The Prison Psychoses
The history of the prison psychoses in Germany. By Drs. Paul Nitsche of Dresden and Karl Wilmanns of Heidelberg. Translated by Francis M. Barnes Jr., MD and Bernard Glueck, M.D., with an introduction by William A. White, M.D. Published in the Nervous and Mental Disease Monograph Series, 1912.
“The first group Bonhöffer designates as a simple paranoid disorder, if one wishes, an acute paranoia, on the basis of a characteristic degeneracy, the erethistic debility which is well defined by a combination of superficial endowment, feeble comprehension, a tendency toward change of occupation and early criminality. The psychosis stands in direct contrast to the original personality. During imprison-ment there develops along with retention of mental acuity and allopsychic orientation, an acute paranoid symptom-complex. Amidst an acute anxiety state there develop ideas of reference, ideas of influence, isolated hallucinations, an obsessive tendency toward a depressive recapitulation of the individual’s past, nervosity and irritable depression. Of interest was also the psychotic evaluation of dream experiences which were manifested by ideas of having been nightly tortured, beaten and choked. The duration of the disorder, which may show a remittent course, varies from several months to two years. The delusional formation progresses only for a short time and in no instance leads to a retrospective change of the content of consciousness. More frequently the process subsides quickly without leaving an alteration in the personality upon the termination of the imprisonment and the transfer of the patient to another environment. Insight is not always complete, the ideas of reference and the ideas of prejudice directed against the institution personnel may remain uncorrected.”