Female Hysteria: Was it an intentional lie ?

Hysteria, meaning “of the uterus“ (from the Latin word hystericus) is a "medical" word assigned to women who cause problems. Throughout history, hysteria has almost exclusively been regarded as a woman's disorder, in fact, female hysteria is the first mental disorder attributable to women. However, it's no longer officially recognized as a medical disorder.

"Hysterical" women displayed a wide list of symptoms, including, but by no means limited to - nervousness, sexual desire, insomnia, faintness, fluid retention, shortness of breath, hallucinations, irritability, loss of appetite for food or sex, emotional outbursts, and an uncontrollable urge to cause trouble.

The history of the notion of hysteria can be traced to ancient times, in fact, a description dated at 1900 BC (middle kingdom of Ancient Egypt) suggests that spontaneous uterus movement within the female body is the main cause of hysterical disorders. Hysteria can also be traced to Ancient Greece - even the Greek physician and the father of western medicine (Hippocrates) believed that the cause of female hysteria lies in the movement of the uterus, in fact, hysteria was at the base of the birth of psychiatry according to Greek mythology. 

In the fourth century, Plato claimed that a women's uterus wandered around a women's body slamming other organs causing the symptoms above.

According to a hypothesis, female hysteria was "invented" by beta males who envy the effects of alpha males on women, those who classified attractive women as of an illness and got these so-called "hysterical" to come to them for masturbation. Providing the services of a male prostitute while calling themselves doctors and describing the act as a temporary cure.

Even tho hysteria was quite often in virgins, nuns, and widows, married women were rarely diagnosed with the disorder. At the extreme case, nuns and virgins undergo a pelvic massage by the doctor until the patient experienced orgasm which they called "healing paroxysms". (also removal of the ovaries was sometimes performed)

According to the psychiatrist Charles Lasègue, hysteria was the wastepaper basket of medicine where one throws otherwise unemployed symptoms. For instance, before the introduction of  EEG (Electroencephalography), epilepsy was frequently confused with hysteria.

During the late 19th, Sigmund Freud reversed the paradigm: he considered the lack of libidinal evolution as the cause of hysteria while the failure of conception as a result of this disease. (I highly recommend reading the article below)  

What about you ? do you think the physicians were innocent?

References : 

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3480686

Hysteria beyond Freud 

 Picture Credit: 

Thumbnail - pixabay.com

All the rest- wikimedia.org  

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