Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Aya Zaidel1
This article attempts to add another layer to our understanding of the phenomenon of hysterical
duality. The author postulates that hysterical duality can be explained based on the dual-aspect
model of feminine sexuality, which exhibits two initially contradictory paths: one derived from
primary vaginal sensations and the other from clitoral pleasure. At first, these two paths create a
fundamental split between representations of internal space, containment and motherhood and
representations related to auto-eroticism and the effacement of the Other’s presence and needs.
The author argues that this manifest contradiction makes the attainment of integration in
feminine development an intricate and protracted process, which involves an act of inversion.
This inversion entails a post-Oedipal disavowal of primary vaginal sexuality, pending its
rediscovery through the encounter with the Other. Hysteria is thus viewed as the result of a
failure to perform this inversion and an inability to extract oneself from the position of a
‘‘Vaginal Girl’’, who defines herself through the desire of the other. This pathological course of
development leaves the hysteric’s sexuality in a split state and traps her in the duality of clitoral
pleasure versus penetration, which unconsciously represents humiliation and exploitation.
One of the most uncanny features of hysteria is its ability to deceive us. The
hysteric patient enters the consulting room and carries great promise. She is
expressive, abundant, quick to surrender, offering the impression that
therapeutic language was created just for her; she seems hungry and eager
to meet the Other, to go out into the world and to take everything in.
Indeed, it was hysteria that opened the gates of psychoanalysis (Breuer,
1895); its arrival had given birth not only to a new science but also to the
hope for a better world. In time, however, one realizes just how hopeless
the hysterical dynamic is. Little by little, one finds that the plethora of
Aya Zaidel MA, clinical psychologist in Jerusalem; Member, Tel-Aviv Institute of Contemporary
Psychoanalysis, Israel.
Address correspondence to Aya Zaidel, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel, Eliyau
Hanavi St. 20, 7172233 Modiin, Israel. E-mail: aya.zaidel@gmail.com
ZAIDEL
enquire from your own experiences of life, or turn to the poets, or wait until
science can give you deeper and more coherent information’’ (Freud, 1933,
p. 135).
It should be noted that out of these three paths, Freud considers the first to
be the one most closely linked to hysteria. Freud perceives the hysteric
woman as having gone a step too far by not retaining enough of her early
wishes and, due to the intensity of her shame, by having massively repressed
her sexuality. However, this submission is merely external, and grudge,
anger, and jealousy are in fact still active under the cover of darkness. This
creates a placating and obedient façade, which indicates the presence of
equally potent resistance and defiance. In other words, the hysteric joins the
voices that try to prevent her speech and walks a silenced road that entails
profound and inherent resistance to her condition.
Kohon (1984) elaborates on the role of the process of object-exchange in
the formation of hysteria. In his view, the girl’s Oedipal drama contains a
‘‘hysterical stage’’ in which she is trapped in mid-transition between mother
and father and may fail to extricate herself. This position links hysteria to
femininity in general and to the Oedipal complex in particular, undermin-
ing an understanding of hysteria which relies on a dyadic model.
In order to illustrate the intricacy of this ‘‘hysterical stage’’, Kohon coins
the term ‘‘divalence’’7 to signify the specific moment in development when
the girl acknowledges the difference between the sexes and must exchange
her love-object. The hysteric woman remains trapped in this stage,
constantly shifting between the two objects (father and mother), incapable
of reaching a decision: at one moment, she is competing with her mother,
trying to win and seduce her desired father; at another, she is caught in a
phallic struggle with the father over her mother’s love, determined to defeat
the father and prove his inferiority. This stalemate position, neither here nor
there, eventually leads the hysteric to feel that she had been betrayed by
both her mother and her father.
Picking up on Freud’s thread, Kohon’s model helps us understand part of
the deceptiveness characteristic of hysteria. The analyst who seeks to
position herself in relation to the hysteric woman can never know her actual
position within her patient’s tangle of identifications, yearnings, grudges and
jealousies, due to the latter’s constant inversions. Indeed, Kohon likens the
hysteric woman to a matador waving his red cloth, first on one side and then
on the other, in order to capture the Other’s gaze and spur them into action,
doing all this unconsciously in order to leave them empty-handed, frustrated
and flabbergasted.
