ABSTRACT

It has frequently been said that hysteria was made for psychoanalysis, or even that hysteria made psychoanalysis, that it forced its birth and encouraged its development. Hysteria has been considered the neurosis closest to normality. Only one thing remains unequivocally evident: hysteria will always bear the stamp of femininity, a femininity that appears as a caricature because it is still anchored to a phallic identification. Being a true caricature of the feminine, the hysteric confronts us also with a caricature of everything else: heterosexuality, homosexuality, perversions, the couple, desire—and psychoanalysis. To interpret Freud only on the basis of his biological statements mutilates his thought and, ultimately, does away with psychoanalysis. Theoretical simplistic naturalism has gone hand in hand with the de-sexualization of the theory, a question that has been a fundamental, controversial issue in the history of psychoanalysis. British psychoanalysts have, then, paid little attention to the notion of the phallic position, the castration complex, and the differentiation of sexes.