Decades ago hysteria was excluded from the official diagnostic manuals and dismembered in several categories. However, from a psychodynamic point of view, it is a model of psychic functioning, and as such, present in the daily clinical practice as the basis of pathological events, both psychic and somatic. From psychoanalysis, it is understood that any psychic symptom should be approached in its fundamentals, rather than in their outward manifestations, and that the disregard of those hysterical grounds contributes to mistaken clinical strategies with losses for both the patient and therapist. And you, how do you understand this question?
hysteria is a kind of neurosis which is first and foremost characterized by somatisation (conversion rather than psychosomatics) and which succeeds in externalizing some of this somatisation by taking on symptoms which are fashionable (signs of the times) both in mental health or/and in society at large (borderline, burn out, autism, ADHD to name a few actual ones) - it is a fashionable "sickness" in this sense ;)
In my opinion hysteria is a kind of conflict regulation, a kind of conflict regulation, which is grounded in the absence of early triangulation between child, mother and father. But in my experience nearly all patients with hysteric forms of defence are traumatized, and its extremely important not overlook behind the dramatic präsentation of not authentic feelings and expressions, the potentielly traumatic roots of the disorder.
I think you mentioned a very important point: a rose doesn't lose its smell because you change its name. The key component of hysteria is repression, although somatization can also be a major component of the clinical picture. As to the therapeutic intervention, I would not use the word "hysteria", since it is usually seen as an insult. Besides that, I think psychoanalysis is the choice for those patients with real hysteria, while psychoanalitical therapy (sometimes using low doses of drugs) is to be choosen when hysteria is only the cover of a relevant psychotic nucleus (although, as shown by Bonaccorsi and Green among others, there's a bit of oral problems in any patient with hysteria).
The answer is yes, I deal with Hysteria in my clinical practice, but as mentioned by Ariane, in the last decades it's psychopathological status has changed in main streem diagnostic manual tending to atomise (conversion disorder, dissociative amnesia, histrionic personality disorder, etc). About the controversy of Hysteria having changed, I believe it has changed less than it has been proposed: what has changed over years is the clinical eye (or ear) of clinicians. I've treated cases with limb paralisis, psychological pregnancy and dissociative fugues: sometimes these symptoms are hidden behind assumed medical diagnoses or behind the belle indiference, that is, the patient doesn't consider it important, so it doesn't report it.
I think it's very important to emphasize this characteristic of hysteria pointed by Ariane Bazan. The need to respond to what is supposedly expected of her is a central point in the hysterical person and, therefore, the hysterical symptoms presentation changes over time due to the influence of the prevailing cultural elements at each instant. These changes lead to the misperception that hysteria no longer exists today. Of course it exists, but under other presentations, appropriate to contemporary culture, which go far beyond those described in the manuals. (As for what Jaime Yasky pointed, is available on my profile a study on the different views on hysteria over the centuries, highlighting what has changed in the clinical eye (or ear) towards it: "Hysteria: from Kahoun to Vienna," but is in Portuguese).
I found very interesting the above contributions and I agree with many points of them. I wonder at this point how we could translate these observations in a practical and teorethical improvement of our psychoanalitical activity. I think that we should keep on mind that some basics aspect could be maybe changed from Freud time : the attribution of " phallic" qualities is more often than once given to feminine role ; oral satisfaction is maybe more problematic today than once and so the regulation of tolerance to frustration ; sexual conflicts seems be in relation more to anal - power concerns, than to the fear of loss of janitorial love (or the desire of janitorial love). Narcisistic concerns impinge many aspects of sexual life. I want to stress the point these are just hypotesis suggested by the reading of the discussion.