Siri Hustvedt’s The Shaking Woman or A History of Nerves takes us into her experiences of having seizures. The first episode occurred while she giving a speech at her father’s memorial in 2006. The author states that she was able to finish out her speech clearly during the first episode, even though she was shaking. I honestly found this a bit puzzling, I have seen people have seizures before and I have seen them fall and shake violently at which point they would be turned to the side so in case they threw up, they would not choke to death. Maybe due to Hustvedt’s previous experiences with migraines she was able to control the episode a bit better than the people I have seen having seizures? Hustvedt also admits to avoiding getting diagnosed by a neurologist and attempts to diagnose her self. She diagnosed her condition as having “conversion disorder” also known as “hysteria”. We briefly discussed the term hysteria in class and associated it with being a bit crazy. I have used the term “that’s hysterical” before to describe the feeling of finding something extremely funny. Acknowledging that “hysteria” is actually associated with violent seizures changes the meaning of the term entirely for me. It’s a scary situation to be in, not knowing when the episodes could arise and not really being able to control it. Initially Hustvedt presumed that the episode occurred during a moment or grief over her dead father but the theory didn’t last for long because the next episode arose while she was teaching writing to psych patients. The scenario was entirely different so it goes to show that these episodes do not have anything to do with personal grief and it could be unpredictable. Hustvedt describes her disorder as a mind-body problem in that there is a difference between psychiatry and neurology; the mind versus the brain and that distinction is important to understand in order to solve this medical mystery.
“Is Hysteria Real? upholds the conventional belief: if you can see it, it’s real and physical. If you can’t, it’s unreal and mental” ( 188). The question arises here about what seems true to us and what we think about it? It depends on the way we see things in others. The decision is in our hands and the way we make decisions according to our daily life experience. I do agree with you about the things getting confusing in between but the author leave it in our hands to make the connections. She herself wants to seek for the answer and name the illness that she has, “no simple identifiable cause and effect to illuminate what exactly is wrong with me” ( 188). Throughout, she mentions about her father’s death, maybe that’s the cause of her shaking.