Stories from mental patients. How I was in a psychiatric hospital. Dina: I looked completely normal

“One day he hit me so hard that he broke my cheekbone.”

It all started when I was 17. I fell in love - as it turned out much later, with a manipulator and sociopath. Our toxic, as it is now fashionable to say, relationship lasted nine years. Over the years, I had two abortions, we tried to break up countless times - the reason was his infidelity, spree, even beatings. One day he hit me so hard that he broke my cheekbone. I left, but came back - I don’t know why.

That's how we lived. I latently understood that this was unhealthy and not healthy, and at some point I decided to turn to a psychologist.

This was my first experience, I went to the appointment in full confidence that they would help me.

But at the reception, this lady (I can’t call her a doctor), having learned that I work in a sex shop, immediately switched to “you”, then advised me to change jobs, “drove” over my mother and, as a cherry on the cake, stated that men like me only want to “fuck and throw away.”

“I decided that everything was to blame for my laziness, stupidity and worthlessness”

I no longer tried to go to psychologists. I just ran away - to another city, to Kyiv. For a year and a half I felt very good - every awakening brought happiness, even when outside the window the revolutionaries began to seize the prosecutor's office. Then I had to return - to St. Petersburg and to my evil genius. We began to live together - calmly, with classic borscht and movies on weekends. I was a freelancer, I didn’t need a job. To friends too - during the “emigration” the circle of friends narrowed from the size of the equator to three people who started families. The ground was slowly disappearing from under my feet, and I almost didn’t notice it - I wasn’t upset that in February of this year he finally left, we broke up. And I wasn’t happy. It seems like I stopped feeling emotions altogether.

My average day began to be spent in bed. I woke up, turned on the TV and ordered food to take home. Not because I wanted to eat - I didn’t feel hungry. I simply stuffed everything into myself (twice as much as usual) under the pictures flashing on the screen - their meaning did not reach me, nor did the taste of the food. There were tumbleweeds of dust flying around the house - I didn’t care. It was as if I was being crushed by a concrete slab, I physically couldn’t get up - well, except to go to the toilet, and only when it was really hot.

From time to time, friends still dragged me to some parties, concerts - I agreed and went, but there was no effect. Nothing made me happy, although I used to like both music and company.

Of course, I tried to find the reason, and, as it seemed to me, I found it: I decided that everything was to blame for my laziness, weakness of will, stupidity, uselessness, and the list goes on. Here it is - a trap cleverly set by depression. You convince yourself of your own worthlessness, which makes you lose the last remnants of the will to live. There is no point in getting off the couch anymore.

By the end of the summer, my memory and attention began to fail: I could not even concentrate on washing one plate. I wasn’t scared - this is also an emotion, and I no longer had them. But my friend was scared - after seeing how I lived, she did not tell me that I needed to “get ready and go for a walk” and give other “useful” advice. She also took a course of antidepressants, so she simply sent me to a psychiatrist.

“I was ashamed: a young healthy girl turned into a vegetable”

In the psychoneurological department, the very first question from the doctor put me into a stupor. “What do you even care about”? Never mind! It was very embarrassing to describe my condition - a young healthy girl turned into a vegetable. And then we started talking about Kyiv, about my damned man - and I burst into tears. I talked about familiar things for an hour and a half, choking on tears. At the end of the conversation, the doctor said: “Well, what can I tell you?” “Go to work and don’t give people brains,” I mentally continued for him. And she turned out to be wrong. I was sent to a day hospital at the Skvortsov-Stepanov psychiatric hospital with a diagnosis of adaptation disorder.

For two months I went there as if for work: electric sleep, antidepressants, different types psychotherapy. The effect appeared immediately, but not from the treatment: being among real crazy people invigorated me, of course. An unforgettable feeling when you sit in line for fluorography among comrades in straitjackets, and then on rounds you listen to stories like “everything is fine today, the voices have disappeared.”

“During art therapy, I realized that I didn’t just need support. I can strangle this support.”

After a couple of weeks, the therapy began to take effect. I was amazed by the body-oriented one: it’s amazing how completing seemingly idiotic tasks like “imagine that you are a grain” or “image a dog” can open your eyes to your own behavior patterns. I realized that it was with great difficulty that I began to make contact, and that I was simply hiding “in the house” from solving problems. During art therapy they asked me to mold myself in the form of a plant - I sculpted a bindweed, and then it turned out that I not only need constant support and support, but I can strangle this support - good version, actually explains a lot.

