CHAPTER 6. Mystical Pathography: A Case of Maso-fetishism in the Goncourts' Madame Gervaisais
Emily S. Apter
Cornell University Press eBooks July 6, 2018 DOI: 10.7591/9781501722691-007 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Historical analysis Peer reviewed |
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| Key points | Argues that Charcot and Richer's clinical classification of hysteria drew directly on the vocabulary and scenography of Christian devotional practice, interpreting female hysterical attacks as mimed stages of the cross and thereby medicalizing religious excess. |
Abstract
The nineteenth-century medicalization of religious excess was given its greatest impetus by Jean-Martin Charcot and Paul Richer in their iconographic and clinical studies of hysteria.In Charcot's /conographie photographique de la Salpetriere (1876), Les Demoniaques dans l'art ( i 886), and La Foi qui guerit ( 1897) and in Richer's Etudes cliniques sur la grande hysterie (1881/85), they examined the female imitatio christi and classified related spiritual performatives: mystical folly, spirit-possession, the convulsionaries of Saint-Medard (a cult renowned for its collective ej aculations on the walls of the church), faith healing, exorcism rites, and attacks of ecstasy and erotic delirium.Charcot's division of hysteria into five passional attitudes Appel, Supplication, Erotisme, Menace, Extase-drew directly on the vocabulary of devotional practice.Richer, the more specialized in visual classifications of the two, deciphered the scenographies of hysterical fe male bodies as so many mimed stages of the cross.The Passion, or chemin de la croix, could be identified when the patient roamed over her bed on bent knees, head bowed, eyes wide open.Contractions and convulsions invariably followed-what Charcot and Richer called attaques demoniaques, in which the patient appeared to be possessed by the Devil.Then the torso would stiffen, and each arm would be flung out to the side (as if nailed to a cross) with the head dropping forward over one shoulder.This stage was dubbed the crucifiement and was typically succeeded by the descente de la croix, a state of physical exhaustion and mental disorientation.The finale was punctuated by extase (where the patient clasped her 1.