Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-t5pn6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-24T04:41:18.134Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Hysteria — a neurologist's view1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 July 2009

C. D. Marsden
C. D. Marsden*
Affiliation:
University Department of Neurology, Institute of Psychiatry, and King's College Hospital Medical School, London
*
2 Address for correspondence: Professor C. D. Marsden, Department of Neurology, Institute of Psychiatry, Dc Crespigny Park, Denmark Hill, London SE5 8AF.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Synopsis

Hysterical symptoms are defined as complaints that are not fully explained by organic or functional neurological disease. Hysterical symptoms are common in neurological practice, accounting for about 1% of neurological diagnoses. Of those with neurological hysterical symptoms, about 80% will not have the hysterical personality, and about 80% will not have Briquet's hysteria. Some 60% will have a physical disease and perhaps as many as 50% will have recognizable psychiatric illness, particularly depression. Others may have unrecognized physical or psychiatric illness. Many hysterical symptoms may be understood in terms of abnormal illness behaviour.

Type
Research Article
Information
Psychological Medicine , Volume 16 , Issue 2 , May 1986 , pp. 277 - 288
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1986

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

1

This paper was first presented as the Maudsley Lecture, delivered to the Royal College of Psychiatrists, 16 November 1984.

References

American Psychiatric Association (1980). Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (third edn). APA: Washington, D.C.Google Scholar
Brain, W. R. (1963). The concept of hysteria in the time of William Harvey. Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine 56, 317–324.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Briquet, P. (1859). Traité clinique et thérapeutique de l'hysterie. J. B. Ballière: Paris.Google Scholar
Charcot, J. M. (1889). Clinical Lectures on Diseases of the Nervous System, Vol. 3, p. 12. The New Sydenham Society: London.Google Scholar
Chodoff, P. & Lyons, H. (1958). Hysteria, the hysterical personality and ‘hysterical’ conversion. American Journal of Psychiatry 114, 734–740.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Engel, G. L. (1970). Conversion symptoms. In Signs and Symptoms (fifth edn) (ed. MacBryde, C. M. and Blacklow, R. S.), pp. 650–668. Pitman Medical: London.Google Scholar
Gowers, W. R. (1893). A Manual of Diseases of the Nervous System. Vol. 1, p. 1. Reprinted 1970, Hafner: Darion.Google Scholar
Guze, S. B. (1967). The diagnosis of hysteria: what are we trying to do? American Journal of Psychiatry 124, 491–498.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Head, H. (1922). The diagnosis of hysteria. British Medical Journal i, 827–829.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kendell, R. E. (1972). A new look at hysteria. Medicine 30, 1780–1783.Google Scholar
Lewis, A. (1972). ‘Psychogenic’: a word and its mutations. Psychological Medicine 2, 209–215.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lewis, A. (1975). The survival of hysteria. Psychological Medicine 5, 9–12.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ljungberg, L. (1957). Hysteria. A clinical, prognostic and genetic study. Acta Psychiatrica et Neurologica Scandinavica 32, Suppl. 112, 1–162.Google Scholar
Mechanic, D. (1962). The concept of illness behaviour. Journal of Chronic Diseases 15, 189–193.Google Scholar
Merskey, H. (1979). The Analysis of Hysteria. Ballière, Tindall, Cassell: London.Google Scholar
Merskey, H. (1982). Hysterical mechanisms and pain. In Hysteria (ed. Roy, A.), pp. 247–260. John Wiley & Sons: Chichester.Google Scholar
Merskey, H. & Buhrich, N. A. (1975). Hysteria and organic brain disease. British Journal of Medical Psychology 48, 359–366.Google ScholarPubMed
Merskey, H. & Trimble, M. (1979). Personality, sexual adjustment and brain lesions in patients with conversion symptoms. American Journal of Psychiatry 136, 179–182.Google ScholarPubMed
Ormerod, J. A. (1911). Hysteria. In A System of Medicine, Vol. 8 (ed. Allbutt, C. and Rolleston, H. D.), pp. 690–693. Macmillan: London.Google Scholar
Parsons, T. (1951). The Social System. Free Press: New York.Google Scholar
Pilowsky, I. (1969). Abnormal illness behaviour. British Journal of Medical Psychology 42, 347–351.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Pilowsky, I. (1978). A general classification of abnormal illness behaviours. British Journal of Medical Psychology 51, 131–137.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Purtell, J. J., Robins, E. & Cohen, M. E. (1951). Observations on clinical aspects of hysteria. A quantitative study of 50 hysteria patients and 156 control subjects. Journal of the American Medical Association 146, 902–909.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Reynolds, J. R. (1855). The Diagnosis of Diseases of the Brain, Spinal Cord. Nerves and their Appendages. J. Churchill: London.Google Scholar
Roy, A. (1979). Hysteria: a case note study. Canadian Journal of Psychiatry 24, 157–160.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Roy, A. (1980). Hysteria. Journal of Psychosomatic Research 24, 53–56.Google ScholarPubMed
Slater, E. (1965). Diagnosis of ‘hysteria’. British Medical Journal i 1395–1399.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Slater, E. (1976). What is hysteria? New Psychiatry, pp. 14–15. Reprinted (1982) in Hysteria (ed. Roy, A.), pp. 36–40. John Wiley & Sons: Chichester.Google Scholar
Slater, E. & Glithero, E. (1965). A follow-up of patients diagnosed as suffering from hysteria. Journal of Psychosomatic Research 9, 9–13.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Tissenbaum, M. J., Harter, H. M. & Friedman, A. P. (1951). Organic neurological syndromes diagnosed as functional disorders. Journal of the American Medical Association 147, 1519–1521.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Trimble, M. R. (1981). Neuropsychiatry, pp. 79–87. John Wiley & Sons: Chichester.Google Scholar
Trimble, M. R. (1982). Functional diseases. British Medical Journal ii, 1768–1770.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Whitlock, F. A. (1967). The aetiology of hysteria. Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica 43, 144–162.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Woodruff, R. A., Goodwin, D. W. & Guze, S. B. (1982). Hysteria (Briquet's syndrome). In Hysteria (ed. Roy, A.), pp. 117–129. John Wiley & Sons: Chichester.Google Scholar
Zeigler, F. J., Imboden, J. B. & Meyer, E. (1960). Contemporary conversion reactions: a clinical study. American Journal of Psychiatry 116, 901–910.CrossRefGoogle Scholar