Hysteria has been researched from many different angles, but this thesis focuses on the
persistence of gendered medical diagnoses following the demise of hysteria. In Chapter One,
I provide an overview of hysteria’s long history, beginning with the first reference to the
disorder in Ancient Egypt. I then conduct a study of nineteenth-century hysteria in Chapter
Two, where I highlight the interactions between medicine and culture that characterized the
hysteria epidemic in Victorian Britain and America. Chapter Three continues this discussion
of nineteenth-century hysteria, detailing the rise of psychological explanations for hysteria in
Europe. My most important research, however, comes in Chapters Four and Five where I
chronicle the rise of specific diagnoses that replaced hysteria in the twentieth century. I focus
on gendered wastebasket diagnoses—illnesses that predominantly affect women, are
categorized based on shared symptoms rather than causes, and are defined in relation to
femininity. In the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), the
descriptions of certain psychiatric conditions that are more frequently diagnosed in women
contain stigmatizing language used to describe hysteria, especially in the nineteenth century.
Outside of the psychiatric realm, chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia are also
wastebasket diagnoses that are described by both doctors and academics using the dismissive
language of earlier descriptions of hysteria. I argue that throughout all of this history, the
mutual influence of medical theory and cultural assumptions—particularly about gender and
femininity—has allowed women’s mysterious medical complaints to remain unexplained.
The ambiguous nature of conditions descended from hysteria and their association with
femininity causes doctors to return to long-standing stereotypes that diminish the suffering of
these patients. Many patients with these conditions struggle to access effective treatments for
their symptoms. Understanding these illnesses in the historical context of hysteria can help
explain and address these experiences. / Thesis / Master of Arts (MA) / The medical field has long been influenced by its surrounding cultural context. Social factors,
including gender, race, and class, all colour the ways in which illnesses are understood and
patients are treated. This thesis examines these interactions between medicine and culture in
the context of nineteenth-century hysteria and the related diagnoses that arose to replace it in
the twentieth century. The disease entity hysteria disappeared in the early twentieth century,
but patients continued to experience the symptoms associated with hysteria under a range of
diagnostic titles. Situating these illnesses in the historical context of hysteria can help address
patient complaints and deconstruct the stigmatizing stereotypes that affect these patients—
particularly those stereotypes associated with femininity that were once attributed to hysteria
patients
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:mcmaster.ca/oai:macsphere.mcmaster.ca:11375/27346 |
| Date | January 2021 |
| Creators | Green, Lily |
| Contributors | Balcom, Karen, History |
| Source Sets | McMaster University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
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