Cases Of Hysteria Research Articles

Charcot’s erroneous double-semidecussation scheme for the retinocortical visual pathways

ABSTRACT Jean-Martin Charcot, often lauded for his seminal contributions, is seldom critiqued for his blunders. One such blunder was his double-semidecussation scheme for the retinocortical visual pathways, proposed in 1875 to explain, on neuroanatomic grounds, cases of hysteria that manifest hysterical amblyopia accompanied with ipsilateral hemianaesthesia. Charcot’s scheme was inconsistent with the older, broadly correct scheme of Prussian ophthalmologist Albrecht von Gräfe. Charcot failed to perform clinicopathologic correlation studies. His analysis relied on a series of mistaken conclusions he made in conjunction with Swiss-French ophthalmologist Edmund Landolt: (1) only an optic tract lesion could produce a homonymous hemianopsia; (2) cerebral lesions, if they ever produced homonymous hemianopsia, did so by secondary effects (e.g. pressure) on the optic tracts; and (3) damage to the cortical projections from the lateral geniculate produces a crossed amblyopia. Challenges to Charcot’s theory came from within France by 1880. By 1882, Charcot recognized that his scheme was erroneous, and he approved a thesis by his pupil Charles Féré that reverted to Gräfe’s scheme with an ill-conceived modification to accommodate Charcot’s concept of hysterical cerebral amblyopia. A critique by American neurologist Moses Starr in 1884 argued for Gräfe’s scheme and refuted Charcot’s erroneous scheme and its subsequent derivatives.

Malaria psychosis reported by Sklyar and Ryabova (Astrakhan)

Sklar and Ryabova (Astrakhan)) in Monatsschrift f. Psychiatrie 78. I (1931): 75 cases, of which 49 are men and 26 are women. Among these 75 cases, 20 are ordinary psychoses (7 Dementia progesokh, 7 paralytics, 6 circular) and 7 cases of hysteria, the remaining 48 cases are real acute infectious psychoses and were found in the form of the following exogenous types of reaction

Roots and vicissitudes of psychic bisexuality

Sigmund Freud considered the difficulty in defining masculinity and femininity from a psychic point of view as a hiatus in psychoanalytic theory. I contend that masculinity pertains to the centrifugal (to that which goes out, and ultimately to that which one loses), and femininity to the centripetal (to the appetency for taking the object into one's own internal space), whether one is considering their archaic roots or their genitalized culmination. The masculine/feminine pair draws support from the body (and, through anaclisis, from the subjective space), identified with a container that is liable already in the first psychic stages of life to empty itself of its own content and to be filled by a foreign content: the content is subjective in the masculine and object‐related in the feminine. The conflicts of ambivalence related to these two movements (desire/anxieties linked to active and passive penetration) lead to the setting up of the rigid and labile poles of the personality, and they are liable to give rise to obsessional and hysterical solutions respectively. My hypotheses will be examined in the light of the two key cases of hysteria and obsessional neurosis in Freud's work: Dora (1905e) and the Rat Man (1909d).

L’arc de cercle des hystériques. Historique, interprétations

Charcot's “Grand hysteria” – with its systematisation in four phases – disappeared along with its author and is now considered to be a socioeconomical and cultural construction of a bygone era. ObjectivesThe objective of this study is firstly to find out whether the “arc de cercle” (arching-back attitude), which is the master symptom of hysteria “à la Charcot” and its current emblem, was itself socially constructed, or whether it is natural. Following on from this, we review the various interpretations, which have been proposed for it over the years. Materials and methodsAfter recalling the description of the “arc de cercle” by Charcot and his pupils, along with the various differential diagnoses that it raises, a dual inquiry has been undertaken: 1. Clinical, into the contemporary manifestations of hysterical conversion; 2. Historical, destined to discover when the first descriptions and iconographic representations were made. Results1. Some current manifestations of conversion are still seen, though essentially in neurology. Amongst these, the “arc de cercle”, also called opisthotonos, is a symptom of Psychogenic Non-Epileptic Seizures. However, the “arc de cercle” has also been observed – naturally – in an epidemic of collective hysteria, where its strong contagiousness was highlighted. 2. Even if the description of hysteria does not hark from the earliest times, that of the “arc de cercle” has been found in a text dating from the 2nd century A.D. and its first known iconographic representation also dates from antiquity. However, it is most notably in the 16th and 17th centuries that it became appropriated by the imagery of the day, amidst its witches and convulsionaries. Contrary to Charcot's opinion, it has been suggested that certain of these images represented tetanos or pathological rage, rather than cases of hysteria. The interpretation of the “arc de cercle” initially evoked uterine conceptions of hysteria before it was to be “desexualised” by Charcot and his pupils, (notably through the importance they accorded to masculine hysteria). Freud, with his term and concept of conversion, conferring a symbolic signification on the symptoms, opened the way to a resexualisation, which blossomed along with his disciples. Subsequently the vulgarisation of the “arc de cercle” in literature, imagery and film rendered it a “theme of modernity” and the cliché of a compelling feminine desire. A concurrent interpretation by Shorter – according to which the potential patients of the day draw from a pool of symptoms – places the accent on the cultural factors determining the symptomatology of hysteria. Conversely, a natural conception underpins the interpretations of Claparède, for whom the symptoms of hysteria were “the revival of adapted defence mechanisms” and of Szasz, for whom they composed a “protolanguage”. The “arc de cercle” thus appears as the archaic manifestation of major suffering or fright. Nonetheless, a physiological interpretation is provided by the analogy with the brief enjoyment – resembling orgasm – occurring after abrupt cessation of the powerful contraction of all the anti-gravity muscles during yawning. ConclusionsThe “arc de cercle” cannot be considered to be a social construction. It appears to be a natural phenomenon in the way Charcot understood it. We consider it as a final common pathway located at the convergence of the functional and the organic, pleasure and pain.

