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Epilepsy is not a disease entity but a symptom complex. Epileptic phenomena are customarily classified under the three main headings: symptomatic, genuine and hysterical. The symptomatic epilepsies, in which the phenomena are due to specific brain lesions, and the hysterical epilepsies, in which the phenomena are traceable to an underlying hysteria, are relatively clear-cut clinical pictures. Genuine epilepsy remains the most obscure, since it contains both organic and psychological elements which are difficult to evaluate.
There is no demonstrable organic brain pathology in genuine epilepsy. The electroencephalogram,1 however, seems to shed some light on the neurological aspects of the problem of etiology. It has been found that the recorded electrical brain waves of ninety-five percent of epileptics manifest some abnormality, either dysrhythmia or dyssynchrony. Ten percent of the general population have this dysfunction but only half of one percent have epilepsy One parent and at least half of the relatives of all epileptics show dysrhythmia. This would suggest that a hereditary predisposition on an organic basis does exist in genuine epilepsy. However, this predisposition alone is not sufficient to produce the disease; something else must be added.2
The question now arises, what precipitates genuine epilepsy in people who have the above-mentioned organic predisposition? It is possible that here psychological factors play a significant rôle. If that is so, then we may ask, is there also a psychological predisposition to the epileptic phenomenon? Furthermore,