“According to Charcot, grand (convulsive) seizures can occur in cases of severe hysteria. The patient has contractions, like the ones experienced by patients with epilepsy, then falls but usually does herself no harm, has facial grimaces and violent movements of the extremities, clenches her fist as if she were angry, screams, whines, laughs or weeps. One of the classical symptoms of the grand hysterical attack is the arching forward of the whole trunk (opisthonus) so that the body, when lying on the floor or the bed, rests only on the head and the heels (arc de cercle) and the abdomen protrudes upward. If these seizures are frequent enough, the two ends of the arch, the head and the heels, can touch. The main characters of the Auxonne monastery madness even “walked” in this pose.” [x]
Paul Richer, “Phase des contorsions (Arc de cercle)”,1885 // The Exorcist, 1973 // In the Mouth of Madness, 1994 // Louise Bourgeois, “Arch of Hysteria”, 1993
