2023-10-07 05:45:03
The names of the diseases have varied according to knowledge. But more often, it is ignorance that has contributed to the waltz of names, particularly in psychiatry. The semantics of hysteria are certainly the most facetious.
This disease which the ancients attributed to the wandering of the uterus remained exclusively feminine until Freud’s picturesque castration complex. Then, it was finally accepted that it might also be male, but the penis, testicles and prostate were never suspected of being the cause.
Its neurological symptoms are very impressive: paralysis, convulsions, blindness, aphasia, syncope, dysphagia, sensory deficits, pain, etc. But since no neurological lesions were ever found, they were called somatomorphic disorders, a catch-all term to signify their resemblance to somatic disorders.
Tetany was the name given to the attacks of Augustine, the famous hysteric that Charcot exhibited in his university theater. This tetany became spasmophilia, then finally “panic attack”, a psychiatric disorder now detached from the hysterical register.
The pains of hysteria have long been confused with those of fibromyalgia, a new diagnosis which has also known various names: psychogenic rheumatism, polyenteropathy, chronic muscular rheumatism, fibrositis, myalgic encephalomyelitis. The current term is “diffuse idiopathic polypain syndrome” or SPID. Note here the adjective psychogenic and the prefix “idio” meaning that the cause is unknown. Finally a confession.
Fatigue, attention and concentration problems have been confused with chronic fatigue syndrome, now independent of hysteria.
Psychiatrists have modified hysteria to “conversion syndrome” to mean the conversion of a psychiatric disorder into a physical disorder. An elegant admission of ignorance.
Modern medicine has insisted on dissociating the convulsions of hysteria from those of epilepsy, because the electroencephalogram is always normal. They were called “psychogenic non-epileptic seizures” or CNEP. More psychogenic.
The latest manual for the perfect psychiatrist has brought together this disparate group under the generic term functional neurological disorder or FND. “Functional” can be considered a synonym for “psychogenic” or “idiotic”, but less explicit!
Hysteria now has a scholarly explanation: an abnormal functioning of the central nervous system characterized by an alteration in the transmission of information between the brain regions involved in emotional regulation and self-representation on the one hand and the motor and sensory system on the other hand. Moving synthesis.
Let us have no doubt that the words and classifications of hysterical symptoms will still change for our literary happiness, because the semantics of ignorance is always more poetic than that of knowledge. Particularly in medicine.
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