Female Hysteria Research Articles

Hysterical Women: The Fight for an Expanded British Franchise at the Turn of the 20th Century

This project argues that in the United Kingdom at the turn of the 20th century, social and medical claims of female hysteria worked as a way of confining women to the domestic sphere. To explore the social implications of feminine hysteria in this region, the medical legitimacy of these claims is analyzed through looking at the texts of various surgeon generals of the late 19th and early 20th centuries while placing them in conjunction with the rapidly changing world. This world was filled with suppressors who worked toward maintaining established social norms. The group analyzed in this project, women, were most prominently suppressed through the negative rhetorical use of medical terms such as female hysteria in pursuit of maintaining the status quo of the early 1800s. This umbrella term was historically used to describe any and all afflictions of women but morphed into ammunition for medical professionals and the general public alike to contain unruly women. This project contextualizes women’s health issues encapsulated by this umbrella term (hysteria) and others with the prevailing thoughts on women’s suffrage of the time to argue the above claim.

Death by Laughter: Female Hysteria and Early Cinema

Death by Laughter: Female Hysteria and Early Cinema

HYSTERICAL FEMININITY IN NICK JOAQUIN’S THE WOMAN WHO HAD TWO NAVELS

In this essay, I read Nick Joaquin’s The Woman Who Had Two Navels through the lens of feminist scholarship on the history and social construction of female hysteria. I argue that a critical intertextual reading of this sort affirms the heteropatriarchal foundations of popular ideations of the Philippine nation. I use Sara Mills’ Feminist Stylistics to draw attention to Joaquin’s discourse on women, specifically, hysterical women such as Connie Escobar. I argue that the discourse of the novel—its reliance on the stereotype of the hysterical feminine woman, its focalization through a male gaze, and its employment of the schemata of “women asking for it”—explains why readers find Connie Escobar’s inconsistent behavior and characterization not only plausible, but even subversive. However, reading the novel from the lens of feminist stylistics also reveals instances where the novel reinscribes patriarchal ideology. Any reading that views Connie as a metaphor for the Philippine nation must therefore confront the patriarchal ideology that informs this vision of the nation.

Pursuit-worthy research in health: Three examples and a suggestion

This paper, in a nutshell, is a plea for community participation in research along with an adapted idea for how such participation should be shaped and understood. I will give varied examples of the ways in which scientists viewing a perceived problem solely from an external perspective has led to mistakes. If we do not properly take into account the knowledge and values of people with a condition, we are liable to pursue the wrong sorts of treatments. In particular, I provide examples of three ways (exemplified in the cases of “female hysteria”, autism, and chronic fatigue syndrome) scientists are liable to pursue treatment of what they perceive to be at least partially mental illnesses that they/we shouldn't. I present the idea of deliberative research—the concept is based on that of deliberative democracy. The idea of deliberative democracy is that decisions should be made on the basis of reasons that would be acceptable to the target population. I similarly argue that research decisions should be made on the basis of reasons that would be acceptable to the target population, even if it requires other experts to determine how those reasons are best to be respected in the context of a particular project.

Charcot and the psychology of hysteria, with special reference to a never published final case history

ABSTRACT Jean-Martin Charcot is perhaps best remembered for his contributions to organic neurology. However, his pursuit of hysteria, the most prevalent diagnosis in his hospital clinic, yielded no anatomical lesion to account for hysteria’s plethora of somatic disorders assumed due to a purely functional or dynamic lesion in the cerebral cortex. This led Charcot to turn his attention to the psychology of hysteria. Taking advantage of institutional reforms at the Salpêtrière—notably, the establishment of his professorship in nervous diseases—Charcot from the early 1880s focused his teaching increasingly on case histories of hysteria in male as well as female patients. Already renown for his earlier dramatic public lessons on female hysteria, his lessons of the 1880s, of which two volumes were published at the end of the decade, elaborated the issue of psychology in terms of altered states of patient’s suggestibility. By the decade’s end, Charcot’s worldwide reputation rested on the prospects of this work as acknowledged by numerous students, notably medical psychologists Pierre Janet and Sigmund Freud. Yet Charcot’s views remained sketchy. They were discussed at length in his unpublished notes for a lesson intended for May 1893, just a few months before his sudden death. His unpublished notes reveal a detailed case for dreams as illustrating a psychological mechanism underlying hysteria in a 17-year-old Paris artisan. I conclude by considering why this significant climactic case of Charcot’s might have been overlooked by his entourage.

