Hysteria and Psychology

Being a psychology major I felt it best for me to take a second and reflex on hysteria, as we discussed during class, but relate it to the Freudian ideas. Ideas that even now heavily influence our culture, and ideas that during Freud’s time were highly regarded. Freud usually is not well considered for his ideas for women, one of his major ideas regarding women being penis envy. However Freud did deal with female patients and enforced his own ideas upon them. Hysteria was already a condition during the time of Freud, though he explored many reasons for it. When Freud worked with one of his most famous patients, Anna O, he can to a few conclusions. At first Freud believed that hysteria was caused by abuse during childhood, but afterward changed his idea that of women being sexually repressed, the same idea that Moira spoke of in American Horror Story. I found it interesting that this idea could be sourced back to psychology and thought it was interesting that a man who often seems to disregard females came up with this concept. Luckily, psychology has advanced past the point of hysteria being an acceptable diagnosis for women.
-Joan Welch