Though Jung adds his usual comment about Freud’s
over-estimation of the role of sexuality, he did not disagree with
many of Freud’s views on hysteria (see PSYCHOANALYSIS). These are
that hysterical symptoms are a return of repressed memories in a
different form, that they are symbolic and can be elucidated by means
of ANALYSIS (see SYMBOL), that there is a problematic excess of
psychic ENERGY (usually sexual), and that the aetiology of hysteria is
to be found in the personal background of the patient. It is striking
that lung’s habitual addition of the collective to the personal UNCONSCIOUS
is muted when he discusses hysteria. Perhaps this reflects the
fact that most of his writing on the subject dates from his earliest,
psychiatric period when it was often Freud’s theories which he was
demonstrating or discussing. lung’s earliest psychiatric interests were
in the general field of states of altered consciousness or semi-consciousness
(‘occult’ phenomena, somnambulism, hysteria). See SPIRIT.
lung’s contribution may be summarised as follows:
(1) The WORD ASSOCIATION TEST (see ASSOCIATION) showed the central
role of secrecy in hysteria (i.e. the forbidden, and, hence, sexual
nature of the hysteric’s fantasies is revealed).
(2) In hysteria, the natural tendency of the PSYCHE to divide itself
into relatively autonomous complexes has gone out of control so that
a complex/complexes have invaded and possessed the body (see COMPLEX
POSSESSION). A form of personality disintegration has taken
place and the somatic symptoms of hysteria may be seen as the
symbolic representatives of such pathological complexes (see DISSOCIATION).
(3) Using TYPOLOGY, lung concluded that hysteria may be seen as an
extraverted disorder (SCHIZOPHRENIA being introverted). The reason
why hysterics tend to need to involve other people in their difficulties

is that they have projected these difficulties onto the outside world
(hence, extraverted). The effect the hysteric has on the immediate
world is an indication of that person’s internal state. A simple example
of this would be that a hysterical paralysis of the legs would
require the patient to seek assistance of others in walking. What
could be a clearer demonstration of the patient’s regressed state and
his/her unmet infantile needs?
(4) Because of (3), hysterics often manifest as leader figures. Hitler
was an example of this, in lung’s view. Apropos of Nazism, lung
wrote of a ‘collective hysteria’ (see GUILT) in which a large group
splits off a part of itself which then functions ‘out of control’. Hitler’s
dissociations and those of the German people at that time coincided.