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Name: Hysteria: The disturbing history - Kindle edition by Scull, Andrew. Health, Fitness & Dieting Kindle eBooks @ Amazon.com.
Rating: 4.4 (70 reviews)

Andrew T. Scull

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Hysteria: The disturbing history Illustrated Edition, Kindle Edition

by Andrew Scull (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

4.4 70 ratings

Part of: Biographies of Disease (7 books)

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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's
greater 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 during
the 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.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Review from previous edition: "Elegantly constructed book...Skull is otherwise exemplary on the whole historical curve." --George Rousseau, TLS 20.08.10"The stories they tell are often fascinating and alarming - pitched somewhere between farce, genius, horror and a lab report." --The Scotsman 23/10/2009"These four 'biographies' of diseases go far beyond questions of biology or medical practice; they talk politics, sex and class, faith." --The Scotsman 23/10/2009"The notion of an ailment having a birth, a lifespan, and - ideally - a demise...is an illuminating and useful concept." --Wendy Moore, British Medical Journal 31/10/2009"Andrew Scull's exploration...provides an utterly enthralling study of medical ideology and sociology." --Wendy Moore, British Medical Journal 31/10/2009"Should be required reading for all students of medicine." --Wendy Moore, British Medical Journal 31/10/2009

About the Author

Andrew Scull has held faculty positions at the University of Pennsylvania, Princeton, and the University of California, where he is Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Science Studies. He is a past president of the Society for the Social History of Medicine, and has held fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the American Council of Learned Societies. He is the author or editor of more than twenty books, many of them on the history of psychiatry in Britain and the United States. He has lectured on five continents, as well as making many media appearances on programmes dealing with mental health issues.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B006H07PYQ
Publisher ‏ : ‎ OUP Oxford; Illustrated edition (October 7, 2009)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ October 7, 2009
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 3161 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 227 pages
Page numbers source ISBN ‏ : ‎ 019956096X

Best Sellers Rank: #498,752 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #62 in History of Psychology (Kindle Store)
- #164 in Medical Psychology History
- #196 in Popular Psychology History

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K. L. Uminski

Wow

Reviewed in the United States on September 16, 2012

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FacInating history of this "disease". I have been studying multiple personalities and reports of satanic ritual abuse. The victims are often women diagnosed with hysteria. It speaks to the inherent misogyny is the psychiatric world, which in a smaller measure, still exists. Patriarchal oppression and fear of female sexuality, this was the real disease, and I think it was the doctors who need the help. Really, erotic pictures of women in nightgowns in bizarre positions which at the time had to be held for a long time for the picture? Spontaneous - indeed.
So what happened to this diagnosis? My opinion? Exhaustion. Everytime a celeb checks into a hospital for exhaustion, I wind up thinking, she would have been a hysteric if this were 150 years ago.

5 people found this helpful

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Art Shapiro

Dr. Tarr, meet Professor Fether!

Reviewed in the United States on June 26, 2021

"Hysteria has always existed. everywhere and in all ages," declared Jean-Martin Charcot. And Sir Aubrey Lewis said: "A tough old word like hysteria dies very hard. It tends to outlive its obituaries."
This is a concise history of a disease that never existed. From classical times down through the Victorian era it was considered a female disease causally related to the reproductive tract and monthly cycle. This led to such barbaric treatments as inserting ice in the uterus (along with ice-water enemas) and applying leeches to the external genitalia. The once-distinguished London physician Isaac Baker Brown considered clitoridectomy the ultimate "cure." He practiced what he preached and this ultimately led to his professional downfall and personal disgrace. (Scull doesn't give the whole story!) Charcot, who for a while was at the top of his profession, was a scoundrel who staged public spectacles with allegedly hypnotized women demonstrating their insanity on command before a titillated audience. Freud systematically misrepresented and falsified the history of his "hysterical" female patients. It took an epidemic of "shell shock" in World War I to disassociate hysteria from the female reproductive system.
This book in effect presents the history of hysteria as a microcosm of the history of psychiatry and a demonstration of everything that has been wrong with it. Very few mental conditions have ever been properly and rigorously well-defined so as to merit recognition as distinct diseases. The exceptions are outright pathologies such as syphilitic paresis and Kreuzfeld-Jakob disease. The term "neurosis" has largely disappeared from the professional lexicon if not from popular usage. The only real definition of psychosis is a mental disturbance too profound to be a neurosis. Ironically, the much-ridiculed diagnostic manual has represented an attempt to make diagnoses more consistent and reproducible by reducing them to check-lists, with a minimum number of symptoms from the list as the necessary and sufficient conditions for a diagnosis to be made. The problem is that the diagnoses are unambiguously polythetic in character, and in a polythetic definition there are no necessary and sufficient conditions. If hysteria was a non-existent entity, what can we say of its conceptual successors, things like fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome, PTSD and now, perhaps, long Covid? To the extent that they respond to pharmacological interventions we can extend some credibility to their existence, even if neither their causal mechanisms nor the mode of action of the drugs used for their treatment can be characterized at this time. Psychiatry resembles voodoo: sometimes mere suggestion can have dramatic results. But only sometimes.

