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Distress signals

	Hystories: Hysterical Epidemics and Modern	4	“Hysteria is a mimetic disorder; it mi-
	Culture by Elaine Showalter		mics culturally permissible expres-
	Picador £16.99 pp244		sions of distress,” Showalter writes.
	Joan Smith		“An Englishman can legitimately complain of
	Did hysteria once provide		headaches and fatigue but not that his penis is
	could not otherwise articulate		retracting into his body - a perfectly acceptable
			symptom in Malaysia and South China.” These
1	It has often been remarked that hysteria, the		sentences, giving a flavour of Showalter’s mildly
	malady Freud identified in many of his women		ironic style, may go towards explaining why she has got
	patients, has now all but disappeared as a		into so much trouble. The intelligent scepticism of the
	formal diagnosis. Freud’s patients suffered from		academic (she is a professor of English) is hardly
	paralysis or seizures with no obvious cause,		calculated to find favour with people who regard them-
	which he regarded as physical manifestations		selves as victims of sexual abuse, or sufferers from
	of unconscious desires. Feminist critics wrested		contagious diseases.
	this theory from Freud and linked it to the	5	Yet I do not think this is
	suffocating social conditions in which his patients		Showalter’s intention. She does not doubt that what used
	lived, arguing that hysteria provided a “language”		to be called shell shock, now known as posttraumatic
	for women who could not otherwise articulate their		stress disorder (PTSD), makes people sick. Her aim is
	discontents.		to place her subjects in a context which encourages the
2	Liberate the patients, according		reader to ask why so many people currently
	to this theory, and their malady disappears. For		believe themselves to be victims of syndromes
	Elaine Showalter, however, hysteria has not disap-		for which there is very little scientific evidence.
	peared in the 20th century, but mutated. In this	6	And while she is least convincing on Gulf-war
	controversial book, she examines a series of con-		syndrome, she draws parallels between the experience
	temporary epidemics and syndromes, from Satanic		of people claiming quite diverse causes
	ritual to chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS), and argues		for their suffering in a way that goes a long way
	that they are outbreaks of mass hysteria. Most		towards proving her thesis.
	contentious of all, she includes in her list of hys-	7	What the book also shows is the degree of
	terical epidemics Gulf-war syndrome, claiming		consolation people derive from identifying
	that the diverse symptoms suffered by returning		themselves as victims. Most of the people she
	veterans are the modern equivalent of shell		writes about are furious with someone, whether
	shock.		it is governments or doctors. This fosters an
3	In Britain and America, former soldiers are already		unhealthy atmosphere of fear and suspicion in
	reacting furiously to what they see as an		which more outlandish theories gain popularity
	attempt to dismiss their ailments as psychosomatic.		- distracting us, as she says, “from the real
	Nor have they taken kindly to finding		problems and crises of modern society”. Paradoxically,
	themselves bracketed with that vociferous band		we are unlikely to discover what is
	of Americans who are convinced that they have		making so many people angry and ill in a climate
	been kidnapped and experimented on by		in which books such as Showalter’s generate
	creatures from outer space. Showalter’s book		more of the anxious, hostile reactions she has
	seems just as likely to upset sufferers from CFS.		attempted to write about.
	It is only fair to say at this point that Showalter
	is not suggesting that CFS sufferers or Gulf-war		‘Sunday Times’, June 1, 1997
	veterans are perfectly healthy. Nor does she
	think that alien abductees or people who claim
	to have recovered memories of childhood abuse
	are telling lies. Her argument centres on the
	idea that each culture creates its own unspoken
	rules about acceptable and unacceptable ways
	of expressing distress. According to this argument,
	societies generate “symptom pools”
	which pressure individuals to develop certain
	manifestations and not others. Chief among the
	prohibitions is the stigma that attaches to any
	form of mental illness, so that patients are
	encouraged to look for physical explanations for
	their condition.