Fugitives from Guilt: Postmodern De-Moralization and the New Hysterias

Abstract

In Hystories: Hysterical Epidemics and Modern Media (1997), Elaine Showalter explores range of conditions—chronic fatigue syndrome, multiple personality disorder, recovered memory, satanic ritual abuse, alien abduction, Gulf War syn- drome—that she views as modern forms of hysteria as distinct from the old conversion and anxiety hysterias characteristic of the last fin-de-siecle and associated with the names of Charcot, Janet, Breuer, and Freud. Against the widespread claim that hysteria is thing of the past, having disappeared due to the rise of feminism or level of psychological sophistication incompatible with the forma- tion of hysterical symptoms (except perhaps among culturally backward populations), Showalter argues that, on the con- trary, far from having died, hysteria is alive and well in the form of the psychological plagues or epidemics of imaginary ill- nesses and hypnotically induced pseudomemories that char- acterize today's cultural narratives of hysteria (4-5). Although she provides rich description of the new hysterias—the hystories or hysterical stories of chronic fa- tigue, alien abduction, etc.—Showalter does not pretend to offer depth-psychological account of the psychodynamics underlying these conditions beyond identifying the role of suggestion on the part of physicians and the media in their creation and dissemination. Her definition of hysteria as a An earlier version of this paper, written with the assistance of Naomi Gold, was presented at scientific meeting of the Toronto Society For Contemporary Psycho- analysis, October 2000; and to the Group for the Applications of Psychology, University of Florida, Gainesville, February 2002. The present version, presented at the scientific meetings of the Canadian Psychoanalytic Society, Vancouver, June 2002, has been substantially revised in collaboration with Jean Hantman Carveth, who also supplied illustrative clinical material.