“Hysteria – still with us and presenting in Neurology”

Talk & Discussion by

Steph Howlett

 Saturday 11th May 2013 – 9.00am – 12.15pm

 The Circle, 33 Rockingham Lane, Sheffield, S1 4FW

Between 10 and 30% of patients referred to consultant neurologists have symptoms that cannot be explained by physical disease or damage. These patients present with all the symptoms described by Freud and Breuer in their work on hysteria; non-epileptic seizures, paralysis, weakness, numbness, speech and visual disorders and a range of other physical and dissociative symptoms. As well as being very physically disabled by their symptoms these patients are often extremely psychologically traumatised, but may make no connection between their traumatic life events and their physical symptoms. In this presentation Steph Howlett will talk about her work with modern day hysteria and the adaptations in technique that she has introduced in order to offer time-limited therapy for this difficult and challenging presentation. From her original psychoanalytical training she has drawn on understandings from medical research and neuroscience and incorporated techniques informed by psychodynamic interpersonal therapy, mindfulness and Sensorimotor Psychotherapy. She will illustrate the talk with examples from her own case material.

Steph Howlett

 Steph Howlett is a psychoanalytically trained psychotherapist who has spent the last ten years working in a specialist psychotherapy service for patients with medically unexplained neurological symptoms in the Dept of Neurology of Sheffield Teaching Hospitals. She is part of a multi-disciplinary team of clinicians and researchers with a national and international reputation for their work in developing effective time-limited psychotherapeutic approaches for this group of patients.

 The event will be chaired by Dr Nick Read, Gastroenterologist and Psychoanalytical Psychotherapist