The photograph, then, becomes a representation of a representation of a disease that represents. In other words, in order to produce the most perfect images of hysteria, the hysteric — a woman whose illness simulates the symptoms of other diseases — was transformed, through hypnosis, into an artificial hysteric who perfectly simulated the simulations of hysteria. The medical photograph becomes a copy of a copy of a copy, a representation so far removed from the original that all duplicitous traits, were easily erased, leaving the deranged and chaotic nature of the original far behind. The photograph succeeded in turning the hysteric into a wholly artificial being, literally a flat, framed, unmoving image. .Asti Hustvedt
About This Quote
This quote is a perfect example in which a person is permanently shown as something that they are not. In this instance, it is a woman who was previously diagnosed with hysteria and treated for it, but after the treatment has been completed, she is no longer treated like a hysterical patient. She is treated like any other patient who had the same disease and then received the same treatment. After treatment was completed, she was no longer seen as a woman who could be prone to hysteria.
Source: The Decadent Reader: Fiction, Fantasy, And Perversion From Findesiacle France
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