A SHORT "HISTORY" OF HYSTERIA

BY MARGARET LAYNE Hysteria. It is one of the oldest diagnostic terms in medicine. The condition it describes first appears in an Egyptian medical papyrus from about 2000 BCE, noting peculiarities in female behavior that were ascribed to a wandering of the uterus, causing disturbance and distress throughout the body. The ancient Greeks gave it its modern name, derived from the Greek hystera (“womb”), and in the 4th century BCE, Plato further developed the somewhat horrorfilm notion of an under-stimulated uterus going rogue and roaming at large through the system in search of satisfaction: “The animal within [women] is desirous of procreating children, and when remaining unfruitful...gets discontented and angry, and wandering in every direction through the body drives them to extremity, causing all varieties of disease.” Galen, the great 2nd century physician, rejected the idea of the wandering womb, but observed that hysterical symptoms appeared more often among virgins, nuns, widows, and unmarried or unhappily married women, concluding that the condition was a result of sexual deprivation; abstinence or frustration, he theorized, led to a toxic accumulation of vapors in the uterus that affected physical and mental well-being. All the ancients agreed that the most effective treatment was external pelvic massage to lure the vagabond womb back to its proper place or to encourage the congesting vapors downward and clear the system. The prescription in medieval and renaissance medicine was intercourse for married women, marriage (and intercourse) for unmarried women, or as a last resort, massage by a midwife. Sneezing, vigorous outings on horseback, and prolonged sessions in a rocking chair were also considered viable alternatives. Over the ensuing centuries, the clinical definition of hysteria expanded to include an ever-lengthening list of female complaints and behaviors: anxiety, surliness, faintness, nervousness, insomnia, fluid retention, restlessness, heaviness in the abdomen, muscle spasms, shortness of breath, irritability, loss of appetite, inability to climax during intercourse, erotic fantasies, an urge to masturbate, depression, heart palpitations, headaches, weepiness, confusion and a general “tendency to cause trouble” – in short, almost any female behavior that men found bewildering or irritating. To a modern understanding, the “symptomology” clearly describes various physical and psychological conditions occurring in a healthily sexualized woman, including the normal hormonal cycle, PMS, postpartum depression, and sexual frustration. But by the late 1800s, when Sarah Ruhl’s In the Next Room, or the vibrator play takes place, the catalogue of “hysterical symptoms” was 75 pages long and still growing: normal female sexuality transformed into a pathology by a social context in England and America that was in every respect, including in the bedroom, based on the superiority of the male. In the latter half of the 18th century and the early years of the 19th, things had been very different. While they had never enjoyed social or political parity with men, there had been an acknowledgement of equality for middle and upper class women in certain respects. A lively wit and nimble intellect were admired and appreciated in a woman. Depending on her social status, a woman could, in fact, become a significant offstage political force as a hostess and as an influence on her husband and the powerful men in his circle; and she was welcomed as a full and enthusiastic participant in sexual relations, which were viewed as a healthy and natural activity among consenting partners. So-called “marriage manuals” of the time display an exuberant relish for the erotic pleasures a man and woman might enjoy together. This was the era of Henry Fielding’s rowdy, romping Tom Jones (1749), Lawrence Sterne’s ribald Tristram Shandy (1765), and the extraordinary correspondence between a husband and wife who clearly shared a full and equal partnership in every sense, John and Abigail Adams. But the pendulum swings to the left, the pendulum swings to the right, and the late 1820s saw the beginning of a shift in the socio-sexual paradigm towards what Dr. Rachel Maines, in her fascinating book The Technology of Orgasm, calls “an androcentric model”: an institutionalization