Word.ws English Dictionary

la belle indifference

la belle indifference noun: a paradoxical lack of emotional distress or concern despite the presence of an illness or serious physical symptoms.

Noun

la belle indifference (uncountable)

  1. A paradoxical lack of emotional distress or concern despite the presence of an illness or serious physical symptoms.
    • The available evidence does not support the use of la belle indifférence to discriminate between conversion symptoms and symptoms of organic disease. The quality of the published studies is poor, with a lack of operational definitions and masked ratings. La belle indifférence should be abandoned as...2006, Stone J, Smyth R, Carson A, Warlow C. La belle indifférence in conversion symptoms and hysteria: Systematic review. British Journal of Psychiatry. 188(3):204-209. doi:10.1192/bjp.188.3.204
    • Even now, one pays attention to the complex-indicators which we have studied, especially the physical ones (blushings, twitchings, strikingly soft or loud, quick or slow speech, smiling upon the recounting of severe suffering ("La belle indifference"), symptomatic movements, etc).1919, Oskar Pfister, The psychoanalytic method, trans. Charles Rockwell Payne, publ. Moffat, Yard, and Company, New York, pg. 496

Examples of la belle indifference in a sentence

  • It is interesting to note that insofar as this supports our hypothesis it accords with the time-worn conception of the hysterical patient with little or no anxiety — la belle indifference.1958, Joseph Wolpe, Psychotherapy by Reciprocal Inhibition, Stanford University Press, →ISBN, page 88:
  • La belle indifference is a way of pretending nothing is happening: it represents a way of showing one's paralysis to others by manipulating their judgment through an attitude of indifference.2009, Giampiero Arciero, Guido Bondolfi, Selfhood, Identity and Personality Styles, John Wiley and Sons, →ISBN, page 171:

Forms of la belle indifference

alternative formla belle indifférence
alternative formbelle indifference

Origin of la belle indifference

From French la + belle + indifférence.

Questions about la belle indifference

What does la belle indifference mean?
La belle indifference means a paradoxical lack of emotional distress or concern despite the presence of an illness or serious physical symptoms.
How do you use la belle indifference in a sentence?
It is interesting to note that insofar as this supports our hypothesis it accords with the time-worn conception of the hysterical patient with little or no anxiety — la belle indifference.
What part of speech is la belle indifference?
La belle indifference is a noun.

Words near la belle indifference in the dictionary

  1. l8z
  2. la
  3. La Anunciacion
  4. La Bassée
  5. La Bastide-Clairence
  6. la belle indifference
  7. la belle indifférence
  8. la belle époque
  9. La Brea
  10. La Calle
  11. La Carlota

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: la belle indifference (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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