ABSTRACT
Jamiseon Webster argues that there is something annoying about the celebrated (or denigrated) muteness, disappearing acts, or unspoken bodily protest attributed to hysterical women at this point in psychoanalytic history. Any analyst who has worked with a hysteric knows the intense intricacy of what comes to be said, the incredible work of analysis that she performs, no less the process of encountering, again and again, some kernel of trauma, the very limits of understanding, that tends to bring the analysis towards its final moments. Why emphasise what is merely the symptomatic starting point? Why not describe the ferocious intelligence of some hysterical patients when it comes to analytic work, no less their intelligence in relation to their analysts, something that has often been called clairvoyant, even if defensive − let’s talk about you? What other treatments are as maddening, mystifying and magical? And what about the hysteric’s politics, so variably celebrated as radical, feminist, or disparaged as submissive, conservative? This also seems to miss the mark of what takes place in analytic work; though the question, no less how it is conceptualised, is not impertinent for the future of the institution of psychoanalysis. What could a more hysterical psychoanalysis look like, and is that even something we want in the 21st century? In this chapter, looking at an analyst analysing hysteria (Kristeva), a hysterical analyst (Montrelay) and the hysterical analysand turned analyst (Tustin) Webster will try to get closer to this vision.
