From:
        "marvin_krims" <[log in to unmask]>

Thu 4:18 PM

Right on, Betsy!

Marv
>
>Apropos the 'disappearance" of hysterics or their symptoms:
>One characteristic of hysteria is its mutability or, if you  prefer,
>its movability:  remember  the original idea of a "wandering
>uterus."  The symptoms can wander, defeating decoding by
>consciousness and resisting cure.   This from Juliet Mitchell,
>in a seminar (perhaps also in print somewhere, but I don't know where).
>
>Less clinical, Elaine Showalter's work on fatigue syndrome as hysteria
>might add background, but I haven't read it.
>
>Elizabeth Young-Bruehl's SUBJECT TO BIOGRAPHY states on  p. 195:
>(on the separation into two of the "Anorexie Hysterique" diagnostic category)
>
>recently sociocultural historians and historians of psychiatry have
>ratified the clinical judgment by claiming that anorexia is to  the late
>twentieth
>century what  hysteria was to the late nineteenth--both diseases are
>"exaggerated sterotypes of their times"--and since the two fins des siecles
>are sdifferent, the diseases are,of course, different as well.
>
>This  raises the issue of cultural/historical context as well as the
disease's
>predilection for "morphing."   Others will no doubt provide many leads.
>
>Good luck
>
>Elizabeth fox
>
>At 02:10 PM 8/8/00 -0400, you wrote:
>>From:
>>        [log in to unmask]
>>
>>1:23 PM
>>
>>I know that some hypotheses have been put forward at different times, but
can
>>anyone explain, or point me to some places I can learn, why classic hysteric
>>symptoms have vanished?
>>
>>thanks,
>>steve schmersal
>>nyc
>>

Marvin Krims