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The hero of the novel by Jerome K. Jerome managed to find signs of all the diseases mentioned in the medical encyclopedia, except for puerperal fever. If a handbook of rare mental syndromes fell into his hands, he would hardly have succeeded, because the symptoms of these diseases are extremely exotic …
Rare deviations demonstrate that our psyche is capable of the most bizarre, even poetic somersaults.
«Alice in Wonderland Syndrome»
Named after the famous novel by Lewis Carroll, this disorder manifests itself when a person inadequately perceives the size of surrounding objects, as well as his own body. To him, they seem much larger or smaller than they really are.
The disorder occurs for unclear reasons, is most common in children, and usually resolves with age. In rare cases, it persists after.
Here is how a 24-year-old patient with Alice syndrome describes the attack: “You feel that the room around you is shrinking, and the body is getting bigger. Your arms and legs seem to be growing. Objects move away or appear smaller than they actually are. Everything seems exaggerated, and their own movements become sharper and more rapid. Just like Alice after meeting the Caterpillar!
Erotomania
Surely you have come across persons who are sure that everyone around them is in love with them. However, victims of erotomania go much further in their narcissism. They sincerely believe that people of high social status or celebrities are crazy about them and try to woo them with secret signals, telepathy or messages in the media.
Erotomaniacs reciprocate imaginary feelings, so they will call, write passionate confessions, sometimes even trying to get into the house of an unsuspecting object of passion. Their obsession is so strong that even when the «lover» directly rejects the advances, they continue to persist.
Compulsive indecision, or abulomania
Abulomania sufferers are usually physically and mentally healthy in all other aspects of their lives. Except one — the problem of choice. They argue for a long time whether or not to be the most elementary things — like a walk or buying a carton of milk. In order to make a decision, they say, they need to be 100% sure of its correctness. But as soon as options arise, paralysis of the will sets in, which is accompanied by an attack of anxiety and depression.
Lycanthropy
Lycanthropes believe that they are actually animals or werewolves. This psychopathological personality disorder has its own varieties. For example, with boanthropy, a person imagines himself to be a cow and a bull, and may even try to eat grass. Psychiatry explains this phenomenon by the projection of the repressed affects of the psyche, usually sexual or aggressive content, onto the image of the animal.
The walking dead syndrome
No, this is not exactly what we experience on Monday mornings … The still little understood Cotard’s syndrome, aka the walking dead syndrome, characterizes the patient’s firm and extremely painful belief that he has already died or does not exist. This disease belongs to the same group as Capgras syndrome — a condition in which a person believes that his partner has been «replaced» by an impostor or double.
This is due to the fact that the parts of the brain responsible for visual recognition of faces and the emotional reaction to this recognition cease to communicate with each other. The patient may not recognize himself or others and is stressed by the fact that everyone around him — including himself — is «fake».