There were also individual sessions with a psychotherapist. Thanks to this magical woman: having started to work through my suffering on the subject of a forced move and a nine-year love epic, she eventually unearthed a huge number of things that had always prevented me from living. Thanks to her, I learned to say “no”, not to create illusions, to appreciate and listen to myself. After classes, I no longer wanted to bury myself in a blanket; I began to want to do something. The concrete slab has disappeared. I realized that for two years now I haven’t woken up not only in a good, but in a normal mood, without self-hatred! And suddenly she began to smile inside and out. Once a passer-by even said: “Girl, you are so happy, stay like that always.” But nothing special happened, I just became myself again.

I have always loved listening and reading all sorts of stories about the incomprehensible and inexplicable; I have had this since childhood. She was also not lacking in imagination; she imagined all the contents of these stories very vividly and clearly. Often, while walking through the forest, sitting at home alone, I began to imagine that someone would crawl out or a mysterious sound would be heard. But despite this, practically nothing horrific, frightening or simply strange stories. Maybe only a couple of times, and they weren’t scary, but rather just incomprehensible.

This is how I lived for 19 years. And in the 20th year of my life I managed to get a job industrial practice to a psychiatric clinic, to a helpline (I’m a psychology student). I still practice there, for about 2 years now. I work not alone, but with two of my classmates. Once a week, on Saturday, and sometimes on holidays. Despite the fact that the helpline belongs to a psychiatric clinic, our office (and now a small “apartment”) is located in the most ordinary city student clinic. Conditionally ours labor activity can be divided into 3 time stages.

The first stage is the very beginning of our practice, when we have just arrived there. We only worked the day shift from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., and our “boss,” who brought us here, remained alone at night in a small office equipped with a sofa, armchairs, a washbasin, a refrigerator, and, in fact, two telephones that received calls. calls.

The second stage began six months later, when we got used to it and began to trust us in the new place. We began to remain on full, 24-hour duty, from 8 a.m. on Saturday until 8 a.m. on Sunday.

The third stage began in December 2012, when our telephone was reorganized into a new regional service, we were allocated an entire “apartment” where there was a workplace with a server and 4 computer-phones, a kitchen, a reception office, a shower and a toilet. We started working from 9 to 9, also all day long.

But enough introduction. I’ll say right away that the strangeness did not start from the very beginning. The entire first stage, when we worked only during the day, everything was quiet and calm. Nearby in the gym there were boys practicing karate, a security guard or a security guard sat at the entrance, the clinic was not empty, even though it was Saturday. It all started in the second stage, when we started staying overnight. Moreover, for the first few nights I did not stay with the girls, but went home, that is, they were on duty together. That's when all sorts of stories began about suspicious steps in the corridor and so on. But I didn’t attach any importance to this, you never know. And the girls didn’t seem to bother too much either. Although even then it began to be alarming, given that the guard makes his last round from 22.00 to 22.30, and then locks himself in his closet, watches TV and sleeps. There is no point for him to walk in our wing at all, because the toilets are located at the opposite end of the corridor, and there are no stairs, if he suddenly felt the urge to go up somewhere or go down to the basement, we wouldn’t even hear it.

There were many stories. There are even more legends associated with this clinic, heard from our boss after the fact. I will only tell stories that I myself witnessed.

Case No. 1. This was one of my first night shifts, back in the old office. We then went to smoke on the fire escape, which was located at the other end of the corridor. Sometimes we went down a flight of stairs, closer to the basement, and stood near the exit to the street, and sometimes right at the door and the stairs to the top, which was surrounded by bars, and the bars were locked with a barn lock. One fine night we once again went there to smoke, all three of us. Passing by the guard's closet, we heard his measured snoring and walked even more quietly, so as not to wake him. There was no one else at the clinic except the 4 of us; it was 12 at night or so. Once on the stairs, we did not go down to the exit, but stayed near the grate where the light was on. I must say that this light was on on all 3 floors, except for the 4th, there was pitch darkness, you couldn’t see anything. We stood, quietly talked, were already tired and were soon going to lie down and take a nap. There was a pause in the conversation. And then I heard the quiet sound of footsteps descending the stairs. The steps were soft and muffled, as if a light man was walking in slippers, and very slowly, each step was distinct and precise. They were heard from the very top, i.e. from the 4th floor, where the lights were turned off. I turned around, looking at my friends. They also stood and listened to this sound. This made me even more scared, because if only I had imagined this, I could have blamed everything on my fatigue. The guard disappears immediately - firstly, he was sleeping in the closet 2 minutes ago, and secondly, when he walks around the floors, the lock on the grate to the stairs is open and the grate door itself is open. We stood like that for a minute, listening to this unnatural sound for a night clinic. Then one of my friends decided to look up the flight of stairs - and saw nothing, and something continued to descend towards us along the stairs. Without saying a word, we quickly put out our cigarettes and rushed to the toilet, which was nearby. There we were able to throw away our cigarettes and laugh it off nervously, still not understanding what had just happened. Barely finding the strength to leave the toilet, we rushed headlong to our room, past the same snoring guard. They locked the room and sat in it all night until the morning, not daring to go out for a smoke.

