Abstract
In his original 1885 description of the syndrome, Gilles de la Tourette emphasized the triad of multiple tics, coprolalia, and echolalia.
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Although current diagnostic criteria do not include coprolalia as a necessary component of Tourette syndrome (TS),
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its presence is highly indicative, albeit not pathognomonic, of this condition.
Coprolalia is the uncontrollable utterance of obscenities and profanities.
Obscenities are defined as utterances describing sexual acts, body function or elimination acts, and organs of reproduction and sexual anatomy.
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Profane utterances, on the other hand, convey a religious connotation.
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In reality, the spectrum of these socially inappropriate utterances also includes references to animals (e.g., bitch, bull, pig)
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and racial epithets.
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Coprolalia is the most common of the so-called coprophenomena, which also include copropraxia, or the uncontrollable performance of obscene gestures, mental coprolalia, or obsessive thinking of obscenities and profanities, and coprographia, or the compulsion to write down such expressions. Coprolalia and copropraxia are among the most socially disabling of the symptoms seen in TS.
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This review focuses attention on a variety of aspects of coprophenomena, pointing out those areas clearly in need of further study.
