Werewolves in Neurology and psychology
The term lycanthropy was also applied to those individuals afflicted with a form of dark melancholy, a deep depression that gave rise to a violent form of insanity.
Clinical lycanthropy or Lycanthropic Disorder is a form of psychosis or dementia in which the patient has delusions of being a wild animal (usually a wolf). The subject does not actually change shape, but is nevertheless capable of being as dangerous as an actual werewolf.
Many cases of supposed werewolfry victims, which are the works of Lycanthropic Disorder, have been recorded since antiquity. The Book of Daniel describes King Nebuchadnezzar as suffering from depression that deteriorated over a seven-year period into a frank psychosis at which time he imagined himself a wolf.
According to the essay titled "the beast within" werewolves offer several explanation to several questions posed by modern neurology. The following quotes are from modern doctors with several ideas on how werewolves offer insight into modern phsycholgy. They tell us that the fear of werewolves is the fear of degeneration and being overtaken by anger.
Neurological Signs: Lycanthropy
I had always understood lycanthropy to mean the transformation of a human into a wolf(Greek: lukos-wolf, anthropos-man). Such animal-like behaviour has a long history.1,2The mythical werewolves so beloved of the film industry aside, these cases, sometimes labelled “clinically canthropy” to emphasize the distinction, usually seem to be associated with psychiatric disorderssuch as psychosis or depression and have been understood as delusional disorders in the sense of self-identity disorder.3I was somewhat surprised to read in a recentcase report the word lycanthropy used to denote conversion to a pig. However, this was simply a reflection of my own ignorance, since in a review of over thirty published cases of clinical lycanthropy only a minority had wolf or dog themes.3Hence the “animal-like behaviour” may encompass a broader phenotype than simply that of the wolf. (I have seen one patient with behavioural variant front temporal dementia who, according to his wife, used to bark like a dog.) Perhaps Gregor Samsa’s metamorphosis into a gigantic insect in Franz Kafka’s story Metamorphosis (Die Verwandlung, 1915) is therefore also an example? This broader definition including the pig obviously stimulates a few literary reminiscences, perhaps first to come to mind being George Orwell’s Animal Farm(1945), wherein the pig Napoleon and his supporters gradually adopt human characteristics, walking on two legs.
Electroconvulsive Therapy for Lycanthropy and Cotard Syndrome: A Case Report
We present a case of psychotic depression presenting with lycanthropy (being converted to a pig) and Cotard syndrome simultaneously and treated with electroconvulsive therapy. A 37-year-old female patient developed psychotic depression after a stressor (a possibility of having a malignancy). As her depression worsened, she developed delusional belief of self being metamorphosed to a pig and her children also being metamorphosed into pig. In addition, she had the delusional belief that her own body and body of her children was rotting away. She was treated with electroconvulsive therapy along with venlafaxine and olanzapine, with which she improved completely.
Modern Werewolves
There are many individuals today who believe they are werewolves, and some of the lycanthropes
have been studied and treated by psychologists and psychiatrists. The
November 1975 issues of The Canadian Psychiatric Association Journal
reported in details on several recent cases of lycanthropy.
In the first case,
the twenty-year-old patient, referred to as Mr. H, was convinced that he was a
werewolf. A drug user, he told his doctor that while serving in the United
States Army in Europe, he had hiked into a forest near his post and had
ingested LSD and strychnine, the latter a deadly poison
that acts as a stimulant when taken in tiny quantities. Both substances are
pharmacologically similar to some of the ingredient used by shape shifters in
the past. They had an instant and potent effect on the young man, who claimed
to have seen fur growing on his hands and felt it sprouting on his face. Soon
he was overcome by a compulsion to chase after, catch, and devour live rabbits.
He wandered in this delusional state for several days before returning to the
post.
Placed on the tranquilizer chlorpromazine, Mr. H was weaned away from drugs and received
adjunct therapy for some nine months, during which time he continued to hear
disembodied voices and to experience satanic visions. Claiming to be possessed
by the devil, he insisted he had unusual powers. Tests indicated his delusions
were “compatible with acute schizophrenic or toxic psychosis” He was treated
with an antipsychotic drug, and when he improved sufficiently, he was referred
to an outpatient clinic. After only two visits, however, he had stopped
taking the medication and left treatment. Subsequent efforts to contact him
failed.
