Table 1.

The Author, Diagnosis, Country of Origin, Year of Publication, and Description of the Schneiderian First-Rank Symptoms as Described in Texts Published From 1810 to 1932

Author	Diagnosis	Country	Year	Description of the Symptoms	Form(s) of Specific Symptom
Haslam38	A case of insanity	UK	1810	Kiteing … is a very singular and distressing modes of assailment … as boys raise a kite … so these wretches, by means of the air-loom and magnetic impregnations contrive to lift into the brain some particular idea which floats or undulates in the intellect for hours…. Lobster-cracking—an external pressure of the magnetic atmosphere surrounding the person assailed so as to stagnate his circulation, imped his vital motions … “Thought- making”—while one of these villains is sucking at the brain of the person assailed to extract his existing sentiments, another of the gang … will force into his mind a train of ideas very different from the real subject of his thoughts … brain-sayings which may be defined a sympathetic communication of thought in consequence of both parts being impregnated with the magnetic fluid … it is not hearing but appears to be a silent conveyance of intelligence … but the person assailed is conscious that the perception is not in the regular succession of his own thoughts. (pp. 31, 32, 34, 35, 38, 39)	Thought insertion Thought withdrawal Somatic passivity
Prichard43	Monomania	UK	1837	Bodily sufferings are as numerous as they are strange and surprising. I well remember a lunatic who … fancied that the physician to whose care he was confided had the power of torturing him by electricity, and that invisible wires were spread through every part of the house as conductors of the fluid, which was used at night as the instrument of cruel and tyrannical persecution. (p. 34)	Somatic passivity
Esquirol44	Lypemania [melancholia], general insanity	France	1838 (1845)	A young man thinks himself subjected to electrical action which causes his sufferings. A woman attributes her sleeplessness and unpleasant feeling to magnetizers. (p. 40). This lypemaniac thinks that he is subject to the deadly influence of electricity or magnetism. By certain occult instruments, physical science is preparing for him a thousand ills, hears whatever he utters, however great the distance or even divines his thoughts. (p. 207)	Somatic passivity
Leidesdorf45	Insanity (mental states of weakness)	Austria	1857	Someone relentlessly crams a stream of foreign thoughts into me. This stops me from doing whatever I need to do that day…. (See ref. 45, p. 212). The magnetic state into which I was born should have remained a secret in order not to be martyred through its sympathetic effects on insane people, and thereby not constantly reminded of my unhappiness. Instead I am driven about at the disposal of every sort of physical experiment without any rights to protection. (See ref. 45, p. 213)	Thought insertion Somatic passivity
Griesinger47	Mental depression	Germany	1861 (1867)	The higher degrees of hypochondria, too, gradually pass, partly through increase of the feeling of anxiety, partly through the fixing of certain attempts at explanation, not only into true melancholia, but even complicated with delusions (ideas of being surrounded by an invisible agency, of being the victim of evil machinations, influenced by magnetism, & c.). (p. 215). [Griesinger described the cases of Matthews and Krauß—see table 3—as examples of “systematically developed and dramatized delusions of physical and mental interference.” (See ref. 47, p. 33)	Passivity of unknown type
Fisher48	Insanity	USA	1872	Reason is slowly eclipsed, and he seeks unreal causes for his misery, in the frown of God, or the machinations of his enemies. He attributes his bodily discomfort to magnetism, or spiritualism, or other forms of unseen agency. (p. 33)	Somatic passivity
Kahlbaum49,50	Catatonia	Germany	1874	He spoke about a secret machine, electrical or otherwise, that causes these complaints (headaches … someone sticking a needle into his head) …. He accused the physician of … trephining him with his electrical machine. (p. 43)	Somatic Passivity
Worcester51	Partial intellectual mania/monomania	USA	1882	In our day, the new forms of government, the watchfulness exercised over all citizens; the new and wonderful discoveries in physics and chemistry have given rise to the belief in persecution by the police and detectives, and that one is a victim to the mysterious tortures of electricity and magnetism. (p. 235)	Somatic passivity Passivity of unknown type
Hammond52	Intellectual monomania	USA	1883	It is not at all uncommon for the victims of delusions of persecution to imagine that they are being acted upon by some occult influence, or by some one of the forces of nature, as heat, magnetism, or electricity … the patient … had delusion that unknown enemies—freemasons—were acting on him by electricity, which they sent into his brain, through the top of his head, by powerful batteries which they had in their lodge-rooms. (p. 345)	Somatic passivity Passivity of unknown type
