abulia
/əˈbuːlɪə
/(also aboulia)
noun [mass noun] Psychiatry
An absence of willpower or an inability to act decisively, a symptom of schizophrenia or other mental illness.We report 2 previously non-demented patients who developed acute confusional state, abulia, and moderate cognitive decline after the occurrence of an infarct in the capsular genu....
- This abulia is really getting to me, I can't figure it out.
- This self should be free from mental and physical stigmata (suggestibility, amnesia, aboulia, anesthesia, etc.), which commonly characterize the disintegrated states making up multiple personality.
Derivatives
abulic
/ adjective ...- This produces Para paresis; with weakness more marked peripherally, urinary incontinence and aboulic and aphasic symptoms.
- There are the unstable whose existence is passed in starting enterprises and never finishing them; there are the dreamers, the erratic and the aboulic with their plans that never materialize; there are those whose judgment is chronically false and who are invariably wrong in their estimates of men and events.
- Zeno's and Emilio's aboulic personalities, their incapability of pursuing and sustaining an active participation in life, reflect Svevo's tragic sensibility of life as a disaster and his meditation on vulnerability and death, filtered through the looking glass of bitter-sweet irony mixed with ineffective wisdom.
Origin
Mid 19th century: coined from a-1 'without' + Greek boulē 'the will'.