憑依症狀을 수반한 精神科 患者의 臨床的 考察

Clinical Investigation of Psychiatric Inpatients with Possession Symptoms

The authors examined a group of psychiatric inpatients of neuropsychiatric department of Seoul National University Hospital who had possession symptoms in order to elucidate the clinical, psychopathological and sociodemographic characteristics of the group. Four cases of possession were presented to analyse the meaning of possession symptom. The results are as follows : 1) Among 2813 patients who had admitted to SNUH from Jan 1，1981 to Dec 31，1989， 22 cases had possession symptoms. The incidence was 0.78% of all admisstion during that period. 77.3 % of the possessed patients were females. The majority of them were in their twenties and were grown up in the urban area and came from middle class. Almost of them had no specific occupation and were Christians. 2) Most of them had precipitating factors before onset and showed relatively good outcome. 3) The objects of possession were the souls of the dead in 34%, demons and devils and Christian deities in 34%, shamanistic deities in 23.4% and living persons in S.5%. 4) When the types of possession experience were classified into Spirit Possession (SP) and Spirit Intrusion(Sl) according to Clements, the number of SP cases were 7. All SP cases were females. They were diagnosed as Dissociative Disorders(2 cases), Brief Reactive Psychoses(2 cases), Atypical Psychosis(l case), Major Depression(l case) and Schizophrenia(1 Case). Most of the Schizophrenic patients(l2 cases) belonged to SI group. 5) Religious background of the possession cases seems to be relatd with the development of possession symptoms and the coloring of their contents.