Hysteria: An Evaluation of Specific Diagnostic Criteria by the Study of Randomly Selected Psychiatric Clinic Patients

In 1962, Perley and Guze introduced specific criteria for the diagnosis of hysteria based on clinical observations made in 1951 by Purtell, Robins and Cohen. A number of reports have been published since 1962 evaluating the limits and usefulness of these criteria. A recent paper by Guze (1967) summarizes a large part of this work and explores various problems of definition and methodology. In 1968, two papers appeared in this journal evaluating the criteria for hysteria by applying them to women with chronic medical illnesses (Woodruff) and to normal women (Farley, Woodruff and Guze). The present study is an extension of the method used in those reports.