Psychoanalytic Study of a Case of Organic Epilepsy*

The work of Jelliffe and White in this country and of Groddeck, Ferenczi and Hollos, and others in Europe has recently directed our attention to the psychoanalytic mechanisms observed in certain psychiatric syndromes undoubtedly based upon structural disease. I have elsewhere presented a psychoanalytic study of some symptoms observed in a case of uremic delirium.1 The following is a very incomplete study of certain aspects of a case of epilepsy which seemedto have arisen upon the basis of congenital syphilis. My brother and I are making a study of thirty—five cases of congenital syphilitic epilepsy, and this is the only one in which the psychodynamic factors were easily accessible.2

Family History—The patient was the only progeny of her parents, both of whom were entirely free from epilepsy. One other pregnancy resulted in a child which died in two weeks. Miscarriages were denied but not convincingly. The father was generally recognized to be syphilitic. He had lost all his hair early in life, was regarded by the neighbors as being fast and promiscuous. His Wassermann was always negative, however, in our laboratory. His eyes were strikingly pathological and the opinion of the oculist was that there were distinct corneal scars and other evidence that he himself had