Medical Humanities III: Narrating the Psyche: Representations of Hypnosis, Mental Illness, and Postpartum Depression in Russian Literature

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

This panel examines representations of the psyche in Russian literature and medicine from the late 19th century to the early 20th century. In particular, it focuses on examples of hypnosis, mental illness, and postpartum depression. How is diagnosis constructed and presented in literature? What models for diagnoses of mental illness existed in medical journals? How does a contemporary diagnosis affect and/or change our reading of historical novels in the modern world? How can a medical practice, such as hypnosis, counter a dominant ideology? The panelists consider how the psyche is constructed and narrativized by authors such as Leo Tolstoy, Anton Chekhov, Aleksandr Belyaev, and Mikhail Bulgakov, as well as medical practitioners, and how these literary and medical representations of mental health and illness can shed light on both our understanding of those texts and those conditions.

Sub Unit

• Literature: 19th Century

Chair

• Giulia Dossi, St Olaf College

Papers

• Picturing Beyond the Boundaries: The Question of Mental Illness Represented in A. Chekhov’s 'The Black Monk' (1893) - Jiwon Jung, Northwestern U

• Anna Karenina and Postpartum Depression: An Alternative Medical Analysis - Catherine E Fantuzzo, New York U

• How Stories of Mental Illness Were Told in Medical Journals (1840s-1880s) - Giulia Dossi, St Olaf College

• The Hypnotized: Alexander Beliaev and Mikhail Bulgakov, a Conversation about the Human Soul across Time and Space - Nikolai Krementsov, U of Toronto (Canada)

Discussant

• Yvonne Helen Howell, U of Richmond