2.3 The Reappearance of Image-Based Hysteria Research (original) (raw)

From Disappearance to Reappearance of Image-Based Hysteria Research 237 definite diagnosis. 390 This, in turn, has posed additional difficulties for estimating with sufficient accuracy the actual incidence of hysterical symptoms in the current clinical settings. Nevertheless, even according to the lowest estimates in contemporary epidemiological studies, present-day manifestations of hysteria seem to be no less frequent than schizophrenia. 391 Unlike schizophrenia, until very recently, not only did hysteria merit hardly any clinical interest, but it also ceased to be the topic of any systematic scientific research. 392 However, in the remainder of this chapter, we will see that this situation gradually began to change by the beginning of the twenty-first century. Furthermore, I will show that, in a remarkable parallel to Charcot's image-based research, the presentday resurgence of scientific interest in hysteria turned out to be closely related to the implementation of cutting-edge imaging technologies. And as will become apparent by the end of my enquiry, these new imaging technologies deliver images that are very different from the ones with which Charcot worked in the framework of his hysteria research. 2.3 The Reappearance of Image-Based Hysteria Research Somewhat paradoxically, precisely when multiple humanities scholars emphatically declared hysteria to be a no longer existing medical phenomenon, 393 three contemporary scientific studies of this elusive disorder appeared. The studies by Tiihonen et al., Yazici and Kostakoglu, and Marshall et al. were all published in the closing decade of the twentieth century. 394 They had several features in common. First, they all investigated medically unexplained somatic symptoms. For the most part, all three studies focused on limb paralysis, which, in line with the DSM criteria that were valid at the time, was diagnostically attributed to conversion disorder. 395 Second, in addition to the official DSM label, the authors of all three studies explicitly