Art Criticism - The State University of New York

Showalter notes, was his inattentiveness to what his hysterical patients were
actually saying.20 In Charcot's practice, the patient (particularly the female
patient) was silenced, her body put on display but her voice not heard.21
Charcot's privileging of the visual over the auditory22 is clear. It seems Charcot
preferred to treat his patients as objects rather than subjects who might contribute
to their own treatment. 23
Freud furthered the field of hysteria greatly, beginning with his collaboration
with 10sefBreuer titled Preliminary Communication (1892). This
essay eventually became part of their larger collaborative publication Studies
on Hysteria (1895). It was at first met unfavorably in German medical circles,
but later came to be regarded as a major catalyst of psychoanalysis.
In Studies on Hysteria, Freud and Breuer detail the symptoms of
hysteria as they occurred in their individual practices. Their list of symptoms is
clearly similar to those of Charcot.
Neuralgias and anaesthesias of various kinds, many of which persisted
for years, contractures and paralyses, hysterical attacks and
epileptoid convulsions, which every observer regarded as true epilepsy,
petit mal and disorders in the nature of tic, chronic vomiting
and anorexia, carried to the pitch of rejection of all nourishment, .
various forms of disturbance of vision, constantly recurrent visual
hallucinations, etc.24
Freud believed early on that hysteria or "hysterical conversion" manifested
itself through repression of a traumatic event, which was then later "released"
. in the form of a somatic malady. His later work insisted that instead of traumatic
events, it was often an unacknowledged or repressed sexual wish that led to
the hysterical symptom(s). A major difference between Charcot and Freud is
that the latter focused on the patient's voice, and treated him or her as a
subject. While Charcot privileged visual modalities of hysteria (photographs), .
Freud and Breuer employed a more aural, analytical and etiological approach.25
A paramount case in the treatment of hysteria involved the patient
Breuer called Anna O. This ·patient, whom Breuer treated over the course of
approximately one year, exhibited many of the "token" hysterical symptoms
mentioned above. In her case, however, Breuer ingeniously used hypnotism as
a therapeutic method. It was through hypnotism that he was able to discern
that Anna 0 exhibited two separate states of consciousness, her primary
condition and her second condition. During the primary stage, Anna 0 was
essentially "normal" with respect to emotions and psychological disposition.
It was when Anna 0 was in the second state that such hysterical symptoms as
paralysis of the limbs, (psychological) inability to eat or drink, and inability to
speak in her native language appeared.
vol. 17, no. 1 91