Brouillet’s Une leçon clinique à la Salpêtrière as an epistemic tool in Charcot’s research on hysterical amnesia

ABSTRACT Much has been written, mostly in overly critical terms, about Jean-Martin Charcot’s use of images in his hysteria research. Besides the images of patients Charcot produced for his clinical research, one other image has preoccupied present-day scholars—André Brouillet’s painting Une leçon clinique à la Salpêtrière. Unveiled at the 1887 Salon in Paris, this life-sized painting depicts Charcot lecturing on hysteria to his male audience while presenting a swooning female patient. For many present-day critics, Brouillet’s painting symbolizes Charcot’s purported misuse of his female hysteria patients. Contrary to such interpretations, this article shows that Brouillet’s painting did not merely serve as an iconic visual representation of Charcot’s hysteria research but was also used by Charcot as an active epistemic tool in his research on hysterical amnesia. Through a close reading of Charcot’s only published lecture on hysterical amnesia, which he held on December 22, 1891, I analyze the process through which Charcot generated new medical insights into hysterical amnesia. I thereby trace the decisive role that Une leçon clinique played in this process.

"Psychoanalysts are always at the same time doctors and patients and can be cured as doctors." An analysis of Karl Kraus's antipsychoanalytic aphorisms (1905-1930).

Karl Kraus was one of the most important and influential personalities in Vienna at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century; he was the founder and life director of the magazine Die Fackel, famous for leading important debates with writers, poets, journalists, and psychoanalysts. At the beginning of the 20th century, Freud wanted to win Kraus's sympathy because he believed that having him on his side was essential for psychoanalysis to penetrate the artistic and cultural circle of Vienna. As will be shown in this article, the alliance between the two was never consummated and, on the contrary, they became antagonists, with Ernst Jones naming Kraus "Freud's greatest enemy." In this paper, mentions of Freud and psychoanalysis in Die Fackel between 1905 and 1930 were identified and subsequently, 26 aphorisms written by Kraus through the post-structural linguistic approach were analyzed. A sample from the digital collection AAC-FACKEL of the Austrian Academy Corpus was used. Early writings reveal that Kraus came to regard psychoanalysis as an ally in his struggle against Austrian sexual morality, yet he was always wary of its invasion of the intimate lives of individuals. Kraus criticized Freud's explanation of female hysteria and instead considered that the root of female suffering was due to their inability to give themselves individuality. It can be concluded that although Kraus was a severe critic of psychoanalysis, at many times he viewed some of its postulates with sympathy, to the point that he considered his aphorisms to be a kind of attenuated psychoanalysis; that is, without the exaggerated presence of sexual elements or interpretations.

Examining the Impact of the Advancements in Nineteenth Century Neuroscience on Drama: An Analysis of Jean-Martin Charcot’s Stages of Female Hysteria in August Strindberg’s Miss Julie

