Effects of intensive psychotherapy on epileptic children; report on three children with idiopathic epilepsy.

Abstract

THE PSYCHIATRIC study of genuine epilepsy has produced information which strongly suggests that psychologic factors play a role in the elaboration or exacerbation of epileptic phenomena. The literature on psychopathology of epilepsy has been thoroughly reviewed elsewhere.1Various studies, mostly clinical, have led to the development and elaboration of hypotheses concerning the psychobiological functions of both the aura2and the seizure manifestations.3 If psychopathological hypotheses of the origin of the epileptic syndrome have some basis in fact, there should be a possibility through psychologic means of modifying the frequency and/or form of the seizures in certain epileptic patients. The neurophysiological correlates of epileptogenic phenomena, such as the electroencephalogram, may possibly also be modifiable through psychologic means. Barker and Barker4and others, for instance, have collected evidence that exploratory psychologic investigations may modify the cerebral bioelectric activity of known epileptic patients. They have interviewed epileptic subjects during