In addition, through its position at the end of the Oedipal phase, Kohon’s
model may be able to include within its scope both the early processes as
they occur and the way in which these are retrospectively (‘‘après-coup’’)
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In other words, the focus here is both on the girl’s early experiences with
her mother and on how these experiences are translated in retrospect. In this
context, Freud mentions a common complaint made by women patients,
that they were not properly fed by the mother. Freud does not disqualify the
authenticity of this claim, but he does point out that it may have been
retrospectively ‘mobilized’ in order to facilitate the abandonment of the
mother and her exchange as the object:
When we survey the whole range of motives for turning away from the mother
which analysis brings to light—that she failed to provide the little girl with the
only proper genital, that she did not feed her sufficiently, that she compelled her
to share her mother’s love with others, that she never fulfilled all the girl’s
expectations of love, and, finally, that she first aroused her sexual activity and
then forbade it—all these motives seem nevertheless insufficient to justify the
girl’s final hostility. Some of them follow inevitably from the nature of infantile
sexuality; others appear like rationalizations devised later to account for the
uncomprehended change in feeling. Perhaps the real fact is that the attachment
to the mother is bound to perish, precisely because it was the first and was so
intense (Freud, 1931, p. 234).
In other words, Freud argues that the hysteric may give the impression
that she is sicker than she actually is, because she rejects the sexual
development she had already attained. That is, the hysteric woman had
unconsciously achieved a well-developed and integrated sexual organiza-
tion, which is not controlled by component instincts and one can assume
that her object-relations are correspondingly complex, multi-faceted and
sophisticated. Nevertheless, this is a conflictual achievement which cannot
be admitted into consciousness. This gap accounts for the common state of
affairs in which the hysteric patient, who may be a striking and well-
articulated woman, is blind to this aspect of her behavior and vehemently
clings to her view of herself as a weak and helpless ‘‘little girl’’. In fact, this
amalgamation of mature and childish aspects might be one of the most
prominent attributes of hysteria. Thus, women who are capable of
integrative thinking but who present their opinions in a childlike manner
are often intuitively recognized as hysteric.
In conclusion, one might say that returning the hysteric to the Oedipal
allows us to escape the view which focuses on the ‘hysterogenic’ mother
and the assumption that hysteria is derived from actual lacunae in the
mother’s psyche and in her relation to her baby (Brenman, 1985). Such
views make it difficult to appreciate the hysteric woman’s psychic
achievements and blur the distinction between hysteria and other disorders.
Therefore, Kohon’s arguments, which return hysteria to the Oedipal stage,
are a significant milestone in the history of hysteria. However, it should be
noted that Kohon only develops one of the axes Freud specified as related to
the development of femininity in general and hysteria in particular—the
exchange of the object. As mentioned, Freud added another axis, one
concerned with the vicissitudes of instincts. In other words, the little girl
must not only abandon her primary love-object but must also change her
genital zone. In Freud’s view, these two axes interact and work together.
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If we are to understand how a little girl turns into a woman, we must follow the
further vicissitudes of this excitability of the clitoris. Puberty, which brings about
so great an accession of libido in boys, is marked in girls by a fresh wave of
repression […] When at last the sexual act is permitted and the clitoris itself
becomes excited, it still retains a function: the task, namely, of transmitting the
excitation to the adjacent female sexual parts, just as—to use a simile—pine
shavings can be kindled in order to set a log of harder wood on fire. Before this
transference can be effected, a certain interval of time must often elapse, during
which the young woman is anaesthetic. This anaesthesia may become
permanent […] When erotogenic susceptibility to stimulation has been
successfully transferred by a woman from the clitoris to the vaginal orifice, it
implies that she has adopted a new leading zone for the purposes of her later
sexual activity. A man, on the other hand, retains his leading zone unchanged
from childhood. The fact that women change their leading erotogenic zone in
this way, together with the wave of repression at puberty, which, as it were, puts
aside their childish masculinity, are the chief determinants of the greater
proneness of women to neurosis and especially to hysteria. These determinants,
therefore, are intimately related to the essence of femininity (p. 220–221).
digestive organ, which devours everything and draws everything into itself.
