Source:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203358704577235933886725036.html?mod=wsj
Five Best: Books About Hysteria - WSJ.com
By ASTI HUSTVEDT
..........................................................
Mad Men and Medusas
By Juliet Mitchell (2000)
Psychoanalyst Juliet Mitchell asks in this book: Why does the medical community insist that hysteria no longer exists when she knows, "beyond a shadow of a doubt," that it does? She traces hysteria's disappearance as a medical diagnosis to the early part of the 20th century, when it was divided into smaller parts. Anorexia and multiple personality disorder, for example, were originally symptoms of hysteria but are now classified separately. She also shows how hysteria's identification as a female affliction ultimately contributed to its demise: When soldiers returned from the trenches of World War I suffering from hysterical paralyses, limps and nightmares, doctors hesitated to label these battle-scarred men hysterics, and thus the euphemism "shell shock" was born. Mitchell, however, argues that hysteria is inherent to the human condition. It may have been dismantled, renamed and discarded as a diagnosis, but to claim that it has disappeared is, she insists, as nonsensical as saying that love and hate have vanished.
...................................
Mad Travelers
By Ian Hacking (1998)
Wellcome Library, London
A hysteric at the Salpêtrière hospital in Paris in the late 19th century.
The philosopher Ian Hacking is one of those writers whose books leave readers with the sense that they have always understood what in fact they did not understand before they read his work—exactly my response to "Mad Travelers." Here his subject is a short-lived epidemic of hysterical fugue, or compulsive wandering, that took place in Europe at the end of 19th century. Hysterical fugue, which afflicted the mad travelers of Hacking's title, had all but vanished as a diagnosis by the early 20th century and is therefore an example of what he calls a "transient mental illness." It was limited to a specific time and place or, in a term the author borrows from biology, to an "ecological niche" that nurtured it. The argument is elegant and persuasive, one that Hacking applies to contemporary culture as well, citing anorexia and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder as possible products of our own ecological niches. In "Mad Travelers," Hacking transforms hysterical fugue from an obsolete medical curiosity into a parable about psychiatry.
...............................................................................
Invention of Hysteria
By Georges Didi-Huberman (1981)
I first read "Invention of Hysteria" as a student in Paris during the 1980s, when it was a must-read in academic circles. Georges Didi-Huberman belongs to the school of thought that says psychiatry creates psychiatric categories, which in turn create psychiatric patients—hence the invention of hysteria. In addition to grappling with this complicated and unresolved epistemological issue, Didi-Huberman investigates the ways in which photography contributed to the "manufacturing" of hysteria in Paris during the 19th century. Photographs were used to document hysterical symptoms, and patients adapted their behavior to correspond to these images. The hospital hysteria ward was thus transformed into what the author calls a factory that produced hysterics. The book (first published in English in 2003) includes more than 100 spectacular photographs and drawings. While Didi-Huberman's prose tends to obfuscate his arguments—exasperatingly so at times—"Invention of Hysteria" is justifiably a classic in cultural studies.
......................................................................
Mad, Bad and Sad
By Lisa Appignanesi (2008)
Lisa Appignanesi's ambitious and fascinating book explores two centuries of "mad, bad and sad" women and the mind doctors who treated them. While the author's scope extends well beyond hysteria proper, the disorder in its myriad forms appears throughout the text. Some of her subjects are women who became famous patients, such as a young woman named Augustine, whose hysteria made her a medical celebrity in 19th-century Paris; and some are famous women who became patients, including Zelda Fitzgerald and Marilyn Monroe. Appignanesi reminds us that medical history is made up of human stories and that unhappiness, especially of the female variety, tends to be adapted to fit current diagnostic categories. These days, the tendency is to locate mental illness in biology—in "chemical imbalances" in the brain, for example. Appignanesi counters, with ample evidence, that illness is not stable but shifts according to the needs of the time.
..............................................................................
Studies on Hysteria
By Josef Breuer and Sigmund Freud (1895)
This founding text of psychoanalysis is as relevant today as it was when it was published over a century ago. In many ways, the medical climate of the early 21st century resembles that of the late 19th. Then, as now, physiology was considered the source of all kinds of disorders, from mania to melancholia. Sigmund Freud and his close friend and collaborator, Josef Breuer—along with, significantly, the five hysterics whose case histories are presented in the book—collaborated to create a radically new paradigm, one in which medically inexplicable symptoms were understood as conversions of psychological trauma. Hysteria, then, became a language that communicates through the body what the mind is unable to say. The prescribed treatment was talking, not pill-popping. The authors refer to the hysterics in the book as their "instructors," an acknowledgment of the enormous and often unrecognized role that patients play in the production of medical theory. In fact, it is Breuer's patient Anna O. who coined the term "the talking cure." Even the anti-Freudians among us will admit that "Studies on Hysteria" is beautifully written. As Freud himself points out, the case histories read like short stories.
.........................................................
A version of this article appeared Mar. 17, 2012, on page C10 in some U.S. editions of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Asti Hustvedt.
Ms. Hustvedt is the author of 'Medical Muses: Hysteria in Nineteenth-Century Paris.'
