1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910811250803321

Autore

Goldstein Jan <1946->

Titolo

Hysteria complicated by ecstasy : the case of Nanette Leroux / / Jan Goldstein

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Princeton, New Jersey : , : Princeton University Press, , [2010]

©2010

ISBN

1-4008-3371-X

Edizione

[Course Book]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (259 p.)

Disciplina

616.8524

Soggetti

Hysteria

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

Front matter -- Contents -- Illustrations -- Preface -- Part One. HYSTERIA COMPLICATED BY ECSTASY -- Chapter 1. PRELIMINARIES -- Chapter 2. CONTEXTS -- Chapter 3. MAKING SENSE OF THE CASE -- Chapter 4. TEXTUAL MATTERS -- Part Two. THE TEXT OF THE CASE HISTORY -- Observations of Nanette Leroux: Hysteria Complicated by Ecstasy -- Appendix. On the Compatibility of Foucauldian and Freudian Approaches -- Notes -- Index

Sommario/riassunto

Hysteria Complicated by Ecstasy offers a rare window into the inner life of a person ordinarily inaccessible to historians: a semiliterate peasant girl who lived almost two centuries ago, in the aftermath of the French Revolution. Eighteen-year-old Nanette Leroux fell ill in 1822 with a variety of incapacitating nervous symptoms. Living near the spa at Aix-les-Bains, she became the charity patient of its medical director, Antoine Despine, who treated her with hydrotherapy and animal magnetism, as hypnosis was then called. Jan Goldstein translates, and provides a substantial introduction to, the previously unpublished manuscript recounting Nanette's strange illness--a manuscript coauthored by Despine and Alexandre Bertrand, the Paris physician who memorably diagnosed Nanette as suffering from "hysteria complicated by ecstasy." While hysteria would become a fashionable disease among urban women by the end of the nineteenth century, the case of Nanette Leroux differs sharply from this pattern in its early date and rural setting. Filled with intimate details about Nanette's behavior and



extensive "ations of her utterances, the case is noteworthy for the sexual references that contemporaries did not recognize as such; for its focus on the difference between biological and social time; and for Nanette's fascination with the commodities available in the region's nascent marketplace. Goldstein's introduction brilliantly situates the text in its multiple contexts, examines it from the standpoint of early nineteenth-century medicine, and uses the insights of Foucault and Freud to craft a twenty-first-century interpretation. A compelling, multilayered account of one young woman's mental afflictions, Hysteria Complicated by Ecstasy is an extraordinary addition to the cultural and social history of psychiatry and medicine.