Invention of Hysteria: Charcot and the Photographic Iconography of the Salpetriere
by: Georges Didi-Huberman and Alisa Hartz

Hardcover. Cambridge MA, MIT, 1st, 2003, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, pages. The story of how hysterics were "invented" in 19th-century Paris is a fascinating one. All the more so because the staged performances that Freud witnessed at the famous Salpetriere asylum were to form the basis of his theory of hysteria, a theory which had a lasting impact on both psychiatry and medicine. Photography played an important role in the way doctors learned about so-called hysteria, often under the guise of objectivity.