Description of An Acute Castration Fear, Based on Superstition

In Fatshan, a small town north of Canton in the province of Kwangtung, South-China, I was able to observe an acute condition of anxiety, which is well known in this area to the local population and doctors. The condition usually presents itself in the following way. The patient, invariably a man, has been suffering for a shorter or longer period from some kind of somatic disease, for which he may have been hospitalized or not. Suddenly he enters a stage of extreme anxiety with urgent appeals to the doctor for help and explaining, that his penis is going to disappear and that this fact is a clear and definite sign of his approaching death. No definite explanation is given concerning the way by which the patient might lose his penis and the patient does not specify if it might be cut off or fall off or disappear by some other method. Any assertion by the doctor or an attendant, that the penis is quite normal, that it does not show any signs of diminishing size or disintegration, and that there is no danger whatever present, does not improve the anxiety of the patient in the slightest degree. Nor does the patient advance any explanation, how the danger for his penis should be connected with his imminent death. The patient is usually able to alarm the whole family about his condition and several of his relatives will usually stand around his bed and join the patient in his urgent appeals to the medical staff for immediate help against the approaching death. The attitude of the family members is one of believing the anxiety of the patient to be justified, sharing his fear to be in danger of death in the very near future and not at all one of considering the patient to be mentally ill. The common local population considers this condition not as a disease but is equally convinced that the related symptoms are facts. Frequently a patient will at the height of his anxiety grasp the penis with his hand in order to prevent it from disappearing or one of the attending family me