Alternative Views On Hysteria (Part 4)

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

There are different approaches and views on hysteria, they do not go far from Freud's theory, however, they significantly expand and complement its definition, causes and treatment. In fact, in the research of hysteria, most of the phenomena that are basic in psychoanalysis have been discovered today, like a child who makes as many discoveries in the first years of life as does not later on throughout his life

Alternative views of hysteria

Jaspers' paradigmatic phrase (first published in the article "General Psychopathology") that the hysteric wants to appear larger than he really is has been mechanically repeated for almost 90 years: "The hysteric wants to be noticed, attracts attention in order to seduce."

David Shapiro describes the hysterical style, personality traits and considers repression (also forgetting, lack of concentration) as a defense mechanism.

Janet has a theory of hysteria that shares the prevailing views of heredity and degeneration in France. Hysteria, in his views, is a well-known form of degenerative changes in the nervous system, which is expressed in an innate weakness of mental synthesis, but I soon came to a different view of the origin of hysterical dissociation (splitting of consciousness).

IP Pavlov believed that hysteria is based on the weakness of the nervous system, mainly of the cortex, and the predominance of subcortical activity over the cortical. A temporary dysfunction under the influence of a psycho-traumatic agent in a person prone to hysteria and giving this person one or another benefit in this situation can be fixed by the mechanism of the formation of a conditioned reflex. This underlies the hysterical fixation of a painful symptom.

Vadim Rudnev: The merit of Breuer and Freud was that they realized that hysteria is not only not pretense (as many psychiatrists in the 19th century thought), that a hysterical symptom is like a mute emblem, the meaning of which is to pay attention those around him that torment the neurotic.

This concept was also developed in the book by one of the representatives of the antipsychiatric trend in psychology of the 1960s and 1970s, Thomas Szasz "The Myth of Mental Illness", where he wrote that a hysterical symptom is a kind of message, a message in iconic language, sent from neurotic to a loved one or a psychotherapist, a message that contains a signal for help.

Comparing hysterical and obsessive neuroses, V. Rudnev notes that an obsessive neurotic "isolates" from thing to event ("empty bucket - I won't go anywhere"), and hysterics "displaces" from event to thing ("they gave a slap in the face - neuralgia of the facial nerve").

The hysterical woman, according to Monique Courneu-Janin, “being all a 'phallic fetish' built by her mother, is invested by the mother in a different way than the boy:“she is entirely”,“completely and completely phallic”” (Cournu-Janin M., 2007, p. 112). A hysterical woman represses herself entirely, becoming an inanimate thing, offering herself to a man as a prize, a victory cup, a valuable thing, a marker of male wealth and superiority in relation to other men, an object of envy of others. The psyche is repressed as a whole as an indivisible object, in contrast to the body, which is repressed in parts.

Melanie Klein defends the idea of, so to speak, an “endogenous” origin of hysteria, explaining mental disorders by the incessant conflicts between the drive for life and the drive for death. In her opinion, there is a psychotic basis for neuroses, it is quite logical that her ideas were oriented in the direction indicated by Ferenczi, that is, in the direction of "oralization of hysteria", where the problem of the penis was replaced by the problem of the mother's breast. In accordance with this, the libido played only the role of bait, while the real problem was placed in destructive drives. M. Klein, to a change in the interpretation of unconscious phantasms towards pregenitality, emphasizing the role of archaic forms, where fears of annihilation (annihilation) are observed.

Archaic hysteria is also described in Joyce McDougal's book Eros, Thousand Faces.

The Cassandra complex is the story of the heroine of ancient Greek mythology, a typical example of a girl, misunderstood and unheard, brought up by a "cold" mother. American psychologist Laurie Leighton Shapira wrote: "The girl gets the impression that life cannot go the way she wants, but only the way the mother wants. In the child's mind, reality is not trustworthy." Why? Because a mother for a child is the first and, up to a certain age, the only reality. If the mother showed her coldness in early childhood (did not take it in her arms, did not give her breasts, did not caress), the thought grows stronger in the baby's mind: the world will not give me anything just like that. I can only live if I am comfortable, the way my mother wants to see me, and therefore the world. Due to the lack of approval from the mother, the girl from childhood learns to hide her true feelings deep in her soul and hide her world. Hiding her true self, she immediately begins to feel guilty. Thus, a complex of guilt and auto-aggression arises, and hysteria becomes the only way to present oneself. Why does the mother do this to the girl? Because she was treated in the same way, she is a victim of dislike, passionate but does not accept her passion, capable of much, but does not understand it. [40]

