[Pathogenesis of obsessional states against a psychopathic background].

The paper is concerned with a clinical study of 37 psychopaths with obsessional symptoms: 24 anancasts and 13 psychasthenics. In 14 patients the obsessional ideas were combined with obsessional actions, in 28 cases there was a defect of integrative automatized motions, in 6 cases--tics, in 2--writing spasms and in 1 case--a spastic torticollis without symptoms of an organic lesion of the nervous system. A hyperkinesis of the tic-type, professional dyskinesia and possibly obsessional actions may be explained by a functional dissociation of the neocrotex with subcortex and limbico-reticular complex. The author discusses the hypotheses of an inborn insufficiency of the latter.