In Studies onHysteria Revisited[2] Charles Melman identifies four concepts : traumatism, incompatibility, repression and unconscious. Beyond the image is to be found a repressed and rejected cast-off ; the constitution of whom, Melman asserts, is freshly preserved. Unremittingly, this original signifier’s infiltration presents the hysteric's psychosomatic manifestations. Sounding out that foreign body, Freud’s discovery assures us that psychoanalysis alone, in deciphering the language of symptomatology, gives recognition to and discharges that real place of suffering.
Keywords : Freud; Melman; repression; hysteria; incompatible; rejection; signifier.
An Intolerable Rejection[1]
It is intolerable. It is rejected. Its rejection becomes an intolerable and highly charged infiltrating agent. In Studies on Hysteria Revisited[3] Dr Charles Melman restores Freud’s inauguration of the essential concept of repression and of the unconscious, because one is correlative with the other.[4] The development of these new writings presents us with an idea of the freshness with which hysteria signifies the embodying preservation of an ancient, pervasive, unconscious text. What is it that we don’t want to know about the history of our subject; what implicates a traumatism so incompatible? The psychoanalyst has something new to tell us; firstly, fundamentally, he refers us to Freud.
“Up to a time shortly before I entered the University it had been my intention to study law”[5] Freud tells us. It is not a matter of chance that the first advocate of psycho-analysis was a Jew. To profess belief in this new theory called for a certain degree of readiness to accept a situation of solitary opposition – a situation with which no one is more familiar than a Jew.[6] Freud writes that his interest, after making a lifelong detourreturned to the cultural problems which had fascinated him long before, when he was a youth. “I perceived even more clearly that the events of human history, the interactions between human nature, [and] cultural development...are no more than a reflection of the dynamic conflicts between the ego, the id and the super-ego, which psycho-analysis studies in the individual-are the very same processes repeated upon a wider stage.”[7]
Asserting that the castration complex is the deepest root of anti-Semitism, Freud writes that, “even in the nursery little boys hear that a Jew has something cut off his penis-a piece of the penis, they think-and this gives them a right to despise Jews?”[8] In his paper on Infantile Genital Organization Freud maintains that we “ought not to speak of a castration complex until this idea of a loss has become connected with the male genitals.”[9]
“[We] must hold fast to the view that fear of castration is one of the commonest and strongest motives for repression and thus for the formation of neuroses.”[10] “...[I]t seems to me [Freud asserts] that the significance of the castration complex can only be rightly appreciated if its origin in the phase of phallic primacy is also taken into account.”[11] So alien to our consciousness are the things by which our unconscious mental life is governed![12]
In December 1938, having escaped the immigrant home of his childhood to avoid persecution for his line of thought, but also for his race[13], Freud the foreigner, speaks to us about the price he had to pay for his discovery of the unconscious in psychic life the and the role of instinctual urges.[14]
In The Language of the Body[15] in Studies on Hysteria Revisited we are reminded of Freud’s concept of the inauguration of somatic conversion.[16] In 1895, that “gifted neurologist and lecturer on nervous diseases”[17] presents a foundational schema when he puts into place his Picture of Sexuality[18] [see diagram below]; and with it, a Freudian topology,[19] depicting the function of space occupied by the psyche and its lowering of tension.[20]
Dr Melman writes:
That which is interesting for us in the way of which Freud speaks of the body is that he specifies it in some way as a real of which we cannot rid ourselves. There is a real from which we can take flight, and then there is a real which follows us everywhere, which accompanies us, which sticks to your skin and holds permanently the menace of a tension, of an excitation which can be resolved only by doing certain work.[21]
This new work on hysteria brings us to the threshold of something new; but constitutionally, we return again to Freud’s text on Repression. The ill people in question, he tells us: hysterics, obsessionals and those suffering from what was called at that time anxiety hysteria – phobia, suffer frustration of wishes denied to them; these systems are as such satisfactions destined to replace them.[22] We are reminded that the psychical tendencies subject to repression are die Vorstellungsrepräsentanz - that is, the representant of the representative of a drive; whose accomplishment would be a source of displeasure. Motivated by the pleasure principle therefore, the ego forces this repression.
In his foundational, pioneering work we know from Freud’s 1915 text, that there is no unconscious without Repression[23]. “It’s on this occasion that he [Freud] puts into place primary repression – die Urverdrängung”,[24]which Dr Melman calls primary repression of the representant of the representative of the drive, which from then on becomes fixated and will be a source of attraction for all repressions to come.[25]
Freud asks if substitutive formations for this repression coincide with symptoms. Acknowledging primal repression Melman asks, “is there a margin; a separation between the substitutive formations linked to this repression and symptoms?”[26] Consciousness is not aware of what happens when repression occurs, the ideational content of the representant of the drive escapes consciousness completely.
In our human world it is only in the world of words that things can take on a new meaning.
Lacan outlines in Écrits how the signifier enters into the signifying chain; but here, in Studies on Hysteria Revisited Charles Melman places the signifier very early “something of the signifier comes to be inhabited in this frontier between the soma and the psyche.”[27]
How are we to understand that we are inhabited by a signifier? In hysteria, how are we to interpret this, knowing that the signifier enters into the world of things; it continues to astound us! How is this repression linked to the feminine position? What happens to the repressed? Does repression have something to do with a defect particular to the subject, or has it got to do with the fact of something particular to structure?
Freud details very well his own particular finding of die Urverdrängung – primal repression, leading us to the side of structure. “It’s via primal repression that a signifier finds itself untouched by all that could be of direct reference, of immediate reference of a link to an object.
