The Psychopathology of Hair Plucking (Trichotillomania): Hyman S. Barahoe. Psa. Rev., XXVII, No. 3, 1940.

This article begins by drawing attention to the important rôle which hair has played in the beliefs and rituals of primitive peoples. The author calls attention to the taboos which attach to the cutting of hair among various tribes, its ambivalent and magical significance in many rituals, its importance as an expression of grief or mourning and its symbolic value for both sexes in the representation of strength and beauty. Assuming that the explanation of hair plucking may be discovered more easily by the psychogenic approach, the author seeks to deduce the phallic significance of hair from a perusal of folklore and mythology, and to understand the meaning of this symptomatic activity by its underlying relation to the Oedipus and castration complexes. The older designation of monomania (tic de l'epilation) is rejected as inappropriate. Sixteen cases of hair plucking in psychotic patients are given with superficial explanations of the phenomenon. This series, which is not very illuminating, serves chiefly to indicate that hair plucking is not limited to any particular psychosis, and may occur in 'apparently unrelated emotional states'. The author has not made a sufficiently thorough study of the psychoanalytic literature on the subject.