Hysterical Epilepsy

Hysterical Epilepsy, a term that originated in the time of Charcot, when it was applied to cases of so-called 'great hysteria' that began with seizures difficult to distinguish from (or completely indistinguishable from) epileptic ones. At present, most psychiatrists and neurologists have abandoned the use of this name due to the terminological confusion it introduces. Cases where true epileptics exhibit hysterical phenomena, and in particular hysterical seizures, undoubtedly exist, but they are completely analogous to cases of many other organic diseases of the brain, which also often have hysterical symptoms superimposed on them, but which nevertheless do not give rise to such double diagnoses. The existence of true 'transitional' cases between hysteria and epilepsy is difficult to admit from the point of view of modern nosological views, since these are two nosologically completely different concepts: while epilepsy is an organic disease, hysteria represents a functional symptom complex. In particular, cases of so-called affect-epilepsy (see), where there is no organic basis, as well as cases generally of epileptiform seizures in hysterics, have nothing in common nosologically with epilepsy.