Hysteria and its Historiography: A Review of Past and Present Writings (II)

van den Berg Jan Hendrik , The changing nature of man: Introduction to a historical psychology (1956), translated from the Dutch by Croes H. F. (New York, 1961), 115–88.

Schaps Regina , Hysterie und Weiblichkeit: Wissenschaftsmythen über die Frau (Frankfurt, 1982), 9. Schaps follows on this point the observation of Susan Sontag in Illness as metaphor (1977) that it is those diseases without known causes and cures that remain most available for social and moral allegorization.

Chodoff Paul Lyons Henry , “Hysteria, the hysterical personality and ‘hysterical’ conversion”, American journal of psychiatry, cxiv (1958), 734–40, p. 739. See also Wolowitz Howard M. , “Hysterical character and feminine identity”, in Bardwick Judith M. (ed.), Readings on the psychology of women (New York, 1972), 307–14.

Manuli Paola , “Donne mascoline, femmine sterili, vergini perpetue. La ginecologia greca tra Ippocrate e Sorano” (1983), cited in King Helen , From parthenos to gynē (ref. 15), 113. See also Rousselle Aline , “Images médicales du corps. Observation féminine et idéologie masculine: Le corps de la femme d'après les médicins grecs”, Annales. Economies. Sociétés. Civilisations, xxxv, no. 5 (September-October, 1980), 1090 and 1109–11.

Karlsen Carol F. , The devil in the shape of a woman: Witchcraft in Colonial New England (London, 1987), 253–7.

Schaps , Hysterie und Weiblichkeit (ref. 120), 138–44.

Carroy-Thirard Jacqueline , “Figures de femmes hystériques dans la psychiatrie française au 19e siècle”, Psychanalyse à l'université, iv (1974), 313–23. See also Wajeman Gérard , “Psyché de la femme: Note sur l'hystérique au XIXe siècle”, Romantisme: Revue du 19e siècle, xiii-xiv (1976), 57–66.

Mitchinson Wendy , “Hysteria and insanity in women: A nineteenth-century Canadian perspective”, Journal of Canadian studies, xxi, no. 3 (Fall, 1986), 87–105.

Bart Scully , “The politics of hysteria” (ref. 53), 366–78.

In addition to Chodoff Lyons , “Hysteria, the hysterical personality and ‘hysterical’ conversion” (ref. 121), see Lerner Harriet E. , “The hysterical personality: A ‘woman's disease’”, Comprehensive psychiatry, xv (1974), 157–64. It is interesting in this regard to recall the official definition of Briquet's Syndrome as “a stable, polysymptomatic disorder with wide-ranging and recurrent somatic complaints but with no known organic explanation and affecting primarily women under the age of thirty”. The authors of the concept offer no explanation for limitation of the condition to women.

For instance to film. On the cinematic representation of these stereotypes, see Wells C. E. , “The hysterical personality and the feminine character: A study of Scarlett O'Hara”, Comprehensive psychiatry, xxvii (1976), 353–9.

Gourevitch Anne , Le mal d'être femme: La femme et la médecine dans la Rome antique (Paris, 1984), 127.

Fischer-Homberger Esther , “Hysterie und Misogynie — Ein Aspekt der Hysteriegeschichte”, Gesnerus, xxvi (1969), 117–27.

Fischer-Homberger writes of “diese beschimpfend-entschuldigende soziologische Doppel-funktion der Diagnose Hysterie” (“this insulting-excusing sociological double-function of the hysteria diagnosis”, p. 117).

Introduction to Hartman Mary S. Banner Lois (eds), Clio's consciousness raised: New perspectives on the history of women (New York, 1974), p. vii.

Works in this tradition include Wood Ann Douglas , “The fashionable diseases: Women's complaints and their treatment in nineteenth-century America”, in Hartman Banner (eds), Clio's consciousness raised , 25–52; Barker-Benfield G. J. , The horrors of the half-known life: Male attitudes toward women and sexuality in nineteenth-century America (New York, 1976); Barker-Benfield G. J. , “Sexual surgery in late nineteenth-century America”, International journal of health services, v (1975), 280–8; Ehrenreich Barbara English Deirdre , For her own good: 150 years of the expert's advice to women (New York, 1978); and Ehrenreich Barbara English Deidre , Complaints and disorders: The sexual politics of sickness (Old Westbury, New York, 1973).