Case No. 2. It happened about six months after the first one, in the fall, after a long summer break from work. We still lived in that first office, or rather we lived there for the last month before moving to a new “apartment”. This happened at night, at 2 or 3 o'clock. We were mortally tired from the daytime calls and decided to take a nap, especially since at such a late time people hardly call. I lay down on the sofa, along the wall, with my head towards the door, which was slightly closed from me by a closet standing along the same wall. And the girls laid out 2 chairs perpendicular to my sofa and slept there, one closer to the door, and the other by the window. We chatted a little before going to bed, already being in the dark, I deliberately did not answer, pretending to fall asleep, although I was still quite awake, I was just tired of talking. And then the girl who was sleeping by the window turned to the one who was lying closer to the door. Her voice trembled. “Do you want to be scared? Turn around." She continued to lie with her back to the door, saying that she didn’t want to turn around, asking, “What’s there?” “There’s something standing there. Yul, at least take a look.” At first I decided that my friend had decided to scare us before going to bed, but my heart prudently sank to my feet. Having overcome my fear, I looked out from behind the closet and looked towards the door. My whole body immediately went cold and my heart began to beat wildly. I saw in the gap between the wall parallel to mine and the door of a person, a girl who was standing with her back to the wall. She stood completely motionless, her hair hid her face, I saw only her thin hands and body, dressed in a floor-length white dress with long sleeves. It wasn’t transparent, I didn’t see the wall or the wallpaper pattern behind it, it just stood there and covered that wall! Like a very real person. Just where to get it from to a stranger in a locked hospital and a locked office? I stared at her for literally a minute, then I couldn’t stand it and reached for the night light. When the light appeared, she disappeared, I don’t know how, because when she turned on the light, her back was to the door. We decided not to discuss anything; it was scary and incomprehensible. We dozed off in the light. The girl who first noticed this described everything that was happening as I saw it, so there is no point in retelling it.

Story No. 3. It happened literally 3 weeks ago, after our “relocation”. We started going to the basement to smoke, which is a long corridor with low ceilings, the floor of which is covered with iron sheets, but on the sides there is a regular concrete floor, so we move to the smoking room “along the wall” so as not to rattle the iron, especially on at night. There are closed doors on the sides, but on the right side there are 2 rooms that you can look into - one is simply closed with a lattice, and the second room simply has a door taken out and placed next to it. The smoking room, naturally, is located at the very end of the corridor, right next to the second door. The light is on only at the entrance to the basement and in the smoking room itself, and in the middle of the corridor there is always a kind of twilight. The smoking room itself looks like a room from the opening scenes of the first Saw, only with chairs and a small window in the ceiling, and also a saucepan in the center (instead of an ashtray). Despite the infernal situation, it was never scary in this basement; we calmly went there alone, even at night. I could take coffee and smoke there, sipping it. And once I even dozed off there for half an hour, sitting on a chair. So this time I went there after one particularly long conversation, took 2 cigarettes, planned to sit in a calm atmosphere, listen to the wind hum outside the smoking room window. For more than 2 months, I got used to all the sounds of the basement - the rustling of iron leaves from the wind, and drops of water, and other sounds. I felt calm there. And then suddenly, having gone down, I felt an incomprehensible anxiety, I wanted to get away from there as quickly as possible. But I wanted to smoke even more, and I headed to the smoking room. Having smoked one cigarette, I was about to reach for the second, but suddenly changed my mind. It became really alarming. I quickly headed towards the exit, trying to walk on the concrete, so that I walked completely silently, because I was also wearing felt slippers. Having almost approached the exit from the basement, I suddenly heard a completely foreign sound. It was a childish giggle that came right behind me, about two meters away. A wave of coldness rushed through my body. I automatically turned around, the sound died down, there was no one behind me. Pitch silence. I started so hard that my heels sparkled! In seconds she climbed the stairs, ran along the corridor, afraid to look back, ran into the “apartment” and locked the door. I literally turned white with fear, my eyes were bulging. I told the girls everything, now we don’t go to the basement alone at night and without phones.

