Heboid syndrome can conditionally be attributed to syndromes of distorted (disharmonious) development. This can be explained by the relatively late manifestation of the 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 disease and the role of mental development in its origin are not well understood.
Thus, according to BiB.social, heboid syndrome is a system of symptoms characterized by painful sharpening and distortion of emotional-volitional personal qualities, which are mainly characteristic of adolescence. The syndrome was first described in 1890 by K. Kahlbaum, who designated it by the term "heboidophrenia" in connection with symptoms similar to hebophrenia.
What is the syndrome?
Expressedpsychopathological features of heboid syndrome:
- disinhibited state, perversion of primitive drives, especially sexual ones;
- disappearance or distortion of moral attitudes (the concept of good and evil, legal and behavioral) and a tendency in this regard to antisocial and illegal actions;
- dulling of emotions with the absence or decline of such higher emotional manifestations as a sense of pity, sympathy, compassion;
- increased emotional excitability with a tendency to aggressive behavior;
- pronounced egocentrism and the 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 learning.
Many scientists have studied the heboid syndrome, its psychopathology and its manifestations in various diseases. There is little description of the developmental dynamics, mainly in schizophrenia in adolescents and young adults.
Children's age and syndrome
How does heboid syndrome manifest itself in children?
Studies show that the syndrome is often preceded by behavioral disturbances in childhood, especially sadistic perversion of sexual desire, cravings to mock loved ones, to harm other adults and children, to mock animals, experiencing pleasure, desire for anything that can cause disgust or disgust in many people. Children enjoy playing with worms, caterpillars, spiders, rummaging through garbage cans for hours andlandfills.
They have a special attitude to different emotions, to negative events and incidents (traffic accident, quarrels, struggle, murder, fire). Psychopathology can also be expressed in a tendency to theft, leaving the house, cruel deeds, gluttony. Other components of this syndrome are often added to the attraction disorders in children: incomprehensible stubbornness, a tendency to contradict adults, lack of pity for others.
When can such an ailment first appear?
Heboid manifestations can occur long before adolescence, sometimes as early as 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 arose 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 cases of earlier occurrence of such disorders, the pathology of drives comes to the fore in the form of their amplification and perversion. Adolescents become more sexual, they masturbate vigorously, often without even hiding it, they are happy to talk about sex, become cynical, often use obscene language, seek sex, sometimes show various sexual perversions.
In addition, they havethe hallmarks of a perversion of sexual desire, often sadistic, which at first is directed mainly against relatives, especially against the mother. Teenagers all the time try to do everything to show anger, mock, terrorize and beat their family members. The perversion of instincts includes increased aggressiveness, lack of disgust, refusal of hygiene, untidiness.
Differences from other forms of pathology
A age-comparative 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 heboid syndrome varies depending on the form in which it occurs. In borderline disorders, in particular psychopathy and organic psychopathic states, such manifestations can often be smoothed out by the end of adolescence or during adolescence. In schizophrenia, heboid symptoms 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 also been suggested that some prolonged heboid states are an atypical manifestation of schizophrenia. According to some authors, the syndrome may 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 psychopathy and psychopathic conditions caused by brain infections and trauma. However, often psychopathic individuals with manifestations of the heboid are included in the group of so-called antisocial or emotionally stupid. Due to age-related changes, separating geboid states with different classification forms is very difficult. In a differentiated diagnosis, in most cases, one has to look not so much at the classification differences of the syndrome, but 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 side by side. In 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, alternation of anger and irritation with strange jokes, mannerism, grimaces (similar to manifestations of heboidophrenia), autistic fantasy components, rudimentary productive symptoms (delusions, episodic ideas of relationships) are also noted.. In the case of the stage of adolescent retrograde schizophrenia, the onset of heboid disorders is preceded by severe negative symptoms.
Syndrome knowledge
Features of the heboid syndrome in psychopathy have been little studied. The manifestations of heboids are associated with age, and, according to statistics, most oftensuch 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 psychopathy (mainly in the group of excitable and hyperthymic ones). In such cases, there are mainly pathologies of exacerbation and unsharp distortion of adolescent personality shifts, mainly emotional-volitional, which are described earlier.
In the described development system, not only sadistic and perverted inclinations predominate, but also increased inclinations. Rudeness, sharpness, affective outbursts, aggression arise under the influence of various situations, as manifestations of pathological protest reactions, 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 increased 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 promiscuity, alcohol abuse, theft - are manifested in connection with increased drives and a particular tendency to imitate reactions. They are more common in antisocial groups of adolescents. This behavior is formed under the influence of negative society, observed in the illegal or criminal actions of adolescents with schizophrenia.
Often heboid syndrome in adolescents withemerging psychopathy does not imply the development of a tendency to isolation, thought disorder, complex pathological fantasy, rudimentary perception and delusional disorders, episodes of anxiety and fear inherent in a patient with schizophrenia with the described syndrome. This condition in severe psychopathy usually does not go beyond adolescence.
With stable antisocial and delinquent behavior, the result of such states is usually safe, does not leave defects in the emotional-volitional sphere.
High Personality Defect
Heboid syndrome is characterized in situations of psychopathological conditions by an initially obvious defect of higher personal qualities:
- lack of criticism,
- no sense of distance,
- gross violation of higher emotions (including moral and intellectual),
- a sharp disinhibition of the lower drives in the form of undisguised masturbation,
- gluttony.
Asocial actions in these patients are usually impulsive or driven by outside influences.
There may be other signs: mood swings from euphoria to irritability, exhaustion, mental inertia. Vegetative disorders can often occur: endocrine pathology (obesity, hypertrichosis), hydrocephalus with hypertension.
The difference between heboid syndrome and schizophrenia is the absence of acute behavior, special thinking disorders, inferior pathological fantasies or other symptoms.
Separate manifestations of the heboid, associated with the disinhibition of drives and the exacerbation of certain features of the teenage psyche, may be in children with rapid puberty of an organic nature. These include clinical disorders, increased aggressiveness, vagrancy and some other antisocial behavior (petty theft, alcohol consumption) in boys, and emotionality combined with very high sexual desire with sexual promiscuity in girls. However, these manifestations are only a separate component of the heboid syndrome, not associated with it by a specific pathological picture.
Pathology Therapy
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 noticeable decrease in the syndrome can be observed, and social and labor adaptation may be restored. Heboid syndrome usually does not recur, but in those who have suffered it, one can observe a distortion of the personality with obvious signs of developmental delay, the appearance of the strangest individual properties and emotional-volitional qualities.
