On the Origin of the "Influencing Machine" in Schizophrenia

"On the Origin of the 'Influencing Machine' in Schizophrenia" (German: Über die Entstehung des „Beeinflussungsapparates“ in der Schizo­phrenie) is an article written by Austrian psychoanalyst Victor Tausk.

They believed their thoughts and bodily sensations were controlled by a machine that defied their technical comprehension and secretly influenced them from a distance, often claiming that it was operated by a group of people who were persecuting them.

The paper has become a classic in the psychological understanding of schizophrenia[2] and, according to consensus among today's psychiatrists, remains Tausk's most enduring contribution to the study of mental illnesses.

[4] According to Tausk, the loss of ego boundaries in schizophrenia is accompanied by a regression to pregenital narcissistic states, in which the child could not yet distinguish between the self and the exterior world and believed that their parents or God knew all their thoughts.

In the novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, the narrator, "Chief" Bromden, believes that the psychiatric ward in which he is committed (including the staff) is a machine in the service of a broader "Combine" – his name for technological society.

The January 1919 issue of Internationale Zeitschrift für Psychoanalyse , in which Tausk's article on the influencing machine was first published