Opening the biscuit tin: Piecing together the fragments in two cases of hysteria

Luce Irigaray contends that patriarchy is founded on symbolic matricide, and that this has had devastating consequences, particularly for women. Therefore, she argues, ‘we need to find, rediscover, invent’ a maternal genealogy. For many feminists, the marginalised figure of the madwoman has represented a discursive gap, through which they might do just that. ‘Dora’, in particular, as the beguiling subject of Freud's ‘fragmented’ study of hysteria has fascinated feminist theorists and artists for decades. This paper reconsiders this fascination, in conjunction with stories told in my family about my great-grandmother Alice, a woman diagnosed with ‘hysteria’ in north Queensland some 20 years after Freud published ‘Dora’. I take up Barthes’ work on mythology, to explore the way both constructions of hysteria, the public and the private, have functioned as mythic practices, enabling women to re-construct their selves. In the case of my great-grandmother, generations of women have re-construed her story from the old photographs, bits of cloth and jewellery that Alice's daughter kept in an old Arnott's biscuit tin. Reflecting on these practices via Barthes, I suggest that the more threadbare our mother-stories are, the more they offer those who care to rework them.

Relation entre la conversion somatique et l’idée de la mort

The author attempts to show that somatic conversion is due to the fact that a subject in major denial of death was in fact faced with its reality. The author argues that in Freud's cases of hysteria, the symptoms were preceded shortly before by the death or severe illness of somebody close to the patient, or that the patient was abused sexually, abuse which is also a reference to death. The presence of conversions in war neurosis confirms the relationship with death. Their greater frequency in adolescence corresponds to a denial of death typical of this age period. Somatic conversion is more rare in the 20th century due to the decline in religious belief in eternal life. Women were traditionally more subject to conversions than men because they were less protected by the “spirit of capitalism” and its principle of ceaseless work, which, according to Max Weber, turned religious faith to another direction.

Vom Reflexbogen zum psychischen Apparat: Neurologie und Psychoanalyse um 1900

As a disciple of Ernst Wilhelm von Brücke and Theodor Meynert, Sigmund Freud was familiar with 19th century physiology and neurology. He started his career with laboratory work and began later on, when being a young medic to develop an explicit psychological method for curating hysterics. These cases of hysteria ask riddles to the established medical discourse and practice. Freud's long time unpublished Entwurf einer Psychologie (1895) makes the attempt of a "psychology for the neurologist". He tried to give a sufficient theory of the psychic apparatus on the basis of natural science. At the same time he (together with Josef Breuer) published his Studies on Hysteria, which--in addition to his earlier essay on Aphasia (1891)--argued, that there is no clear cut relation between body and soul. Despite the dubious, non-reductive character of the soma-psyche-relation, Freud gave reason to search for a complex field of interrelations between the physiological and psychological knowledge, beyond the divide of natural sciences and humanities. Not until his groundbreaking Traumdeutung (1900) Freud gave up the claim of reintegrating psychological knowledge into the neuroscientific field for now. But up to his latest work he always adheres to the principal project of unifying the natural and the psychical being of the subject. In the gap between the two spheres, for long occupied by the discursive figure of the 'psycho-physical parallelism', Freud situated the Unconscious. In the passage to a psychoanalytical theory of psychic events Freud took up the model of the reflex arc well known from neurology. The transmission into psychoanalysis complexifies the unilinearity of reflexes, so that the psychic apparatus can be analysed as a cybernetic mechanism 'avant la lettre'. It is interesting enough that inhibition as well as consciousness play a key role in the regulation of the psychic apparatus. In this context Freud stresses the importance of speech and language within the self-organising processes concerning the claims and aims of basic needs and drives.

