Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jkksz Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-22T16:13:18.160Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Prevalence of Hysteria and Conversion Symptoms

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2018

James Farley ,
Robert A. Woodruff Jr.  and
Samuel B. Guze
James Farley
Affiliation:
supported by Summer Research Scholarship, U.S.P.H.S.
Robert A. Woodruff Jr.
Affiliation:
Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, Missouri, 63110
Samuel B. Guze
Affiliation:
Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, Missouri, 63110
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Since 1962, a series of studies have appeared in the psychiatric literature which define hysteria with increasing precision, differentiating that syndrome from the presence of conversion symptoms alone. Hysteria was described in a recognizable fashion more than a century ago by Briquet (1859). Some fifty years later, the syndrome was redescribed by Savill (1909). After a further period of nearly fifty years, Purtell, Robins and Cohen described hysteria as it occurred in a controlled series of patients (1951). Working from Purtell's clinical data, Perley and Guze introduced specific checklist criteria for the diagnosis of hysteria in 1962. These criteria defined a female population homogeneous in prognosis, a population to be distinguished from that defined by conversion symptoms alone. Conversion symptoms are seen in a variety of medical and psychiatric illnesses, and by themselves, conversion symptoms are of little prognostic value (Gatfield and Guze, 1962; Perley and Guze, 1962; Slater and Glithero, 1965).

Type
Research Article
Information
The British Journal of Psychiatry , Volume 114 , Issue 514 , September 1968 , pp. 1121 - 1125
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1968 

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.)

References

Arkonac, O., and Guze, S. B. (1963). “A family study of hysteria” New Eng. J. Med., 268, 239–242.Google Scholar
Briquet, P. (1859). Traité clinique et thérapeutique de l'hystérie. Paris: J. B. Ballière & Fils.Google Scholar
Gatfield, P. D., and Guze, S. B. (1962). “Prognosis and differential diagnosis of conversion reactions” Dis. nerv. Sys., 23, 623–631.Google Scholar
Guze, S. B., and Perley, M. J. (1963). “Observations on the natural history of hysteria” Amer. J. Psychiat., 119, 960–965.Google Scholar
Majerus, P. W., Guze, S. B., Delong, W. B., and Robins, E. (1960). “Psychologic factors and psychiatric disease in hyperemesis gravidarum: a follow-up study of 69 vomiters and 66 controls” Ibid., 117, 421–428.Google Scholar
Murphy, G. E., Robins, E., Kuhn, N., and Christensen, R. F. (1962). “Stress, sickness and psychiatric disorder in a ‘normal’ population: a study of 101 young women” J. nerv. ment. Dis., 134, 228–236.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Perley, M. J., and Guze, S. B. (1962). “Hysteria—the stability and usefulness of clinical criteria” New Eng. J. Med., 266, 421–426.Google Scholar
Purtell, J. J., Robins, E., and Cohen, M. E. (1951). “Observations on clinical aspects of hysteria” J. Amer. med. Assoc., 146, 902–909.Google Scholar
Savill, T. D. (1909). Lectures on Hysteria and Allied Vaso-Motor Conditions. London: H. J. Glaisher.Google Scholar
Slater, E., and Glithero, E. (1965). “A follow-up of patients diagnosed as suffering from ‘hysteria’” J. psychosom. Res., 9, 9–13.Google Scholar
Woerner, P. I., and Guze, S. B. (1968). “A family and marital study of hysteria” Brit. J. Psychiat., 114, 161–168.Google Scholar
Woodruff, R. A. (1968). “Hysteria: an evaluation of objective diagnostic criteria by the study of women with chronic medical illness” Ibid., 114, 1115–1119.Google Scholar
Submit a response

eLetters

No eLetters have been published for this article.