This book was excellent for what it was, but was not what I had hoped for. I saw it listed on the group of nominees for the Royal Society’s best science book of the year. Based on the nomination a d the title, I thought it would be something akin to oliver sacks, exploring unusual neurological disorders or “House” going through the diagnostic steps to solve a mystery. Instead, you already know that everyone in the book has a psychosomatic disorder,or, to use the more modern term functional neurological disorder. The author’s exploration of how culture contributed to these disorders and of how our western society has a tendency to overmedicalize experiences was interesting, but not what I had hoped for ( )

Early in her book on outbreaks of mass psychosomatic illness around the world, neurologist Suzanne O’Sullivan observes that “disease impresses people; illness with no evidence of disease does not. Psychological illness, psychosomatic and functional symptoms [that is, symptoms which indicate problems with how the nervous system is working] are the least respected of medical problems.” She proceeds to look at cases in various countries, including Sweden, Kazakhstan, the Miskito Coast of Central America, Columbia, (the US embassy in) Cuba, Guyana, and small-town USA. Many of these cases involve children and teenage girls, and most involve people on the periphery of the dominant culture: ethnic minorities and groups suspicious of the government or caught between two worlds, the traditional and the modern.

Drawing mostly on anthropology, social psychology, and philosophy, the author makes a strong case for the ways in which society and culture shape illness and the means by which extreme symptoms, which can’t be attributed to physical pathology, communicate important messages about conflicts within a group or culture. O’Sullivan says mass hysteria/conversion disorder/psychosomatic or neurological disorder—the phenomenon goes by a variety of interchangeable names—are as “real” as disease in which there is discernible abnormality in the body. She rightly rejects Cartesian mind-body dualism, pointing out that “mind” is a function of the brain, that it too is created from biology and is “not an intangible independent entity.” However, she does not explain how the minds/brains of groups of people actually create illness—that is, how problems with the functioning of their nervous systems cause mass hysteria. There is vague, unsatisfying mention of neural circuitry and of patients paying too much attention to the “white noise” of their bodies, misinterpreting that noise, perseverating on symptoms observed and reinforcing their misinterpretations. It is not clear how all this ties in with the mass events that O’Sullivan is interested in. Noticeably lacking is a discussion of the mechanisms of social contagion. Also absent are footnotes and sources.

While I found The Sleeping Beauties an interesting and stimulating read, it was not a wholly satisfying one. Thank you to Net Galley and the publisher for providing me with a digital ARC. ( )