Despite what many people think, this trope was not originally a psychiatric one, but a purely physical one.
The ancient Greeks, who did not anatomize humans, believed that the human uterus ("hystera" in Greek) could move throughout the body to attack the other organs, causing both mental and physical disease. This belief held well into the post-Renaissance era.
By the 19th century the meaning of the word "hysteria" changed, becoming a catch-all for any psychiatric problem a woman could have; listed symptoms covered 50 pages of a Victorian psychology text and included such disparate entries as fainting, nervousness, fluid retention, "a general tendency to cause trouble" and much more. Most Victorian psychiatrists attributed hysteria to a deprivation of sex, although the popular idea that doctors of the era masturbated women as a form of treatment (or that they did so with mechanical vibrators) was a myth created wholecloth by historian Rachel Maines in her 1998 book The Technology of the Orgasm. Later peer reviewers of the book noted that none of her sources actually said what she claimed they did.
In the early 20th century, though, the meaning expanded, as doctors influenced by a misunderstanding of Freud began to see all women's health problems as psychological, "not real", "all in her head", and used the word "hysteria" to describe this belief: even women suffering from cancer or angina found themselves being diagnosed with hysteria. One hospital study done in 1983 — yes, less than fifty years ago — found that 10% of the women referred to the local psychiatric outpatient clinic were actually suffering from heart disease.
Although hysteria is no longer considered by psychiatrists to be a legitimate diagnosis, some older doctors still use it to describe any condition they don't recognize — but generally only in women, and usually only in middle-aged women. Women are also much more likely to be diagnosed with anxiety disorders than men are. This is largely because women are more likely to report this condition and seek therapy compared to men. And are more likely to experience distress due to sexism and all of its ugliness.
