An Unusual Case of Stigmatization

The case presented is a several-month study of the stigmatization of a 70-year old woman, Anna Maria T. Stigmatization, the spontaneous appearance on a person’s body of Christ’s wounds on the Cross, is a wellknown phenomenon among Catholics, while in this century it has also appeared in Protestants. The phenomenon has long been considered mysterious and miraculous. After first excluding the possibility of fraud, several elements of Anna Maria’s stigmata were verified in an effort to sustain the hypothesis of a psychogenic genesis. The author made a study of the form, dimensions, localization and anatomo-pathological features of the stigma, and tests were carried out on the autonomical nervous activity of Anna Maria’s hands. The results indicated a very circumscribed vasomotor increased activity in the area where the stigmata lay. Anna Maria T. also underwent a psycodiagnostic evaluation to assess her mental state and from the results of the basic tests ( i.e., MMPI and Rorshach) no elements were found that could indicate any psycho-pathological problem. Combining these elements with the circumstances in which the stigmatic marks manifested themselves the first time and reappear each month, no elements were found that could indicate with which mechanisms a mental image (i.e., the figure of Christ on the Cross) could be transferred to Anna Maria’s body, i.e., no elements able to demonstrate the psychosomatic hypothesis of stigmata.