The American Journal of Psychoanalysis, 2019

 2019 Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis 0002-9548/19

www.palgrave.com/journals

FEMALE ANATOMY AND HYSTERICAL DUALITY

Aya Zaidel1

This article attempts to add another layer to our understanding of the phenomenon of hysterical
duality. The author postulates that hysterical duality can be explained based on the dual-aspect
model of feminine sexuality, which exhibits two initially contradictory paths: one derived from
primary vaginal sensations and the other from clitoral pleasure. At first, these two paths create a
fundamental split between representations of internal space, containment and motherhood and
representations related to auto-eroticism and the effacement of the Other’s presence and needs.
The author argues that this manifest contradiction makes the attainment of integration in
feminine development an intricate and protracted process, which involves an act of inversion.
This inversion entails a post-Oedipal disavowal of primary vaginal sexuality, pending its
rediscovery through the encounter with the Other. Hysteria is thus viewed as the result of a
failure to perform this inversion and an inability to extract oneself from the position of a
‘‘Vaginal Girl’’, who defines herself through the desire of the other. This pathological course of
development leaves the hysteric’s sexuality in a split state and traps her in the duality of clitoral
pleasure versus penetration, which unconsciously represents humiliation and exploitation.

KEY WORDS: hysteria; hysterical duality; female sexuality; female sexual

development
https://doi.org/10.1057/s11231-019-09180-8

One of the most uncanny features of hysteria is its ability to deceive us. The
hysteric patient enters the consulting room and carries great promise. She is
expressive, abundant, quick to surrender, offering the impression that
therapeutic language was created just for her; she seems hungry and eager
to meet the Other, to go out into the world and to take everything in.
Indeed, it was hysteria that opened the gates of psychoanalysis (Breuer,
1895); its arrival had given birth not only to a new science but also to the
hope for a better world. In time, however, one realizes just how hopeless
the hysterical dynamic is. Little by little, one finds that the plethora of

Aya Zaidel MA, clinical psychologist in Jerusalem; Member, Tel-Aviv Institute of Contemporary
Psychoanalysis, Israel.
Address correspondence to Aya Zaidel, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel, Eliyau
Hanavi St. 20, 7172233 Modiin, Israel. E-mail: aya.zaidel@gmail.com
 ZAIDEL

associations, narratives, dreams and images hides an insurmountable wall

and well-entrenched resistance. The hysterical course leads to a dead-end,
to great frustration and despair. The hysteric, who poured herself so easily
into the therapeutic mold, altogether fails to be nourished by it. Hysteria
turns out to be one of the most difficult disorders to treat and its great
promise turns into a bitter disappointment.
Does this impressionistic and stereotypical description truly represent a
facet of the hysteric dynamic? And if so, what is the essence of this
deceptive duality which so effectively confuses and disorients us? There is
no doubt that we are facing a phenomenon that has many manifestations
and layers. Psychoanalytic literature has described it as a tension between
seductiveness and disgust or between pleasure and repulsion (Freud,
1905a); as a struggle between feminine and masculine identification (Lacan,
1952, 1958); as a fluctuation between engulfment and abandonment
(McDougall, 1989); or as a mixture of excess and lack (Bollas, 2000). Each
theory observes hysterical deception through a different lens: from those
that focus on sexual conflict to those emphasizing the primary relation to
the mother (Anzieu, 1990; Khan, 1975; Brenman, 1985). Feminist views
added yet another important layer: when the woman is denied her status as
an independent subject, she is forced to express her silenced voice in
distorted fashions (Cixous et al., 1976). The social polarization of gender,
which equates masculinity with activity and femininity with passivity, was
diagnosed as another factor contributing to the emergence of duality, by
entrapping women in impossible situations where they must choose
between the different essential aspects of their identity (Benjamin, 1988).
Moreover, this duality has diverse and intricate configurations. It
sometimes manifests itself as a pendular motion between two poles and
sometimes as a state in which one aspect is revealed and the other is
concealed; sometimes it appears as a split and sometimes as dissociation.
Hysteric patients may, for example, exhibit sudden transitions between
seduction and panic—inviting in and shaking off at the same time.
Alternately, they may cling to a single pole, thus betraying the existence
of its opposite: portraying themselves as eager for interaction, while hiding
their grudge, criticism and resistance; pushing the other away, while
secretly clinging to a fantasy of being ‘conquered’. In other cases, both poles
appear to be completely detached and inviting, alluring and seductive
behavior, is accompanied by absolute shock, agitation and revulsion when
the hysteric’s advances are answered in kind.
In the present paper, I will attempt to link hysteric duality to feminine
sexuality and show how this duality involves the female anatomy. I describe
how female anatomy is initially assimilated into the psychic system,
creating two allegedly contradictory trends: the first stems from pre-
 FEMALE ANATOMY AND HYSTERICAL DUALITY

symbolic vaginal sensations and the unconscious representation of an

internal space; the second, from clitoral auto-erotic pleasure. I argue that
the task of feminine development is to unite these two ‘‘aspects’’2 through an
act of inversion. This inversion3 involves a post-Oedipal disavowal of
primary vaginal sexuality until its eventual rediscovery through the
encounter with the Other, when the integration of penetration and pleasure,
passivity and activity, maternal and paternal representations, can finally
occur.
According to this model, the hysteric woman is one who had not yet
performed the required inversion and had not extricated herself from the
position of a ‘‘Vaginal Girl’’4, who represents and defines herself through the
desire of the Other. The hysteric woman had not attained functional sexual
unity, by integrating the two allegedly contradictory trends and her sexuality
is still in a state of primary duality. Thus, pleasure remains auto-erotic and
split-off from the vagina, which is experienced as a receptacle for the needs
and sexuality of the Other; what is concealed and what is revealed remain
separate and feminine desire is left without sufficient representation.
Explicitly, this genital split is manifest through a duality of submission
and refusal, seduction and rejection, invitation and isolation. One pole
dictates complacency, over-identification with the needs of the Other,
masochism, self-sacrifice and a sense of obligation. It suggests a notion of
the self as an absorbent space, and the admission of the Other into this
space as degradation, humiliation and exploitation. The other pole gives rise
to outrage and resistance to the Other’s power and influence, to isolation, to
the refusal to be penetrated by the other, to aversion and grievance. The
hysterical drama which takes place between these two poles may present
itself through symptoms such as nausea, vomiting and vaginismus, as a life-
experience or as a combination of the two. Either way, this is the emotional
landscape in which the hysteric is trapped—a tautological dead end, which
precludes all development and growth.
By focusing on sexuality, this perspective tries to maintain the complexity
of the Freudian view, which highlights the role of the unconscious and the
endogenic factors, as well as the contextual, phylogenetic and cultural
effects, while limiting our ability to rely on any particular phenomenology
(Green, 1995). This kind of perspective regarding hysteria has the advantage
of being able to encompass the vast range of its many manifestations, while
singling out any constant factor which lies beyond the various plastic
presentations and the level of pathology in general. Furthermore, I retain the
(late) Freudian notion which links Hysteria to femininity, that is, to feminine
development and to the particular and unique form of the feminine Oedipus
complex5. This point is significant because history has shown that the more
hysteria became untethered from sexuality and femininity and the more it
 ZAIDEL

drifted into the domain of early development, the more it became

assimilated into other diagnoses, such as borderline personality disorder,
perversion or psychosis, losing its conceptual potency and clinical
usefulness and coming very close to disappearing altogether (Yarom,
2005; Zaidel, 2016). It is indeed tempting to relinquish so controversial a
diagnosis as hysteria, especially due to how feminine hysteria was used
throughout history to justify the torture and oppression of women.
Nevertheless, the renewed interest and the creative discussion it has
sparked suggest that maybe it still has something valuable to offer us (Bollas,
2000; Mitchell, 2000; Showalter, 1997).
However, in contrast with the phallocentrism of the Freudian view, the
present attempt to examine and understand hysteria is grounded in theories
which do not perceive feminine development exclusively in terms of coping
with an experience of absence. On the contrary, the theories on which I
draw argue that female anatomy, as it is represented in the mind, has crucial
consequences for development and that the girl has vaginal sensations and
an unconscious notion of the existence of an internal space from the very
beginning. For the most part, this paper is informed by models that consider
the simultaneous existence of two initially contradictory trends in feminine
sexuality (Montrelay, 1970; Braunschweig and Fain, 1971). As I will try to
show, because these theories are mainly preoccupied with the fundamental
duality of feminine sexuality, they may offer a fruitful context for the
understanding of the duality inherent in hysteria.

