ABSTRACT
In “Sexuality in the aetiology of the neuroses” Sigmund Freud introduces the question of anaesthesia in attempting to draw a corollary between medical investigations, and sensitivities around taking a sexual history in psychoanalysis. In Freud’s earlier observations concerning hysteria however, we find the possibility of further opening our interrogation of anaesthesia. Freud also notes, however, in a somewhat contradictory fashion that young women who have remained anaesthetic during their first sexual experiences are more prone to anxiety neurosis, which resolves upon the anaesthesia giving way to what he refers to as “normal sensitivity”. In all instances, given the reciprocal relations between anaesthetic and hysterogenic zones, anaesthesia may be replaced by hyperaesthesia producing an “extraordinary refinement” Freud writes, “of sensory activity”. The intoxicating effects of cocaine had not given way to anaesthesia but rather to a hyper-aesthetics of language and dreams; psychoanalysis operating under the influence of the intoxicating effect of language driven through the delirium of free association.
