hysteria

n.

hysteria is applied in psychiatry to certain psychogenic disorders characterized by excitability, anxiety, sensory and motor disturbances, or the involuntary simulation of blindness, deafness, etc.; mania in its basic sense of a mental disorder characterized by excitability, exaggerated feelings of well-being, excessive activity, etc. describes the phase of manic-depressive psychosis that is distinguished from depression; delirium denotes a temporary state of extreme mental disturbance (marked by restlessness, incoherence, and hallucinations) that occurs during fevers, in alcoholic psychosis, etc.; frenzy, not used technically in psychiatry, implies extreme emotional agitation in which self-control is lost; in extended use, hysteria suggests an outburst of wild, uncontrolled feeling laughed and cried in a fit of hysteria, mania, a craze for something a mania for surfing, and delirium, rapturous excitement a delirium of joy