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The Importance of Hysteria

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2018

H. Merskey
H. Merskey*
Affiliation:
University of Western Ontario, London Psychiatric Hospital, 850 Highbury Avenue, PO Box 2532, Terminal A, London, Ontario N6A 4HI
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Extract

Hysteria has been a topic of interest throughout the history of medicine; those who have been concerned with it include Galen, Paré, Sydenham, Charcot and Freud. Anyone who chooses to proclaim its importance, therefore, might be asked to provide some reason for gilding the lily. Controversies have always attended the subject, and different disciplines still disagree over it. The diagnosis, which occurs in the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-9, 1978) has been deprecated on both sides of the Atlantic (Slater, 1965; DSM-III, 1980) and also advocated with varying degrees of fervour (Walshe, 1965; Lewis, 1975; Merskey, 1979). It is a subject of historical study (Veith, 1965; Walker, 1981; Shorter, 1984); there have been at least nine monographs on it since 1977 (Horowitz, 1977; Krohn, 1978; Jakubik, 1979; Merskey, 1979; Roy, 1982; Riley & Roy, 1982; Colligan et al. 1982; Weintraub, 1983; Ford, 1983), and there is a steady flow of paper on the topic of hysteria or its major subdivisions (eg, hysterical personality, conversion symptoms) or pseudonyms and partial pseudonyms (eg, somatisation disorders, borderline personality, and operant pain).

Type
Symposium on Hysteria
Information
The British Journal of Psychiatry , Volume 149 , Issue 1 , July 1986 , pp. 23 - 28
Copyright
Copyright © 1986 The Royal College of Psychiatrists 

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