Hysteria

Denise Maurano Mello draws on Jacques Lacan's observations of Freud's work to analyze hysteria, a topic that remains an enigma today.

This volume addresses one of the fundamental themes in the development of Freud's theory. Only through the study of hysterics, and with the help of some of them, did Freud abandon the suggestive method and hypnosis and develop his methodology for accessing the unconscious. Understood in antiquity as a manifestation related to the uterus, in the Middle Ages as a consequence of divine intervention or demonic possession, and, contemporarily, as a subjective way of coping with loss, hysteria has never ceased to be seen as an enigma made present.

Although it no longer refers exclusively to women, hysteria has never lost its connection with the feminine. In Hysteria , Denise Maurano, based on the observations of Jacques Lacan, who reread and updated Freud's work, connects the Baroque and tragic theater in her interpretation of how Freud conceived of the subject and intervened upon it. By contextualizing hysteria in the work of the Viennese psychoanalyst, the author offers keys to interpreting Freud's work.