The Hystory of the Crazy Woman

PART I- The History of Hysteria

Whether you are a girl, woman and/or simply the owner of a uterus, you may have had the pleasure of being told phrases including, but not exclusive to:

“YoU’rE mAd!”, “YOu’Re cRazY!”, “WhY ARe yOu sO eMoTIonaL?!”

According to my super thorough research, a.k.a. a google search, the words mad, crazy and emotional, alongside words such as

·         Uncontrolled

·         Unrestrainable

·         Frenzied

·         Unhinged

·         Delirious

·         Manic

are all synonyms for HYSTERIA.

For those who may not be familiar with the term, to be ‘hysterical’ means to be affected by wildly uncontrollable emotion. In fact, only up until recently it was categorised as a mental illness that only affected those with a uterus- before this it was even deemed a physical disorder. Only after 1980 was this “illness” not considered a problem for the medical domain; this is not because hysteria was a suddenly eradicated illness, nope, not all, but because the medical field finally agreed that having emotions whilst being a woman does not constitute sickness.

The history of hysteria is a very interesting one that never fails to fascinate me. The progression of this disease started with the likes of Hippocrates and Plato in ancient Greece believing that a woman’s uterus was able to move around her body (hysterike pnix/ “suffocation of the womb”). Subsequently this was thought to induce madness, treatable by putting nice smells near the vaginal area, sneezing, or being pregnant all the time to encourage the uterus to return to its rightful place. This developed into ideas surrounding the toxicity of the “female seed” and even menstrual blood. Once again, the proposed treatment was frequent pregnancy, and regular sexual intercourse with their husbands (male semen was thought to have the power to heal so it was a popularly prescribed treatment for hysteria). And in more recent times, Freud posed his oedipal concept as an explanation for female hysteria. If you haven’t encountered any of Freud’s work, I assure you it will not leave you disinterested, essentially the explanation was that madness is caused by a woman’s repression of her desire to have a penis. And again, the corresponding treatments included, you guessed it, marriage, frequent sexual intercourse and pregnancies, as this allowed a woman to metaphorically have her own penis by marrying or giving birth to one. 

Hectic right!

Even today in medicine, have you ever wondered why the surgical procedure to remove all or part of the uterus is called a “HYSTER-ectomy”, yep, this happens to be why.

Now, if you are anything like me you are probably wondering “why were they so obsessed with uteruses?” (Or is it “uteri”)? Well, the answer is quite simple, anatomically the male and female bodies differ, yes this is true, but the only organs that the sexes do not share are the reproductive organs. Hence, it is understandable that the natural drawn conclusion was that if women were the only ones to display hysteria, their reproductive organs must be to blame.

Before proceeding I think it is important that I clarify that as comedic as it is, the point of producing literature on this is in no way to mock the scientific process or encourage you to point and laugh at the contributions made to help understand more about the human body. You’ve got to remember that at one point in time it was deemed idiotic to even suggest the world was anything other than a frisbee that you could fall off of. If I am honest, I too would assume that if a particular sex was to demonstrate an illness it’s likely that it’s due to their reproductive organs, right?

I can definitely see the logic, in fact, that’s not the part I have an issue with at all. My biggest issue, however, is the fact that hysteria was an entire medical condition birthed from complete misogyny.

**Misogyny

/mɪˈsɒdʒ(ə)ni/ noun

Dislike of, contempt for, or ingrained prejudice against women. **

In a nutshell, hysteria was medicine’s solution to “understanding and managing” female behaviours.

In fact, if you’re reading this and have a uterus let’s play a fun little game where we go through the symptom list and see whether you may have been diagnosed with hysteria! Here are a handful of symptoms:

• Emotional dependency
• Platonic relationships
• Frustration
• Sexual forwardness
• Irritation
• Intolerance
• Anxiety
• Feeling of crying
• Laughing seemingly without reason
• Crying seemingly without reason
• Heaviness in head
• Clenched teeth
• Mood swings

So, if you have a uterus and have been playing along, I can confirm that if you present any of the following symptoms above at any time, it is likely that not too long ago you would have been encouraged to get pregnant or have your uterus cut out.

Now, I know I’m making a joke out of this, but on a serious note, deep it, there was a point in time that women were considered sick or even admitted into psychiatric wards for expressing irritation, laughing to hard at a joke or making the first move. A lot of the symptoms for hysteria were “problems” that only became problematic if displayed by a woman.

