Conflict Avoidance in Obsessionals and Hysterics, and the Validity of the Concept of Dysthymia

This paper sets out to demonstrate similarities of behaviour between obsessionals and hysterics in responses to perceptual conflict, which might be expected on the basis of psycho-analytical theories, but which could not be predicted from the dimensional framework of personality favoured by Eysenck in which obsessionals and hysterics are found at opposite poles of an introversion-extroversion continuum, and in which anxiety states, depressives and obsessionals are grouped together in one indistinguishable category of dysthymia.