Ernst Kretschmer, (1888–1964), a German psychiatrist known for the establishment of a typology based on the human constitution, suggested that hysterics show “a preference for what is loud and lively, a theatrical pathos, an inclination for brilliant roles…(and) a naive, sulky egotism” (Bornstein et al., 2015).

The first providing a detailed psychoanalytic description of the hysterical personality style was Wilhelm Reich, (1897–1957), an Austrian psychoanalyst. He wrote “coquetry in gait, look or speech betrays, especially in women, the hysterical character type…We find fickleness of reactions…and…a strong suggestibility, which never appears alone but is coupled with a strong tendency to reactions of disappointment…”

Easser and Lesser, (1965) seek to integrate two different earlier approaches: the ego psychology school and Freud’s libido theory. They proposed a classification of hysterics consisting on two extremes-the hysterical personality and the “hysteroid” (borderline) personality. Zetzel, (1968) also divided patients into “good” hysterics, who function well, and “bad” hysterics, who have weak egos and poor object relations. This latter group of patients has a profile and level of functioning similar to the one seen in borderline patients (Slipp, 2014).

Several theorists studied the particular traits of this type of personality including histrionic’s impressionist cognitive style and inattention to detail. In his book, “Hysterical Personality Style and the Histrionic Personality Disorder,” Horowitz (1991), focused on the connection between perception and behavior in histrionic personality; he argued that it was based on an underlying information processing bias. A disturbed mental representation of the self would constitute the link to the various features of this type of character. Continue reading “Another Kretschmer’s important contribution was the demand for objective criteria in order to distinguish hysteria from simulation (Lerner, 2003)”