The ‘secret’ source of ‘female hysteria’: the role that syphilis played in the construction of female sexuality and psychoanalysis in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries

Abstract

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the unspoken fear of syphilis played a significant role in the development of beliefs about female sexuality. Many women were afraid of sexual relationships with men because they feared contracting syphilis, which was, at that time, untreatable. Women also feared passing this disease on to their children. Women's sexual aversion, or repression, became a focus for Freud and his colleagues, whose theory of psychosexual development was based on their treatment of women. This article examines the case of Dora, the memoirs of Mabel Dodge Luhan and other sources to argue that the fear of syphilis was a significant factor in upper- and middle-class women's avoidance of heterosexual relationships. The fear of syphilis, in turn, became a significant factor in the psychoanalytic construction of female sexuality. The social suppression of the fear of syphilis has had a profound impact on theories of women's development. The implication for psychiatry is that our models of psychological development occur within a sociocultural milieu and cannot escape suppressed aspects of our culture.

Gender Differences in Functional Movement Disorders

“…27 There is currently no clear scientific explanation for the differences in gender prevalence favoring females and phenomenology type of FMDs; it can be argued that neurobiological, hormonal, cultural, social, and previous history of psychological or sexual trauma may contribute, although similar gender distribution in patients aged ≥50 years would suggest convergence of neurobiological conditions predisposing to FMDs at this age in both genders. Some researchers have claimed that FNDs are linked to sexual issues in women, including sexual abuse, which may increase their predisposition to FNDs [28][29][30] ; however, this may be an oversimplification, considering emerging evidence attributing a complex and multidimensional nature to FNDs. 2 Our study has some limitations given that the enrollment was carried out in a tertiary, referral center for movement disorders, which may potentially bias the gender and phenomenology distribution of these patients.…”

Dora's mother: a housewife's psychosis

“…The secrecy and fear surrounding venereal disease influenced many social attitudes, reinforced the division between races and social classes, and significantly influenced the construction of female sexuality and the notion of family. 13 Today we also speak of 'reckless transmission' of infection as a legal definition. 14 However, this paper is more concerned with the intrapsychic as an inquiry into the internal forces driving the victim of a sexually transmitted infection when they contract the illness without their conscious knowledge.…”

“…Freud's academic interest lay in working out his theories of hysteria, but one wonders about his being taken aback by the mysterious ways in which female sexuality showed itself or remained obscure, finding its peculiar diversions in a patriarchal social order. The sociocultural aspect of syphilitic infection in the 1900s has been examined extensively, 8 linking to femininity 13 and the family matrix. 12 Feminist writers argue that early psychoanalysts failed to fully acknowledge that, for many, the avoidance of sex with men was based on their fear of contracting venereal disease and, for married women, their fear of passing the disease to their children.…”

“…The secrecy and fear surrounding venereal disease influenced many social attitudes, reinforced the division between races and social classes, and significantly influenced the construction of female sexuality and the notion of family. 13 Today we also speak of ‘reckless transmission’ of infection as a legal definition. 14…”

Double jeopardy: The objectification of women as mothers

“…However, a more sociological and practical explanation based on cultural factors, not intrapsychic and unconscious fantasies, is more universally correct. Upper‐ and middle‐class white women of the Victorian era were afraid of contracting syphilis from their husbands and passing it to their children, thus refused sex with their husbands (Rudnick & Heru, 2017). Freud's explanation for some men's inability to perform with women was that man has a primary hatred of women because of the child's sense that he (sic) had experienced intolerable frustration and/or narcissistic injury at the hands of his mother (May 2001).…”