Dawa Sonam 

Summary and Response 

Mental health plays a big role in our life since the way we think, feel and communicate are all dependent on our mental state. Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, gives an insight which focuses on patients who are suffering from a mental disorder known as hysteria in Lecture I. Freud’s colleague, Dr. Josef Breur, worked on Freud’s theory of psychoanalysis to treat patients who are suffering from hysteria. According to Freud, the patients suffer from hysteria due to traumatic events they experience and also because the patients keep their emotions repressed. “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman shows the harsh reality of hysterical patients through the main narrator’s point of view. Both Freud and Gilman’s share how the doctor’s attitude towards hysterical patients were different from other patients who suffered from organic illnesses. Freud greatly emphasizes how doctors didn’t fully understand the illness since it was out of their scope of knowledge but Dr. Breuer took a different approach and actually showed interest in helping the hysterical patients.

As Freud explains in Lecture I, patients that suffered from hysteria weren’t given the same sympathy by the doctors and were treated differently than patients with organic illnesses. Freud describes how “It is noticeable that his attitude towards hysterical patients is quite other than towards sufferers from organic diseases. He does not have the same sympathy for the former as for the latter” (Freud 2201). This quote demonstrates how much differently the doctors treated the hysterical patients and how the doctors didn’t care whether the patients suffered or not. Freud also talks about how the doctors don’t understand hysteria and doesn’t make an effort to actually diagnose the patients. Freud also talks about how the doctors didn’t fully grasp the situation or the reasons behind hysteria and failed to understand it. Freud explains how the doctors “attribute every kind of wickedness to them, accuses them of exaggeration, of deliberate deceit, of malingering. And he punishes them by withdrawing his interest from them” (Freud 2201). This quote perfectly shows how the doctors despised the patients because of their own personal belief and even judged them. Not only did they fail to diagnose them properly they even punished them by completely ignoring them. Since the doctors couldn’t properly understand hysteria, the doctors made sure to not pay attention to hysterical patients since it would hurt their ego to admit their lack of information on the illness this made the doctors lose their interest in properly diagnosing hysterical patients and even treated the hysterical patients differently.

Unlike other doctors, Dr. Breuer actually cared about the hysterical patients and wanted to properly diagnose them. Freud states how Dr. Breuer gave his patient “both sympathy and interest, even though, to begin with, he did not know how to help her” (Freud 2202). Dr. Breuer didn’t want these patients to keep suffering and tried his best even though he himself was unsure of the proper way to diagnose the hysterical patient. While other doctors gave up and ignored these hysterical patients, Dr. Breuer values his patients’ health and wants to help these patients escape from their mental illness. The patient herself makes Dr. Breuer’s “tasks easier” since she acknowledges his capabilities as a doctor (Freud 2202). Dr. Breuer used hypnosis to find out that “absences was a result of the stimulus proceeding from these highly emotional phantasies” (Freud 2202). Dr. Breur came up with this conclusion after spending many days doing the hypnotic procedure on the hysterical patients. This shows how much effort Dr. Breuer put in to make sure he finds a way to treat the hysterical patient’s mental illness.

“The Yellow Wallpaper” perfectly illustrates Freud’s criticism of most doctors since the doctors didn’t care enough to understand the root of hysteria and didn’t know how to diagnose a hysterical patient properly. As Freud explained, most doctors weren’t specialized in diagnosing mental illnesses since “Medical skill is in most cases powerless against severe diseases of the brain.” (Freud 2201). The narrator described her husband John and her brother as a “physician of high standing” (Gilman 648), but both of them fail to properly diagnose their own family member which shows that they care enough to look more into her symptoms. John told his wife to practice rest cure since that’s the only thing that was believed to cure hysteria. John is similar to these doctors which Freud criticized since he followed what every other doctor was doing which ultimately led to his wife’s downfall. John also fails to notice what the narrator needs to do in order to overcome the illness which is to express herself in ways she feels comfortable. He limits the narrator to do any normal activity and even takes away her child from her. As the story progresses, the narrator gets attached to the wallpaper more and more and eventually stops expressing herself through her writings. John’s failure as a physician fits Freud’s criticisms of most doctors due to his lack of willingness to understand the illness and properly diagnose it.

Hysterical patients had to greatly suffer since doctors wouldn’t try to understand the illness properly and chose to ignore any patients who suffered from hysteria. Dr. Breuer however, saw it differently and wanted these hysterical patients to escape from their suffering. Dr. Breuer was respected by the patients for his character and his intellect which made it his job much easier. Gilman and Freud perfectly portrayed how badly the doctors treated the hysterical patients and it’s sad how much the hysterical patients had to suffer because of these kinds of doctors . Mental health is not something you should take lightly and you should keep in mind that everyone in every age can suffer from depression and anxiety so you shouldn’t ignore them when you see the signs.