ABSTRACT
It would no doubt be satisfying to male vanity to interpret the marked prominence of women in the possession of cults which we have just discussed as the reflection of an inherent, and biologically grounded female disposition to hysteria. Unfortunately, however, this conclusion is untenable because in practice these movements are not entirely restricted to women. Notwithstanding my emphasis in the previous chapter, several of the cults .which we have already examined do in fact also include men, and not only those with obvious personality disorders. Italian tarantism, this ‘religion of remorse’, as de Martino punningly labels it, which still today attracts a few downtrodden male peasants, had in earlier periods a wider catchment among men. Seventeenth-and eighteenth-century accounts reveal a considerably higher proportion of men tormented by the spider’s bite than is the case today. These statistics correspond well with other historical data which show how, in previous centuries, tarantism had a particular appeal for men whose social circumstances were unusually oppressive or constricting.
