Current Theories and Practices
Current psychiatric terminology distinguishes two types of disorder that were previously labelled 'hysteria': somatoform and dissociative. The dissociative disorders in DSM-IV-TR include dissociative amnesia, dissociative fugue, dissociative identity disorder, depersonalization disorder, and dissociative disorder not otherwise specified. Somatoform disorders include conversion disorder, somatization disorder, pain disorder, hypochondriasis, and body dysmorphic disorder. In somatoform disorders, the patient exhibits physical symptoms such as low back pain or limb paralysis, without apparent physical cause. Additionally, certain culture-bound syndromes such as "ataques de nervios" ("attacks of nerves") identified in Hispanic populations, and popularized by the Almodóvar film Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, exemplify psychiatric phenomena that encompass both somatoform and dissociative symptoms and that have been linked to psychological trauma. Recent neuroscientific research, however, is starting to show that there are characteristic patterns of brain activity associated with these states. All these disorders are thought to be unconscious, not feigned or intentional malingering.
Jungian psychologist Laurie Layton Schapira explored what she labels a "Cassandra Complex" suffered by those traditionally diagnosed with hysteria, denoting a tendency for those with hysteria to be disbelieved or dismissed when relating the facts of their experiences to others. Based on clinical experience, she delineates three factors which constitute the Cassandra complex in hysterics: (a) dysfunctional relationships with social manifestations of rationality, order, and reason, leading to; (b) emotional or physical suffering, particularly in the form of somatic, often gynaecological complaints, and (c) being disbelieved or dismissed when attempting to relate the facticity of these experiences to others.
Read more about this topic: Hysteria
Famous quotes containing the words current, theories and/or practices:
“I don’t see America as a mainland, but as a sea, a big ocean. Sometimes a storm arises, a formidable current develops, and it seems it will engulf everything. Wait a moment, another current will appear and bring the first one to naught.”
—Jacques Maritain (1882–1973)
“The real trouble about women is that they must always go on trying to adapt themselves to men’s theories of women, as they always have done. When a woman is thoroughly herself, she is being what her type of man wants her to be. When a woman is hysterical it’s because she doesn’t quite know what to be, which pattern to follow, which man’s picture of woman to live up to.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)
“Such is the art of writing as Dreiser understands it and practices it—an endless piling up of minutiae, an almost ferocious tracking down of ions, electrons and molecules, an unshakable determination to tell it all. One is amazed by the mole-like diligence of the man, and no less by his exasperating disregard for the ease of his readers.”
—H.L. (Henry Lewis)