Synopses & Reviews
Over the course of several centuries, Western masculinity has successfully established itself as the voice of reason, knowledge, and sanity--the basis for patriarchal rule--in the face of massive testimony to the contrary.
Hysterical Men boldly challenges this triumphant vision of the stable and secure male by examining the central role played by modern science and medicine in constructing and sustaining it.
Mark Micale reveals the hidden side of this vision, that is, the innumerable cases of disturbed and deranged men who passed under the eyes of male medical and scientific elites from the seventeenth century onward. Since ancient times, physicians and philosophers had closely observed and extravagantly theorized female weakness, emotionality, and madness. What these male experts failed to see--or saw but did not acknowledge--was masculine nervous and mental illness among all classes and in diverse guises. While cultural and literary intellectuals pioneered new languages of male emotional distress, European science was invested in cultivating and protecting the image of male, middle-class detachment, objectivity, and rationality despite rampant counter-evidence in the clinic, in the laboratory, and on battlefields.
The reasons for suppressing male neurosis from the official discourses of science and medicine as well as from popular view range from the personal and psychological to the professional and the political. They make for a history full of profound silences, omissions, and amnesias. Now, however, under the greatly altered circumstances of today's gender revolution, Micale's work allows this story to be heard.
Review
"Do not waste much time on hysteria in men. Leave hysteria to women and children," advised a German doctor in 1887 in response to noted French physician Jean-Martin Charcot's notions that men could manifest hysteria. Micale has uncovered a wealth of information that rebuts much of the traditional medical and popular thinking about men and emotional distress. Micale charts nervous diseases in men from the 17th century until Freud. It was only in 1859, in a medical text by Pierre Briquet, that detailed attention was paid to male hysteria, and he noted that doctors didn't see the condition because "they did not want to see it." Micale's canvas is broad and, while the book has a history of science slant, it is also a work of cultural criticism, charting the changes in acceptable masculine affect, as exhibited in works like Whitman's Leaves of Grass. Micale brings much fascinating information together with élan. Publishers Weekly
Review
An absolutely first-rate inquiry into the history of psychiatry and the shape-shifting entity called hysteria. No one concerned with the significance of gender can ignore Micale's thoughtful, engaging, and discerning analysis. Hysterical Men will be widely and enthusiastically reviewed -- and read. Charles Rosenberg, Harvard University
Review
An excellent guide to the territory of male hysteria. Because he has so thoughtfully and self-consciously explored the elusiveness of male hysteria, Micale sees what the great modern explorer, Freud, saw when he was able to look - chiefly at himself. Micale's book should be the prolegomena to any future study of male hysteria. Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, Columbia Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research
Review
Hysterical Men engages the problems and meanings associated with the gendering of mental illness as "male" during the late nineteenth century. Micale's account is clear, direct, and, more important, balanced in its reading of major figures involved in this debate, including that self-diagnosed hysteric Sigmund Freud Sander L. Gilman, Emory University
Review
Micale documents the evasions, suppressions, and distortions in medical investigations of this archetypal 'female' disorder for over three hundred years. This is a fully-realized cultural history of hysteria which opens to us a unique perspective on the interrelationships between Western medicine, the myriad literary representations of the disease, and the social history of gender since the seventeenth century Robert A. Nye, Oregon State University
Review
Micale writes here about what he calls the "hidden history" of male nervous illness, or hysteria, exploring its denial and theories in males from the early modern period through the early 20th century. The author of many other books and articles on hysteria, Micale ranges from incidents in England, France, and other parts of Europe to Frenchman Jean-Martin Charcot and Sigmund Freud, drawing on mostly primary sources, such as letters, diaries, essays, and novels, because the topic was excluded from mainstream historical resources. He concludes that "hysteria" was mostly thought to be a woman's disease and that the research period is one of missed opportunities, as male psychologists were incapable of seeing mental conditions in themselves. Micale acknowledges modern progress in "masculine self-understanding," though he admits that the process is still in development. An excellent book overall. Leigh Mihlrad
Review
