ID# 56:
Field worker report on dementia praecox (schizophrenia) at King's Park Hospital, by Laura Teitelbaum
Date:
1918
Pages: (1|2|3|4|5|6|7)
Source:
American Philosophical Society, ERO, MSC77

Field worker report on dementia praecox (schizophrenia) at King's Park Hospital, by Laura Teitelbaum

[obscured] -2 her people sent, she said. She did not like to go about "like this." At the end of the interview she looked up fiercely and said "I was all right to go home, why are they keeping me here?" Patient until the time of commitment. The patient is reported as being always a very peculiar, very quiet girl. Her outstanding characteristics were bashfulness and modesty. She was one of the shrinking type. She never talked to a man, nor had anything to do with any girls. Her main pets were dolls and dogs. Indeed, she loved the dolls and dogs all her life and would make believe they were real babies. She is reported by her mother as never having outgrown those childish fancies. In fact she liked nothing in the world better than dolls and dogs. The patient never got beyond the grammar school because she did not like to study. "She was always so nervous." There was nothing in life that interested her. She had no ambitions, no desires, She spent her time helping about the house. When she went on a visit anywhere, her mother went also, and the mother usually did all the talking so that the girl was always left in the background. Consequently, the girl never had a chance to develop any initiative. In short, it appears that the patient was always a shallow, simple girl, with no object in life and a shrinking disposition. She first showed signs of insanity when she was found on her bed in a fit of tears. Nothing could make her stop crying. Her mother received no answer to her quiries [sic], except "It's my head, mother. My head! My head!" Shortly before this attack, it seems, she fell in love with a minister. This minister knew nothing of her affections. Later she learned that the man she loved was married and had a child. The knowledge that this man was married, her mother thinks, made the girl insane. She would go Sunday after Sunday to hear him preach. The patient became worse and worse. One time she cried to her mother,

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