Morantz Regina , “The perils of feminist history”, Journal of international history, iv (1973), 649–60; Morantz review of Barker-Benfield's book in Bulletin of the history of medicine, li (1977), 307–10; and Parsons Gail P. , “Equal treatment for all: American medical remedies for male sexual problems: 1850–1900”, Journal of the history of medicine and allied sciences, xxxii, no. 1 (January, 1977), 55–71.

For a recent and particularly heavy-handed example of this writing, consider Masson Jeffrey M. , A dark science: Women, sexuality, and psychiatry in the nineteenth century (New York, 1986), with a preface by Catharine MacKinnon. In the introduction to his book, Masson likens the nineteenth century writing on women's nervous afflictions to latterday pornography, equates the pelvic examination of female patients to rape, and characterizes the labels ‘witch’ and ‘hysteric’ as “yet another example … of the unrestricted violence that men have unleashed against women throughout history” (p. 14).

Smith-Rosenberg Carroll , “The hysterical woman: Sex roles and role conflict in nineteenth-century America”, Social research, xxxix (1972), 652–78, recently reprinted with minor changes in Smith-Rosenberg , Disorderly conduct: Visions of gender in Victorian America (ref. 1), 197–216, 330–5.

For a later statement of this view by a nonhistorian, see Krohn , Hysteria: The elusive neurosis (ref. 85), 156–211.

“To put it somewhat glibly, at a simple social level, hysteria, with its malingering, invalidism, tantrums and wilfulness was the nineteenth century woman's protest against confinement in the home-sweet-home of bourgeois industrial capitalism” ( Mitchell Juliet , Women: The longest revolution (ref. 79), 118).

Thus the French feminist critic Catherine Clément describes hysteria as “femininity in revolt … along with the historical fetters that enclose it on all sides” (“Enclave/Esclave”, in de Courtivron Isabelle Marks Elaine (eds), New French feminisms: An anthology (Amherst, Mass., 1980), 130–6, p. 133); and Juliet Mitchell observes that “Hysteria is the woman's simultaneous acceptance and refusal of the organisation of sexuality under patriarchal capitalism. It is simultaneously what a woman can do both to be feminine and to refuse femininity” ( Mitchell , Women: The longest revolution (ref. 79), 289–90).

Smith-Rosenberg , “The hysterical woman: Sex roles and role conflict” (ref. 1), 209ff.

Hunter Dianne , “Hysteria, psychoanalysis, and feminism: The case of Anna O.”, Feminist studies, ix, no. 3 (Fall, 1983), 464–88.

Ibid., 474.

Other feminist scholars have also discussed the idea of female hysteria as an effort to preserve a pre-Oedipal relationship with the Mother and to reject post-Oedipal heterosexuality. See, for example, Maria Ramas, “Freud's Dora, Dora's hysteria: The negation of a woman's rebellion”, Feminist studies, vi, no. 3 (Fall, 1980), 472–510.

Hunter , “Hysteria, psychoanalysis, and feminism” (ref. 142), 485.

Ibid.

It is interesting to consider back to back the studies of Hunter and Orr-Andrawes. Both essays represent new and intelligent interpretations by women writers of a famous case history and both combine psychoanalytic concepts with a later body of theoretical work. The two authors, however, proceed from entirely different disciplinary bases which lead to wholly separate conclusions. This said, the two readings are by no means mutually exclusive.

Showalter , The female malady (ref. 53), 129–34, 145–64, 167–94.

Ibid., 129.

Ibid., 129–34, 162–4.

Ibid., 147–54.

Ibid., 155–62.

For information on Pappenheim's career, refer to Jensen Ellen , Streifzüge durch das Leben von Anna O./Bertha Pappenheim: Ein Fall für die Psychiatrie — Ein Leben für die Philanthropie (Frankfurt am Main, 1984), and Marion A. Kaplan, “Anna O. and Bertha Pappenheim: An historical perspective”, in Rosenbaum Muroff (eds), Anna O.: Fourteen contemporary reinterpretations (ref. 103), 101–7.

