Through Madness We Can Reach God: Female Hysteria, Possession, & Clarice Lispector

“I haven’t been human for a long time. They wanted me to be an object. – But I don’t totally obey: if I have to be an object, let me be an object that screams.”
Clarice Lispector

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Apologies for any voiceover issues, the majority of the audio was recorded while I was recovering from a month long illness that left me without much of a voice, all will be fixed in the next video 🥀

A few corrections I’d like to make since posting:

“Studies On Hysteria” was published in 1895, not 1889, and although Freud and Breuer did popularize the idea of men also having hysteria through the publishing of “Studies On Hysteria,” they weren’t the first to discuss it. French neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot (1825–1893) went against the ideas of his peers, and believed that “hysteria was an organic condition which could be caused by trauma and occur as such in ‘models of masculinity as railway engineers or soldiers’, thus leading the way in understanding neurological symptoms arising from trauma.”

Years later, Freud and Breuer also believed that hysteria was linked to traumatic events, and that it could affect men as well as women, and came up with the “talking cure” in an attempt to treat what they viewed as repressed and “strangulated” emotions and events.

Apologies for any mistakes that I didn’t catch before posting, I am only human after all. If there are any others I’ll add them here.
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I have been captivated by the words of Clarice Lispector for a while now, and really enjoyed being able to tether her words, worlds, and characters to my favorite film, Possession. I sincerely hope you enjoy it, and that it resonates with you in some way.

With love,
video blonde

Sources:
“The Imitation of the Rose” - Clarice Lispector
“That They Be Keepers of The Home”: The Effect of Conservative Religion on Early and Late Transitions into Housewifery” - Darren Sherkat
https://www.theguardian.com/commentis...
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles...
“Dead Blondes and Bad Mothers: Monstrosity, Patriarchy, and the Fear of Female Power” - Jude Doyle
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/bl...
“Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women's Anger” - Soraya Chemaly
“A Woman Looking at Men Looking at Women” - Siri Hustvedt
“Ways of Seeing” - John Berger
“Learned helplessness and the depressed housewife” - David C. Spendlove, James R. Gavelek, and Val MacMurray
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles...
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles...




Tags:
#Possession1981 #claricelispector #theimitationoftherose #filmanalysis #videoessay #horror