But let me tell you, friends, a story about how I was in a real psychiatric hospital. Oh, there was a time)
It all started with the fact that from a dashing and carefree childhood I had several scars left on my arms. Nothing special, ordinary scars, many people have them, but the psychiatrist at the military registration and enlistment office, a mustachioed guy with a sly squint, doubted my words that I got the scars by accident. “We’ve seen you like this. At first the scars are accidental, then you shoot your fellow soldiers after lights out!” he said. Two weeks have passed and here I am, along with a dozen of the same pseudo-suicidal people, heading for a final examination to the regional psychiatric clinic.
At the entrance to the hospital, we were subjected to a formal search, all our personal belongings were shaken and all the prohibited items that were found were taken away (stabs, laces/belts, alcohol). They left the cigarettes and thank you for that. Our department consisted of two parts. In one there were conscripts, in the other there were prisoners, mowing down from responsibility. It's such a neighborhood, isn't it? We almost never crossed paths with prisoners, and the most colorful character among us was a hefty Tatar in a Nirvana T-shirt, to whom the nickname “sex” almost immediately stuck. “Sex” was a wonderful, but harmless guy and loved to have a tasty jerk before going to bed. Moreover, he didn’t care about the jokes, requests to stop and direct threats. Without jerking off, “Sex” didn’t fall asleep.
The hospital toilet deserves special mention. The two unfenced toilets were clearly the same age as the pre-revolutionary building itself. But the worst thing was that the toilet was constantly crowded with smoking people. Here you could discuss bark, try to shoot a cigarette, make fun of the psychos from the third floor. Yes, there were real psychos above us and you could have a real rage over them, shouting at each other through the bars on the windows. It was extremely difficult to light a cigarette, because from complete idleness everyone was constantly smoking and tobacco stocks were melting before our eyes, and there was nowhere to replenish them. There was absolutely nothing to do, and when we were kicked out for a cleanup day, everyone was extremely happy. Cleanup work in a psychiatric hospital is a holiday, because on other days they were not allowed to go outside. Oh yes, the toilet. It was extremely difficult to satisfy natural needs, due to the same smokers. Do you think anyone came out? Yeah, right now. Over time, of course, everything settled down, they introduced a schedule and religiously followed it, but in the first days it was completely brutal. Those who were simpler climbed onto the toilets right in front of the smokers, the rest heroically endured and waited for the night.
But nothing lasts forever, our examination period ended and we left the not-so-comfortable walls of the psychiatric hospital. Few of the guys were drafted into the army after that; most were diagnosed with “Personality Disorder,” which greatly ruined their lives in the future. So much for random childhood scars...

The Ufa-Room correspondents communicate with very different people. And unusual... These people tell us interesting stories, which we subsequently share with our readers. This time the heroes and authors of the stories are Ufa psychiatrists and their patients. All the stories are real, therefore, in order not to reveal medical secrets, we will not indicate names... The stories are short, but catchy. By the way, if you have an unstable psyche and are under 18 years old, we do not recommend reading further! It is contraindicated! Contains elements of violence!

Oculist

No, we are not talking about a doctor of the relevant specialty, but about a patient in a psychiatric hospital. He received this nickname due to his peculiarities. The fact is that he amused himself by gouging out the eyes of other patients. Actually, it seems like he wasn’t violent, he was a rather calm old man. But periodically obtaining pencils, pens and any relatively sharp objects in various dishonest ways, he could suddenly gouge out someone’s eye. Since the cases were not isolated, and the man looked askance at the doctors, he was isolated as much as possible from all sharp objects. But ophthalmologist He turned out to be resourceful and got used to gouging out his eyes with his finger. The effectiveness was generally lower than when using a pencil, but it was being improved... It was impossible to completely isolate the patient - procedures and walks were carried out one way or another. Realizing that ophthalmologist does not stop there, they began tying his hands behind his back. For some time, his “ophthalmological” practice ceased... But only for some time. During another walk, when no one was expected to do anything from him (the break was quite long), he managed to gouge out the eye of one of the patients... with his toe! A dedication that is admirable.

Uniform

A story worthy of Gogol's "The Overcoat". One of the patients was a former military man. And everything would have been fine if he had not worn the same military uniform all his life. Always. Day and night. The uniform was already very, very old, worn out, but he was faithful to it! Romance? Don't tell me. After all, when the uniform was taken to the wash, he walked naked, not recognizing any other alternative. The patient was seriously ill, so he practically lived in a psychiatric hospital... Several years passed, and after the next wash, the uniform began to creep at the seams. They tried to somehow restore it, they made a copy, but the man knew his uniform and did not agree to a replacement. When his favorite clothes were gone, he spent the rest of his life naked. Even in winter, when it was necessary to move from one building to another, he walked without clothes...

