Hysteria Trauma And Melancholia

Hysteria, trauma and melancholia are not only powerful tropes in contemporary culture, they are also prominent in the theatre. As the first study in its field, Hysteria, Trauma and Melancholia explores the characteristics and concerns of the Drama of Hysteria, Trauma and Melancholia through in-depth readings of representative plays.

Hysteria, trauma and melancholia are not only powerful tropes in contemporary culture, they are also prominent in the theatre. As the first study in its field, Hysteria, Trauma and Melancholia explores the characteristics and concerns of the Drama of Hysteria, Trauma and Melancholia through in-depth readings of representative plays.

The Trinity of Trauma: Ignorance, Fragility, and Control is structured as a trilogy. This book includes the first two parts: Volume I, The Evolving Concept of Trauma, and Volume II, The Concept and Facts of Dissociation in Trauma, which are predominantly conceptual, theoretical, and empirical in nature.Volume I aims to overcome conceptual flaws that have plagued the trauma field to date. It proposes new definitions of trauma and derivative concepts as well as a dimension of trauma-related disorders. It suggests that individuals and their environment constitute, depend on, and are relative to each other. Volume I unites two groups of trauma-related disorders that were previously contrasted in psychiatric history under various names such as "melancholia" versus "hysteria", "traumatic neurosis" versus "traumatic hysteria", and "posttraumatic stress disorder" versus "dissociative disorders". It also mends the "dissociation" of dissociative and conversion disorders.Volume II analyzes and defines the concepts of "personality", "self", "dissociation in trauma", and "dissociative parts". It explores and documents the biopsychosocial features of different prototypical dissociative parts in traumatized individuals. Important features of these parts also characterize other players in traumatization, stretching from perpetrators to society at large.

This collection analyzes philosophical, psycho-analytic and aesthetic contexts of the discourse of melancholia in British and postcolonial literature and culture and seeks to trace the multi-faceted phenomenon of melancholia from the early modern period to the present. Texts discussed range from Shakespeare and Milton to Coetzee and Barker.

We seem to be living in hysterical times. A simple Google search reveals the sheer bottomless well of “hysterical” discussions on diverse topics such as the #metoo movement, Trumpianism, border wars, Brexit, transgender liberation, Black Lives Matter, COVID-19, and climate change, to name only a few. Against the backdrop of such recent deployments of hysteria in popular discourse––particularly as they emerge in times of material and hermeneutic crisis––Performing Hysteria re-engages the notion of “hysteria”. Performing Hysteria rigorously mines late 20th- and early 21st-century (primarily visual) culture for signs of hysteria. The various essays in this volume contribute to the multilayered and complex discussions that surround and foster this resurgent interest in hysteria––covering such areas as art, literature, theatre, film, television, dance; crossing such disciplines as cultural studies, political science, philosophy, history, media, disability, race and ethnicity, and gender studies; and analysing stereotypical images and representations of the hysteric in relation to cultural sciences and media studies. Of particular importance is the volume's insistence on taking the intersection of hysteria and performance seriously.

Hysteria is alive and well in our present time and is apparently spreading contagiously: especially the second decade of the twenty-first century has displayed an ever-increasing interest in the term. A quick Google search opens the gates to sheer endless swathes of discussions on hysteria, covering almost every aspect of public discourses. The arts—as it is often in such cases—seem conspicuously involved in and engaged with this hysterical discourse. Surprisingly, while the strong academic interest in hysteria throughout the twentieth century and most prominently at the turn of the century is well known and much discussed, the study of how these discourses have continued well into twenty-first-century art practices, is largely pressing on a blind spot. It is the aim of this volume to illustrate how hysteria was already well established within the arts alongside and at times even separately from the much-covered medical studies, and reveal how those current artistic practices very much continue a century spanning cross-fertilization between hysteria and the arts.

How Hysterical reads scenes from the films Light It Up , Three Kings , Remember the Titans , Paris is Burning , Boys Don't Cry , and Magnolia alongside biblical texts from Numbers , Exodus , Isaiah , Micah , Ezekiel and Revelation . An innovation in studies on Bible and film, How Hysterical is less centred on direct citation of the Bible in film than on analyses of hypostasized biblical influence in culture. Here, through accessible engagement with feminist, queer, post-colonial and ideological critical theories, Runions discusses the processes by which biblical and filmic texts can both bolster and disrupt identifications with the norms that drive politics and culture.

This study traces key developments in theatre’s engagement with mental health since the 1970s. It introduces and applies the concept of the ‘mental health play’ as accurate and timely in addressing the way mental distress and mental illness have been brought to the stage. The study argues that the theatre is a central calibrator for reflecting developments and tensions in, as well as attitudes towards, mental health care, and thus opens up a domain that still has stereotypes and myths attached to it. Theatre’s representations of mental distress inform and shape cultural production and vice versa. Mental health plays are central in encouraging and fostering conversations about mental health, and they thus intervene in ongoing debates. Due to its interdisciplinary approach, this study contributes to and extends existing research in multiple fields, including theatre and science, performance studies, and the medical humanities.