FREUD’S VIEW ON HYSTERIA AND FEMININE DEVELOPMENT

Freud’s papers about femininity and feminine development are perhaps
some of the most vilified pieces of writing in the history of psychoanalysis.
Freud’s phallocentric view, heavily critiqued for its revolting moral
judgement and distinction between ‘‘inferior’’ clitoral pleasure and ‘‘supe-
rior’’ vaginal pleasure, gave rise to substantial feminist criticism. As many
have indicated, Freud posits male sexual development as the starting point
and deduces feminine development as its derivative. Thus, femininity in
Freud’s eyes is defined mostly as the lack of something. Historically, this
perspective has considered women as the ‘‘Other’’—Le Deuxième Sexe [The
Second Sex] (de Beauvoir, 1949). When we shift our starting point, the
overarching conceptualization and understanding of female development
changes, as we can see from the groundbreaking work of Chodorow (1989)
and many others (such as Grunberger, 1970; Irigaray, 1977; Gilligan, 1982;
Harris, 1991; Dimen, 1991, 1995).
 FEMALE ANATOMY AND HYSTERICAL DUALITY

Nevertheless, as part of this feminist shift, it may be important to go back

and examine whether the Freudian model of hysteria has any elements that
merit conservation (Birksted-Breen, 1993). Despite its major faults, it seems
that Freud’s theory has several valid contributions: he presents an intricate,
multi-faceted model which offers a role for body and mind, for both parents,
viewed in the present and the past—a model into which one can equally fit
early and late experiences, the real and the symbolic orders.
In his papers—‘‘Some Psychical Consequences of the Anatomical
Distinction between the Sexes’’ (1925), ‘‘Female Sexuality’’ (1931) and
‘‘Femininity’’ (1933)—Freud defines the development of femininity as
characterized by two conversions. The first exchanges the object (the father
replaces the mother) and the second exchanges the genital region (the
vagina replaces the clitoris). This development occurs simultaneously along
two axes, each of which must attain the required inversion.

The first axis—the exchange of the object

Regarding the first conversion, the transition from the mother to the father as
the object of desire, Freud stresses the importance of the initial affinity
between the girl and her mother. He argues that the girl’s hostility towards
her mother precedes Oedipal rivalry and stems from the infantile wish for
exclusive possession of the mother, a wish that is inevitably frustrated by the
recognition that this love cannot be realized. Alongside these factors, the
castration complex is active with great intensity. According to Freud, the
girl’s discovery that she is ‘‘the creature who is without a penis’’ and that she
suffers from ‘‘organic inferiority’’ (1931, p. 232) is a painful and unsettling
realization. She initially interprets this as a ‘personal dysfunction’, and only
eventually understands that it is an attribute of womanhood in general.
Either way, femininity at large is devalued and the inescapable outcome is
hostility: ‘‘at the end of this first phase of attachment to the mother, there
emerges, as the girl’s strongest motive for turning away from her, the
reproach that her mother did not give her a proper penis—that is to say,
brought her into the world as a female’’ (Freud, 1931, p. 234).
Despite Freud’s outrageous claims concerning women’s deficient moral
values (Horney, 1935), their narcissistic love (Horney, 1923, 1926, 1933a)
and their rigidity in old age, it is hard not to value the way he paid attention
to the profound feelings of inferiority that many women sometimes face, as
if they truly have something shameful to conceal. In his view, the feeling of
being flawed is so difficult to work through that a woman will always yearn
for what she had been denied. The immeasurable shame for having a genital
that is ‘lacking’, that is ostensibly invisible and flawed, is added to social
edicts that advocate chastity and concealment and becomes the trademark
 ZAIDEL

of femininity, even when the latter takes to ‘coquetry’ and ‘ostentatious-

ness’: ‘‘Shame, which is considered to be a feminine characteristic par
excellence but is far more a matter of convention than might be supposed,
has as its purpose, we believe, concealment of genital deficiency’’ (Freud,
1933, p. 132). In Freud’s view only a successful pregnancy, which gives the
woman a (male) child, could eventually grant her the feeling the she is in
possession of something glorious, potent and visible. Only the perfect and
beautiful baby that she carries in her arms, that ‘miracle of creation’ could
offer the woman some notion of that imagined (and, naturally, glorified)
feeling of being in possession of a penis. In other words, instead of a hole,
she can finally present a baby—the living, visible and tangible fruit of her
loins, whose existence and vitality are undeniable.
Nevertheless, these mature moments of pride and satisfaction are the
outcome of a winding and arduous developmental journey and lie well
beyond the reach of the little girl.6 According to Freud, the wish to become
pregnant is the mature result of a certain transformation, that is, of the ability
to exchange the infantile wish for a penis for viable and attainable
gratification (a baby). Before this can be done, the girl must face her
disappointment and hostility. She must prove able to abandon her primary
love object—her dear mother, in order to make room for the new object—
the father. This is a complicated task and the girl’s attempt to perform it may
lead her down different paths. Freud (1931) depicts three main paths, each
of which has significant consequences for the girl’s development and her
personality in general.
The first developmental path sees the bitterly disappointed girl turn her
back on her genitals and the pleasure she derives from them, sentencing
herself to yet another castration. This solution is in fact a masochistic one,
ruling in favor of identification with the disappointing mother. The girl thus
accepts her (externally) passive role, while splitting and repressing her
wishes and desires for satisfaction. Freud terms the second developmental
path, the one stemming from the girl’s feeling of deficiency, a ‘‘masculinity
complex’’: the girl refuses to acknowledge her ‘‘inferiority’’, she continues to
derive direct and active gratification, heralds the desired masculinity and
spends her life trying to obtain ‘‘what men have’’. This path does not entail
any turns towards passivity or an identification with the mother and, in
extreme cases, Freud argues that it leads to homosexual object-choice. The
third developmental path is a combination of the two previous solutions and
it alone leads to ‘‘normal femininity’’. This solution, however, remains rather
vague and Freud says little about it other than stating that it is ‘‘very
circuitous’’ (Freud, 1931, p. 230). He passes the reins to his successors,
reminding the reader that, despite his efforts, femininity had always
remained a ‘dark continent’: ‘‘if you want to know more about femininity,
 FEMALE ANATOMY AND HYSTERICAL DUALITY

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, 1933,
p. 135).
It should be noted that out of these three paths, Freud considers the first to
be the one most closely linked to hysteria. Freud perceives the hysteric
woman as having gone a step too far by not retaining enough of her early
wishes and, due to the intensity of her shame, by having massively repressed
her sexuality. However, this submission is merely external, and grudge,
anger, and jealousy are in fact still active under the cover of darkness. This
creates a placating and obedient façade, which indicates the presence of
equally potent resistance and defiance. In other words, the hysteric joins the
voices that try to prevent her speech and walks a silenced road that entails
profound and inherent resistance to her condition.
Kohon (1984) elaborates on the role of the process of object-exchange in
the formation of hysteria. In his view, the girl’s Oedipal drama contains a
‘‘hysterical stage’’ in which she is trapped in mid-transition between mother
and father and may fail to extricate herself. This position links hysteria to
femininity in general and to the Oedipal complex in particular, undermin-
ing an understanding of hysteria which relies on a dyadic model.
In order to illustrate the intricacy of this ‘‘hysterical stage’’, Kohon coins
the term ‘‘divalence’’7 to signify the specific moment in development when
the girl acknowledges the difference between the sexes and must exchange
her love-object. The hysteric woman remains trapped in this stage,
constantly shifting between the two objects (father and mother), incapable
of reaching a decision: at one moment, she is competing with her mother,
trying to win and seduce her desired father; at another, she is caught in a
phallic struggle with the father over her mother’s love, determined to defeat
the father and prove his inferiority. This stalemate position, neither here nor
there, eventually leads the hysteric to feel that she had been betrayed by
both her mother and her father.
Picking up on Freud’s thread, Kohon’s model helps us understand part of
the deceptiveness characteristic of hysteria. The analyst who seeks to
position herself in relation to the hysteric woman can never know her actual
position within her patient’s tangle of identifications, yearnings, grudges and
jealousies, due to the latter’s constant inversions. Indeed, Kohon likens the
hysteric woman to a matador waving his red cloth, first on one side and then
on the other, in order to capture the Other’s gaze and spur them into action,
doing all this unconsciously in order to leave them empty-handed, frustrated
and flabbergasted.
In addition, through its position at the end of the Oedipal phase, Kohon’s
model may be able to include within its scope both the early processes as
they occur and the way in which these are retrospectively (‘‘après-coup’’)
 ZAIDEL

