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Patent applications and neurotic concerns: further explorations in the Patent Office

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

David V. James  and
Paul L. Gilluley
David V. James*
Affiliation:
Camlet Lodge RSU, Chase Farm Hospital Campus, The Ridgeway, Enfield, Middlesex EN2 8JL
Paul L. Gilluley
Affiliation:
Henry Rollin Unit, Long Grove Road, Epsom, Surrey KT19 8PZ
*
∗Correspondence
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It is a commonplace of clinical practice that those with obsessional disorder, or with obsessional features to a psychotic illness, often develop concerns about cleanliness and contamination, some with a focus on everyday bodily processes. In a search of the Patent Office for psychotic ideas (James & Gilluley, 1997), it became apparent that patents reflecting concern about bodily functions were strongly represented in the patent collection. These stood out from patents concerning innovation in conventional medicine or medical appliances, and some of them had the flavour of the more bizarre ideas on the subject put forward by patients in our psychiatric practice. It was decided to explore the collection of the Patent Office further, with a view to surveying the range of such patents and examining their relation to the times in which they originated. The procedure used was the same as in our previous article.

Type
Original papers
Information
Psychiatric Bulletin , Volume 22 , Issue 3 , March 1998 , pp. 162 - 165
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright
Copyright © 1998 The Royal College of Psychiatrists

References

James, D. V. & Gilluley, P. L. (1997) Psychotic patients and patent applications. The mad scientist revisited? Psychiatric Bulletin, 21, 764–768.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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