Briquet's Concept of Hysteria: An Historical Perspective

Abstract

Paul Briquet's Traité de l'Hystérie was published in 1859 and is a comprehensive clinical and epidemiological study of 430 patients with hysteria. It was widely known and quoted in its time, but was submerged by the rise of the psychoanalytic concept of hysteria at the end of the 19th century. Briquet's work was resurrected in 1971 with the recommendation that the term Briquet's Syndrome be used for certain forms of hysteria. This paper translates into English those sections of his monograph devoted to his concept of hysteria and discusses these in an historical framework. Briquet regarded hysteria as a “Neurosis of the Brain” in which a variety of unpleasant environmental events acted upon the “affective part of the brain” in a susceptible and predisposed individual. He considered the brain to be the “seat of hysteria” because it was the source of the multiple manifestations of the condition. Amongst its many other notable contributions, Briquet's study finally laid to rest hysteria's historic association with physical disease of the female genitalia.