If this ‘‘organ-hole’’ (1970, pp. 153) remains central to sexuality later on, it
distorts the entire psychic dynamic, altering it to suit archaic schemes which
subjugate the world to cyclic and closed-off oral rules. A third set of
processes concerns the woman’s relation towards her body. In Montrelay’s
view (1970), the anatomic identity between the woman and her mother
creates a direct link between auto-erotic pleasure and the attainment of the
forbidden primary object. In other words, a woman’s body, once it receives
its feminine form during puberty, is also a re-embodiment of the actuality of
the mother’s body. By re-attaining the maternal body, herself, the woman
finds it difficult to repress her primary wishes and their representations may
be destroyed. Or, stated differently, the real which forces itself on the
woman is the reality of her own body. From now on, the presence of this
body is associated with anxiety, because of its existence as an un-
representable object that is a blind spot as far as symbolic processes are
concerned.
This psychic economy, which remains external to representation and
which is the result of a subversive, voiceless and nameless sexuality that
operates according to the oral laws of incorporation and ejection, has a
counterpart. This second economy is subjected to the pressures of
repression and, therefore, eventually enters representation and may fuel
sublimation processes. Paradoxically, this second economy is the result of
times in which the woman is estranged to her body and the pleasure she
derives from it, potentially indicating the de-cathexis of the oral-vaginal
scheme. Primary femininity is repressed and forgotten, and this loss
structures the woman’s symbolic castration. This is why, according to
Montrelay (1970) periods of latency or frigidity in analysis may often be
considered as signs of progress. Representations are thus gradually
constructed where there was once only an empty space.
It should be noted that in Montrelay’s view, it is the first psychic
economy, that which creates a kind of hole or rupture in the network of
representations which establishes the phallocentric view in the woman’s
mind. This economy, by only leaving room for clear and visible entities,
structures vaginal sensations as an absence. On the other hand, the second
psychic economy, the one not derived from and even disavowing primary
vaginal sensations, is the one that will eventually achieve a concentric
status in the psyche. In fact, the transition to the second economy depends
on the girl’s ability to devaluate the phallus, on her way from childhood to
adulthood. The girl must forsake the feeling of awe and the experience of
helplessness and inferiority in relation to masculine potency, removing the
father from his throne. Then, when this romantic idealization is relin-
quished, the penis—through its insignificance—can become separated from
FEMALE ANATOMY AND HYSTERICAL DUALITY
archaic material. The woman is thereby able to agree to pleasure and accept
the penis by having recognized what it can provide rather than through a
feeling of humiliation and submission (Montrelay, 1970, pp. 161).
In this sense, Montrelay’s model provides a space for a true and intimate
encounter with men in adulthood and not only for the phallus, as it is
represented inside the mother. This encounter is very important in the
transition to the second economy, as it touches on the same place in the
woman’s psyche that remains unknown and ineffable. Therefore, it is
possible that the hysteric woman, who yearns for a man who could heal her,
persistently clings to this wish as part of her struggle for health as well.
When a real encounter does take place, something will happen that
involves the key to her wellbeing: this way, she may be able to get rid of the
persecutory aura of the perfect man and begin voicing her inner space. The
significance of Montrelay’s model thus lies not only in the complex, multi-
faceted view it offers and its suggested way of integrating phallic (Freud,
1925, 1931, 1933) and concentric (Horney, 1926, 1939; Klein, 1928; Jones
1927, 1935) notions of feminine sexuality. As mentioned, Montrelay turns
things on their heads—both in addressing the historical controversy
surrounding femininity and in depicting the woman’s developmental path
to maturity. Theoretically, Montrelay encompasses both the Freudian view
and that of Horney, Klein and Jones. However, her approach to each of
these views is antithetical. While the ‘natural’ vaginal sexuality of Horney,
Klein and Jones is often considered to be the ‘healthy’ core that will lead to
a unique feminine identity, Montrelay views it as an inhibiting factor in
relation to such an identity. In addition, and more importantly, Montrelay’s
model embeds the inversion in the developmental move towards femininity:
the woman who will eventually attain an integral position in relation to her
sexuality is required to perform a kind of inversion—both in relation to her
ownership of her desire and concerning her object-relations. In other words,
she is paradoxically required to ‘eliminate’ her desire in order to obtain it
and to ‘eliminate’ the phallus in order to find a place for the penis and for
her sexuality within the symbolic order.
Thus, beyond the intricacy of this model and the fact that it contains both
the archaic and the later relationships, there is another thread that links
Montrelay’s model to Freud’s. For Montrelay, there is no direct line
connecting biology and feminine maturity; rather, this process, as Freud so
sharply intuited (1905b, 1931, 1933), involves an inversion. In Montrelay’s
view, the woman must rebel against her own nature to submit to the
symbolic order and rebel against the latter in order to express her unique
sexuality. In this sense, feminine nature entails—at least temporarily—an
element which negates the strive towards pleasure and self-preservation.
