Approaching Hysteria: Disease and Its Interpretations - Mark S. Micale - Hardcover

Few diseases have exercised the Western imagination as chronically as hysteria--from the wandering womb of ancient Greek medicine, to the demonically possessed witch of the Renaissance; from the "vaporous" salon women of Enlightenment Paris, through to the celebrated patients of Sigmund Freud, with their extravagant, erotically charged symptoms. In this fascinating and authoritative book, Mark Micale surveys the range of past and present readings of hysteria by intellectual historians; historians of science and medicine; scholars in gender studies, art history, and literature; and psychoanalysts, psychiatrists, clinical psychologists, and neurologists. In so doing, he explores numerous questions raised by this ever-growing body of literature: Why, in recent years, has the history of hysterical disorders carried such resonance for commentators in the sciences and humanities? What can we learn from the textual traditions of hysteria about writing the history of disease in general? What is the broader cultural meaning of the new hysteria studies?In the second half of the book, Micale discusses the many historical "cultures of hysteriaMicale, Mark S. is the author of 'Approaching Hysteria: Disease and Its Interpretations - Mark S. Micale - Hardcover' with ISBN 9780691037172 and ISBN 0691037175.