Actually, I may be one of the few left who has had the privilege of listening to the word salad of an authentic hebephrenic, back in about 1967 or 1968. Mostly, nowadays, they don’t get to this point because heavy medications keep them from deteriorating so far. Hebephrenia, for those who don’t know, is a stabe in the development of schizophrenia in which the personality becomes, as Silvano Arieti put it in a great clinical book, Interpretation of Schizophrenia, “dilapidated.” Or –
“The hebephrenic type of schizophrenia is often difficult to differentiate from the paranoid. The most striking difference consists of a more rapid disintegration. The symptoms start generally in adolescence or early youth insidiously and with a progressive course. The content of thought is characterized by many poorly systematized, poorly rationalized, and many cases completely disorganized delusions. Grandiose delusions are more common than in the paranoid type. Also much more common are hypochondriacal ideas, preoccupations with the body image, and kinesthetic delusions. It is not rare to find a patient who thinks that he has lost his bowels or that his heart has changed place, his brain has melted, and so forth. Hallucinations are common and, more frequently than in the paranoid type, are pleasing in content. “
But elsewhere, Arieti points out that there really is a content to these verbal expressions if you listen hard enough.
I do remember the poor old woman who favored me with fifteen or so minutes of pleasant babble, though. I remember the hardest thing was that she wouldn ’t stop, and I couldn’t find a conversational moment to excuse myself and leave in a socially appropriate manner. Maybe Derrida has the same effect.
Christopher Rhoades Dÿkema
-------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <../attachments/20030901/9f2d8fb3/attachment.htm>