How Diagnosis Changes with Time | Esther Perel

Criteria, diagnosis, accompany the culture of the day. In the 19th century, we talked about hysteria. We do not talk much about hysteria today because we realized that the majority of these hysterical women were actually women who had experienced sexual abuse. They were not hysterical, they were traumatized. Narcissism is the word that we come back with on the 21st century. Stress and anxiety and depression was the 20th century. So every century and every culture as its expressions through mental illness or mental manifestations. Eating disorders exist in some cultures and not in others. A diagnosis, a personality disorder, doesn't just exist like that without a background. It's easy to make these issues very personal, but they are also societal.