Dissenting View

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Continuum Magazine
VOL. 4 No. 6

Elaine Showalter, feminist, cultural critic and Professor of English at Princeton University, USA, flew into London in June promoting her book, Hystories: Hysterical Epidemics and Modern Culture (Picador, £16.99, ISBN 0 330 346709). Showalter’s thesis asserts that America is in the grip of psychogenic diseases – ‘psychological plagues’ or ‘Hystories’. Historically, Showalter’s work expands on Caspar Schmidt’s 1984 essay which theorized that ‘AIDS’ is an example of ‘epidemic hysteria’, by including Gulf War Syndrome, chronic fatigue syndrome (ME), recovered memory, multiple personality disorder, satanic ritual abuse and alien abduction as the ‘pandemic hysterias’ of the late 20th century.

Showalter says she was shocked by the reactions to her book by the chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS/ME) lobby: "They have made me a target. It’s an orchestrated campaign, they have used the Internet to give advice on disrupting the book readings and writing letters to book stores. Some of the threats were obscene… But I’m not going to stop, I’m not afraid of them".

Showalter focuses on a cluster of causes that have instigated today’s proliferating hysterias: disease scares (‘AIDS’); religious fundamentalism; lack of self-worth resulting in a need for recognition through a dis-eased identity; medical market forces; popular media; sensational medical journalism (‘epidemic’ and ‘plague’ mongering); and communities of shared disease-identity (e.g. the ‘HIV/AIDS’ Community, the ME Community).

Showalter argues that victims of syndromes are encouraged to blame external sources for psychic problems: "…they learn about diseases from the media, unconsciously develop the symptoms, and then attract media attention in an endless cycle. Culture forces people to deny the psychological and emotional sources of their symptoms, and to insist that they must be biological and beyond their control, for them to view themselves as legitimately ill…"

It seems our ‘psychoanalytic post-modern age’ has made various hysterical symptoms popular, fashionable and contagious. Bulemia, anorexia and ‘AIDS’ have been very much the vogue conditions to get ‘into’: many people in high-circles from the arts to showbiz to royalty have sported these desired illnesses. Princess Diana expressed her neurosis through the physical form of bulemia. Showalter terms these conditions ‘communicable diseases’ (psychologically infectious), easily transmitted by media-hype: the vulnerable and impressionable masses internalize popular illness as a group-identity through the Internet, the popular press, television, news letters, and science journals – as well as work-shops/support groups.

The controversy surrounding Showalter’s thesis centres on the Gulf War Syndrome which she terms a ‘psychogenic sickness’: "Gulf War Syndrome differs dramatically from the syndromes of earlier modern wars. That difference lies in the ways both American and British politicians and media have rejected psychological explanations, and displaced the medical investigation of illness to charges of government cover-up and conspiracy. In the US, about 80,000 of the 700,000 American troops who served in the Gulf have reported over 120 different symptoms ranging from hair loss, headaches, heartburn and fatigue to skin rashes and muscle aches. Despite rumors of widespread birth defects, gynaecological infections in wives, and contagion to health workers, there is no medical or statistical evidence that such events have occurred", she claims.

Generally we look for external pathogenic or toxic causes on which to ‘blame’ our illnesses, as with ‘HIV’ and AIDS, and pesticides and GWS. ‘HIV/AIDS’ counselors and physicians never ask why a patient is dis-eased, so obsessed are they with ‘HIV’ fetishism that they never really ‘see’ the patient. The Great War, the Gulf War and the AIDS War have produced psychological illness in young males but these hysterias have been over-looked by medicine. War neurosis is stigmatized as ‘unmanly’, therefore war veterans demand a clinical cause for their distress. There is no doubt that Gulf War and AIDS War victims are suffering from ‘real’ physical complaints from toxic-chemical assault (organ-phosphate- insecticides to cyto-toxic ‘antiviral’ drugs). But Showalter stresses that war neurosis can equally produce ‘real’ pain and suffering: "The suffering of Gulf War Syndrome is real by any measure, and the symptoms caused by war neurosis are just as painful and incapacitating as if they were caused by sarin, pesticides or vaccines. War neurosis is not imaginary, or fake, or simply in the head; it is a valid explanation of pain…Until we can acknowledge that war makes people sick no objective panels or costly studies can change the likelihood that veterans will seek to dignify their symptoms and reaffirm their patriotism by insisting on material cause."

