Customer Reviews

Hystories

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

Although I agree with the conclusions of the book her arguments were not stated is a strong way. Many were just a rehash of some of the most outlandish cases, cases referred to as 'high strangeness" She does show how the media plays a big part into flaming the fires with sensational broadcasting. As it turns out not one shred of evidance has ever been verified from any of Rivera's sensational satanic cult specials, yet thousands of people entered therapy for things that never happened. She also talks about male hysteria which is seldom touched upon, So, some good points if no a terrific book.

I really had high expectations for this book - the author worked for the Wellcome Institute of the study of the History of Medicine affiliated with Cambridge University - and I felt a historical look at how women's experience of illness (since men are rarities in the hysterical world) ties into modern conceptions of chronic illness would be particularly insightful. Unfortunately, I was disappointed with the level of scholarship in this volume. Her earlier chapters centering on the development of the clinical concept of "hysteria" through the 19th and early 20th century are her strongest and best researched and the insights she makes regarding connections between influential thinkers are excellent.

Showalter ties the psychological basis of vaguely explained or ephemeral illness to more modern diseases like Chronic Fatigue Syndrome with its numerous psychological and physical symptoms and pinpoints the difficulty of many chronic illness sufferers. Namely that we "live in a culture that still looks down on psychogenic illness, that does not recognize or respect its reality. The self-esteem of the patient depends on having the physiological nature of the illness accepted. The culture forces people to deny the psychological, circumstantial, or emotional sources of their symptoms and to insist that they must be biological and beyond their control in order for them to view themselves as legitimately ill..." While this insight is excellent and, I believe, very true, what the author misses out on is the profound personal nature of the experience of chronic illness with its various ramifications.

Her final conclusion - that feminism and the feminist interpretation of the "hysteria" phenomenon has raised women's expectations of themselves without the inherent power to fulfill those expectations and that the way we should deal with this outcome is simply to study the various aspects of hysteria further - falls flat and does not seem to be well-grounded in the previous context of the book. Unless you are really interested in 19th century medical/women relationships (the one strong point of the book), I think you can miss this one.

Showalter claims that theories legitimizing chronic fatiguesyndrome as an actual illness are "on the other side ofscience" and implies that a handful of questionable experts have legitimized the illness. While her findings serve to support her theory, her investigation misses or overlooks scientific research from peer-reviewed medical journals, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the National Institutes of Health. In reality, the CDC includes CFS on a list of "Priority 1 New and Reemerging Infectious Diseases" along with hepatitis C, malaria, and tuberculosis.

^M Showalter fails to acknowledge a wide range of peer-reviewed scientific research documenting immunological dysfunction, deficits in cognitive function, and neuroendocrine system abnormalities in patients with chronic fatigue syndrome.

^M ^M Had Showalter's book been written at the turn of the century, she would have included multiple sclerosis (once known as "faker's disease") among her list of "hysterias."

^M Meanwhile, today, over half a million American adults and children are suffering from an illness which Showalter dismisses as a "psychic problem" and "coping mechanism." The former Assistant Secretary for Health, Dr. Philip R. Lee, wrote a public letter last fall describing CFS as a "scientifically recognized disease syndrome. . . not, as some have characterized it, some sort of psychological problem." Chronic fatigue syndrome is a complex illness characterized by incapacitating fatigue, neurological problems, and a constellation of symptoms that can resemble other disorders such as mononucleosis, multiple sclerosis, Lyme disease, and autoimmune diseases such as lupus.

^M ^M Chronic fatigue syndrome, also known as chronic fatigue and immune dysfunction syndrome (CFIDS), is already poorly understood by the American public. Showalter plays on popular misconceptions, propagating misinformation while watching her stardom (and her book's sales) soar.

