[Freedom in disorders of the mind and spirit]

The much used and popular word "freedom" is being examined as to its significance and in that context the peculiar expression "freedom of will" is also brought into the discussion. In the course of this clarification, philosophy, jurisprudence, poetic-literary and our everyday language all had to lend a hand. In its application to psychic abnormal and sick persons one finds that in the endogenous psychoses, because of the profound change of existence, some patients experience the freedom of being for the very first time; this, however, can in the course of the illness turn into its opposite.