The Psychology Book

30

See also: Alfred Binet 50–53 ■ Pierre Janet 54–55 ■ Sigmund Freud 92–99

K

nown as the founder of

modern neurology, French

physician Jean-Martin

Charcot was interested in the

relationship between psychology

and physiology. During the 1860s

and 1870s, he studied “hysteria,” a

term then used to describe extreme

emotional behavior in women,

thought to be caused by problems

with the uterus (hystera in Greek).

Symptoms included excessive

laughing or crying, wild bodily

movements and contortions,

fainting, paralysis, convulsions, and

temporary blindness and deafness.

From observing thousands of

cases of hysteria at the Salpêtrière

Hospital in Paris, Charcot defined

“The Laws of Hysteria,” believing

that he understood the disease

completely. He claimed that hysteria

was a lifelong, inherited condition

and its symptoms were triggered

by shock. In 1882, Charcot stated:

“In the [hysterical] fit... everything

unfolds according to the rules, which

are always the same; they are valid

for all countries, for all epochs, for all

races, and are, in short, universal.”

Charcot suggested that hysteria’s

similarity to a physical disease

warranted a search for a biological

cause, but his contemporaries

dismissed his ideas. Some even

believed that Charcot’s “hysterics”

were merely acting out behavior

that Charcot had suggested to

them. But one student of Charcot,

Sigmund Freud, was convinced

of hysteria’s status as a physical

illness, and was intrigued by it. It is

the first disease Freud describes

in his theory of psychoanalysis. ■

T H E L A W S O F

HYSTERIA ARE

UNIVERSAL

JEAN-MARTIN CHARCOT (1825 –1893)

Charcot gave lectures on hysteria

at the Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris.

He believed hysteria always followed

ordered, clearly structured phases, and

could be cured by hypnotism.

IN CONTEXT

APPROACH

Neurological science

BEFORE

1900 BCE The Egyptian Kahun

Papyrus recounts behaviorial

disturbances in women caused

by a “wandering uterus.”

c.400 BCE Greek physician

Hippocrates invents the term

“hysteria” for certain women’s

illnesses in his book, On the

Diseases of Women.

1662 English physician

Thomas Willis performs

autopsies on “hysterical”

women, and finds no sign

of uterine pathology.

AFTER

1883 Alfred Binet joins

Charcot at the Salpêtrière

Hospital in Paris, and later

writes about Charcot’s use of

hypnotism to treat hysteria.

1895 Sigmund Freud, a

former student of Charcot,

publishes Studies on Hysteria.