Hysteria at Intervals

(De)Pathologization of Sexuality in the History of Psychoanalysis

Abstract

Despite the increasing interest in the history of sexuality, there remains a significant risk in the history of science, namely, skepticism as an adverse reaction to the critical reconstruction of the contingent emergence of any scientific theory. It is important to understand how an excessive critical spirit might lead to an anti-scientific attitude to find alternative ways of historizing the scientia sexualis. I explore such alternative paths through the history of hysteria, a highly polemical phenomenon that intertwined neurology, psychiatry, psychoanalysis, feminism, literature and, of course, sexuality. After highlighting some of the controversies around the topic, I discuss the ontological status of hysteria and how to conduct historical research on it without falling into the Scylla of naturalism or the Charybdis of constructivism.