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What does the word insanity mean?

• A more or less permanent unsoundness of mind, mental disease; a condition marked by abnormality of the reasoning faculty, delusions, illusions, or hallucinations, with irresponsibility and a lack of understanding of the nature of one's speech and actions; lunacy, craziness. It is an acquired condition and so distinguished from idiocy or imbecility, and is chronic, thus distinguished from the delirium of fever or shock.

• Mental aberration.

• This term includes all the varieties of unsound mind, - Mania, Melancholia, Moral Insanity, Dementia, and Idiocy. A slight degree of insanity is sometimes popularly called a kink in the head; in Scotland, a bee in the bonnet.

• [ Latin] Unsoundness of mind; a disorder of the mental faculties which in more or less permanent in character, and not a mere temporary accompaniment of disease or of poisoning by drugs, and which is evinced by illusions, delusions, and hallucinations, by incorrigible perversion of ideas and reasoning, and by persistence in a course of extravagant, unreasonable, or purposeless action. In origin, i. may be either congenital or acquired. Either variety may be inherited( Hereditary i.). Acquired i. may be secondary to another neurosis or to disease( Consecutive i.), or independent of the latter( Primary i.). It may occur in epidemics, being communicated from one person to another( Epidemic i., Communicated i.). The causes of i. are changes taking place in the individual at critical periods of life, as in the i. of puberty( hebephrenia), the i. of pregnancy and of the puerperal state, the i. of the menopause, and the 1. due to senile degeneration( Senile i.); disease, especially fevers( Febrile i., Post-febrile i.) and neuroses( Epileptic i., Choreic i., Hysterical i.); poisoning by various agents( Toxic i., including Alcoholic i.); debilitating habits( i. of masturbation, etc.); and circumstances of any kind acting powerfully upon the emotions as religious excitement, worry and over-work, losses and reverses, love. I. is distinguished, according to the special mental function affected, into Perceptional i., chiefly characterized by false or perverted perceptions( illusions and hallucinations); Intellectual I. ( Ideational i.), including monomania, paranoia( Primary delusional i., Systematized i., Systematized delusional i. ), reasoning mania, and intellectual mania, in which the reasoning powers are perverted and there are false or abnormal conceptions; Emotional i. ( Affective i.), in which there is derangement of the emotions, comprising emotional monomania, melancholia, hypochondriasis, and Moral i. ( in which the moral sense and the disposition undergo radical changes) ; Volitional i., in which the will is affected, including aboulomania and other perversions of volition; Compound i.., in which two or more faculties of the mind are simultaneously involved, comprising acute mania, catatonia, dementia, general paresis, and other forms. A special form of compound i., in which the mental faculties are abridged from the beginning, constitutes idiocy. In course, i. may be acute or chronic, and is sometimes intermittent, recurring at intervals( Periodical i., Recurrent i.). A special variety of periodical i. is Circular i., in which mania and melancholia alternate. Another is Impulsive i., in which, after a period of apparent sanity, a momentary uncontrollable impulse to do insane actions suddenly sets in and suddenly disappears. According to the special symptoms or tendencies which it exhibits, i. is classed as Maniacal Melancholic, Homicidal, Suicidal, etc. See also Mania, Melancholia, Hypochondriasis, etc.

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