PERSONALITY IN EPILEPSY

Abstract

Three groups of epileptic out-patients (juvenile myoclonic epilepsy, psychomotor epilepsy and cryptogenic grand mal) were studied. The groups were matched as closely as possible with each other with regard to sex, age and treatment. Out-patients suffering from Meniere''s disease served as a control group; these patients were treated with placebo and matched with the epilepsy groups with regard to sex, duration of disease and social level. The Marke-Nyman inventory was used as a quantitative assessment of personality traits. This inventory is an operative definition of Sjobring''s neurophysiological model of personality, including the 3 dimensions: validity, stability and solidity. Epileptic patients, irrespective of the type of seizures, were substable. Low validity was found in patients with juvenile myoclonic epilepsy and in patients with psychomotor epilepsy with temporal EEG focus. In those latter epilepsy groups a tendency to subsolidity was also observed. In Sjobring''s frame of reference these substable patients of low validity had a psychological vulnerability since they were unable to overcome the small concrete adversities of life. They adhered to problems, and being unable to solve them, they tended to react in a mood of discontent or of maladjustment. In the usual psychiatric frame of reference substable patients of low validity were classified as psychoasthenic patients with emotional instability.