This can be said to be dramatically illustrated at a certain moment during
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childbirth, when the body is open and ready, and the woman must put her
trust in nature and push the baby out. At this moment, the woman’s life and
her ability to give life to her baby involve the courage to ‘step into the pain’.
In other words, in order to traverse the birth canal and to be born as a
mother, the woman must at this point actively choose to surrender herself to
a process that might be associated—however momentarily—with the
experience of being slaughtered or ripped to shreds.
Braunschweig and Fain (1971) present an equally complex model which
addresses the inherent contradiction of femininity and the ‘inversion’
characteristic of its development. They begin by distinguishing the path of
the girl from that of the boy in their discussion of the core of hysterical
anxiety. The boy handles this anxiety by means of a phallic narcissism,
which is made possible by the visibility of the penis—its self-evident
presence and existence. In other words, the penis, which was initially an
instrument of Eros, is turned into a narcissistic object through the process by
which the boy extricates himself from the Oedipal complex.11 For the girl,
however, the way out of the Oedipal complex is far less clear. The hidden
nature of her genitals prevents her from dealing with the Oedipal
predicament by directing her frustration to a narcissistic investment of her
genitals (except in pathological cases on which I will elaborate later). Her
core of hysterical anxiety is more persistent and is conducive to a series of
manifestations involving a full or partial regression to the anal phase, simply
because the option of narcissistic investment in the penis does not exist for
her.
In this sense, Braunschweig and Fain argue that the latency period is a
crucial and edifying time for the girl—a time of intricate transformation,
rather than the reinforcement of an existing solution. It is important to note
that Freud also viewed (1905b) this period as crucial for women—as a time
of concealed maturation and change. However, unlike Freud, Braun-
schweig and Fain do not make do with general statements about the girl’s
latency but offer an in-depth description of its characteristic instinctual
transformation.
As mentioned, feminine latency is characterized by the revival of anal
material. As one can often notice in this age, the girl devotes a considerable
amount of time to cleanliness, order and aesthetics, develops a strict dress
code and becomes excessively meticulous in her external appearance.
Braunschweig and Fain claim that this kind of behavior in the girl is not only
a reaction-formation related to the re-emergence of scatological material,
but also serves as an actual leverage: thus, when the girl works on making
herself more beautiful, she is transitioning from mere cleanliness to
coquetry—to a narcissistic investment of her entire body. This narcissistic
investment is developmentally vital, and it plays the role of eventually
FEMALE ANATOMY AND HYSTERICAL DUALITY
uniting the functions of her genitals, her erotic pleasure and her ability to be
desired. To put it plainly, while the forsaken and discontented Oedipal boy
finds solace and hope for a better future in his penis, the equally forsaken
and discontented girl is supposed to apply her narcissistic investment to her
entire body, while denying the existence of the vagina. She does this to
someday be able to enjoy her body as a whole and experience her genital
sexuality as unified.12
Alongside this transformative use of the anal mindset, the girl shapes her
approach to reality. In this reality, which is derived from the law of the
father, the environment casts the shadow of the phallus on feminine
sexuality. In other words, culture tends to deny the existence of the feminine
sex (which represents castration) and glorify the clitoris in a fetishistic
manner which sets it apart from the ‘flaw’ which is the vagina. Under these
circumstances, Braunschweig and Fain argue that the little girl is better off
claiming agnosticism regarding these ubiquitous overtones. This allows her
to accept her sexuality as something which may not be publicly and openly
recognized, but which is nevertheless not a personal flaw. From this
standpoint, she can now wait for a partner who could reveal to her a truth
which undercuts reality. That is, in addition to the need to deny any
knowledge of the existence of the vagina in order to eventually attain an
integrated sexuality, the shadow of the phallus ‘compels’ the girl to suspend
‘truth’—her intuitive knowledge of her (vaginal) sexuality and make her way
in the world with considerable guile. She must be able to remain a child, to
accept and acknowledge the law of the father and, in fact, to initially deny a
part of her femininity. Thus, in time, through her encounter with a man, she
will be able to extricate herself from that very law—beguiling it and using it
to her advantage.