Sandor Ferenczi's article “The Phenomena of Hysterical Materialization” (1919) plays a classic role. Ferenczi is the first to recognize the important role of the I in the bodily language of the hysterics. In his opinion, the regression of the I-hysteria should be attributed to the time when the organism, in order to adapt to reality, is trying to change this reality with the help of magical gestures. The only thing that a hysteric does is talk to his body, like a fakir, playing with it. It was Ferenczi who was one of the first to question the genital fixation of hysteria, since the regression, considered from this point of view, is very deep. The regression into the “primitive state” as Ferenczi sees it has certain consequences for our understanding of body language and language in general. The organic basis on which everything symbolic in psychic life arises is partly manifested in hysteria.

Wilhelm Reich, in his Character Analysis (1933), explored the relationship between somatic flexibility and sexual bragging of a hysterical nature. Reich explained the deep fear that hysterics must grip during intercourse. The superficial eroticization that distinguishes these people always remains only a tactic with which they resist danger. This position can, perhaps, be formulated as follows: it is better to seduce at the moment that you choose yourself than to be seduced by an unexpected attack, without having time to develop protective strategies, that is, to take an active position, to control what is happening, the hysteric is trying to get ahead of his partner, because he wants to be the dance leader. The hysteric seeks not to satisfy the attraction, but to overcome the partner.

Fenichel attributes an important role to identification. In his opinion, hysterics fail to identify their I with their body. Identification can occur both with a rival and with a lost object: two typical identification modalities, the last of which is characteristic of melancholy. Since we know the frequency of depression attacks in hysterics, this connection does not surprise us.

Abraham and he take the view that genitality is excluded from love and that incestuous fixations play an important role. Here it is necessary to remember that in a woman, these fixations are related to both the mother and the father. With regard to female sexuality, recent sexology studies investigating the role of the clitoris and vagina seem to warrant a new assessment. Be that as it may, at the level of fantasy, the problem is to dismember your gender, for example, the desire to have a penis (or envy) - fear of the role of the mother, or the desire to have children - the relationship to the mother's breast (envy), etc. etc.

According to Lacan, the hysteric is characterized by desires for unsatisfied desire. At the same time, castration continues to remain at the center of hysterical issues. The phallus, a metaphor for the penis, is the object of desire for the hysterical.

"Phallus" is understood here as a symbol of gaining power. The child is often a kind of phallus of the mother, with which she cannot part. It follows from this that the child is a phallus. This is entirely related to the hysteric transferring this role to others for whom he must be a phallus. Closely related to this is the desire to have, to receive the phallus, which is associated with the risk of losing it again. The latter means the fear of castration, the conversion of desire into antipathy and "desire for unfulfilled desire", which avoids risk. Instead, the hysteric is identified with the desire of the other (like a mother, whose phallus was supposed to be a child) and hence a feeling of worthlessness arises. To take the place of the desire of the Other. Run away from fulfilling your desires, leaving only the desire to desire.

During one of the last International Psychoanalytic Congresses, there was a section on hysteria, in which psychoanalysts of various kinds discussed hysteria, many of whom considered hysteria a defense that maintains distance and controls the disorders that they described with the words “primitive”, “psychotic”, “not -sexual”. As you know, the concept of hysteria as a defense is nothing new, it has already been presented in a similar way by some Kleinians, for example, Fairbairn. In other words, psychiatrists avoid the challenge of hysteria.