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marija

Critical view of history of hysteria

Reviewed in the United States on January 15, 2017

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This book offers a critical and theoretical history controversies caused by 'epidemic' of hysteria. It uncovers the logic behind re-discovery of hysteria in the nineteenth century mental health system. The author explains theories, modes of examination and curing, scientific and humanist explanations, and disputes that hysteria caused. He looks at the suffering and spectacular behaviors of hysterics in the context of political, gender, and professional hierarchies. Scull gives a thoughtful insight into writing on hysteria not only in the fields of psychiatry and psychoanalysis, but also in the literary studies, feminism, and critical theory.

4 people found this helpful

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vermillion

Great read

Reviewed in the United States on October 1, 2015

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A superficial examination of the conflict between neurological and psychological causes of symptoms since the last witch trials. An enjoyable easy read.

4 people found this helpful

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David K.

Tour the history of hysteria

Reviewed in the United States on September 20, 2015

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This book, via a well-written biography of hysteria, gives the reader a tour of the history of medicine, psychiatry, and culture.

5 people found this helpful

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Margaret Thompson

Who's Hysterical Now?

Reviewed in the United States on April 21, 2014

A diagnosis of "hysterical" is not longer acceptable in the field of modern medicine, and author Andrew Scull knows why. In Hysteria: The Disturbing History he explores the history of hysteria, its origins, development, and evolution.

In an analysis that covers several centuries, Scull explains that hysteria was ofetn associated with female biology, that is was used as a blanket term for more specific afflictions, and that at one time it was even considered somewhat of a fashion statement to be hysterical.

I found the ties to history and, in particular, Victorian era England to be particularly interesting although there was very little investigation into the sexual components of hysteria prevalent at this time.

The questions posed as to what was behind hysteria were thought-provoking ones. Was it simply an excuse for men to control women? Was it a way for repressed women to express their unhappiness?

The subject of the book is a compelling one, although a basic understanding of medical terminology will help when reading it, as it can be somewhat clinical. The stories interspersed throughout will likely be more intriguing to most readers than some of the medical analysis. However, if you are in any way involved in the mental health field, this will be right up your alley. Another notable book that helped me understand the history of hysteria is Face of Madness: Hugh W. Diamond and the Origin of Psychiatric Photography .

3 people found this helpful

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N.D.A. Kemp

A most welcome study

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 17, 2012

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This is a splendid book. With considerable elegance it surveys the paradigmatic shifts in the understanding and treatment of a disease that was once familiar but now appears to have disappeared. We are, for example, led through medical preoccupation with the movement of the womb, hence `hys'teria, towards neurological explanations. Professor Scull broadens our understanding of this fascinating subject by demonstrating that, perhaps contrary to popular belief, this was not a condition that was confined to women. He provides an especially compelling and effective section on shell shock during the First World War. His study details the development and ever-increasing sub-categorisation of mental illness. This process has meant that the rather amorphous condition of hysteria has been dispersed into a range of other conditions outlined in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association such as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Andrew Scull's account is both well-informed and lucid. Moreover, it is refreshingly free from the theory-laden claptrap that too frequently squeezes the life out of historical analyses of mental illness. This excellent book ought to be of interest to psychiatrists, psychologists, medics, historians, philosophers and the lay public. I recommend it unreservedly.

14 people found this helpful

Amazon Customer

An eye opener

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 6, 2019

Verified Purchase

Really interesting

One person found this helpful

cmac

Good service

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 28, 2014