John C. Marshall - Böcker

Patients with striking physical symptoms suggestive of a neurological disease, but no evidence of nervous system damage are typically labelled as suffering from "hysterical conversion". Despite claims that conversion disorders have disappeared from clinical practice, patients with conversion symptoms continue to present diagnostic conundrums to clinicians. The disorder accounts for 4% of all referrals to neurology services.This book covers aspects neglected by previous works on this controversial condition, moving away from traditional historico-sociological accounts towards neuroscientific theories about the causes and categorization of hysteria. Recent investigations using functional imaging and hypnosis are covered, as are the neuropsychological accounts inspired by them, alongside more traditional psychodynamic accounts. A section on medico-legal aspects is innovative and timely. The key causal role of life events is also addressed, along with the influence of military conflict and culture in shaping and modifying clinical presentations, and changes in physical manifestations of hysteria through the centuries.With contributions from a distinguished international team, representative of all interested specialty groups, this books aims to demonstrate that hysterical conversion remains clinically important, with potential for empirical research in both social and medical sciences, as well as offering a fertile source for advancing neuroscience.

In clinical neuropsychiatry, case studies provide invaluable demonstrations of the range and types of unusual psychological states that can occur after brain damage. In the pursuit of objectivity and scientific respectability, however, many academic reports of neuropsychiatric disorders appear cold, contrived and impersonal. The essence and character of the patient's experience and behaviour is easily obscured or even lost - a fact that cannot help researchers, therapists and other practitioners to relate their conceptual knowledge to the flesh-and-blood people they meet in their professional lives. In practice, much of the actual discourse of such patients has been ignored as unworthy of scientific interest. This book describes real patients in a clear and jargon-free way. These cases should serve to reduce the discrepancy between the formal representations of psychiatric illness in the mainstream literature and the reality of people struggling to make sense of their own predicament in everyday life.

This book brings together basic scientists or clinicians from a variety of different backgrounds - immunology, infectious diseases or critical care - who share a common interest in understanding the changes that occur in immune responses in sepsis.