Gender and Sex Manifestations in Hysteria Across Medicine and the Arts

Abstract

The diagnosis of hysteria has existed for at least four-thousand years, with roots in the ancient Greek word hysterikos, referring to diseases of the womb. In the sixteenth-century medical discourses, female hysteria was caused by excess pollution of the womb, with fluids that were labelled ‘female sperm' as the probable cause. In the work of Shakespeare, there is a reference to hysterica passio, a term used by King Lear to self-diagnose his affliction. Shakespeare shows how a disease associated with women, and the ‘wandering womb' phenomenon could have been spoken of in an associative way. At this time, there is a transformation of the nature of hysteria from a neurological consequence of the sick womb, to sexual deviance. Portrayals of the male deviant would evolve by the Victorian era, concurrent with the diagnosis of ‘spermatorrhea'. There are very direct correspondences between the hysteria of spermatorrhea and the notion in Western medicine of the direct links between female hysteria and too much or not enough sexual energy release. Hysteria in both sexes was famously diagnosed and catalogued by Jean-Martin Charcot at the end of the nineteenth century. By the twentieth century, hysteria was also depicted as a disorder of gender as well as sexuality. i 2014 S. Karger AG, Basel