What makes people hysterical

Usually, the feelings are more intense than the situation warrants. Under this definition, many things can lead to a feeling of hysteria.

Anxiety disorders absolutely lead to hysteria, and although they are not often thought of as "true" hysteria, they absolutely cause overwhelming emotions that can cause you significant distress, embarrassment, and fear. Because hysteria is not a medical term, there are often alternative ideas for what constitutes hysteria and what does not.

Not all "hysteria" is emotional. In some cases, a delusional belief may be hysteria - such as believing you're ill when you're not, or believing you're overweight when you aren't. PTSD can often lead to hysteria. PTSD often has triggers, where if the person experiences some event like a loud noise , they start immediately reliving the trauma, and that can overwhelm them with negative emotions despite no actual danger taking place.

The emotions can be so strong that they "break" and cannot seem to control them. When someone's in the process of experiencing a panic attack, it may be argued that they're hysterical, because panic attacks themselves are an emotionally overwhelming response. Panic attacks occur when a person responds to a change in their body however small and feel like they're suffering from a heart attack, often with accompanying symptoms.

The symptoms are very real, but they're caused by anxiety - not by a heart attack, thus indicating that panic attacks are, in many ways, a hysterical response.

Severe reactions to phobias are another example of a hysterical response. While all phobias are irrational fears, in some cases a person may experience fear so extreme that they are completely overwhelmed, indicating that they have lost control of their emotions. They may scream, cry, or even come close to fainting as a result of this fear.

Except where otherwise noted, content on this site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4. Wellcome Collection. Jean-Martin Charcot demonstrating hysteria in a patient, Attribution 4. Hysteria stems from sexual frustration in women. George Cheyne. Mezzotint by J. Faber, A Mesmerist using Animal Magnetism on a female patient. Men and women in a Mesmer Banquet. Hysterical yawning woman.

Series of three photos showing a so-called 'hysterical' woman yawning. The vibrator cure So, where exactly did the myth of vibrators come from if the most famous hysterical doctor of the 19th century did not use them to treat patients?

Advert for Harness' "Electropathic Belts". Defining hysteria The extreme misdiagnosis of hysteria slowed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries because of two major factors: psychoanalysis and World War I.

About the author. The famed Austrian psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud had studied with Charcot, so he had first-hand experience observing patients who had been diagnosed with the ailment as well as Charcot's treatment methods. Anna had found that simply talking about her problems with her therapist had a major impact on her well-being. She dubbed this treatment the "talking cure" and it is still referred to as talk therapy to this day.

Carl Jung, a colleague of Freud's, treated a young woman named Sabina Spielrein who was also thought to suffer from hysteria. Jung and Freud often discussed Spielrein's case, which had an impact on the theories they developed. Spielrein herself trained as a psychoanalyst and helped introduce the psychoanalytic approach in Russia before she was murdered by Nazis during World War II.

In , the American Psychological Association changed their diagnosis of "hysterical neurosis, conversion type" to that of " conversion disorder. Dissociative disorders are psychological disorders that involve an interruption a dissociation in aspects of consciousness, including identity and memory. These types of disorders include dissociative fugue, dissociative identity disorder, and dissociative amnesia.

In the most recent update of the DSM, the DSM-5, symptoms that were once labeled under the broad umbrella of hysteria fit under what is now referred to as somatic symptom disorder. Somatic symptom disorder involves having a significant focus on physical symptoms such as weakness, pain, or shortness of breath. This preoccupation with symptoms results in significant distress and difficulties with normal functioning.

The individual may or may not have a medical condition. It is important to note that this does not involve faking an illness; whether the person is sick or not, they believe that they are ill. Ever wonder what your personality type means? Sign up to find out more in our Healthy Mind newsletter. Women and hysteria in the history of mental health.

Clin Pract Epidemiol Ment Health. Carota A, Calabrese P. Hysteria around the world. From the thirteenth century onwards, the struggle with heresy assumes a political connotation: the Church aims tat unifying Europe under its banner, so breviaries become manuals of the Inquisition and many manifestations of mental illness are seen as obscene bonds between women and the Devil.

If in early Christianity, exorcism was considered a cure but not a punishment, in the late Middle Ages it becomes a punishment and hysteria is confused with sorcery [ 19 , 20 ].

Although not an official Church manual, it takes on an official tone due to the inclusion of the papal Bull within the text. The devil is everywhere in these pages: he makes men sterile, kills children, causes famine and pestilence and all this with the help of witches.

The compilers of the manual are familiar with the medicine of the age, and they investigate the relationship between sorcery and human temperaments: their descriptions rival those contained in the best psychopathology manuals [ 21 , 22 ]. The text is divided into three parts and aims at proving the existence of demons and witches warning the reader that anyone not convinced is also a victim of the Devil explaining how to find and punish sorcery.

