[Hysterical neuroses in childhood and adolescence]

A sample of 148 child and adolescent psychiatric patients with hysterical neurosis is described as to the variables features and extent of symptomatology, age and sex distribution, psychosocial adversity and prognostic factors. Out of the "classical" symptoms seizures, walking disturbances, twilight attacks and paralyses were seen most frequently whereas vision and hearing disturbances were rather rare. Only one fifth of the patients presented a monosymptomatological pattern of disturbance. Mean age at falling ill was 13.4 years, just three children were younger than 6 years. Our clinical results buttressed by other reports of the child and adolescent psychiatric literature indicate that the traditional concept of hysteria postulating a close link between somatical symptom development and a specific intrapsychic conflict is hardly tenable at least for childhood and adolescence. Classification should be rather grounded upon an essential phenomenological approach as designed by ICD 10.