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PETER BARGLOW, MD

Arch Gen Psychiatry. 1964;11(6):571-580.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

Pregnancy fantasies of women who are not pregnant may be accompanied by somatic compliance resulting in the psychopathological condition called pseudocyesis. Hippocrates, in 300 BC, described 12 women "who imagine they are pregnant seeing that the menses are suppressed and the matrices swollen."¹ John Mason Good introduced the term pseudocyesis (Greek pseudes—false, kyesis—pregnancy) in his System of Nosology,² in 1823.

The clinical picture consists of: (1) menstrual cycle aberration with hypomenorrhea or amenorrhea, (2) gradual abdominal enlargement, (3) breast changes with increase in size, tenderness, secretion of colostrum or milk, pigmentation, and increased size of papillae, (4) a soft blue cervix, (5) a uterus enlarged and softened consistent with a six week to eight month pregnancy, (6) various gastrointestinal and other subjective somatic symptoms such as a sensation of fetal movement, (7) weight gain, and (8) suspicion or certainty of . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

Author Affiliations
CHICAGO

From the Departments of Psychiatry and Obstetrics, Zürich Kantonspital, Zürich, Switzerland.

Footnotes
Read before the Department of Psychiatry Division Meeting, Michael Reese Hospital and Medical Center, June, 1964.

This research was supported by a grant from the National Institute of Mental Health (MSP-15714).

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