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NEW WOMEN, DEVIANT BODIES:
UNRULY FUNCTIONING, DIAGNOSIS AND
THE REFEMINIZATION OF DEPRESSION
“The main characteristic of our political rationality is the
fact that this integration of the individual in a community or
in a totality results from a constant correlation between an
increasing individualization and the reinforcement of this
totality.”
Foucault 1988, p. 162
Since the 19
th
century, women’s gender-challenging behavior has been fodder for
psychiatric diagnosis. Middle class women who failed to uphold domestic
responsibilities were dubbed hysterical in the 19
th
century, and historians have referred to
this period as an epidemic. Since that time, feminist scholars have contended that
hysteria was less a disorder than an indication of how far medicine and domineering men
of authority will go to disrupt private female revolutions against gender confines. Since
that time, and particularly in the 20
th
century, we have witnessed increasing types of
diagnoses that are primarily assigned to women. This study tracks the common symptoms
ascribed to a number of 20
th
century disorders, particularly depression and depression-
linked disorders in the 1990’s and presently, and the cultural backdrops that provided
conditions in which these diagnoses could arise. Utilizing feminist theory and history,
and post-structural analysis, the paper assesses the impact of diagnoses that share
symptoms, specifically whether these linkages construct diagnoses that are transparently
sexist and easily resisted. The paper contends that though depression research and health
policy statements spin the diagnosis as one that affects a broad population of men and
women, psychiatric practices today dub certain female groups as most at risk resulting in
the “refeminization” of depression. And while certain linkages do exist across these
“female” disorders, this paper also locates new types of disciplinary “technologies” that
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Convention