[A] fascinating book by historian Mark Micale, whose research is enriched by his extensive knowledge of European intellectual debates and his particular interest in France...If you are interested in the links between medicine and literature, if you are a student of gender or of mental health...you simply must buy this book. Library Journal
Review
Micale has done more than tell a good story... What Micale has accomplished is a tour de force of medical, cultural, and psychological detective work. In his hands, the three-thousand-year refusal of the medical world to acknowledge the existence of hysteria in any but females is proven to have a perfectly understandable psychoanalytic basis, but it has taken a scholar of wide-ranging intellectual background and enormous perspicacity to build, era by era, to its discovery and the construction of his impressively supported thesis. He has provided a model for other scholars to follow, not least in demonstrating by example that a historian of medicine must be also a historian of culture. Pauline M. Prior - Times Higher Education
Review
andldquo;Using ethnographic and historical work on scientific laboratories, this superb study takes the reader through the emergence of hypnosis in the late nineteenth century, tracing the prehistory and the history of what was to become psychoanalysis. In a highly informed and fascinating manner, Mayer recounts the controversies that swirled around the practitioners of hypnosis and carefully considers the material conditions of clinics, laboratories, museums, and consulting rooms to show how hypnosis was central to the notion of the unconscious mind and how this notion was propagated in different clinical settings. Neither hagiographic nor discrediting, Mayer shows how the nineteenth centuryandrsquo;s new scientific psychology, grounded in hypnosis, needs to be seen in its specific social setting. Among many other contributions, this work gives the most convincing explanation of why Freud abandoned hypnosis as a practice. It also persuasively shows how Freudandrsquo;s consulting room, with its quiet environment of dim light and the famous couch, was in deliberate and direct opposition to the noise, bright lights, and public aspect of the clinical laboratories of hypnosis. A contribution of the first importance to the history of psychoanalysis, this book also makes for great reading.andrdquo;
Review
andldquo;Can there be a truly innovative and surprising retelling of the origins of psychoanalysis? Andreas Mayerandrsquo;s book demonstrates that possibility emphatically by reexamining the detailed set of practices associated with hypnotism that emerged first in France, to be transferred by Freud and others to German-speaking lands. These practices, Mayer demonstrates, are linked closely in Paris, Nancy, Vienna, and Zurich to the particular novel local sites and spacesandmdash;the newly configured clinics, laboratories, public demonstrations, and experimental programsandmdash;of the different schools that developed hypnotism and psychotherapy and contested very vigorously with one another for epistemic authority and influence. Perhaps for the first time, Freudandrsquo;s work emerges as fundamentally novel but also completely embedded in the fine-grain development of these practices and debates. Mayerandrsquo;s methodical and original research and argument leads to a fascinating reimagining of, through rigorous demonstration based on supreme command of historical evidence, the mythical origins of psychoanalysis.andrdquo;
Review
andldquo;There are few people with such deep knowledge of the early career of Sigmund Freud as Andreas Mayer, and probably no Freud scholar with his grasp of the history of science and medicine in late-nineteenth-century France, Austria, and Germany. Here Mayer couples great erudition with methodological innovations drawn from recent science studies to skillfully reexamine the key sites and experimental cultures of hysteria, hypnosis, and early psychoanalysis.
Sites of the Unconscious is a tour de force that marks an important advance in our understanding of the origins of psychoanalysis.andrdquo;
Review
andldquo;Ingeniously researched and insightfully argued,
Sites of the Unconscious will revolutionize our understanding of histories and cultures of the mind in fields as diverse as anthropology, science studies, and psychiatry.andrdquo;
Review
and#8220;Mayerand#8217;s brilliant Sites of the Unconscious (a revised and expanded translation of the authorand#8217;s 2002 Mikroskopie der Psyche) is another path-breaking work. Mayer radically shifts conventional understandings of psychoanalysis by examining it alongside a broader set of practices, sites and materials connected to hypnotism in a wide range of historical contexts. It is a book that no scholar of Freud or psychoanalysis can ignore.and#8221;
Review
"A marvelous book for those who wish to read about the history of hypnosis and psychoanalysis. Although most psychoanalytic institutes have copious information available about Freudand#8217;s cocaine use and the origins of hypnosis, it is rare to find the rich detail that Mayer provides."
Review
Rich in material, the book is a very fluent, informative, and enjoyable read and is recommended to any historian of psychoanalysis and psychiatry.
