Cosmic Consciousness in Catatonic Schizophrenia

Sometimes in the course of the development of a personality a great crisis arises. This crisis may take the form of a religious experience at the normal level, or, if the conflict be too great or the personality too unstable, it may go on into the realm of psychopathology, not uncommonly in the shape of an attack of what is known in clinical psychiatry as catatonic schizophrenia. Such episodes are of interest to the student of the psychology of religion as well as to the psychiatrist, giving, as they often do, insight into the dynamics of the religious consciousness, as well as into psychopathology.

There came into the author's hands not long ago a most absorbing document, written by one of his patients who had been through just such an experience. Its writer being a man of considerable literary ability, the document describes with great vividness the onset and development of his experience, so that it adds an enlightening chapter to the studies of Storch (10) and Boisen (1).

Thirty-seven years old at the time of his admission to the Western State Psychiatric Institute, this patient was of British descent, single and unemployed.

He was born in Pennsylvania. His only sibling was a brother less than two years older. Their father, a skilled worker, was accidentally killed when the patient was four months old. The mother took an unskilled job, devoting herself entirely to the support and care of her sons. Since she had difficulty in getting the patient to eat enough till he was eight years old, and since he was quiet and shy, preferring to stay close to her, rather than engage in rough games, she did not consider him as strong as his brother. For fourteen years, the patient states, his brother slept in the same bed with the mother while he was in another bed in the same room. From the patient's fourteenth to seventeenth years the patient shared his mother's bed. He then asked for and received a room of his own.