translated into psychic forms. This is a central and essential principle in

Freud’s thinking, which can only be preserved by sustaining the centrality of
the Oedipal complex as a place in which all previous impressions converge.
Regarding hysteria, Freud acknowledges his limited ability to depict the
archaic relation between the girl and her mother, but still affords equal
importance to their early relationship and to the manner in which it is
transformed during the Oedipal phase, through the recognition of the
difference between the sexes:
Everything in the sphere of this first attachment to the mother seemed to me so
difficult to grasp in analysis—so grey with age and shadowy and almost
impossible to revivify […] this phase of attachment to the mother is especially
intimately related to the aetiology of hysteria, which is not surprising when we
reflect that both the phase and the neurosis are characteristically feminine
(Freud, 1931, p. 226–227).

In other words, the focus here is both on the girl’s early experiences with
her mother and on how these experiences are translated in retrospect. In this
context, Freud mentions a common complaint made by women patients,
that they were not properly fed by the mother. Freud does not disqualify the
authenticity of this claim, but he does point out that it may have been
retrospectively ‘mobilized’ in order to facilitate the abandonment of the
mother and her exchange as the object:
When we survey the whole range of motives for turning away from the mother
which analysis brings to light—that she failed to provide the little girl with the
only proper genital, that she did not feed her sufficiently, that she compelled her
to share her mother’s love with others, that she never fulfilled all the girl’s
expectations of love, and, finally, that she first aroused her sexual activity and
then forbade it—all these motives seem nevertheless insufficient to justify the
girl’s final hostility. Some of them follow inevitably from the nature of infantile
sexuality; others appear like rationalizations devised later to account for the
uncomprehended change in feeling. Perhaps the real fact is that the attachment
to the mother is bound to perish, precisely because it was the first and was so
intense (Freud, 1931, p. 234).

Therefore, hysteria for Freud is a heterogenous disorder which entails a

mixture of earlier and later experiences. In his lecture, ‘‘Some Thoughts on
Development and Regression—Aetiology’’ (1916–1917), Freud describes
the complicated combination of fixation, regression and repression that is
endemic to hysteria. He argues that while the hysteric woman adheres to
her early sexual objects, there is very little regression to previous stages of
sexual organization. Instead, one finds massive repression, which prevents
 FEMALE ANATOMY AND HYSTERICAL DUALITY

the highly developed sexual organization already attained from being

admitted into consciousness:
In hysteria there is a regression of the libido to the primary incestuous sexual
objects and that this occurs quite regularly; but there is as good as no regression
to an earlier stage of the sexual organization. To offset this, the chief part in the
mechanism of hysteria is played by repression […] Thus the genital organization
holds good for the unconscious, but not in the same way for the preconscious;
and this rejection on the part of the preconscious brings about a picture which
has certain resemblances to the state of things before genital primacy. But it is
nevertheless something quite different (Freud, 1917, p. 343).

In other words, Freud argues that the hysteric may give the impression
that she is sicker than she actually is, because she rejects the sexual
development she had already attained. That is, the hysteric woman had
unconsciously achieved a well-developed and integrated sexual organiza-
tion, which is not controlled by component instincts and one can assume
that her object-relations are correspondingly complex, multi-faceted and
sophisticated. Nevertheless, this is a conflictual achievement which cannot
be admitted into consciousness. This gap accounts for the common state of
affairs in which the hysteric patient, who may be a striking and well-
articulated woman, is blind to this aspect of her behavior and vehemently
clings to her view of herself as a weak and helpless ‘‘little girl’’. In fact, this
amalgamation of mature and childish aspects might be one of the most
prominent attributes of hysteria. Thus, women who are capable of
integrative thinking but who present their opinions in a childlike manner
are often intuitively recognized as hysteric.
In conclusion, one might say that returning the hysteric to the Oedipal
allows us to escape the view which focuses on the ‘hysterogenic’ mother
and the assumption that hysteria is derived from actual lacunae in the
mother’s psyche and in her relation to her baby (Brenman, 1985). Such
views make it difficult to appreciate the hysteric woman’s psychic
achievements and blur the distinction between hysteria and other disorders.
Therefore, Kohon’s arguments, which return hysteria to the Oedipal stage,
are a significant milestone in the history of hysteria. However, it should be
noted that Kohon only develops one of the axes Freud specified as related to
the development of femininity in general and hysteria in particular—the
exchange of the object. As mentioned, Freud added another axis, one
concerned with the vicissitudes of instincts. In other words, the little girl
must not only abandon her primary love-object but must also change her
genital zone. In Freud’s view, these two axes interact and work together.
 ZAIDEL

The second axis—the exchange of the genital zone

Of the two axes Freud defined as characteristic of feminine development
and related to hysteria, the one involving the exchange of the genital zone is
harder to stomach. Freud describes how the little girl must trade the active
pleasure of clitoral stimulation for the passive pleasure of vaginal stimu-
lation. In Freud’s view, before the father enters her life, the little girl
experiences a ‘normal’ mixture of passive and active tendencies. The
passive tendencies are linked to the pleasure derived from the mother’s
care—such as that of maternal feeding, cradling and caressing; the active
tendencies are manifest in the girl’s strive for independence and her play—
in which she may, for example, take the role of the mother in caring for her
doll.
During the phallic stage, in which the girl’s dominant erotogenic zone is
the clitoris, her active tendencies are more prominent and aimed at the
mother (wishing to impregnate her). In fact, Freud describes the little girl at
this stage as being no different than a little boy: ‘‘We are now obliged to
recognize that the little girl is a little man […] and that the truly feminine
vagina is still undiscovered by both sexes (1933, p. 118). Nevertheless,
Freud states that while the boy’s subsequent development constitutes a
continuation and preservation of the natural growth towards activity and its
associated erotogenic zone (the penis), the girl faces an altogether different
state of affairs: she must relinquish clitoral pleasure, exchanging it for the
vagina as her leading erotogenic zone, and must be able to replace the
active aim with the passive one. According to Freud, this relinquishment is a
precondition for the attainment of a mature feminine position—a task at
which many women fail. Freud views this failure as conducive to the
development of neurosis and especially hysteria.
It should be noted that Freud’s view regarding the girl’s need to exchange
erotogenic zones appears very early in his writings. In a letter to Fliess,
Freud (1897) associates the sexual inhibition characteristic of hysteric
patient with the rejection of sexuality which takes place during the
transitional period between the phallic stage and the stage in which the girl
discovers the pleasure derived from passive, vaginal stimulation. During this
interim, the girl must reject her sexuality and wait for the drive to become
reawakened in its new version. According to Freud, hysteric women are
those who became trapped in this interim and were unable to complete the
required transition.8 In other words, the hysteric woman cannot let go of her
desire in order to eventually regain a new version of it. This is a panicked
race forward, a hysteric stampede which is unmindful of time. This notion,
concerning the need for incubation processes, is elucidated once more in
Freud’s ‘‘Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality’’ (1905b):
 FEMALE ANATOMY AND HYSTERICAL DUALITY

If we are to understand how a little girl turns into a woman, we must follow the
further vicissitudes of this excitability of the clitoris. Puberty, which brings about
so great an accession of libido in boys, is marked in girls by a fresh wave of
repression […] When at last the sexual act is permitted and the clitoris itself
becomes excited, it still retains a function: the task, namely, of transmitting the
excitation to the adjacent female sexual parts, just as—to use a simile—pine
shavings can be kindled in order to set a log of harder wood on fire. Before this
transference can be effected, a certain interval of time must often elapse, during
which the young woman is anaesthetic. This anaesthesia may become
permanent […] When erotogenic susceptibility to stimulation has been
successfully transferred by a woman from the clitoris to the vaginal orifice, it
implies that she has adopted a new leading zone for the purposes of her later
sexual activity. A man, on the other hand, retains his leading zone unchanged
from childhood. The fact that women change their leading erotogenic zone in
this way, together with the wave of repression at puberty, which, as it were, puts
aside their childish masculinity, are the chief determinants of the greater
proneness of women to neurosis and especially to hysteria. These determinants,
therefore, are intimately related to the essence of femininity (p. 220–221).

