izuba le Mer 16 Fév -
Dans ton texte il est aussi écrit ça et c'est très très fort:is there a characteristic multiple sclerosis personality?
It has been pointed out that there is a difficulty in differentiating multiple sclerosis with
psychiatric disturbances from essentially psychogenic illness with psychosomatic
neurological symptoms. (Teitelbaum 1977)
A distinctive multiple sclerosis personality was first described by Charcot in 1874, and subsequently observed
by many physicians. Euphoria, stupor, unmotivated laughing and crying, and loss of memory have all been
reported--usually assumed to result from the disease itself:
it seems clear that intellectual deterioration, euphoria, personality change, and ...
exaggeration of emotional expression are, like physical disability, symptomatic of the
disease, and are directly due to damage to the CNS. (Surridge 1969)
Multiple sclerosis patients are very susceptible to emotional and physical stress, especially anxiety and
frustration. Stress has brought on first attacks as well as relapses (Brickner & Simons 1950; Grant et al.
1989). This characteristic emotionality and sensitivity to stress may result from lesions in the brain, as many
assume. Yet researchers have found evidence that multiple sclerosis patients were emotionally disturbed
long before their disease appeared:
Psychologically, the premorbid state of the multiple sclerotic is that of great immaturity
since early infancy. He is emotionally abnormal long before he shows signs of his
organic disease. The multiple sclerotic seems to have an excessive need for love and
affection which was not gratified in childhood. The resulting frustrations evoke anger
which must be repressed in order to preserve whatever gratifications are available. As
a result the external personality is happy-go-lucky, with a paramount desire to please
and to be approved. There seems to be an outward calm and a deeply concealed inner
tension. (Grinker & Robbins 1954)
The response of these patients to turbulent and/or cloying childhood influences is
passive and docile and leads them to hide feelings behind a smiling or unsmiling
mask.... These vignettes typify most of the features of MS: extreme emotional
dependence, passivity, problems in separation from key figures, brought about by courtship, marriage, illness and death, and a giving-up response when attempts at
separation threaten, or actuate, reprisals from a key figure .... (Paulley 1977)
One clue to the immaturity and passivity of multiple sclerosis patients was uncovered by Groen and
colleagues (1969):
The psychosomatic aspects of multiple sclerosis are discussed on the basis of
continuous psychiatric observation of the life events, behavior and attitudes of patients
during their remissions and relapses, and partly also on clinical psychological studies.
The disease occurs preferentially in patients who stem from a family with a tyrannical
father or a mother who was subservient to her husband. They have strong taboos
about sex, which have produced in them at an early age strong feelings of guilt and
reinforced their fears. The personality development is fixed at an infantile phase. In
particular they have difficulty in expressing aggression. They try to disarm, even at an
adult age, the feared authority figure by much subservient, innocently smiling
behavior: puérilisme mentale. In addition the patients were found to be markedly
compulsive.
"Personality development fixed at an infantile phase." Did these persons miss puberty, and perhaps some
childhood as well? Benedek and Rubenstein (1942) pointed out that sexual suppression can suppress the sex
hormone releasing factors (gonadotropins) in the brain:
If the psychosexual development was such that the gonadotropic function was
suppressed, the sexual cycle would not develop, that is, the hormone production would
remain similar to that of children.
Langworthy (1948) too noted the emotional and sexual immaturity of MS patients:
It has always been apparent that poor emotional adjustment was a problem in many
cases of multiple sclerosis even before the symptoms of organic disease developed. In
these instances the patients may be emotionally immature and show this immaturity in
all their interpersonal relationships. It is often seen particularly in their sexual
adjustment, which can be evaluated at a preadolescent level of emotional growth.
Psychiatrist Wallace Ellerbroek observed (personal communication 1978) that multiple sclerosis patients
primarily have an excess of anger and a marked lack of being horny--and the latter is
associated with increased estrogen levels, not a lack. [A] frequent initial complaint, not
recognized as MS, is vaginal anaesthesia. [B]oth the males and females are primarily
carefully concealed hysterical personality disorders .
Increased estrogen levels do inhibit male sex drive by neutralizing testosterone, the primary libido hormone,
but low sex drive is more often associated with low testosterone than with high estrogen. Because
testosterone is the hormone of aggression (Mazur & Booth 1998) as well as libido, suppression of anger as
well as suppression of libido presumably suppresses testosterone. And because the vagina is estrogensensitive (Sherfey 1972), "vaginal anaesthesia" seems more likely to be associated with low estrogen than
with high estrogen.
