Alice In Wonderland Syndrome

Do you suffer from Alice in Wonderland syndrome? No you say? ... and I bet you don't know anybody who suffers from Cheshire Cat syndrome either, huh? Tis true you know, these are documented syndromes. In my line of work I come across a lot of terminology and sometimes it can be quite interesting to take a look at some.

Acc. to my Stedman’s, AIWS (Alice In Wonderland Syndrome) is described as the illusion of dreams, feelings of levitation, and alteration in the sense of passage of time, sometimes associated with migraine, epilepsy, and various diseases of the parietal lobe of the brain. I don't know about ya'll but wouldn't this be the same as getting on a good buzz?

In more technical terms, AIWS is a psychopathological syndrome of distorted space, time and body image wherein the patient has a feeling that the entire body or parts of it have been altered in shape and size (metamorphosis), associated with visual hallucinations. The disorder was first described in 1955 by the English psychiatrist John Todd (1914-1987), who named it for Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

Psychoanalytic interpretation by Todd has made more understandable and plausible the illusionary dreams, feeling of levitation, and alteration in the sense of passage of time that Alice experienced. Alice trod the paths and byways of a wonderland well known to Carroll, her creator, who suffered severely from migraine. The majority of patients have personal or family history of migraine.

In Lippman’s report, one of the patients stated that she felt short and wide as she walked, calling this a ”tweedlike dum” or ”tweedle dee” feeling. Associated disorders may include apraxia, agnosia, language disorders, feelings of déjà vu or jamais vu, dreamlike or trancelike states, and delirium.

The Cheshire Cat syndrome is another medical eponym taken from Alice in Wonderland. It was first described by the British physician Eric George Lapthorne Bywaters (born 1910) in 1968.

When Alice asked the Cheshire Cat which road she should take, he asked her where she wanted to go.

"I really don’t know. I suppose it doesn’t really matter," she replied.

"Well, then I suppose it doesn’t matter what road you take," he aptly remarked.