This study examines the depiction of female hysteria in August Strindberg's "Miss Julie" by analyzing its historical development, Julie's characterization, and the influence of neuroscience on the portrayal of mental illness in literature and drama. Utilizing a descriptive method, it investigates Julie's character and the impact of Charcot's theory on the stages of grand hysteria on her portrayal. The analysis is based on a close reading of the play, relevant literature on Charcot's research, and secondary sources to understand the relationship between neuroscience and the arts in the 19th century. A qualitative research design is employed to explore Charcot's research's impact on literature and drama. The study reveals that Strindberg's "Miss Julie" shows a clear influence of Charcot's stages of grand hysteria, with Julie being a good example of a hysterical woman. The complex portrayal of mental illness in the play highlights the impact of social and cultural factors on its depiction. The findings suggest that scientific discoveries, like Charcot's work on female hysteria, significantly impacted mental illness portrayals in books and plays, revealing the complex relationship between scientific progress and cultural perceptions of mental health. The study recommends further exploration of other pre-Freudian theories to gain a more comprehensive understanding of Strindberg's works and their portrayal of mental illness. In conclusion, the study emphasizes the importance of understanding the historical and cultural context of the portrayal of mental illness in literature and drama.

GENDERED PERCEPTIONS OF MADNESS: FEMALE HYSTERIA AND MALE MELANCHOLY IN SHAKESPEARE’S HAMLET, MACBETH AND KING LEAR

Madness, as one of the most controversial and challenging Renaissance topics, was not only deeply influenced by its mediaeval heritage but also the mediaeval perceptions of dominating masculinity and subordinating, vulnerable femininity. Thus, the numerous Renaissance treatises feverishly tried to explain various and, often identical, mental disorders. However, this was done with difficulty. The aim of this paper is to analyze and discuss the gendered perception of two of these mental disorders, namely female hysteria and male melancholy. Hysteria was primarily aestheticized and eroticized, while melancholy was intellectualized. As a man of his time, Shakespeare had surely been familiar with the gendered perception of madness. His portrayal of women in tragedies abounds in varieties due to his direct questioning of these categories. His first hysterical character, Ophelia, is unquestionably conventional while lady Macbeth challenges the established gender roles. King Lear, on the other hand, is a peculiar case of a man suffering from a female disease. Keywords: madness; hysteria; melancholy; Shakespeare; Ophelia; lady Macbeth; king Lear.

Acting and Race in Night of the Living Dead (1968)

Acting and Race in <i>Night of the Living Dead</i> (1968)

Hysteria and Gender Culture: A Study of Catherine in Wuthering Heights

Since ancient times, hysteria has been recognized as a woman's uterine lesion or a disease related to the possession of evil spirits. However, modern social studies have re-examined the symptoms of hysteria and determined that what has been termed “hysteria” can actually be connected to psychological symptoms related to a woman’s failure to obey the prescribed social gender norms or adhere to societal gender images. Hence, hysteria may be a subconscious or unconscious, though always ineffective, attempt to fight against oppressive gender expectations. In order to escape the pressure from prescribed gender norms or patriarchal norms, women may retreat into a world of insanity, using hysteria to release their anger or anxiety. In order to further illustrate how hysteria fights against the existing cultural structure, this study uses Wuthering Heights as an example of hysteria as a consequence of the perspectives of gender, family structures, and social class, as well as the interactive effects of these dimensions. To achieve this goal, the study applies the theories and criticisms of gender psychology, gender criticism, and binary gender opposition to analyze the symptoms of female hysteria in literature and to demonstrate how women, forced to conform to prescribed gender images, use hysteria as a defense mechanism to express their anger toward gender subjectivity; it also aims to further deconstruct the androcentric society and discourses based on gender binary opposition.

Echoes of hysteria: Gender, affect and economic crisis in Blue Jasmine and Young Adult

This article analyses gendered representations of the 2008 financial crash in contemporary American cinema, focusing on films by Jason Reitman and Woody Allen. Scholars of the financial crisis on film have persuasively argued that the main impetus of indie global financial crisis cinema has been less to narrate the events than to make them intelligible through personification. I illustrate and modify this statement by suggesting that Reitman’s and Allen’s characters not only embody the financial crash but do so, importantly, along gender lines. What stands out the most, I propose, is the trope of female suffering. In both films, we witness female protagonists in the grip of monetary and mental crisis. I contend that this image of the distraught woman – with all the messiness and embarrassment of her feelings in full view – sheds new light on the affective pathologies of American capitalism. To make this point, I draw on cultural emblems of female hysteria, as well as on the work of political scientist Claudia Leeb on the expression of suffering and its transformative potential. Through their tormented heroines, Reitman and Allen provide a provocative view of US capitalism and its casualties after the global crash.

