Hysteria Beyond Freud

Sander L. Gilman, Helen King, Roy Porter, G. S. Rousseau, Elaine Showalter

Univ of California Press, Mar 25, 2022 - Medical - 502 pages

"She's hysterical." For centuries, the term "hysteria" has been used by physicians and laymen to diagnose and dismiss the extreme emotionality and mysterious physical disorders presumed to bedevil others—especially women. How did this medical concept assume its power? What cultural purposes does it serve? Why do different centuries and different circumstances produce different kinds of hysteria?
 
These are among the questions pursued in this absorbing, erudite reevaluation of the history of hysteria. The widely respected authors draw upon the insights of social and cultural history, rather than Freudian psychoanalysis, to examine the ways in which hysteria has been conceived by doctors and patients, writers and artists, in Europe and North America, from antiquity to the early years of the twentieth century. In so doing, they show that a history of hysteria is a history of how we understand the mind.
 This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1993.

About the author

Roy Sydney Porter was born December 31, 1946. He grew up in a south London working class home. He attended Wilson's Grammar School, Camberwell, and won an unheard of scholarship to Cambridge. His starred double first in history at Cambridge University (1968) led to a junior research fellowship at his college, Christ's, followed by a teaching post at Churchill College, Cambridge. His Ph.D. thesis, published as The Making Of Geology (1977), became the first of more than 100 books that he wrote or edited. Porter was a Fellow and Director of Studies in History at Churchill College, Cambridge from 1972 to 1979; Dean from 1977 to 1979; Assistant Lecturer in European History at Cambridge University from 1974 to 1977, Lecturer from 1977 to 1979. He joined the Wellcome Institute fot the History of Medicine in 1979 where he was a Senior Lecturer from 1979 to 1991, a Reader from 1991 to 1993, and finally a Professor in the Social History of Medicine from 1993 to 2001. Porter was Elected a fellow of the British Academy in 1994, and he was also made an honorary fellow by both the Royal College of Physicians and the Royal College of Psychiatrists. Roy Porter died March 4, 2002, at the age of 55. In 1977, Showalter published A Literature of Their Own: British Women Novelists from Bronte to Lessing. It was one of the most influential works in feminist criticism, as it sought to establish a distinctive tradition for women writers. In later essays, Showalter helped to develop a clearly articulated feminist theory with two major branches: the special study of works by women and the study of all literature from a feminist perspective. In all of her recent writing, Showalter has sought to illuminate a "cultural model of female writing," distinguishable from male models and theories. Her role as editor bringing together key contemporary feminist criticism has been extremely influential on modern literary study.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Hysteria Beyond Freud; UC Press voices revived
• Authors: Sander L. Gilman, Helen King, Roy Porter, G. S. Rousseau, Elaine Showalter
• Publisher: Univ of California Press, 2022
• ISBN: 0520301978, 9780520301979
• Length: 502 pages
• Subjects: Medical / Internal Medicine; Psychology / General; Social Science / Gender Studies