Mad Men and Medusas: Reclaiming Hysteria

Front Cover
Basic Books, Sep 10, 2000 - Psychology - 380 pages
This worthy successor to Psychoanalysis and Feminism is both a defense of the long-dismissed diagnosis of hysteria as a centerpiece of the human condition and a plea for a new understanding of the influence of sibling and peer relationships. Juliet Mitchell argues that, because it our first social relationship, the sibling relationship is crucial to development, and that it is a critical failure of psychoanalysis and other psychological theories of development to obscure and ignore the importance of siblings and peers.In Mad Men and Medusas Mitchell traces the history of hysteria from the Greek "wandering womb" to modern-day psychiatric diagnoses, arguing that we need to reclaim hysteria to understand how distress and trauma express themselves in different societies and different times. Using fascinating examples from anthropology, Freud's case studies, literature, and her own clinical practice, Mitchell convincingly demonstrates that while hysteria may have disappeared as a disease, it is still a critical factor in understanding psychological development through the life cycle.
 

Contents

A Fragment of a Case
43
A Fragment of a Case of Hysteria
82
Where Has All the Hysteria Gone?
109
Sexuality Death and Reproduction
134
From Hysteria to Motherhood
159
Emptiness and Possession
203
The Hysterical
246
Trauma
280
From Catastrophe to Trauma
317
Notes
347
Selected Bibliography
353
Index
365
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