The Hysteric's Discourse

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Gérard Wajcman

THE HYSTERIC'S DISCOURSE ¹

Let us talk about hysteria, a field of investigation almost without limitations: throughout history there are writers telling us about hysteria, from the miraculous healing at the temple of Asclepios to the treatment of anorexia in a modern hospital; from the witch and her dealings with the devil to the high society lady and her fainting spills. Over time any concept of hysteria has been outdated by hysteria itself. For some, its diffuse, multiple patterns sprawl over the entire field of pathology. Facing both the practical difficulty of providing treatment for so ubiquitous a disorder and the theoretical problem of forcing it under one category, others, like Charcot, chose to reduce the multiple to one and to declare hysteria a single indivisible entity.

There doesn't seem to be anything medicine has not said about hysteria: it is multiple, it is one, it is nothing; it is an entity, a malfunction, an illusion; it is true and deceptive; organic or perhaps mental; it exists, it does not exist. Before proposing yet another spurious theory on the subject, we must in the existing theories locate the prolific nature of hysteria, its propensity to play in every key; this can be done with little risk of error. The very inconsistency of the disorder has lead many to think of it as a figment of the imagination; and yet, the profusion of literature devoted to it involves the entire range of medical knowledge.

[…]

We'll give the name of hysteric to this object which cannot be mastered by knowledge and therefore remains outside of history, even outside its own. This disjunction (//) can be expressed in the following way: if hysteria is a set of statements about the hysteric, then the hysteric is what eludes those statements, escapes this knowledge.

Moreover, beyond the properly scientific attempt to master an object through knowledge and thus to reduce it to a body of statements, the history of hysteria bears witness to something fundamental in the human condition--being put under pressure to answer a question. The questioning one is the hysteric. Asking a question is so elementary a relation of language that it can be done without words: when the hysteric presents her riddled body to the physician, even though mute, she poses her question.

The hysterical subject questions the physician about the symptom that, unexplainably, riddles her body. She presses him for an answer, impelling him to generate the knowledge needed to cure her.

While knowledge cannot articulate the hysteric, the hysteric ushers the articulation of knowledge.

Intending to talk about hysteria, we found that hysteria made us talk.

[…]

Following Jacques Lacan, we will call this particular structure the hysteric's discourse. (Perhaps Lacan's notion of discourse in general is inspired by this structure.)

This structure, whose elements are revealed by the history of hysteria, is fundamental first as discourse, and, second, as the hysteric's discourse.

THEORY OF THE FOUR DISCOURSES

Lacan's concept of discourse is a specific formalization of the basic components of speech and its effects. It accounts for what is at stake when we claim the right to speak. What do we do when we make this claim? First, we assume a place. Before the actual speech act occurs certain stable relations determine its effect, depending on the place from which it is performed. According to Lacan, it is the discourse that gives the speech act its status. Second, we assume language. Speech is addressed to another place in the direction of which it is delivered. Discourse as a signifying articulation establishes the social link that proceeds, from the place of speech as performance, to the place of speech as destination: to speak to an other is to act upon him. Thus discourse institutes power and conditions its exercise.

Lacan's symbolism

agent -- > other²

accounts for these elements. It formalizes the places which come into play with every speech act, namely the agent of discourse and the other who is acted upon. This formula also suggests the dimension of power in all actions exercised upon an other. The effect of such actions, the product of discourse, requires the introduction of a third place:

agent -- > other -- > production

Finally, psychoanalysis necessitates a fourth item to complete this array: the place of truth. The analytic experience is based on the fact that, at least ordinarily, we do not know what we say: what we intend to say is not the truth of what we say: the agent of speech conveys a meaning unknown to him. Far from being the master of meaning, he acts, in the words of J.A. Miller, as its appointed 'functionary.' Thus, the agent suffers the truth rather than delivering it. His place only seems to be one of acting subject, a semblance brought in by speech as such. He who claims to speak in the name of truth cannot speak it, precisely because he speaks in its name.

[…]

To answer with Lacan, the hysteric is a chimaera, bringing to mind the myth of the sphinx. With the riddle she poses to man, the sphinx not only institutes a certain relation of speech, but specifically the discursive relation of agent to other. The riddle is the hysteric herself; she is the barred subject [barred sgif], whose body is marked by unexplainable symptoms. These symptoms define her discourse as a question addressed to the other. Brandishing her suffering, she acts as the sphinx posing a riddle to man. Having acknowledged her question, he raises to the position of master endowed with limitless power: he is the master of knowledge supposed to have the answer capable of silencing her. For the hysteric's discourse, the relation agent -- > other thus takes the form -->S₁.