Humiliation and the Cultural and Relational Structuring of Hysteria: Reply to Commentaries

In this reply to the discussions by Muriel Dimen and Richard Lasky of “Hysteria and Humiliation” I emphasize how historical theoretical conceptualizations of hysteria have always been informed by derogatory attitudes. I concur with Dimen's view that power is always invoked in gender and race relations and that these inevitably find their way into the clinical. I disagree with Lasky's view that the hysteric can be understood primarily through the operation of “autonomous mental events” and that too great a reliance on this concept obscures the role of cultural and developmental experiences of humiliation in the origins and maintenance of hysteric phenomena.