Word: hysterias
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...hysterical men in every hospital. This, it soon developed, was not so. The "hysterical" men actually had diseases ranging from epilepsy to cancer and poliomyelitis. In fact, for a long time the three researchers could find no men in a civilian hospital whose illness fitted the definition of hysteria. So they turned to military and veterans' hospitals...
...they found 38 men diagnosed as suffering from hysteria or, as it is sometimes called, "conversion reaction." They carefully checked these patients against healthy men, against men with physical illnesses, against other male neurotics and female hysterics. Their findings...
...Hysteria" in men differs from women's hysteria in one essential way: the men always stand to gain something, such as escape from prosecution or release from military service. They do not plan their illness deliberately for this purpose (if they did, it would be fraud or malingering), but the element of advantage is always present. None of the women patients stood to gain anything nearly so tangible from their hysteria, so far as the doctors could...
...patients can always describe their symptoms crisply, e.g., "I'm all nervous inside and pass out," or "I can't seem to remember things and I rave at night," and they know where they "hurt." Women hysteria patients, on the other hand, can never tell precisely what ails them: they babble vaguely and dramatically about aches & pains all over. And they commonly have twice as many symptoms...
...Robins and Cohen do not present their findings as final. Rather, they urge that data on "hysterical" men be kept separate from that on hysterical women. And if any physician finds a genuine case of old-fashioned hysteria in a man, they want to know about...