Israël Luçien , L'hystérique, le sexe et le médecin (Paris, 1979), 4, 196–205, reprinted in a second edition in 1985. Israël discusses Mary Baker Eddy, founder of the American Christian Science Movement, as a second ‘successful’ hysteric.

Ibid., 205.

Hunter , “Hysteria, psychoanalysis, and feminism” (ref. 142), 485.

Showalter , The female malady (ref. 53), 161.

Steinmann Anne , “Anna O.: Female, 1880–1882; Bertha Pappenheim: Female, 1980–1982”, in Rosenbaum Muroff (eds), Anna O.: Fourteen contemporary reinterpretations (ref. 103), 118–31.

Clément Catherine cited in Showalter , The female malady (ref. 53), 161.

Mitchell , Women: The longest revolution (ref. 79), 117.

If I understand her correctly, Mitchell suggests further that in the struggle against dominant gender stereotypes, women often unconsciously identified with these behavioural models: “It was, among other things”, she observes, “against their definition as hysterics that nineteenth-century feminists protested — No doubt, they often did so hysterically” (p. 120).

Mitchell , Women: The longest revolution (ref. 79), 312–13.

Bernheimer Charles Kahane Claire , (eds), In Dora's case: Freud—hysteria—feminism (New York, 1985).

Freud , Fragment of an analysis (ref. 76).

See the judicious discussion of the case is Gay, Freud: A life for our time (ref. 77), 246–55.

The literature on Dora is large and cannot be reviewed here. For critical, cultural readings of the case, see the bibliography of In Dora's case (ref. 163), 277–80. A useful summary of recent medical writings on the subject can be found in Jennings J. L. , “The revival of ‘Dora’: Advances in psychoanalytic theory and technique”, Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, xxxiv (1986), 607–35.

Bernheimer Kahane , (eds), In Dora's case (ref. 163), 24.

Gearhart Suzanne , “The scene of psychoanalysis: The unanswered questions of Dora”, in In Dora's case (ref. 163), 105–27.

Moi Toril , “Representation of patriarchy: Sexuality and epistemology in Freud's Dora”, in In Dora's case (ref. 163), 181–99.

Sprengnether Madelon , “Enforcing Oedipus: Freud and Dora”, in In Dora's case (ref. 163), 267–71.

Raymond Fulgence , “Définition et nature de l'hystérie”, in Proceedings of the Congrès des Aliénistes et Neurologistes de la Langue Française, University of Lausanne (5 August 1907), 367–417, p. 378.

For an exception, see Ellenberger Henri , “Charcot and the Salpêtrière school”, American journal of psychotherapy, xix (1965), 253–67.

Guillain Georges , J. M. Charcot (1825–1893): Sa vie, son œuvre (Paris, 1955); Owen A. R. G. , Hysteria, hypnosis and healing: The work of J.-M. Charcot (London, 1971).

Although curiously the full, complex, evolving intellectual relationship between the two figures has yet to be reconstructed. To my mind, the best study remains Andersson, Studies in the prehistory of psychoanalysis (ref. 78), chapters 2, 3 and 4.

Charcot Jean-Martin , Clinical lectures on diseases of the nervous system , iii, translated by Savill Thomas (1889), edited with an introduction by Ruth Harris, in Bynum W. F. Porter Roy (eds), Tavistock classics in the history of psychiatry (London, Routledge, forthcoming); Charcot Jean-Martin , Charcot the clinician: The Tuesday lessons , translated with commentary by Goetz Christopher G. (New York, 1987), especially lesson 5; and “‘Mon Cher Docteur Freud’: Charcot's unpublished correspondence to Freud, 1888–1893”, annotation, translation, and commentary by Gelfand Toby , Bulletin of the history of medicine, lxii (1988), 563–88.

Gasser J. , “J. M. Charcot et la découverte des localisations motrices chez l'homme”, Gesnerus, xlvi, nos 3/4 (1988), 501–20.

Gelfand Toby , “Réflexions sur Charcot et la famille névropathique”, Histoire des sciences médicales, xxi (1987), 245–50.

Silverman Debora Leah , Nature, nobility and neurology: The ideological origins of ‘Art Nouveau’ in France, 1889–1900 (doctoral dissertation, Princeton University, 1983), i, chap. 4.

