Heboid syndrome can conditionally be attributed to syndromes of distorted (disharmonious) development. This can be explained by the relatively late manifestation of pathology - most often during puberty.
The syndrome is characterized by pronounced manifestations of distortion, destruction or loss of certain components of the personality, which brings it closer to psychopathic states and distinguishes it from psychopathic syndromes. The occurrence of this ailment and the role of mental development in its origin are not well understood.
So, according to BiB.social, heboid syndrome is a system of symptoms characterized by painful sharpening and distortion of emotional-volitional personal qualities, characteristic mainly for adolescence. For the first time, the syndrome was described in 1890 by K. Kahlbaum, who designated it with the term "heboidophrenia" in connection with symptoms similar to hebophrenia.
What is the syndrome manifested in?
Pronounced psychopathological features of the heboid syndrome:
- disinhibited state, perversion of primitive drives, especially sexual;
- the disappearance or distortion of moral attitudes (the concept of good and evil, legal and behavioral) and the tendency in this regard to antisocial and illegal actions;
- dulling of emotions with the absence or decline of such higher emotional manifestations as a feeling of pity, sympathy, compassion;
- increased emotional excitability with a tendency to aggressive behavior;
- expressed egocentrism and desire to satisfy the lowest needs, criticism with a special desire to resist accepted social attitudes and behavioral norms;
- loss of interest in any work activity, especially training.
Many scientists have studied the heboid syndrome, its psychopathology and its manifestations in various diseases. Little is described of the dynamics of development, mainly with schizophrenia in adolescents and young people.
Children's age and syndrome
How does heboid syndrome manifest itself in children?
Studies show that the syndrome is often preceded by childhood behavior disorders, especially a sadistic perversion of sexual desire, a desire to mock loved ones, harm adults and children, mock animals, experiencing pleasure, the desire for anything that can cause disgust or disgust in many people. Children enjoy playing with worms, caterpillars, spiders, and rummage around in garbage cans and dumps for hours.
They have a special attitude to different emotions, to negative events and incidents (traffic accident, quarrels, fighting, killing, fire). Psychopathology can also be expressed in a tendency to theft, leaving home, cruel acts, gluttony. Other components of this syndrome are often added to impaired attraction in children: incomprehensible obstinacy, tendency to contradict adults, lack of pity for others.
When can such an ailment appear for the first time?
Geboid manifestations can occur long before adolescence, sometimes already at the end of preschool and primary school age. However, more often, heboid syndrome in children is first detected in adolescence. This occurs, as a rule, with the disharmonious development of sexual desire. Observations show that heboid disorders that occurred in childhood are significantly exacerbated and actively formed under the influence of accelerated puberty.
The most common manifestations of the syndrome
With the manifestation of heboid syndrome in adolescence, as in the cases of the earlier occurrence of such disorders, the pathology of drives in the form of their amplification and distortion comes to the fore. Teenagers increase their sexuality, they masturbate vigorously, often without even hiding it, they enjoy talking about sex, become cynical, often use indecent expressions, tend to have sex, and sometimes show different sexual perversions.
In addition, they show distinctive signs of a perversion of sexual desire, often a sadistic one, which is primarily directed primarily against relatives, especially against the mother. Teenagers are constantly trying to do everything to show anger, mock, terrorize and beat members of their family. Perversion of instincts includes increased aggressiveness, lack of squeamishness, rejection of hygiene, untidiness.
Differences from other forms of pathologies
A comparative age-related analysis of heboid disorders in children, performed in different periods of adolescence, indicates that the main component of the described syndrome is behavioral disorders that increase with age.
The dynamics of the heboid syndrome varies depending on the form in which it occurs. In borderline disorders, in particular psychopathies and organic psychopathic conditions, such manifestations can often be smoothed out towards the end of adolescence or during adolescence. With schizophrenia, the symptoms of heboid persist for 15-20 years.
Heboid syndrome is especially characteristic in its most common form in the continuous sluggish course of schizophrenia and the initiation of other forms with manifestation in adolescence. It has been suggested that some prolonged geboid states are an atypical manifestation of schizophrenia. According to some authors, the syndrome can also be noticeable at the initial stage of paranoid and retrograde schizophrenia.
What are the causes of pathology?
