WHAT DOES “BEING A WOMAN” REALLY MEAN? A reappraisal of the concept of “hysteria” through the analysis of a phenomenological-dynamic psychotherapy of a case study

Abstract

The clinical construct of hysteria, of ancient origin, was much discussed in the course of the twentieth century, until it was broken down by nosography into its personological and symptomatic components. Despite this political and social operation, the concept of hysteria remains tacitly in use amongst many psychiatrists and psychotherapists and has recently returned to the center of theoretical elaboration. Phenomenological psychopathology, with its attention to individual experience and the premise of suspending moral judgement and bracketing theoretical models (epochè), is proposed as a useful tool for the reconstruction of a concept of hysteria beyond stigma. Understood as an existential position, hysteria has specific characteristics of emotional intensification, figurality and centrality, which go beyond gender stereotypes. The present case study aims to show how a phenomenologically orientated psychotherapeutic gaze might discern a picture of hysteria starting from what at first glance might seem like a gender dysphoria. The central question of hysteria, in fact, "what does 'being a woman' mean?" assumes for this patient such an identity value as to lead her to question her belonging to a gender. The phenomenological unfolding highlights different coordinates of this patient's individual experience (selfhood, lived body, lived space, otherness, and lived time), while providing a description of the hysterical life-world. In hysteria, the central question of gender identity manifests itself in the need to receive constant confirmation from outside, to capture the gaze of the other, and to express the power of seduction.