More from the OpEd ...
... Kraepelin, of Munich, helped lay the groundwork for modern psychiatry. Chief among his contributions are his descriptions of "mixed states" in manic depression (known today as bipolar disorder).
People with bipolar disorder do not toggle between euphoria (mania) and gloom (depression). Elements of both states can be suffered at once.
Extreme anxiety, for example, can produce excitement and depression together -- a mixed state.
In reading Kraepelin's book, one cannot help but notice that over and over again he is describing Donald Trump. Most of this column will simply quote Kraepelin, from R. Mary Barclay's translation of "Manic Depressive Insanity and Paranoia," (Ayer Co., 1987).
Anyone who reads the news can fill in the blanks.
"(T)he delusion formation peculiar to paranoia ... may develop in the two fundamental directions of ideas of injury and of exaltation. ... At first it remains within the limits of suspicious conjectures, arrogant and overweening self-conceit; but these draw ever-fresh nourishment from the prejudiced evaluation of the experiences of life, and they become more and more fixed. ... The patients become arrogant and high flown; when they are contradicted, or on other trifling occasions, they fall into measureless fury, which is discharged in outbursts of rank abuse."
In mixed-state insanity, patients "display exalted self-consciousness, are pretentious and high-flown, but by no means of cheerful mood; they rather appear dissatisfied, insufferable, perhaps even a little anxious. They have something to find fault with in everything, feel themselves on every occasion badly treated ...
"Mood is permanently exalted, careless, confident. The patients have very marked self-confidence, put an extremely high value on their own capabilities and performances, boast with the most obvious exaggeration. They wholly lack understanding for the morbid imperfection of their temperament. Rather they are convinced of their superiority to their surroundings."
Kraepelin calls this a "grumbling mania." ...
