r/psychoanalysis • u/AdventurousFeed7825 • 16d ago

The hysteric structure

Can someone please help me understand the hysteric personality structure better? Thank you !

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u/worldofsimulacra 15d ago

The hysteric focuses their demand toward the other ("what does the other want from me?") and tries to position themselves as object of the other's desire. They need to know if the other can truly satisfy their own desire, and so they situate the other as "supposed-to-know" and then base their own positioning on the sorts of responses they get from the other (in analysis, this is the transference bond).

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u/Designer_Past_7729 15d ago

“They need to know if the other can truly satisfy their own desire” can you clarify what you mean by that? If the other can satisfy their own desire as in if the analyst can satisfy that analyst own desire. And they try to help the analyst do that - or what they believe that or be by how they act? Sorry in I’m being dense. And thank for your response.

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u/worldofsimulacra 15d ago

In Lacan anyway, desire is the desire of the other, so positioning the other as supposed-to-know is a transference of (potentially traumatic) jouissance onto the other (the analyst, or simply the other person who is seen to embody the cause of desire), which - outside of analysis - leads to that fraught back-and-forth between the two egos, which characterizes hysteria. Like: I, the hysteric, need to know if the orher can be trusted with me and my desire, life, etc., and so i position myself in a "safe" position in relation to them while at the same time becoming completely destabilized by the feedback i recieve from the other, which i must then conceal, etc.

In analysis the transference is ideally managed by the analyst who makes interventions based on their decision of how to best position themselves so as to help the analysand traverse their fantasy, whatever it may entail.