Defining hysterical symptoms

Defining hysterical symptoms

The conventional view would appear to define hysterical symptoms (whether so-called conversion symptoms or hysterical dissociation) in terms of a number of features. The first is the occurrence of a symptom which, if taken at face value, would be an indication of some underlying pathological process; yet no pathology of a conventional kind can be elicited, and the presence of such pathology (wh...

Anxiety in patients with hysterical conversion symptoms.

In psychiatry, most diagnoses are descriptions of behaviour or of phenomena reported by the patient, whereas in somatic medicine a diagnosis usually includes the pathological process underlying a syndrome or a symptom. Consequently, when a group of conditions were delineated which appeared to be of somatic origin, yet for which no organic cause was apparent, it was not surprising that terms imp...

Hysterical paraplegia.

Between 1944 and 1984 20 patients were admitted to a spinal injuries centre with a diagnosis of traumatic paraplegia. They subsequently walked out and the diagnosis was revised to hysterical paraplegia. A further 23 patients with incomplete traumatic injuries, who also walked from the centre, have been compared with them as controls. The features that enabled a diagnosis of hysterical paraplegi...

Hysterical Belch

Hysterical Psychosis

Clinical features of 88 patients diagnosed as having hysterical psychosis are analysed and compared with those of an equal number of catatoaic schizophrenics and conversion reaction. Hysterical psychosis is characterised by acute onset. often following the occurence of an emotionally disturbing event, absence of any characteristic thought disturbance, and emotio.ial volatility. Prognosis is goo...