ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author demonstrates that pre-oedipal dyadic levels of personality organization can be integrated with oedipal struggles, and hysteria can be placed within the context of sexuality and gender identity. He illustrates how the passions or madness of a patient must be invited in the transference to help treat the hysterical character. The author shows how the models proposed by Wilfred R. Bion, Jacques Lacan, and Andre Green helped his in working with this patient. One major reason has been the incompleteness of the oedipal level organization and fragmentation of the psychic structures in the patients readers are now seeing leading to an increase in the diagnosis of borderline personality. Lacan’s concepts of the Real, and the Symbolic were very valuable. The patient’s illusions in living in the completeness of the Real and foreclosing the paternal symbolic function were equally useful. Lacan’s focus on the analytic attitude had a great deal of similarity with Bion’s advice to analysts.
