Book Review – July 2022 – The Sleeping Beauties

I deal daily in mysterious conditions – ongoing physical and other soul body conditions that continue to entangle the subject. These invariably have physical symptoms, but do not yield to ordinary medical treatment. In the past many of these conditions were known slightingly, as ‘psychosomatic.’ Fortunately, medical science, thanks to neurologists and others, now knows them as ‘functional neurological disorders.’ (FNDs). Something in the client’s life has happened to create physical symptoms and ongoing entangled aspirations, expectations, fears, distress and sometimes terror. Young women are particularly susceptible to FNDs, to the extent that, in the past, such conditions were considered to be ‘hysterical’ – taking us back to the uninformed view of Galen and Aristotle, which have plagued women ever since.

A few weeks ago, someone put up a meme showing a woman with a stake through her body and the doctor is saying, without looking at her, ‘losing some weight will help.’ Yes, we all know that one! Even today, try going into a doctor with an FND and you may well be reacted to as if you were hysterical and could do something about stopping what you are suffering. We also know that women’s pain is still being subtly (or not so subtly) treated differently from men’s pain by male doctors, as if we don’t know what we are talking about.

I am so very glad to have found Sleeping Beauties by Suzanna O’Sullivan which features many people suffering from FNDs. This book details how the author has visited and studied specific cases where people have shared conditions: these include child migrants from Syria in Sweden who have fallen into a permanent condition of sleep – these were children who had already suffered untold trauma on their way to a country that proved their refuge. Most of those in this ‘resignation syndrome’ as it has been called, have also not had their settled status confirmed. They have the body observations of an active person, but they are not conscious.

Around the world there are what have been called ‘folk illnesses’ like those experienced in people from the Moskito Coast, grisi-sickness which looks like an outbreak of something from Salem, but which is probably nearer in tone to the Tarantism of Southern Italy that gave us the Tarantella. These conditions allow, particularly women, to express something awful in a safely understood and cultural way. But then there is Havana Syndrome which afflicted the diplomats whom Obama sent in to open up the American Embassy in Cuba – and they were grown-up people of Western background, and yet they had unexplained and very physical symptoms. They were happy to put down their symptoms to what the CIA called ‘sonar terrorism,’ but there was no evidence that was the causation.

I do recommend this book to anyone who is interested in mysterious conditions because, not only are the cases very interesting, but the neurologist who has written it displays a rare humility in the face of the media circus and medical shibboleths that surround FNDs; she doesn’t have all the answers, but she does understand that some other filters are in operation that are not usually considered by medical practitioners – and she makes a very good stab at understanding them from a rational perspective. When you consider the spirit of the illness itself, and the function it is playing in any case, everything becomes more understandable.

Image: Sleeping Beauties by Suzanne O’Sullivan

I am posting this extension of my Plague Diary every day. If you would like to support us, our donation button, books, courses, and events are here: www.hallowquest.org.uk.