So, we can’t just let the uterus owners have all the fun! I’ve got a game for those who don’t have a uterus; let’s see if you would have been diagnosed with hysteria by identifying if you have any of the symptoms listed below:

• Emotional dependency
• Platonic relationships
• Frustration
• Sexual forwardness
• Irritation
• Intolerance
• Anxiety
• Feeling of crying
• Laughing seemingly without reason
• Crying seemingly without reason
• Heaviness in head
• Clenched teeth
• Mood swings

If you don’t own a uterus and were keeping score, congrats, without knowing the results I can already confirm that the results just came back negative- you would not have been diagnosed with hysteria.

You get the gist, and I’m sure you see the issue here.

Misogynistic stereotypes are what contributed to certain behaviours being deemed an illness when presented by a woman. The idea that women must be calm, submissive, sexually reserved and obedient meant that any deviants from these “natural, correct womanly behaviours” were literally thought to require medical aid.

Part II- Modern-day Hysteria

Although hysteria was removed from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders in 1980, the concept of hysteria has leached into our societies and remains present today in our language and attitudes.

To all my lovely readers who have menstrual cycles, I am sure you’ve probably heard or maybe even said something along the lines of the following:

“aRe yOU mOoDy bEcAusE of YOuR PeRiOd” “iT mUSt bE sHarK wEeK!” “YOu’Re juSt fEeliNG hOrMonAL thAt’S aLL”.

It’s a bit of a sticky one still, because I appreciate the recognition that we as a society now have of the female anatomy and physiology. And I also love how periods are being normalised. However, comments like these, kind of grate my soul.

I hate the way in which we are still in the mindset of justifying female behaviour that deviates from the “prim and proper” actions expected of a woman. These behaviours that counter the subconscious image of appropriate female behaviour are then considered “crazy” the same way they were when hysteria existed. The only time people bring up periods is when trying to validate negative emotions- to date I have not once heard someone connect an emotion such as happiness or surprise with their period. It’s always “they must be cranky/moody/emotional/sad/irritable/ frustrated, because they’re on their period”.

I would be lying if I didn’t hold my hand up and say I was guilty as charged. When my girlfriends hit me up with issues and are talking to me about their emotions, my first instinct is to ask them if they’re about to start their period- as if to subsequently reassure them that their response to a situation or current feelings are only then understandable or considered valid.

Why can’t women/ those with uteruses/ those with periods just have emotions! Why can’t we just be sad without being emotional. Why can’t we be angry without being crazy. Why can’t we feel emotion without being hysterical!

This is not to say that hormones do not influence mood and emotions. Nor am I saying this to undermine current medical conditions that have mood related symptoms such as PMS (premenstrual syndrome, PCOS (polycystic ovarian syndromes), PMDD (premenstrual dysphoric disorder) etc. But how we make reference to the influence hormones have on people’s moods and emotions should be used beneficially, not as a form of oppression or seen as weakness.

The reason I cry “misogyny” is that those without uteruses also have hormones and hormone cycles. Obviously, they do not go through menstruation, but fluctuations of hormones in the body can result in symptoms similar to those of PMS, and those associated with menstruation. It’s colloquially referred to as “man-struation” (I’m a sucker for a good pun), “man periods” or “irritable male syndrome”. However, get this, these fluctuations, of testosterone in particular, occur on a daily basis as well as displaying monthly patterns. But because male emotions and behaviours have historically not been viewed as “mysteries that require better understanding” in the same way female emotions have, this has never been viewed as a problem that necessitates solving within society. Hence men are not labelled “hormonal/ crazy/ hysterical” for their hormonal fluctuations and do not constantly have to validate their emotions based on these natural cycles.

Healthy people with female sex organs, should also not have to legitamise their emotions, whether it be via a diagnosis of hysteria or announcing that they’re are on their period, to fit or maintain misogynistic expectations of female behaviours.

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I hope you enjoyed this as much as I enjoyed reading and writing about it. If you are a returning reader, thank you for coming back to read this blog post! If you’re new hello, hi, welcome, you should definitely check out some of my other stuff if you liked this post.

I really hope you learned a thing or two from this and maybe look into the history of hysteria yourself too, but if all you took from this is not to call a girl “crazy” then I guess that’s okay with me.

But ultimately, I just want you to know what I know, you know!

Signed,

IAMLENGA

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*Alongside my own opinions, this post and the points made within it were inspired by a range of sources that you should check out if you found this to be an interesting read:

·         https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/history-quackery/history-hysteria

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

·         https://wellcomecollection.org/articles/W89GZBIAAN4yz1hQ

·         https://www.youthkiawaaz.com/2014/11/hysteria-by-eye/

·         https://www.vogue.com/article/trump-women-hysteria-and-history

(Shout out to my A-Level Psychology teacher from a couple of years ago for unknowingly inspiring this post.)