Freudian analysis of hysteria in Bram Stoker's "Dracula"

Hysteria was stigmatized by the ancient Egyptians as an exclusively feminine malady and remained so until Sigmund Freud's self-analysis uncovered his own male hysteria. Freud realized that dreams, hysterical symptoms, and even laughter often released sexual expressions which his Victorian society severely repressed. The Victorian author of Dracula, Bram Stoker, probably had some knowledge of these contemporary studies by Freud. Nevertheless, he seemed unaware that his dream-inspired vampire fantasy revealed the "Oedipal complex" he had repressed since childhood. Sexual anxieties inevitably drove Stoker to an embarrassing fit of "hysterics," which he unconsciously projected onto the male characters in Dracula.