Showalter's book seems to be a liberal feminist version of "Personal Responsibility" discourse, _despite_ the fact that some of the targets of her critique (such as those caught up in moral panics about "ritual abuse" and "recovered memories") are well-deserved ones. As such, it will only help those who want to paint, for instance, the CFS patients as frauds, in the interest of helping us maintain our "healthy" work ethic.
The question is neither whether Showalter's analysis is cultural or physiological nor whether cultural critiques of medical discourses are legitimate. The problem with Showalter is that she is making use of psychoanalytic means to promote the ideological ends of individualism. (And, remember, in her prescriptions for grad students she is similarly asking us to individually accomodate ourselves to whatever the job market offers--with perhaps the help of anti-depressants.) In this regard, Showalter is no alternative to the individualism that standard medical research promotes, though she may think she is. What's wrong with her book is not its interest in "culture"--it is bad because it offers a familiar and seductive critique of mass culture and self-absorption from a liberal individualist point of view.
Yoshie