Fashion and cult in neuroscience the case of hysteria

Abstract

Two obdurate delusions of neuroscience (and neuroscientists) are illustrated by these books—that the contemporary position inevitably is the most scientifically advanced, and that medical science is set on an inexorable and more or less linear path to ultimate truth. The image is conjured of the scientist as stone mason, chipping away at the rock of ignorance uncovering the glorious forms of reason, but the trajectory of neuroscience of course is far less perfect. The awkward reality is that the march of science has an erratic course, veering up many culs de sac, and is a trajectory influenced by personality cult and by public fashion—today as much as ever. It is with these central propositions in mind that the three books can be considered, involving as they do the history of the medical conceptions of hysteria. One (Enquist) is a quite brilliant novel, one (Maddox) an excellent biography and one (Faulks) a panoramic story. All three provide in their various ways an interesting take, from the perspectives of those closely involved, on the theories and treatment of hysteria of Jean-Martin Charcot and of Sigmund Freud. These theories (and treatments) dominated the subject in their times and had great cultural importance; yet they are notable today for their almost complete invisibility. Many exemplify discoveries, initially well-evidenced, which were then subjected to hyperbole and exaggeration and amplified to the level of nonsense and non-science, while their perpetrators were upheld as fashion icons (a common and still current tendency in the field of neuroscience for at least 150 years). Consider the many thousands of theses, papers, books and lectures devoted to these topics by numerous brilliant and learned doctors; now dismissed as scientific distractions. These were culs-de-sac up which drove most of the fashionable neuroscientists of their day. Both Charcot and Freud enjoyed cult …