Hysteria [[electronic resource] ] : the biography / / Andrew Scull

• Record Nr.: UNINA9910780813903321
• Autore: Scull Andrew T
• Pubbl/distr/stampa: Oxford ; ; New York, : Oxford University Press, 2009
• ISBN: 1-383-04603-4; 0-19-162333-4; 1-282-38320-5; 9786612383205; 0-19-157180-6
• Descrizione fisica: 1 online resource ( 223 p.) : ill
• Collana: Biographies of disease
• Disciplina: 616.85/24
• Soggetti: Hysteria - History; Psychiatry - History
• Lingua di pubblicazione: Inglese
• Formato: Materiale a stampa
• Livello bibliografico: Monografia
• Note generali: Description based upon print version of record.
• Nota di bibliografia: Includes bibliographical references and index.
• Nota di contenuto: Prologue : suffocation of the mother -- Mysteria -- Neurologie -- An English malady? -- Reflexly mad -- American nervousness -- A hysterical circus -- Freudian hysterics -- The wounds of war -- L'hystérie morte?
• Sommario/riassunto: The nineteenth century seems to have been full of hysterical women - or so they were diagnosed. Where are they now? The very disease no longer exists. In this fascinating account, Andrew Scull tells the story of Hysteria - an illness that disappeared not through medical endeavour, but through growing understanding and cultural change. More generally, it raises the question of how diseases are framed, and how conceptions of a disease change through history.The lurid history of hysteria makes fascinating reading. Charcot's clinics showed off flamboyantly 'hysterical' patients taking on sexualized poses, and among the visiting professionals was one Sigmund Freud. Scull discusses the origins of the idea of hysteria, the development of a neurological approach by John Sydenham and others, hysteria as a fashionable condition, and its growth from the 17th century. Some regarded it as a peculiarly English malady, 'the natural concomitant of England'sgreater civilization and refinement'. Women were the majority ; of patients, and the illness became associated with female biology, resulting in some gruesome 'treatments'. Charcot and Freud were key practitioners defining the nature of the illness. But curiously, the illness seemed to swap gender duringthe First World War when male hysterics frequently suffering from shell shock were also subjected to brutal 'treatments'. Subsequently, the 'disease' declined and eventually disappeared, at least in professional circles, though attenuated elements remain, reclassified for instance as post-traumatic stress disorder.