[Hysterical psychoneurosis and its psychopathological and clinical limits]

The author's purpose in this paper is to delimit the clinical and psychopathological features of the hysterical psychoneurosis, correlating its symptoms (as characteristic of this neurosis) with the psychodynamic speculations of psychoanalysis. To achieve, this, the author starts by placing this disorder among the psychoneurosis as opposed to the actual neurosis and, within that group, among the transference neurosis, separating it, in that way, from the narcissistic and impulsive neurosis. The hysterical psychoneurosis is also distinguished from the fobic and the obsessive neurosis. The clinical picture of the hysterical psychoneurosis is then defined taking into account personality on one side and symptoms on the other. Dependence, sexual behavior disturbances, agressivity, effects of identification and repression are considered characteristics of this personality. Paroxistic symptoms, corporal and lasting symptoms and psychic syndromes are part of the hysterical symptoms. The author makes a clinical characterization of these phenomena as they are actually found. On this basis the author intends to distinguish hysteria from normality, from fobic and obsessive neurosis, from schizophrenic, manic-depressive and paranoic psychosis; from traumatic and actual neurosis and from psychosomatic diseases and epilepsy. He critically examines the validity of diagnostic-differential criteria and points to the overlapping with other pathologies, discussing in brief the theoretical and practical problems that those questions pose.