This Article  • References  • Full text PDF  • Reply to article  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Citation map  • Citing articles on HighWire  • Citing articles on Web of Science (40)  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Similar articles in this journal  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

An Experimental Study of "Ego-Closeness—Ego-Distance"

HAROLD M. VOTH, M.D.; MARTIN MAYMAN, Ph.D.

Arch Gen Psychiatry. 1963;8(4):366-380.

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

The experiments reported in this paper originated with A. C. Voth's^22,23 discovery, confirmed by him over a period of years, that the extent of autokinesis seen by patients under test conditions is predictably related to the nature of the patient's illness. Some individuals, when placed in a totally darkened room for ten minutes and asked to look steadily at a stationary pinpoint of light,^* will see that light move, while others consistently report no movement at all. A. C. Voth found that state hospital patients who carried diagnoses of alcoholism, hysteria, involutional melancholia, manic-depressive psychosis, paranoid conditions, and psychopathic personality, in the main reported little or no movement of the light in the autokinetic test. Patients with a diagnosis of schizophrenia, obsessional neurosis, or anxiety neurosis reported fairly extensive movement. In his work with normal subjects, A. C. Voth²¹ showed that the autokinetic phenomenon . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

Author Affiliations
TOPEKA, KAN.

Department of Research, The Menninger Foundation (Dr. Voth).

Director of Psychological Training, The Menninger Foundation (Dr. Mayman).

Footnotes
Submitted for publication Nov. 6, 1962.

This investigation was supported by a Public Health Service Research Grant, M-4401(A), from the National Institute of Mental Health, Public Health Service.

The subject is seated at a table nine feet away from a pin point of white light, 0.0006 ft-c. in intensity, in a normally lighted room. Before him is a 22 by 28 in. sheet of paper fastened to a drawing board. The subject is told he will be left alone in a totally darkened room, except for the pinpoint of light, for ten minutes and that he is to look steadily at the light during the entire test period. He is told that the light may or may not appear to move, and should it move, he is to trace its path with a pencil. If the light then stops moving, he is to make a small dot and leave his pencil there, ready to resume tracing the movement if the light starts moving again. Should the pencil reach the edge of the board, he is to start again from the approximate center and proceed as before. The room is not darkened when these instructions are given, and discerning subjects can easily tell that the light is actually a stationary one. No suggestion is given that the light will move; subjects are merely told it may or may not appear to move.

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter     What's this?