Hysteria Complicated by Ecstasy

The Case of Nanette Leroux
Erscheinungsjahr 2011
ISBN: 978-0-691-15237-0
Verlag: Princeton University Press

Buch, Englisch, 264 Seiten, Format (B × H): 152 mm x 229 mm, Gewicht: 427 g

Hysteria Complicated by Ecstasy offers a rare window into the inner life of a person ordinarily inaccessible to historians: a semiliterate peasant girl who lived almost two centuries ago, in the aftermath of the French Revolution. Eighteen-year-old Nanette Leroux fell ill in 1822 with a variety of incapacitating nervous symptoms. Living near the spa at Aix-les-Bains, she became the charity patient of its medical director, Antoine Despine, who treated her with hydrotherapy and animal magnetism, as hypnosis was then called. Jan Goldstein translates, and provides a substantial introduction to, the previously unpublished manuscript recounting Nanette's strange illness--a manuscript coauthored by Despine and Alexandre Bertrand, the Paris physician who memorably diagnosed Nanette as suffering from "hysteria complicated by ecstasy." While hysteria would become a fashionable disease among urban women by the end of the nineteenth century, the case of Nanette Leroux differs sharply from this pattern in its early date and rural setting.Filled with intimate details about Nanette's behavior and extensive quotations of her utterances, the case is noteworthy for the sexual references that contemporaries did not recognize as such; for its focus on the difference between biological and social time; and for Nanette's fascination with the commodities available in the region's nascent marketplace. Goldstein's introduction brilliantly situates the text in its multiple contexts, examines it from the standpoint of early nineteenth-century medicine, and uses the insights of Foucault and Freud to craft a twenty-first-century interpretation.A compelling, multilayered account of one young woman's mental afflictions, Hysteria Complicated by Ecstasy is an extraordinary addition to the cultural and social history of psychiatry and medicine.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Goldstein, Jan

Fachgebiete

• Medizin | Veterinärmedizin Medizin | Public Health | Pharmazie | Zahnmedizin Medizin, Gesundheitswesen Geschichte der Medizin

Inhaltsverzeichnis

List of Illustrations vii

Preface ix

Part One: HYSTERIA COMPLICATED BY ECSTASY

Sexuality, Time, and Commodities in the Malady of Nanette Leroux

Chapter 1: PRELIMINARIES 3

The Authors of the Case: An Inbuilt Polyphony 6

The Plot Summary 11

Chapter 2: CONTEXTS 18

Contexts: What They Do for the Reader, and

How Many Are Enough 18

Savoy: Old Regime, Revolution, and Piedmontese

Restoration 20

The Spa: A Characteristically Nineteenth-Century Setting 35

Commodities and Consumer Culture 42

Diagnostics: Catalepsy and Hysteria circa 1820 46

Medicine and Science as Public Spectacle 56

The Local Scientifi c Public Sphere 64

Scientifi c Networks, or How Despine Found Bertrand 65

Religion in Savoy and in the Leroux Case 69

Defi ant Women: Despine's Chagrins Domestiques 73

Chapter 3: MAKING SENSE OF THE CASE 83

The Authors? Understanding of the Case 83

A Twenty-First-Century Interpretation of the Case 94

Chapter 4: TEXTUAL MATTERS 128

Nanette Leroux or "Nanette Leroux": The Issue of Pseudonyms 128

Palimpsest and Polyphony: The State of the Manuscript 129

Choosing a Text for Translation 133

Part Two: THE TEXT OF THE CASE HISTORY OBSERVATIONS OF NANETTE LEROUX

Hysteria Complicated by Ecstasy 137

Appendix On the Compatibility of Foucauldian and Freudian Approaches 201

Notes 205

Index 239

Über Autor(innen)

Goldstein, Jan
Jan Goldstein is the Norman and Edna Freehling Professor of History at the University of Chicago. Her books include "The Post-Revolutionary Self: Politics and Psyche in France, 1750-1850" and "Console and Classify: The French Psychiatric Profession in the Nineteenth Century".