Studies on Hysteria Revisited

Charles Melman on Trauma, Incompatibility, Repression and the Unconscious

Charles Melman, Helen Sheehan

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• eBook ISBN: 9781000454765
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Mental Health in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Steeped in Lacanian theory, this book is the first of its kind to present a longitudinal approach to the study of hysteria.

In these 21 seminars Dr Melman leads us from the first records of hysteria to Freud's major discovery of the principal concepts of trauma, incompatibility, repression and the unconscious. Peppered with invaluable clinical examples, the author guides readers through difficult concepts as he links hysteria to the birth of psychoanalysis itself, and demonstrates how the reader may become implicated in this discourse.

Capturing Melman's indomitable spirit, Studies on Hysteria Revisited will be an important read for graduate students, clinicians, and those in psychoanalytic formation.

Chapter 1

Introduction

Charles Melman

DOI: 10.4324/9781003167839-1

We don’t have any need nowadays to save either Freud or Lacan. They don’t in any way need it, we should perhaps try and save ourselves. In fact, the condition by which we can escape neurosis, “do not give up on your desire”, is encapsulated in the Lacanian dictum which he indicated in the Ethics of Psychoanalysis.¹ If this dictum brings us to something worse, have we not then got this choice only as a way of closing the question: to include a dissatisfaction which is expressed in hysterical demand or stoic resignation with regard to “this worse” which is that of psychoanalysis?

Perhaps in order to respond to this question, we have to take up again an examination of the foundations on which psychoanalysis was established, that is to say to take up once again the Studies on Hysteria.² Let us note from the outset that Freud’s writings on which we continue to found ourselves, those which go from the Project³ to the Dream⁴ book are more than 100 years old and, despite the promise made by Freud in 1913 in his article on the “Unconscious”,⁵ he never again took up Studies on Hysteria. What may appear even more astonishing, is that the second topology which appeared in 1920,⁶ contradicts this book. We could legitimately hope that he would have renewed his conceptions from the new economy, implied in the automatism of repetition.

Freud’s students in turn, were not too eloquent on hysteria. We don’t have texts or works to which we can spontaneously and immediately refer. The one and only decisive and important reference which we have to hand is the introduction made by Lacan on the discourse of the hysteric.⁷ But, a question must be asked: can the discourse of the hysteric be resumed in the fact that it establishes a basis, that it gives its place to what is, properly speaking, the subjective position from where the subject expresses himself when he is able – for example, that there is no sexual rapport – in other words to say, with conviction to express his complaint, or indeed, does this algorithm resume for us the clinic of hysteria?

What we can, all the same, immediately point out, is that the discourse of the hysteric offers to the one who speaks, no matter who, a kind of prêt-à-porter, a ready-to-wear if he finds himself a little bare in his investment in a word. Therefore, we shouldn’t be surprised if hysterical positions properly speaking, if the sayings and the manifest signs of hysteria can be met within structures, in psychopathological organisations which are extremely diverse. In other words, the discourse of the hysteric presents itself at first as a possible way for everyone to contain himself in language. It is one of the major ways, quite simply, of making the social bond. And Lacan, emphasised that no matter what the structure of the patient, he will find himself being led, through the discourse of the hysteric, by the very fact of the protocol of the analytic cure.

Perhaps what we have to regret is that Lacan did not come back to the conditions which made that birth possible, that is to say, the foundation of psychoanalysis itself. It could be said with regard to this, that Lacan never wanted to approach psychoanalysis via the clinic, to establish for example, a treatise on a clinic of psychoanalysis. There is a simple reason for this: the clinic, psychoanalytic or otherwise offers itself as evidence, like a frame in which the observer finds himself privileged enough to have himself excluded. This is the principle of the establishment of all the clinics with which we deal. And precisely, in the case of hysteria, we know how he or she will freely apply themselves in giving a picture to all eventual voyeurs. Do we have to emphasise the fact that our position is different? First, for us, the subject is in the picture! In other words, the position of the observer is completely included in what he observes: he is at one and at the same time the part taken up and the part being taken up. He is himself a product of the procedure he is studying. But above all what we have to study with regards to hysteria is precisely this: in what way is the subject himself caught up in the picture? We have to be ready to conquer the resistances presenting themselves as the revelation of the most intimate of our abjection – an attempt at capturing what could amount to a certain violation.

