Sigmund Freud And Hysteria Essay

Mass hysteria is a phenomenon that transmits collective allusions of threats through a population in society as a result of rumors and fear. The Crucible by Arthur Miller accurately portrays mass hysteria that took place during the Salem witch trials of 1692. People were accused based on revenge or other malicious motives and to make the situation worse, nothing about the trials was logical. After a few people were accused, fear set into the town and everyone was viewed as a witch until proven innocent. Mass hysteria not only happened during the Salem witch trials, but right after the Twin Towers fell on September 11, 2001 as well. Mass hysteria ties into both the accusations made in The Crucible and the islamophobia that set in after 9/11.

John steinbeck has done it again. Another great novel for the world to see. Of Mice and Men. This book has many unique characters who all have a different story and something going on but one character in particular named Curley is who we will be talking about. Curley is rude and violent and always assuming someone is with his girl. For these reasons curley has been diagnosed with paranoid personality disorder. “The word personality describes deeply ingrained patterns of behavior and the manner in which individuals perceive, relate to, and think about themselves and their world. Personality disorders are enduring patterns of inner experience and behavior that deviate markedly from the expectations of an individual's culture. They must be rigid, inflexible, and maladaptive and of sufficient severity to cause significant impairment in functioning or internal distress.”

Freud suggested at one time that hysteria in women may have been caused by early sexual experiences, however he never gave credit to ideas that involved fathers or step fathers being the perpetrators of abuse. He also adapted his stance and instead stated that incestuous fantasies played a significant role in mental disturbance

In the nineteenth century, women often suffered a disease called hysteria and were given treatment plans. Stemming from the Greek word for “uterus,” hysteria was presented as a solely feminine ailment. Any activity of the uterus, such as: menstruation, childbirth, or sexual intercourse, accentuated a woman’s vulnerability to hysteria. Hysterical fits were recognized by

represented when viewing the woman’s relationship with her husband. Firstly, the woman is diagnosed with hysteria and her husband claims that “there is really nothing the matter with one but temporary nervous depression — a slight hysterical tendency —” (Gilman 75). Even though her husband has a medical background, he falls for the typical response of the time period; accepting the fact that his wife has hysteria. Although this is the case, the diagnosis for hysteria doesn’t appear to be as apprehensible as they make it seem. The reason women were diagnosed was because they were fragile and emotional beings and some doctors even believed that the uterus was the cause (Moss and G. Wilson 426). In essence, the woman is diagnosed with a mental illness that she doesn’t have, since she’s actually going through postpartum depression after having her child (Moss and G. Wilson 426). In addition, the woman tends to obey her husband's rules and beliefs. Since

The first manifestation that will be examined in this chapter is hysteria. While there existed different forms of hysteria, this section of the chapter will focus on the aspect that it was considered a disease that affected women more than men due to their weakness and susceptibility to emotions. Several publications were written about women and hysteria, or they were written geared toward women about dealing with hysteria. Women were viewed as unable to control their bodies, being described as the “feebler sex” and meek. Inasmuch, when struck with a hysterical paroxysm – a medical term for an attack or episode – they were rendered helpless. As stated by Robert Brudenell Carter, a nineteenth-century physician and ophthalmic surgeon, based on the research conducted during this time, it was decided that there were ‘satisfactory reason[s] for the greater proclivity of the female sex to hysteria, and also for the absolute rarity of its occurrence in man.’ Furthermore, even though hysteria affected both males and females, in the nineteenth century it was seen as an illness that was prone to the female sex. This view flooded into society and thus created the many public debates on the discourse of the illness, along with the literary responses such as Jane Eyre.

The term “hysteria” doesn’t quite mean the same thing today as it did 150 years ago. In western culture today we know the term to mean: “exaggerated or uncontrollable emotion or excitement, especially among a group of people”. (Webster’s International Dictionary, 2009) However, in the Victorian era it was used as a diagnostic blanket term by physicians and psychologists to label women’s mental symptoms. During this time period the diagnosis and prevalence of hysteria/women’s neurosis was extremely high second only to fever. Any emotional outbursts outside of the norm, nervousness, sexual urges and fantasies, (all things which we have names for today; depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, sexual frustration etc.) which were considered improper mental behavior of a lady, were labelled as such. One such famous victim of this

