The “Hysterical Personality”

4. Most medical authorities speak of a “hysterical personality.” This is the way one current medical work describes it:EGWC 65.4

“What characterizes the hysterical personality is the infantile reaction to life and the inability to adjust at the adult level of reality. The individual is hypersensitive, excessively irritable, self-centered (not altogether selfish), preoccupied with himself, impulsive and moody, and generally deficient in emotional control. He is enthusiastic and depressed by turns, often has out-bursts of crying, and sometimes of uncontrollable laughter. Like every child he craves attention and is querulous if he does not receive it, showing that he is considerably narcissistic [that is, sexually attracted toward himself]. He is shy, easily frightened, afraid to be alone, and he would dominate the stage, sometimes in true histrionic fashion. He is generally impatient and anxious, and not infrequently has acute attacks of anxiety. He exaggerates his complaints, keenly feels seeming neglect, is inordinately ceremonious, and preoccupied with his bodily functions. He is affectionate and resentful at the same time (ambivalent), strongly attached to his family, yet incapable of loving very deeply. He is often cruel to the very people he loves best (sadistic trend). He injects his personality into everything and easily identifies himself with persons and things. He lives a life of childish phantasy and loves to indulge in day dreams (autistic thinking). Most characteristic is his extreme and abnormal suggestibility. Sexually he is immature.... In short, the outstanding characteristics of hysteria are persistence of infantile trends and abnormal psychosexual development.”—WECHSLER, op. cit., p. 711.EGWC 65.5

Dr. Wechsler immediately adds this important, qualifying sentence: “Not every hysteric, of course, shows all the above mental traits; nor does the occurrence of one or more of them in an individual make of him a maladjusted neurotic.”—Ibid. Note particularly the last half of the sentence.EGWC 66.1

5. A hysterical episode, or what the layman might call a “hysterical fit,” can take a number of different forms. As one medical writer says: “Hysteria is kaleidoscopic in its manifestations and may appear in the form of physical or mental disturbances.”—ARTHUR P. NOYES, Modern Clinical Psychiatry, p. 286.EGWC 66.2

To sum up the outstanding “manifestations” of a hysterical episode, or fit, as Dr. Noyes gives them: There may be “disturbance of special sense organs, such as blindness, pains, headaches.” “Paralysis may be present in any one of several forms.” There may be “aphonia, in which the patient cannot phonate speech.” But though the patient cannot speak he “continues to cough.” There may be “hysterical vomiting.” One of the commonest forms of “mental disturbances” in hysteria “is amnesia,” a blotting out of memory. There may be “dramatic posturings and activities and an excessive flow of speech appearing nonsensical.... Occasionally the hysterical patient spins fantastic stories.” “At times ... the patient suddenly leaves the place of his usual activity and without any apparent purpose travels to some remote point.”EGWC 66.3