| Synonym: | Syndrome of the psychic automatism |
The Kandinsky–Clérambault syndrome or syndrome of the psychic automatism is a psychopathological syndrome, considered to be a typical feature of paranoid schizophrenia and is characterized by pseudohallucinations, delusions of control, telepathy, thought broadcasting and thought insertion by an external force.[1] The syndrome also characterized by delusion of being controlled by a source outside himself.[2] The Kandinsky-Clérambault syndrome is not well known and it is used mainly by Russian, French and German psychiatrists.
The syndrome of Kandinsky–Clérambault is named after Victor Kandinsky and Gaëtan Gatian de Clérambault.Victor Kandinsky (1849–1889), a Russian psychiatrist, was the first to describe the syndrome of psychic automatism by his own subjective personal experiences during his psychotic episode. The syndrome of psychic automatism is described in a Kandinsky's monograph in Russian "On Pseudohallucinations" (Russian: О псевдогаллюцинациях|link=no) published posthumously in 1890 by his wife Elizaveta Freimut. The syndrome is also identified by Gaëtan Gatian de Clérambault (1872–1934), a French psychiatrist who credited with introducing the term "psychic automatism".[3]
Ian McEwan's novel Enduring Love has a victim of the syndrome, a jed Parry, as one of the protagonists. Parry targets and almost destroys the married life of the science journalist he falls in love with. [4] [5]