It was like being dressed by someone else. Inside the walls of the Salpêtrière Hospital, hundreds of women were diagnosed and treated for a plethora of mental disorders. From the 1860’s to the 1880’s, the lead psychiatric doctor was Dr. Jean Martin Charcot, which changed both the scientific and public engagement with the medical communities. Taking advantage of the newly emerging technology of photography, Dr. Charcot took photographs of the patients of the Salpêtrière in an attempt to document what he considered the largest afflictions to women mental health. In particular, he had a focused on the diagnosis of hysteria. Importantly, these women did not have much control over their lives, and certainly no control over their health care. The photographs Charcot took resurged the diagnostic use of ‘hysteria’, as well as many other adjacent term, by medical professionals but more importantly by common society. The stereotype of the ‘hysterical woman’ can be rooted back to Charcot’s photographic collections and public lectures with patient demonstrations. In this project, I created 19th century inspired paper dolls using a template and the published photographs of the women in the Salpêtrière Hospital from the Iconographie Photographique de Salpêtrière. Paper dolls were a children toy were they could dress up an image of person with different clothing choices. In this twist on the class children toy, the images of the women of the Salpêtrière can be dressed with clothing adorned with labels of various mental disorders used by Dr.Charcot. This work is meant to highlight two key thing about the Salpêtrière and its patients. To begin, the dolls lack any control over the choices the player makes similar to how the patients lacked control over the diagnosis they received. Secondly, by reflecting the ideas of mental health diagnosis onto a children’s toy, the laissez-faire attitude of labeling women with mental disorders as a medical practice and as a dismissive social practice is expressed.

References:

Didi-Huberman, Georges, and Alisa Hartz. Invention of Hysteria: Charcot and the Photographic Iconography of the salpêtrière. The MIT Press, 2005. 

Bourneville, and Paul Regnard. Iconographie Photographique De La salpêtrière: Service De M. Charcot. Progrès médical, 1879.