[Stigmatisation and absence of nutrition in the case of Therese Neumann (1898-1962)]

Therese Neumann, from Konnersreuth in Bavaria, developed stigmata at the age of 29 and allegedly lived without any food for 36 years. After a fire accident in 1918, she suffered from paralysis, deafness, and blindness. Later she developed stigmata on her extremities and left side of the thorax, bleeding lesions in the skin, bleeding in the eye region, and altered states of consciousness in the form of "visions" of religious content. On the basis of a report by her physician, Dr. Otto Seidl, to the Bishopric Ordinariate of Regensburg (1927) and a manuscript for presentation before the Catholic Medical Society of the Netherlands (1928) Seidl had no doubt of the authenticity of these phenomena, and he diagnosed hysteria. While under surveillance by four nuns for 14 days, Neumann exhibited no intake of nourishment; weight measurements and urine tests however suggest the opposite. Investigation in a clinic was refused. Her case is interpreted here in the light of contemporary psychiatry. As far as medical records go, Therese Neumann's is one of a series of surprisingly similar cases of stigmata development, conversion disorder, and alleged absence of nutrition. In nosological terms, these would be classified today as dissociative disorders.