Sculptor

One of the patients in a psychiatric hospital suffered from obsessive-compulsive disorder. He believed that he should constantly create. Otherwise something bad will happen. He drew well, and in general, he turned out to be really creative personality. The problem was that, in his opinion, he had to do something constantly - draw, craft, sculpt... When he had to take a break for lunch, for sleep, he was very nervous. And it also seemed to him that people could suffer from any of his inaction. How, he did not know. Moreover, he understood that this was a pathology and really wanted to be cured. Occupational therapy helped him with this. His creative workaholism turned out to be very useful in winter - he sculpted sculptures from snow, decorated the hospital grounds, gradually distracting himself from the obsessive thought that if he paused, something terrible would happen. This is one of positive examples when a person was able to get rid of his illness. Or at least minimize it.

Runner with the Wolves

The most ordinary girl saw and heard wolves. They accompanied her almost constantly. A large flock led by its leader. She understood them. Often, while at home, she could hear people howling invitingly in the yard. her wolves. She went out onto the balcony and saw a flock, and sometimes only one leader. When she went out for a walk, they followed her, she could stroke any of them, run her fingers through their thick, beautiful fur. They understood her like no one else... They were real. The girl had no real friends among people, because no one believed in her pack, and how many times did they protect her from attacks by bandits, from bad guys from the street. The girl could spend hours in the forest, where she went to communicate with the wolves, in the forest where they came from... The girl suffered from schizophrenia. After the course of treatment, she said something that made my skin crawl:

Yes, I felt the effect. Now I have no friends at all. Thank you.

Squirrel

One man suffered from alcoholism. Many, many years of continuous drunkenness, which already got to my wife. One day, she solved the problem simply - she prepared various foods, removed everything containing alcohol from the house, left her drunken husband to wake up, and locked him from the outside. And she went to see a friend for a couple of days. Upon her return two days later, she saw an idyllic picture: her husband was sitting on a chair in the middle of the room, opposite another empty chair, and discussing with someone the exploits accomplished in the Battle of the Ice. At the same time, he spoke very convincingly, and at his wife’s perplexed glance, he “introduced” his interlocutor:

Masha, this is the devil. I came for you, but you weren’t at home!.. That’s it, you can take her, I’ve already gotten her.

The woman called the appropriate team. Diagnosis: Alcoholic delirium, or simply delirium tremens.

Letter from the heart

This is what one of the patients of a psychiatric hospital wrote when asked, what would you do with your offenders? The answer was received on 2 sheets of A4 format. Most of it has been cut out, but the general gist is this:

“First I would tie it to the battery. Very close to the hot battery. Having deafened him so that he wouldn’t scream, I would have torn his tongue out. Then he won't be able to scream at all. I would put a needle under each nail. Slowly, to prolong his suffering... I would carefully open his veins, and then his stomach, wrapping his intestines around his hand, because there is no need to offend me.”

Girl, 8 years old.

The Truman Show

“Someone is following me. Constantly, I didn’t know who it was or what they needed, but I had bugs all over my apartment, even in the toilet. Can you imagine it? When it’s impossible to even take a step without them knowing about it? Even abroad they accompanied me. At first I thought it was some kind of service, but what do they need? I was afraid, but recently I tried to make contact. They didn't go for it! And then I realized, my life is a show for someone, they just watch how I live, someone might really find it interesting. I’ve calmed down a little, which means they won’t kill me...” Mania of persecution?

We are so different, and yet we are together

A story about one of the patients: “I am a creative person. Yes, I draw and sing well. Many people like it. Maybe someday I'll record my own album. This is my dream". The same patient at a different time: “I have worked all my life as a turner at UMPO, I have a 5th grade. Sing? What are you talking about? I have never been able and am not going to do this nonsense, I am a working man”... In fact, the patient is a programmer with 10 years of work experience. This is the so-called “Plurality” of personality.

Different people, different destinies, different situations, they have only one thing in common - they all know this world from the other side. There are other values ​​on the other side that not everyone can accept, but does that make these values ​​any less real to those who see them? Maybe we are all sick?

Believing himself to be the only one normal person- psycho? If so, then I'm crazy.
© I'm a robot

Tata Oleinik

Vlad Lesnikov

Yes, we like to write about the mentally ill. Firstly, against their background it is easier for us to feel mentally healthy. Secondly, Kant also said that there is nothing more interesting in the world than the stars in the sky and all sorts of oddities inside the human brain. Here you go, it used to be, you carry your head calmly on your shoulders and don’t expect any trick from it. Although a keg of gunpowder with a lit fuse would, perhaps, be slightly more dangerous - such amazing things can sometimes be done to people by their consciousness.