Meynert53	Paranoia	Austria	1884	After spending time in a Berlin asylum, a 38-year- old journalist relapses. A secret society follows him. Spies precede him when he travels…. He is a mere “keyboard” upon which the others play…. At night the others weaken him through artificial sweat, and during the day, they make him sleepy through dispensing narcotics that operate from a distance. … [Meynert comments]: Clearly this patient has hypochondriacal sensations, which combine with anxiety to produce the ongoing delusions of external influence and his persecutory state. (See ref. 53, pp. 148–149)	Somatic passivity
Kraepelin42,55,56	Primäre Verrücktheit and Dementia Praecox	Germany	1883– 1899	1st edition (1883)—Patients experience “inner” voices, “mind speech”, “telegraphy”, … with the help of magnetic machines, they can swap his limbs around, empty out his brain, extract his semen, or, by means of magical incantations, withdraw his thoughts. (p. 287). 6th edition (1899)— Particularly common are ideas of an influence exerted on the body … someone is … pulling their thoughts out of their head … patients try to give a more detailed account of thought transference … various limbs are set in motion against the patient’s will … a particularly crafty practice is “withdrawing of thoughts”	Thought withdrawal Made acts Thought insertion Somatic passivity
Kandinsky57	Unspecified psychosis	Russia	1885	For a long period during his illness, a patient was convinced that invisible spies were able to tap into his thoughts. They did so by employing a special machine which registered the “nearly imperceptible movements of his tongue.” The patient notes that he made these movements involuntarily when thinking in words. Therefore, he made every effort to think without making the corresponding movements with his tongue. (See ref. 57, pp. 118–119)	Passivity of unknown type
Folsom59	Primary delusional insanity	USA	1886	“Delusions of Unseen Agency”—The common delusions are of marital infidelity, attempts at poisoning, mesmerism, electricity, influence through telegraphs, telephones, poisoned air, etc. (p. 168)	Passivity of unknown type
Spitzka60	Paranoia	USA	1887	Men, as in one case of the writer’s, complain that their foes are drawing out their semen through the nose by an invisible influence in the shape of an “ascending vapor.” (p. 316)	Somatic passivity
Salgo61	Die Verrücktheit	Austria	1889	Distances are bridged by means of various electrical and magnetic machines. Telegraph and telephone enable the intertwined actions of the different agents. The patients are not alone even in their most secret and intimate moments. Their thoughts are exposed to their persecutors … they can barely have their own thoughts or write them down, for they are entirely in the power of their tormentors, who impose their thoughts upon them, and change all their actions at will.... By means of electric and magnetic apparatus they are maltreated in the most horrible manner, their genitals are irritated, their spine is dislocated, their bones are sawn, they are made constipated, their digestion is halted. (p. 270)	Thought insertion Thought broadcasting Made acts Somatic passivity
Clouston62	Monomania	UK	1892	“Monomania of Unseen Agency” … Such patients believe that they are electrified, that they are mesmerized … that persons read their thoughts, or have power over them to act on their thoughts…. One of the most typical examples of delusions of being affected by electricity—and this and mesmerism are the two most common of all unseen agencies of which the insane complain. (p. 252) … That persons read their thoughts and influence their thoughts are very current delusions. Patients almost always complain most of unseen agencies at night … [others] have delusions that they are worked on by electric batteries. (pp. 254–255)	Thought insertion Somatic passivity
Scholz63	Paranoia	Germany	1892	Electrified from a distance … delusions based on anomalies of sensation on the skin, as if being electrified from a distance or being stuck with needles. One could also call it the delusion of long-distance effects. Belonging to this is the delusion of being harassed by telephonic wires.	Somatic passivity
Shaw64	Paranoia	USA	1892	Electrical and telephonic machines are in some way made to act upon them.	Passivity of unknown type
Kirchhoff65	Paranoia	Germany	1893	The telegraph communicates his fate to the entire world. The letters that he writes are immediately read aloud by an invisible enemy; hardly has a thought developed in his mind before it is expressed aloud…. The knowledge of physical apparatus is generally utilized in explanation [of the voices]. The terms electricity and magnetism are usually employed to cover the indefinite notions concerning the supposed underlying physical processes. (pp. 239–241)	Thought broadcasting
Stearns66	Primary Delusional Insanity	USA	1893	He is aware that there is an instrument or “Machine” [“which affects the spinal column”] in the Retreat, which leads to the suspicion that I am using it on him in the scheme which is being enacted against him. His thoughts become voices which he hears from persons whom he may pass in the street and speak aloud about the very subject of his mental operations. [A quoted letter from a patient] “This point is the great power that Mrs. J. possesses in venting her spite whenever she will, even to the death of the victim, by the aid of your powerful electrical or magnetic machine. … You spoke to me of its being unpleasant at home; but it is all caused by your women here at the Retreat abusing me at a long distance while at home. They think that physicians often, and sometimes attendants or friends, have the power of affecting the brain in such a manner as to render its mental operation visible to others. Their very thoughts are read by persons whom they may pass in the street, and may become converted into voices. (pp. 217, 221)	Somatic passivity Thought broadcasting
