The Chairman opened the proceedings by asking two questions: (1) had hysteria disappeared or did we simply not know how to diagnose it, and (2) what in our view were the factors that predisposed to hysteria? On diagnosis, the first panellist, Janine Chasseguet-Smirgel, pointed out that Freud had stated already in the Studies on Hysteria that the term hysteria could cover the worst and the most contradictory of phenomena. Pure forms were very hard to find in the clinical situation; mixed configurations made up of an amalgam of symptoms were the most common, so that diagnosis was difficult.
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