And don’t forget: often, only by studying a broken thing, you can understand how it should ideally work. It was psychiatry that at one time created the basis on which they developed modern sciences about thinking in general, such as neurobiology, neurophysiology, evolutionary psychology, etc. And for purely educational purposes, and not to completely scare our audience with all sorts of horrors, we have collected eight case reports describing cases of rare and very interesting syndromes .

No control

In the 20s - 30s of the 20th century, former postal department employee Dieter Weise was treated for seven years at the German Charité clinic. Mr. Weise's problem was that he could not control his body. The only things he could control were his speech and breathing. Everything else was controlled by a certain Peter, who was a big bastard.

The attending doctors were never able to get to know Peter: he did not enter into contact with humanity, left all communications to Dieter, and he himself had a blast.

Richard Stübe, the patient’s attending physician, wrote: “The patient’s clear, reasonable speech was amazing - the speech of an exhausted but completely healthy person.” While Peter masturbated in front of the nurses, banged his head against the wall, crawled on all fours under the beds and threw feces at the orderlies, Dieter Weise, in a tired voice, asked those around him for forgiveness and begged them to immediately put him in a straitjacket.

The luminaries of world psychiatry debated for a long time how Mr. Weise’s disease should be defined. Some argued for an unusual form of schizophrenia, while others suggested that they were dealing with an advanced version of “alien hand syndrome,” in which the brain loses volitional control over neurons associated with one or another part of the body.

It was never possible to find out: in 1932, patient Weise, left unattended for a short time, plugged the drain hole of the sink in his room with a piece of a sheet, waited until there was enough water, and drowned himself by putting his head in the sink. “It was undoubtedly a murder,” Dr. Stuebe later reflected. “It’s scary to imagine Dieter’s feelings at that moment when the unknown invader who occupied his body forced Dieter to bend over the sink...”

The book in which American psychiatrist Oliver Sacks described this clinical case is called “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat.” In the 1960s, Mr. Sachs was asked to examine a famous musician and conservatory teacher whom Sachs calls “Professor P.”

Professor P. was no longer young and all his life he enjoyed a reputation as a person with oddities, which did not prevent him from first being a famous singer, then a respected teacher, as well as starting a family and living happily with his wife for many years. So my wife was worried that lately the professor had become completely unpredictable.

Sax talked with the musician, did not find any special oddities, minus some eccentricities, and they began to say goodbye. And then the professor did a very unexpected thing. Approaching his wife, he extended his hand, felt her head with the gesture with which one usually takes a hat, and attempted to put the object thus obtained on himself. The wife twisted her fingers, the professor moved them in the air and thought. Sax made a hunting stance and took the professor into a spin. They met regularly, talked, and passed a lot of tests.

It turned out the following. The professor's worldview suffered from catastrophic holes. He resembled a man trying to look around in a dark closet with a weak flashlight. He practically couldn’t distinguish people visually, but he could identify voices perfectly. Worse, he often confused people with inanimate objects. He could remember a detail - a mustache, a cigar, big teeth, but was not able to recognize a single human face and could easily mistake a head of cabbage or a lamp for a person.

Looking at the landscape, he did not see most of the houses, people and human figures - they seemed to fall into some kind of blind spot. When Sachs laid out several objects on the table, the professor sometimes managed to identify one of them; he simply did not notice the rest and was very surprised when they said that under his nose, in addition to the notebook, there was also a saucer, a comb and a handkerchief. He agreed to recognize the reality of these objects only after touching them.

When the doctor gave him a rose and asked him to say what it was, the professor described the flower as “an oblong object of a dark green color with a red extension at one end.” Only after smelling the object did he determine that it was a rose.

His vision was fine, but the brain only absorbed about ten percent of the signals received through visual transmission. In the end, Sachs diagnosed Professor P. with congenital agnosia - a pathological disorder of perception, although very well compensated by the rich life experience and good education of the patient, who, seeing instead of the world around him mainly a chaos of difficult-to-define objects, still managed to become socially successful and a happy person.

Frozen Horror

Autism, which, thanks to the light hand of the authors of Rain Man, is now often confused by the general public with genius, is a disease that has not yet been studied completely enough. Many scientists believe that it is more appropriate to talk about a group of different pathologies with common symptoms. For example, it is known that some autistic people are practically incapable of aggression; others, on the contrary, suffer from severe and prolonged bouts of uncontrollable anger directed at others; still others, experiencing anger and fear, prefer to inflict damage on themselves.

The behavior of autistic Aiden S., 19 years old, who was under observation for some time at the hospital at the University of Pennsylvania, belongs to the fourth, rarest category.

