A Retrospective Study of Operationally Defined Hysterics

Abstract

A group of psychiatric patients were operationally defined as ‘hysterics’ by their reliance on the perceptual defence mechanism of repression, as disclosed in a valid psychological test. Most of them had dependency conflicts. Only half of them, almost exclusively female, had received the clinical diagnosis hysteria, the diagnosis being apparently founded on bodily complaints, overt aggression, and absence of depressive mood and anxiety. Lack of these characteristics in patients resorting to repression and with dependency conflicts results in diagnostic uncertainty. Clinical and test data justified the separation from operationally defined hysterics of three small subgroups: one with brain dysfunction, one with regressive psychosis, and one with non-regressive schizophrenia. Relevant diagnostic clues in the psychological tests and in the clinical picture are discussed.