Art Criticism - The State University of New York

2 Elaine Showalter, The Female Malady: Women, Madness, and English Culture,
1830-1980, (New York: Penguin Books, 1985), 145.
3 Indet;d, hysteria as an aspect of the decadent personality is a parallel that has been
discussed in connection with literary figures such as the Brothers Goncourt,
Walter Pater, Huysmans, and Baudelaire.
4 Max Simon Nordau, Degeneration (Omaha: University of Nebraska Press, 1993),
536. Although Nordau's contagion theory was developed in 1895, the idea still
seems to resonate in and pertain to contemporary society, and as noted, will be
discussed later.
5 Nordau, 27.
6 Ibid, 27.
7 For more on this subject see Nordau's Degeneration especially the section
"Decadents and Aesthetes" (book III section III).
8 Ilza Veith Hysteria and the History of a Disease (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1965),.229.
9 Veith 230.
10 Charcot, I.M., Le,onsdu mardi' la Salpetriere, policlinique du 19 mars, 1889
(Paris: Felix Alcan, 1889),424 ..
II These body positions were often mimicked epileptic fits and were rarely seen in
hysteria outside of SalpAtriAre.
12 Veith 232.
13 At the time of Charcot's practice, hypnotism was viewed as a form of "quack
science" akin to mesmerism. Hypnotism as a means of freatment was not seen
by many as a viable, reliable, or real form of
medical treatment. Most opposition was given by the'''Nancy School," a group of
investigators who often challenged Charcot's practice at SalpAtriAre.
14 Charcot devised two main methods for the treatment of hysteria. The first
addressed the psychic trauma itself (by removing the patient from its source)
~hile assuring the patients that their hysteria was curable. The second method
involved makeing the patients exercise their affected body parts,
and making them more mobile, with the hope of restoring their vitality. These
treatments are paralleled by what we now call physical therapy and psychological
intervention.
15This was a condition that appeared primarily after World War I and was
characterized in males as post-traumatic neurosis. This form of "male hysteria"
was regarded as developing out of a specific event (unlike its female counterpart)
and as a curable neurosis.
16 Mark S. Micale Approaching Hysteria: Disease and its
1nterpreiations,(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995),96.
17 Micale 97.
18 Charcot also worked on four issues of Iconographies de la SalpAtriAre bet\Veen
1876 and 1888. See Paul Verhaeghe's Does the Woman Exist? From Freud's
Hysteric to Lacan's Feminine (New York: Other Press, 1999),8.
19 I.M. Charcot and Paul Richer, Les D%moniques das l'art, Amsterdam, 1972,
reprinted Paris in 1887, p. v. (quoted in spec. bodies, 176).
20 Elaine Showalter The Female Malady, Women, Madness, and English Culture,
100
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