The hysteric, with limbs dragging or spasmodically
twitching, paralyzed by a loss of speech, or trapped in an intricate web of
lies, asthmatic, breathless, choking, convulsing and vomiting uncontrollably, a
puzzle of strange symptoms and disturbing forms of behavior, was the very
origin of psychoanalysis. It was
through his work with Breuer on the case of Dora, that Freud first began the
development of his theory. Juliet
Mitchell in her latest book, Mad Men and Medusas proposes a radical
reconceptualization of the mechanism of hysteria and in so doing offers a new
take on psychoanalysis itself.

Challenging much of twentieth century psychoanalytic
theory, which argues hysteria has disappeared, Juliet Mitchell in Mad Men
and Medusas argues that, not only does hysteria still exist but that in
fact, like love or hate, it has always been a part of human emotional
life. "There is no way in which
hysteria cannot exist: it is a particular response to particular aspects of the
human condition of life and death."[p.317]

The term "hysteria" has been in
circulation for over two thousand years and while the specific symptoms of hysteria
may have varied over the centuries, the disorder itself has staked a persistent
presence. Despite the mutating nature
of the disorder, hysteria has typically been associated with women, for the
Greeks and Late Renaissance hysteria was linked to the womb, for the medieval
Christians hysteria was understood as a seduction by the devil, in the
18thcentury with women and "vapors", and in the 19thcentury with
women and "nerves". The later
part of the nineteenth century witnessed a decisive turn in theories of
hysteria. Jean Martin Charot at
Salpetriere continued with the tradition analysis that since the18th century
had understood hysteria as a neurological disorder, but his contemporary
Hippolyte Bernheim offered an alternate conception. Bernheim argued that hysteria is a psychological disorder and in
so doing opened the way for Freud, and for the "disappearance" of
hysteria itself.

The Family Drama

In traditional psychoanalytic theory the hysteric
has failed to negotiate the Oedipal complex. 
According to this theory both boys and girls initially desire their
mother, and in the resolution of the Oedipal complex this desire is accepted as
taboo. The Oedipal complex poses more
challenges for women than for men. 
Women not only have to accept the incest prohibition but must change
both the object and zone of their sexuality: the girl child must change her
sexual object from mother to father, and must change her sexual zone— from
clitoral/phallic activity to vaginal receptivity—in accord with her secondary
identification with her mother. 
According to this traditional model women are more susceptible to
hysteria because for women the resolution of the Oedipal complex is a more
arduous task. Thus we see that the
Freudian model explains hysteria in terms of the normative gender roles of the
heterosexual family and additionally roots hysteria in a vertical relationship
between child and parent.

Mitchell argues that where traditional
psychoanalytic theory locates the source of hysteria in the failure to resolve
the Oedipal complex, in fact a pre-Oedipal lateral, sibling relationship is
operative. There is a
"displacement" that occurs when a sibling arrives and this
displacement is threatening. Mitchell
re-interprets the case of Little Hans: When his sister Hanna is born, Little
Hans is no longer his mother’s baby. He
has been displaced from his position. 
The question for Little Hans becomes, "where does he stand now his place
has gone?"[p326]. Little Hans’
relationship to his sister is highly ambivalent: she is like him, but not him,
and he loves her but hates her. To
regain his sense of place and escape the chaos of the highly ambivalent
emotions he feels towards the sister, Hans want to become his mother’s baby
again. Hans is then beset with feelings
of violence towards his rival sibling and towards his mother for her
betrayal. These violent tendencies
bring the threat of punishment and it is not until this point that the father,
with the castration complex, enters onto the scene.

Hysteria Forgotten

While the hysteric was the very origin of
psychoanalysis, in twentieth century replaced by versions of neurosis and
psychosis, eating disorders, multiple personality disorder, psychosomatic
illness, and borderline personality disorder, hysteria has all but disappeared
from psychoanalysis. Mitchell argues
that this disappearance is based on 1. The changing nature of hysteria, 2.
Psychoanalysis’ omission of sibling relationships and, 3. The problem of male
hysteria.

Hysteria, Mitchell notes, is characteristically
mimetic. The hysteric imitates the
behavior of others, never involved genuinely but forever acting, engages in a
world of make believe. This mimetic
character of hysteria renders the disorder itself highly mutatable. Thus the hysteria that Freud first
encountered in the late nineteenth century responded dialogically to the
development of psychoanalytic theory and so by the early twentieth century,
imitating the newly ‘discovered’ category of psychosis, had taken on an altered
guise.

