VESTIBULAR REACTIVITY IN SCHIZOPHRENIA

Abstract

In a series of papers, 1 Angyal has described a syndrome occurring in a certain form of schizophrenia and consisting essentially of a particular type of dissociation, which has been called loss of ego reference. An outstanding feature of the syndrome is the constant occurrence of paresthesias: bizarre changes in the experience of the body—a subjective impression of excessive lightness or heaviness, of changes in the size of the body and other distortions of the body image. According to Angyal, these paresthesias are due to changes in the muscle tonus, which become dissociated in conjunction with the dissociation of complex behavior tendencies. The explanation of these paresthesias on the basis of changes in the muscle tonus was supported also by the fact that it was possible to produce experimentally similar changes in the experience of the body in normal subjects by introducing passive changes in muscle tonus. Such experimentally produced