But what has this to do with women's health? It is quite simple: if a physician cannot identify the cause of a disease, it means that it is procured by the Devil. The inquisitor finds sin in mental illness because, he says, the devil is a great expert of human nature and may interfere more effectively with a person susceptible to melancholy or hysteria.

Hysteria is considered a woman's disease, and who more than women are prone to melancholy? Obviously, the women most affected are elderly and single, in most cases they have already been in mourning or victims of violence. At the end of the Middleage, journeys along the coasts of the Mediterrinean sea contributed to a quick diffusion of Greek Classics, preserved and disseminated by the Arabians.

The humanistic movement born with Dante, Boccaccio and Petrarch emphasized a respect for the writings of the Antiquity. During these centuries, a new realistic approach to man as a person was born, which opposed the scholastics and introduced a fresh point of view about nature and man [ 19 ].

Italian philosopher Giovanni Pico della Mirandola espoused the principle that each man is free to determinate his own fate, a concept that perhaps more than any other has influenced the developments of the last three centuries: only man is capable of realizing his ideal and this condition can, however, be achieved only through education [ 23 ].

Up to this time the medical vision of hysteria, inherited from the Hippocratic-Galenic tradition, continues to dominate [ 24 ]. At the end of the 16th century, in European countries affected by the Counter-Reformation, the theological vision tends to overwhelm the medical community. During this period the most intense activity of the Roman Inquisition, in which magic has replaced the fight against heresy, is recorded.

Thus in these states, a new generation of physicians emerges, which is destined to be subordinated to inquisitors [ 24 ]. It is precisely the physician and theologian Giovan Battista Codronchi who, by criticizing the medical therapy of the time aimed at treating hysteria, give us a detailed description of them.

The physician prohibited this treatment at all, an attitude due to the concern typical of that historical phase related to sex and sexual repression.

The treatment for him must be practices by the spiritual guides [ 24 ]. Another important physician, the Dutch Johann Weyer intended to prove that witches were mentally ill and had to be treated by physicians rather than interrogated by ecclesiastics [ 19 ]. In he became the private physician of the Duke William of Cleves, who was a chronic depressive. The Duke observed that witches manifesedt many of the same symptoms as his relatives became insane.

In , Weyer publishes De prestigiis Daemonum , which is a step-by-step rebuttal of the Malleus Maleficarum. However, for the doctors of that time, the uterus is still the organ that allows to explain vulnerable physiology and psychology of women: the concept of inferiority towards men is still not outdated. Willis introduces a new etiology of hysteria, no longer attached to the central role of the uterus but rather related to the brain and to the nervous system [ 24 ].

In , another English physician, Thomas Sydenham , published a treatise on hysteria Epistolary Dissertation on the Hysterical Affections which refers back to natural history through describing an enormous range of manifestations and recognizing for the first time the fact that hysterical symptoms may simulate almost all forms of organic diseases [ 19 ]. However, the author fluctuates between a somatic and a psychological explanation [ 27 ].

Sydenham demonstrates that the uterus is not the primary cause of the disease, which he compares to hypochondria: his work is revolutionary as it opposes the prejudices, but it will take several decades for the theory of "uterine fury" to be dismissed [ 26 ]. The scientific development does not mark a dramatic shift from a demonological vision of medicine, but progresses hand in hand with evolution of theories on exorcism.

The written records tell us of several outbreaks of hysteria, the most famous of which is undoubtedly the one occurred in the village of Salem Massachusetts in The texts recall an episode in which a slave originally from Barbados talks about the prediction of fate and some girls creat a circle of initiation.

This latter was formed by women yunger then twenty years of age and unmarried. The action of creating a circle of initiation was in itself an open violation of the precepts of the Puritans. There is no record of the first stages of the disease: the girls result "possessed" since February The symptoms described were staring and barred eyes, raucous noises and muffled, uncontrolled jumps, sudden movements etc. The local doctor, William Griggs, referred the problem to the priest.

The slave and two other women were summoned, and the former admitted witchcraft and pacts with the devil. Gradually they began to accuse each other. Eventually, 19 were hanged as "witches", and over were kept in detention. Only when the girls accused the wife of the Colonial Governor of being part of this circle herself, the latter forbade further arrests and trials for witchcraft [ 27 ]. Marion Starkey , at the end of World War II, reports the case comparing it with more contemporary events [ 27 ].

Her explanation of classical hysteria is that the illness manifested itself in young women repressed by Puritanism, and was aggravated by the intervention of Puritan pastors, this leading to dramatic consequences. The incident proves thus that hysteria could be seen as a consequence of social conflicts [ 27 ]. Social conflicts do not occur exclusively in closed societies, such as small communities such as puritanical circles, but they also occur in more open and dynamic societies asbig cities.

