Humiliation and the Cultural and Relational Structuring of Hysteria: Reply to Commentaries

In this reply to the discussions by Muriel Dimen and Richard Lasky of “Hysteria and Humiliation” I emphasize how historical theoretical conceptualizations of hysteria have always been informed by derogatory attitudes. I concur with Dimen's view that power is always invoked in gender and race relations and that these inevitably find their way into the clinical. I disagree with Lasky's view that the hysteric can be understood primarily through the operation of “autonomous mental events” and that too great a reliance on this concept obscures the role of cultural and developmental experiences of humiliation in the origins and maintenance of hysteric phenomena.     

Political Humiliation and Conversion

In this article, I explore political humiliation and its relation to conversion, as seen in the autobiographies of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King. In brief, I argue that before and during the time that Martin Luther King and Malcolm X lived, political structures, laws, policies, and programs gave rise to and supported social behaviors and communications of the dominant group that were aimed at humiliating a subjugated, marginalized group—African-Americans. These experiences of political humiliation served to motivate Malcolm X and Martin Luther King to make changes in their religious commitments and attitudes. I argue further that their conversions, while different in a number of ways, cannot simply be understood as religious acts. Rather, their conversions represent political-religious acts that involved a turning away from the individual and social political subjugation to acts of political resistance against the pervasive barrage of humiliations at the hands of whites. Their political-religious acts of resistance also included a redemptive telos, which was a quest for a present and future political, social, and religious realization of human dignity and freedom.     

唯心主义与癔症

从唯心主义角度分析癔症病因,为揭示癔症形成提供新的思路。说明唯心主义认知观在癔症的形成中有不可忽视的作用。因此,改变癔症患者的唯心主义认知观对治疗癔症患者有重要的作用。     

Hysteria and psychosis

The relationship between endogenous-psychotic and hysterical behavior is presented in this paper on the basis of typical patients' accounts. Various patterns of behavior are revealed: chronic hysterical psychotic syndromes, acute hysterical psychotic syndromes, hysterical exalted psychotic episodes, simulated hysterical psychotic syndromes, hysterical behavior in the attempt to cope with psychosis, and pseudohysterical behavior in endogenous psychoses. The specific aspects of the doctor-patient relationship in the case of these patients are described.     

Torture,Dignity, and Humiliation

Several recent analyses of torture focus on the humiliation torture inflicts on the victim as the principal evil inherent in torture. This paper challenges this focus by arguing that the connection between torture and humiliation is not a necessary one. Though it is true that most contemporary usages of torture humiliate, it is shown that this is dependent on both the context of the torture and the specific means of torture applied. It is demonstrated that, in certain circumstances, torture is feasible without inflicting the humiliation contemporary accounts of torture identify. At a theoretical level, it may even be possible to use torture as a way of explicitly expressing respect. The paper, therefore, warns against hinging the entire case against torture on humiliation and argues that we should scrutinize other ways in which torture may violate dignity, too.     

Hysteria and Self Psychology

ABSTRACT

The article uses a self psychological lens to explore the notion of hysterical personality from our earliest understanding of it as the root of all psychogenic disorders, as discovered by Breuer and Freud, to its present elimination in the DSM-V. Can hysteria still be considered an applicable diagnosis or character style in the modern time? Or is it a culturally and historically limited phenomenon that no longer holds validity? Considering the case of Dora from Heinz Kohut’s revolutionary view, which privileges the subjective and empathic stance in treatment, one can infer that Dora’s own hysterical symptoms were not pathological, as Freud thought, but rather healthy attempts to bolster an enfeebled self. Nevertheless, both Kohut and his followers conclude that from a self psychological perspective both object-instinctual understandings, and self-object transferences, are essential for successful analytic treatment.     

