In this post, I'll be continuing my review and summary of Rachel P. Maines' monograph entitled, The Technology of Orgams: "Hysteria", the Vibrator, and Women's Sexual Satisfaction, this time focusing on the second section of her book, which is concerned with "hysteria" in relation to orgasm.
(Or, as Maines describes it, the pathologization of women's sexuality.) I will begin with a summary of Maines research, and then suggest some complications.
Book cover.
Antiquity and the Middle Ages
The symptoms doctors were most concerned with in this period were fainting, anxiety, insomnia, muscle spasms, shortness of breath, loss of appetite, lack of interest in having sex with an "appropriate male partner", and/or "causing trouble for others". (23). These symptoms, when they manifested in women (and only when they manifested in women), were assumed to be the result of the woman not getting enough "good sex", and/or that the vagina or uterus was malfunctioning, or even "suffocating" the woman ( 23-24). Doctors believed that "fluids" needed to let out of the vagina, and it was observed that women became quite wet indeed during genital massage, so that was what often was prescribed- masturbation of course, was forbidden, and husbands and midwives were expected to do the "massaging" ( 23-25). Occasionally, vaginal suppositories, which were said to be irritating, were inserted instead ( 24). As discussed in the last section, it was not understood that "fluid releasing" was part of female sexual stimulation or orgasm.
Renaissance
In this era, doctors continued to believe that "fluid" needed to be released, and that midwives and husband should do the "releasing", and not the woman herself (27). However, it was emphasized during this period, that young "hysterics" (still all women) needed to marry in order to be cured, and married "hysterics" would be cured through penetrative sex with their husbands (, 27). Any other curative method was a last resort.
18th and 19th Centuries
The 18th and 19th centuries were marked by a greater variety of theories. Many doctors believed that "hysteria" was caused directly by sexual deprivation, others believed it was caused by masturbation, and still others believed that it did not actually exist at all, and that women were faking their symptoms in order to get attention (32, 42). This was also a period in which, for the first time, a few (although not the majority) actually believed that men could also be "hysterical", although they were referred to as "hypochondriacs", which doesn't mean what it means today- it simply means a man who was sexually deprived to the point of apparent illness (32).
Especially for doctors who believed that masturbation was the cause, marriage was still the the popular prescribed cure ( 32). If this was not possible, horseback riding and "genital massage" (still not by the woman herself), was suggested instead. (32). "Hysterics" received little to no sympathy, and were regarded as failures to their husbands ( 39).
Sometimes, during these massages, of their genitalia, breasts, or even torsos, women would laugh or scream- other times, they would sob (34).
As discussed in the first section of her book, Freud's understanding of these treatments as sexual largely put an end to them. While initially a believer in hydrotherapy (for which women paid unbelievable amounts of money for each year) and even electrotherapy for "hysterics", of course, eventually Freud came to believe that "hysteria" was the result not of sex deprivation, but due to "imagined" childhood trauma (44). He believed that "hysterics", like his other patients, could be cured through talking with him about it (the "talking cure"), which is, of course, more or less what standard therapy is today (44).
A critique I have of this section, is that Maines' seems to be taking it for granted that these women were sexually deprived (and that this deprivation was the cause of their symptoms), and that these attempts at curing them were helpful, wanted, and non-traumatic, and I don't see any evidence for this.
I think, most likely, given that we've learned that half of less women experience orgasm through the kind of sex Maines calls 'androcentric" (penetration solely), and little was known about women's sexuality and few believed she had a right to it in Christian society, few women were sexually satisfied in this period. But I don't know that it follows that the sexual deprivation would cause things like "causing trouble for others", or losing your appetite, or being anxious, or not sleeping. To me, it seems like what is happening here, is that women who exhibited inappropriate sexual behavior, or really, an inappropriate behavior, were being pathologized and told that their vaginas were making them sick- and they could only be cured through marriage, which is, conveniently, what society and their parents wanted for them also.
Anna O./Bertha Pappenheim,
What I also think is happening (or, know is happening from other sources) is that women who were suffering from depression were not taken seriously, and instead were diagnosed as "hysterics"- there are many cases, such as the more famous "Anna O" and "Dora" cases, in which women who would now see as depressed, or even survivors of sexual assault, were dismissed by Freud and his colleagues as deceptive "hysterics", and denied proper treatment based on that diagnosis.(Darcy Buerkle discusses these cases, and the general lack of seriousness afforded to women's despair in the "Freudian age" in her book, Nothing Happened: Charlotte Salomon and an Archive of Suicide)
I also don't think it should be ignored that for many girls and women, who were likely pressured into these treatments, or outright forced by parents or others, some of these very early, physically intimate treatments, while they might have resulted in orgasm, were likely also traumatic.
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