Why Siblings? Introducing the “Sibling Trauma” and the “Law of the Mother” on the “Horizontal” Axis

ABSTRACT Siblings came to me as a contradictory experience: a Eureka-like ecstatic revelation subdued by a numb sense of tired relief. I had struggled for years with what was intended as a book on male hysteria. Although in Studies in Hysteria (1895) Freud published only cases of female hysteria, it was his insistence on the existence of hysteria in men that was the underlying foundation–stone of psychoanalysis. Without it, hysteria could not have been a universal; no universal, no unconscious, no psychoanalysis. But likewise it was in discarding his trauma theory of the genesis of hysteria in favor of the concept of desire that made Freud overjoyed to give up his “neurotica” and confirm the inauguration of a new knowledge – psychoanalysis.

“The Blue Rose” by Lesia Ukrainka as the ‘rite de passage’: biography, psychiatry and writing

The paper explores “The Blue Rose” (1896) by Lesia Ukrainka in terms of the ‘rite de passage’ as the text with a ritual function that reflects the cultural, gender, and author status transformations within the field of literature. In the most general sense, the first drama by Lesia Ukrainka is analyzed as an act of initiation into the fin de siècle culture. Peculiar features of this ritual are the critical comments of the modern culture, transformation of the autobiographical facts into aesthetic phenomena, and interiorization of the motif of death.&#x0D; “The Blue Rose” discusses a female genetic illness — a popular topic of the late 19th century — and depicts an attempt of escaping into the illusionary world of platonic love. Representation of the female insanity and ‘unconventional love’, as well as the critique of a bourgeois view of happiness and the patriarchal world, is also an important aspect of the drama. References to the unpublished materials of Lesia Ukrainka’s archive — her excerpts from the “Psychiatry” by Krafft-Ebing — allow concluding that “The Blue Rose” treats insanity as a psychiatric and not a psychological phenomenon. The mother-daughter relations as well as the tension of the mother-son relations in the family of Kosaches are also an important element in Lesia Ukrainka’s work.&#x0D; “The Blue Rose” (1896) is a multidimensional and experimental drama. Its author transforms numerous autobiographical facts into cultural situations and engages in a discussion on the topical themes and motifs of the fin de siècle, in particular female insanity, hysteria, and maternity. The writer employs naturalistic methods of analysis and reinforces descriptions of female insanity with the facts from psychiatric practice. “The Blue Rose” displays an interest of Lesia Ukrainka in Neoplatonism, which she would later associate with a Neo-romantic impulse ‘ins Blaue’.&#x0D; In general, the author did not follow the foreign patterns, as the critiques noted, but explored the Zeitgeist of the new era. She involved authentic practical experience of her own life and the lives of her relatives and friends, analyzed moral norms and psychological states referring to the cultural codes that ranged from “The Romance of the Rose”, Dante, Shakespeare, and Heine to Zola, Ibsen, and Nadson. This practice ensured Lesia Ukrainka’s initiation into the fin de siècle culture and paved her way to the modernist drama.

