Information AboutHysteria |
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Hysteria, or Somatization Disorder , is a diagnostic label applied to a state of Mind , one of unmanageable Fear or Emotion al excesses. The fear is often centered on a body part, most often on an imagined problem with that body part ( Disease is a common complaint). People who are "hysterical" often lose self-control due to the overwhelming fear. Because of its association with Female Hysteria the term ''hysteria'' fell out of favor in the latter half of the 20th century. The word "hysterical" was replaced with synonyms such as functional, nonorganic, psychogenic and medically unexplained. In 1980 the American Psychiatric Association officially changed the diagnosis of “hysterical neurosis, conversion type” to “ Conversion Disorder .” HISTORY See Also: Female hysteria The same general definition, or under the name Female Hysteria , came into widespread use in the middle and late 19th Century to describe what is today generally considered to be Sexual Dissatisfaction .1 Typical "treatment" was massage of the patient's genitalia by the physician and later Vibrator s or water sprays to cause Orgasm . By the early 1900s , the practice and usage of the term had fallen from use until it was again popularized when the writings of Sigmund Freud became known and influential in Britain and the USA in the 1920s . The Freudian Psychoanalytic School of Psychology uses its own, somewhat controversial, ways to treat hysteria. The knowledge of hysterical processes was advanced by the work of Jean-Martin Charcot , a French Neurologist . However, many now consider hysteria to be a legacy diagnosis (i.e., a catch-all junk diagnosis),2 particularly due to its long list of possible manifestations: one Victorian physician cataloged 75 pages of possible symptoms of hysteria and called the list incomplete.3. MASS HYSTERIA See Also: Mass hysteria The term also occurs in the phrase mass hysteria to describe mass public near-panic reactions. It is commonly applied to the waves of popular medical problems that "everyone gets" in response to news articles. A similar usage refers to any sort of "public wave" phenomenon, and has been used to describe the periodic widespread reappearance and public interest in UFO reports, Crop Circles , and similar examples. Also, when information, real or fake, becomes misinterpreted but believed, e.g. Penis Panic . Hysteria is often associated with movements like the Salem Witch Trials , McCarthyism , the First Red Scare , the Second Red Scare , Terrorism , and Satanic Ritual Abuse where it is better understood through the related sociological term of Moral Panic . EXTERNAL LINKS
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