Numerous reports are to be found in the literature pertaining to a group of somatomotor and autonomic responses in experimental animals which are described by a host of names, the more common of which are rage, fear, or flight.
Woodworth and Sherrington58 and Bazett and Penfield5 described responses in decerebrate cats having many of the elements usually associated with an assumed state of anger in normal cats. The former authors called these "pseudoaffective reflexes." Starting with Goltz15 in 1892, a number of authors7,11,46 described affective states in decorticate dogs and cats which Cannon and Britton7 termed "... a sort of sham rage."
In 1928, Bard2 applied the term "sham rage" to a group of behavioral manifestations, predominantly sympathetic in character, which appeared in cats with the caudal and ventral half of the diencephalon and the central nervous system caudal to it isolated from the more