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The Hysterical Woman

Hysterical symptoms waned as the sexual revolution and the women's liberation movement advanced. We can thank Sigmund Freud for pointing out some of the roots of hysteria in Puritan or Victorian morality and for recommending cures therefor. Havelock Ellis and his lady friends actually deserve more credit than Freud for the sexual revolution that climaxed in the Sixties. We still see public displays of hysterical behavior from time to time in our almost liberated rational culture. Some of the classical symptoms are still observed, usually in mental institutions, and they are not to be made light of, for the behavior is suffered rather than deliberately intended. On the other hand, fainting was once a widespread, intentional form of hysteria, to be cured by smelling salts; fainting has gone out of style along with hooped skirts - I knew Southern belles who still practiced it in the Fifties. During the American Revolution, Benedict Arnold's wife, Peggy Shippen, practiced fainting, and she presumably brought hysteria to a fine art with her stellar performance before Washington, Hamilton, and Lafayette, after her husband's treachery was exposed. However that may be, certainly everyone now living has encountered a hysterical woman or two. But what is a hysterical woman?

The term was originally reserved for women only: it was borrowed from a Greek word that means "uterus". Nonetheless, various forms of the supposedly irrational behavior denoted by the term have occasionally been observed in males. Yet it is an insult for a man to be called hysterical, for his gender is ideally reasonable (rational). Therefore, "hysterical", when applied to a man, is a dismissive label used to discredit him for expressing himself like an emotional woman. Furthermore, hysterical men are often deemed vain, subjective, selfish, narcissistic, and probably homosexual. But to say a woman is hysterical is not offensive because hysteria, vulgarly speaking, is one of her traditional roles. That role may still be viewed in old films: hysteria was treated with a good slap across the female sex-symbol's lovely face when her hysteria became unbearable to the rational heroes. Heroes are more understanding now that sexpots are muscular martial arts Amazons armed with assault rifles. Besides, thus armed, women are seldom inclined to deploy hysterical antics.

Fine, but what is hysteria? According to modern psychologists, the term "hysteria" is useless for purposes of diagnosis and classification: there is no clear definition of hysteria, no common etiology, clinical picture, epidemiology, or prognosis. Hysteria is not dependent on any known organic or structural pathology. That being said, I opine that female hysteria is a role variously conditioned by sexual politics. Hysteria is one way women learned to behave without getting their heads beat in by men. It is a way of avoiding conflict and expressing anxiety or protest without taking direct personal responsibility. In those ancient cultures where the practice was not frowned upon, a hysterical woman might be an enthusiastic prophetess possessed by a god or goddess. Where it was frowned upon, she was possessed by evil spirits, at least until she became "mentally ill."

The New Encyclopedia Brittanica(1997) provides us with some insight into the meaning of the term and the prejudices attached to it:

"Hysteria, in its clinically pure form, seems to occur among the psychologically naive (!) than among sophisticated (!) persons." Moreover, we find that hysteria is now diminishing throughout the world because of "sophistication", "diminished sexual prudery", and "less authoritarian family structure." Furthermore, we learn that hysteria is anxiety converted to physical symptoms, from paralysis to convulsions, and that it also involves disturbances of the senses. Some of those disturbances were once used as proof of witchcraft. We might as well include here extrasensory experiences and other paranormal (abnormal) phenomema.

The Encyclopedia of Psychology (1994) edited by Raymond J. Corsini also illuminates our subject:

"While it can be said that hysterical symptoms allow individuals to avoid unpleasant situations without assuming responsiblity for their behavior, this hardly distinguishes them from other neurotic (!) behavior patterns that serve the same purpose." Furthermore, we learn of there is "primary gain", or the avoidance of emotional conflict, and "secondary gain", the attention and support of others by virtue of being incapacitated and, at the same time, avoiding unacceptable behavior.

I believe the foregoing supports the view that hysteria can be a woman's tactical response to male intimidation - I make no such inferences here in regards to amnesia, sleepwalking, and multiple personality. Men may believe they have a natural right to chastise and terrorize women for their own good; or they may simply ignore their wishes, and if some protest is made, dismiss them as irrational creatures who therefore have no business in rational politics.

A case of hysteria was broadly televised at the culmination of the famous Elian Case. Elian's mother drowned bringing her little boy to the United States from Cuba. After he was rescued and given refuge with his Miami relatives, a tug-of-war ensued between his Miami relatives, who wanted him to stay in the States, and his Cuban relatives, including his father, who wanted him back in Cuba. Thanks to the free media, Elian soon became the internationally recognized Symbolic Boy who had been saved by Mary, Mistress of the Sea, Our Lady of Sorrows.

The United States Supreme Court declined to hear the final petition of Elian's Miami relatives. Although no statement was attached to the refusal, it effectively and finally affirmed the paternal rights and the sanctity of the nuclear family thereunder.The Symbolic Boy was whisked off to the airport forty minutes later and flown to Cuba. Many Americans had strong feelings one way or the other, and many were ambivalent. The polls indicated that the majority of Americans did not care about the Elian Case - as far as they were concerned, it was just another event contrived by the media.

Now witness the hysterical scene in front of the Miami relative's home where Elian had lived for awhile, until he was snatched away by government agents armed with assault rifles. Men in front of the house look angry and sad. They shake their heads somberly. But some of the women are wailing, apparently grief stricken. One woman is frantically ripping down the old protest signs, tearing them up, falling on her knees, getting up, shrieking, crying, and running about madly. A local television reporter approaches her, asks her to calm down and to make a statement, which she now does in plain English, movingly, eloquently, almost hypnotically, while holding back the rage and tears. It takes no priest of Apollo to interpret her speech - that evening, we wondered why we did not hear it again on prime-time news.

Just what did she say? She said that something sinister is going on in the United States. She said that we love money too much here, thinking of only ourselves as we stuff our faces while other people are starving to death. She said we do not respect the mother's will, the mother's rights in our fine country, that we are sending a little boy back to a place where he will be told that his mother is a traitor for trying to give him the gift of freedom. She declared we do not honor all those who have died for freedom, including the boy's mother, and she pointed out that immigrants did not come to America for gold but for freedom. Then she made a prophecy: Elian will grow up to learn the truth, how freedom was given to him by his mother, and then stolen away from him by politicians. As she prophesied that Americans will pay dearly for their greed and carelessness everywhere, the microphone and camera was suddenly jerked away.

Immediately thereafter, a political activist for the Cuban-American community appeared to say, in a monotone, that "although the woman was hysterical, not articulate, and was blaming the wrong people," she was "supporting the right cause." He was cool, calm, collected, articulate, sophisticated - his face was a virtual death mask of political self-control. Maybe that is how it must be amongst men lest they get themselves killed for telling it like it is, for expressing their true feelings with enraged screams and bitter prophecies. Perhaps that is a hysterical woman's job, still today, in this advanced liberal age. At least for a brief and glorious moment, the ancient prophetess had her oracular say in our free country on June 28th, 2000 C.E. through the heart and mouth of a hysterical Cuban-American woman in Miami. In her subjective fit she did not call for men to be more objective and to kill Fidel Castro, invade Cuba and set up gambling joints and houses of prostitution: no, she called them to task for making a decision according to their usual patriarchal prejudice. She did not speak this time for Apollo, but for those of his children who would love to live in the land of the free and the home of the brave.