Hysteria Complicated by Ecstasy: The Case of Nanette Leroux - download pdf or read online

Hysteria complex by means of Ecstasy deals an extraordinary window into the internal lifetime of an individual regularly inaccessible to historians: a semiliterate peasant lady who lived nearly centuries in the past, within the aftermath of the French Revolution. Eighteen-year-old Nanette Leroux fell ailing in 1822 with numerous incapacitating anxious signs. residing close to the spa at Aix-les-Bains, she turned the charity sufferer of its clinical director, Antoine Despine, who taken care of her with hydrotherapy and animal magnetism, as hypnosis was once then known as. Jan Goldstein interprets, and offers a considerable creation to, the formerly unpublished manuscript recounting Nanette's unusual illness--a manuscript coauthored by way of Despine and Alexandre Bertrand, the Paris doctor who memorably clinically determined Nanette as struggling with "hysteria advanced by way of ecstasy." whereas hysteria could turn into a trendy illness between city girls via the tip of the 19th century, the case of Nanette Leroux differs sharply from this development in its early date and rural setting.

Filled with intimate information about Nanette's habit and vast quotations of her utterances, the case is noteworthy for the sexual references that contemporaries didn't realize as such; for its specialise in the variation among organic and social time; and for Nanette's fascination with the commodities to be had within the region's nascent market. Goldstein's creation brilliantly situates the textual content in its a number of contexts, examines it from the point of view of early nineteenth-century medication, and makes use of the insights of Foucault and Freud to craft a twenty-first-century interpretation.

A compelling, multilayered account of 1 younger woman's psychological afflictions, Hysteria complex by way of Ecstasy is a unprecedented addition to the cultural and social heritage of psychiatry and medicine.