ABSTRACT
The hysterical symptom is strange as it reveals a gap in people understanding of the human body. In standard literature on psychosomatic symptoms a distinction is usually made. In Sigmund Freud’s times, science approached the question of hysteria from a concept of the body as a self-explanatory unity of biology and physiology. Freud came to understand that he could not solve the question of hysteria without considering the relation between the body and the patient’s narrative, that is, the way she talked about her body. Because of her specific symptomatology the hysterical patient disclosed a primary incongruity between body and language which we all share. Her imaginary body manifested this leap; from body to language; from biology to symbolization. In 1949 Claude Levi-Strauss published his important article on the efficacy of symbols. In his paper Levi-Strauss suggests that—when the sufferer has faith in the healer—words have effect on the physical reality, not only on the psychical reality.
