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On the medical history of the doctrine of imagination1
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 July 2009
Synopsis
In the early moderera the notion of imagination was made responsible for phenomena which were later explained in terms of embryology, genetics, psychology, bacteriology or other scientific disciplines. Images, often seated in the upper abdomen (hypochondriac region) or the womb (hysteria), were regarded as powerful influences on material reality. In the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the hypochondriac forms of imagination became mere whims and spleens, but they kept much of their original potency in respect of the uterus, accounting for monstrosities and the shaping of human offspring. The hysterical conversion of imagination into somatic phenomena has never been questioned. Since the two World Wars the realm of imagination has again expanded beyond the uterus and the older disease-concepts. In the last 10–20 years images seem to have regained some of their original creative force.
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- Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1979
Footnotes
This paper is a slightly enlarged version of ‘Aus der Medizingeschichte der Einbildungen’ which is contained in: E. Fischer-Homberger (1979): Krankeit Frau und andere, Arbeiten zur Medizingeschichte der Frau pp. 106–129, 150–153. Huber Verlag: Bern-Stuttgart-Wien. (Pp. 160; illustrated; DM 38.) Translated from the German by E. H. Ackerknecht.
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