Soren Kierkegaard

metaphysical roots, which can be seen in the aura that hovers around the
figures who are often singled out in descriptions of epilepsy—the “great”
epileptics, so to speak: Moses, Saint Paul, Caesar, Caligula, Holy Roman
Emperor Charles V, Flaubert, Dostoyevsky, and van Gogh.
Epilepsy is caused by a number of different dysfunctions in the brain and
therefore appears in many different forms. The epilepsy that is touched off
by the temporal lobes of the brain is called temporal lobe epilepsy. Attacks
are characterized by psychic and by physical symptoms, but they can also
be exclusively psychic, as, for example, in experiencing a particular memory
or an intense emotion, often one laden with anxiety. An attack can also
take the form of a feeling of sublime bliss. Among these examples there is
not one that mightnotapply to Kierkegaard.
Modern research, furthermore, has also demonstrated that some patients
with temporal lobe epilepsy are virtually possessed by an urge to write. In
technical language they aregraphomaniacsand suffer fromhypergraphia. Other
typical behavioral syndromes associated with hypergraphia include an en-
hanced interest in philosophical and moral subjects; hyposexuality (reduced
sexual drive), sometimes accompanied by changes in sexual behavior; irrita-
bility; long-windedness; perseveration (compulsive continuation, often as
repetition) of a train of thought; and viscosity, a certain clamminess of the
skin. In other respects, patients with temporal lobe epilepsy function well.
Did Adolph Peter Adler suffer from epilepsy? Many of the symptoms
make it a suggestive diagnosis, but this diagnosis was at most hinted at, never
actually made. For example, in late September 1855, Frederik Helveg wrote
the following inDanish Church Timesconcerning Adler’s having been called
as a prophet: “He saw nothing, but, through his senses (namely, the olfac-
tory sense) and especially his hearing, he received a definite impression,
arose from his bed (the revelation took place at night) and then, right on
the spot and in accordance with what was dictated to him, he wrote down
the words that constitute the contents of the revelation.” The olfactory
experience to which Helveg here refers is a phenomenon that has been
recorded among patients with temporal lobe epilepsy and is presumably due
to a lesion on the basal portion of the temporal lobe. Helveg, who knew
Adler personally, titled his article “A Parallel between Two Prophets”—
that is, Adler and Kierkegaard. The parallel concerned their critiques of the
church, which resembled each other in many ways—but might not the two
prophets Adler and Kierkegaard have resembled each other in other ways
as well?
Or, to put it another way: Can a diagnosis of epilepsy, more specifically
temporal lobe epilepsy, also be made in the case of Kierkegaard? Could
his preoccupation with Adler—which at times verged on monomania—be