Where traditional psychoanalytic theory understood
hysteria as a strictly vertical—parent/child—relationship, Mitchell argues that
to fully understand the mechanism of hysteria it is necessary to consider how
lateral, or sibling relationship are operative. The early twentieth century failure to appreciate the importance
of sibling relationships resulted, in a failure to understand the mechanism of
male hysteria. Because early
psychoanalysis did not understand male hysteria it failed to recognize
returning WWI soldiers as hysterics and thus encouraged the development of
alternate psychological categories. 
Mitchell writes, "The hysteria, then, that is, despite our
blindness, so noticeable in war surely involves brothers —enemies or
compatriots. This is missed because, in
the theory and clinical practice of psychoanalysis, parents are all"[p130]

Mitchell recognizes a third factor in the
disappearance of hysteria. She argues
that cultural biases against the feminine were instrumental in the
‘disappearance’ of hysteria. Mitchell
argues that the soldiers who returned from WWI were in fact suffering from
hysterical symptoms, but that the medical profession could not accept that a
disorder traditionally understood as feminine could affect men on such a large
scale. In the nineteenth century male
hysteria had some credence, however the massification of male hysteria was
unpalatable to the medical community in so far as it radically challenged and
‘feminized’ traditional conceptions of ‘maleness’. Thus rather than identify returning soldiers as hysterics,
alternate categories of psychological disorder were instantiated, and hysteria
was ousted from mainstream psychoanalytic discourse.

Political implications of Mitchell’s theory

Mitchell’s theory of hysteria with its emphasis on
the lateral sibling relationship has important and interesting political
implications. According to Mitchell’s
theory the prevalence of female hysteria can now be understood not in terms of
essential or normative familial structures, but rather in terms of social
structures which favor the position of the boy-child and thus make the stakes
of sibling displacement higher for girls, i.e., because socially and culturally
boy children are more valued, the girl-child experiences a greater degree of
displacement in the face of the boy-child sibling. In addition by placing the emphasis on the lateral sibling
relation instead of on the vertical relation to the parents, Mitchell’s theory
allows for a gender-neutral conception of hysteria and allows us to think
beyond the normative structure of the traditional heterosexual family
structure.

Mitchell’s reconceptualization of the familial
relationships that subtend hysteria, allow for a new understanding of the
manner in which the death drive, the life drive and sexuality are at work in
hysteria, and this in turn allows for new ways of thinking about individual and
social violence. According to
traditional Freudian theory, the death drive and the life drive are opposed to
one another and sexuality is rooted in the life drive. Mitchell argues that in hysteric sexuality,
sexuality and the death drive come together. 
She writes, "Hysteria shows us how sexuality moves across the death
and life drives"[p158]. This
fusing of sex and death in turn explains the hysteria of soldiers and the
phenomenon of war-rape. The soldiers’
sexuality as hysteric only mimes the life drive; there is no actual
reproductive tendency. Rather for the
soldiers sexuality is related more strongly to death and via rape, only mimetically
enacts the life drive.

In recent political theory there has been a strong
move to rethink the questions of community. 
Mitchell’s theory of lateral hysteria offers an interesting perspective
on this issue. The question of
community, essentially a question of how to negotiate the self/other
relationship, now, in light of Mitchell’s work, can be more thoroughly
considered in terms of conceptions of sorority and fraternity. Marcuse in Eros and Civilization
argued for a psychoanalytic understanding of the political relationship to
authority. For Marcuse the vertical
Oedipal relationship was definitive. 
Now with Mitchell’s emphasis on the importance of lateral relationships
we are pointed towards a psychoanalytic understanding of the lateral political
relations to our neighbors and fellow citizens, brothers, sisters, peers, with
whom we create a shared community. We are offered fresh insight into how these
relationships are challenging, threatening, and into how they can function or
become pathological. Mitchell’s novel
theory of hysteria not only poses important and interesting challenges to
psychoanalytic theory but also suggests new and exciting ways in which we can
think about our shared life on earth and the political, emotional human drama
in which we all are players.

© 2002 Kathryn Walker
 

Kathryn Walker is a doctoral student in
York University’s Social and Political Thought program. Her work is focused on the
relationship between moods, rationality and politics. Kathryn is also part of
the j_spot editorial collective.

Categories: Psychoanalysis