Does the werewolf exist? (Lycanthropy)

Clinical lycanthropy, also called therianthropy or lycomania, is a psychological syndrome which takes the term from the mythical image of lycanthropy that we all have in our cultural heritage through science fiction novels and films that deal with the theme of what we know as the werewolf.

It is a syndrome that is characterized by the guy thinks he’s a wolf, is usually accompanied by psychosis; Other animals that usually reincarnate in the individual according to their perception are not only wolves but also hyenas, cats, horses, tigers and even toads, bees and birds.

The syndrome of clinical lycanthropy

It was a study carried out at the Malean Hospital, which finally led to the syndrome being recognized as such and in 2004 a list was drawn up with more than 30 confirmed cases.

On the other hand, the psychiatrist Jan Dirk Blom has done a study in his book “History of Psychiatry” about lycanthropy; In his study he only found 13 cases between 1850 and 2012. A very interesting book that tells us about the disease, describing its symptoms, the treatment and the different theories that exist about the causes.

A person who feels like a werewolf truly believes that he is this animal and behaves as such to the astonishment of others. He moans, he growls, he may walk on all fours… When a person who suffers from clinical lycanthropy returns to his lucid state, he may remember that he feels at that moment as if he were a real werewolf.

No consensus has been reached on this last point. While some psychiatrists and psychologists frame it as a delirium disorder, for others it is a severe case of depersonalization; The least plausible theory is the one that appeals to lycanthropy as part of the evolutionary history of human beings.

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These are men who live and coexist with these animals for a time, blending in with them and returning in a certain way to the primitive man that we all carry within us from our ancestors; men who, like the wolf, ate raw meat or dressed in skins similar to the skin of this animal.

This idea or archetype can be in our unconscious and appear in extreme situations such as the fact that we can get lost in the mountains or a forest and act like a wolf until they find us.

werewolf syndrome

There are also other diseases that cause what we could call “werewolf syndrome.”; It is hypertrichosis, a disease that appears due to a recessive mutant gene, which causes hair to grow and the individual’s body to expand in an excessive way; It happens to one in a million people.

Another disease related to the topic is Porphyria; also produced by a recessive gene that causes ailments in the spine, redness of the eyes and teeth, as well as photophobia.

Possibly these two diseases could be the origin of the legend of the werewolf; it is not surprising that During the Middle Ages, one of these diseases was confused and they said “I saw a werewolf.”.

The lack of knowledge of the disease of lycanthropy as a case of psychosis possibly caused people to try to find a meaning for it at the time. As happened with the bogeyman or “the bogeyman”, these types of legends had an origin that when analyzed and unraveling the meaning of the legends we can be very surprised by what we can discover.

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Werewolf syndrome, as we can also call it, does not present many cases today, except for some diseases such as hypertrichosis, for example. Now we know the true origin of werewolves.