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Book SynopsisSurrealist writer Andre Breton praised hysteria for being the greatest poetic discovery of the nineteenth century, but many physicians have since viewed it as the "wastebasket of medicine," a psychosomatic state that defies attempts at definition and cure and that can be easily mistaken for other pathological conditions. In light of a resurgence of
Trade ReviewHonorable Mention for the 1999 Barbara Perkins and Geroge Perkins Award of the Society for the Study of Narrative Literature
Table of ContentsPrefaceAcknowledgmentsPt. 1The Hysterical Subject of Theory1Introduction: Navel Inversions3Ch. 1The Navel of Sigmund Freud's Inaugural Dream53Pt. 2History's Hysterias99Ch. 2Medicine's Hysteria Romance: Is It History or Legend?101Ch. 3Gothic Hysterics: Ann Radcliffe's The Romance of the Forest139Ch. 4Jean-Martin Charcot's Vampires174Pt. 3Hysteria's Case Histories241Ch. 5Turnings of Nostalgia: Sigmund Freud, Karl Jaspers, Pierre Janet243Ch. 6Anne Sexton's Business of Writing Suicide290Ch. 7"You Freud, Me Jane": Alfred Hitchcock's Marnie, the Case History Revisited332Pt. 4Performing Hysteria379Ch. 8A Womb of One's Own, or the Strange Case of David Cronenberg381Ch. 9Beyond Hysteria: Cindy Sherman's Private Theater of Horror409Notes433Bibliography451Index467
