Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: schizophrenia

  • Dr. Sabina Spielrein: Consequences of feminism and love

    Irving RosenToronto, Ontario, Canada While all our lives are eventful, some people tend to experience situations that set them apart. Born in 1885 in Rostov, Czarist Russia, Sabina was the eldest child of prosperous intellectualized parents of Jewish origin. Academically and artistically gifted, by age eighteen she developed alarming behavior. She showed tics, grimaces, body…

  • Schizophrenia in Nikolai Gogol’s Diary of a Madman and Lu Xun’s A Madman’s Diary

    Janet Ming GuoAtlanta, Georgia, United States Lu Xun’s 狂人日記 (A Madman’s Diary; 1918)1 was inspired by Nikolai Gogol’s Записки сумасшедшего, Zapiski sumasshedshevo (Diary of a Madman; 1835).2 Both works reveal crucial information about schizoaffective disorder and schizophrenia, two psychiatric disorders that are often misdiagnosed3 but affect many people worldwide. In 2019 the World Health Organization estimated…

  • Hölderlin’s madness

    Nicolas RoblesBadajoz, Spain German poet and philosopher Johann Christian Friedrich Hölderlin was born in Lauffen-am-Neckar (Würtemberg) in the year 1770. His father, a pastor and a schoolmaster, died two years later. When he was four years old, his mother moved to Nürtingen and remarried, but his stepfather also died soon after the marriage. In addition…

  • Richard Dadd: art and madness

    JMS PearceHull, England Is there anything so extravagant as the imaginations of men’s brains? Where is the head that has no chimeras in it? . . . Our knowledge, therefore is real only so far as there is conformity between our ideas and reality of things. . . – (John Locke, An Essay Concerning Humane…

  • Mental illness in art

    JMS PearceHull, England It is often said that creative art is linked to eccentricity, sometimes bordering on madness. Examples abound of great musicians, writers, and artists who at some time in their lives were deranged and often committed to institutions for mental illness. Some ended their lives in suicide. To what extent is art inspired…

  • The Montreal Experiments: Brainwashing and the ethics of psychiatric experimentation

    Shaan BhambraMontreal, Canada “We do not merely destroy our enemies; we change them.”1– George Orwell, 1984 In the aftermath of World War II, the race to become the dominant world power motivated both the United States and the USSR to strive for influence, power, and military strength. In the mid-twentieth century, the brewing Cold War…

  • Nikolai Gogol’s The Diary of a Madman

    James L. FranklinChicago, Illinois, United States Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol (1809–1852) was a member of the first wave of great Russian authors of the nineteenth century. Born in a Ukrainian Cossack village then part of the Russian Empire, he made his way to Saint Petersburg where he found his métier in the short story; a genre…

  • A man with a psychotic disorder by Diego Velazquez

    Fernando ForcénChicago, Illinois, United States During the modern era, kings employed jesters for the entertainment of monarchs and their guests. These jesters were often people with mental illnesses or congenital metabolic diseases. They were payed for their services and often lived in the royal household. There, they amused the royal family and other members such…

  • Haunted by a living spirit

    Bernardo NgSan Diego, California, United States Witchcraft has been present in the Mexican culture for centuries, both in and out of the context of disease, with witches practicing either white or black magic. The most nationally recognized site for witchcraft is the city of Catemaco, Veracruz, on the Gulf of Mexico. The white magic witches,…

  • Alden Nowlan, the schizotypal poet

    Shane NeilsonHamilton, Ontario, Canada I suspect a psychiatrist would have pronounced me a victim of dementia praecox or some such thing.1—Alden Nowlan Applying a psychiatric diagnosis to the dead is a mug’s game. Alden Albert Nowlan (1933–1983), the critically acclaimed Canadian poet, novelist, and playwright, might agree, if one considered the bitter evidence of his…