In 1980, hysteria died. That was the year it was removed from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) handbook and ceased to be considered a medical condition. But we need only look around us to see that hysteria has never been more alive – just consider the run on toilet paper at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Or the consumer hysteria every Black Friday, or the overheated discussions taking place on Facebook and Twitter every day.
We all recognise hysteria – the display of over-the-top emotions – when we see it. In fact, no sooner than it left the DSM handbook, hysteria seems to have migrated to every other sphere of our lives. No longer a medical condition, it is our era’s defining sociological phenomenon. What lessons can hysteria teach us about the societies we live in today?
Sociological key to the world
Medical and historical researchers, psychoanalysts and philosophers, religious and gender studies scholars, as well as painters and writers, have all grappled with hysteria and tried to unravel its mysteries. From ancient Egyptian times until deep into the 18th century, hysteria was diagnosed as a convulsive disorder affecting women, caused by a ‘wandering womb’, which was believed to move freely through the body all the way into the head, emitting toxic fumes that led to hysteria.
