Hysteria Today (original) (raw)
Related papers
Women and Hysteria in the History of Mental Health
Clinical Practice & Epidemiology in Mental Health, 2012, 8, 110-119. ISSN: 1745-0179 (open access)
Hysteria is undoubtedly the first mental disorder attributable to women, accurately described in the second millennium BC, and until Freud considered an exclusively female disease. Over 4000 years of history, this disease was considered from two perspectives: scientific and demonological. It was cured with herbs, sex or sexual abstinence, punished and purified with fire for its association with sorcery and finally, clinically studied as a disease and treated with innovative therapies. However, even at the end of 19th century, scientific innovation had still not reached some places, where the only known therapies were those proposed by Galen. During the 20th century several studies postulated the decline of hysteria amongst occidental patients (both women and men) and the escalating of this disorder in non-Western countries. The concept of hysterical neurosis is deleted with the 1980 DSM-III. The evolution of these diseases seems to be a factor linked with social “westernization”, and examining under what conditions the symptoms first became common in different societies became a priority for recent studies over risk factor.
HYSTERIA: A HISTORY IN TWO STAGES
History and Philosophy of Psychology Section & UK Critical Psychiatry Network Joint Conference, 2016
The observation of the narratives on the history of hysteria reveals that those who elaborated them did not always take into account the fundamentally historiographical aspect of the proposal, taking some inferences as historical facts. This slip gave rise to narratives that should not be classified as history, but rather as mythologies. The historical path of hysteria often begins in Egyptian medicine, follows a continuum through Hippocrates, the witches of the Middle Ages, the vapours of Illuminism, the Salpêtrière, Charcot and then Freud. However, from a historiographical point of view, (and avoiding anachronism), this path might not be so safe. This paper reviews that trajectory and proposes that the history of hysteria would unfolds in two stages, distinguishing hysteria, disease of the uterus, from hysteria, a neurosis. A bridge between the two conceptions would have been established by Thomas Sydenham, in 1682, in the Epistolary Discourse to the Learned Dr. William Cole.
Se-duction is not sex-duction: Desexualizing and de-feminizing hysteria
Frontiers in Psychology
The psychopathological analysis of hysteria is a victim of narrow conceptualizations. Among these is the inscription of hysteria in the feminine sphere, about body and sexuality, which incentivized conceptual reductionism. Hysteria has been mainly considered a gendered pathology, almost exclusively female, and it has been associated with cultural and/or religious features over time rather than treated as a psychopathological world. Further, hysteria has been dominated by conceptual inaccuracies and indecision, not only in terms of clinical features but also in terms of its definition. For this reason, it seems necessary to “undress” hysteria from this feminization, sexualization, and corporealization with which it has been abundantly clothed over the years. “Undressing” hysteria will make possible a reconfiguring and deconstructing of the explanatory-causal model of Charcot and Freud. However, if we take out this cultural heritage, the stigma accompanying this diagnosis, and the wei...
What the heck is Hysteria? ( Chapter 1 )
2023
This book is a historical review of the ideas that shaped the concept of hysteria, with special emphasis on the final decades of the 19th century, the period in which Psychoanalysis was born. In this chapter, a historical journey is made from Plato to the middle of the 19th century, the golden age of hysteria. It describes what was called suffocation of the mother and its most common treatment. For more information about the complete book: http://chiabai.zarcrom.net/libros/histeria/en/
Agency indicates the ability to act in the present, particularly with the power to produce change or a desired effect, and, accordingly, agency is generally and implicitly assumed in philosophical writings to be conscious. After all, how could someone act or effect change without being conscious of her actions or intentions? Psychoanalysis poses a particular challenge to the idea that agency resides solely in the conscious, since the discourse posits that an unconscious or subconscious works within the mind to influence and even direct a person's actions. In the present essay I consider Sigmund Freud's and Pierre Janet's early psychological writings from the late-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, particularly those concerned with or pertinent to hysteria as a trauma-based disorder involving the loss of agency and weakness of willpower, in order to consider possibilities of agency beyond the field of consciousness.
Hysteria, its Representation, and Misrepresentation in Literature
The Criterion, 2023
This paper examines the portrayal of hysteria in literature, tracing its representation from antiquity to the present day. Hysteria has been a topic of interest in both medical and literary fields for centuries, and the portrayal of hysteria in literature has been influenced by contemporary medical ideas and insights about the disorder. The history of hysteria is composed of a body of writing by men about women, but women writers have also made significant contributions to the understanding and representation of hysteria. The works of literature that explore hysteria reflect the prevailing cultural attitudes towards mental illness during their respective time periods and cultural contexts and continue to captivate readers and spark important discussions about mental health, gender, and the power of literature to shape our understanding of the world.