ABSTRACT
The definition and diagnosis of hysteria continues to be controversial and debatable. Clinicians have used the term hysteria to describe a symptom, several patterns of illness, attention-seeking behavior and a personality type. Psychophysiological studies on hysterical patients tend to fall into two broad groups: stimulus screening capacity, investigated by arousal, and habituation of the galvanic skin response and the processing of stimuli in the brain, investigated by the evoked-response potentials. A review on the neuropsychological concept of somatoform disorders focuses on the models suggesting damage to the brain stem structures, modulating influence of the cerebral cortex and of the second somatosensory area. The results of the genetic studies reviewed do not provide any strong support to the genetic hypothesis. The presence of organic brain disease appears to facilitate the use of hysterical mechanisms, thus supporting an association between the two conditions rather than etiologically causative role for organic disease in the onset of hysteria.
