Foerster's syndrome is the name used by
Arthur Koestler
Arthur Koestler, (, ; ; hu, Kösztler Artúr; 5 September 1905 – 1 March 1983) was a Hungarian-born author and journalist. Koestler was born in Budapest and, apart from his early school years, was educated in Austria. In 1931, Koestler join ...
in his account of the compulsive punning first described
[ARNMD (1940), Vol. XX, p.732, cited in Koestler] by the German neurosurgeon
Otfrid Foerster.
In 1929, Foerster was operating on a patient suffering from a
tumor
A neoplasm () is a type of abnormal and excessive growth of tissue. The process that occurs to form or produce a neoplasm is called neoplasia. The growth of a neoplasm is uncoordinated with that of the normal surrounding tissue, and persists ...
in the third ventricle – a small cavity deep down in the phylogenetically ancient regions of the
midbrain
The midbrain or mesencephalon is the forward-most portion of the brainstem and is associated with vision, hearing, motor control, sleep and wakefulness, arousal (alertness), and temperature regulation. The name comes from the Greek ''mesos'', " ...
, adjacent to structures intimately concerned with the arousal of emotions. When the surgeon began to manipulate the tumor, affecting those sensitive structures, the (conscious) patient burst into a manic flight of
puns. He exhibited typical sound associations, and with every word of the operator broke into a
flight of ideas. The sound of one word swiftly echoed in the sound of the next, and all of the words had something to do with knives and butchery. This gruesome humour, Koestler noted, all came "from a man tied face down to the operating table with his skull open".
See also
*
Witzelsucht
Witzelsucht ( " joking addiction") is a set of pure and rare neurological symptoms characterized by a tendency to make puns, or tell inappropriate jokes or pointless stories in socially inappropriate situations. It makes one unable to read sarcasm ...
References
{{reflist
Psychopathological syndromes
Humour