Overview
Hysteria in a casual everyday sense refers to some kind of extreme excitement or overwhelming emotion. I use it often in the context of anti-drug or anti-immigrant hysteria, in which people are so frightened over something unfamiliar that they jump to radical or pseudoscientific solutions. However, “hysteria” used to describe a now-defunct disorder that framed an excess of emotion as a pathology that requires treatment, and it was usually assigned to women.