hysteria

1. (medicine, nosologically dated) A mental disorder characterized by emotional excitability etc. without an organic cause.Examples: "The typical cases of hysteria cited by Freud thus involved a moral conflict—a conflict about what the young women in question wanted to do with themselves. Did they want to prove that they were good daughters by taking care of their sick fathers? Or did they want to become independent of their parents, by having a family of their own, or in some other way? I believe it was the tension between these conflicting aspirations that was the crucial issue in these cases. The sexual problem—say, of the daughter's incestuous cravings for her father—was secondary (if that important); it was stimulated, perhaps, by the interpersonal situation in which the one had to attend to the other's body. Moreover, it was probably easier to admit the sexual problem to consciousness and to worry about it than to raise the ethical problem indicated. In the final analysis, the latter is a vastly difficult problem in living. It cannot be "solved" by any particular maneuver but requires rather decision making about basic goals, and, having made the decisions, dedicated efforts to attain them."uncountableusually

2. (informal, psychopathology) Synonym of conversion disorder.Synonyms: conversion disorderinformaluncountableusually

3. (psychiatry, until early 20th century, now historical) Any disorder of women with some psychiatric symptoms without other diagnosis, ascribed to uterine influences on the female body, lack of pregnancy, or lack of sex.Synonyms: uterine melancholyhistoricalobsoleteuncountableusually