Parry-Jones William , “‘Caesar of the Salpêtrière’: J.-M. Charcot's impact on psychological medicine in the 1880s”, Bulletin of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, xi, no. 5 (May 1987), 150–3.

Widlöcher Daniel , “L'hystérie dépossédée” (ref. 75); and Critchley E. M. R. Cantor H. E. , “Charcot's hysteria renaissant”, British medical journal, cclxxxix (issue of 22–29 December 1984), 1785–8.

The ‘scientification’ of hysteria in Charcot's work is also the subject of Gérard Wajeman, Le maître et l'hystérique (Paris, 1982), chapters 6 and 7.

Trillat , Histoire de l'hystérie (ref. 10), 132–8.

Ibid., 138–47.

Trillat Etienne , “Le tableau, la copie et le faux: A propos de la nosographie de ‘L'hystérie de Charcot’”, Frénésie: Histoire. Psychiatrie. Psychanalyse, iv (Autumn, 1987), 38–49.

Trillat , Histoire de l'hystérie (ref. 10), 153–5, 167–79, 192–5, 197–204.

Harrington Anne , “Metals and magnets in medicine: Hysteria, hypnosis and medical culture in fin-de-siècle Paris”, Psychological medicine, xviii (1988), 21–38; Harrington , “Hysteria, hypnosis, and the lure of the invisible: The rise of neo-mesmerism in fin-de-siècle French psychiatry”, in Bynum W. F. Porter Roy Shepherd Michael (eds), The anatomy of madness: Essays in the history of psychiatry, iii (London, 1988), 226–46.

Harrington also discusses the phenomenon of the psychic transfer in her book Medicine, mind, and the double brain: A study in nineteenth-century thought (Princeton, New Jersey, 1987), 171–82.

Harrington , “Metals and magnets” (ref. 186), 27–31; “Rise of neo-mesmerism” (ref. 186), 227–30.

Zeldin Theodore , France 1848–1945, ii: Intellect, taste and anxiety (Oxford, 1977), 858.

Didi-Huberman Georges , Invention de l'hystérie: Charcot et l'iconographie photographique de la Salpêtrière (Paris, 1982).

Bourneville D.-M. Régnard P. , Iconographie photographique de la Salpêtrière (3 vols, Paris, 1876–80).

The classic hysterical fit as recorded in the iconography of the Salpêtrière has recently been reenacted in Dr. Charcot's hysteria shows, an hour-and-a-half dance and theatre production performed for the first time on 15 April 1988 at the Austin Arts Center of Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut.

The strong erotic undercurrent in the Salpêtrière's study of hysteria has been remarked upon by numerous scholars. See Foucault Michel , Histoire de la sexualité, i: La volonté de savoir (Paris, 1976), 74–76; and Carroy-Thirard , “Figures de femmes hystériques” (ref. 125), 317–23.

Charcot Jean Martin Richer Paul , Les démoniaques dans l'art, introduction by Pierre Fédida, postface by Georges Didi-Huberman (Paris, 1984).

For the broad cultural context of Charcot's work in this area, consult Jacqueline Carroy-Thirard, “Possession, extase, hystérie au XIXe siècle”, Psychanalyse à l'université, xix (1980), 499–515.

Didi-Huberman Georges , “Charcot, l'histoire et l'art”, in Charcot Richer , Démoniaques dans l'art (ref. 194), 125–203.

La Leçon de Charcot: Voyage dans une toile, exposition organisée au Musée de l'Assistance Publique de Paris, 17 September-31 December 1986 (Paris, 1986).

Signoret Jean Louis , “Variété historique: Une leçon clinique à la Salpêtrière (1887) par André Brouillet”, Revue neurologique, cxxxix, no. 12 (1983), 687–701, with a full bibliography.

For a discussion of numerous other aspects of Charcot's work and their bearing on the historiography of hysteria, consult Micale, “Hysteria and its historiography — The future perspective” (ref. 4).

Goldstein Jan , “The hysteria diagnosis and the politics of anticlericalism in late nineteenth-century France”, Journal of modern history, civ, no. 2 (June 1982), 209–39; idem, Console and classify: The French psychiatric profession in the nineteenth century (New York, 1987), chapter 9.

Goldstein , Console and classify, 6.

Ibid., 323–31.

Ibid., 333.

Ibid., 339–61.

