Zelig syndrome
Ingrid. Ingrid Bersenda
In Woody Allen's film 1983 is told the history of a affectionate man from a surprising mental disorder which forces him to assume the identity of those in front of him.
In psychiatry and psychology there have been many cases of patients who after a brain injury have transformed their personality in a manner irreversible and unrecognizable and they started to suffer from severe psychiatric disorders.
Already in 1868 Harlow (Harlow J. – Recovery from the passage on iron barb trough the head. Pubblications of the Massachussets Medical Society 1868;2:327- 346.) reported the description of the behavioral changes resulting from an extended frontal damage of a patient who, during a work accident, fu hit by an iron bar that it penetrated the lower part of the brain, injuring the orbito-medial regions of both frontal lobes. Before of this trauma the patient had been described as a efficient man; later was described as inconstant, capricious, voluble, irreverent, prone to the heaviest obscenities, intolerant constraints or advice, ostinato.
Psychologists in Naples for a few years Seashell, Della Rocca and others they discovered the case of A.D., a patient of 65 years than having had damage to the frontal-temporal lobe developed a syndrome similar to that of Zelig: at the bar he became a barman, the kitchen became a cook and changed behavior, depending on the context in which it was located. It became like Zelig is one, none and a hundred thousand.
A.D. he forgets the identity he just assumed when he assumes the next one, even if it remains observable, even through its chameleon-like psychological features, the red thread of his personality and character.
It is said to be a chameleon, because like chameleons, it was transformed and adapted in an extreme way to the environment in which it was located.
A.D is different from patients with environmental dependence syndrome, also called use syndrome The usage behavior, that they imitate the gestures of their interlocutors, or they tend to use all the objects in front of them.
Its special feature is the total and omnipervasive immersion in a context, as if he had lost the ability to keep one's identity constant and over-adapt to roles (and not to simple stimuli) proposed from time to time by’ environment that surrounds it.
In the case of patient A.D. examination showed that he suffered from severe autobiographical memory disorders (that which allows you to remember the salient episodes of your existence), confabulations (that is, incoherent and out of context speeches) and anosognosia (lack of awareness of one's illness).
Zelig syndrome is not actually considered in the DSM-IV Manual (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of mental disorders o "Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders") among the psychiatric disorders where disorders such as anorexia are classified, the bulimia, neuroses and more, since the zelig cases are few in history.
Allen's Leonard Zelig is literally the projected image of others, a mirror that gives people back their own image and depends in part on the environment in which it is located. In fact Leonard Zelig was born in New York, and it was son of a matriarch and a failed Yiddish actor, he is a poor fellow with an insatiable thirst for affection, which dates back to his sad childhood as an outcast Jew. Instead of caresses and kisses he received an overabundance of beatings. Questa carenza affettiva portò Zelig a identificarsi psicologicamente e fisicamente con le persone che incontra: the emotional deficiency he suffered in family and social relationships influenced his life.
The family relational system in which he lived did not allow him to be listened to and loved and this led him to need to inexorably seek the approval of others.
Today day we often see cases of people who tend to want to adapt to the environment in which it is locatedno, they imitate fashions and models in an extreme way. This is inevitably stimulated by the mass media, but there is one neurological predisposition or systemic relational to influence The true phenomena of imitation needs. Surely the children who have the possibility of living in environments ready for affection e listening and where they are clear values, based on loyalty and more, there is less chance of getting to the pathological.
