ABSTRACT
The subject of hysteria is particularly significant for psychoanalysts, for it was in the process of the study and treatment of this condition that Freud discovered the method of psychoanalysis and developed many of its basic theories. Over the years a psychoanalytic characterology emerged which assumed increasing clinical importance. There is no pure hysterical personality any more than there is a pure compulsive personality. In personality development, residuals of earlier stages of growth can invariably be found interspersed with the characteristics of later stages. The hysterical personality has never been as sharply clarified. Globus hystericus, vomiting, anorexia, and bulemia are bywords in the symptomatology of hysteria. The sexuality of the hysteric is indeed a sham, but primarily because it expresses a pregenital oral-receptive wish rather than a genital one.
