ABSTRACT
A great advance in the potential power of hysteria is accomplished when a hysterical movement gains a formal structure, not by developing one through its own processes, but by gaining control over an existing organization. To understand the threat that hysteria poses for organization adding the recognition that organizational structure is part of the symbolic, the register of shared meaning. Organizational structure may be considered the synchronic aspect of organization—the specification at any given time of what behaviour is expected of participants as part of their jobs and of how the individual behaviours co-ordinate with each other. The antagonism between hysteria and organization plays out through some phases, each of them representing the increased power and danger of hysteria. Hysteria consists in the experience of being penetrated by masculine meaning, and the attempt to expel it, undermine it, and destroy it.