Freud's theory and its use in literary and cultural studies: an introduction

De Berg, Henk. Freud's Theory and Its Use in Literary and Cultural Studies: An Introduction. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2003. 155pp. $60.00 hardcover. This short book is intended to introduce advanced undergraduates and graduates to Freud's theories and their application to literature and culture. One can imagine a series of classroom lectures, in which teacher presents, with verve, Freud's main ideas, interspersing Freud's own examples with made-up ones. The presentations on Freud are followed by expositions of ways in which critics and thinkers have applied Freud to literature and culture. The writing is clear, lively, unpedantic, and rhetorical. It serves its purpose well. In Part I, De Berg sets forth Freud's key ideas: repression; conscious versus unconscious mental processes; sexuality; dreams, free associations, Freudian slips, resistance, and transference; ego, superego, and id. The chapters are organized by topic rather than pursuing Freud's development as a thinker. Even book titles, like Three Essays on Theory of Sexuality or The Ego and Id, are dropped from text, although sexuality theory and second topography are topics. This topic-based organization gives slightly skewed impression that Freud's ideas were synchronous, but De Berg does point out that second topography came later, and in any case, book is not written for scholars, but rather for beginners. Simplicity and brevity take precedence over scholarly usability. Is summary accurate? For most part, yes, except in one area, discussion of unconscious. De Berg does not say that it was in The Interpretation of Dreams that Freud discovered unconscious. Instead, discussion of unconscious is displaced backward onto Studies on Hysteria. Several problems result. Breuer is made coresponsible for dualistic model of mind (consciousness/unconsciousness), whereas Breuer never signed off on Freud's final essay, in which Freud begins to construe psyche as site of permanent, as opposed to pathological and curable, conflict. Moreover, book creates impression that unconscious may be equated with drives, probably because sexual repression is at bottom of most of Freud's cases of hysteria. The Interpretation of Dreams is then treated as if it were centrally about interpretation of dreams, instead of equally about interpretation of dreams as the royal road to a knowledge of unconscious activities of mind. Thus, De Berg takes Freud to task for not taking consciousness into account as a source of dreams-a reasonable complaint, but one that overlooks fact that Freud instrumentalized dreams, insisting that every dream had unconscious roots precisely so as to be able to posit existence of unconscious. The student who pursues Dramatisierung (dramatization) as a form of dream work in The Interpretation of Dreams will not find it; Freud himself calls it die Rucksicht auf Darstellbarkeit (considerations of representability). It is still not possible today to write about Freud and escape controversy. The reader picks up a book on Freud wondering: How will author approach topic? Will he or she be pro- or anti-Freud? Will Freud be represented as a monument of intellectual history? …

Incest, Freud's seduction theory, and borderline personality.

In the early 1890s Freud expressed the belief that many cases of hysteria had a basis in childhood incest. Later he expressed a different view, emphasizing childhood fantasies of sexual intimacies with a parent that never actually took place. Freud never totally repudiated his original seduction theory, however, maintaining to the end of his life that at least some cases of actual incest occurred and that these instances underlay certain types of psychopathology. In our era we have become aware that incest is frequently a forerunner of subsequent borderline disorders, especially in women hospitalized with borderline personality disorder (B.P.D.). All the clinical manifestations of B.P.D. can be related to the prior incest experiences.

One Hundred Cases of Hysteria in Eastern Libya

One Hundred Cases of Hysteria in Eastern Libya

Multiple personalities, related disorders and hypnosis.

Abstract The central mechanism in cases of multiple personalities appears to be spontaneous self-hypnosis. Furthermore, spontaneous self-hypnosis contributes to many cases of hysteria (Briquet's syndrome), borderline shizophrenia, reactive schizophrenia, anorexia nervosa, sociopathy, and cases with many other diagnostic designations. In turn, cases of multiple personalities offer insights into the nature of hypnosis.

Multiple personalities. A report of 14 cases with implications for Schizophrenia and hysteria.

