Nancy Kuhl’s fourth full length collection of poems, On Hysteria, was published in July 2022. Of On Hysteria, psychoanalyst and literary critic Adam Phillips writes: “Making poetry and psychoanalysis seem of a piece, Kuhl manages in this remarkable and unusual book to write poems at once poignant, incisive and lyrical about experiences that are uncanny in their ordinariness.” ORDER: Shearsman UK // ORDER: Amazon
READ: Keene Carter’s review of On Hysteria in the Colorado Review // READ: Billy Mills’s review of On Hysteria in Elliptical Movements // READ: Karla Kelsey’s interview with Nancy Kuhl about poetry, psychoanalysis, and, On Hysteria in Tupelo Quarterly // LISTEN: Voices from “ROOM: A Sketchbook for Analytic Action” podcast with Isaac Slone and Aneta Stojnić
On Hysteria References and Citations
Some poems in On Hysteria refer to or borrow language from Studies on Hysteria by Josef Breuer and Sigmund Freud, 1895; and A Fragment of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria by Sigmund Freud, 1905. Specific references are to the Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud translated by James Strachey.
Works by Sigmund Freud and Joseph Breuer
Epigraph: “Hysterics suffer mainly from reminiscences.” On the Psychical Mechanism of Hysterical Phenomena (7), Studies on Hysteria.
“Hysteria” page 8: “…the connection is not so simple. It consists only in what might be called a ‘symbolic’ relation between the precipitating cause and the pathological phenomena—a relation such as healthy people form in dreams.” On the Psychical Mechanism of Hysterical Phenomena (5), Studies on Hysteria.
“A Case History” page 12: “The course of the illness fell into several clearly separable phases…” Case 1: Fräulein Anna O (22), Studies on Hysteria.
“Footnote (A Case History)” page 18: “Naturally I pressed my investigation no further…” Case 2: Frau Emmy von N (101n), Studies on Hysteria.
“Complaints of Profound Darkness” page 23: “At moments when her mind was quite clear she would complain of the profound darkness in her head, of not being able to think, of becoming blind and deaf, of having two selves, a real one and an evil one which forced her to behave badly, and so on.” Case 1: Fräulein Anna O (23), Studies on Hysteria.
“The Talking Cure” page 28: “…and finally her disturbances of speech were ‘talked away’…” Case 1: Fräulein Anna O (35), Studies on Hysteria.
“A Case History” page 31: “We shall be reminded, moreover, of hysterical macropsia…” Case 2: Frau Emmy von N (64n1), Studies on Hysteria.
“This History in Fragments Called Stone” page 33: “…you will be able to convince yourself that much will be gained if we succeed in transforming your hysterical misery into common unhappiness.” Psychotherapy of Hysteria (305), Studies on Hysteria.
“Analogies” page 47: General Index (323) and “Breuer and I had often compared the symptomology of hysteria...” Case 4: Katharina, (129) Studies on Hysteria; also General Index (323) and “This first account...” (16), Fragment of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria.
“A Case History” page 53: “...she was choosing shortness of breath…” Case 4: Katharina (126), Studies on Hysteria.
“Hysteria” page 60: “But she would never begin to talk until she had satisfied herself of my identity by carefully feeling my hands.” Case 1: Fräulein Anna O (30), Studies on Hysteria.
Additional References and Citations
Epigraph: “Critics of the family were called hysterics.” (94), Becoming Freud by Adam Phillips, 2014.
“The Drawing of Granite Bay” page 15, incorporates language from Nature and Character at Granite Bay, by Daniel A. Goodsell, 1901.
“This History in Fragments Called Stone” page 33, incorporates language from The Granite Landscape: A Natural History of America’s Mountain Domes, from Acadia to Yosemite by Tom Wessels, 2001.
Acknowledgments
On Hysteria benefited from an Erikson Scholar residency at the Erikson Institute, Stockbridge, MA, and from my course of study as a research fellow at the Western New England Institute for Psychoanalysis, New Haven, CT.
On the Cover
Detail of an ambrotype of five female members of the Peralta family, three wearing tinted blue dresses, attributed to William Shew. Beinecke Library.