I have an agenda: I have had Chronic Fatigue Syndrome for 10 years and though I am light years better than I was, I am still plagued by exhaustion and neurocognitive difficulties. These are my cards. Elaine Showalter's motivations for including Chronic Fatigue Syndrome in her book Hystories are more obscure. Ostensibly, it is to help deluded creatures like me recognize that the cure for what ails us lies in Freudian psychotherapy; that if we got our psychological house in order and acquired the skills for living a protracted time on the couch would bestow, we would recognize that we were equal to the challenges of modern life and wouldn't need to hide behind the screen a chronic, debilitating illness provides. We have been aided in this by the mass media and by the support groups established for advocacy and succor. The source of our infection lies not in some bacterial or viral agent, but in our speech, our susceptibility not in some genetic predisposition or immune system stressor, but in our psyches. I think this is a fair summary of her views. There are several problems with this. A search of Med-Line will reveal a copious literature that's been written on CFS over the last 10 years or so. She discusses none of this. When she invokes a recognized authority on CFS, Dr. David Bell, a deeply compassionate man, who has never wavered in his belief in the organic basis of the illness, the archetype of the good doctor in my opinion, she distorts his words beyond recognition. Dr. Simon Wessely, a British MD, the authority of choice, whose Svengali she plays Trilby to, has been discredited repeatedly in articles she never mentions. No peer reviewed psychiatric literature has ever indicated that people with CFS were any more likely to be somatizing than anyone else. And on and on. This is the worst treatment on the subject of this illness I have encountered. It is a rank farrago of innuendo, procrustean concept, and either inept, but more likely dishonest method. It is not scholarship but slander, slander because by her patronizing tone and tendentious methods, it is clear she has nothing but contempt for those she views as hysterical. A couple of suggestions: Oslers Web, by Hillary Johnson, provides the most comprehensive overview of the illness and how it was (mis)handled by the government, academic and professional institutions, and the media and is now available in paperback. Also, an excellent analysis of multiple personality and the sometimes problematic nature of memory is Rewriting the Soul,by Ian Hacking. Both are available from Amazon. As for Showalter, caveat emptor! This one's a real stinker: get it from the library.

As a person who has suffered from Chronic Fatigue Immune Dysfunction Syndrome for 10 years, I am naturally appalled that this author could make assumptions about a disease she obviously is judging without fully reviewing. It is obvious that she has not fully reviewed the illness that is CFIDS, because if she had, she could not call it a "hysterical illness" and be truthful. She is using a truly debilitating, chronic illness and it's sufferers' in order to attempt to make her own case for hysteria; how appalling. How irresponsible! There were also smug, self-righteous authors and sadly, medical personnel who declared years ago that multiple sclerosis was also a "hysterical illness" without medical basis in fact. I am disgusted that this author puts herself in this low class of unlearned people, because the harm she is capable of doing with this book by misinforming the public is too horrendous to even contemplate. How fitting it would be if she herself were to become afflicted with this malady, and could judge the disease's validity from a close viewpoint, as those of us afflicted have been forced to do. I would certainly be more interested in her opinions of this illness if this were to come to pass. Therefore, I rate this book not only at the worst end of the scale, but declare that it is also rated to be dangerous in it's misinformation, as well as a public disservice.

This is NOT a medical book; nor does Showalter set out to "disprove" the syndromes she discusses. Showalter discusses why these syndromes are occurring in epidemic proportions here (the west) and now. If you are looking for studies showing that this or that syndrome really does or doesn't "exist", or if you are looking for a prescription or diagnosis, this is not the book for you. This is a cultural analysis.

The book is actually written in two parts. The first is about the history of hysteria, dwelling almost entirely in France in the last decades of the 19th century and also in Freud's office. The second half is full of chapters each dedicated to one modern day hysteria. As a reader, I am more interested in the second half. I would have preferred the author focusing on these syndromes, and showing the history of hysteria incidentally, as she went along.

My other complaint is that the book is clearly written by a media critic rather than a sociologist. These syndromes don't exist in print so much as in peoples' minds. There are lots of direct quotes from sufferers and interviews with them, but there is also a heavy reliance on tracking the syndromes through news stories. The media are an important part of the propagation of these symptoms, but a brief discussion of the Billy Crystal movie "City Slickers" and an excerpt from Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical "Sunset Boulevard" were unnecessary.

Overall, the book is an interesting read for anyone interested in all the new modern ways our society has invented for being unhappy, and a good introduction to other literature on the subject.

