American Journal of Applied Psychology, 2014, Vol. 2, No. 5A, 21-24 Available online at http://pubs.sciepub.com/ajap/2/5A/6 © Science and Education Publishing DOI:10.12691/ajap-2-5A-6 Hysteria Today Claudia Livingston Ades * Psychoanalysis Department of Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil *Corresponding author: clauades@uol.com.br Received August 05, 2014; Revised August 29 2014; Accepted October 27, 2014 Abstract The aim of this article is to study female hysteria, through the eyes of freudian psychoanalytical theory and Piera Aulagnier´s contributions. A clinical case study, whose subject has presented female hysteria characteristics, will be presented and, through a theoretical-clinic articulation, it will be possible to compare how this neurosis used to present itself in the past, and how it does today. Keywords: hysteria, femininity, identification process Cite This Article: Claudia Livingston Ades, “Hysteria Today.” American Journal of Applied Psychology, vol. 2, no. 5A (2014): 21-24. doi: 10.12691/ajap-2-5A-6. 1. Introduction The present article intends to address female hysteria and the vicissitudes of the identification process that it concerns, in light of the freudian psychoanalytical theory. Although not always acknowledged as such, hysteria remains intensely present, emerging nowadays under disseminated ways through means of communication, such as eating or panic disorders, and some other symptomatologies; the focus on the symptoms that arise can, nevertheless, overshadow the understanding of the psychic constitution they are part of. According to Freud in “Female Sexuality” (1931), during the negative Oedipal phase, the mother is the main love object of the girl and is where all her fixations and repressions lie, causing neurosis, specially the hysterical type. In his words: “(…) is my conjecture that this phase of mother-attachment is specifically closely connected with the etiology of hysteria, which is not a surprise, when we reflect that both - the phase and the neurosis in question - are characteristically feminine” (Freud, 1931, p. 261). Therefore, it is during the initial period of the relationship between the girl and her mother that one should focus on the study of the psychogenesis of hysterical neurosis. Femininity is a subject that, although it was widely discussed by Freud, remained - in his opinion – an enigma; for that reason, at the end of his “Femininity” text (1933 [1932]), he suggests for those who wish to learn more about it, “(…) enquire from your own experiences of life, or turn to the poets, or wait until science can give you deeper and more coherent information”. (Freud, 1932/1933, p. 164) Some characteristics are common in hysterical neurosis. According to Laplanche and Pontalis, “the specificity of hysteria is to be found in the prevalence of a certain kind of identification (…) such as in emergence of the Oedipal conflict occurring mainly in the phallic and oral libidinal spheres” (Laplache and Pontalis, 1967, p. 275). 2. The Identification Process In “Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego” (1921), the identification is described as “(…) the earliest expression of an emotional tie with another person” (Freud, 1921, p. 133), playing an important part in the early history of the Oedipus complex. In “Female Sexuality” (1931), Freud addresses the aggressive and sadistic oral desires of the girl as if they had been forced on her by “(…) early repression, in the dread of being killed by the mother, a dread which, on its turn, justifies the death-wish against her. (…) The child wants to devour the mother, from whom she received nourishment.” (Freud, 1931, p. 272). According to the author, this dread can be transferred to the father due to repression, but in reality, this is not originally targeted to him, but to the mother figure. Freud analyzes the event of the identification process in “Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego” (1921) the same way as the neurotic symptom: he quotes the example of a little girl that develops the same tormenting cough as her mother’s. According to the author, if the identification originates from the Oedipus complex, it will mean “(…) a hostile desire on the girl's part to take her mother's place, and the symptom expresses her objectal love towards her father (...). ‘You wanted to be your mother, and now you are – at least as far as your suffering goes.’” (Freud, 1921, p. 134-135). According to the author, this is the complete mechanism of the structure of a hysterical symptom. Another possibility described by Freud about the symptom is the fact that it also happens with the loved one, and he exemplifies it with the coughing that Dora would imitate from her father. In this case, “(…) identification has appeared instead of Object choice, and that object choice has regressed to identification”. (Freud, 1921, p. 135).