Hysteria Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Hysteria - Essay Example The hysterical person claims one or more of many difficulties or disorders. These include: complete or partial inability to hear or see, prolonged periods of forgetting (amnesia), inability to sleep or sleep walking (somnambulism), loss of speech (aphoria), trances, muscular habits (spasms tics or tremors) and apparent epileptic seizures (idiopathic epilepsy), conversion hysteria in which metal conflicts re converted into physical symptoms such as paralysis, blindness and anesthesia, the fugus or flight, in which an individual becomes amnesic for personal past and multiple personality, in which individual's personality splits into two or more distinct personalities with dissociation of consciousness. Amnesia is a condition where the person cannot recall certain past experiences of his life. In functional amnesia, there is no brain damage as is found in some other forms. The forgotten material remains inaccessible to the person, but can be restored after treatment. Because the person cannot cope with this threatening material, there is repression so that it can be eliminated from the consciousness. Fugus states are characterized by a general amnesia for the person's entire past, including who he is and where he lived. This is associated with a flight (fugue) where the person wanders away from home and then days, weeks, and sometimes years later, finds himself in a strange place, not knowing how he got there, and not remembering about the period of fugue. In some cases, a person has lived away from his original home for ten or more years, starting a new occupation, building a family, only to "reawaken" later, missing his place of origin. In somnambulism, certain thoughts become so strong during sleep as to determine the person's behavior. The person rises and carries out some act. Like multiple personalities, there is some dissociation of some sub-system within the personality which is expressed during sleep and for which nothing is remembered during the waking state. Multiple personalities are rare. It is as if several parts of personality have not been successfully integrated so they become separated or dissociated from each other and the person frequently shifts from one to the other. There appear to be several complete systems of personality with each system having distinct emotional and thought processes, different from each other. When one personality is free and impulsive, another is inhibited and responsible. In conversion reaction, the person suffers from physical symptoms with o organic basis. It could be in the form of anesthesia (loss of sensitivity of some body part) where the person does not feel any pain or sensation in that part of the body. Diagnostic criteria for conversion disorder as defined in the DSM-IV are as follows: One or more symptoms or deficits are present that affect voluntary motor or sensory function that suggest a neurologic or other general medical condition. Psychologic factors are judged to be associated with the symptom or deficit because conflicts or other stressors precede the initiation or exacerbation of the symptom or de