Approaching Hysteria

Few diseases have exercised the Western imagination as chronically as hysteria - from the wandering womb of ancient Greek medicine, to the demonically possessed witch of the Renaissance; from the "vaporous" salon women of Enlightenment Paris, through to the celebrated patients of Sigmund Freud, with their extravagant, erotically charged symptoms. In this book, the author surveys the range of past and present readings of hysteria by intellectual historians; historians of science and medicine; scholars in gender studies, art history, and literature; and psychoanalysts, psychiatrists, clinical psychologists, and neurologists. In so doing, he explores numerous questions raised by this ever-growing body of literature: why, in recent years, has the history of hysterical disorders carried such resonance for commentators in the sciences and humanities? What can we learn from the textual traditions of hysteria about writing the history of disease in general? What is the broader cultural meaning of the new hysteria studies? In the second half of the book, Micale discusses the many historical "cultures of hysteria". He reconstructs the past usages of the hysteria concept as a powerful, descriptive trope in various non-medical domains, including poetry, fiction, theatre, social thought, political criticism, and the arts. His book is an attempt to write the historical phenomenology of disease in an age preoccupied with health, and a prescriptive remedy for writing histories of disease in the future.

ISBN 0691037175   Pages 340 ISBN13 9780691037172 (What's this?)   Volumes 001 Publisher Princeton University Press   Weight (grammes) 684 Imprint Princeton University Press   Published in New Jersey Format Hardback   Height (mm) 243 Publication date 25 Jan 1995   Width (mm) 166 Library of Congress RC532.M53   Spine width (mm) 29 DEWEY 616.8524009   Academic level Undergraduate, Postgraduate, Professional / Scholarly DEWEY edition DC20

		Preface
		Introduction: The New Hysteria Studies		3
		A Short "History" of Hysteria		19
Ch. 1		The Major Interpretive Traditions
		Intellectual Histories of Hysteria		33
		Psychoanalytic Hysteria		56
		Feminist Histories of Hysteria		66
		Charcot and the History of Hysteria		88
		Nonfeminist Social and Political Histories		97
Ch. 2		Theorizing Disease Historiography
		The Need for Definitional Clarity		108
		Beyond the "Historical Hysterics"		116
		From Theory to Practice		120
		Beyond the Freudian Historical Teleology		125
		Toward Sociosomatic Synthesis		129
		The "Doctor-Patient Relationship"		139
		The De-dramatization of Hysteria		149
		The Question of Social Class		154
		Hysteria - The Male Malady		161
		On the Rise and Fall of Nervous Diseases		169
Ch. 3		Cultures of Hysteria: Past and Present Traditions
		Hysteria's Metaphorical Past		179
		The Literary, Dramatic, and Visual Arts		182
		Politics, History, Society		200
Ch. 4		Cultures of Hysteria: Future Orientations
		Conceptualizing Cultural Influence		221
		Hysteria, Gender, Culture		239
		Hysteria and Religion Reconsidered		260
		More...

[Micale] is learned in the new scholarship, which he surveys comprehensively, judges intelligently, and writes about with lucid insight. . . . "Approaching Hysteria" is a most timely, informative, and stimulating book. It deserves a place on the shelf of major modern works on hysteria. . . .

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