“…Many writers have held that the frequency of conversion disorder has decreased among medically knowledgeable populations (i.e., inhabitants of urban areas of industrialized countries) but has remained relatively steady among the less sophisticated (Abse, 1974;Chodoff, 1974;Chodoff and Lyons, 1958;Temoshok and Attkisson, 1977). Psychoanalytic writers usually append to this observation the view that dramatic conversion symptoms have been replaced by hysterical personality disorders (Blinder, 1966;Laplanche, 1974). Engel (1970) argues that no decline has occurred but that more sophisticated patients present with more sophisticated conversion symptoms.…”