Regis67	Progressive systematized insanity	France	1895	Holes are made in the wall to … to electrify them; electric batteries are put up in their vicinity, or even in their chambers, also acoustic tubes and telephones, with the aid of which their enemies insult them and produce in them all kinds of disagreeable sensations. The patient hears his thought distinctly uttered as soon as it arises, not in a loud tone, but in a sort of more or less variable internal voice: and he then believes that others also hear them which is to him an inexpressible torture, since the thoughts he most desires to keep secret are those most distinctly heard. He perceives that others hear his thoughts since they respond before he has uttered them. (p. 223)	Somatic passivity Thought broadcasting
A Clark68	Partial insanity	UK	1897	In going through the wards of an asylum, we must be struck with the number of patients who … are subject to strange and perverted sensations, which they attribute to mesmerism, electricity, or other unseen agency. One of the most distracting phases of this obsession of persecution is the belief that a man’s thoughts are read while still unuttered, that they are stolen. (pp. 126–127, p. 130)	Somatic passivity Thoughts withdrawal
MacPhearson69	Systematized delusions in the degenerate	UK	1899	This form of insanity … is variously known as Persecution Mania, Monomania of Persecution, [or] Monomania of Unseen Agency … [The persecutor] has at command certain occult influences, by means of which he pursues his nefarious practices…. Many patients complain of obscure pain, twitching of muscles, sensations of burning, and other anomalous feelings, generally of a localized nature, which they attribute to the action of acids, telephone or telegraph wires, or to spiritualistic agencies. (pp. 211–215)	Somatic passivity
Norman70	Systematized delusional insanity	UK	1899	Some patients are tormented by hearing all their thoughts spoken. This has been called the echo of thought. The patient usually accounts for it in the belief that by some underhand means his thoughts are made public…. Thus it is a very frequent complaint that the patients’ thoughts are read; his thoughts also are influenced; he is compelled to think of horrible or degrading subjects; by mesmerism or some such means he is rendered stupid and unable to think; he is made to sleep or rendered somnolent; he is kept awake—this may be by voices, by tortures, or by direct action upon the mind preventing sleep; he is compelled to be silent, or to say things which he knows to be wrong, or which he did not intend to say, or sometimes which he does not understand. Acts which have the appearance of impulse are sometimes accounted for in this way; that is, the patient states that he is made to do them by some external influence dominating his will. Some patients complain that their moral control is weakened, and that their moral feelings are tampered with; some assert that their mind is entirely in the hands of their enemies. A patient said to me, “They have my mind; they hold it in hypnotism.” (pp. 392–394)	Thought broadcasting Thought insertion Made impulses Made acts
Paton71	Dementia praecox	USA	1905	Patients complain of receiving electric shocks affirming that they have been given to them by certain individuals…. Unexpected effects from unseen agencies. (p. 379, 398)	Somatic passivity
Wernicke72	Autopsychosis	Germany	1906	…a completely fresh patient claims that he must be in the immediate vicinity of a machine, admittedly hidden from him, that turns him continually around in circles? Of course, in such cases magnetic and electrical forces are commonly to blame as the effective agents. (p. 74). …Patients notice the emergence of thoughts which they consider to be alien to themselves…. Almost always, these thoughts are said to be “made,” “looked for,” “inserted ….” (pp. 68–69). Just as the emergence of thoughts by local abnormal irritation is usually attributed to an external influence, so can momentary disappearance of thoughts occur as a symptom … to be interpreted in a similar way by a sick person … that thoughts were “drawn out of” them. (p. 199)	Made actions Thought insertion Thought withdrawal
Bechterew73	Delusion of magical hypnosis	Russia	1907	… the patient states that someone hypnotized him six years ago. “Some individuals have a secret power in their eyes. They need only look at someone and hypnotize that person against his will.” …The patient noticed that people walking bye would address him intimately against his will. As soon as the passerby looked at the patient, the passerby had the patient read his thoughts: “There now, you are hypnotized. You will turn about face and go home.” The patient did not actually hear this but rather a conversation of thoughts followed involuntarily in his head…. Such thoughts could also enter at a distance from unknown people…. Someone took hold of his tongue, larynx and lips, so that the patient could only mumble certain words, without being able to actively participate. (See ref. 74, pp. 204–205)	Made actions Thought insertion Somatic passivity
