The Relation of Infantile Convulsions, Head-banging and Breath-holding to Fainting and Headaches in the Parents

The long past and short history of the vocabulary of anglophone psychology.

“…Thus, a word such as schizophrenic (Bleuler, 1912; McNally, 2007) has also come to mean self-contradictory, as in “A recent national opinion survey by Potomac Associates shows a markedly schizophrenic public mood” (Watts, 1974, p. 30). Another example is head-banging (Levy & Patrick, 1928), a worrisome condition that by the 1970s had come to refer to the vigorous head shaking engaged in by heavy-metal enthusiasts (Powers, 2000).…”

Head Banging in Early Childhood: A Suggested Cause

“…Theories regarding etiology of dramatic rhythmic movements can be • Received in the Editorial Office on March 8, 1961. classified under the following general headings: autoerotism (3,12,24), aggression (8,9,10,11), motor release (4,13,14,16,18,19), parent-child relationships (1,8,20), intracranial irritations (2,8,9,10,21).…”

Self-mutilating behavior.

“…From 3 to 12 years the incidence rose to about 45% and thereafter declined. Levy and Patrick (1928) found the incidence of head banging to be 2.6% and 3.8% in the babies seen in two small clinics in Illinois. Kravitz, Rosenthal, Teplitz, Murphy, and Lesser (1960) found head banging in 3.6% of children seen in private practice.…”

“…For many of the measures in this study (amount of separation, number of siblings, adequacy of mother-child relationship) Kravitz et al did not employ a control group, and so some of their results are difficult to interpret. Levy and Patrick (1928) claimed to find an association between the occurrence of breath holding and head banging in children and fainting and periodic headaches in their mothers. Although the association between breath holding in the child and fainting in the mother reached statistical significance, the other associations did not.…”