MIRROR WRITING

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 264, 1 July 1932, Page 8

MIRROR WRITING

STRANGE GASE OF WOMAN WH,0 READ UPSIDE DOWN. • RESULT OF PSYCHIC SHOCK. LONDON, May 7. A case of a woman who wfote back- ' wards, read upside down, and drew upside down oq paper laid flat before her is recorded in the Lancet. D|pscribed as "A Case of PseudoMirror- Writing," it is given by Dr. iRichard Eager, medical superintsndent of the Devon Mental Hospital, and Dr. John W. Fisher, temporary assistant medical officer at the hospital. The patient was a domestie servant of twenty-eight. When abont nineteen she was classified at the Devon Mental Hospital as a congenital mental defecetive. She did not then show any peculiarity of writing. She was discharged over a year later and went into service. A few weeks later she was "taken ill," and rememhered nothing more until next morning. The illness seems to have heen of the nature of a "flt." Some months later she was admitted to a local infirmary. She said "she couldn't think, speak or write, but she could hear . what people said to her." Four mon'ths " h'efore she left she had a "shock" which brought her speech back. After being in an epileptic colony she went back to the infirmary, where it was reported she attempted to strangle herself, and in consequence she was readmitted to the Devon Mental Hospital. When she wrote she started on the customary side of the paper — to the left — and using her right hand made each word hackwards. Each letter symhol, however, was correetly orientated. With her left hand she wrote in the same way, but with less facility. In church she held her prayer hook upside down. In tidying a room vases and photos were put upside down, and pictures reversed upon the walls. Objects from Nature, such as a man, a dog, or a flower pot, she drew upside down with the paper flat before her, but with the paper vertical in front of and parallel with the object she drew normally. She spelt names hackwards almost as quickly as one could spell them forwards. Cure by Hypnotherapy. The doctors helieved that the patient was reading, writing and drawiag "iprimitively"i — lin othter words, she tended to portray an ohject as she saw it rather than as training would cause her to .perceive it. Their view was that the "flt" which occurred after leaving service was the psychic shock that effected the loss of speech and caused the "learned processes," demanding the effectual co-ordination of important centres, to revert to a childish type and that the subsequent "shock" while in the infirmary was sufflcient to restore the former, but not the latter. They helieved that the psychic disturbance was causing her to see objects of the outside world just as they were cast upon the retina unless checked by her intelligence — in other words, unless corrected by reason and common sense. The doctors came to the conclusion that inasmuch as all the available evidence pointed unmistakeably to a functional origin they must perforce class this case in the province of hysteria. After coming to these conclusions they felt in duty bound to establish their diagnosis by a trial of hypnotherapy. The patient was consequently put under light hypnosis, and, while in this state, it was suggested to her that after waking she would write, read, and see everything normally. Before leaving the room she was asked to write the operator's name and address on a slip of paper. This was performed, quite freely and without hesitation, in an ordinary manner. The following morning a letter was received written in the normal way. "There is no doubt now," the doctors reeord in the Lancet, "that the diagnosis has heen clinched. The patient has been discharged from the hospital, and so far as we can tell at present a complete cure has been effected."