Charcot's Studies on Hysteria: Five Case Histories, 1870–1893

by Toby Gelfand

Jean-Martin Charcot (1825-1893) has been the subject of considerable historical study, both biographical and with particular focus on his work on hysteria and influence on two of his many students, Pierre Janet and Sigmund Freud. This project, following the precedent and title of Breuer and Freud's Studies on hysteria (1895), deals with a small series of five in-depth patient case histories that span the 23 years of Charcot's career interest in hysteria. The aim is to show changes in the physician's formulation of the ailment and thus his interaction with specific sufferers. Broadly speaking, Charcot's conception of hysteria evolved from an anatomical and physiological one to an increasingly psychological formulation, from a female gendered malady to one afflicting males as well. He later introduced his version of an experimental demonstration of hysteria using hypnotism and subsequently embraced an hereditarian explanation of the cause of the ailment. This final view of Charcot - psychological in causal mechanism and hereditarian in fundamental causality - has always been a surprising one, which many historians have found difficult to rectify, but this study will shed light on this contested achievement of Charcot's.

223 pages, Hardcover

Published January 28, 2019