An additional study in hysteria: the case of Alice M.

Abstract

Abstract A highly detailed account of the psychotherapy of one female hysterioa treatment failureis the stimulant for discussion of the genetics and dynamics of this nosology. The patient's symptomatology includes feelings of unreality, seizures, an embryo dual personality, and frigidity. Hypnosis revealed the experimental basis for these symptoms and associated adjustment di5iculties. The dynamics bear a remarkable resemblance to those advanced by Freud and Breuer, though issue is taken with several fundamental psychoanalytic concepts. The Discussion deals largely with the phenomenology of the female hysteric. It is concluded that the seemingly favorable prognosis of the hysteric is illusionary if the goal is characterologic change.