Motor Disorder: A Psychological Perspective

Abstract

: From the point of view of the ‘psychic reflex arc’ all psychiatric events merge into motor phenomena, which assist the final inner elaboration of stimuli into external world. We can therefore examine the many, often grotesque, movements of mental patients from two points of view. Either we try to acquaint ourselves with the disturbances of motor mechanism itself, which can show disturbances independent of any psychiatric anomaly and this is the approach adopted by neurology. Or we try to know the abnormal psychic life and the patient’s volitional awareness, which these conspicuous movements exhibit. In so far as we know the meaningful connections, the movement becomes behavior we understand, for instance the delight in activity shown by the manic patients in their exuberance or the increased urge to move shown by the patients who are desperately anxious. Somewhat between neurological phenomena and the psychological phenomena lie the psychotic motor phenomena which we register without being able to comprehend them satisfactorily one way or the other. They can be explained psychologically. Some of the disorders various culturally. Motor disorder can be assessed and managed psychologically