The causes of heboid syndrome are not fully understood. It is described in psychopathies and psychopathic conditions caused by brain infections and injuries. However, often psychopathic individuals with manifestations of a geoid are included in the group of so-called asocial or emotionally stupid. Due to age-related changes, the separation of the geboid states with various classification forms is very difficult. In the differential diagnosis in most cases, one has to look not so much at the classification differences of the syndrome as at the associated symptoms and the clinical picture of the disease as a whole, including the dynamics described above.
Schizophrenia and Heboid Syndrome
They often go near. With schizophrenia, the syndrome manifests itself in a particularly pronounced perversion of sexual desire with strong sadistic actions with emotional coldness. Autistic behavior, various thinking disorders, unreasonable mood swings with bouts of fear and anxiety, alternating anger and irritation with strange jokes, mannerisms, grimaces (similar to manifestations of geoidoid phrenia), autistic components of fantasies, rudimentary productive symptoms (delirium, episodic relationship ideas) are also noted . In the case of a stage of teenage retrograde schizophrenia, the appearance of heboid disorders is preceded by pronounced negative symptoms.
The study of the syndrome
Features of the heboid syndrome in psychopathy are poorly understood. Manifestations of geboids are associated with age, and, according to statistics, most often such deviations are observed in males. At the same time, literature data indicate the possibility of more or less pronounced heboid states as a method of sexual decompensation in some developing psychopathies (mainly in the group of excitable and hyperthymic). In such cases, there are mainly pathologies of exacerbation and unsharp distortion of personality changes in adolescents, mainly emotional and volitional, which are described earlier.
In the described development system, not only sadistic and perverse inclinations prevail, but also increased drives. Rudeness, severity, affective outbursts, aggression arise under the influence of various situations, such as manifestations of pathological reactions of protest, unreasonable or for an insignificant reason, and not against an emotionally cold background. Opposition to parents is associated with reactions of independence with a painful and heightened desire for independence and does not have the nature of constant actions, physical and moral bullying, characteristic of a patient with schizophrenia and with this syndrome.
Deviant behavior
Forms of antisocial behavior - vagrancy, sexual licentiousness, alcohol abuse, theft - are manifested in connection with increased drives and a special tendency to imitate reactions. They are more common in asocial groups of adolescents. This behavior is formed under the influence of a negative society, observed in the illegal or criminal actions of adolescents with schizophrenia.
Often, the geboid syndrome in adolescents with emerging psychopathy does not imply the development of a tendency to isolation, disordered thinking, complex pathological fantasies, rudimentary perception and delusional disorders, episodes of anxiety and fear inherent in a schizophrenic patient with the described syndrome. Such a condition with severe psychopathy usually does not go beyond adolescence.
With stable asocial and delinquent behavior, the result of such conditions is usually safe, does not leave defects in the emotional-volitional sphere.
Defect of high personal qualities
Heboid syndrome is characterized in situations of psychopathological conditions by an initially obvious defect of higher personal qualities:
- lack of criticism
- lack of sense of distance
- gross violation of higher emotions (including moral and intellectual),
- sharp disinhibition of lower drives in the form of undisguised masturbation,
- gluttony.
Asocial actions in such patients, as a rule, are impulsive or are performed under external influence.
There may be other signs: mood swings from euphoria to irritability, exhaustion, mental inertia. Often there may be vegetative disorders: endocrine pathology (obesity, hypertrichosis), hydrocephalus with hypertension.
The difference between heboid syndrome and schizophrenia is the absence of acute behavior, special thinking disorders, lower pathological fantasies or other symptoms.
Separate manifestations of a geoid associated with disinhibition of drives and an exacerbation of some features of the teenage psyche can occur in children with rapid puberty of an organic nature. These include clinical disorders, increased aggressiveness, a tendency to vagrancy, and some other anti-social behavior (petty theft, alcohol consumption) in boys and emotionality combined with a very high sexual desire with sexual licentiousness in girls. However, these manifestations are only a separate component of the heboid syndrome, not associated with it with a specific pathological picture.
Pathology therapy
The treatment of heboid syndrome is symptomatic. It does not exclude the use of tranquilizers and sedatives. The prognosis of treatment depends on the dynamics of the underlying disease. In a severe, low-progressing form of schizophrenia with the end of adolescence, a marked decrease in the syndrome can be observed, and social and labor adaptation can be restored. Heboid syndrome is usually not repeated, but those who have suffered it can observe personality distortion with obvious signs of developmental delay, the appearance of the strangest individual properties and emotional-volitional qualities.