A psychoneurosis, characterized by lack of control over acts and emotions, by morbid self-consciousness, by anxiety and by simulation of various disorders
a psychiatric condition variously characterized by emotional excitability, excessive anxiety, sensory and motor disturbances, and the simulation of organic disorders
A person who is suffering from hysteria is in a state of violent and disturbed emotion as a result of shock. By now, she was screaming, completely overcome with hysteria. Term formerly used in psychology to designate a neurosis marked by emotional excitability and disturbances of psychic, sensory, vasomotor, and visceral functions. The concept was used frequently in the first half of the 20th century to explain a wide variety of symptoms and behaviours observed particularly in women. (The term derives from the Greek word for womb, reflecting the Greeks' belief that the condition resulted from disturbances of the uterus.) It was eventually dropped from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders as overly broad. Disorders with symptoms similar to those of traditional hysteria include conversion disorder, factitious disorder, dissociative disorder, and personality disorder (histrionic type)
A nervous affection, occurring almost exclusively in women, in which the emotional and reflex excitability is exaggerated, and the will power correspondingly diminished, so that the patient loses control over the emotions, becomes the victim of imaginary sensations, and often falls into paroxism or fits