Saint hysteria
Subtitle: neurosis, mysticism, and gender in European culture
By: Cristina Mazzoni.
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Published: 1996
Place of publication: Ithaca, N.Y
Language: eng
Number of pages: 233
Subjects: Women mystics -- Europe -- Psychology; Christian women saints -- Europe -- Psychology; Psychiatry and religion; Hysteria; Ecstasy
Description: Saint Hysteria examines scientific, literary, and religious texts that share a fascination with the otherness of the female body, whether in ecstatic pleasure or in neurotic pain. Cristina Mazzoni focuses on material from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, mainly in Italy and France. Her approach uses the methodologies of cultural studies and feminism but also benefits from the insights of psychoanalytic criticism.

She asks how the identification of mysticism with hysteria became prevalent, and explores the continuing dialogue between a historicizing view of hysteria and a view of hysteria as repressed religious mysticism.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [213]-225) and index.