Like many autistic people, Aiden is incredibly dependent on the daily routine, the stability of the surrounding situation and reacts painfully to any innovations. Therefore, any “wrong” action of relatives or medical personnel causes Aiden to have a catatonic attack: the young man freezes in the position in which he happened to encounter “danger” - pajamas of an unpleasant color, loud noise, unusual food. His muscles become completely stiff, and if the position at the time of the attack was inappropriate for maintaining balance, then the patient falls to the floor with a loud thud, without changing this position. No amount of force can be used to straighten his arm or leg without breaking something.

Aiden can remain in this position indefinitely. Therefore, the doctors, as soon as Aiden was “jammed” again, performed a traditional ritual, once developed by Aiden’s mother. The body was carried into a completely dark room, after which one of the doctors whispered and recited nursery rhymes from Mother Goose Tales for half an hour, and after some time Aiden again regained the ability to move normally.

The previously mentioned Oliver Sacks in his works often recalls a patient who suffered from a rare syndrome called “Korsakoff psychosis.” Former grocer Mr Thompson was brought to the clinic by friends after he went crazy due to years of alcoholism. No, Mr. Thompson does not rush at people, does not harm anyone, and is very sociable. Mr. Thompson's problem is that he has lost his personality, as well as the surrounding reality and memory. When Mr. Thompson isn't sleeping, he's trading. Wherever he is - in the ward, in the doctor's office or in the bathroom during a hydromassage session - he stands at the counter, wipes his hands on his apron and talks with the next visitor. His memory span is approximately forty seconds.

Would you like sausages or maybe salmon? - he asks. - Why are you in a white coat, Mr. Smith? Or do you now have the same rules in your kosher store? And why did you suddenly grow a beard, Mr. Smith? Something I can’t figure out... am I in my shop or somewhere?

After this, his brow calms down again, and he offers the new “customer” to buy half a pound of ham and smoked sausages.

However, in forty seconds Mr. Thompson also manages to go wild. He's telling stories. He makes incredible guesses about the identity of the buyer. He finds hundreds of convincing and always different explanations for why he suddenly fell out from behind his counter and found himself in an unfamiliar office.

Ah, a stethoscope! - he shouts unexpectedly. - You mechanics are wonderful people! Pretend to be doctors: white coats, stethoscopes... We listen, they say, to machines as if they were people! Manners, old man, how's it going at the gas station? Come in, come in, now everything will be as usual for you - with black bread and sausage...

“Within five minutes,” writes Dr. Sachs, “Mr. Thompson takes me for a dozen different people. Nothing is retained in his memory for more than a few seconds, and as a result he is constantly disoriented, he invents more and more incomprehensible stories, constantly creating a world around himself - the universe of the Arabian Nights, a dream, a phantasmagoria of people and images, a kaleidoscope of continuous metamorphoses and transformations. Moreover, for him this is not a series of fleeting fantasies and illusions, but a normal, stable, real world. From his point of view, everything is fine."

The Bulgarian psychiatrist Stoyan Stoyanov (yes, Bulgarian parents also have brilliant insights) in the 50s of the 20th century spent a long time observing patient R., who would have been an ordinary schizophrenic if he had not experienced periodic attacks of the so-called dream-like oneiroid.

The attacks occurred approximately once every two months. At first the patient began to feel restless, then he stopped sleeping, and after three or four days he left the hospital and went straight to Mars.

According to the doctor, during these hallucinations the patient changed decisively: from uncommunicative, gloomy, with primitive speech and limited imagination, he turned into a person with well-developed artistic speech. Usually, during an attack, R. slowly stomped around in a circle in the center of his room. At this time, he willingly answered any questions, but was clearly unable to see either the interlocutor or the surrounding objects, so he constantly ran into them (which is why he was transferred to a “soft room” during attacks).

R. described receptions in Martian palaces, fights on huge animals, flocks of flying leathery birds on the orange horizon, his complex relationships with the Martian aristocracy (especially with one of the princesses, with whom he, however, had completely platonic feelings). Dr. Stoyanov especially pointed out the exceptional accuracy of the details: all attacks always occurred on Mars, in the same environment.

Over the several years that the doctor took notes, R. was never caught in a contradiction: if he said that the columns in the side hall of the princess’s palace were made of greenish stone - a serpentine, then three years later, “seeing” these columns, it will exactly repeat the previously made description. It is now known that hallucinations during a dream-like oneiroid have exceptional reality for the hallucinating person; they are more detailed, meaningful and lasting than any dream, although they are also easily forgotten after “waking up”.

Least favorite of words

Wernicke's aphasia - this is the diagnosis of 33-year-old Muscovite Anton G., who survived a traumatic brain injury. Dialogues with him were published in the Bulletin of the Association of Psychiatrists (2011). After the accident, Anton can’t figure out the words: it’s as if they have changed in his dictionary, torn away from their meanings and mixed up as God pleases.

