Mad Men And Medusas: Reclaiming Hysteria And the Effects of Sibling Relations On the Human Condition - Hardcover

Has hysteria really disappeared from the categories of diagnosed mental illnesses while remaining a widely used lay term? Or has it merely become convenient for psychiatrists, psychologists and psychoanalysts to abandon this emotive term for more discreet diagnoses? Juliet Mitchell traces the history of hysteria from the Greek 'wandering womb' to modern day psychiatric diagnoses to argue that we need to reclaim hysteria to understand how trauma and distress express themselves in different societies at different times. She posits a new theory of the causes of trauma that stresses lateral relationships over the classic generational ones. Sibling relations are the great omission in both psychoanalytic theory and clinical practice.

Juliet Mitchell is a psychoanalyst and currently A. D. White Profeesor at large at Cornell University. She is a university lecturer in Gender and Society at Cambridge University and a Fellow of Jesus College. She has one daughter and lives in London.