Chapter 4: Friedan discusses early American feminists and how they fought against the assumption that the proper role of a woman was to be solely a wife and mother. She notes that they secured important rights for women, including education, the right to pursue a career, and the right to vote.[11]

It is this disorder that sparked psychoanalytic interest and development, as noted by the infamous case study of Anna O. by Sigmund Freud and Josef Breuer (1895). Though the study of hysteria in psychoanalysis provided fundamental beginning insights about the human psyche during the 19th century, the history of the institutionalization of hysterics is nevertheless tinged with traces of the oppression of women (Chodoff, 1982; Dmytriw, 2015). Hysteria was a disorder that was predominately attributed to women (Tasca et al., 2012), and how it became known as a woman’s disorder can be gathered from societal and cultural contexts in Europe during the 19th century, in particular the stereotypes surrounding women at the

During one of the first treatments, Dora recounts an unfavorable situation in which Herr K. arranges a meet between Dora, Frau K. and himself. Against Dora’s knowledge Herr K. convinces Frau K. to stay at home to be alone with Dora. Upon her arrival, Herr K. pulls “down the outside shutters […] and, instead of going out the open door, suddenly [clasps] the girl to him and [presses] a kiss upon her lips” (21). Freud immediately begins to analyze the situation in stating the strangeness of Dora’s reaction. Instead of eliciting sexual excitement, the encounter evokes a “violent feeling of disgust” (21) and the need to flee. Freud states that any person “in whom an occasion for sexual excitement elicited feelings that were preponderantly or exclusively unpleasurable” (22) is undoubtedly hysterical. With this claim, he gives no concrete evidence to support this theory except his limited knowledge on

        Hysteria is a physical disorder that has symptoms like psychological stress, selective amnesia, and attention-seeking behavior. The term hysteria has a controversial history as it used to be a disease specifically for women. Hysteria can also be a psychoneurotic disorder characterized by violent emotional outbreaks, disturbances of sensory and motor functions, and various abnormal effects due to autosuggestion. Hysteria is also an uncontrollable outburst of emotion or fear. Hysteria is the first mental disorder attributable to women.

Knowledge guidance is very important when it comes to Freud’s (1910) discussion of hysteria. Knowledge guidance helps conduct the congitive processes that occur during the therapy. In Freud’s discussion about the bungling of acts he explains how when people cannot form their speech correctly or make mistakes in their writing is due to repressed thoughts trying to force themselves to the surface. The mistake in grammar is the disruption of the knowledge guiance because the thought process of talking and reasoning is messed up because the interference of the repressed thought stops the process occuring in the cerebral cortex. Resistance also depends on knowledge guidance because when a patient resists talking about a topic, the brain knows that

Many students were taken to the hospital with a wide variety of symptoms.People pondered on what this could be.According to dictionary.com,mass hysteria is,”a condition affecting a group of persons, characterized by excitementor anxiety, irrational behavior or beliefs, or inexplicable symptoms ofillness.”There are many incidents were mass hysteria is seen.It is a psychological thing where many people are coerced into thinking that something is thought to be something that it really is not.Symptoms pplay a major role in mass hysteria outbreaks by causing someone to feel like they have a certain disease when really it is something else.

“There is no question therefore, of any intellectual uncertainty here: we know now that we are not supposed to be looking on at the products of a madman’s imagination, behind which we, with superiority of rational minds, are able to detect the sober truth; and yet this knowledge does not lessen the impression of uncanniness in the least degree” (Freud 424). Freud’s concept of psychoanalysis revolves around and into the minds of characters in every literary work, trying to understand how they function with their lives. Freud described his process through his essay The Uncanny by explaining how something that is uncanny is considered terrifying “because it is not known and familiar” (418). He also mentions the works of other authors and how they resemble to uncanniness. Freud’s theory does have its advantages on different characters in different stories when readers can examine and understand how they live out their lives and find ways of relieving them of their personal problems however; it doesn’t necessarily help them deal with their issues and thereby limiting its theoretical use.

In the middle ages, somatoform disorders were believed to be a spiritual disorder of evil and demonic possession, and in the 17th century, it was said that “hysteria could stimulate any medical disease. Freud explained the syndrome of hysteria as “conversion of emotional distress into physical symptoms” Kallivayalil, R. A., & Punnoose, V. P. (2010).