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The Characters of Psychoanalysis

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The Characters of Psychoanalysis Hysteria Hysteria has disappeared from contemporary culture only insofar as it has been subjected to a repression through the popular diagnosis of ‘borderline personality disorder’. In Hysteria the distinguished psychoanalyst Christopher Bollas offers an original and illuminating theory of hysteria that weaves its well-known features— repressed sexual ideas; indifference to conversion; over-identification with the other—into the hysteric form. Through a rereading of Freud, Bollas argues that sexuality in itself is traumatic to all children, as it ‘destroys’ the relation to the mother, transfiguring her from ‘mamma’, the infant’s caregiver, to ‘mother’, the child’s and father’s sex object. For the hysteric this recognition is endlessly traumatic and the hysterical personality forms itself into an organised opposition to this knowledge. True to his earlier writings, Bollas’ vision is thought provoking and mind expanding. Hysteria brings new perspectives to long-standing ideas, making enlightening reading for students and professionals involved in psychoanalysis and psychotherapy alike, as well as the lay reader who takes an interest in the formation of personality in western culture. Christopher Bollas is a psychoanalyst in private practice in London. He is the author of The Shadow of the Object (1987), Being a Character (l992), Cracking Up (1995) The New Informants (with David Sundelson) (1995), and The Mystery of Things (1999). Hysteria Christopher Bollas London and NewYork First published in 2000 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London, EC4P 4EE This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 Routledge is on imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group © 2000 Christopher Bollas All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Bollas, Christopher. Hysteria/Christopher Bollas. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Hysteria. I. Title. RC532.B64 1999 99–38081 616.85' 24–dc21 CIP ISBN 0-203-36108-3 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-203-37364-2 (Adobe eReader Format) ISBN 0-415-22032-7 (hbk) ISBN 0-415-22033-5 (pbk) Contents Introduction 1 1 The characters of psychoanalysis 5 2 Sexual epiphany 15 3 Sexuality and its transformations 29 4 In the beginning is the mother 43 5 Erotising absence 65 6 Functions of the father 75 7 The seduction of the story 93 8 Hot and cold 105 9 Showing off 115 10 Self as theatre 125 11 The malignant hysteric 135 12 Transference addicts 155 13 Seduction and the therapist 161 14 The last chapter 173 References 193 Index 195 Introduction His body imposes upon him a logic he detests. He replaces the body driven by its biology with an imaginary one symbolising his distress by enervating parts of it whilst showing little interest in its plight. He will be indifferent to it. Its sexuality seems divisive to him and, although he represses sexual ideas, paradoxically he finds they become rather powerful nuclei of the banished which continuously strive to return to consciousness. He will often dissociate himself from such returns, appearing cold and ascetic. Or he may do the opposite, becoming a kind of ringmaster to his internal world, exhibiting sexual ideas in his own ongoing theatre. Between these extremes he is lost in his own world of daydreams, where, amongst other possibilities, he can remain a perpetual innocent, living as a child inside the adult body. He can transmit his state of mind in adept ways, so much so that others of like temperament can identify with his plight. He could find himself in a community of kindred beings, all transmitting symptoms back and forth over their own psychic Internet. He is an hysteric. Any essay on hysteria is obliged to address its famous traits. When we think of hysteria we think of people who are troubled by their body’s sexual demands and repress sexual ideas; who are indifferent to conversion; who are overidentified with the other; who express themselves in a theatrical manner; who daydream existence rather than engage it; and who prefer the illusion of childlike innocence to the worldliness of the adult. They also suffer from suggestion, either easily influenced by the other or in turn passing on ideas to fellow hysterics. Although others in the village of character disorders share one or more of the above traits, only the hysteric brings them together into a single dynamic form. One task I have set myself is to provide a theory which weaves these traits into the hysteric form. Theories of hysteria have tended to privilege certain perspectives at the expense of others, as if theories were small armies engaged in a war with one another. If one finds a biological contribution to the hysteric’s interpretation of his or her plight—such as the hysteric’s disenchantment with bio-logic’s imposition of stage of sexual excitation—does this mean that the explanation rests on biology? If one addresses the hysteric’s relation to the ‘primary object’—initially, always the mother—does this mean that the theory rests on the self as derivative of maternal 2INTRODUCTION character? If one conceptualises the hysteric according to the dynamics of family life, does the theory stand or fall on the concept of family life? In looking at something as complex as hysteria we are obliged to use as many perspectives as are necessary both to distinguish the essential traits and to forge them into an integrated vision of how each of these constituents influences, and is in turn affected by, the others. The reader will find that I give equal weight to the self s bio-logic, to its stages of psychic development, to its object relations, and to its formation in culture. My theory rests fundamentally on Freud’s conceptualisation of hysteria—although there are areas where I disagree with him —but I have clearly been influenced in my thinking both by British object-relations theory—the schools of Klein and Winnicott—and by French psychoanalytic thought, especially the work of Lacan. But on what basis do I construct my theory? This book’s strengths, and its limitations, are based on what I have been taught by my hysterical patients and by those hysterics whose treatments I have supervised. The reader will find that very often I discard theory in favour of an hysteric speaking for himself or herself; thus the book is full of clinical examples. The structure of the book is perhaps slightly unusual. A chapter may nominally be on the mother or on the father, yet only a part of the theory about the influence of each will be in that chapter. Further material on each will be found in other chapters, as will be true of all the themes in the work. There is, then, a certain repetition of the main concentrations—on sexuality, conversion, seduction, the mother, etc.—but the reader will find variations that introduce slightly different perspectives. The concerns of the text proceed rather in the manner of what Searle (p.2) calls ‘criss-crossing continua’, because it was first given in lecture form and the students needed to hear the main arguments repeated from time to time in order to follow them throughout the entire course of the seminar. I have elected to retain this format, not only because this is how it was originally composed, but also because I think the theory of hysteria is so complex that the reader will benefit from variegated recurrence. The decision to deliver the lectures and subsequently to write the book derived from clinical supervisions in the USA in the mid-1980s. The cases being presented were clearly hysterics but the majority of the presenters thought of them as borderline personalities. Although in the past, supervisees had certainly presented a variety of character disorders, by the mid–1980s almost every case presented was hysteric. What was I to make of this? Gradually, it seemed to me to be an unconscious demand in the therapeutic community to reconsider hysteria. Disenchantment with the over-embracing concept of the borderline diagnosis was clear, and thinking the hysteric through the theoretical lenses of the borderline personality had become something of a tragedy. I found myself giving micro-lectures on hysteria in the midst of supervisions, and then decided it was best to offer a seminar, which seemed to confirm the need to think this through. The ideas in this book were first presented at the Institute of Contemporary Psychotherapy in New York in 1987 at the kind invitation of INTRODUCTION 3 Edward Corrigan, which in turn led to two other seminars on hysteria in New York, one in 1991 and then again in 1996. I am grateful to the participants in these seminars for their critiques. The seminar was then presented in Chicago, São Paulo, Tel Aviv and Malmö and I wish to thank the psychoanalysts and psychotherapists in these communities for their comments, and especially those who provided many of the clinical vignettes to be found throughout this book. In particular, I would like to thank Ulla and Lars Bejerholm, Gabriella Mann and Manoel Berlinck.
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