Who are hysterics

Say the word “hysteria” and you will most likely imagine a crowd of football fans at the moment when their team scores the winning goal. But it’s better to remember someone you know who always strives to be in the spotlight and tries by any means to arouse interest in himself.

Such a person describes in great detail everything that happens to him. In communication, he is busy only with himself, his clothes are often extravagant, and his mood is changeable: he laughs out loud, and the next moment he is thrown into tears. “Hysterical”, “hysterical” – people around talk about women and men, and it almost sounds like an insult. However, the word itself, before entering into everyday use, appeared in the medical and psychoanalytic vocabulary.

Hysteria rehabilitation

Sudden mood swings, fainting, memory loss, paralysis – these varied and changeable symptoms Hippocrates called hysteria. He believed that it occurs only in women: due to prolonged sexual abstinence, their uterus (“hysteria” – from the Greek hysteron, “womb”) becomes mobile and, “wandering around the body”, puts pressure on other organs, causing such strange conditions. .

But for many centuries, most doctors considered these manifestations to be a simulation or the result of autosuggestion and called hysteria not a disease, but “the great pretender.” Indeed, hysterical symptoms manifested themselves only in the presence of spectators, were safe (falling, a person did not hurt himself) and did not contradict the norms of behavior in society – after all, in the XNUMXth century, fainting in public was considered a sign of aristocracy.

It wasn’t until the mid-nineteenth century that the French neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot rehabilitated hysteria as a mental illness and persuaded doctors to take it seriously. This is what his student Sigmund Freud did, who considered hysteria to be one of the types of neurosis.

Freud suggested that the causes of his patients’ hysterical behavior lay in the sexual sphere. In particular, it can be caused by violence experienced or imagined in childhood. The memory of this is so unbearable for a woman that it is forced into the unconscious, but continues to make itself felt with hysterical manifestations in which Freud saw a simulation of an orgasm.

Usually, girls outgrow the desire to connect with their father, identifying themselves with the parent of their own sex – with their mother. In the case of hysteria, Freud saw an unresolved Oedipus complex – an unconscious unwillingness to separate from the father, leading to sexual immaturity and problems with sexual “self-determination.”

It is repressed sexuality that breaks through in the form of bodily symptoms or an inappropriately strong emotional reaction. Not everyone manages to safely survive the oedipal phase, so many of us have hysterical traits. That’s why the psychological portrait of a hysteric sometimes seems so familiar…

Eternal game

“Who am I to you?”, “How do you value me?”… Our need to constantly make sure that we are desirable, that the other appreciates and approves of us, is the main consequence of the hysterical component. This was the opinion of the outstanding French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan.

The paradox is that a person suffering from hysteria tries with all his might to arouse desire in another, to achieve passion for him, but very soon he himself is frightened of this passion.

In order to distance himself from her and alleviate the anxiety that sex (too real, mundane, animal) causes him, the hysteric turns his existence into a theatrical stage, where everything is a complete optical illusion, where he constantly plays out emotions, as if addressing the audience, whom he need to be touched and seduced. And what about the audience?

“At the beginning of their acquaintance, they are fascinated – communication inspires with ease and simplicity,” says existential psychotherapist Svetlana Krivtsova. – But imperceptibly, the relationship is complicated: the words of the partner are still captivating, but annoying indifference to other people, non-compliance with agreements and violation of personal boundaries – tantrums do not feel when to stop, causing embarrassment with inappropriate frankness or tactlessness.

Their unpredictability, self-interest, mood swings cause an irresistible desire to end the relationship.

Говорящее тело

Surprisingly, constant preoccupation with the sexual side of life turns the whole body into an erogenous zone. The eyes, ear or knee can act as the genitals at the unconscious level. Sexuality spouts from all pores, which is expressed in somatization, that is, the appearance of physical symptoms: temporary blindness, colitis, skin diseases. These painful conditions appear and disappear inexplicably, for no apparent reason.

“For example, a woman brought up in strictness, who considers masturbation to be something shameful, may lose the ability to move her arm,” explains psychoanalyst Nancy McWilliams. “This phenomenon is known as ‘glove palsy’, where only the hand is affected – it does not have a neurological cause like true palsy that involves the entire hand.”

Истеричка бессознательно преподносит себя врачу как загадку, которую тот должен разгадать. Символически она отдает тело в дар науке, демонстрируя все новые и новые странные симптомы, отказываясь выздороветь в срок или самым неожиданным образом реагируя на лекарства. Врач становится своего рода зрителем-партнером-соперником, с которым приходится часто встречаться.

But today, in the era of sexual liberation, hysteria has lost the vivid manifestations that it was famous for in the past. You will no longer meet convulsions or frightening paralysis, but the body continues to talk about mental trouble.

Male-female

We often dream of being someone else. For a hysteric, this is not difficult: not recognizing one’s sexual essence (“Am I a man or a woman?”) Brings him closer to the realization of this dream! Refusing to confine herself to reality, the hysterical woman stands up for the right to be who she wants to be, and plays one after another different roles like movie stars. When meeting with a hysterical woman, we never know which side she will appear before us.

In her psyche there is male and female, yin and yang, active and passive. Hence the strategies of seduction that can puzzle anyone: actively conquer, passively surrender, and if the other gets too close, flee. Such a woman brings erotica to the most innocent relationships, deep down dreaming only of high love! She constantly intrigues, plays with mystery, but requires that we see her under all masks.

It is often said that she is frigid and that is why she can control her body and emotions. Psychoanalyst Jean-David Nazio in his book “Hysteria, or the Magnificent Child of Psychoanalysis” comes to exactly the opposite conclusions: rather, she manages to experience an orgasm in an incomprehensible way, without surrendering to another even at the peak of pleasure, “without involving a grain of her personality in relations with a partner.”

Неудовлетворенность как образ жизни

Dissatisfaction is our common destiny, but in a person prone to hysteria, it develops into a way of life. The hysterical woman feels like an unfortunate victim, experiencing endless frustration. The more others try to please her, the more she (instead of rejoicing) thinks about what she lacks.

On the day when the object of her desires makes it clear that he has succumbed to her charms, she immediately loses her love for him. The inner languor, which sometimes makes us think that if we had everything, we would have nothing more to expect from life, it takes on a frightening dimension. She imagines that if all her desires were satisfied, she would die of anguish.

Neurosis for good

Chronic dissatisfaction with life often turns tantrums into perpetually grumbling or moaning people. However, it also happens the other way around – neurosis gives energy to tantrums, forcing them to move forward and improve the world that surrounds them.

In search of a world that finally suits them and where no one will feel frustrated, they can get involved in politics or charity, participate in social movements and advocate for the need for change. So Bertha Pappenheim (one of Sigmund Freud’s patients, whom he described under the pseudonym Anna O.) became the world’s first female social worker, devoting herself to helping illegitimate children and abused girls.

So we owe a lot to tantrums. And the hysteria that operates within us and makes us always want more is not so bad as we sometimes think.