„Hypermetamorphosis“

Abstract

The term "hypermetamorphosis" was originally coined in 1859 by an almost forgotten psychiatrist from Breslau, now Wroclaw in Poland, Heinrich Wilhelm Neumann. The 1906 textbook of his assistant Wernicke transmitted the concept to Klüver and Bucy, who understood it as the "excessive tendency to take notice of and to attend and react to every visual stimulus" in their syndrome description of bitemporal lobectomy in the monkey (1937-1939). Hypermetamorphosis so far has not been properly operationalized, and the concept appears outdated. Components such as "compulsive manipulation", "magnet reaction/groping", "compulsive grasping/grasp reflex", "utilization behavior", and "environmental dependency syndrome" can be better delineated and are commonly seen in frontal rather than temporal lesions. They may occur with frontal contusion, anterior cerebral artery infarction, in diseases of the Pick complex, and basal ganglia neurodegeneration.

Who says this is a modern disorder? The early history of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder

“…Neumann also described eloquently the ambiguous feelings these children in their parents [28] . The term was later adopted by Wernicke, who was one of his assistants, but exclusively for psychotic children [68] . The emergence in France of the concept of ADHD according to modern terminology may stem from the concept of "mental instability" (Table 1) introduced in 1885 by Désiré-Magloire Bourneville at the Hospital Bicêtre in Paris, following his observations of children and adolescents who had been labeled ''abnormal'' and placed in medical and educational institutions [69] .…”