Andre Green says that today they are trying to correlate hysteria in its form with borderline disorders, obsessive neuroses, narcissistic manifestations, psychosomatics, hypochondria, refer to the preoedipal early relationship with the mother, pregenital fixations (oral, anal-sadistic). [7]

ode to eternal love or Hysteria according to Freud to this day …

Psychoanalysis is born in the study of hysteria. At the same time, a paradoxical story is observed in the relationship between psychoanalysis and hysteria: as psychoanalysis is developed in the studies of hysteria, hysteria itself gradually disappears, as it were. Already in the middle of the 20th century, they began to say that hysteria had completely dissolved. However, is hysteria really no more after this concept has existed for more than two millennia? Perhaps, in the 20th century, it moves into the field of mass psychology under the guise of mass hysteria? Maybe her symptoms were in some other nosological cell? Maybe she was consumed by borderline disorders? Perhaps it was disassembled into a number of individual mental disorders, as prescribed by Charcot's pupil Babinsky, who called his 1909 work "The Dismemberment of Traditional Hysteria" and replaced the very concept of hysteria with the neologism of Pityatism? Maybe hysteria gave rise to other nosological units - anorexia, bulimia, chronic fatigue, multiple personality disorders? Perhaps, indeed, "the form of the disease has changed … but the very existence of hysteria is now more irrefutable than it ever was"? [17]

Everyone knows that it was by listening to hysterics that Freud gradually laid the foundations of psychoanalytic theory, psychoanalysis as a method of research and a method of therapy.

His analysis of the etiology, course and therapy of mental disorders in Investigations of Hysteria is a dizzying account of the birth of psychoanalysis. The transient, unconscious account described by Sigmund Freud, which is conceptualized in the aftereffect many decades later in hindsight.

It was cooperation with hysteria that bore fruit in the form of the fundamental concepts of psychoanalysis: repression, resistance, unconsciousness, transference, protection. Understanding the meaning of symptoms, the emergence of the method of free association and the technique of psychoanalysis.

Psychoanalysis was born of an encounter with hysteria, and therefore, like Lacan, today we should ask ourselves - where did the hysteria of that time disappear? Anna O, Emmy von N. - do the lives of these amazing women already belong to another world?

On the other hand, does modern psychoanalysis deal with the question of the presence or absence of hysteria? The definition of hysteria as such has disappeared from some psychiatric reference books.

Psychoanalysis arose as a result of the systematization of knowledge and the accumulation of experience in the treatment of patients with hysteria. Freud was later able to establish the validity of his conclusions for the three basic neuroses, which he called transference neuroses. Modern psychoanalysis has succeeded in establishing the universality of the rule of linking suppressed affects with symptoms and problems in everyday life. And the very process of forgetting significant and emotionally intense life events without living these emotions was called repression. [22]

Freud's main discovery is that he showed how the relationship between the sexual sphere and the mental apparatus is established and how such a connection through the organism, acting as a mediator, passes into mental activity. He managed to get to the very roots of hysteria and rid the hysteria from the mysterious aura, revealing the initiating mechanisms. On the other hand, he stressed the relativity of the role played by sexuality in this type of neurosis, showing that other types of neuroses can be sexually conditioned.

In fact, in the research of hysteria, most of the phenomena were discovered that are basic in psychoanalysis today, like a child who makes as many discoveries in the first years of life as he does not make later throughout his life.

The story of hysteria in the context of psychoanalysis is both a story of paradox and disappointment.

And although Freud set us on the path to solving the riddle of hysteria, he himself was partly a victim of the temptations of the deceptive games of hysterics, which mask the latter's fear of emptiness. Without exaggeration, it can be argued that it will take a lot of work to clarify the mystery of hysteria.

The current debate on the significance of the phenomenon of hysteria in psychoanalysis does not give specific answers, persistently following the path of development and the search for a single truth.

Remaining a ground for discussion and controversy, hysteria irrefutably continues to exist both in the time of Freud and to this day.

Today's disputes and disagreements regarding the advisability of turning to Freud's theory (some consider it outdated sometimes even without reading the master's work) due to the fact that hysteria in its original manifestation has long since sunk into summer, cannot touch that unshakable foundation of psychoanalysis as a method of research and therapy. theories on which skyscrapers of psychotherapy of different directions are being built today. The systematized base laid by Professor Z. Freud was formed through field research and groping. It is irrefutable that Her Highness Hysteria became the muse in this creation for Freud. Even today, she continues to push to go to the analyst's office, only changing her flirty hat for "louboutins" …

Far from disappearing forever from our existence, hysteria has adapted to our time and, as before, continues to exist among us in a distorted form. Time, like the work of a dream, does mysterious metamorphoses with it, forming endless puzzles for psychoanalysts.

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