Hysteria, the facts and the myths involved in it. This is the main topic in this paper. The Disorder or the illness called Hysteria is a paradigm in the world of neurological medicine and psychological study. As targeted for an audience of professionals, this paper discusses hysteria, its history, etiology, demographics and treatment. It also discuss course of disease and modern diagnosis and treatment strategies. The paper also discusses contributions of Freud, Breuer, Charcot, and Briquet and the studies on the cases of Anna O and Dora.
The history of the illness was traced back from the Victorian era where women were regarded to be an epitome of conservative human beings that are too vulnerable to any outside destruction thus they are kept safe. Then the timeline goes to the 19th century where hysteria became a common disorder or an ailment for the women as it was associated with their deprivation of sexual intercourse. The myth or the theory as they call them continued to exist until the modern studies came into existence associating hysteria to psychological illnesses, which gave a clearer view on the nature of the disease.
This paper delves into the physical and psychological manifestations, symptoms, causes and treatments of hysteria. It also includes the findings and discussions by famous psychologies and other scholars that made hysteria one of their most interesting focuses of study. History of hysteria Hysteria is related with a former medical diagnosis associated with women that is not recognized in the modern authority of medical diagnosis.
According Maines (1999), the history of hysteria is traced back during the Victorian era, which is portrayed by women with the symptoms that includes faintness, nervousness, insomnia, fluid retention, and heaviness in abdomen, muscle spasm, shortness of breath, irritability, loss of appetite for food or sex, and a tendency to initiate trouble. During the ancient times, philosophers like Plato and Hippocrates and ancient Greek philosophers provided for the definition of hysteria and it was found to be recorded in Egyptian papyri.
According to Greek mythology, the uterus wanders throughout a female’s body that strangles the victim as it gets to the chest that causes the disease. Such myth was the origin of the term hysteria, which means uterus in Greek. In Modern medical term, Hysteria is now known as “Somatization Disorder” or “Briquet’s Syndrome in honor of Paul Briquet, the French physicians who first described the syndrome during the 19th century. The term was intended to mean that the physical symptoms manifested by the person came from a psychological origin.
The modern medical interpretation of hysteria thus brings forth a new definition of “Somatization disorder” which is a psychiatric condition marked by multiple medically unexplained physical, or somatic symptoms which in order to qualify as such patients must be serious enough to interfere importantly with a person’s ability to perform important activities that includes work, school or family and social responsibilities, or lead the complainant to seek medical treatment.