Summarize the theory that Charcot proposed to explain hysteria and hypnotic phenomena
Jean-Martin Charcot was considered as the Europe’s extreme brilliant physician. He was known for his magnificent accomplishments in the field of neurology. He was the one, who observed the death symptoms of his patient keenly at the time of his death to derive the correlation between the specific abnormalities in the patient’s spinal cord and the brain. In his professional career, he described the disease of the motor neuron, which is still known as the Charcot’s disease.
He helped in the identification of the structures of the brain found associated with the physiological as well as the behavioral functions. He got very much influenced by the disease named as the hysteria. Most of the physicians considered the hysteria as the malingering because of the unavailability of the other organic causes for the hysteria.
Charcot strictly discouraged the malingering theory for hysteria. He proposed the hysteria as a real disease. He called his theory on hysteria and the hypnotism as the theory of the suggestibility. He followed the medical model to identify the hysteria as real illness. He concluded the cause of hysteria as the neurological degeneration, which can be associated with hereditary. According to him, hysteria is a process, which is progressive as well as irreversible in nature.
He concluded the resemblance between the symptoms of the hypnosis and the hysteria. He defined the hysteria as predisposition of the hypnotizability. He believed that only patients with hysteria could be subjected for hypnotism. He got disproved by one of the member from the Nancy school as they have defined the hypnotism as the symptom associated with mental pathology.