ABSTRACT
In human cultures the hysteric has worn the mask that reflects the overt morality and the hidden sexual aspirations of the contemporary ethos. This chapter argues that the hysteric in early childhood deals with the failures of good-enough mothering and care by precocious sexual development. The primitive anxieties and affects generated by the failure of a phase-adequate holding-environment, and the resultant threat to the coherence of the emergent ego, are coped with by intensification, as well as exploitation, of the sexual apparatuses of the body-ego. The hysteric compels the environment to act upon him, or for him, but does not become accessible to mutuality of psychic dialogue and sharing. The hysteric establishes that peculiar psychic reality – the grudge – through which he or she can relate without mutuality and communicate without the risk of being known and helped.
