Hysteria from Freud to Lacan

by NASIO, JUAN-DAVID

• ISBN13: 9781892746023
• ISBN10: 1892746026
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1998-05-17
• Publisher: Other Press

Summary

In the English-speaking psychoanalytic world, few diagnostic categories are as controversial as hysteria. This concept, widely held to reflect outmoded cultural prejudices aganist women, has virtually disappeared from our theoretical literature, diagnostic manuals, and traning programs. However far from being gender-bound, hysteria from Jacques Lacan represents a psychic strategy that bears on one of the most fundamental preoccupations of existence: What does it mean to be a woman? What does it mean to be a man?

Author Biography

Juan-David Nasio, psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, is Director of Studies at the University of Paris VII (Sorbonne) and Director of the Séminaires Psychanalytiques de Paris, a major center for psychoanalystic training and the dissemination of psychoanalystic thought to non-specialists. He is a former member of the École Freudienne of Jacques Lacan and worked closely with the renowned child analyst Françoise Dolto. He is the Editor of the Psychoanalysis Series at Éditions Payot. Author of eight books on psychoanalysis, Dr. Nasio has published numerous articles and interviews in leading publications and has participated extensively in French radio and television broadcasts. He lives in Paris, where he practices psychoanalysis with adults and children.

Table of Contents

The Lacanian Clinical Field: Series Overview	p. xi
Foreword	p. xvii
Opening Remarks	p. xxi
The Face of Hysteria in Analysis	p. 1
The Unsatisfied Ego	p. 4
The Hystericizing Ego	p. 6
The Sadness Ego	p. 9
Differentiating Hysteria, Obsession, and Phobia	p. 11
The Causes of Hysteria	p. 13
A Reading of Freud's First Theory: The Origin of Hysteria Is the Psychic Trace of a Trauma	p. 13
Hysteria Is Brought About by an Inappropriate Ego Defense: Repression	p. 16
Hysteria Is Brought About by the Failure of Repression: Conversion	p. 18
Suffering in the Conversion Symptom Is the Equivalent of Masturbatory Gratification	p. 20
The Choice of Organ to Be the Site of Conversion	p. 21
The Conversion Symptom Disappears If It Takes On a Symbolic Value Produced by the Analyst's Listening	p. 24
A Reading of Freud's Second Theory: The Origin of Hysteria Is an Unconscious Fantasy	p. 27
The Sexual Life of the Hysteric	p. 33
The Sexual Life of the Hysteric Is a Paradox, the Painful Expression of an Unconscious Fantasy	p. 33
The Paradox of the Hysteric's Sexual Life	p. 34
The Hysterical Woman and the Pleasure in Openness	p. 35
Hysterical Fantasies	p. 39
The Unconscious Fantasy at the Root of Hysteria Is a Visual Fantasy--The Threat of Castration Enters through the Eyes: The Case of a Boy	p. 39
Fantasied Anxiety Destined to Be Expressed in a Conversion Symptom Is the Unbearable Anxiety Called "Castration Anxiety"	p. 40
Castration Anxiety Is Unconscious	p. 41
The Hysterical Fantasy Is an "Arrest at the Image" in the Phallic Stage of the Child's Libidinal Development	p. 42
The Visual Fantasy of Castration as the Unconscious Origin of Hysteria: The Case of a Girl	p. 43
What Is Hysterical Conversion? A Phallicization of the Non-Genital Body and Estrangement from the Genital Body	p. 47
What Is Converted in Hysterical Conversion? Castration Anxiety Is Converted Partly into Excessive Erotization of the Non-Genital Body, Partly (and Paradoxically) into Inhibition of Genital Sexuality	p. 49
The Uterus in Hysteria: A Fundamental Fantasy	p. 55
Differentiating Hysterical, Obsessional, and Phobic Fantasies	p. 59
Castration Anxiety Is at the Center of Hysterical, Obsessional, and Phobic Fantasies	p. 59
Imaginary Portraits of the Hysteric	p. 67
The Analyst Listening to the Patient Has a Mental Representation of the Castration Fantasy	p. 69
The Analyst Looks at What He Hears	p. 72
Psychoanalytic Treatment of Hysteria and the Termination of Analysis	p. 75
The Treatment of Hysteria Consists in Guiding the Patient to Experience Successfully the Ordeal of Castration Anxiety	p. 75
During the Treatment, the Patient Separates Twice: First from Himself, Then from the Analyst	p. 77
Hysteria in the Transference: Conditions That Lead the Patient to the Threshold of the Ordeal of Anxiety	p. 79
The Neurotic's Desire Is a Desire for Anxiety	p. 83
The Analyst's Action Aims at Resolving Transference Hysteria	p. 85
Passing Through the Ordeal of Anxiety	p. 88
Mourning at the Time of Termination Is Mourning not for My Analyst, but for a Fiction and an Anxiety	p. 89
Passing Through Anxiety Gives Way to the Pain of Mourning	p. 93
The Pain of Mourning Is not the Pain of Loss, but the Pain of Finding What One Has Lost When One Knows It Is Irretrievably Lost	p. 94
Passing Through Anxiety Is Finding the Birthplace of the Person I Have Been All Along	p. 97
Passing Through Anxiety Changes My Perception of My Sexual Identity	p. 102
Brief Observations	p. 105
Reading the Lacanian Formula for the Hysterical Fantasy	p. 107
The Libidinal Presence of Hysteria: A Clinical Example	p. 108
Example of a Feminine Fantasy of Hysterical Anxiety and Hatred of the Mother-Phallus	p. 109
Questions and Answers on Hysteria	p. 111
Hysterical Blindness in the Theories of Charcot, Janet, Freud, and Lacan	p. 125
Excerpts from the Works of Freud and Lacan on Hysteria	p. 133
References	p. 141
Index	p. 145
About the Author	p. 152
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