective manifestations; remarkable artistic achievement.

One of the most remarkable medical achievements of the Korean War was the development of psychiatry. During the Korean War, soldiers and prisoners of war (POWs) experienced "gross stress reaction" and manifested poor concentration and memory as well as clinical depression and social alienation. Rest and relaxation rotations served as the primary treatment for their conditions. Civilians also bore the brunt of the war's effects. Delusions of grandeur and megalomania appear to have been common among Koreans, but there were few mental health facilities to provide treatment and care. Out of the furnace of war, psychiatry emerged as a newly specialized field, and in the 1950s, Korea became the very place where military psychiatry training under the U.S. military laid the groundwork for civilian psychiatry. This essay aims to enrich the study of mental illness during and after the Korean War by providing a more detailed picture of the mental problems experienced not only by veterans and POWs, but also by civilians in Korea. Examining mental health issues from this period is challenging due to the scarcity of resources for delving into the minds of the civilians involved. Taking military psychiatry as a starting point, this essay goes beyond existing scholarship to discuss psychiatry-related responses to the Korean War, including the influence of military psychiatry on civilian psychiatry, the endeavors of medical professionals and government policies, and contemporary expressions of mental distress during and after the war.

This article is an attempt to reply to a number of theoretical and epistemological issues frequently addressed in contemporary evolutionary psychology. We adopt a critical approach to both the empiricist conceit so often underlying the discipline and its core premises around the relationship between mind and biological evolution. As an alternative we take a constructivist view from which we propose to broach that relationship through the so-called Baldwin effect. That phenomenon, widely known among evolutionary biologists today, enables us to elude simplistic approaches to the problem of the relationship between psychology and evolution. It also affords a perspective for re-focusing the issues on the activity of organisms and the classic inter-connections among phylogenesis, historiogenesis and ontogenesis. The study concludes with a warning about the limitations to explanation that should be assumed by any psychological postulate with universally comprehensive pretensions, an issue evocative of the inevitable and structural crisis in which psychology should agree to transpire.

On 22 July 2011, the Norwegian Anders Behring Breivik carried out two attacks in Oslo that cost the lives of 77 people, injured many others, and plunged the entire Norwegian nation into mourning. When he was arrested, Breivik presented himself as a member of the Knights Templar, whose mission is to defend the Christian Western world. He considers that he has sacrificed himself by his actions for his people and says that he has prepared himself for martyrdom. In analysing Breivik's words and writings, this article attempts to identify the thought mechanisms involved in Breivik's idea of election (megalomania) and martyrology. It highlights the importance of a mechanism of "return to the sender," whereby Breivik returns the reproaches directed at him by an agency of judgment (ego ideal or superegoic object). It emphasizes the existence of a "burning desire" and yearning (Sehnsucht) for this same persecuting superegoic object, an object that Breivik constantly wants to find again, even if in death. Taking into consideration Searles's hypothesis that the sense of being persecuted is a defence against the impossibility of mourning, and also H. Blum's hypothesis that persecutory feelings are indicative of fears of a "regressive loss of object constancy," the different psychic mechanisms and modes of functioning underlying Breivik's terrorist determination are related here to what we know about his affective development and infantile relationships.

Suicide attacks and terrorism are characterized by cognitive simplicity, which is related to self-deception. In justifying violence in pursuit of ideologically and/or politically driven commitment, people with high religious commitment may be particularly prone to mechanisms of self-deception. Related megalomania and glorious self-perception are typical of self-deception, and are thus crucial in the emergence and expression of (suicide) terrorism.

Candidates for emigration are susceptible to a psychotic breakdown accompanied by feelings of guilt arising from abandoning their community of origin. The elimination of this guilt involves, essentially, a denial of identity with a touch of megalomania which makes treatment difficult.

MODERN PSYCHIATRIC NOSOLOGIES SEPARATE CATATONIA ALONG THE LINES OF PRESUMED ETIOLOGY: bipolar, major depression, schizophrenia, and/or due to a general medical condition. Catatonic signs have always possessed significant diagnostic, therapeutic, and prognostic value. Kahlbaum's description of this syndrome in his monograph "Katatonia" included careful documentation of phenomenology. Kahlbaum selected the term katatonia to describe "tension insanity." He felt that the neuromotor signs were more important than the content of delusions (e.g. megalomania). While he felt that he was describing a unitary illness, he did identify mood disturbance, psychosis, and medical factors in this new illness.(1) In modern times, the term catatonia has become limited to describe a specifier of neuropsychiatric illnesses.The authors of this article feel that the term katatonia should be used to describe a group of neuropsychiatric illnesses presenting with catatonic signs. This may prevent the misconception that "catatonia is schizophrenia" and improve the detection of katatonia in patients. Specifically, katatonia is also observed in mood disorders, general medical conditions, and pervasive developmental disorders. The literature also supports the view of Dr. Leo Kanner and his description for neuromotor and neuropsychiatric signs in autistic disorder. This scale is named in honor of Dr. Kanner. It was developed by the authors and includes some of Dr. Kanner's core concepts. This paper will identify the clinical features of katatonia and introduce the KANNER scale (see Appendix 1) to improve conceptualization, detection, and measurement of this important clinical syndrome.

An exploration of the use mind/body metaphors in a woman whose physical, environmental and psychoneurotic trauma culminated in an irreversible colostomy. She lived in a world of concrete symbols, her primary process damaged such that she could not create generative symbols to process her trauma. She regressed to a state of infantile megalomania, recoiling from the external reality of subjective others. Her introjective disorder mirrored her digestive disorder as she could absorb neither good objects nor good nutrients. The analytic situation has been an auxiliary fecal container and we work to bridge her mind body split with mind/body metaphors. As she reclaims lost development mastery, she displays a symbolized sphincter. As her capacity to form symbols grows, she rages and mourns for the loss of her fantasized ideal parents and her ideal body.