Past, Present Future podcast – The History of Bad Ideas: Hysteria

[Robert 1973]

Past, Present, Future podcast – The History of Bad Ideas: Hysteria:

For the first in a new set of episodes about bad ideas with interesting histories David talks to the writer and broadcaster Helen Lewis about hysteria, an ancient idea that became a very modern diagnosis. Why was hysteria associated with both madness and saintliness? How did Charcot and then Freud use hysteria to rationalise otherwise baffling female behaviour? What happens when group hysteria takes hold? And why do we still find it so hard to do without these kinds of labels?

 

[rvallee]

One weird thing about this whole thing is how much it mirrors common beliefs at the time about criminality, about the existence of a "criminal mind", people who are almost inhuman in their outlook on life, cannot be reformed and also can be identified with a simple assessment. The whole thing pretty much died out.

I guess the only conclusion is that sick people are so contemptible that we are perceived as worse than criminals. Which generally fits, considering how medical professionals take pride in asserting that if their patient were a horrible war criminal, they'd treat them the same as any other person. Which we are not. I certainly don't recognize people in the descriptions of chronic illness. All I see is similar whining to the whole "criminal mind" nonsense and its various gizmos, such as "lie detectors". We are more in the pet category, and not the cute kind.

 

[duncan]

We are more in the pet category

Or pest, something to avoid, at best to be tolerated (even while we are being swatted at), but not indefinately - which speaks to why so many of us are left untethered to old friends and family members alike. Real diseases either resolve or kill. Everyone knows that.