Another werewolf patient, thirty-seven-year-old Mr. W was admitted to the hospital after
repeated pubic displays of bizarre activity, including howling at the moon, sleeping in cemeteries, allowing his hair
and beard to grow out, and lying in the center of busy highways. Unlike
Mr. H, Mr. W had no history of drug or alcohol abuse. He had once been a farmer
and considered of average intelligence, which was found in an IQ test
administered when he served in the United States Navy. Now, he was seen
not only as psychotic but also as intellectually deficient, with a mental age
of an eight-to ten year-old child.
Because of the
patient’s increasing dementia, the doctors performed a brain biopsy. Their
findings revealed an abnormal physiological deterioration of cerebral tissue,
known as walnut brain. Mr. W was diagnosed as having a chronic brain
syndrome of unknown origin. When placed on antipsychotic drugs, he showed no
further symptoms of lycanthropy. Seen later on an outpatient basis, he
exhibited quiet, childlike behavior.
The October 1977
issue of The American Journal of Psychiatry details the particularly
bizarre story of a forty-nine year-old woman who believed herself a wolf and,
with increasing frequency, had begun acting like one. She revealed that just below the surface of a seemingly normal
twenty-year marriage she had harbored a consuming desire to indulge in secret,
bestial appetites. Her erotic daydreams often involved other women in
polymorphous perverse orgies. The wolf was a constant and central figure in her
fantasies; she felt its mesmerizing stare fastened onto her by day, its hot
breath on her bare neck at night. Soon she began “feeling like an animal with
claws.” For her, the message was clear-she was a wolf.
After a time, she
began to act out her compulsions. At a family gathering, for instance, she was
suddenly overwhelmed by the wolf passion. Stripping naked and dropping to all
fours she excitedly approached her own mother, and assuming the sexual posture
of a female wolf, she offered herself. The woman’s state continued to
deteriorate; the next evening, after making love to her husband, she lapsed
into a frenetic two-hour episode of grunting and of clawing and gnawing at the
bed. She explained afterwards that the devil “come into her body and she
became an animal.”
Enrolled in an
inpatient program, she received daily psychotherapy and was placed on
medication.In the first three weeks she suffered relapses, during which
she would rave: “I am a wolf of the night, I am wolf woman of the day……. I have
claws, teeth, fangs, hair………and anguish is my prey at night………powerless is my
cause. I am what I am and will always roam the earth after death……….I will
continue to search for perfection and salvation.” Concurrently she experienced
the urge to kill accompanied by a consuming sexual excitement.
She now saw the head
of a wolf, rather that her own face, when she gazed in the mirror. The medical
staff commented on “the unintelligible, animal-like noises she made.” There was
some improvement, but the patient then relapsed during the full moon. Writing about her experience, she stated:
“I don’t intend to give up the search for (what) I lack……….in my present
marriage……..my search for such a hairy creature. I will haunt the graveyards
for a tall, dark man that that I intend to find.” After nine weeks of
treatment, she was released from the hospital on a regimen of drugs designed to
free her of her delusion.
On the basis of the
woman’s symptoms, her doctors were able to formulate a psychological profile of
the lycanthrope, which is not so different, in spite of its modern medical
language, from the conclusion of some of the more enlightened physicians and
thinkers of earlier times
have been studied and treated by psychologists and psychiatrists. The
November 1975 issues of The Canadian Psychiatric Association Journal
reported in details on several recent cases of lycanthropy.
In the first case,
the twenty-year-old patient, referred to as Mr. H, was convinced that he was a
werewolf. A drug user, he told his doctor that while serving in the United
States Army in Europe, he had hiked into a forest near his post and had
ingested LSD and strychnine, the latter a deadly poison
that acts as a stimulant when taken in tiny quantities. Both substances are
pharmacologically similar to some of the ingredient used by shape shifters in
the past. They had an instant and potent effect on the young man, who claimed
to have seen fur growing on his hands and felt it sprouting on his face. Soon
he was overcome by a compulsion to chase after, catch, and devour live rabbits.