Healing Humiliation: From Reaction to Creative Action

In the midst of global crises, feelings of humiliation are intensified (Lindner, 2008 ; Moïsi, 2009 ). Counselors are often on the front lines of suffering during turbulent times. This article explores how the dynamics of humiliation are coming to the forefront of concern around the globe. Applying a relational framework, the authors examine the impact of humiliation, offering a case example that illustrates how counselors can lead their clients out of destructive reactions into creative action.     

Conversion Hysteria in a Pre-Adolescent Girl

Abstract

This paper is a case presentation of a 10-year-old girl with classic conversion hysteria symptomatology. Psychological test material as well as the ten session treatment is presented. The original Breuer/Freud conceptualization of hysteria and its linkage with trauma is considered. Current theories of trauma with the usual presenting symptoms of dissociation, abandonment fears, and repetition are also considered.     

Humiliation and Transgender Regulation: Commentary on Paper by Ken Corbett

This commentary reads Ken Corbett's “Boyhood Femininity” alongside the Lawrence King case to examine shame as a means of regulating gender nonconforming boys. Corbett describes the dominant clinical discourse on feminine boys that understands them to be “nonconforming, extreme, and disordered” and notes that such discourse depends on the presupposition that boys must be masculine. This discourse is at once ontological and normative, asserting both that boys are naturally masculine and that they need to become masculine, a paradoxical imperative that may account for the ways in which the discourse is haunted by anxiety about the location, durability, and persistence of masculinity. In responding to the framing of boyhood femininity as a disorder, Corbett inverts the diagnosis; as a response to the reading of gender variant youth as inappropriately arrested in their psychosexual development, he diagnoses the profession itself as suffering from a “developmental lag” and suggests that the diagnosis that condemns a femme boy to psychic stagnation and unhappiness projects its own failure to see beyond normative gender presumptions onto the phenomenological life of the feminine boy. Corbett asks us to consider boyhood femininity as the scene of gender's emergence rather than as the site of its failure.     

A Rorschach Investigation of Narcissism and Hysteria in Antisocial Personality

We investigated Rorschach responses associated with narcissism and hysteria in a group of antisocial personality disordered offenders. The Rorschach protocols of 42 subjects who met the criteria from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (3rd ed., rev. [DSM-III-R]; American Psychiatric Association, 1987) for antisocial personality disorder were analyzed using Exner's (1986) criteria for pairs, reflections, and personal responses, and Gacono's (1988) criteria for the impressionistic response. Severe, or primary psychopaths (n = 21), scoring ≥30 on the Hare (1980) Psychopathy Checklist (PCL), were compared to moderate, or secondary pscyhopaths (n = 21), scoring <30 on the PCL. The mean number of pair and impressionistic responses did not significantly differ for the two antisocial groups. The highly psychopathic group, however, did exhibit a significantly greater mean number of reflection and personal responses. We discuss pair and reflection responses and their relationship to narcissism in psychopathic disturbance. We recommend interpreting the personal response within the context of the psychopathic character and view personal responses as expressions of narcissism and omnipotence in highly psychopathic subjects. We also hypothesize that the impressionistic responses are indicative of primitive dissociative processes and hysteria in psychopathic subjects, and that their presence provides construct validity for the work of Guze (1976) and others who suggested an underlying histrionic dimension to psychopathy.     

Hysteria,A Century Later: Post-Kleinian Theory and Technique

ABSTRACT

Freud developed many of his theories and technique while attempting to help hysterical patients. This article approaches hysteria not just as a syndrome consisting of a group of signs and symptoms, but primarily as an inner world configuration that fuels object relations patterns. The internal world hysterical profile informs the transference/countertransference experience and the therapeutic process. I attempt to describe some of the technical problems psychoanalysts have to deal with while working with these patients. Hysterical object relations do not necessarily manifest themselves as somatic symptoms—epileptic-like, paralysis, blindness, etc.—even in patients that show the relational hysterical patterns. These object relations modes can appear in any analysis irrespective of the primary diagnostic conceptualization.