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Invention of hysteria : Charcot and the photographic iconography of the Salpêtrière / Georges Didi-Huberman; translated by Alisa Hartz.

By: Contributor(s): Language: English, French Publisher: Cambridge, Mass. ; London : MIT, 2003Description: xii, 373 pages : illustrations ; 26 cmContent type:
  • text
Media type:
  • unmediated
Carrier type:
  • volume
ISBN:
  • 0262042150
  • 0262541807
  • 9780262042154
Uniform titles:
  • Invention de l'hysterie. English
Subject(s):
Contents:
I. Spectacular Evidence -- 1. Outbreaks -- 2. Clinical Knowledge -- 3. Legends of Photography -- 4. Thousand Forms, In None -- II. Charming Augustine -- 5. Auras -- 6. Attacks and Exposures -- 7. Repetitions, Rehearsals, Staging -- 8. Show-Stopper -- App. 1. "Living Pathological Museum" -- App. 2. Charcot's Clinical Lectures -- App. 4. Preface to the Photographic Journal of the Hospitals of Paris -- App. 5. Preface to the Iconographie photographique de la Salpetriere (vol. I) -- App. 6. Preface to the Iconographie photographique de la Salpetriere (vol. II) -- App. 7. Photographic Platform, Headrest, and Gallows -- App. 8. "Observation" and the Photograph at the Salpetriere -- App. 9. "Photographic Card" at the Salpetriere -- App. 10. Technique of Forensic Photography -- App. 11. Portrait's Veil, the Aura -- App. 12. "Auracular" Self-Portrait -- App. 13. Aura Hysterica (Augustine) -- App. 14. Explanation of the Synoptic Table of the Great Hysterical Attack -- App. 15. "Scintillating Scotoma" -- App. 16. Cure or Experimentation? -- App. 17. Gesture and Expression: Cerebral Automatism -- App. 18. Tableau Vivant of Cataleptics -- App. 19. Provoked Deliria: Augustine's Account -- App. 20. Theatrical Suggestion -- App. 21. Somnambular Writing -- App. 22. How Far Does Hypnotic Suggestion Go?
Summary: In this classic of French cultural studies, Georges Didi-Huberman traces the intimate and reciprocal relationship between the disciplines of psychiatry and photography in the late nineteenth century. Focusing on the immense photographic output of the Salpetriere hospital, the notorious Parisian asylum for insane and incurable women, Didi-Huberman shows the crucial role played by photography in the invention of the category of hysteria. Under the direction of the medical teacher and clinician Jean-Martin Charcot, the inmates of Salpetriere identified as hysterics were methodically photographed, providing skeptical colleagues with visual proof of hysteria's specific form. These images, many of which appear in this book, provided the materials for the multivolume album Iconographie photographique de la Salpetriere.As Didi-Huberman shows, these photographs were far from simply objective documentation. The subjects were required to portray their hysterical type--they performed their own hysteria. Bribed by the special status they enjoyed in the purgatory of experimentation and threatened with transfer back to the inferno of the incurables, the women patiently posed for the photographs and submitted to presentations of hysterical attacks before the crowds that gathered for Charcot's Tuesday Lectures.Charcot did not stop at voyeuristic observation. Through techniques such as hypnosis, electroshock therapy, and genital manipulation, he instigated the hysterical symptoms in his patients, eventually giving rise to hatred and resistance on their part. Didi-Huberman follows this path from complicity to antipathy in one of Charcot's favorite cases, that of Augustine, whose image crops up again and again in the Iconographie. Augustine's virtuosic performance of hysteria ultimately became one of self-sacrifice, seen in pictures of ecstasy, crucifixion, and silent cries.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

I. Spectacular Evidence -- 1. Outbreaks -- 2. Clinical Knowledge -- 3. Legends of Photography -- 4. Thousand Forms, In None -- II. Charming Augustine -- 5. Auras -- 6. Attacks and Exposures -- 7. Repetitions, Rehearsals, Staging -- 8. Show-Stopper -- App. 1. "Living Pathological Museum" -- App. 2. Charcot's Clinical Lectures -- App. 4. Preface to the Photographic Journal of the Hospitals of Paris -- App. 5. Preface to the Iconographie photographique de la Salpetriere (vol. I) -- App. 6. Preface to the Iconographie photographique de la Salpetriere (vol. II) -- App. 7. Photographic Platform, Headrest, and Gallows -- App. 8. "Observation" and the Photograph at the Salpetriere -- App. 9. "Photographic Card" at the Salpetriere -- App. 10. Technique of Forensic Photography -- App. 11. Portrait's Veil, the Aura -- App. 12. "Auracular" Self-Portrait -- App. 13. Aura Hysterica (Augustine) -- App. 14. Explanation of the Synoptic Table of the Great Hysterical Attack -- App. 15. "Scintillating Scotoma" -- App. 16. Cure or Experimentation? -- App. 17. Gesture and Expression: Cerebral Automatism -- App. 18. Tableau Vivant of Cataleptics -- App. 19. Provoked Deliria: Augustine's Account -- App. 20. Theatrical Suggestion -- App. 21. Somnambular Writing -- App. 22. How Far Does Hypnotic Suggestion Go?

In this classic of French cultural studies, Georges Didi-Huberman traces the intimate and reciprocal relationship between the disciplines of psychiatry and photography in the late nineteenth century. Focusing on the immense photographic output of the Salpetriere hospital, the notorious Parisian asylum for insane and incurable women, Didi-Huberman shows the crucial role played by photography in the invention of the category of hysteria. Under the direction of the medical teacher and clinician Jean-Martin Charcot, the inmates of Salpetriere identified as hysterics were methodically photographed, providing skeptical colleagues with visual proof of hysteria's specific form. These images, many of which appear in this book, provided the materials for the multivolume album Iconographie photographique de la Salpetriere.As Didi-Huberman shows, these photographs were far from simply objective documentation. The subjects were required to portray their hysterical type--they performed their own hysteria. Bribed by the special status they enjoyed in the purgatory of experimentation and threatened with transfer back to the inferno of the incurables, the women patiently posed for the photographs and submitted to presentations of hysterical attacks before the crowds that gathered for Charcot's Tuesday Lectures.Charcot did not stop at voyeuristic observation. Through techniques such as hypnosis, electroshock therapy, and genital manipulation, he instigated the hysterical symptoms in his patients, eventually giving rise to hatred and resistance on their part. Didi-Huberman follows this path from complicity to antipathy in one of Charcot's favorite cases, that of Augustine, whose image crops up again and again in the Iconographie. Augustine's virtuosic performance of hysteria ultimately became one of self-sacrifice, seen in pictures of ecstasy, crucifixion, and silent cries.

Translated from the French.