ABSTRACT
In a congress presentation in 1868, then later in a paper published in 1874, Kahlbaum described catatonia as a particular form of psychic and muscular disorder. He identified the four fundamental symptoms: catalepsy, negativism, hyperkinesia, and organic-vegetative disorders. Negativism is a disorder of activity in which there is passive or active resistance to any prompting from the internal or external world. Examples of negativism include refusal to take food or to answer questions, urinary and faecal retention, motor inertia, and contradictory movements. Bleuler (1950) added the idea of interned negativism: the ego's opposition to feelings and instinctual drives is based on a contradiction between an impulse and what Kraepelin (1907) called a counter-impulse. Many psychoanalysts have explored catatonia. Nunberg highlights two features common to both catatonia and hysteria: dramatization and anxiety. The difference between the two is an economic one.
