The Seba library treats Poisoning in 7 passages, across 5 authors (including Bleuler, Eugen, Berry, Patricia, Kohn, Livia).
Her constant association to poisoning was her husband whom she praised in such high tones that one suspected her to have something against him.
Bleuler demonstrates that the schizophrenic poisoning-delusion is not a primary sensory disturbance but a complex-bound formation whose latent content—repressed hostility toward an intimate—is betrayed by the patient’s associative pattern.
, Dementia Praecox or the Group of Schizophrenias, 1911thesis
the specific delusion of poisoning occurs during diarrhea when a general poisoning-delusion is present… the direction of the delusion can originate only in psychic causes and our experience has proven that these causes are exclusively affective ones.
Bleuler argues that somatic stimuli (diarrhea) merely provide material exploited by an already-existing affective complex, thereby subordinating physiological triggers to psychological etiology in the genesis of poisoning-delusions.
, Dementia Praecox or the Group of Schizophrenias, 1911thesis
Hamlet’s Poisoned Ear… One must not walk innocently in direct sun, and Ophelia is a naive soul.
Berry introduces the archetypal figure of the poisoned ear as the central metaphor of Hamlet, linking psychic naivety and unmediated reception to susceptibility to contamination of hearing and thought.
, Echo’s Subtle Body: Contributions to an Archetypal Psychology, 1982thesis
Mimicked platitudes must be destroyed before hearing can hear reflectively. Hamlet must first kill the Polonius hidden behind the arras before his mother can reflect her sins.
Berry extends the poisoned-ear motif to argue that conventional wisdom—embodied in Polonius—is itself the toxic agent that must be violently removed to restore authentic psychological hearing.
, Echo’s Subtle Body: Contributions to an Archetypal Psychology, 1982supporting
the imperial fascination with alchemy resulted in the death of at least two sovereigns due to elixir poisoning… Instances of elixir poisoning are also documented in other milieux.
Kohn documents historically attested cases of elixir poisoning in Tang-dynasty China, establishing the literal dangers of alchemical practice as a counterpoint to its symbolic idealisation in depth-psychological literature.
, Daoism Handbook, 2000supporting
problematic reactions, side effects, and abuses of drugs of all kinds… a dark reality hidden behind a carefully manipulated image… pharmaceutical companies that were forced to withdraw from the market or issue warnings for once-celebrated drugs.
Tarnas reads collective pharmaceutical poisoning scandals as Saturn-Neptune archetypal phenomena, framing mass drug toxicity as a culturally symptomatic unveiling of hidden corruption.
, Cosmos and Psyche: Intimations of a New World View, 2006supporting
Your husband killed himself by carbon monoxide poisoning 3 months ago. You feel both guilt and anger along with the sadness.
Worden employs carbon monoxide poisoning as a clinical vignette framing survivor guilt and complicated grief in a psychotherapeutic training context.
, Grief Counseling and Grief Therapy A Handbook for the, 2018aside