I think I picked up this book for two of the least likely reasons. The first reason is that I regularly browse through McKay's book "Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds". Mckay's book, written well before the nineteenth century rise in popular psychology, has chapters of amusing and interesting anecdotes about crowd behaviour - and how it perpetuates itself. For some reason I expected Showalter's book to be the modern equivalent - it isn't, although let me state right here that this is by no means a bad thing. The second reason I read this was because I have been interested in vague way by all the Ritual Satanic Abuse media reports (and crowd frenzies) which have sprung up over the last couple of decades. We had our own incident of it in New Zealand recently you see - which has resulted in very unsatisfactory result for many people - the alleged-perpetrators and supposed-victims. I hoped that this book would shed insight on why these events happen and illustrate it with other cases. Hystories did, well sort of .

I guess mostly what I expected was a sort of true-crime kind of book, with lots of incidents linked to one another. What instead I found was a very thoughtful historical and literature review of the development of pschological illness and the way in which they rise and are perpetuated. This does brush on Mckay's area - but Showalter's approach is more thoughtful and intellectual examining the complex reasons, psychological ones among them, for these events developing. I have to say this for Showalter, her research and footnoting seem impeccable. Were I actually more interested in the psychological development of disease then it would be no hard thing to check all of her sources and the developments of her arguments. It is certainly controversial in its topic, but it seems to me she never denies that people don't have some kind of disease - only that it isn't physical and it might not be what they think. I found it very thought-provoking indeed, almost the psychology of modern psychology.

So while I it wasn't at all what I expected - it was certainly worth reading. Perhaps it is the modern descendent of Mckay's work after all.

While obviously more of an anecdotal examination than a scientific study, Elaine Showalter's presentation about various (in her estimation) hysterical manifestations is enjoyable, entertaining and, to a good degree, informative. My favorites are the recovered memories, satanic ritual abuse and alien abductions, all of which appear to result from someone wanting a little ordinary, good old attention. Oh man, I have deceased relatives from rural Central Texas who would have THRIVED on these sorts of things, if only they'd every known or thought about them. I was surprised, though, that the author did not mention the radiation hysteria of the late 1940s and 1950s, the early days of the atomic age when everyone was hunting everywhere for uranium -- like that incident wherein an entire film factory was torn down because the owners were CONVINCED that radioactivity was clouding one particular type of their film (and not a light leak).

I can see where some folks, such as Gulf War vets and chronically tired workers, would take umbrage at the suggestion their maladies are not genuine -- but that's for the reader to decide. I sincerely hope that the rest of my 14 separate personalities (the ones old enough to read, that is) find as much entertainment in this book as I did.

This is a book on various medical and psychological topics byan English professor who has previously written on illness in the 19thcentury. I am expert only in one aspect of her topic, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. In that area, the writer does not cite any current research. Her citations, generally, are from the popular press. She has not interviewed any of the academic experts (at Harvard, Johns Hopkins, U of Washington, etc.) on the illness. Nor has she spoken with any of the many physicians who specialize in treatment of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. Thus she has not accessed the current knowlege of this illness, and her opinions should be judged in that light. This is not an expert performance.^M ^M Frank Albrecht, Ph.D.

The publisher of Ms. Showalter's book, Columbia Press, shouldbe ashamed. This slanderous pulp should have never been published andshould definately not be promoted. Without any medical ^M citations, Ms. Showalter has written a very biased piece of work that is in itself very hurtful to Gulf War Syndrome (GWS) and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) patients by perpetuating the myth that these illnesses are "all in the head".^M ^M

On a positive note, because of Hysteries, many doctors have come to the defense of CFS patients. Dr. Marsha Wallace was on Washington local TV^M just recently and she went on and took on Showalter person to person emphasizing that her patients don't get better with antidepressants and^M psychiatry. Dr. Ben Natelson commented in a radio interview that CFS is a real disease when the topic of Ms. Showalter came up. Dr. Paul Levine, on a recent chat on Prodigy, stated in regards to CFS being considered a hysterical disorder, that "any physician who believes that this is true is^M not keeping up with the literature and should be informed that (s)he needs updating." Dr. Philip Lee, assistant secretary of health in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has recently stated, "It is not, as some have characterized it, some sort of psychological problem. Recovery is slow and uncertain for^M many clients." ^M

How can Ms. Showalter justify her hysterical disorder thesis by ignoring these medical professionals and the medical literature that is published clearly indicating this is a physical disorder? What is her hidden agenda? ^M ^M

Controversy can be turned into dollars regardless of the negative impact it has on its victims. This is pure greed at its finest, folks.