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Acting Hysteria: An Analysis Of The Actress And Her Part, Lydia Stryk

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines the woman's part in dramatic representation as a hysterical construct and explores the hystericizing effect that the playing of this construct has on the actress. Drawing on feminist psychoanalytic analyses of male psychology and on the historical origins of male-invented female hysteria, this study uses dramatic representation as a model and metaphor for woman's hystericization in Western culture.

Charcot's theatricalization of female hysteria through public performances of hysterical acts and the Ophelia as psychological/aesthetic model in British mental asylums are investigated as metaphorical sources for a new definition of female hysteria as a disease of performance, of …