It is difficult to encompass the entire controversy sparked by Freud’s view

regarding the need to exchange the feminine erotogenic zone and to adopt
the passive tendency. The first wave of resistance included Karen Horney’s
ground breaking work (1923, 1926, 1932, 1933a), Ernest Jones, who
distanced himself from the Freudian female perspective and supported
Horney (1927, 1935), and Melanie Klein (1932). The early critique was
rekindled during the 1960’s and 1970’s mainly in France and the United
States (Sherfey, 1966; Chasseguet-Smirgel, 1970). In general, the critics
questioned Freud’s view that the experience of femininity is an absence—as
a ‘deficient’ masculinity. It was argued that the girl is aware of the positive
aspects of female anatomy from the very beginning and that she has a
primary genital sensuousness and a unique feminine drive which naturally
impels her towards heterosexuality.
Today, years later, we can examine whether Freud’s conclusions had
remained valuable considering the many critiques of his model. Such an
examination is conducted by Birksted-Breen (1993), who explores the price
of having forsaken the Freudian model. In her review, Birksted-Breen
describes how this controversy was widespread and indicative of different
psychoanalytic traditions regarding the body-mind issue. According to
Birksted-Breen, the attempt to understand feminine development requires
one to adopt a certain position regarding the body-mind relationship,
because femininity itself embodies a certain tension between biology and
psychology. Thus, Birksted-Breen argues that Freud’s ‘‘opponents’’, who
 ZAIDEL

heralded the existence of a fundamental feminine essence, favored biology,

because they saw femininity as an innate fact that required no explanation.
On the other hand, Freud’s ‘‘supporters’’ afforded little importance to the
influence of the body. This position is especially marked in the Lacanian
model, which argues that there are no given men and women; rather,
femininity and masculinity are grounded in language alone. Birksted-Breen
indicates that considering femininity to be merely an outcome of discourse
limits the role of the body and of pre-verbal experiences, which are essential
to the development of femininity.
Birksted-Breen notes that the opposition between biology-based
approaches and approaches that reject the body’s influence does not exist
in Freud’s view. Freud’s greatness lies, rather, in the fact that he paid
homage to both sides, granting central roles to anatomy and the limitations
it imposes and to the psychic processes and the flexibility and space these
afford. The Freudian model sees both parties co-existing in what Birksted-
Breen calls an ‘‘unhappy marriage’’ (1993, p. 22). In addition, the beauty of
the Freudian model lies in the fact that it focuses on motion, that is, on the
developmental process that takes place on the way to femininity. As
mentioned, Freud saw this development as circuitous and prolonged, as a
moving forward through paradoxical inversions9—the mother must be given
up for the girl to be able to identify with her; desire must be relinquished for
the girl to attain it. The hysteric woman is one who had failed to perform this
inversion, to turn her world upside down, both on the level of the object (to
switch from the mother to the father) and on that of the erotogenic zone (to
shift from clitoral to vaginal pleasure). This woman is caught in the middle;
one hand clinging fast to infantile pleasure and its concomitant incestuous
fantasies, while the other reaches out towards the mature feminine position.
In conclusion, the intricate and diverse nature of hysteria supports
maintaining the Freudian position, which views feminine development as a
prolonged, winding process which is shaped by both biology and psychic
processes. Moreover, as demonstrated by Kohon, we must preserve the
central role of the Oedipal complex in the etiology of hysteria to keep it
from becoming assimilated into other diagnoses. On the other hand, it is
important to keep in mind that the Freudian model is wanting in relation to
the unique way the feminine body is registered in the unconscious. It is both
irrational and ironic that Freud saw the registration and influence of genital
anatomy as only valid for men, solely, while he saw the female genitalia as
experienced, solely, as a lack (Bernstein, 1990). Sadly, it seems that Freud
was led more by his fears than by clinical evidence and logical deduction
(Horney, 1967; Chasseguet-Smirgel, 1976).
 FEMALE ANATOMY AND HYSTERICAL DUALITY

FEMININITY AS AN INHERENT CONTRADICTION

French psychoanalyst, Michèle Montrelay (1970), offers a model for
understanding femininity which maintains the Freudian emphasis on the
centrality of the Oedipal and the archaic processes and which addresses the
inversion that lies on the way to femininity. However, unlike Freud, this
model does elaborate on how female anatomy and primary vaginal
sensations are registered in the unconscious.
Montrelay begins by wondering why the theory of femininity is
articulated in the form of different alternatives.10 In other words, what
significance lies in the fact that the discussion of femininity has, from the
very beginning, revolved around the opposition between theories which
define femininity through the phallus and those the focus on the unique and
innate feminine nature. Montrelay states that this inherent opposition exists
within the woman’s psyche, that feminine sexuality is a continuous
interplay of two contradictory psychic economies within the feminine
unconscious, which might cause anxiety and lead to pathology, but may
also facilitate sublimation and encourage growth and developmental
processes.
The first psychic economy is derived from the girl’s primary vaginal
sensations. By their very nature, these sensations might remain beyond
representation, discourse and language, thus structuring that part of
feminine sexuality that remains as a kind of ‘blind spot’ or ‘dark continent’
in the woman’s psyche. Montrelay notes several reasons for why primary
vaginal sensations may remain beyond repression and symbolic economy;
some of these are related to environmental factors and some to female
anatomy itself. First, it has to do with the different response that girls get
regarding infantile sexuality, in comparison to boys. Montrelay argues that,
contrary to common opinion, the girl is less prone to suffer threats
concerning her masturbatory activities and the public displays of her early
sexuality and is thus able to maintain a hidden sexuality. For this reason,
feminine sexuality can escape the grim sentence of castration. In compar-
ison, the visible nature of the boy’s sexuality exposes him to the threat of
castration from the very beginning. His ‘‘explicit’’ anatomy means that he
must acknowledge the fact that he is not master of his own desire from the
outset and that he is divested of the privilege of conducting his sexual life in
the shadows, far from the watchful eye of his environment. The second
reason for the exclusion of primary vaginality from the symbolic order is that
early vaginal sensations are combined with oral-anal instincts. Following
Klein (1928) and Jones (1935), Montrelay argued that the girl’s archaic
vaginal experience is organized in accordance with her current develop-
mental stage. This leads to the formation of a psychic scheme of a vaginal
 ZAIDEL

digestive organ, which devours everything and draws everything into itself.
If this ‘‘organ-hole’’ (1970, pp. 153) remains central to sexuality later on, it
distorts the entire psychic dynamic, altering it to suit archaic schemes which
subjugate the world to cyclic and closed-off oral rules. A third set of
processes concerns the woman’s relation towards her body. In Montrelay’s
view (1970), the anatomic identity between the woman and her mother
creates a direct link between auto-erotic pleasure and the attainment of the
forbidden primary object. In other words, a woman’s body, once it receives
its feminine form during puberty, is also a re-embodiment of the actuality of
the mother’s body. By re-attaining the maternal body, herself, the woman
finds it difficult to repress her primary wishes and their representations may
be destroyed. Or, stated differently, the real which forces itself on the
woman is the reality of her own body. From now on, the presence of this
body is associated with anxiety, because of its existence as an un-
representable object that is a blind spot as far as symbolic processes are
concerned.
This psychic economy, which remains external to representation and
which is the result of a subversive, voiceless and nameless sexuality that
operates according to the oral laws of incorporation and ejection, has a
counterpart. This second economy is subjected to the pressures of
repression and, therefore, eventually enters representation and may fuel
sublimation processes. Paradoxically, this second economy is the result of
times in which the woman is estranged to her body and the pleasure she
derives from it, potentially indicating the de-cathexis of the oral-vaginal
scheme. Primary femininity is repressed and forgotten, and this loss
structures the woman’s symbolic castration. This is why, according to
Montrelay (1970) periods of latency or frigidity in analysis may often be
considered as signs of progress. Representations are thus gradually
constructed where there was once only an empty space.
It should be noted that in Montrelay’s view, it is the first psychic
economy, that which creates a kind of hole or rupture in the network of
representations which establishes the phallocentric view in the woman’s
mind. This economy, by only leaving room for clear and visible entities,
structures vaginal sensations as an absence. On the other hand, the second
psychic economy, the one not derived from and even disavowing primary
vaginal sensations, is the one that will eventually achieve a concentric
status in the psyche. In fact, the transition to the second economy depends
on the girl’s ability to devaluate the phallus, on her way from childhood to
adulthood. The girl must forsake the feeling of awe and the experience of
helplessness and inferiority in relation to masculine potency, removing the
father from his throne. Then, when this romantic idealization is relin-
quished, the penis—through its insignificance—can become separated from
 FEMALE ANATOMY AND HYSTERICAL DUALITY