Kraepelin56	Dementia praecox	Germany	1913	8th edition (1913)—characteristic of the disease … is the feeling of one’s thoughts being influenced... people speak to the patient in his thoughts … transfer to him words, thoughts, pictures, smells and feelings…. A patient explained “They take my thought from me and nothing comes back” … Their thoughts are conveyed by a machine … the patient is terribly tormented in this body … these sensations are associated with electricity and similar action at a distance.	Thought insertion Thought withdrawal Made feelings Somatic passivity
White75	Dementia praecox	USA	1913	Thought deprivation “robbed of their thoughts by their enemies.”	Thought withdrawal
Jaspers 76,77,78	Schizophrenia	Germany	1913, 1920, 1923	Feelings, perceptions, acts of will, moods, etc., can all be made…. [Patients] almost always elaborate these experiences into delusions of physical and other influences, complex apparatuses, and machines which have power over them or supernatural influences…. A former patient at the Heidelberg Clinic, a well-educated individual, who a little later became acutely ill with schizophrenia, wrote an account of these “made” phenomena … “Everything is a riddle to me. On the following morning, I was put into a most peculiar mood by this machine … the machine–the construction of which was quite unknown to me- was fixed in such a way that every word I spoke was put into me electrically and I of course could not avoid expressing the thoughts in this peculiar mood... I was translated into a death-mood. …At the time my thoughts had been taken from me, so I don’t know why I had to die. A joyous mood was put into me which prevented me from thinking anything. From that day onwards, I have been painfully tortured. …I feel the machine is getting me down mentally more and more and I have several times asked for the current to be turned off and my natural thinking returned to me…. I try to fight these thoughts with all my energy, but it cannot be done with the best will in the world as the thoughts are actually pulled out of me.’ (See ref. 77, pp. 91–92; ref. 79 Eng., pp. 579–580). … [The patient] does not feel master of his own thoughts and in addition he feels in the power of some incomprehensible external force. “Some artificial influence plays on me; the feeling suggests that somebody has attached himself to my mind and feeling, just as in a game of cards someone looking over one’s shoulder may interfere in the game.” (See ref. 77, p. 68); ref. 79 Eng., p. 123). …A thought vanishes and there arises the feeling that this has come about from outside action. A new thought appears without context. That too is made from outside. A patient tells us: “When she wants to think about something—a business matter for instance—all her thoughts are suddenly withdrawn, just like a curtain. The more she tries the more painful it is a string pulling away from her head.” (See ref. 76, p. 71; ref. 79 Eng., p. 123)	Made feelings Thought withdrawal Thought insertion
Berze31	Paranoia Hypophrenia (Berze’s replacement term for dementia praecox)	Austria	1914	The patient … reports … the doctor hypnotized him because upon leaving he noticed that foreign thoughts were influencing him…. When asked about the transmission of thoughts, he answered: “the thoughts always come unconsciously. Sometimes, I force myself to think different thoughts, and thereby fight against the foreign one by having ones of my own. But I never prevail. I then have both: my own and the foreign thoughts next to one another….” He has physical delusions, ideas of bodily influence…. He explains this as being “electrically suspended.” They make him jump in the air…. He exhibits jerky, shaking, writhing movements ...The movements are experienced as made. The patient exclaims, “… Using electricity, a certain P. in Leipzig made these jerky movements in me…. I know that he is a prophet through the transmittal of thoughts. I hear one or two words and the entire sentence comes into my thoughts…. He appears to me as if I were hearing him, but I do not hear, but nevertheless know it. He comes directly into my brain as a thought. P [also] imposes these jerky movements … I am merely an instrument, helpless, an automaton.” (See ref. 31, pp. 43–46) [Another patient reports] “Sometimes I feel like I have my own will. But then suddenly he is there and transports me through his will. Sometimes he lets me be free, but when he is there, I cannot compel myself to any action. Then I am completely under his will.” (See ref. 31, p. 136)	Thought insertion Made actions
Buckley80	Schizophrenic psychoses	USA	1920	He may complain that something is wrong with his mind … that someone is interfering with his brain.	Passivity of unknown type