Therefore, as one can conclude from the Freudian model (1931, 1933),
as well as from those of Montrelay (1970) and Braunschweig and Fain
(1971) healthy feminine development requires the girl to ignore her own
nature and her sexuality during certain stages. Paradoxically, this efface-
ment allows her to develop an integrated feminine identity. These three
models are similar in the sense that they position the act of inversion after
the Oedipal stage and are thus concerned with processes related to
relatively late stages of development. These models differ, however, in their
perceptions of the inversion process. While Freud discussed the repression
of the girl’s infantile ‘‘masculine’’ sexuality, which involves clitoral
stimulation, Montrelay describes, the annihilating pre-symbolic aspects of
feminine sexuality, which stem from primary vaginal sensations, indicating
the presence of denial. Braunschweig and Fain, however, focus on the
general culture’s fetishistic attitude towards the clitoris, an attitude which
the girl is to embrace until the rediscovery of her vaginal sexuality. Rather
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other words, the girl cannot perform the required act of inversion: to shift
from pre-symbolic sensuous knowing (her primary knowledge of the vagina)
to not-knowing (denial of her own sexuality and being part of a group) and
then to mature knowing (acknowledging the vagina as part of a whole).
Instead, we can theorize she is faced with three options: to adhere to her
initial state, to adopt the opposite position or to keep alternating between
these two states. All three options entail an incomplete transformation and a
constant return to the same position.
It seems that one can notice the connection between the impossible
predicament of the ‘‘vaginal child’’ and the phenomenology of hysteria. In
fact, when one views hysteria as a failed inversion, one can see how it entails
three potential presentations: the first entails acquiescing and holding one’s
ground. In this state, the woman identifies herself as a container, a ‘‘cesspit’’,
and presents the position of a good, placating and obedient girl. Under the
surface, one finds outrage and a phantasmatic sadomasochistic world, where
feminine sexuality is subjected to ‘‘vaginal logic’’ (i.e., operates in line with a
devouring oral scheme). This state resembles what Montrelay called the first
psychic economy, which is a continuation of the primary vaginal sensations
which have an annihilating effect. As this state involves an unsymbolized
sexuality which subverts the processes of representation and symbolization,
this psychic position is related to somatization, dissociation, hysterical
‘‘excess’’ and ‘‘masquerading’’ and additional phenomena that express regions
that were left without representation, as blind spots or dark continents. The
second presentation entails a transition to an inverted position, but the
inversion seems to stop midway. The woman is ‘‘stuck’’ in an oppositional
stance that is linked to ‘‘clitoral logic’’, which states that only what is visible is
significant. This is a constant state of resistance and protest against the feeling
of not being recognized by the group and it may manifest in symptoms of
nausea, vomiting or vaginismus. However, as mentioned, this attempted
rebellion merely betrays the woman’s surrender and her acceptance of
phallocentric law. In this state, the anger and the outrage are on the surface,
while underneath there is an inability to disengage from primary vaginality in
order to eventually turn it into a source of pleasure. The third and perhaps most
advanced presentation entails a constant motion between the two previous
states, an oscillation between a state of inviting submission which conceals
defiance and rejection of the Other and its opposite. This precludes any
opportunity for completing the inversion and is rather a closed-off fluctuation
between the two poles.
The various hysteric presentations, all of which involve being trapped
midway between seduction and isolation—a result of being a ‘‘vaginal
girl’’—can be depicted through different prisms. In sexual intercourse the
woman cannot associate sexual pleasure with the vagina and penetration.
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This is because the vagina, with whom she is identified, is the very reason of
her disappearance. Therefore, there is often a tremendous gap between the
capacity for sexual arousal and enjoyment and different degrees of
vaginismus and an unconscious notion of intercourse as humiliating. In
other words, because the vagina is the locus of trauma, one can witness a
‘‘healthy’’ and often even a promiscuous and licentious sexuality, so long as
the vagina is not involved. The trauma surrounding the existence of the
vagina may account for the hysteric’s strange amalgamation of seductivity
and disgust. According to this position, the hysteric is seductive because she
is truly interested in sexual contact with the Other. In fact, she can only stay
in the safe and visible areas of sexuality, where there is no risk of revelation,
which equals effacement. When consummation draws near, she becomes
constricted and overwhelmed with shock, disgust and repulsion. She
appears to be saying ‘‘I am willing to be sexual as long as no one needs
anything from me, as long as I can keep from surrendering—thus
simultaneously revealing and erasing myself’’.