archaic material. The woman is thereby able to agree to pleasure and accept
the penis by having recognized what it can provide rather than through a
feeling of humiliation and submission (Montrelay, 1970, pp. 161).
In this sense, Montrelay’s model provides a space for a true and intimate
encounter with men in adulthood and not only for the phallus, as it is
represented inside the mother. This encounter is very important in the
transition to the second economy, as it touches on the same place in the
woman’s psyche that remains unknown and ineffable. Therefore, it is
possible that the hysteric woman, who yearns for a man who could heal her,
persistently clings to this wish as part of her struggle for health as well.
When a real encounter does take place, something will happen that
involves the key to her wellbeing: this way, she may be able to get rid of the
persecutory aura of the perfect man and begin voicing her inner space. The
significance of Montrelay’s model thus lies not only in the complex, multi-
faceted view it offers and its suggested way of integrating phallic (Freud,
1925, 1931, 1933) and concentric (Horney, 1926, 1939; Klein, 1928; Jones
1927, 1935) notions of feminine sexuality. As mentioned, Montrelay turns
things on their heads—both in addressing the historical controversy
surrounding femininity and in depicting the woman’s developmental path
to maturity. Theoretically, Montrelay encompasses both the Freudian view
and that of Horney, Klein and Jones. However, her approach to each of
these views is antithetical. While the ‘natural’ vaginal sexuality of Horney,
Klein and Jones is often considered to be the ‘healthy’ core that will lead to
a unique feminine identity, Montrelay views it as an inhibiting factor in
relation to such an identity. In addition, and more importantly, Montrelay’s
model embeds the inversion in the developmental move towards femininity:
the woman who will eventually attain an integral position in relation to her
sexuality is required to perform a kind of inversion—both in relation to her
ownership of her desire and concerning her object-relations. In other words,
she is paradoxically required to ‘eliminate’ her desire in order to obtain it
and to ‘eliminate’ the phallus in order to find a place for the penis and for
her sexuality within the symbolic order.
Thus, beyond the intricacy of this model and the fact that it contains both
the archaic and the later relationships, there is another thread that links
Montrelay’s model to Freud’s. For Montrelay, there is no direct line
connecting biology and feminine maturity; rather, this process, as Freud so
sharply intuited (1905b, 1931, 1933), involves an inversion. In Montrelay’s
view, the woman must rebel against her own nature to submit to the
symbolic order and rebel against the latter in order to express her unique
sexuality. In this sense, feminine nature entails—at least temporarily—an
element which negates the strive towards pleasure and self-preservation.
This can be said to be dramatically illustrated at a certain moment during
 ZAIDEL

childbirth, when the body is open and ready, and the woman must put her
trust in nature and push the baby out. At this moment, the woman’s life and
her ability to give life to her baby involve the courage to ‘step into the pain’.
In other words, in order to traverse the birth canal and to be born as a
mother, the woman must at this point actively choose to surrender herself to
a process that might be associated—however momentarily—with the
experience of being slaughtered or ripped to shreds.
Braunschweig and Fain (1971) present an equally complex model which
addresses the inherent contradiction of femininity and the ‘inversion’
characteristic of its development. They begin by distinguishing the path of
the girl from that of the boy in their discussion of the core of hysterical
anxiety. The boy handles this anxiety by means of a phallic narcissism,
which is made possible by the visibility of the penis—its self-evident
presence and existence. In other words, the penis, which was initially an
instrument of Eros, is turned into a narcissistic object through the process by
which the boy extricates himself from the Oedipal complex.11 For the girl,
however, the way out of the Oedipal complex is far less clear. The hidden
nature of her genitals prevents her from dealing with the Oedipal
predicament by directing her frustration to a narcissistic investment of her
genitals (except in pathological cases on which I will elaborate later). Her
core of hysterical anxiety is more persistent and is conducive to a series of
manifestations involving a full or partial regression to the anal phase, simply
because the option of narcissistic investment in the penis does not exist for
her.
In this sense, Braunschweig and Fain argue that the latency period is a
crucial and edifying time for the girl—a time of intricate transformation,
rather than the reinforcement of an existing solution. It is important to note
that Freud also viewed (1905b) this period as crucial for women—as a time
of concealed maturation and change. However, unlike Freud, Braun-
schweig and Fain do not make do with general statements about the girl’s
latency but offer an in-depth description of its characteristic instinctual
transformation.
As mentioned, feminine latency is characterized by the revival of anal
material. As one can often notice in this age, the girl devotes a considerable
amount of time to cleanliness, order and aesthetics, develops a strict dress
code and becomes excessively meticulous in her external appearance.
Braunschweig and Fain claim that this kind of behavior in the girl is not only
a reaction-formation related to the re-emergence of scatological material,
but also serves as an actual leverage: thus, when the girl works on making
herself more beautiful, she is transitioning from mere cleanliness to
coquetry—to a narcissistic investment of her entire body. This narcissistic
investment is developmentally vital, and it plays the role of eventually
 FEMALE ANATOMY AND HYSTERICAL DUALITY

uniting the functions of her genitals, her erotic pleasure and her ability to be
desired. To put it plainly, while the forsaken and discontented Oedipal boy
finds solace and hope for a better future in his penis, the equally forsaken
and discontented girl is supposed to apply her narcissistic investment to her
entire body, while denying the existence of the vagina. She does this to
someday be able to enjoy her body as a whole and experience her genital
sexuality as unified.12
Alongside this transformative use of the anal mindset, the girl shapes her
approach to reality. In this reality, which is derived from the law of the
father, the environment casts the shadow of the phallus on feminine
sexuality. In other words, culture tends to deny the existence of the feminine
sex (which represents castration) and glorify the clitoris in a fetishistic
manner which sets it apart from the ‘flaw’ which is the vagina. Under these
circumstances, Braunschweig and Fain argue that the little girl is better off
claiming agnosticism regarding these ubiquitous overtones. This allows her
to accept her sexuality as something which may not be publicly and openly
recognized, but which is nevertheless not a personal flaw. From this
standpoint, she can now wait for a partner who could reveal to her a truth
which undercuts reality. That is, in addition to the need to deny any
knowledge of the existence of the vagina in order to eventually attain an
integrated sexuality, the shadow of the phallus ‘compels’ the girl to suspend
‘truth’—her intuitive knowledge of her (vaginal) sexuality and make her way
in the world with considerable guile. She must be able to remain a child, to
accept and acknowledge the law of the father and, in fact, to initially deny a
part of her femininity. Thus, in time, through her encounter with a man, she
will be able to extricate herself from that very law—beguiling it and using it
to her advantage.
Therefore, as one can conclude from the Freudian model (1931, 1933),
as well as from those of Montrelay (1970) and Braunschweig and Fain
(1971) healthy feminine development requires the girl to ignore her own
nature and her sexuality during certain stages. Paradoxically, this efface-
ment allows her to develop an integrated feminine identity. These three
models are similar in the sense that they position the act of inversion after
the Oedipal stage and are thus concerned with processes related to
relatively late stages of development. These models differ, however, in their
perceptions of the inversion process. While Freud discussed the repression
of the girl’s infantile ‘‘masculine’’ sexuality, which involves clitoral
stimulation, Montrelay describes, the annihilating pre-symbolic aspects of
feminine sexuality, which stem from primary vaginal sensations, indicating
the presence of denial. Braunschweig and Fain, however, focus on the
general culture’s fetishistic attitude towards the clitoris, an attitude which
the girl is to embrace until the rediscovery of her vaginal sexuality. Rather
 ZAIDEL

