What is hysterical stress

: an anxiety disorder and especially a phobia when the mental aspects of anxiety are emphasized over any accompanying physical symptoms (as heart palpitations and breathlessness) —used especially in Freudian psychoanalytic theory In conversion hysteria the affect of the repressed complexes is drafted into bodily …

: feeling or showing extreme and uncontrolled emotion : marked by hysteria. : very funny.

Examples of hysteria in a Sentence

A few of the children began to scream, and soon they were all caught up in the hysteria. Wartime hysteria led to many unfair accusations of treachery. The spreading of the disease caused mass hysteria in the village.

Hysteria is undoubtedly the first mental disorder attributable to women, accurately described in the second millennium BC, and until Freud considered an exclusively female disease. Over 4000 years of history, this disease was considered from two perspectives: scientific and demonological.

Neurological Causes

If you find yourself uncontrollably crying during a happy event or laughing hysterically during a sad event, you may have a condition called pseudobulbar affect (PBA). PBA is a neurological disorder, meaning that it is caused by damage to the nervous system.

This mass treatment—a cure for the now-defunct medical condition of “hysteria”—was made possible by a new technology: the vibrator. Vibrators allowed physicians to massage women’s clitorises quickly and efficiently, without exhausting their hands and wrists.

It is mental instability, fits of rage, anxiety; things that can actually happen when you are suffering from an illness or trauma. In 1980, hysteria was removed from medical texts as a disorder unto itself, but it has remained present as a symptom of disease brought on by specific trauma, both physical and mental.

n. A personality disorder marked by immaturity, dependence, self-centeredness, and vanity, with a craving for attention, activity, or excitement, and behavior that is markedly unstable or manipulative.

If pleasure was obtained from them then hysteria could be cured. If a woman was unmarried, or widowed, manual stimulation by a midwife involving certain oils and scents was recommended to purge the uterus of any fluid retention.

He insisted that hysterical fits followed four clearly-defined stages – 1) epileptoid fits, 2) ‘the period of contortions and grand movements’, 3) ‘passionate attitudes’, and 4) final delirium.

The word hysteria originates from the Greek word for uterus, hystera.