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A Measure of Ego Strength?

JAN EHRENWALD, M.D.

Arch Gen Psychiatry. 1962;7(1):30-38.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

In February, 1959, a schizophrenic patient of mine, a man of 30, was fitted with eye glasses to correct his myopia. On the way from the optician to my office he had a brief episode of depersonalization: "I felt in my skin there was a different person. ... If I wrote my name I'd have asked myself: Who is this guy? To tell the truth, I felt quite uncomfortable." As it turned out, my patient's myopia had been slightly overcorrected. It was this chance observation which gave rise to the present study. It raised the question whether there was a causal connection between the patient's passing state of depersonalization and the slight distortion of his visual world caused by the new eye glasses.

To test this hypothesis I designed a simple experimental procedure. A random selection of patients from the Psychiatric Service of Roosevelt Hospital and . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

Author Affiliations
NEW YORK

Attending Psychiatrist; Chief, Adult Psychiatric Outpatients Service, The Roosevelt Hospital, New York City.

Footnotes
Submitted for publication May 8, 1961.

I am indebted to Dr. David L. Krohn, of the New York Eye and Ear Infirmary for his help in developing the optical accessories for the VDT and for his guidance in evaluating its ophthalmological aspects.

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