than repression or denial, this calls for disavowal, which is characteristic of

the emergence of fetishes. These three mechanisms may operate together in
varying ratios. For example, when disavowal is applied to perception (that
is, to primary vaginal sensations), repression is applied to any concomitant
representations (i.e., the oral representation of the vagina) and denial is
applied in relation to social messages. The operation of these mechanisms
and the question of why certain girls perform this inversion while others fail
to do so merits further discussion.
It would be more accurate to talk about disavowal, because this
particular mechanism acts in a two-fold manner, which preserves a certain
perception (i.e., vaginal sensations) while denying its meaning (for instance,
the maternal role). But whether we are discussing repression, denial or
disavowal, all these mechanisms are mainly associated with illness and
pathology and arguing that they are prerequisites for healthy feminine
sexual development may appear peculiar at first. In this context, it is
interesting to recall Freud’s amusing story about the caretaker’s daughter
and the landlord’s daughter, who play a sexual game together but arrive at
very different ends: the caretaker’s daughter attains a satisfying and liberated
sex-life, while the landlord’s daughter ends up with depression, nausea and
finally a neurosis which ‘‘cheats her of marriage and her hopes in life’’
(Freud, 1916–1917, p. 353). According to Freud, the different fate of these
two girls stems from the fact that the landlord’s daughter has a more
developed ego. This means that a developed ego, which may mean more
sophisticated defense mechanisms, is not a guarantee for attaining full
sexual development, rather, it may even hinder such development. This
point is particularly relevant to the development of hysteria which, in light
of the theory hereby suggested, is the result of premature vaginal awareness,
which entails an excessive identification with the maternal role and an
excessive and insufficiently mature capacity for containing the Other’s
needs.

HYSTERIA AND THE VAGINAL GIRL

Normal feminine development, which gradually associates the vagina with
pleasure and attains genital unification, may become a pathological process
when its key inversion is not completed. This halfway collapse leaves the
woman’s sexuality in a state of duality. As I will try to demonstrate, this
duality may be connected to the hysterical being. It is this duality which
entraps the hysteric woman in the pendulum swing between seduction and
isolation and rejection, in a binary world where letting the Other in
 FEMALE ANATOMY AND HYSTERICAL DUALITY

represents degradation, humiliation and exploitation and cannot serve as a

source for growth and enrichment.
In this context, Braunschweig and Fain describe a certain familial
constellation which hinders the girl’s capacity to attain functional sexual
unity, due to an inability to deny the existence of the vagina and
narcissistically invest her entire body. In this narrative, the girl had
witnessed symbiotic relations between the mother and a brother, who is the
mother’s chosen object. The mother’s interest in the girl is strictly related to
the girl’s role as an accomplice in maintaining this symbiosis. The girl shares
the same fate with her father, who is equally excluded from the mother-son
couple. This leads to the formation of an alliance of the rejected, a
miserable joining of daughter and father, which attests to his inability to
establish his power and imprint his law on his family. One could say that the
son and the father switch roles: the son is admired while the father remains
superfluous and worthless. On a more abstract level, the girl’s wish to be
desired is replaced by a substitute of identification with the mother, which is
designed to placate her brother; the cathexis of the entire body is thus
replaced by a premature recognition of the vagina. According to Braun-
schweig and Fain, this kind of narrative results in the girl leading a double,
split life: out in the open, she is a servant to the mother-son couple and
shares the idolization of the son and the suffering of the father. Under the
surface, she leads a powerful and secret sadomasochistic fantasy life, which
reveals a wish for a strong, authoritative man who could subdue the mother
and dismantle the perfect relationship between her and the son.
Using different terms, one could say that when the girl is an extension of
the mother in caring for the brother and an extension of the father in healing
his narcissistic injuries, she may continue to draw on her primary vaginal
sensations and view herself as a vagina—a receptacle for the desire and the
needs of the Other. The unconscious representation of the vagina, as the
object of her narcissistic investment, becomes her identity and her defining
feature and precludes the narcissistic cathexis of her entire body, which is a
precondition for eventual sexual integration.13 The inversion required for
the development of femininity, which entails the denial of the vagina,
cannot succeed. Instead, one sees the emergence of a kind of Vaginal-
Girl—an extension and a servant of three masters: the symbiotic mother, the
glorified son and the castrated father.
The notion that feminine pathology in linked to the woman’s perception
of her sexuality as a vessel designed to serve the Other is hardly new. Glenn
(1986) argues that Freud noticed that Dora, as indicated by the name he
chose for her,14 positioned herself as a maid, a person who served the needs
of others, as he put it: ‘‘a person who serves in the home of another’’
(‘‘dienende Person’’; Freud, quoted in Glenn, 1986, p. 595). In Glenn’s
 ZAIDEL

view, Dora’s identity as a servant seeped into Freud’s countertransference,

by which he projected onto Dora his relation to his ‘‘prehistoric old nurse’’,
the one who seduced and abandoned him and to whom he attributed the
origins of his neurosis (Freud, 1900, p. 248).15
Whether the girl develops into a vaginal girl due to endogenic factors,
exogenic factors or both, this development is likely to lead to two opposing
paths. The first is related to primary vaginality and the second to clitoral
pleasure. Both paths remain separate in a way which creates a duality or a split
between the vagina, with the various representations associated with it
(motherhood, sacrifice, containment, service and submission), and the
clitoris, with its own web of representation (auto-eroticism, personal pleasure,
selfishness, indifference to the Other’s needs). The first path follows a vaginal
psychic logic16—a primordial rationale, which does acknowledge the
existence of things hidden, but still sees any ‘‘hole’’ as a ‘‘black hole’’. In
other words, what is concealed or invisible acts as a dangerous and devouring
thing, which subverts the processes of representation and symbolization. The
second path, that could be termed clitoral logic, is the obverse—the path
related to evident and exposed places, to the belief that ‘‘if it cannot be seen, it
doesn’t exist’’. Naturally, despite their opposition, these two options that the
vaginal girl faces are two side of the same coin. In both cases, the vagina
remains a ‘‘nothing’’; that is, the girl does not establish the ability to represent
this ‘‘nothing’’ as a ‘‘something’’ and use it as part of an integrated whole. As
mentioned, this ability is crucial for the development of mature femininity.
Such premature recognition of the vagina as an organism which plays a part
in feminine eroticism also affects the interaction between the girl and the law
and reality. The precocious knowledge of the vagina and of her own
motherhood not only burdens the girl and separates her from childhood, it also
alienates her from the reality of the group which, as mentioned, casts the
shadow of the phallus on feminine sexuality.17 Because the girl associates her
sexuality with the vagina, which is culturally invisible, she inevitably
associates herself with those who cannot be recognized. This is a permanent
frustration that cannot be assuaged by external or social change as, despite her
protests, the girl herself complies with the law against which she protests. Her
identity as a vagina leads her to a dead end—to futile stalemate. From here on,
her way is in fact barred, because her very identity as someone who is
‘‘lacking’’ subjugates her to the very law she cannot accept.
By sketching this process along a timeline, we could argue that the girl
knows what she is not supposed to know and thus cannot wait to rediscover
what she already knew. Her premature knowledge of her vaginal sexuality
operates as a trauma which halts time and development. Thus, she is denied
of the suspension and incubation processes that are deemed so vital to
feminine development by Freud, Montrelay and Braunschweig and Fain. In
 FEMALE ANATOMY AND HYSTERICAL DUALITY