The same dynamic, with its various presentations, is evident on the level
of object-relations. Sometimes, the woman yearns for a ‘‘real’’ strong man
who could rescue her from her intolerable identification with her mother.
Unfortunately, that same man, whose presence indicates the existence of
the vagina, symbolizes the very identification from which she is trying to
liberate herself and paradoxically sends her back into her mother’s lap. In
other words, her potential liberator is also her subjugator and she cannot
reveal herself because this revelation means effacement. At other times, an
opposite, ‘‘clitoral’’ logic may prevail, which is the very same logic under a
different guise. In this case, the explicit presentation is that of a woman who
defies her vaginal identity (which she had, in fact, failed to deny), who
rejects the mother and identifies with the father, to the extent that she may
sometimes argue that she has no need for a man at all. Nevertheless, this
defiance can be intuitively recognized as a profound wish for a relation that
could actualize and even force upon her the unattainable submission. That
is, the origin and the outcome of this maneuver are identical to the previous
one: intercourse is perceived as ‘‘providing a service’’ and penetration is not
pleasurable. Yet another option, which may be more common, is the
constant alternation between these two states, as described by Kohon
(1984): identifying with the mother and rejecting the father at one moment
and identifying with the father and rejecting the mother at another.
This dynamic, which is often evident in the transference of hysterical
patients, places the analyst in an impossible situation. When the patient
accepts and takes in an interpretation, she feels humiliated, erased and
inferior in relation to the analyst. In her eyes, that which revealed her (an
adaptive interpretation) had erased her; that which liberated her—had
FEMALE ANATOMY AND HYSTERICAL DUALITY
subdued her. Similarly, one can notice the constant motion between
groveling and stubbornness, between a saccharine and a contentious
attitude. Thus, there may be sudden shifts between struggle (accompanied
by a sense that the analyst is superfluous), and undifferentiated yearning
(accompanied by a sense of utter dependence). As mentioned, these two
states seem to operate in a separate and detached manner.
In many ways, this description is similar to that of borderline personality
disorder. Therefore, it begs the question of why not define these binary shifts
as a derivative of a dependence/independence conflict and a good/bad
split? This will not only offer a sound depiction of this dynamic but may also
sever the offensive and perhaps even reductive link between hysteria and
femininity. Unfortunately, history has shown that any depiction which
ignores the sexual aspect makes hysteria disappear and erases its unique
character. The hysterical woman, who traps the analyst in an impossible
and intolerable dynamic, is often a woman who is capable of an integrated
view of the Other, who can contain the Other, show empathy and be a kind
and devoted mother to her children (or a sensitive and skilled therapist…).18
In other words, defining the hysteric split in terms of the basic Eros/Thanatos
or good/bad split would be inaccurate and would hinder an integrated view.
More than any difficulty in maintaining a complex, multi-faceted, intimate
and close relationship, hysteria entails a constant sense of rage, victimhood
and a difficulty in feeling satisfaction and enjoyment.
AFTERWORD
It sometimes seems that hysteria has no clearer indicator than its
elusiveness. The plasticity of its symptoms, its ability to manifest as both a
structure and a state and its way of bending itself to fit various suggested
etiologies—these give the impression that we are looking at a mirage.
Hysteria seems to absorb everything into it, to constantly reshape itself to
suit the mold of what is projected onto it, to keep reinventing itself. It needs
an audience and it lives for one, it fades when you look away and reappears
according to the spectator’s will.
But hysteria is not only elusive, it is also difficult to understand and
decipher: when you touch upon early experiences, you lose your grasp on
later ones; when you focus on the mother, you lose hold on the father; when
you treat endogenous factors, you let slip actual traumas and so on. Perhaps
more than any other disorder, hysteria reveals to us just how limited our
sight is, the extent to which the sense of sight itself is hysterical—obsessed
with exteriority and beauty, incapable of representing things hidden and
unknown, disguising what is secret behind a thousand masks.
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
I would like to thank Dr. Josef Triest for his contribution to this paper.
NOTES
stemming from the narcissistic investment of the penis and the exaggerated expectations,
the anxiety and the erotic inhibition, this investment may evoke.
