There are some conditions that as soon as you hear about them, you think you have them, even if you (probably) don’t have them, and Witzelsucht fits perfectly into this category, being one obsession with telling inappropriate jokesplay on words or tell useless stories in any other way.
Patients with Witzelsucht tend to make jokes compulsively, sometimes without realizing that what they said was inappropriate or even not funny at all, and in another bizarre aspect of the disorder, patients can sometimes have difficulty reading sarcasm.
The term Witzelsucht, translated from German, literally means joke (Witz) e dependence (Sucht), and was first used to describe four patients seen by neurologist Hermann Oppenheim in the 1880s. The patients all had right frontal lobe tumors and “an addiction to banal, excessive and often sarcastic jokes.”
There condition is rarebut there are case reports documenting that the condition is indeed out there, for example a 54-year-old began exhibiting a range of unusual behaviors, including inappropriate jokes, childish comments and laughing at his own jokes, with the condition putting him in trouble when, at a work event, he said “who the hell chose this place” and got fired.
After three years of inappropriate excessive familiarity and decreased personal hygiene, the man was evaluated for behavioral changes.
“On examination, the patient often laughed, almost giggling, at his own comments, opinions or jokes, many of which were borderline sexual or political in content”
he wrote his psychiatric team in The Journal of Neuropsychiatry and Clinical NeurosciencesFurthermore, this behavior continued under their care, to which the team stated:
“On one visit to the clinic, he started dancing in the club, in another, he publicly discussed his sexual situation, and on a third visit, he grabbed the examiner’s and a passing doctor’s tie and started to compare them. During these behaviors, the patient would immediately fall into laughter ”.
More details on the rare Witzelsucht
Like most other patients with Witzelsucht, she had problems with her right frontal lobe, which appears to be vital for humor and inhibitory control, and in her case it was Pick’s disease causing damage to this part of his brain.
Witzelsucht sometimes has a sexual element, or hypersexuality and other forms of disinhibition. After a hemorrhage, a 59-year-old described by the same team began hugging young women longer than necessary, as well as compulsively laundering and shoplifting.The patient also felt generally happy, but his constant pranks annoyed his wife.
“He would have woken her up in the middle of the night and burst out laughing, just to tell her about the jokes he had made up.”
As a compromise, he began writing his own lines instead, meaning that when he was seen by a psychiatric team, he had 50 pages of ready-to-use lines.
“I went to the Automotive Department to get my driver’s license. They gave me an eye examination and here’s what they told me: ABCDEFG, HIJKMNLOP, QRS, TUV, WXY and Z; now i know my abc’s, can i get my driver’s license please? How is hunger treated? Get away from the buffet table. “
were the two jokes the man had sent to the BBC when they wrote of his case; and while they weren’t the best jokes out there, they made him laugh hysterically, plus according to the BBC, the rest were largely too rude to be published.
While the ability to write many, many lines may seem like a superpower, it comes at a higher price than other socially awkward consequences.
“The paradox of Witzelsucht and moria is that these patients are actually insensitive to humor not generated by themselves”
wrote the team, who later added:
“Even when they recognize and understand a joke, they don’t respond effectively with a sense of gaiety or a laugh. In other words, they don’t feel the punchline as humorously related to the plot, but simple forms of humor that don’t require the integration of a punchline (eg slapstick and puns) can still be experienced as fun. “
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