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Most analysts view traditional psychiatric nosology as too simplistic or obscure. By approaching psychopathology dynamically, however, they sometimes sacrifice both the parsimony and shared vocabulary
that is so useful, for example, in teaching medical students and psychiatric residents. In his book Alan Krohn attempts to clarify the diagnosis of hysteria by bringing a "psychoanalytic approach to bear on the hysterical personality and the hysterical neurotic." He demonstrates how we may arrive at a diagnosis of hysterical neurosis, character, and personality that is systematic and also organizing and synthesizing of psychoanalytic observations. Making use of the concepts of unconscious conflict, ego structure, cognitive style, defense, resistance, and intrapsychic and interpersonal conflict, his approach is both detailed and extensive.
The monograph is divided into chapters on Freud's Theory of Hysteria, Definitions of Hysteria, Historical and Cross-Cultural Perspectives, Comprehensive Definition and Case Illustration, and Concluding Remarks. The review of Freud's theory and the further historical review of the many definitions of hysteria are meticulous and scholarly.
Particularly valuable is the author's attempt to clarify and elucidate hysteria in men, which has been variously diagnosed as passive-aggressive, passive-dependent personality disorder, narcissistic character disorder or even depressive neurosis. It would, however, be a mistake and a misreading to view this monograph simply as a definitional study of hysteria, for it is also a study of the methodology of diagnosis from a psychoanalytic perspective.
The author views the hysteric as having intrapsychic conflicts that are "essentially oedipal," and he sees the preoedipal material that emerges during the course of an analysis as being primarily of a regressive or resistance nature. Although Krohn acknowledges that preoedipal traumata shape and change the nature and structure of the oedipal relations