Ibid., 361–77.

Shorter Edward , “Les désordres psychosomatiques: Sont-ils ‘hystériques’? Notes pour une recherche historique”, Cahiers internationaux de sociologie, lxxvi (1984), 201–24; idem, “Paralysis: The rise and fall of a ‘hysterical’ symptom”, Journal of social history, xix (1986), 549–82; idem, “Women and Jews in a private nervous clinic in late nineteenth-century Vienna”, Medical history, xxxiii (1989), 149–83; idem, “Mania, hysteria and gender in lower Austria, 1891–1905”, History of psychiatry (forthcoming, 1990). These essays form part of an ongoing book-length study of Shorter's tentatively entitled From hysteria to somatization: Mind-body relations in historical perspective.

Shorter , “Les désordres psychosomatiques”, 204.

Ibid., 202; Shorter , “Rise and fall of a ‘hysterical’ symptom” (ref. 206), 549. This belief contrasts with Shorter's earlier contention that hysteria in the past has been too vague and unreliable diagnostically to write such a history. See Shorter Edward , “Women's diseases before 1900”, in Albin Mel (ed.), New directions in psychohistory (Toronto, 1980), 183–208, p. 184.

Shorter , “Les désordres psychosomatiques” (ref. 206), 201–6; idem, “Rise and fall of a ‘hysterical’ symptom” (ref. 206), 549–51.

Shorter , “Rise and fall of a ‘hysterical’ symptom” (ref. 206), 549. Note the contrast between Shorter's emphasis on the social and cultural determinants of symptom selection and the older Freudian idea of the intrapsychic causes of ‘choice of neurosis’.

For similar speculations from a medical perspective, refer to Stefanis C. Markidis M. Christodoulou G. , “Observations on the evolution of the hysterical symptomatology”, British journal of psychiatry, cxxviii (1976), 269–75, and Jacques Frei, “Contribution à l'étude de l'hystérie: Problèmes de définition et évolution de la symptomatologie”, Schweizer Archiv für Neurologie, Neurochirurgie und Psychiatrie, cxxxiv, no. 1 (1984), 93–129.

Shorter , “Rise and fall of a ‘hysterical’ symptom” (ref. 206), 551. Shorter's work rests on recent medical research into the process of somatization. For an overview of the literature on this important subject, consult Lipowski Z. J. , “Somatization: The concept and its clinical application”, American journal of psychiatry, cxlv (1988), 1358–68.

Shorter , “Rise and fall of a ‘hysterical’ symptom” (ref. 206), 550.

Ibid., 564.

Ibid., 550.

Shorter , “Mania, hysteria and gender in Lower Austria, 1891–1905” (ref. 206), 1–2, 31–33.

Shorter , “Rise and fall of a ‘hysterical’ symptom” (ref. 206), 573.

Along these lines, see Anson Rabinbach's essay, “The body without fatigue: A nineteenth-century Utopia”, in Drescher Seymour Sabean David Sharlin Allan (eds), Political symbolism in modern Europe: Essays in honor of George L. Mosse (London, 1982), 42–62, which places nineteenth century disorders of nervous energy and exhaustion in the context of an emergent capitalist value system. The framework of explanation that Shorter seeks for his material may be provided in part by Rabinbach.

Refer to Micale , “Hysteria and its historiography — The future perspective” (ref. 4) for a consideration of these factors.

Goldstein's thesis, for instance, does not account adequately for Charcot's most important and personal statement on Catholicism, the late essay “La foi qui guérit”, in which Charcot concedes in surprisingly sympathetic tones that with certain patients religious faith possesses an authentic curative effect. Similarly, Harrington, with Goldstein's work in mind, has proposed an interesting counter-interpretation: Rather than foreclosing the religious, Harrington observes that the extensive work of the Salpêtrians on topics such as hypnosis, faith healing, “double consciousness”, and psychic transference provided “a pathway back to the supernatural” (“Hysteria and its historiography — The future perspective” Harrington , “Hysteria, hypnosis, and the lure of the invisible” (ref. 186), 239).

I have discussed further the idea of writing a “natural history of hysteria” in “Hysteria and its historiography — The future perspective” (ref. 4).

See Micale , “Hysteria and its historiography — The future perspectrive” (ref. 4).