other words, the girl cannot perform the required act of inversion: to shift
from pre-symbolic sensuous knowing (her primary knowledge of the vagina)
to not-knowing (denial of her own sexuality and being part of a group) and
then to mature knowing (acknowledging the vagina as part of a whole).
Instead, we can theorize she is faced with three options: to adhere to her
initial state, to adopt the opposite position or to keep alternating between
these two states. All three options entail an incomplete transformation and a
constant return to the same position.
It seems that one can notice the connection between the impossible
predicament of the ‘‘vaginal child’’ and the phenomenology of hysteria. In
fact, when one views hysteria as a failed inversion, one can see how it entails
three potential presentations: the first entails acquiescing and holding one’s
ground. In this state, the woman identifies herself as a container, a ‘‘cesspit’’,
and presents the position of a good, placating and obedient girl. Under the
surface, one finds outrage and a phantasmatic sadomasochistic world, where
feminine sexuality is subjected to ‘‘vaginal logic’’ (i.e., operates in line with a
devouring oral scheme). This state resembles what Montrelay called the first
psychic economy, which is a continuation of the primary vaginal sensations
which have an annihilating effect. As this state involves an unsymbolized
sexuality which subverts the processes of representation and symbolization,
this psychic position is related to somatization, dissociation, hysterical
‘‘excess’’ and ‘‘masquerading’’ and additional phenomena that express regions
that were left without representation, as blind spots or dark continents. The
second presentation entails a transition to an inverted position, but the
inversion seems to stop midway. The woman is ‘‘stuck’’ in an oppositional
stance that is linked to ‘‘clitoral logic’’, which states that only what is visible is
significant. This is a constant state of resistance and protest against the feeling
of not being recognized by the group and it may manifest in symptoms of
nausea, vomiting or vaginismus. However, as mentioned, this attempted
rebellion merely betrays the woman’s surrender and her acceptance of
phallocentric law. In this state, the anger and the outrage are on the surface,
while underneath there is an inability to disengage from primary vaginality in
order to eventually turn it into a source of pleasure. The third and perhaps most
advanced presentation entails a constant motion between the two previous
states, an oscillation between a state of inviting submission which conceals
defiance and rejection of the Other and its opposite. This precludes any
opportunity for completing the inversion and is rather a closed-off fluctuation
between the two poles.
The various hysteric presentations, all of which involve being trapped
midway between seduction and isolation—a result of being a ‘‘vaginal
girl’’—can be depicted through different prisms. In sexual intercourse the
woman cannot associate sexual pleasure with the vagina and penetration.
 ZAIDEL

This is because the vagina, with whom she is identified, is the very reason of
her disappearance. Therefore, there is often a tremendous gap between the
capacity for sexual arousal and enjoyment and different degrees of
vaginismus and an unconscious notion of intercourse as humiliating. In
other words, because the vagina is the locus of trauma, one can witness a
‘‘healthy’’ and often even a promiscuous and licentious sexuality, so long as
the vagina is not involved. The trauma surrounding the existence of the
vagina may account for the hysteric’s strange amalgamation of seductivity
and disgust. According to this position, the hysteric is seductive because she
is truly interested in sexual contact with the Other. In fact, she can only stay
in the safe and visible areas of sexuality, where there is no risk of revelation,
which equals effacement. When consummation draws near, she becomes
constricted and overwhelmed with shock, disgust and repulsion. She
appears to be saying ‘‘I am willing to be sexual as long as no one needs
anything from me, as long as I can keep from surrendering—thus
simultaneously revealing and erasing myself’’.
The same dynamic, with its various presentations, is evident on the level
of object-relations. Sometimes, the woman yearns for a ‘‘real’’ strong man
who could rescue her from her intolerable identification with her mother.
Unfortunately, that same man, whose presence indicates the existence of
the vagina, symbolizes the very identification from which she is trying to
liberate herself and paradoxically sends her back into her mother’s lap. In
other words, her potential liberator is also her subjugator and she cannot
reveal herself because this revelation means effacement. At other times, an
opposite, ‘‘clitoral’’ logic may prevail, which is the very same logic under a
different guise. In this case, the explicit presentation is that of a woman who
defies her vaginal identity (which she had, in fact, failed to deny), who
rejects the mother and identifies with the father, to the extent that she may
sometimes argue that she has no need for a man at all. Nevertheless, this
defiance can be intuitively recognized as a profound wish for a relation that
could actualize and even force upon her the unattainable submission. That
is, the origin and the outcome of this maneuver are identical to the previous
one: intercourse is perceived as ‘‘providing a service’’ and penetration is not
pleasurable. Yet another option, which may be more common, is the
constant alternation between these two states, as described by Kohon
(1984): identifying with the mother and rejecting the father at one moment
and identifying with the father and rejecting the mother at another.
This dynamic, which is often evident in the transference of hysterical
patients, places the analyst in an impossible situation. When the patient
accepts and takes in an interpretation, she feels humiliated, erased and
inferior in relation to the analyst. In her eyes, that which revealed her (an
adaptive interpretation) had erased her; that which liberated her—had
 FEMALE ANATOMY AND HYSTERICAL DUALITY

subdued her. Similarly, one can notice the constant motion between
groveling and stubbornness, between a saccharine and a contentious
attitude. Thus, there may be sudden shifts between struggle (accompanied
by a sense that the analyst is superfluous), and undifferentiated yearning
(accompanied by a sense of utter dependence). As mentioned, these two
states seem to operate in a separate and detached manner.
In many ways, this description is similar to that of borderline personality
disorder. Therefore, it begs the question of why not define these binary shifts
as a derivative of a dependence/independence conflict and a good/bad
split? This will not only offer a sound depiction of this dynamic but may also
sever the offensive and perhaps even reductive link between hysteria and
femininity. Unfortunately, history has shown that any depiction which
ignores the sexual aspect makes hysteria disappear and erases its unique
character. The hysterical woman, who traps the analyst in an impossible
and intolerable dynamic, is often a woman who is capable of an integrated
view of the Other, who can contain the Other, show empathy and be a kind
and devoted mother to her children (or a sensitive and skilled therapist…).18
In other words, defining the hysteric split in terms of the basic Eros/Thanatos
or good/bad split would be inaccurate and would hinder an integrated view.
More than any difficulty in maintaining a complex, multi-faceted, intimate
and close relationship, hysteria entails a constant sense of rage, victimhood
and a difficulty in feeling satisfaction and enjoyment.

AFTERWORD
It sometimes seems that hysteria has no clearer indicator than its
elusiveness. The plasticity of its symptoms, its ability to manifest as both a
structure and a state and its way of bending itself to fit various suggested
etiologies—these give the impression that we are looking at a mirage.
Hysteria seems to absorb everything into it, to constantly reshape itself to
suit the mold of what is projected onto it, to keep reinventing itself. It needs
an audience and it lives for one, it fades when you look away and reappears
according to the spectator’s will.
But hysteria is not only elusive, it is also difficult to understand and
decipher: when you touch upon early experiences, you lose your grasp on
later ones; when you focus on the mother, you lose hold on the father; when
you treat endogenous factors, you let slip actual traumas and so on. Perhaps
more than any other disorder, hysteria reveals to us just how limited our
sight is, the extent to which the sense of sight itself is hysterical—obsessed
with exteriority and beauty, incapable of representing things hidden and
unknown, disguising what is secret behind a thousand masks.
 ZAIDEL

In this paper, I have nevertheless tried to tackle a certain structural layer

of this deception. I have described the complexity of feminine development,
which disobeys the Aristotelian demand for a sequential plotline where one
thing leads to another and instead moves in two separate channels at once.
These channels, a product of how feminine anatomy may be registered in
the unconscious, are supposed to progress towards a functional sexual unity
in which vagina and clitoris, passivity and activity, maternal and paternal
identity converge to create a being that is somewhat more whole. This is a
highly intricate task because, as mentioned, progress in a given channel is in
diametric opposition to its counterpart. The unification of these two
modalities and their integration as two reciprocating positions occur
through an act of inversion, which suspends the primary vaginal sensations
pending their rediscovery. This inversion may lead to a more complete
feminine position—which includes the ability to look beyond the visible
and represent the ‘‘nothing’’.
According to this position, the hysterical woman is one who remained a
‘‘vaginal girl’’—who rushed along and began to shoulder the weight of
knowing about the vagina and about the existence of an inner space
prematurely—with the burden, the accelerated maturity, the victimhood,
and the alienation this entails. Such accelerated maturation, stemming from
external or internal circumstances, prevents the hysteric from cathecting her
body as a whole and completing the course of feminine development. She
thus fails to attain functional unity and her sexuality remains in a state of
duality. She is caught in-between, in a closed world of duality, where she is
either seductive or disgusted, inviting or isolated, groveling or stubborn.
This perspective, which focuses on endogenic sexuality—which stays
mysterious and hidden—may offer a clue. We can thus make the conjecture
that the trauma of the hysteric lies not only in the encounter with the
external world or with overwhelming sexuality in general; rather, it is
simultaneously born from the body itself, from inside—as a premature and
precocious representation of the vagina: the part of her sexuality that can
offer pleasure and enrich the ego when sexual integration is achieved but,
when it acts independently, grounded in primary, pre-symbolic sensa-
tions—it erases and is erased, annihilates and devours and, most of all—it is
subservient to the Other.
Therefore, after trying not to be tricked by the deceptions of the gaze, but
to find what is hidden and constant, we may return to Charcot’s immortal
dictum:
‘‘C’est toujours la chose génitale, toujours … toujours … toujours’’ [It’s
always a question of the genitals, always … always … always …] (Gay,
1988, p. 92).19
 FEMALE ANATOMY AND HYSTERICAL DUALITY

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
I would like to thank Dr. Josef Triest for his contribution to this paper.

