Katathymia

KATATHYMIA, katathymia (from Greek kata- according to and thymos-desire), according to the definition of Maier (H. W. Maier), who proposed this term, is the influence of emotional factors (affects) and ambivalent strivings (feelings, desires, apprehensions) on the content, character, and course of thought processes and other mental functions (delusional ideas, deceptions, memories, hallucinations, etc.). The essence of katathymia lies in the action of affects on associative processes—exciting in relation to those processes that move in the same direction, and inhibiting in relation to opposite ones. However, not every such action of affect is katathymic. Thus, one cannot speak of katathymia in relation to cases where, for example, in states of depression, the dominant affect of oppression and anguish exerts a determining influence on the entire world-view and thinking of the patient, instilling only gloomy thoughts. Such a general influence of the mood-determining affect on the content of experiences is called, at the initiative of Bleuler (holos-whole, entire), holothymic. The katathymic action is caused only by affects associated with specific, more or less limited groups of representations, with each of these groups, precisely by the power of the affect associated with it, being welded into an unbreakable whole—an affectively colored complex. The latter, once formed, causes the emergence in the psyche of a prolonged affective tension, which exerts a more or less constant influence on the course of associations. This influence is narrowly selective. Thus, the masturbation complex causes the masturbator to interpret a whole series of phenomena of surrounding life in a sense corresponding to this complex: innocent painful sensations seem to her or him to be signs of an incipient brain disease, a glance cast in passing by someone is a sign that his vice has been discovered, an indifferent remark is taken as a hint, and the whispering and laughter of comrades or fellow workers as outraged mockery of his weakness. However, in those areas that have not become linked in one way or another with the complex, the course of associations and the correctness of thinking may remain undisturbed. An important feature of the katathymic syndrome, according to Maier, is the circumstance that the affect operating within it is always so strong that the subject ceases to be logical in points connected with the complex; affective connections between individual representations and images turn out in such cases to be significantly stronger than evidence and common sense. Thus arises a special kind of thinking that sharply deviates from logic and the real relation of things. A very important role is attributed to katathymia in the construction of certain forms of delusion; in particular, delusion formation in paranoia is considered by Maier to be the purest type of katathymic thinking. Kretschmer and others extended the concept of katathymia also to certain phenomena of the normal psyche, first of all to a number of features of primitive (archaic) thinking. Since in the latter the ability for analysis and the establishment of logical connections is still very weak, individual images are united with each other not on the principle of the greatest frequency of coincidences, but on the commonality of affect. This is especially manifested in areas associated with sexual experiences, the procurement of food (hunting, war), and the drive for self-preservation (fear of diseases and death), where "magical" thinking based on katathymia manifests itself most brightly.