Hysterical personality and family: a clinical case.

Within the framework of family typology, the therapist can organize and orient his own observations, by confronting the characteristics of a particular family system, with the models of a "shared reality". Structural and organizational analysis of the family system, according to a general typology, can also be useful when the therapist has to deal with a defined and a not specific symptom or disease, and when a differential diagnosis is necessary for its pragmatic effects. This is often the case of hysteria, which according to many authors can show today various, confused shapes, as depression, general existential discomfort, anorexia and bulimia, and forms of exhibited addition. The authors present a clinical case, trying to point out how a "typology-oriented" observation of the family system, allowed the therapists to clarify an individual condition, otherwise difficult to understand.