hysteric

Sometimes, when we put ourselves in the hands of others, we either experience tender mercies or brutal assaults. Perhaps this is related in some ways to the human capacity for mercy and cruelty, both sides of the same coin (a cliche nonetheless).

When women, who are often typecasted as emotional, hysterical, and insane, fall prey to the straitjacketing of institutions and society bound on forcing them into unmitigating docility, they become easy targets for abuse and maltreatment, just because they have been labelled as unstable or unreliable, hence their voices ignored.

Below is a link to website on how women who seek or are forced into psychiatric treatment have been abused and patronized. You have hear of a various famous women creative types who finally descended into the final abyss of mental darkness, thrust into that role by societal's iron fists. Freud, the pioner of psychoanalysts, could not understand why his female patients complained of sexual abuse, had labelled them as hysterics, thus turning back the clock on psychology.

Here is an account of legendary, beautiful and volatile movie star, Frances Farmer. I am sure the world over would have similar stories to share.
http://www.cchr.org/art/eng/page34.htm

The setting up of institutions to hide away society's unpresentable and outcast, and treating them as less than savages highlights our fear of what Kristeva will call the abject. Frances's case became well known because of her fame and beauty. But what if similar circumstances happened to an uknown person? Women, in the words of the philosopher-semiotician, are abject beings, as are all associated with them.

Tennessee Williams have vowed a dark and horrific vengeance on Blanche in The Streetcar Named Desire when he had her institutionalised for insanity, after being raped by her brother-in-law.