CATALEPSY. - An extreme degree of volitional inhibition, involving complete incapacity for any activity, combined with a particular passive pliability of the muscles of the various parts of the body (“waxy flexibility”), whereby the patient may be placed by others—in the head, trunk, and limbs—in any position, however difficult or uncomfortable, and retains it even for a long time, until it is altered or ceases of itself through fatigue. During the cataleptic state every organic activity (breathing, circulation, sensibility) is weakened and dulled; recollection of what took place in it is incomplete or absent.
In c. the patient may be induced to activity by imitation, automatically repeating the actions (echopraxia) or words (echolalia) of those around him, or under the impetus of a suggestion, as occurs in that state of suspension and almost emptying hypnotism (v.) in which the patient may be led to enact feelings and actions instilled in him by the experimenter through oral or visual suggestion. C. may be observed in hysteria (v.), epilepsy (v.), manic forms, and particularly in dementia praecox. C. may be induced by the subject himself, as in the “autocataless” of Hindu fakirs (v. FACHIRISMO) or in the course of metapsychic manifestations, sometimes assuming the appearance of a supernatural occurrence.