Hysteria – mysterious disease and its journey through centuries. Four discourses and the hysteric.

Abstract

Hysteria has been deeply imbedded in the history of human kind throughout the centuries without having medically explained symptoms. With the development of modern medicine many symptoms have been found to have an organic cause. The same modern medicine has shown through brain scans that there are people who have serious and debilitating symptoms without any organic cause. This leads to the work of Freud and Lacan who dedicated their lives exploring how our inner world- unconscious directly influences our well-being. Lacan and his followers are courageous to point out that we all are, to a certain extent, a hysteric. Lacan’s four discourses are important concepts to better understand how language, the unconscious and other signifiers impact our lives and society as a whole. The Master discourse, The University discourse, The Analytic discourse and The Hysteric discourse shows how language and speech are positioned and how we relate between the Subject and the Other. It can be challenging for the Analyst to work with the Hysteric.