12 Braunschweig and Fain (1971) argue that this process also constitutes a kind of ’hole
cleaning’—an initial preparation to the positive internalization of a receptive genital. This
process requires the girl to throw out the ’feces’ in order to experience herself as clean both
externally and internally, without damaging the father as her object of desire or her
identification with the mother. The boy plays an important role here, by being the natural
target for the projection of all this disgusting and repulsive anal preoccupation; this is often
evident in the exaggerated and accentuated aversion towards ’those filthy boys’ exhibited
by latency-age girls. The father, however, remains desired and free of excretions. This
means that the idealization of the penis ’gains’ from the anal cathexis which normally
targets the boy (1971, p. 134).
13 One can, of course, think of many and diverse circumstances that would lead to the same
result. Sexual assault, for example, might not only force the girl into premature recognition
of the vagina and her sexuality as subservient to the Other, (i.e., of what was supposed to
remain unknown to her), but also and inevitably undermine the authority of the father as
the representation of the law.
14 According to Glenn (1986), one of the expressions of Freud’s countertransference towards
Dora was his choice of name, as he notes in The Psychopathology of Everyday Life: ‘‘There
appeared to be a very wide choice […] I myself expected that a whole host of women’s
names would be at my disposal. Instead, one name and only one occurred to me—the
name ‘Dora’. I asked myself how it was determined. Who else was there called Dora? I
should have liked to dismiss with incredulity the next thought to occur to me—that it was
the name of my sister’s nursemaid […] At once there came to my mind a trivial incident
from the previous evening which provided the determinant I was looking for. I had seen a
letter on my sister’s dining-room table addressed to ‘Fräulein Rosa W.’. I asked in surprise
who there was of that name and was told that the girl I knew as Dora was really called Rosa
but had had to give up her real name when she took up employment in the house, since my
sister could take the name ‘Rosa’ as applying to herself as well. ‘Poor people,’ I remarked in
pity, ‘they cannot even keep their own names!’ […] When next day I was looking for a
name for someone who could not keep her own, ‘Dora’ was the only one to occur to me’’
(Freud, 1901, pp. 240–241; emphasis in original).
15 Nevertheless, one should keep in mind that, in Freud’s (1905a) view, Dora’s servile identity
was the result of her being exploited and mistreated by her environment and had nothing to
do with primary vaginal sexuality, whose existence he did not acknowledge.
16 In Kleinian terms, one could refer to a kind of unconscious phantasy. Nevertheless, it seems
that this formulation would not do justice to Montrelay’s view, in which the primary
psychic generalization is not a representation but a process which subverts the very
existence of representation. Therefore, it is more accurate to talk about psychic logic, a
certain rationale which guides psychic action.
17 Braunschweig and Fain depict the excessive preoccupation with the clitoris in various
cultures, which includes its removal, its extension or various other surgical procedures. All
these practices deny the inherent difference of feminine sexuality whose genital
manifestation is not singular in nature. The shadow of the phallus is cast over this
anatomic reality: only one part of feminine sexuality is recognized—the clitoris, while the
existence of the vagina is concealed.
18 In this context, it is difficult not to think about Breuer’s patient, Bertha Pappenheim, known
as Anna O. (Breuer, 1895), and the considerable contribution of hysterical women to
psychoanalysis and the world of psychotherapy. It is interesting to note how very severe
symptoms can coexist alongside such highly developed capacities in the hysteric. In this
FEMALE ANATOMY AND HYSTERICAL DUALITY
context, Freud writes of ‘‘the features which one meets with so frequently in hysterical
people and which there is no excuse for regarding as a consequence of degeneracy: her
giftedness, her ambition, her moral sensibility […] the independence of her nature’’ (Freud,
1893–1895, p. 161). It is important to keep in mind that, as far as Freud is concerned, even
when the hysterical symptoms supposedly indicate the absence of a capacity for
symbolization, this is not the case. Hysterical somatization does not necessarily involve
any difficulty in terms of mentalization; rather, it stems from the fact that the hysteric is
reviving the physical origin that created the image in the first place (‘‘hysteria is right in
restoring the original meaning of the words’’, p. 181).
19 Peter Gay writes: ‘‘Early in 1886, during a reception at Charcot’s house, [Freud] had
overheard his host arguing in his lively way that that a severely disturbed young woman
owed her nervous troubles to her husband’s impotence or sexual awkwardness’’ (Gay,
1988, p. 92). The source of the hysterical troubles of that poor woman was rooted in her
husband’s genital problems. By the way, the quote also illustrates the problem with the
predominantly endogenic view. It is important to stress that all issues this paper is
describing are also the sequelae of the encounter of the female child with the external
world.
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