The Independent (4 May, 1997) ran two letters taking Showalter to task with the headline: ‘Try a Gulf War chemical cocktail yourself’. Elizabeth Sigmund, of the Organo-Phosphate Information Network, wrote: "Will Showalter agree to wear a flea-collar containing an organo-phosphate (OP) insecticide named diazinon for two weeks, as US troops did; allow her bedding to be sprayed every other day with a similar insecticide; and take NAPs tablets (containing pyridostigmine bromide which has now been admitted to enhance the effect of OPs), as thousands of UK and US troops did, for the same period?…It is interesting that Ms Showalter spends three months each year at the Welcome Institute in London. We have evidence connecting the research being carried out by Simon Wessely and Anthony David with Welcome; both men have a) suggested that the cause of GWS is psychosomatic, post-traumatic stress syndrome, and b) received large chunks of funding from the Pentagon…"

However, Showalter has not ruled out chemical/organic components as contributory factors in causing illness in cases designated as CFS, Gulf War Syndrome and ‘AIDS’ despite being misinterpreted on this point. Rather she objects to the ‘illness ideologies’ that have sought to ‘blame’ external causes (chemical and viral) as the major focus for the war against disease – always backed up by vested political and scientific multinational interest groups. Showalter asserts that 90% of those suffering from ME (‘CFS’) are white, and that 70% are female; like ‘AIDS,’ can ME be an illness of pathogenic/viral origin since it is gender, culture and even class specific? ‘AIDS’ is predominantly male, ME is predominantly female. Why is ME common among middle-class Western women yet seldom – if ever – affects Third World peasants? By combining female ME and male AIDS one might have the complete picture of the AIDS epidemic equally distributed between the sexes but with gender specific symptoms.

Many gay men become ill because their mental and emotional resources are depleted. Recreational drugs, while effecting a momentary high inevitably lead to depression and alienation which in turn induces psychosomatic conditions which in the presence of the bogus HIV positive result are absurdly nominated as ‘AIDS’ – compounding their ‘condition’. The ‘HIV+’ test result has done more psychological and immunological damage than the non-existent ‘HIV’. Stress affects the brain, cardiovascular system, endocrine system, immune system and various hormonal responses. Stress is an important contributing factor to the multiple range of physiological illnesses currently being reported as Gulf War Syndrome (GWS) or AIDS Related Conditions (ARC).

For Showalter dis-ease does not operate in a vacuum: we actively identify with dis-ease as a cultural specific identity. Many gay men now act-out or, rather, act-up, Queer Hysteria as a herd instinct identity situating themselves as homohiv, homoaids rather than homosexual. Dis-ease identity is fast displacing the homosexual identity of post-Stonewall. For Freud, Hysteria was considered a female attribute but examples of early Christian saints suggest Hysteria is equally a male prerogative. ‘Belief’ by thousands of gay men in ‘HIV’ is a product of group-tranced Queer Hysteria. Showalter notes that hundreds of thousand of highly educated people are drawn to beliefs such as alien abduction and devil worship and participate in these well-organized movements. Likewise learned cultural critics and science journalists irrationally believe in ‘HIV’.

Showalter’s urgent appeal is that psychogenic symptoms should entail no stigma and that we have it in ourselves to confront our own hystories, our own demons. Gay men need to wrestle and exorcise their demon ‘HIV’ and learn to confront their own pycho-pathologies rather than blaming ‘HIV’. She states: "I wrote the book to destigmatise hysterical illness. I am in complete sympathy with the people suffering from these syndromes. As someone who is outside the fray, I thought I was in a position to raise difficult questions. I’m not going to solve this problem, but I can at least bring it out into the open. My mantra is: Knowledge is the cure."

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