TY  -  JOUR
AU  -  Bandinelli, Pier Luca
AU  -  Trevisi, Manuela
AU  -  Kotzalidis, Giorgio Demetrio
AU  -  Manfredi, Giovanni
AU  -  Rapinesi, Chiara
AU  -  Ducci, Giuseppe
T1  -  Chronic Koro-Like Syndrome (KLS) in recurrent depressive disorder as a variant of Cotard’s delusion in an Italian male patient. <BR>A case report and historical review
PY  -  2011
Y1  -  2011-05-01
DO  -  10.1708/889.9813
JO  -  Rivista di Psichiatria
JA  -  Riv Psichiatr
VL  -  46
IS  -  3
SP  -  220
EP  -  226
PB  -  Il Pensiero Scientifico Editore
SN  -  2038-2502
Y2  -  2026/05/17
UR  -  http://dx.doi.org/10.1708/889.9813
N2  -  SUMMARY. Cotard’s syndrome is a delusional disorder, first described in the 1880ies by Jules Cotard, characterized by the intense nihilistic belief that the patient’s entire body or parts of it are disintegrated or dead. The syndrome is always associated with severe depression. Koro was described a little later from Asia and consisted in the belief that one’s own genitalia are shrinking or disappearing and death will ensue thereafter, but there are many cultural variants and the syndrome may present in an incomplete form. We report a Koro-like syndrome sharing more features with annihilation delusions, such as Cotard’s syndrome. In Koro-like syndromes, the délire de négation may be limited to localized systems or organs. We believe that some complete and incomplete forms of Koro, when embedded in a depressive core, may represent a variant of Cotard’s delusion.<BR>The intense affective condition would restrict consciousness, thereby producing altered perceptual constancy, which in turn would result in a delusional perception of a body segment. In fact, our patient did not reach a complete denial of his entire body, but rather focused on sexual identity.<BR>We analysed the psychosexual issues of our case according to Kretschmer’s 1918 view of a “bipolar setting” between sthenic and asthenic characters of a patient suffering from sensitive delusions of (self-) reference. This view may allow us to relate the personological character to the genetic comprehensibility of the delusion.
ER  -