Gruhle15	Schizophrenia	Germany	1922	[A patient reports] “The one thing I have to deal with all the time is this dragging through me. I cannot express it any better than this. Sometimes this lasts the entire day, sometimes more forceful, sometimes less. …Sometimes, it is pulled through me from a department store, at other times, a mass grave and a falling to one’s doom, or from Siberia, through the entire night. I no longer know the words. There is no tone or sound, just a passing through, sometimes greater, sometimes less. Someone tells something—but one does not hear it—it is just drawn through the head. … Sometimes, it is the thoughts of others that pass through. …I cannot do anything about it. It is something different than hearing, and it is not like thinking.” (See ref. 15, p. 69)	Thought insertion
Bleuler81	Schizophrenias (dementia praecox)	Switzerland	1924	The feeling of “thought pressure” should be mentioned in which the patient has the feeling that he has to think, where against his will “it” thinks within him and where thoughts are incessantly “made” for him…. (p. 378). …in the case of the thoughts becoming loud, what is thought at the moment by the patients is spoken out loud. (p. 387) “…they are tortured with complicated machines or telepathic influences.” (p. 390)	Thought insertion Thought broadcasting Somatic passivity
De Clérambault82	Chronic hallucinatory psychosis	France	1924	Patient # 1 [Quotes from the patient] … I am being given thoughts that do not belong to me… I can’t find my own thoughts anymore… I know that I am being influenced… I smile about the things that are funny and that are being put into my mind... There is always something which comes and blocks my thoughts… I am constantly given new ideas… I am sent so many things… disgusting things, things that pertain to street women… I am awoken so that ideas may be put into my head…. They try to change the movements that belong to me… Thoughts are taken out of my head ... I am given all possible and imaginable desires … They rob my ideas … I make gestures that are ordered to me... I write with a hand that is not mine…. I recognize that these thoughts are not my own, because I do not think in this way… these sensations are not that of my body; these inclinations, these angry feelings, I disapprove of them all; all of this comes to me so abruptly. Why is it that everything I do is being tampered with? (pp. 169–184)	Thought insertion Made feelings Thought withdrawal Made actions Somatic passivity
Mira y López 192783	Schizophrenias	Spain	1927	Another characteristic phenomenon of schizophrenia is termed “stealing of thoughts” where patients become convinced that their thoughts are being stolen by other beings who control them at will, forcing the sufferer to think in the way that they wish. Such patients interpret this conviction as “ideas of possession or influence”…. Patients claim to be “electrified,” “hypnotized,” “magnetized” by mysterious enemies, machinery and forces. (pp. 268–269)	Thought withdrawal Thought insertion Somatic passivity
Mayer-Gross84	Schizophrenia	Germany	1928	An older schizophrenia patient regularly complained that the hospital staff inflicted torture on her body. The cleaning of the floors (above her room), moving furniture, washing silverware in the kitchen, stirring the soup, all take place in her body…. She hears these things in her room, (such sounds could in fact could be heard in her room), but, at the same time, she feels these activities taking place in her body. The personnel do this deliberately to torture her.…the cleaning and stirring do not at all occur above or below her (the source of the sound) but entirely in her own body. (see ref. 84, p. 462)	Somatic passivity
Schröder85	Schizophrenia	Germany	1928	[A patient reports] “Someone’s will, not mine, forced me to leave a lecture and go out into the street…” “Mr. K. suggests I buy a pound of meat, and I must do it. I am just an instrument without a will.” “Someone forges the way for me, and I must go a different way than I wanted, that I must sit down, stroke my hair … I do these things, but it is not my will. I must do these things.” (see ref. 85, p. 529)	Made Actions
Mayer-Gross54	Schizophrenia	Germany	1932	The patient attributed his reduction in activity, which was very painful for him, to his father’s hostile influence. …Tears stream down his face, but he explains that the tears come by themselves. He is not sad but can do nothing to resist the tears…. His father’s glance feeds on his body…. “I am no longer I … I am entirely someone else…” During conversation, he exhibits … repeated thought blocking. He describes this as: “All at once, the thoughts are taken away.” …There are numerous made phenomena: made sexual arousal, made thoughts: “many of the thoughts only do what the other (the father) wants.” (see ref. 54, p. 431)	Thought withdrawal Made feeling Thought insertion
Gruhle58	Schizophrenia	Germany	1932	[A patient reports] I sensed something happening in my body. It was something being transferred, a transferal of a feeling into me. It brought me into such agitation that I wanted to kill myself. There is always a kind of turmoil in me. I sense this magnetism in myself. My limbs are brought to an absolute stop, both in my actions and in walking. And yet, I am wrenched away from certain places without any consciousness on my part. This magnetism must be transferred to me somehow. I also sense a hypnotism which goes through the entire house, which is related to the magnetism. (see ref. 58, p. 190)	Made feelings Made actions