Word: dementia
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...this curious disorder, Dr. Cleckley has coined a fancy name: semantic dementia-meaning inability to grasp the ordinary meaning of life as lived by human beings. It is as though, behind the mask of sanity, the emotional mechanism had collapsed, leaving these semi-suicides incapable of love, joy, sorrow, aspiration, regret. When examined in hospitals, they are often alert, bright, cheerful, amiable, sometimes haughty and aloof; but they usually think very highly of themselves, are always wholly callous to the distress they cause others. To the knowing psychiatrist, their eloquent admissions of error and promises to reform are catchwords which...
Whereas people with other types of mental disorder try to sink to an infantile level, or to an animal or vegetative level, the semantic dementia cases try to find utter disintegration, nonlife. But, not recognizing their deep urge to self-destruction, they practically never commit forthright suicide...
Some of Dr. Cleckley's case histories show people who have only partly developed semantic dementia, who are able to keep out of serious trouble and even succeed in a profession-one a doctor, another a psychiatrist...
...Nolan D. C. Lewis of New York, a top-notch authority on dementia praecox, last week told colleagues of the case of a 65-year-old man whose vision was impaired by cataracts and who had hallucinations that he was engaging in unprintable conduct with young girls. Doctors removed the cataracts. But the hallucinations persisted...
...Most widespread U. S. mental disorder, according to expert opinion, is dementia praecox, or schizophrenia (split personality). Dr. Dayton's statistics tell a different story. Mental disease No. 1 is senile psychosis, the madness of old age. Causes: hardened arteries, threadbare nervous system, worn-out brain, tired heart, "outrageous fortune." From 1917 to 1933, there was an average of 2,000 senile psychotics per 100,000 population; schizophrenics averaged only...