Oct 03, 2024 06:00:00

What is 'hysteria' and why is it thought that only women suffer from it?

'Having

a hysterical outburst' is a term sometimes used to describe someone who suddenly screams and gets angry, or who explodes with anger over something trivial. Hysteria is a slightly old term in psychiatry, and is now classified as a conversion disorder or dissociative disorder , but the educational YouTube channel TED-Ed has an animation that explains what the history of the symptom of hysteria is and why hysteria is associated with women.

What is hysteria, and why were so many women diagnosed with it? - Mark S. Micale - YouTube


The word hysteria comes from the classical Greek word meaning 'uterus,' and the name was used in the Collected Works of Hippocrates, a medical book from around the 3rd century B.C. However, in ancient times, hysteria was described as 'headaches, dizziness, convulsions, and difficulty breathing experienced by women' caused by the female-specific uterus, and this was used to explain symptoms that could not be explained at a time when psychiatry was not yet developed.

In ancient Greece, when the role of the brain and nerves was not yet known, it was believed that a woman's uterus moving around inside her body caused various symptoms. In addition, the superstition that emotional instability, such as sudden laughter or crying, as well as feelings of suffocation and emotional excitement, all originated from the female pelvis was a long-held belief until around the 19th century. Treatments at the time included massage and water pressure to relieve women's sexual desires, and prescribing herbs, but since these methods had no particular medical basis, they often ended up worsening the hysteria.

What are the many diseases and their treatments that were believed in the past even though modern medicine is full of mistakes? - GIGAZINE

by wellcome collection

The theory that 'the uterus moves around inside the body and causes various symptoms' was denied by Roman doctors by the 2nd century. However, the uterus was still thought to be the cause of hysteria, and the idea that 'the uterus secretes something equivalent to semen in men, which stimulates the blood and nerves in the body' was also born. For this reason, there were cases where midwives treated hysteria by inducing orgasm in women.

By the late Middle Ages, Christianity had spread throughout Europe, and Christian influences were also seeping into Western medicine. Some people began to argue that hysteria was not caused by the uterus, but rather that women's minds were influenced by the devil. Combined with misogyny, for a long period throughout the 16th and 17th centuries, women who did not fit into society were accused of being 'witches,' often with dire consequences.

In the late 19th century, during the late Victorian era in Europe and North America, there was a debate about whether hysteria had an origin in the mind or spirit, rather than in the body or soul. At the time, it was believed that middle-class women were more likely to experience hysteria, and that they were experiencing emotional or psychological distress in an environment where social dignity was highly valued and where strict rules were placed on sexual behavior.

There is a book called '

The Yellow Wallpaper ' that helps us understand hysteria of the time. The author, Charlotte Perkins Gilman , suffered from severe postpartum neurosis immediately after the birth of her child the year after her marriage. Women at that time were considered 'hysterical' and 'nervous,' and even if they complained of serious illness after giving birth, they were often ignored. Gilman was recommended bed rest by her doctor, and was treated by confining herself to her home and forbidding any intellectual activity, but her symptoms worsened to the point of mental breakdown. 'The Yellow Wallpaper' is a short story based on that experience, and it describes how women should deal with their physical and mental health.

In the late 19th century,

Sigmund Freud, known as the founder of psychoanalysis, appeared. Freud considered hysteria to be the same as other neurological disorders and claimed that it was caused by repressed emotional stress. Freud's treatment suggested that by extracting repressed emotions from the subconscious, patients could face their own emotions and improve their condition.

Freud also believed that hysteria was not something unique to women, but could occur in men as well. In fact, French neurologist

Jean-Martin Charcot argued that hysteria was a post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in women who had been exposed to violence and oppression, but during World War I, the number of men complaining of PTSD, which he named ' shell shock ,' also increased.

Research on

male hysteria became more active in the late 19th century, and with the development of psychiatry, the idea that hysteria was a symptom unique to women weakened. Furthermore, the idea that women were hysterical was often taken up as a label for the anti-women's movement, and the term hysteria gradually declined as it came under increasing criticism with the rise of feminism. In the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders published in 1980, the various mental and neurological disorders that had previously been described as hysteria were replaced with specific symptoms such as anxiety, depression, PTSD, and epilepsy.

Modern scholars are of the opinion that the idea of hysteria as a general and comprehensive illness was a product of the imagination of ancient researchers. The history of hysteria is also a dark history until medical sexism was eliminated, and it is thought that the reason why women who suddenly become angry are still called hysterical today reflects this history. At the same time, TED-Ed says that the process by which the term hysteria was born and then lost is also an interesting history that reflects the development of Western medicine.