The Transient Nature of Hysteria: How Patriarchal Victorian Values Fostered its Existence
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Hysteria is an everchanging illness that has historically been regarded as both a medical and mental disorder. Characterized by a plethora of symptoms such as anxiety, irritability, and grand movements, the disease was particularly diagnosed in females at its peak in the 19th century. Key figures of the 19th century’s medical and psychological spheres, such as Jean-Martin Charcot and Sigmund Freud, contributed to the perception of hysteria as a predominantly female disease. Charcot’s presentations of the female hysterical body, coupled with the patriarchal values of the Victorian Era, created the perfect environment for hysteria to be viewed in this way. Although once quite prominent, the diagnosis of hysteria ultimately disappeared with its removal from the DSM-III in 1980. Its disappearance and transient nature raise questions about how societal and cultural factors impact the narrative of illnesses. These questions can be approached using Canadian philosopher Ian Hacking’s framework for transient mental illnesses. This framework asserts that mental illnesses are transient because they require a specific environment to flourish, often referred to as an “ecological niche”. Furthermore, Hacking suggests there are four possible vectors that contribute to the development of these illnesses: 1) the illness and its symptoms must be deemed abnormal, 2) the deviant behaviour of the illness must align with other illnesses, 3) the illness must lie between a cultural polarity, and 4) the illness must provide release. Thus, using the concept of Ian Hacking’s framework, hysteria can be viewed as a transient mental illness fostered by the patriarchal values of the Victorian Era and can be examined through each of the four vectors.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.006 | 0.011 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.017 | 0.059 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.013 | 0.010 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.009 |
| Research integrity | 0.003 | 0.007 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".