In this paper the author shows how 'Studies on Hysteria' ushered in a new century of psychiatry. While hysteria as a clinical entity remains as difficult as ever to define, the entire theoretical edifice of psychoanalysis rests upon it, as it allowed the discovery of the laws of conscious and unconscious thought and fantasy and thereby made it possible to explain symptoms and dreams. The author...

Blocked and recovered memories of traumatic events have long been regarded as real phenomena by the mental health profession, our legal system, and the public at large. These phenomena originally were studied by Pierre Janet and Sigmund Freud, and Freud’s (1896/1962) ‘‘Aetiology of Hysteria’’ is perhaps the best known early discussion of this topic. In this now famous 1896 address, Freud presen...

A 23-year-old male complained of loss of peripheral visual field and everything having purple shadows in the afternoon. This had lasted for 3 years but he had paid little attention to the symptoms. Investigations, including visual acuity, intra-ocular pressure, pupil reflex, and anterior and posterior segment of the eyes, were normal. He denied ocular pain, history of head injury, epilepsy or r...

to identify mental disorders and their prevalence in patients with retinitis pigmentosa (rp).this descriptive study was carried out between january 2009 and january 2010 on 417 patients with rp, who were members of iran rp center. the necessary data were collected using questionnaires consisting two parts: the background characteristics and questions assessing the mental health and screening pe...

Freud's Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality is one of the grounding texts of 20th century European thinking. In it Freud develops a highly original theory of sexuality for which hysteria (and pathology in general) serves a model to understand human existence. Freud published this text five times during his lifetime. This article wants to reconstruct the first edition with regard to the stat...

BACKGROUND Seeing triple is a rare complaint, so anatomically unlikely that it is often considered a diagnostic symptom of hysteria. OBJECTIVE To evaluate the complaint of triple vision among a large group of neurological inpatients. DESIGN Personal case series during a 34-year period. SETTING Neurology and neurosurgery wards of the University of Southern California-Los Angeles County Med...

A case of folie à deux dissociative (dissociative hysteria) disorder in an 8 and 12 year-old sister and brother is presented. Illnesses of this type are very rare and there is little medical literature on this subject. Our patients, almost simultaneously, abruptly had complete loss of memory, disorientation, loss of awareness about who they were, and much anxiety, which lasted about 15 hours. B...