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C. Miller Fisher, MD
Neurology Service Massachusetts General Hospital Fruit Street Boston, MA 02114

Arch Neurol. 1995;52(8):743.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

The editorial by Starr and Sporty¹ is a step in the highly desirable direction of promoting the mutual exploration of cerebral function by psychiatry and neurology. Included was a section on "Conversion Disorders," while the term hysteria was not mentioned. The purposes of this note are first, to comment on this quiet change in nomenclature, and second, to present some thoughts on a new terminology.

The classic hysteria of Briquet,² Charcot,³ Freud,⁴ Savill,⁵ and Janet⁶ featured pseudoneurologic deficits (eg, paralysis, anesthesia, pseudoseizures) that were unexplained by any known physical disorder and were, therefore, assumed to have a psychologic origin. Freud⁴ theorized that a hysterical deficit resulted from the repression of a distressing idea or memory that then emerged in the form of a symbolic symptom, the hysterical symptom, whose true identity remained hidden from the subject. The affect of the repressed idea became . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

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