ABSTRACT
The patient is a 36-year-old bachelor, the youngest of four brothers and sisters who are, respectively, four, five, and six years older than him. The second sister was diagnosed as schizophrenic and required hospital treatment. The mother, suffering from severe hypochondria, was hardly capable of attending to him as a baby as her hypochondriac state had been very much aggravated by the pregnancy. During the five years that followed his birth, she underwent several operations for cholecystectomy, laparotomy, and hysterectomy, all of which were attributed to the act of giving birth to Casimiro. As a baby he was looked after by his grandparents, with whom his parents had lived since their marriage. When the patient was 1 year old, the grandparents forced the parents to go and live elsewhere; from then on he was looked after by a woman to whose house his mother took him in the mornings and from where she collected him after work late in the evening. He didn't play with other children. At school he often hid from the other children and the teacher, or ran away complaining that the others said or did things to annoy him. He learned things by himself and on his own, rather than in the classroom. At age 12, he was sent to the city to live with an aunt and uncle and was put to work
