[The syndrome of depressive depersonalization]

Nineteen patients (9 men, 10 women aged 22--38 years) with depressions were examined. The phenomena of anesthesia of ideatoric functions dominated in clinical picture of such depression. This depression is defined as the depression of estrangement. Psychopathologic differentiation of mental estrangement in the structure of depression and in similar disorders of self-consciousness which were formed in depressions under conditions of "transitional syndrome" (according to G.Gross) is outlined. This syndrome is characterised by irreversible negative disorders of "defective depersonalization". The following signs permit to distinguish depression of estrangement from "transitional syndrome": partiality of the estrangement's phenomenon; connection between psychopathologic formations and pathology of imagination (figurative expressiveness, demonstrativity, lability to psychogenic and medical actions); conformity of the syndrome's structure and characteristics of premanifested personality's structure (combination of hyperthymic features with histrionic and/or narcissic ones). "Apperceptive anesthesia" is suggested for designation of the variant of the depression described.