Judith Herman Chapter Summaries

Firstly, let me explain to you what a hysteria is, it is uncontrollable emotion or excitement. You’re probably wondering why would this be exciting, well I am about to tell you. When nine and eleven-year-old girls sought to know their destiny they found the unfortunate answer by engaging with a West Indian woman named Tituba. To see their future the woman used an egg white in a glass of water and looked for telltale shapes. One of the girls thought she

Anna O was 21 year old patient of Breuer. Anna O had developed strange symptoms while taking care of her father who was ill. She developed a cough along with paralysis, hallucinations, hysteria, and loss of feeling in her arms and legs as well as muscle spasms. Breuer could not figure out why Anna was experiencing these types of symptoms so he deemed it hysterical neurosis (Heller, 2005). While under hypnosis Anna’s symptoms were not as severe and she could recall dramatic events that had taken place in her life prior to her symptoms. We now know that Freud used Anna’s case to help develop his clinical experience even though he never treated or worked with her. Freud implemented free association into clinical practice that allowed the patient to speak freely and express their opinions about

Hysteria was one of the class diseases of the 19th century…for centuries hysteria has been seen as characteristically female- the hysterical woman the embodiment of a perverse or hyper femininity…and in [the 1870s, 1880s, and 1890s…physicians reported a high incidence of nervous disease and hysteria among women who felt overwhelmed by the burdens of frequent pregnancies, the demands of children, the daily exertions of housekeeping and family management (Smith-Rosenberg, 1972, 652, 653, 657).

Until the medical breakthroughs that we have made in the modern day, psychology as a science was not fully understood. Modern technology has given us a clearer idea of psychology, but in the past there was less known about the science. This alongside a predominantly male medical discourse led to a medical diagnosis in many women called hysteria. Female hysteria was a medical diagnosis given to specifically women as far back as the ancient Greek civilization. Hysteria started as a supernatural phenomena, but as medicine evolved it would be described as a mental disorder, (Tasca). Hysteria. in actuality, is an absurd and fabricated diagnosis that institutionalized and discriminated countless women. The way it makes a women feel, and the fact that it strips a woman of any sort of free will is a sickening display of blatant misogyny. “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman perfectly displays not only the misogyny, but the torture a woman must face trapped under a hysteria diagnosis. Hysteria as a diagnoses fails to effectively treat many women, instead leading to the mistreatment and wrongful institutionalization of women.

Hysteria is a wide topic but you can always find it with scared people trying to justify something that has happened. Throughout history this is common amongst young girls. A good example is the Le Roy Hysteria. This hysteria was a “mysterious illness” among teenage girls at the high school in Le Roy, New York.

Female Hysteria Hysteria of both genders was widely discussed in the medical literature of the nineteenth century. Women were considered to have exhibited a wide array of symptoms according to motherjones.com, which included faintness, nervousness, sexual desire, insomnia, fluid retention, heaviness in the abdomen, "wetness between the thighs", muscle spasm, shortness of breath, irritability, loss of appetite for food or sex, and a tendency to cause trouble. –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– In an episode from the series Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries, a psychiatrist is seen taking care of several women in the 1920’s. Each women highlights a symptom. From years of being told there is something wrong with them, these women have come to believe what they were hearing.

According to Freud hysteria is a nervous disorder that causes violent fits of laughter, crying, and imagination. It is a lack of

Ms. Martz entered politics in 1996 as Gov. Marc Racicot’s running mate and, with their victory, became the state’s first female lieutenant governor.

“Hysteria” often associated with the words hysterical and hysterectomy are words men used to define women’s illnesses of all variations during the nineteenth century. In The Yellow Wallpaper, the narrator, a woman lacking identity, is characterized as possessing hysterical tendencies by “high standing” physicians, the common profession of the common man, including her brother and husband “John” [Doe] (42). The narrator, anonymous and universally applicable, utilizes her diagnosis of hysteria as a tool to emasculate the gender hierarchy of her era.

In her book Women's Madness, Misogyny or Mental Illness, Ussher notes that in the Victorian era, hysteria was diagnosed primarily in strong, outspoken women: in other words: women who transgressed the ideal of true womanhood and thus challenged patriarchy. This is

Hysteria is a mental disorder that causes uncontrollable emotions. When Hysteria was first diagnosed, it was something completely different than it was today. In about the 1800s Hysteria was thought of as a disease that the woman's sexual organs were not normal. Hysteria in today’s definition, causes social anxiety because the patient is anxious, and does not know when their next emotional outbreak will be.

When I decided to take the trauma course, I was hesitant at first to take it. I did not know what to expect nor felt I would be prepare listen to stories about traumatic occurrences, despite of the number of years I have worked in the field of community mental health. Therefore, now that we are in week eight, I am delighted to have taken this course. The impression I had at first, has changed my insight concerning what is trauma, as for many years, I did not understand why a person in many instances, could not process their trauma. In a quote by Chang stated, “The greater the doubt, the greater the awakening; the smaller the doubt, the smaller the awakening. No doubt, no awakening” (Van Der Kolk, 2014, p. 22). The goes in congruence with my understanding on trauma and how it has changed during this course. As a result, I feel I am awakening when acquiring more about trauma.

In Judith Herman’s book, Trauma and Recovery, she discusses her research and work with trauma survivors. In her book, she writes that, “traumatic events are extraordinary, not because they occur rarely, but rather because they overwhelm the ordinary human adaptations to life” (Herman 24). She explores the idea that trauma is as individual as it is common, with reactions and the journey to the post-traumatic self similar despite differences in events. In the case of Barbara Gordon, while the event may vary, her physical and mental trauma can be compared to America’s fear of its forfeiture of power to terror and the loss of the towers after September 11, 2001. Trauma is about more than just the physical ramifications; when the physical aspect is fixed, Barbara’s legs and the building of the 1 World Trade Center, the mental and emotional trauma still remain.

Judith Lewis Herman’s Trauma and Recovery provides not only greater understanding of how a traumatic event may defined but also the ways in which the effects of the experience may have a significantly repressing effect on the present and future self. Traumatic events are impressing on the self because they overwhelm the conventional emotional and physical perceptions that humanity has adjusted and modified their selves to. As traumatic events generally involve threats to the emotional and physical self, they differ from common misfortunes as they confront the victim with the feeling of extreme terror and helplessness that in result causes the individual to perceive the experience as one that was out of their control. As Herman reiterates, according to the Comprehensive Textbook of Psychiatry, “The common denominator of psychological trauma is a feeling of “intense fear, helplessness, loss of control, and threat of annihilation” (Herman 104). However, it is the response to the traumatic event in the emotional or conscious self that may differ from one another as there are three differing reactions to the terror factor of trauma: hyper-arousal, intrusion, and disconnection. Throughout this essay the work of Judith Lewis Herman’s Trauma and Recovery as well as Stephen Chbosky’s The Perks of Being a Wallflower will be utilized to illustrated the compromising effects a traumatic experience such as childhood sexual abuse may have on the development of a young teen and the ways in

Freud was interested by how Charcot used a hypnosis to treat hysteria. Freud started to experiment with hypnotherapy. He concluded that hypnotherapy effected patients and it could be