During the 1950s, US Army medical officers reported that Puerto Rican soldiers under stress exhibited a theatrical form of pseudo-epilepsy. This work examines the so-called Puerto Rican Syndrome and its social and cultural implications for the growing Hispanic population in the US.

Puerto Rico is a non-incorporated territory that belongs to the United States of America since the US military invasion of Puerto Rico in 1898. With these 108 years of colonization by the United States plus the 405 years of colonization by Spain, Puerto Rico is entitled to be called The World's Oldest Colony in present times. This is a fact that is not well known to the U.S. population and surprisingly, not by many Puerto Ricans either. This book addresses this problem. What is different about this writing is that its presents a Puerto Rican psychiatrist's view of this problem. After working for the past thirty three years as a practicing general Community Psychiatrist in Puerto Rico and in New Bedford, Massachusetts, I have collected very detailed observations about the personalities of my patients who are mostly Puerto Ricans. I have discovered a personality style unique to this population: The Colonized Personality. This book is addressed to the general educated population, both in Puerto Rico and in the United States of America, that have interest in Puerto Rican affairs. The book is divided into seven sections. 1. Preface. Here I define from where the idea of talking about the Puerto Rican personality originated. It also describes my prejudices and how I will detail the personality traits. 2. Introduction. This section is a description of the process of my personal and professional experiences that led me to discover the colonized personality. 3. Chapter One. This first chapter describes the colonized personality disorder. 4. Chapter Two. In this chapter there is a description of how the colonized personality has defined the social organization of the Puerto Rican population. 5. Chapter Three. This chapter presents and details the evaluation scale for defining the colonized personality. 6. Chapter Four. This chapter is a description of the differences between a colonized personality and a non-colonized personality. 7. Predictions. In this last section I formulate hypotheses of Puerto Ricans' future behavior regarding the political status based on the colonized personality.

Winner of the Gradiva Award in Historical Cultural and Literary Analysis and The 2004 Boyer Prize for Contributions to Psychoanalytic Anthropology During the 1950's, US Army medical officers noted a new and puzzling syndrome that contemporary psychiatry could neither explain nor cure. These doctors reported that Puerto Rican soldiers under stress behaved in a very peculiar and dramatic manner, exhibiting a theatrical form of pseudo-epilepsy. Startled physicians observed frightened and disoriented patients foaming at the mouth, screaming, biting, kicking, shaking in seizures, and fainting. The phenomenon seemed to correspond to a serious neurological disease yet, as with some forms of hysteria, physical examination failed to identify any sign of an organic origin. This unusual set of symptoms, entered into medical records as "a group of striking psychopathological reaction patterns, precipitated by minor stress," and was designated "Puerto Rican Syndrome." In this lucid and sophisticated new work, Patricia Gherovici thoroughly examines the so-called Puerto Rican Syndrome in the contemporary world, its social and cultural implications for the growing Hispanic population in the US and, therefore, for the US as a whole. As a mental illness that is, allegedly, uniquely Puerto Rican, this syndrome links nationality and culture to a psychiatric disease whose reappearance recalls the spectacular hysteria that led to the discovery of the unconscious and the birth of psychoanalysis. Gherovici beautifully and systematically uses the combined insights of Freud and Lacan to examine the current state of psychoanalysis and the Hispanic community in America. Blending these insights with history, current events, and her own case material, Gherovici provides a startling, fresh look at Puerto Rican Syndrome as social and cultural phenomenon. She sheds new light on the future of American society and argues that psychoanalysis is not only possible, but much needed in the ghetto.