You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
In Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, Freud (1986) wrote of a relationship between hysteria and sexuality and commented that hysteria was precipitated by the onset of a real sexual situation. Here, the scores on a measure of hysteria and sexual fantasies of student women who were (n = 93) and were not (n = 26) intercourse active were compared. Women who were intercourse active had higher scores on the PDQ4+ Histrionic scale (Hyler, 1994), p < .0001, and higher scores on Wilson's Total Sexual Fantasies (Wilson, 1988), p < .0001. In contrast, the PDQ4+ Obsessiveness scale (Hyler, 1994) scores of women in the 2 groups did not differ, p = .65. The results provide empirical support for a relationship between hysteria and sexuality.