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203358704577235933886725036.html?mod=wsj
Five Best: Books About Hysteria - WSJ.com
By ASTI HUSTVEDT
..........................................................
Mad Men and Medusas
By Juliet Mitchell (2000)
Psychoanalyst Juliet Mitchell asks in this book: Why does the medical community insist that hysteria no longer exists when she knows, "beyond a shadow of a doubt," that it does? She traces hysteria's disappearance as a medical diagnosis to the early part of the 20th century, when it was divided into smaller parts. Anorexia and multiple personality disorder, for example, were originally symptoms of hysteria but are now classified separately. She also shows how hysteria's identification as a female affliction ultimately contributed to its demise: When soldiers returned from the trenches of World War I suffering from hysterical paralyses, limps and nightmares, doctors hesitated to label these battle-scarred men hysterics, and thus the euphemism "shell shock" was born. Mitchell, however, argues that hysteria is inherent to the human condition. It may have been dismantled, renamed and discarded as a diagnosis, but to claim that it has disappeared is, she insists, as nonsensical as saying that love and hate have vanished.
...................................
Mad Travelers
By Ian Hacking (1998)
Wellcome Library, London
A hysteric at the Salpêtrière hospital in Paris in the late 19th century.
The philosopher Ian Hacking is one of those writers whose books leave readers with the sense that they have always understood what in fact they did not understand before they read his work—exactly my response to "Mad Travelers." Here his subject is a short-lived epidemic of hysterical fugue, or compulsive wandering, that took place in Europe at the end of 19th century. Hysterical fugue, which afflicted the mad travelers of Hacking's title, had all but vanished as a diagnosis by the early 20th century and is therefore an example of what he calls a "transient mental illness." It was limited to a specific time and place or, in a term the author borrows from biology, to an "ecological niche" that nurtured it. The argument is elegant and persuasive, one that Hacking applies to contemporary culture as well, citing anorexia and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder as possible products of our own ecological niches. In "Mad Travelers," Hacking transforms hysterical fugue from an obsolete medical curiosity into a parable about psychiatry.
...............................................................................
Invention of Hysteria
By Georges Didi-Huberman (1981)
I first read "Invention of Hysteria" as a student in Paris during the 1980s, when it was a must-read in academic circles. Georges Didi-Huberman belongs to the school of thought that says psychiatry creates psychiatric categories, which in turn create psychiatric patients—hence the invention of hysteria. In addition to grappling with this complicated and unresolved epistemological issue, Didi-Huberman investigates the ways in which photography contributed to the "manufacturing" of hysteria in Paris during the 19th century. Photographs were used to document hysterical symptoms, and patients adapted their behavior to correspond to these images. The hospital hysteria ward was thus transformed into what the author calls a factory that produced hysterics. The book (first published in English in 2003) includes more than 100 spectacular photographs and drawings. While Didi-Huberman's prose tends to obfuscate his arguments—exasperatingly so at times—"Invention of Hysteria" is justifiably a classic in cultural studies.
......................................................................
Mad, Bad and Sad
By Lisa Appignanesi (2008)
Lisa Appignanesi's ambitious and fascinating book explores two centuries of "mad, bad and sad" women and the mind doctors who treated them. While the author's scope extends well beyond hysteria proper, the disorder in its myriad forms appears throughout the text. Some of her subjects are women who became famous patients, such as a young woman named Augustine, whose hysteria made her a medical celebrity in 19th-century Paris; and some are famous women who became patients, including Zelda Fitzgerald and Marilyn Monroe. Appignanesi reminds us that medical history is made up of human stories and that unhappiness, especially of the female variety, tends to be adapted to fit current diagnostic categories. These days, the tendency is to locate mental illness in biology—in "chemical imbalances" in the brain, for example. Appignanesi counters, with ample evidence, that illness is not stable but shifts according to the needs of the time.
..............................................................................
Studies on Hysteria
By Josef Breuer and Sigmund Freud (1895)
This founding text of psychoanalysis is as relevant today as it was when it was published over a century ago. In many ways, the medical climate of the early 21st century resembles that of the late 19th. Then, as now, physiology was considered the source of all kinds of disorders, from mania to melancholia. Sigmund Freud and his close friend and collaborator, Josef Breuer—along with, significantly, the five hysterics whose case histories are presented in the book—collaborated to create a radically new paradigm, one in which medically inexplicable symptoms were understood as conversions of psychological trauma. Hysteria, then, became a language that communicates through the body what the mind is unable to say. The prescribed treatment was talking, not pill-popping. The authors refer to the hysterics in the book as their "instructors," an acknowledgment of the enormous and often unrecognized role that patients play in the production of medical theory. In fact, it is Breuer's patient Anna O. who coined the term "the talking cure." Even the anti-Freudians among us will admit that "Studies on Hysteria" is beautifully written. As Freud himself points out, the case histories read like short stories.
.........................................................
A version of this article appeared Mar. 17, 2012, on page C10 in some U.S. editions of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Asti Hustvedt.
Ms. Hustvedt is the author of 'Medical Muses: Hysteria in Nineteenth-Century Paris.'
