Abstract
If it is certainly too early to answer the different questions which we have asked in this presentation, we can at least resume and analyse many points in the analysis of the facts which we have examined.
— The first would be to underline the importance of psycho-pharmacology in modern psychiatry. The example which we have chosen today shows that it constitutes an important approach for the understanding of the neuroses, as well as for those of the psychoses.
— A second point concerns particularly those neuroleptic drugs in which we have been interested since their discovery. The observation which we have reported shows that all types of stages intermediary between the truly neurological reaction and those psychomotor manifestations produced by the drug, from Parkinsonism to the hysteroid reactions, from the excito-motor syndromes to catalepsy exist, and it is impossible to establish limits.
— A third point touches on the problem of hysteria, considered not as a disease but as a type of reaction inequally developed in various patients. If it is presently impossible to completely equate in a pure and simple manner the hysteroid states of organic origin, or of pharmacological origin, with the neurotic reaction, it is also difficult to believe that the similarities between these are completely fortuitous. In particular, we have seen that the psycho-motor reactions undergone by the patient, under the influence of the medication, produces a rupture in the unity of volition, alterations in the level of awareness, and in the field of consciousness; increase in suggestibility, and even produces infantilism, which elements have in the past been regarded as the essential components of the hysterical mentality. That which is missing is the mythomania and, in part, the symbolic and verbal expression of the affective disorder.
Or, in other words, there are two aspects of hysteria: One is the utilization of the symptom by the patient for secondary gain; the other is the derangement suffered due to certain nervous disequilibrium. The study of the hysteroid side effects permits a better understanding of this last aspect, which in certain cases seems to be primordial. For if it sometimes seems that the hysteric develops and plays on his symptoms, it must not be forgotten that he is also victimized by them.