ABSTRACT
From Antiquity through the Middle Ages the conceptions of hysteria ranged from “uterine migration” to “diabolic possession”. The anatomical investigations of the Renaissance inaugurated paths towards “modern medicine”, which contributed to the formation of psychiatry and, famously in the case of hysteria, to Charcot. Then came Freud, whose place in this hystory remains distinct. But, for some sixty years or so in more recent history, diagnostic manuals of mental disorders have gradually whittled down hysteria, as a category, leaving it in the depot of history, only to keep the symptom of conversion in their arsenal. Do some people want hysteria to disappear? Do some people object to the name itself: far too sexist and rooted in bygone superstitions not to be rendered obsolete? Or has hysteria simply disappeared? After all, everybody knows the predilection of hysteria for the figure of the Father and, if it is true that this figure has been dwindling for a century or two, perhaps hysteria has finally faded away accordingly?
