Art Criticism - The State University of New York

generation on which the multitude of discoveries and innovations burst abruptly,
imposing upon it organic exigencies greatly surpassing its strength, which
created favorable conditions under which these maladies could gain ground
enormously, and become a danger to civilization. 6l
... degenerates, hysterics and neurathenics are not capable of adaptation.
That which inexorably destroys them is that they do not
know how to come to terms with reality.62
CFS was popularized through the American media in much the same way as
MPD. A particular outbreak of CFS in 1984 in Lake Tahoe, Nevada helped to
inform the nation at large about the disease. Soon magazines, newspapers,
television programs and self-help books were all discussing this new disease,
America was hooked. 6 :l The major problem for doctors and academics is determining
whether the diagnoses ofCFS is correct.
MPD and CFS were able to become the "new hysterias" of the late
twentieth anJ early twenty-first centuries because their sufferers are predominantly
women. Thus they fit the stereotype well. Their diagnoses are based on
symptoms that clearly conform to traditional hysteria, and they were easily
promoted like hysterics, through the crowd. But does this mean that these new
maladies are hysteria? Or does the presence of these diseases signal a larger
issue, that of societal decadence?
This immanent decadence, continues, it seems, to the present day, as
the many hysterical manifestations beyond those of CFS or MPD indicate.
Indeed, the two have many other names. Perhaps the most predominant example
is the AIDS epidemic and the "hysteria" that surrounds it. Other noteworthy
examples include the hysteria surroundeding the millennium change
("Y2K") and the death of Princess Diana.64 All of these "hysterical" phenomena
clearly signal that hysteria is still alive and well, at least in the Western
world. Our age tends to label group expressions as hysterical-as in "mass
hysteria"-a cultural diagnosis of groups rather than a psychological diagnosis
of individuals.
Hysterical representations have in fact appeared in the work ofmuItimedia
artist Beth B at the Hayward Gallery, in London. 65 Her work, Hysteria
2000, references the discourse surrounding nineteenth century representations
of hysteria as an illness affecting particularly women. Beth B's work often
incorporates images and sculptures of the various tools that were used to treat
the so-called female malady. Her work, she says, offers "a number of entry
points into the particular critiques ... these critiques focus both on the adequacy
and the role of representation itself in the face of medicine and the
treatment of women."66
~eth B uses images and sound bites of the stereotypical hysterical
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Art Criticism