Hysterical Personality Style and Histrionic Personality Disorder [Hardcover]

Mardi J. Horowitz (Editor)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0876685467 | ISBN-13: 978-0876685464 | Publication Date: July 1991 | Edition: 2nd Revised

This revised edition of the classic work on the hysterical personality begins with a new chapter, introducing the core characteristics of the hysterical personality disorder and providing a framework for the reader that changes and is enlarged in each successive chapter. The second chapter deals with the fundamental diagnostic and formulative issues. The third considers the development of the disorder in terms of childhood and adolescent antecedents. Basic treatment principles are presented in the fourth chapter, and the change process in reschematizing psychological treatment is addressed in the fifth. This last chapter presents a case in detail, indicating development of schemas of self and others; showing how core aspects of personality may change as a consequence of new forms of relationships and new uses of conscious thought. The initial phase of treatment in an average treatable case of hysterical personality is often one that is an urgent appeal for attention. This phase is followed quickly, once a therapeutic attachment is established, by a period of regression, in which unresolved conflicts and childhood fixations are manifested within the therapeutic relationship itself. Ideally, this phase overlaps with a period of working through, the therapeutic antidote to the multiply determined nature of the patient's state at onset of treatment. Finally, termination encompasses the difficult task of separation, itself a phase of important work on self-development for the hysterical personality. The approach here is that of brief or extended treatment guided by psychoanalytic theory, using the basic ground rules of psychodynamic psychotherapy. The main patient type under consideration is the hysterical personality who has developed a separate, although conflicted, self-representation and who has advanced capacity for relationship. This book is a resource for every mental health clinician.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Jason Aronson Inc; 2nd Revised edition (July 1991)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0876685467
• ISBN-13: 978-0876685464
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.2 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,192,685 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Mardi Horowitz, M.D. is Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco. He has been president of the San Francisco Psychoanalytic Institute, the San Francisco Center for Psychoanalytis, and the Society for Psychotherapy Research. He has directed the NIMH Center for the Study of Neuroses and the Program on Conscious and Unconscious Mental Processes of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. He is a founding member of the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies and the Society to Explore Psychotherapy Integration.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

79 of 79 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Mental illness in everyday life, April 3, 2000

By 

A Customer - See all my reviews

This review is from: Hysterical Personality Style and Histrionic Personality Disorder (Hardcover)

This scholarly book tackles a theme that mass market books can only dance around - how children grow up in families where one or more of the parents have an identifiable mental illness such as neurosis which results in bizzare (although often subtle) actions, and unpredictable and inappropriate behavior around the kids.

The basic theme of this book is the way that familys and child development can produce life-long problems with relationships (neurosis) and aggression (personality disorder). Although it acknowledges the extreme difficulty of proving this, it lays out a scholarly, thorough, and compelling case. It touches on a series of intertwined developmental issues, which mass market books would have dealt with separately. This prevents mass market readers from the seeing how these problems are related. This includes issues of promiscuity, what other books would call "low self esteem," substance abuse, gender confusion, repeated destructive relationships, sadism, compulsive sexual behavior, asexual behavior, feminine role-playing in women, fake hyper-masculine behavior in men, and the way that all these defense are mobilized to sabotage relationships and counseling. Although sex plays a role in many of these problems, there is nothing salacious about this book. The tone is not dry, but sometimes amusingly old-fashioned.

There is also a thorough examination of role of adults that act out their repressed hostilities through their children. And the explanation of how adults encourage to children to act out the adults' repressed sexual desires is downright eerie, but seems right on target in an era where so many adults seem obsessed with pushing inappropriate clothes, movies, books on very small children. It also describes cases where small children show extremely disturbing flirtatious and sexual behavior, urged on by their parents (who have no idea).

This book is a series of essays. The quality of each chapter is uniformly excellent. The writers have a Freudian perspective, but the book never bogs down in jargon. Its level of difficulty is appropriate for the interested laymen, although it would be clearly beyond the level of a Psych 101 textbook. Although somewhat technical, this is meat & potatoes psychology you can really get your teeth into. The writing is uniformly good, and repeated readings provide fresh and powerful insights into self-destructive behavior we see every day.