A little remark is necessary here on the status of the clinic in the field of psychoanalysis. We can easily say that the clinic is in some way our imaginary. But, by the same token, it is fairly essential because this imaginary has a currency equal to the two other dimensions, as you are aware. You know how, in the knots for example, Lacan needed to call on this imaginary dimension to not only establish the other two but to verify them and measure their effects. For the mathematicians also, the passage through the imaginary – by the look, by the picture, by the drawing, – all of this was proved necessary. In other words, the quality of the imaginary here does not have to frighten us. If we have a meaning to give to the clinic, we will simply say that it’s the study of different organisations which are the product of this fact that, there is no sexual rapport. We will not privilege one over the other and in this way, one is as good as the other.

Therefore, to conclude this introduction, there is a methodological difficulty, which is perfectly irrefutable. Studies on hysteria easily present themselves as the attempt to account for the subject by the concept. Now, what we find is that by definition, the subject is precisely that which manifests itself by escaping this concept and by denying it. That is what we call Verneinung.⁸ This of course, means there is always a little bit of the ridiculous when we have to pretend to conclude studies on hysteria. We could be tempted by another approach and take up these studies via the way of biography, history, or the novel. We know Freud’s concern when his observations are read like novels. The interest of this double impossibility which I’m emphasising about studies on hysteria is to show how this division is strictly similar to the very structure of hysteria. In what way? The subject is a product of structure, and thanks to historicisation, to the establishing of history, there is some term, some real term, some ultimate term which will finally ensure its advent.

Being is a very strict definition, which is, needless to say, not metaphysical. Being is not realised until the moment when the subject finds himself represented by a signifier which could signify himself: only then will he accomplish his being. We see this kind of division therefore between the attempt to take on board studies on hysteria via the concept itself (which always only gives an approximation, and you may remember these pages of Encore⁹ where Lacan evokes the approximate quality to accord to these concepts) or indeed this passage via historicisation which holds the hope of an end always possible, that is to say, sends us back to a real of which, after all, we never know if it will or not be able to exhaust itself.

With regard to analysts themselves we find an opposition between clinicians – that is to say, between those who refer to the structure – and those who challenge it, to privilege instead the accent given to biography, as if reference to a clinical organisation brings along with it the germ of a decisive error. Some among us remember the quarrels which took place some years ago, which have not even today been put to rest in a satisfying way, between the partisans of structure and those of history.

Finally, in another reference, this same distinction will permit us two different modes of the apprehension of infinity: one which is founded on actual infinity, which founds itself on structure; and the other which we evoke as potential infinity and which on the contrary, animates the narrative, the historicisation. This means that when we wish to take up again studies on hysteria we don’t really know if we should begin by reading books about mathematics or novels …

Our first intention in the following seminars is to take up again the concepts, those which presented themselves to Freud at the beginning, in his construction of psychoanalysis. These concepts are foundational, they are the pillars. For example, from the very first texts which support the whole edifice, we will find concepts such as trauma and incompatibility. What is an “incompatible” representation for the hysteric? What leads the hysteric to repression – the third concept will have for her the particularity, the singularity of veering towards that field called “somatic conversion”. This repression is found in and of itself to be another essential concept because Freud called it the unconscious.

I hasten to say, to simplify, that I will speak of hysteria in the feminine – because that is how it was established historically – and we shall see how and why this position is so well able to respond to the feminine one. Afterwards, we shall have a seminar dealing with masculine hysteria and its particularities.

The first term I will look at this evening is trauma. This trauma, Freud found it in a quasi-systematic fashion, regularly, in the biography of hysterics. This will have a fairly essential role to guide us towards the place of sexuality – because these traumas are essentially of a sexual nature. This helps Freud conceive the economy of the psychical apparatus as ruled by the necessity for abreaction, which permits him to introduce a fundamental concept which is that of the pleasure principle. Trauma plays a harmful role by the eruption of large quantities of excitation, which cannot flow because the subject does not give them an appropriate response, whether that be a motor one, flight for example, or a sexual one: in fact, this trauma survives to an age where the subject is in a state of inadequacy to respond, a state Freud calls sexual prematuration. In the face of, this irruption, the necessary tools are not available, the subject does not have access to an appropriate verbal rejoinder. You know Freud first believed in the reality of trauma, for example in the form of violation, but he finally concluded that it is articulated around phantasy.

