I'm surprised more wasn't said on the history of the disease. Hippocrates actually first recoreded it, and Freud's very first patient in 1880, Anna O., had it (

I'm surprised more wasn't said on the history of the disease. Hippocrates actually first recoreded it, and Freud's very first patient in 1880, Anna O., had it (she was partially blind/deaf and paralyzed) and she eventually recovered. Then it was known as hysteria, and today it's categorized as a form of somatoform disorder. It used to be quite common, and may still be, although there is some controversy in this regard (1a). There's little that can be said about this particular case, because so few details are included - other than that it's no surprise that it co-occurred with DID, for discrete mental illnesses rarely exist in the wild. They almost always come in bunches. Predisposing factors for somataform include alexithymia and childhood trauma (1b) and it often co-occurs with anxiety and/or depression. Alexithymia (a little known condition involving a severe deficit in awareness of emotion and the body, and a focus on the external world) is usually a key factor in the etiology of the disease. "Individuals with alexithymia tend to demonstrate an impoverished fantasy life and limited imagination, a diminished capacity for empathy, a penchant for impulsive behavior, and a propensity to experience emotions somatically" (2). The deficit in emotional processing is usually (at least originally) the result of a conscious effort to suppress/distract from unpleasant emotions (like this lady's trauma), which then express themselves in the body. Indeed, alexithymia-like symptoms are a common feature in a number of common mental illnesses such as depression, anxiety and panic disorder (3), and the more alexithyia-like characteristics these patients have, the worse their somatic symptoms (4). Treatment of the disease is difficult because despite its psychological etiology, patients usually present well and emphatically deny that their psychology has anything to do with their symptoms (5). Interestingly, emerging findings on it tend to revolve around some of Freud's original ideas (6). (1a) http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2235919/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2235919/ (1b) http://jnnp.bmj.com/content/early/2014/03/07/jnnp-2013-307203.short http://jnnp.bmj.com/content/early/2014/03/07/jnnp-2013-30720... and http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022399913004352 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022399913... (2) http://journals.lww.com/hrpjournal/Fulltext/2014/05000/Changes_in_Alexithymia_Following_Psychological.3.aspx http://journals.lww.com/hrpjournal/Fulltext/2014/05000/Chang... (3) http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11126-012-9246-y http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11126-012-9246-y and http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1053810009000919 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1053810009... (4) https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Robert_Schoevers/publication/268690042_Differential_Associations_of_Specific_Depressive_and_Anxiety_Disorders_with_Somatic_Symptoms/links/551bda3c0cf20d5fbde218ef.pdf https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Robert_Schoevers/public... and http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0010440X14002570 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0010440X14... (5) http://www.omicsonline.org/open-access/do-patients-with-somatoform-disorders-present-with-illusory-mentalhealth-2161-0487-1000213.pdf http://www.omicsonline.org/open-access/do-patients-with-soma... (6) http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3744921/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3744921/ and http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4396134/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4396134/ and http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S014976341500161X http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0149763415...