He wandered in this delusional state for several days before returning to the
post.
Placed on the tranquilizer chlorpromazine, Mr. H was weaned away from drugs and received
adjunct therapy for some nine months, during which time he continued to hear
disembodied voices and to experience satanic visions. Claiming to be possessed
by the devil, he insisted he had unusual powers. Tests indicated his delusions
were “compatible with acute schizophrenic or toxic psychosis” He was treated
with an antipsychotic drug, and when he improved sufficiently, he was referred
to an outpatient clinic. After only two visits, however, he had stopped
taking the medication and left treatment. Subsequent efforts to contact him
failed.
Another werewolf patient, thirty-seven-year-old Mr. W was admitted to the hospital after
repeated pubic displays of bizarre activity, including howling at the moon, sleeping in cemeteries, allowing his hair
and beard to grow out, and lying in the center of busy highways. Unlike
Mr. H, Mr. W had no history of drug or alcohol abuse. He had once been a farmer
and considered of average intelligence, which was found in an IQ test
administered when he served in the United States Navy. Now, he was seen
not only as psychotic but also as intellectually deficient, with a mental age
of an eight-to ten year-old child.
Because of the
patient’s increasing dementia, the doctors performed a brain biopsy. Their
findings revealed an abnormal physiological deterioration of cerebral tissue,
known as walnut brain. Mr. W was diagnosed as having a chronic brain
syndrome of unknown origin. When placed on antipsychotic drugs, he showed no
further symptoms of lycanthropy. Seen later on an outpatient basis, he
exhibited quiet, childlike behavior.
The October 1977
issue of The American Journal of Psychiatry details the particularly
bizarre story of a forty-nine year-old woman who believed herself a wolf and,
with increasing frequency, had begun acting like one. She revealed that just below the surface of a seemingly normal
twenty-year marriage she had harbored a consuming desire to indulge in secret,
bestial appetites. Her erotic daydreams often involved other women in
polymorphous perverse orgies. The wolf was a constant and central figure in her
fantasies; she felt its mesmerizing stare fastened onto her by day, its hot
breath on her bare neck at night. Soon she began “feeling like an animal with
claws.” For her, the message was clear-she was a wolf.
After a time, she
began to act out her compulsions. At a family gathering, for instance, she was
suddenly overwhelmed by the wolf passion. Stripping naked and dropping to all
fours she excitedly approached her own mother, and assuming the sexual posture
of a female wolf, she offered herself. The woman’s state continued to
deteriorate; the next evening, after making love to her husband, she lapsed
into a frenetic two-hour episode of grunting and of clawing and gnawing at the
bed. She explained afterwards that the devil “come into her body and she
became an animal.”
Enrolled in an
inpatient program, she received daily psychotherapy and was placed on
medication.In the first three weeks she suffered relapses, during which
she would rave: “I am a wolf of the night, I am wolf woman of the day……. I have
claws, teeth, fangs, hair………and anguish is my prey at night………powerless is my
cause. I am what I am and will always roam the earth after death……….I will
continue to search for perfection and salvation.” Concurrently she experienced
the urge to kill accompanied by a consuming sexual excitement.
She now saw the head
of a wolf, rather that her own face, when she gazed in the mirror. The medical
staff commented on “the unintelligible, animal-like noises she made.” There was
some improvement, but the patient then relapsed during the full moon. Writing about her experience, she stated:
“I don’t intend to give up the search for (what) I lack……….in my present
marriage……..my search for such a hairy creature. I will haunt the graveyards
for a tall, dark man that that I intend to find.” After nine weeks of
treatment, she was released from the hospital on a regimen of drugs designed to
free her of her delusion.
On the basis of the
woman’s symptoms, her doctors were able to formulate a psychological profile of
the lycanthrope, which is not so different, in spite of its modern medical
language, from the conclusion of some of the more enlightened physicians and
thinkers of earlier times