Summary & Response Essay 

In September 1909, Sigmund Freud presented his first lecture out of five on Psycho-Analysis to students at Clark University. Beginning his lecture, Freud established his credibility on this concept by expressing he’s not an expert and there’s no required medical knowledge to understand him as he presents information on behalf of his observations and works under the influence of Viennese physician,  Dr. Josef Breuer. When discussing the concept of psycho-analysis, the mystery surrounding hysteria played a major role in its development.  The term hysteria is derived from the Greek word “hustera” meaning the female womb, establishing the origin of the illness from women. Due to the lack of medical knowledge during the early 1900s,  it’s evident that hysteria was characterized as non-important and non-medical by many physicians. Physicians— predominately male— overlooked many cases due to their ego, while hysterical women suffered internally as  presented in Freud’s first lecture and Charlotte Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper.”

Physicians, swear an oath to diagnose and prescribe treatment in their patients’ best interest no matter the circumstance. When viewing patients, Freud established that his mentor, Dr. Breuer, and he were accompanied by doctors during the first stage of their journey in understanding psycho-analysis. As doctors interacted with hysterical patients, there were cases of misdiagnoses;  “hysteria has been substituted for one of severe organic disease of the brain,” proving the lack of knowledge concerning hysteria(Freud 2201). By hysterical patients being misdiagnosed, it shows a decline in prognosis and care from their physicians. Hysteria was outside of their scope of medicine, proving to make them uncomfortable despite all their knowledge obtained in anatomy, physiology, and pathology. When confronted, many of the doctors “cannot understand hysteria, and in the face of it, he is himself a layman,” leading to the lack of sympathy for these patients (Freud 2201). To the doctors, ‘hysterical people are transgressing the laws of science – like heretics in the eyes of the orthodox’, which they can’t accept due to fear and their ego. As doctors, they feel they’re entitled to know everything concerning the human body since they studied medicine, but hysteria’s unfamiliarity promotes fear within as they don’t want to accept the fact that they don’t know what is hysteria.  

In contrast to the doctors in lecture 1, Dr. Breuer showed sympathy for his patient. His patient was a twenty-one-year-old, who developed a series of physical and psychological disturbances over the course of two years including rigid paralysis, loss of sensation, and a severe nervous cough. Furthermore, the patient was subject to “conditions of ‘absence’,1 of confusion, of delirium, and of alteration of her whole personality, to which we shall have presently to turn our attention” ( Freud 2200). The patient was clearly displaying symptoms of a severe disease that captured the attention of Dr. Breuer, despite not knowing how to diagnose her. He still gave her sympathy, which led to the development of his cure. The talking cure— chimney sweeping— was a way to sweep out the traumatic events in the patient’s mind as she uttered words and a few sentences. It helped improve her condition because for once her illness was addressed rather than dismissed like many other patients. 

The relationship between the narrator and her husband John in “The Yellow Wallpaper is complex considering the fact that he is both her husband and physician. John believes that he is prescribing the best cure possible based on his knowledge, but he was actually hurting her due to his ego as a man. John refuses to admit that his prescribed treatment was not helping his wife. The resting cure, where the narrator stays in isolation in the nursery to rest her mind and not work, was a treatment the wife disagreed with. She was forbidden to work and states, “Personally, I believe that congenial work, with excitement and change, would do me good” (Gilman 648). This shows that the narrator’s input/ idea as to what would benefit her in her treatment as a patient is completely dismissed. 

It appears that only the words of John, a man with a  physician title matters,  considering the fact that he doesn’t believe his wife is sick. Although the narrator acknowledges that her husband loves her by saying, “He is very careful and loving,” she adds that he “hardly lets me stir without special direction”, which highlights John is domineering (Gilman 648). The diction in the narrator’s words highlight that John enjoys being in control of his wife. The fact that his wife— a grown woman— requires special direction shows he likes to guide her as if she was a lost child. Because the wife is not permitted to work or have human interaction, she takes the risk to write in private despite knowing if she was caught, she would be met with “heavy opposition” (Gilman 648). By taking this risk, it ignites more fear in the narrator; she is already fearful of what John would do if he was to discover her not completing his prescribed treatment. 

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