Review
andquot;While the subject matter is mostly familiar, Andreas Mayer introduces a striking originality in terms of assumptions, conclusions, and, especially, methodology. Rather than situating hypnotism as a crude precursor to be superseded by psychoanalysis (as did Freud and most subsequent historians), Sites of the Unconscious argues for the centrality of hypnotism to the emergence in the late nineteenth century of various practices of investigating the mind. . . . Sites of the Unconscious makes a significant contribution by presenting an original, meticulously researched, and densely reasoned narrative. More broadly, it offers an alternative interpretation of scientific change.andquot;
Synopsis
Over the course of several centuries, Western masculinity has successfully established itself as the voice of reason, knowledge, and sanity--the basis for patriarchal rule--in the face of massive testimony to the contrary. This book boldly challenges this triumphant vision of the stable and secure male by examining the central role played by modern science and medicine in constructing and sustaining it.
Synopsis
In the late nineteenth century, scientists, psychiatrists, and medical practitioners began employing a new experimental technique for the study of neuroses: hypnotism. Though the efforts of the famous French neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot to transform hypnosis into a laboratory science failed, his Viennese translator and disciple Sigmund Freud took up the challenge and invented psychoanalysis. Previous scholarship has viewed hypnosis and psychoanalysis in sharp opposition or claimed that both were ultimately grounded in the phenomenon of suggestion and thus equally flawed. In this groundbreaking study, Andreas Mayer reexamines the relationship between hypnosis and psychoanalysis, revealing that the emergence of the familiar Freudian psychoanalytic setting cannot be understood without a detailed analysis of the sites, material and social practices, and controversies within the checkered scientific and medical landscape of hypnotism.and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;
Sites of the Unconscious analyzes the major controversies between competing French schools of hypnotism that emerged at this time, stressing their different views on the production of viable evidence and their different ways of deploying hypnosis. Mayer then reconstructs in detail the reception of French hypnotism in German-speaking countries, arguing that the distinctive features of Freudandrsquo;s psychoanalytic setting of the couch emerged out of the clinical laboratories and private consulting rooms of the practitioners of hypnosis.
About the Author
Andreas Mayer is a research scholar at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin. He is coauthor (with Lydia Marinelli) of Dreaming By the Book: A History of Freudandrsquo;s andlsquo;The Interpretation of Dreamsandrsquo; and the Psychoanalytic Movement.Christopher Barber studied music and history at the State University of New York and history at the University of Vienna. His recent translations include Freud Verbatim and The Secession Talks.
Table of Contents
List of AbbreviationsIntroductionPart I: French Cultures of Hypnosis1. andldquo;Experimental Neurosesandrdquo;: Hypnotism at the Salpandecirc;triandegrave;re HospitalThe Clinical Geography of Charcotandrsquo;s New Research CenterThe Experimentalization of the Unconscious2. The Controversy between Paris and Nancy over Hypnotic SuggestionHypnotic Suggestion as a Therapeutic Method in NancyA andldquo;Suggestive Atmosphereandrdquo;: Bernheimandrsquo;s ClinicThe Problem of SimulationSuggestible SubjectsTwo Cultures of Hypnotism3. andldquo;Amour expandeacute;rimentalandrdquo;: Facts and Fetishes at the Musandeacute;e CharcotA andldquo;Museum of Clinical Factsandrdquo;Transferring Psychic ObjectsPinning Down HallucinationsFetishistic Object-RelationsThe Tactical Intelligence of Subjects4. The Question of Lay HypnosisStage Magnetism and Lay HypnosisEnter the Critic: Joseph Delbandoelig;ufChallenging the Medical Monopoly on HypnosisPart II: The Emergence of the Psychoanalytic Setting5. Parisandndash;Vienna: A Problematic TransferTranslation ProblemsPolemics Surrounding the andldquo;Wiener Nancyerandrdquo;The Krafft-Ebing Scandal6. Freud and the Vicissitudes of Private PracticeConflicting Ceremonies of the CureFactoring Out the Problem of SimulationFreudandrsquo;s Revision: Analysis without Hypnosis7. The Psychotherapeutic Private Practice between Clinic and LaboratoryVoice Commands: The Soundscape of the Hypnotic Consulting RoomIntrospective HypnotismThe Fractionation Method: Oskar Vogtandrsquo;s Laboratory of Hypnosisandldquo;Psychical Analysesandrdquo;: Vogt versus Freud8. Experimentalism without a Laboratory: The Psychoanalytic Settingandldquo;Self-Analysesandrdquo;: Writing, Reading, and DreamingTracking the Complex: Attempts at Stabilizing the Psychoanalytic SettingObjects Blanked Out: Freudandrsquo;s Scene of TreatmentConclusionAcknowledgmentsBibliographyIndex