Evidence exists to support the concept of pathology or diseases of hypnosis. Multiple personalities is such a syndrome, as are many or perhaps all cases of hysteria (Briquet's syndrome). The crux of multiple personalities is the subject's unrecognized abuse of self-hypnosis, by which she creates personalities, beginning at age 4 to 6 years. The process of self-hypnosis allows the delegation of an experience or a function to an alter ago, henceforth relegated to unconsciousness by the amnesia of hypnosis. Most of these patients qualify for the diagnosis of hysteria (Briquet's syndrome), and many are diagnosed incorrectly as being schizophrenic because of their hallucinations, paranoid ideas, and "delusions." Hysteria may owe many of its characteristics to the self-hypnotic induction of conversion and other symptoms.

Metoserpate Hydrochloride for the Treatment of Hysteria in Replacement Pullets

Fifteen flocks of replacement pullets affected with hysteria were treated with metoserpate hydrochloride via the drinking water after water was withheld for an adequate period. The dose was 4 mg/kg body weight (BW) on day 1, and 2 mg/kg BW on days 5 and 9. Metoserpate hydrochloride proved effective and safe for treating clinical cases of hysteria in replacement pullets.

Electro-convulsive therapy in the treatment of bizarre psychogenic movements.

There is considerable disagreement in the literature and in clinical practice on the value of electro-convulsive therapy (E.C.T.) in hysteria. The case to be described adds support to those who believe that E.C.T. has a part to play in carefully selected cases of hysteria that have proven resistant to more orthodox lines of treatment.

Sequential strategies in two cases of hysteria

Two cases of hysteria are presented. In Case I, the patient was unable to keep his eyes open, and in Case II, the patient believed his legs were paralyzed and his lungs were collapsed. A sequential strategy was used which combined various behavioral techniques based on principles of experimental psychology. The usefulness of matching the behavioral technique with the current condition of the patient was illustrated in both individual and milieu therapy settings. In neither case was symptom substitution manifested.

Vertical Nystagmus by Fixation Phenomena

The two cases here reported were characterized by vertical nystagmus and fixation of the eye upward in spite of an effort to look down, coming on many months after an attack of lethargic encephalitis. Reports of similar cases are found in the literature. They are likely to be mistaken for cases of hysteria. From the Department of Neurology, Long Island College Hospital.

THE SENSIBILITY OF THE NIPPLE AREA WITH REFERENCE TO MENTAL DISEASE

In the observation of those nervous and mental affections of whose bodily nature we know little, we sometimes find motor and sensory symptoms, contradictory in character, and apparently obeying no known law. Of the disturbances, pain is the most frequent. Small isolated zones, painful to the slightest touch, exist fairly constantly, at times associated with areas of lessened or increased sense of touch. Oppenheim finds cutaneous and mucous anesthesias often associated with hyperesthesias, and areas on which painful stimuli are not normally perceived as painful. These areas may be hypersensitive to the slightest touch, which in itself may elicit acute pain. These areas have been called hysterogenic zones, but they are probably not entirely found in hysterical conditions. Of these so-called hysterogenic zones-supposedly indicators of higher functional derangements-perhaps the most significant are those in connection with the sexual sphere. Graves,1 in his investigation of sensory disturbances involved in cases of hysteria of both sexes, found a peculiar abnormality of sensation, namely, an anesthesia associated with hyperalgesia sharply confined to the areola-nipple area. The dividing line between the anesthetic and hyperalgesic area and the area of normal sensibility was very sharp, the change from the normal sensation being found wholly within the pigmented area. As this peculiarity was more or less constant in 30 cases of typical hysteria, the conclusion was drawn that “areola-nipple anesthesia associated with hyperalgesia is a pathognomonic and fairly constant stigma in hysteria.” He also notes experiments on the normal individual, in which, as a

Two Cases of Hysteria, Treated by Suggestion, with an Account of some Experiments in Hypnotism

One of the subjects of the following remarks, J. R—, was shown at the Spring Meeting of the Scottish Branch of the Medico-Psychological Association, held at Gartloch Asylum in March, 1910. This case is reported in the Journal of Mental Science for July of that year. The other patient, J. S—, came under my care in May, 1910, and his history is so far unrecorded. As there are many points of similarity in the two cases, it will save time to describe them together in so far as they resemble one another, and then later to indicate the differences between the two.

Three cases of hysteria in the mare

Three cases of hysteria in the mare

Cases of Hysteria in Child-Bed

Cases of Hysteria in Child-Bed