Disorders Focusing on Somatic Symptoms: Conversion Disorder

Bear

Bearly 25 year old construction worker that was paralyzed from waist down, was not upset about paralysis, but test did not see anything physically wrong with him

Forced friend to take LSD and he tweaked out and jumped off a bridge which hypnotized him

Started the trend of treating thing psychoanalytically

Harry

Suffered from sever abdominal pain but there were no physical symptoms or WBC

Was emotionally indifferent and not anxious

He was not loved during childhood, parents were absent. The only time he felt love was when he had an appendectomy in his youth

Wife threatened to leave and abdominal pain starts

Characteristics of Conversion Disorder

Lost or altered physical function (blindness, deafness, paralysis)

No physical basis (but all start at MD)

Person is not faking it, they cannot control

Person seems oddly indifferent to the problem

Global Anesthesia

Paralysis without physical explanation

Why is it not psychosomatic

Psychosomatic has a physiological basis, something can actually be tested for

Hypnosis and Autohypnosis

Can induce a paralysis

Route to altered physical function without physical basis

People who are very hypnotizable can self-hypnotize just by suggesting it to themselves and then it becomes true

Why Autohypnosis

Psychoanalysis

Primary Gain: Solves a problem in a persons life without having to recognize it (things that would cause guilt or anxiety) creates another problem to focus on

Secondary Gain: May drive advantages from problem like out of work, combat, attention

Essentially comes down to behavior, it is reinforced by perks

Cognitive Communication Theory

Person is communicating with illness

Someone cannot face the fact that they need help, so because of that in manifests in a way that you do not say but act

Verbally inarticulate, cannot express discomfort

Why does person appear indifferent

Person does not worry because deep down they know that there is no real problem

Condition is not their problem its the solution