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. Contemporary Approaches to the Science ofHysteria, with contributions from a distinguished international team, representative of all interested specialty groups, 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.

Despite a rich and turbulent history spanning several centuries, malingering continues to be a controversial and neglected clinical condition that has significant implications for medical, social, legal and insurance interests. Estimates of malingering - the wilful, intentional attempt to simulate or exaggerate illness in the pursuit of a consciously desired end - vary greatly, despite the fact that malingering is believed to contribute substantially to fraudulent health care and social welfare costs.

There is little consensus about what would constitute a coherent assessment of malingering, and base rates have been difficult to establish. Malingering remains a difficult attribution to make not least since it falls outside the remit of the formal psychiatric classifications. Labelling a person as a malingerer however, has significant medico-legal, personal and economic ramifications for both subject and accuser. Viewed in this way, malingering is not so much illness behaviour in search of a disease, as the manifestation of a conflict between personal and social values.

The aim of this book is to effect an integration of the different medical, forensic, neuropsychological, legal and social perspectives. The book provides an overview of progress in disparate fields relevant to the subject, including how recent social and neuroscience findings regarding volition, intentional states and theory of mind may have implications for informing detection, management and ultimately its explanation.