by Thomas A. Ban

The term “feeling of loss of feeling” (“das Gefuhl man habe keine  keine Gefuhle mehr”) was introduced in 1913, in the first edition of Karl Jaspers’ General Psychopathology, in reference to a “distressful feeling of not having any feeling” (Jaspers 1963; Shorter 2005). The term was adopted by the AMDP System, in which, in the 1982 English edition and translation, it was defined as “Feeling that one has lost the ability for emotional resonance: loss or absence of feeling, feeling of emotional emptiness, feeling that one’s emotions are ‘dead’ ” (Guy and Ban 1982).  

References

Guy W, Ban TA, edited and translated. The AMDP-System. Manual for the Assessment ad Documentation of Psychopathology. Berlin/Heidelberg/New York: Springer - Verlag; 1962.

Jaspers K. Allgemeine Psychopathologie.Ein Lehrbuch fur StudierendeArzte und Psychologen. Berlin: Springer; 1913. 

Jaspers K. General Psychopathology.Tanslated from the Geman 7^th edition by J. Hoenig and Marian W. Hamilton. Manchester: Manchester University Press; 1963.   

Shorter E. A Historical Dictionary. NewYork: Oxford University Press; 2005. 

Thomas A. Ban

July 16, 2015