In Joseph Raulin published a work in which he defines hysteria as an affection vaporeuse and describes it as a disease caused by foul air of big cities and unruly social life. In theory, the disorder can affect both sexes, but women are more at risk for their being lazy and irritable [ 26 ]. Between the 17th and 18th centuries a trend of thought that delegated to the woman a social mission started developing. If from a moral point of view she finds redemption in maternal sacrifice that redeems the soul but it does not rehabilitate the body, from the social point of view, the woman takes a specific role.

In the physician-philosopher Pierre Roussel published the treatise "Systeme physique et moral de la femme" greatly influenced by the ideas of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Femininity is for both authors an essential nature, with defined functions, and the disease is explained by the non-fulfillment of natural desire.

The excesses of civilization causes disruption in the woman as well as moral and physiological imbalance, the identified by doctors in hysteria [ 26 ]. The afflictions, diseases and depravity of women result from the breaking away from the normal natural functions. Following natural determinism, doctors confine the woman within the boundaries of a specific role: she is a mother and guardian of virtue [ 26 ].

Even more interesting is the fact that the causes and symptoms of hysteria and melancholy are linked to the humor theory. In the 18th century, hysteria starts being gradually associated with the brain rather than the uterus, a trend which opens the way to neurological etiology: if it is connected to the brain, then perhaps hysteria is not a female disease and can affect both sexes.

But this is not such a simple shift as it may seem. The German physician Franz Anton Mesmer found in suggestion a method of treatment for his patients suffering from hysteria, practicing both group and individual treatments.

He identified in the body a fluid called "animal magnetism" and his method soon became famous as "mesmerism". Indeed, it was thought that the magnetic action of the hands on diseased parts of the body could treat the patient, interacting with the fluid within the body.

Only later we realized that this was a mere suggestion. Mesmerism had subsequent developments in the study of hypnosis [ 30 ]. Nonethelsess, Pinel too considered hysteria a female disorder [ 19 , 31 ].

Jean Martin Charcot the French father of neurology, pushed for a systematic study of mental illnesses. In particular, he studied the effectiveness of hypnosis in hysteria, which, from onwards, is distinguished from other diseases of the spirit.

Charcot argues that hysteria derives from a hereditary degeneration of the nervous system, namely a neurological disorder. By drawing graphs of the paroxysm, he eventually shows that this disease is in fact more common amongst men than women [ 32 - 36 ]. During the Victorian Age most women carried a bottle of smelling salts in their handbag: they were inclined to swoon when their emotions were aroused, and it was believed, that, as postulated by Hipocrates, the wandering womb disliked the pungent odor and would return to its place, allowing the woman to recover her consciousness [ 34 ].

French neuropsychiatrist Pierre Janet , with the sponsorship of J. He convinced doctors that hypnosis — based on suggestion and dissociation — was a very powerful model for investigation and therapy.

The chief patient I am worried about today is myself. In he published his Studies on Hysteria with Joseph Breuer The key-concepts of his psychoanalytical theory the influence of childhood sexual fantasies and the different ways of thinking of the unconscious mind have not yet been formulated, but they are already implicit in this text.

Among the cases presented, we find the hysteria of the young Katherina, who suffers from globus hystericus. The text does not refer to the famous Oedipus complex , which emerges through the study of male hysteria, developed after this treatise [ 36 - 38 ]. We now reach a crucial point: until Freud it was believed that hysteria was the consequence of the lack of conception and motherhood. Freud reverses the paradigm: hysteria is a disorder caused by a lack of libidinal evolution setting the stage of the Oedipal conflict and the failure of conception is the result not the cause of the deasease [ 36 - 38 ].

This means that a hysterical person is unable to live a mature relationship. Furthermore, another important point under a historical point of view is that Freud emphasizes the concept of "secondary advantage".

According to psychoanalysis the hysterical symptom is the expression of the impossibility of the fulfillment of the sexual drive because of reminiscence of the Oedipal conflict [ 36 - 38 ]. The symptom is thus a "primary benefit" and allows the "discharge" of the urge - libidinal energy linked to sexual desire.

However, it is a disease of women: it is a vision of illness linked to the mode historically determined to conceive the role of women. The woman has no power but "handling", trying to use the other in subtle ways to achieve hidden objectives.

It is still an evolution of the concept of "possessed" woman [ 37 , 38 ]. Psychiatrists note that any function of the body can be affected by hysteria [ 34 ]. An analysis of the framing of these diagnoses in British medical discourse c. Before the war these diagnoses were perceived as indicators of national decline. Continuity, as well as change, is evident in medical responses to shell-shock [ 38 ].

In the Medical Staff Report it was concluded that an infective agent was responsible [ 34 ]. In McEvedy and Beard put forward an alternative suggestion that Royal Free Disease was an epidemic of hysteria for example the sensory loss affected a whole limb or part of a limb but the pattern rarely followed the distribution of nerves to the skin and also pointed out that the spread of the symptoms, predominantly affecting young female resident staff, is characteristic of epidemics of hysteria, which usually occur in populations of segregated females such as girl schools, convents and factories.