Four thousand years of hysteria

Abstract

We have briefly noted that the principal models used to conceptualize hysteria, following historical trends, have been organic, demonological, neurological, psychological and social-communicative. This mutable disorder has mirrored the medical and social-intellectual scene for thousands of years. Our current nomenclature (hysterical neurosis) reflects medical history in that it combines two metaphors originating more than 2500 years apart. But it is an anachronism rooted in an organic model more appropriate to 1770 than to 1970. George Rosen's historical sociology has shown that “From the eighteenth century to the present there has existed the concept that social stress is in some way related to the causation of mental illness.” 19 The term “hysterical neurosis” seems to ignore this important intellectual trend.