NOTES

1 Aya Zaidel MA is a clinical psychologist, M.A., The Hebrew University of Jerusalem;

Member of the Tel-Aviv Institute of Contemporary Psychoanalysis. Ph.D. student in the
Interdisciplinary Doctoral Program in Psychoanalysis, Sackler School of Medicine, Tel-
Aviv University.
2 As in ‘‘aspect seeing’’, these can potentially be dissociated or integrated (Wittgenstein,
1974).
3 As the reader may recall, Freud used the term inversion to describe homosexuality (1905b).
This term seems appropriate to the matter at hand for two reasons: first, because in this
context it marks the stage in which the vagina is disavowed (i.e., a particular stage in the
formation of sexual identity); second, due to the sexual connotations of the term, which in
animals signifies a metamorphic change: males being submissive or females exhibiting
mounting behavior.
4 I coin this term in the spirit of Limentani’s ‘‘Vagina-Man’’ (1989), in which he uses the term
to describes men who position and identify themselves with the psychic representation of
the vagina. See Limentani (1989).
5 The argument concerning the link between hysteria and femininity does not contradict the
existence of male hysteria. It would be more accurate to say that there may be something in
the female anatomy that ‘‘draws’’ hysteria towards it, just as the male anatomy may be tied
to certain other pathologies.
6 It is important to note that according to Horney (1933b), the achievement of this milestone
is often experienced as conflicted, since the values of the masculine culture are
internalized by girls.
7 Kohon (1984) borrows this term from Pichon-Riviere (1970, 1971), who used it to depict
the good and bad aspects of the same part-object, characteristic of the schizo-paranoid
position. Kohon’s use is somewhat different, denoting the stage in which one must decide
between two whole objects—the mother and the father. This use differs from the notion of
‘ambivalence’ which denotes a state of love-hate duality towards the same object.
8 Later, Freud also remarks on (1897) masculine neurosis as related to the arousal of rejected
erotogenic zone, indicating that sexual arousal which activates the infantile and rejected
aspects of sexuality (such as the anal or oral aspects) leads to repression in men as well.
Freud thus creates a general association, relevant to both women and men, between desire
and disgust.
9 In this sense, this is not merely a conversion of the mother for the father and of the clitoris
for the vagina, but an inversion. It should be noted that Freud views the active instinctual
motion as opposed to the passive motion and as part of the instinct’s ‘‘reversal into its
opposite’’ (1915, p. 126).
10 This refers to the contrast between Freud’s phallocentric view, which sees libido as
essentially masculine and common to both sexes and other views, such as those of Klein,
Jones and Horney, who view feminine libido as a particular phenomenon and femininity as
independent and innate. These views also attribute the girl with a unique genital
awareness, which goes beyond the experience of having no penis.
11 This ‘‘solution’’ is not without its problems. The joining of the narcissism and the eroticism
which are centered on the penis might create an entire range of sexual dysfunctions
 ZAIDEL

stemming from the narcissistic investment of the penis and the exaggerated expectations,
the anxiety and the erotic inhibition, this investment may evoke.
12 Braunschweig and Fain (1971) argue that this process also constitutes a kind of ’hole
cleaning’—an initial preparation to the positive internalization of a receptive genital. This
process requires the girl to throw out the ’feces’ in order to experience herself as clean both
externally and internally, without damaging the father as her object of desire or her
identification with the mother. The boy plays an important role here, by being the natural
target for the projection of all this disgusting and repulsive anal preoccupation; this is often
evident in the exaggerated and accentuated aversion towards ’those filthy boys’ exhibited
by latency-age girls. The father, however, remains desired and free of excretions. This
means that the idealization of the penis ’gains’ from the anal cathexis which normally
targets the boy (1971, p. 134).
13 One can, of course, think of many and diverse circumstances that would lead to the same
result. Sexual assault, for example, might not only force the girl into premature recognition
of the vagina and her sexuality as subservient to the Other, (i.e., of what was supposed to
remain unknown to her), but also and inevitably undermine the authority of the father as
the representation of the law.
14 According to Glenn (1986), one of the expressions of Freud’s countertransference towards
Dora was his choice of name, as he notes in The Psychopathology of Everyday Life: ‘‘There
appeared to be a very wide choice […] I myself expected that a whole host of women’s
names would be at my disposal. Instead, one name and only one occurred to me—the
name ‘Dora’. I asked myself how it was determined. Who else was there called Dora? I
should have liked to dismiss with incredulity the next thought to occur to me—that it was
the name of my sister’s nursemaid […] At once there came to my mind a trivial incident
from the previous evening which provided the determinant I was looking for. I had seen a
letter on my sister’s dining-room table addressed to ‘Fräulein Rosa W.’. I asked in surprise
who there was of that name and was told that the girl I knew as Dora was really called Rosa
but had had to give up her real name when she took up employment in the house, since my
sister could take the name ‘Rosa’ as applying to herself as well. ‘Poor people,’ I remarked in
pity, ‘they cannot even keep their own names!’ […] When next day I was looking for a
name for someone who could not keep her own, ‘Dora’ was the only one to occur to me’’
(Freud, 1901, pp. 240–241; emphasis in original).
15 Nevertheless, one should keep in mind that, in Freud’s (1905a) view, Dora’s servile identity
was the result of her being exploited and mistreated by her environment and had nothing to
do with primary vaginal sexuality, whose existence he did not acknowledge.
16 In Kleinian terms, one could refer to a kind of unconscious phantasy. Nevertheless, it seems
that this formulation would not do justice to Montrelay’s view, in which the primary
psychic generalization is not a representation but a process which subverts the very
existence of representation. Therefore, it is more accurate to talk about psychic logic, a
certain rationale which guides psychic action.
17 Braunschweig and Fain depict the excessive preoccupation with the clitoris in various
cultures, which includes its removal, its extension or various other surgical procedures. All
these practices deny the inherent difference of feminine sexuality whose genital
manifestation is not singular in nature. The shadow of the phallus is cast over this
anatomic reality: only one part of feminine sexuality is recognized—the clitoris, while the
existence of the vagina is concealed.
18 In this context, it is difficult not to think about Breuer’s patient, Bertha Pappenheim, known
as Anna O. (Breuer, 1895), and the considerable contribution of hysterical women to
psychoanalysis and the world of psychotherapy. It is interesting to note how very severe
symptoms can coexist alongside such highly developed capacities in the hysteric. In this
 FEMALE ANATOMY AND HYSTERICAL DUALITY

context, Freud writes of ‘‘the features which one meets with so frequently in hysterical
people and which there is no excuse for regarding as a consequence of degeneracy: her
giftedness, her ambition, her moral sensibility […] the independence of her nature’’ (Freud,
1893–1895, p. 161). It is important to keep in mind that, as far as Freud is concerned, even
when the hysterical symptoms supposedly indicate the absence of a capacity for
symbolization, this is not the case. Hysterical somatization does not necessarily involve
any difficulty in terms of mentalization; rather, it stems from the fact that the hysteric is
reviving the physical origin that created the image in the first place (‘‘hysteria is right in
restoring the original meaning of the words’’, p. 181).
19 Peter Gay writes: ‘‘Early in 1886, during a reception at Charcot’s house, [Freud] had
overheard his host arguing in his lively way that that a severely disturbed young woman
owed her nervous troubles to her husband’s impotence or sexual awkwardness’’ (Gay,
1988, p. 92). The source of the hysterical troubles of that poor woman was rooted in her
husband’s genital problems. By the way, the quote also illustrates the problem with the
predominantly endogenic view. It is important to stress that all issues this paper is
describing are also the sequelae of the encounter of the female child with the external
world.

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