Surrealist writer Andre Breton praised hysteria for being the
greatest poetic discovery of the nineteenth century, but many
physicians have since viewed it as the "wastebasket of medicine," a
psychosomatic state that defies attempts at definition and cure and
that can be easily mistaken for other pathological conditions. In
light of a resurgence of critical interest in hysteria, leading
feminist scholar Elisabeth Bronfen reinvestigates medical writings
and cultural performance to reveal the continued relevance of a
disorder widely thought to be a romantic formulation of the past.
Through a critical rereading, she develops a new concept of
hysteria, one that challenges traditional gender-based theories
linking it to dissatisfied feminine sexual desire. Bronfen turns
instead to hysteria's traumatic causes, particularly the fear of
violation, and shows how the conversion of psychic anguish into
somatic symptoms can be interpreted today as the enactment of
personal and cultural discontent.
Tracing the development of cultural formations of hysteria from
the 1800s to the present, this book explores the writings of Freud,
Charcot, and Janet together with fictional texts (Radcliffe,
Stoker, Anne Sexton), opera (Mozart, Wagner), cinema (Cronenberg,
Hitchcock, Woody Allen), and visual art (Marie-Ange Guilleminot,
Cindy Sherman). Each of these creative works attests to a
particular relationship between hysteria and self-fashioning, and
enables us to read hysteria quite literally as a language of
discontent. The message broadcasted by the hysteric is one of
vulnerability: vulnerability of the symbolic, of identity, and of
the human body itself.
Throughout this work, Bronfen not only offers fresh approaches
to understanding hysteria in our culture, but also introduces a new
metaphor to serve as a theoretical tool. Whereas the phallus has
long dominated psychoanalytical discourse, the image of the
navel--a knotted originary wound common to both
genders--facilitates discussion of topics relevant to hysteria,
such as trauma, mortality, and infinity. Bronfen's insights make
for a lively, innovative work sure to interest readers across the
fields of art and literature, feminism, and psychology.
Originally published in 1998.
The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand
technology to again make available previously out-of-print books
from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press.
These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these
important books while presenting them in durable paperback
editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly
increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the
thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since
its founding in 1905."
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