“I threw the bril,” he says, “I turned the drin.” Well, the kind of round one that will be used to tighten up the colossus.
- Steering wheel?
- Yes. Bryl. Dokor, let's roll the butt. Galosh is howling.
- Head? You have a headache?
- Yes. At the dashing gas. Between tears. Hypodal.

This is not a speech impediment, it is a violation of her understanding. Anton finds it difficult to talk with people. They speak some language unfamiliar to him, in which he has difficulty grasping the barely familiar consonances. Therefore, it is easier for him to communicate with gestures. He also forgot how to read - some wild combinations of letters are written on the signs in the hospital.

Anton himself writes “aknlpor” instead of his name, instead of the word “car” (they show him a car in the picture and slowly repeat “ma-shi-na” several times), he hesitantly writes a long series of consonants on an entire line. Neurologists and speech therapists are able to cope with some problems with aphasia. And although Anton will have long-term therapy, he has a chance to return to a world full of reasonable words and meaning.

Endless happiness

Edelfrida S. is a hebephrenic. She feels good. Her doctor, the famous German psychiatrist Manfred Lutz, author of the bestseller “It’s crazy, we’re treating the wrong people!”, loves hebephrenics. From the point of view of Dr. Lutz, not only a psychiatrist, but also a theologian, only those who suffer from their mental illness should be treated. And hebephrenics are very happy people.

True, if hebephrenia, like Edelfrida’s, is associated with an incurable brain tumor, it is still better for them to live in a clinic. Hebephrenia is always a great, cheerful and playful mood, even if, from the point of view of others, the hebephrenic has no reasons for joy. For example, bedridden sixty-year-old Edelfrida is terribly amused when she tells why she cannot have an operation and therefore will die in six months.

Kick - and I'll throw off my hooves! - she laughs.
- Doesn’t this make you sad? - asks Dr. Lutz.
- Why did it happen? What nonsense! What difference does it make to me whether I'm alive or dead?

Nothing in the world can upset or upset Edelfrida. She remembers her life poorly, vaguely understands where she is, and the concept of “I” means practically nothing to her. She eats with pleasure, only sometimes lowering the spoon to laugh to her heart's content at the sight of cabbage in the soup or to scare the nurse or doctor with a piece of bun.

Aw-aw! - she says and laughs boisterously.
- Is this your dog? - asks the doctor.
- What are you talking about, doctor! It's a bun! And with such brains you are still going to treat me?! This is hilarious! “Strictly speaking,” writes Lutz, “Edelfrida has not been with us for a long time. Her personality has already gone, leaving behind this pure sense of humor in the body of a dying woman.”

And finally, let’s return again to Dr. Sachs, who has collected perhaps the most striking collection of madness in modern psychiatry. One of the chapters of his book “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat” is dedicated to a 27-year-old patient named Christina.

Christina was a completely normal person; she was admitted to the hospital because she needed gall bladder surgery. What happened there, which of the preoperative therapy measures entailed such strange consequences, remained unclear. But the day before the operation, Christina forgot how to walk, sit up in bed and use her hands.

First a neurologist was invited to see her, then Dr. Sachs from the psychiatry department. It turned out that for mysterious reasons, Christina’s proprioception, a joint-muscle feeling, disappeared. The part of the parietal brain responsible for coordination and sensations of one’s body in space began to work idle.

Christina could hardly speak - she did not know how to control her vocal cords. She could take something only by closely following her hand with her eyes. Most of all, her sensations resembled those of a person enclosed in a robot body, which can be controlled by correctly and consistently pulling levers.

“Having ceased to receive an internal response from the body,” writes Oliver Sacks, “Christina still perceives it as a dead, alien appendage, she cannot feel it as her own. She cannot even find words to convey her condition, and she has to describe it by analogy with other feelings.

It seems,” she says, “that my body has gone deaf and blind... I don’t feel myself at all...”

It took eight years of therapy and hard training for the woman to be able to move again. She was taught to move her legs while following them with her eyes. She was taught to speak again, focusing on the sound of her voice. She learned to sit without falling over by looking in the mirror. Today, a person who does not know Christina’s diagnosis will not guess that she is sick. Her unnaturally straight posture, precise gestures, artistic modulations of her voice and carefully mastered facial expressions are perceived by strangers as artificiality and pomposity.

“I once heard them call me a completely fake doll,” says Christina. - And it was so offensive and unfair that I could have burst into tears, but the fact is that I also forgot how to do this. But somehow there’s not enough time to learn everything again.”