The major symptoms of hysteria : fifteen lectures given in the Medical School of Harvard University [between the fifteenth of October and the end of November, 1906] / by Pierre Janet.

  • Janet, Pierre, 1859-1947.
Date:
1907
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The major symptoms of hysteria : fifteen lectures given in the Medical School of Harvard University [between the fifteenth of October and the end of November, 1906] / by Pierre Janet. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    dumb after an emotion, but they were formerly in- clined to stammer, their speech was quite insufficient. A girl's right leg becomes paralyzed; the reason is that, in her childhood, her right leg was affected with rachitis. In the case of another girl, the paralysis of a leg is due to the fact that, in her childhood, the leg was affected with a white tumour and remained long in bandage. This remark relates specially to the very numerous cases of associated hysteria: a disease of any kind bearing on viscera, often an organic lesion of the medulla or of the brain, enfeebles or disturbs some function and it is on this function that the hysteric emancipation is localized. So, in certain cases, hysteria makes conspicuous some light symptoms of organic diseases of the nervous system quite at their beginning by exaggerating them beyond all measure. The fact, for instance, was frequently observed in the cases of tabetic vomiting associated with hysteric vomiting. Fourth law: The function that disappears is the most complicated and the most difficult for the subject. This law applies chiefly to professional and social paralyses. Finally, fifth law: We remark a very curious fact, which we recognize without always being able to account for it. The dissociation bears on the function that was in full activity at the moment of a great emotion. There are here some physiological laws that cause the chief disturbance to bear on this function, that make it, probably through an association of ideas, through an evocation of the emotion, the most difficult for the subject.