Hystories: Hysterical Epidemics and Modern Culture - Hardcover

Showalter, Elaine

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0231104588 ISBN 13: 9780231104586

Publisher: Columbia Univ Pr, 1997

Synopsis

Argues that modern syndromes such as alien abduction, chronic fatigue, satanic ritual abuse, and Gulf War syndrome are all manifestations of mass cultural hysteria, and shows how epidemics of hysteria are spread through self-help books, talk shows, the Internet, films, and literary criticism. For scholars and general readers. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

About this title

About the Author

ELAINE SHOWALTER is Avalon Foundation Professor of the Humanities and professor of English at Princeton University.

Reviews

Applied scholarship in the best interdisciplinary tradition, examining how hysteria, the individual somaticization of anxiety, devolves to the ``hystories,'' or cultural narratives, of the title and how they in turn escalate into psychogenic epidemics. Feminist literary critic and medical historian Showalter (Humanities/Princeton Univ.) identifies six contemporary syndromes as hysterical epidemics, which arise when influential professional gurus impact on vulnerable populations in culturally supportive environments. Showalter modifies her own endorsement (The Female Malady, 1985) of feminist therapy/therapeutic feminism as she attacks the credulousness of ``the feminist embrace of all abuse narratives and the treatment of all women as survivors.'' But psychotherapy is, Showalter claims, part of the solution to the problem that she expands on fluently in the idioms of psychoanalysis, feminism, and literature. When she moves to address chronic fatigue and Gulf War syndromes (rather too absolutely) as psychological in origin, her zeal biases her rhetorical and reportorial judgment; however, on the overlapping hystories of recovered memory, multiple personality disorder, satanic ritual abuse, and alien abduction, the advocates convict themselves--of fascination with conspiracy, of accommodating to guilt and fear by licensing the projecting of blame onto others, and above all of resolute obliviousness to ``the way . . . suggestion worked to produce confabulation.'' Showalter has fun with the compound- bizarre, e.g., Harvard psychiatrist John Mack's speculation that remembered sexual abuse actually screens repressed episodes of alien abduction. But she honors the ``spiritual resonance'' lodged even in the narratives she makes sport of: Her quarrel is not with the symptoms of hysteria; she affirms the they are no less real (and no less treatable) than those of organic diseases. It is with the ``social appropriations'' of hysteria (such as the ramifications of incest accusations based on ``recovered'' memory) that she takes issue, and in defense of emotional mystery and narrative truth that she risks the wrath of the epidemics' suffering proponents by challenging them. Muscular, probably inflammatory, and elegantly expressed. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

The ends of centuries have historically given rise to increased incidents of hysterical epidemics. Literary critic and medical historian Showalter has written a challenging and insightful history of hysteria that brings us up to the Nineties. After defining hysteria, she examines the subject from three perspectives: historically, including the work of Charcot and Freud; culturally, through literature, theater, and film; and, finally, in what is likely to be the book's most controversial area, in terms of epidemics. In this last section, the author hypothesizes that many of today's syndromes, including chronic fatigue, Gulf War, recovered memory, and multiple personality, along with increased reports of satanic ritual abuse and alien abduction, should be correctly categorized as hysterias. Showalter's main point, however, is not the denial of these phenomena but rather "how much power emotions have over the body." A thought-provoking work for informed readers.?Kathleen L. Atwood, Pomfret Sch. Lib., Ct.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Columbia Univ Pr
• Publication date: 1997
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0231104588
• ISBN 13: 9780231104586
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 244