A rare case of cat possession was resported for evaluating it’s psychodynamic meaning and possible correlation to ethnic tradition in Korea. The case was a 22 year old, unmarried Korean, female from a rural area, who had been mentally deficient in IQ 60. After death of her grandmother who had intimate relation to the case, she had suffered from ]c-wer atccrriral j£in, frcie x ia sr.d loss of weight. Ordinary rredical tieatrrent, herb medicine, accupuncture and sharranistic healing ceremony failed in improving the distress. During that period, she had synchronously perceived voice of cat-crying and her deceased grandmother’s figure in her hallucination, and become interested in ghcst stories. After two months of ailrrent, she frequently cried like a cat with scratching posture of a cat. She always responded to her family’s approach with cat crying voice and scratching posture. Chlorpromazine and 8 times of electroshcck therapy resulted in a recovery. Her complicated feelings of love and hate toward her grandmother and hostility toward her survived famaily members were considered to be a principal unconscious motive. Symbolic meaning of a cat could be epitomized as representative of uncanny evil or undesirable female sex from the case’s own feeling as well as from the folkloric materials of Korea and the other countries. This report of animal possession was presumed to be the first case in Korea, because the animal possession had been hardly considered to exist in Korea. (The authors wish to thank Prof. Bin Kimura, Nagoya City University, because he sent us many articles related to animal possession in Japan.)
머 릿 말
症 例
考 察
結 論
References