When Bioethics Is Too Narrow – The Relevance of Philosophy of Medicine in Medical Education

What do these terms have in common? Drapetomania Female hysteria Homosexuality Sluggish schizophrenia If you guessed “former medical conditions that were used to pathologize socially-undesirable persons and their behaviors”, you are correct! Drapetomania was described as a mental illness that caused African-American slaves to run away. Female hysteria was first noted in the second millennium BCE and was subsequently used to institutionalize women. Sluggish schizophrenia was used to subjugate political dissidents in the USSR, and homosexuality is one of the more recent “disorders” to undergo depathologization. These diseases, of course, are now obsolete or exist as behaviors that are widely accepted in western society. So why do they matter? In a sentence – the medical profession exists to treat disease. The corollary – to treat disease, we must first determine what disease is. The historical legacies of medicine are riddled with abuses of human rights stemming from treatment of conditions that were not diseases at all. Today’s medical students will go on to discover and classify new diseases, and competency with theories that conceptualize disease and illness are an educational imperative. Clinical bioethics, in particular, often takes for granted terms such as ‘disease’, ‘illness’, and ‘health’. Knowledge of basic abstract concepts within philosophy of medicine should be foundational, rather than tangential, to medical school humanities curricula. Naturalistic and normative theories comprise the major types of disease-conceptualizing theories. Normative theories aim to define disease in terms of value judgments, often taking the form of ‘X condition is a disease because it is bad for the person who has it’. Theories differ in their assessment of why the condition is bad (that is, they differ in their value judgements). Naturalistic theories aim to define disease without the use of value judgements. This is typically achieved through appeal to deviance from statistical and/or evolutionary function. Each type of theory has its own strengths and limitations, and couching this discussion in terms of historical nosology lends itself to critical examination of pathologization within medicine. Integrating these ideas in medical school curricula will enrich students’ understanding of disease, and may mitigate diagnoses that historically harmed patients.

The Influence of Dominant Discourse On The Formation of Male and Female 'Self'

After a long exploration and narrative work on body discourse and feminine discourse, Cheon Yeon-young shows a deep experimental spirit in terms of the influence of existing discourses and grand discourses and the correlation that has on the formation of ‘Ego’. The artist has come to the novels 『Ginger』, novel collections 『Myeongrang』, 『As you knows』, and closely explores the process of forming the self through family relations father-and-daughter relations mother- and-son relations and mother-and-daughterd relations and the language and human existence. She is dealing with the essential problem of Her work, which reveals the true nature of self and subject by looking into the child s family relationship, which begins with the relationship of the body, is an achievement that must be reevaluated in that she is always heading for a more fundamental problem while pioneering a new narrative field. This paper examines the aspects of the self, subject that the artist identifies with the works of the recent work collection 『As Mom Knows』, and the relationship between the ego formation and the language of the system. The male protagonist at the position of the father in the triangular structure of family desires seen in the collections of works 「As Mom Knows」, 「Glass Lip」, and 「Twenty-Three Eyes」 is still in the arms of maternal women. It shows that you are staying at the level of being a boy. This is what the artist perceives as the “Ego” of a man under the patriarchal system of this land and the meaning that the work represents. In the appearance of staying in the child who stayed in the male protagonist s mother s arms or returning to it, the mother s son, who exhibits perfect maternality, does not become a rational subject that has achieved independence and individualization and is dependent on the boy appearance. The author s clarification and insight that the existing men in this land did not become independent subjects of complete separation, but rather became a dependent self in real life such as food, clothing and shelter by staying in boys who need the care of women with motherhood. Could be confirmed I was able to face the artist s insight and representation of staying in the self . In the mother s arms, who play the role of a strong guardian and male head in the patriarchal system, the “son” manifested an inner “anima” and stayed in the mother’s arms, showing that the mother and child relationship could continue to be completely united. This was to recreate the reality that the son was able to live without having to achieve separation and personalization because there is a mother who has been wholly devoted to a son born with a phallus in the patriarchy and has been a powerful fence. The author s clarification and insight that the existing men in this land did not become independent subjects of complete separation, but rather stayed in boys who need the care of women with maternity, thereby having a dependent self in real life such as food, clothing and shelter. Could be confirmed. On the other hand, from the image of a girl who had to live alone, thrown out of her mother s arms or without any fence, from the triangle of family desire to the role of husband and father as guardians works “Remaining Education”, “Closed Eyes” and “My Severe and sad children”. In the mother-daughter relationship, the mother gave a female hysteria to her daughter, and the girl had to accept it and protect her, but the girl showed an animus-like ego and played the role of the father (father) protecting the house and women. The reality of this narrative is not a story of a girl in a peculiar environment, but rather a mother-daughter relationship in our society where the idea of son preference was strong. Could In the works, the mother , who had to live a life of frustration under the existing patriarchal system, can pour out the resentment.

