Saint Hysteria: Neurosis, Mysticism, and Gender in European Culture (review)

This book examines the turn-of-the-century link between the medical perception of hysteria and that era’s response to religiosity, spirituality, and mysticism. In perhaps one of the clearer sentences of the book, Mazzoni describes her theme: “What follows is an analysis of some of the ways in which the metaphors of hysteria have been used and abused in order to explain a different, yet sometimes analogous phenomenon: the mystical experiences of women” (p. 3). Yet, of course, her text is much more ambitious than this: she investigates the many ways in which men have used the language and tools of psychopathology, especially the concept of hysteria, as techniques to maintain women in a subservient role as emotional/illogical creatures.

For those of us who are even slightly positivistic in our approach to data and evidence in support of generalizations, definitions would help. Mazzoni defines the form of mysticism that she will discuss as that of the Brautmystik (bridal mysticism), which is legitimate and relatively unambiguous (although it is not clear how Simone Weil, whom the author discusses at some length, or some of the fictional female protagonists whom Mazzoni analyzes, fit into this definition). Hysteria, however, is nowhere defined. Defining it in fact would not be an easy task, since its use by different literary and professional writers has varied as suited their purposes, but the lack of definition also allows Mazzoni herself to use the notion of hysteria differently as suits her purposes and her arguments.

In the absence of a historical context, Mazzoni makes many generalizations about “the hysteric” that are equally true (or not true) about obsessionals (e.g., the hysteric’s inability to love), or equally true of schizophrenics (e.g., the historical connection between hysteria and the supernatural). Thus it appears that the notion of hysteria is some literary and stylized caricature employed by comparative literature majors that has little relationship to clinical reality.

Finally, Mazzoni’s selection of texts is somewhat mysterious, and one may wonder how Angela of Foligno and Simone Weil fit into the time frame of nineteenth-century literary and psychiatric writings, except that analyses of these other figures illustrate and bolster her case. The book would be considerably enhanced by some photographs of those who play key roles in Mazzoni’s arguments, especially that of the sculpture of The Ecstasy of Saint Theresa (of Avila) by Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598–1680).

Despite all my quibbles with Mazzoni, I find that I strongly agree, although perhaps for different reasons, with some of her major theses—namely, that the convergence of hysteria and mysticism has been enormously exaggerated and exploited to the detriment of sincere religious commitment, and that labeling mystics as hysterics has added very little helpful or penetrating purpose other than to disparage a group (of both men and women) whose vision of what is valuable in life and worth struggling for differed radically from a materialistic, positivistic viewpoint. We are still left with the puzzle of why mystics and hysterics (I do not like this latter term, but use it to designate those persons so designated in Mazzoni’s book) at times resemble each other enough to enable antireligious and antifeminist writers to draw their equivalence. My own thoughts are that some hysterics have modeled themselves after what are culturally transmitted as behaviors of holiness (e.g., Bernini’s statue of Theresa), and that some of the large number of mystics are in fact mystic-wannabees.

In summary, this is a difficult book that has many thoughtful and interesting things to say, but that too often gets lost in the conceptual and verbal obligatory assumptions and rhetoric of feminist criticism.