The authors review the literature on narcolepsy in schizophrenia and report a case of narcolepsy and cataplexy in a paranoid schizophrenic.

This patient had had 'sleeping spells' since the age of fifteen and developed schizophrenia at the age of twenty-eight, while the symptoms of narcolepsy still existed. They became the basis for various paranoid ideas. The authors discuss several theories, especially the question of psychogenic origin. They refer to Jelliffe and White who state that 'sudden attacks of sleepiness are often found to disguise auto-erotic fantasying and to be compulsive in character'. They also refer to a psychoanalytic study of a patient with narcolepsy who was cured, or at least greatly benefited by psychoanalysis. 'The present status of our knowledge on the subject does not permit a final statement of nosology and etiology, whether the disease is based on organic or merely psychogenic factors.'