Digital Observation: An Analysis of Patriarchal Comments in the Web

Through the journey of the plurality of feminisms, we find ourselves today in the fourth wave, in which cyberactivism predominates, with feminist articulations going through the street/network axis. Thus, we sought to consolidate the arguments in defense of feminism from the analysis of the opposite reactions found online. The locus was the cyberspace itself, where comments were found in web news posts that contained controversial contents linked to themes worked out by feminism in their plurality. The qualitative approach was defined based on non-participant systematic observation and content analysis. Nine categories were extracted, including blaming the victim of violence, discrediting female accusations of violence, stigma of prostitution, social concept of Marianism, objectification of the female body, myth of female hysteria, myth of maternal love, sexual and reproductive rights, demerit the relevance of female representativeness, among other subjects. It has been found that chauvinism and misogyny are social reproductions engendered regardless of gender; whereas the demands on female behavior are mostly associated with an accusatory tone, with responsibilities reversed; that there is still the view that women do not have emancipatory capacity to achieve their successes and that, thus, they must take hold of what man has achieved from his privileges; that sexist attitudes are detrimental to society as a whole and not only to women and; Thus, most of society still does not understand the relevance of female representativeness in the various spaces.

Broken motherhood, biopolitical victim, and transnational female hysteria in Japanese Pan-pan and Korean Yanggongju melodramas: cross-reading Hollywood motifs

ABSTRACTThis article explores possible influences of Americanization on postwar Japanese and Korean melodramas by focusing on the tropes of sexually liberated and exploited women such as the Pan-pan and Yanggongju (prostitutes groomed for American soldiers in both Japan and Korea). In comparison with Hollywood maternal melodramas, Japanese and Korean maternal melodramas not only represent women’s social participation and their romantic love or sexual liberation but also inscribe imbalances arising from U.S. military culture by employing women’s bodies as metonymic victims of their respective nations. I examine the ways in which Tragedy of Japan (1953) and The Body Confession (1964) transform Hollywood motifs into its own vernacular cultural modes to show ambivalent status of the prostitute mother by embodying both a repulsion and fascination toward Americanization. I also tend to the affective moment by which both films go beyond national allegories in which the prostitute mother is victimized by the biopolitical complicity between domestic sexual norms and American militarism. In the frame of melodrama as the self-reflexive mode and the hysteric’s imaginary, films disturb gender roles in that it exposes the contradictions of a dominant ideology. Women’s contaminated bodies not only act as victimized and shameful nations but also grasp their own affect such as hysteria. This essay aims to provide new theoretical and historical tools for analyzing Japanese and Korean national cinema, focusing on gender issues over inter-Asian perspectives.

Frenzied Flappers: The Hysterical Female in Early Twentieth-Century Social Dance

Abstract It is widely acknowledged that the freer, more sexualized movements of social dancing in the early twentieth century (1900–1929) accompanied the beginnings of female emancipation both socially and politically. However, less explored are the similarities between the provocative, inelegant choreography of such social dances and the symptoms of female hysteria, a medical phenomenon that saw the body as a canvas for mental distress as provoked by social tensions. This essay will address the possible alignment of hysteria and popular social dance in relation to the evolving Modern Woman. It will examine the motivations of modern, ‘hysterical’ dances, and discuss their progressive status in terms of gender by considering perceived psychosomatic interactions within the female dancing body.

Female Hysteria, Invisibilized Labour, and the Kafala System

Female Hysteria, Invisibilized Labour, and the Kafala System