This question of trauma remains essential for us. Why? Because we can read there even today the way in which the subject talks about his contribution as a subject, that is to say his birth, with regard to the establishing of a real introduced by the phallic signifier, and by which the subject henceforth finds himself abolished, that is to say constituted. In other words, what trauma illustrates for us, in how it is recounted, is that this foundational act, this violent act which is in some way imposed on an “X” to make of him a subject, this inaugurates at one and the same time his place and his solitude as a subject – this act which gave him birth, gave him the light of day. We do not hesitate to say that if there is a trauma of birth, so dear to Otto Rank,¹⁰ it is indeed this one.

We can then make a few remarks concerning this foundational act, to illustrate this inaugural trauma, this “labour”. For example, if the mentally challenged person is capable of fascinating us and of being cherished by us, it’s precisely because he escapes this trauma of birth and offers us the triumph of the one who manages to be here, never having had to be born. We also know how much the fantasy – we cannot speak here of phantasy, for the obsessional neurotic, is that of being kept warm and covered within the maternal uterus. We can say that this is another way of defying the separating power of the Autre. We know by what symptoms the obsessional tries to maintain this original contact, notably by this phobic contact, these obsessions of washing and indeed this other trait which for him is an abhorrence of everything with a touch of violence, because all expression of violence is considered as criminal and punishable.

We can also ask ourselves a question: from where does this scene which we call primitive get this traumatic character? The primitive scene¹¹ in general, as it is spoken about, gives little to see. But, it interprets the noises which it gives to hear as the very voice of this phallus which, in being presented in this way, makes the subject anxious by the fact of abolishing him, by telling him that at this moment he literally does not know where to place himself, that he has in fact lost his place. And perhaps, one can say that it is this particular mode of jouissance, pushed to anxiety, which the exhibitionist tries to capture in the look of the partner on whom he imposes himself. This initial trauma describes itself, therefore, following the scenario of a seduction which mixes the violence of the agent, with the passivity and the character, without defence, of the patient.

We can say that this character merits the name of secondary elaboration – as Freud introduced it, for example, with regard to the formation of dreams – and indeed, he instructs us in an essential way as to the importance of the narrative, its insertion into history. He shows us, in fact, how the construction of the narrative is only held, when it is of value, by the accident of structure which organises its agency. That is really why the truth has the structure of fiction. This can, once again make us think of the way we are forced to hear all the elaborations that we are led to produce, which are called rationalisations for example, all these elaborations which fill our exchanges whether these have to do with quarrels or so called scientific debates. Meanwhile, it is true, as I outlined earlier, that this story, this scenario, this secondary elaboration offers us pleasure, comfort, in supposing that this narrative, sufficiently faithful and sufficiently repeated, will permit us to find once again this original silence, this original mutism, this original peace. And without a doubt it was under this phantasy that Freud could construct his first therapeutic concepts, his principle of catharsis or even “to speak until one can say no more”.¹² No matter what, it’s because of this trauma that the subject will find himself accompanied everywhere, b...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Endorsements
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• Historical Context
• Acknowledgements
• Preface by Denise Saint Fare Garnot
• Preface by Charles Melman
• 1. Introduction
• 2. A history of the entity known as hysteria
• 3. Repression
• 4. Freud’s Studies on Hysteria
• 5. The language of the body
• 6. The ex-sistence of the hysteric
• 7. The body since Aristotle
• 8. The hysterical symptom
• 9. Opposition S1/S2
• 10. What do we understand by body?
• 11. A Christmas seminar
• 12. The economy of hysteria
• 13. The ex-sistence of the subject
• 14. The polymorphism of hysteria
• 15. The hysteric and her father
• 16. Psychotic episodes in hysteria
• 17. The stage of abalility
• 18. Masculine hysteria
• 19. Paranoia
• 20. Another approach to masculine hysteria
• 21. Resistance to psychoanalysis
• Appendix
• Bibliography
• Index