From then on, a signifier will never be anything but that representing a subject for another signifier.’[28]
Dr Melman continues...
Insofar as we are analysts we have the ability, a very specific one it has to be said, to name this original signifier repressed in this way...It’s the phallus which is charged with this significance, this meaning from the chain; and which will constitute this unique reference, which meanwhile, will divide speaking beings. From now on we’re divided.[29]
With regard to this structural, hysterical problem, a cultural problem and a historical problem, is the fact that there are singular hysterics, and it causes a lot of suffering. Freud unmasks the existence of the unconscious drives, giving accounts of incompatible representations, and in Studies on Hysteria[30] he collected examples of these. In all of those cases the representations provoked shame, remorse, moral suffering, provoking an aversion of the ego.
Quoting Freud, Melman writes:
A representation which accedes to the ego finds itself intolerable and exercises on it a force of repulsion; this constitutes a defence against the dominant idea, a defence which attains its aim, the representation in question having been rejected outside consciousness, and outside memory, and not leaving, in appearance at least, any trace.[31]
In other words, the ego has a conscience but behaves as though it knew nothing. The question arises as to what is the authority of the ego? These New Studies remind us that:
…in refusing to see them as the subject’s own ideas, ranged in the category of shame, of remorse it can only come from the ego ideal. In what Freud tells us, ...In all the cases it has to do with women, with servants with governesses, who are put at the service of the family and who devote themselves to it... as if for the love of le grand Autre, for l’autre,small others, fellow human beings, it was necessary for these patients to give up on their desire.[32]
In linking these repressions to what is able to be tolerated, Melman says that what we are dealing with is conscience, which, he maintains, is strictly confused with the imaginary. His definition of conscience is:
That is what you are able to tolerate, to accept as an image of yourself, and that which you repress, which you reject, it is in some way that which finds itself incompatible, unverträlich, with the image. Before which you will feel it has to be defended, to be maintained, no matter what price![33]
More interesting for us is the specificity of repression, the constitution of a separate psychical group. Freud referred to this Spaltung, a break, a splitting of groups of representations. This is important to bear in mind as this group functions as if there was a radical break between it and the rest of the psychical representations. What happens there, with this repression, where does it go? “Freud describes this very well as the ‘indestructible conservation of the repressed which is essential.’ So, it seems it doesn’t go anywhere.”[34]
The repressed incompatible image remains indestructibly conserved preserving its emotional value and, as Melman writes, “this continues without a doubt like a writing. We know [this] by the psychosomatic manifestations which are produced that it is not the hypothetical signified which is thereby conserved but the signifier.”[35] This cut, this repressed preserves freshly, an active psychical economy.
Following Freud, Melman maintains that what interests us is “that this foreign body, this Fremdekörper, would become the place of a second conscience...The double personality of the hysteric. Another place...from where it can command.”[36] This second conscience has an intelligence which is in no way inferior. This foreign body unremittingly infiltrates from this place all the elements of a normal ego; rejects and cast-offs return from this other place in all the productions of daily life offering itself up to be heard and deciphered through its psychopathology. So, why doesn’t the hysteric talk from this second place which Freud calls einer andere Schauplatz, another showplace – the unconscious? Melman verifies that “This second place is a place of suffering and looking to be recognised.”37
It is interesting the recognition given to the Irish neurologist and émigré Suzanne O’Sullivan - last year’s Wellcome-book-prize winner. In her text entitled It’s All In Your Head[37]she writes: “Psychosomatic disorders are not neurological disorders...psychosomatic disorders are physical symptoms that mask emotional distress...And because every type of specialist sees a different form of psychosomatic illness, and labels and treats it differently, it can be very difficult to fully appreciate the extent of the problem.”[38]
Freud, the Goethe Prize winner in 1930, appreciates the extent of this suffering. Writing in 1923 with authority, his rebuke affirms “we need not be surprised to find that, whereas the neuroses of our...modern days take on a hypochondriacal aspect and appear disguised as organic illnesses...Several authors, foremost among them Charcot, have, as we know, identified the manifestations of hysteria.”[39] In going beyond the imaginary of the look, genuine researchers can hear a lead-in to Freud’s Project[40] where he begins in trying to bring relief to his neurotic patients. In that Nineteenth Century paper, pioneering his way amidst the systems of permeable, impermeable and perceptual neurons is found the term Vorstellung...the idea of it!
Lacan writes “It is hardly surprising that it should be through this door that Freud entered what was, in reality, the relations of desire to language and discovered the mechanisms of the unconscious...That this relation of desire to language as such did not remain concealed from him is a feature of his genius.”[41] Freud asserts that if more attention had been paid to the histories of cases, then those mental entities would have found explanation in a recourse to psychical powers; discovering, as he writes, that those dark symptoms “are...wishes, derivatives of instinctual impulses that have been repudiated and repressed...having arisen in the patient’s internal life, where they have their abode.”[42] Dr Melman asserts:
This separate psychical group operates as if it were a real...a new real...the place of an enigmatic l’Autre from where it is formulated for her, and about which she is not the voice but with her body the book, the written word. This signifier from this place...would possess her and will act in a very particular way...This is what indeed is characteristic of the symptom.[43]
As Melman continues: “This is what Freud tells us with regard to his therapeutic victory, that which is given up to decrypting in this way, to what can be interpreted once it is recognized, when it is decrypted, it is abolished, it falls.”[44]
[1] This Paper was given at an international conference, Why was Psychoanalysis Founded by an Emigrant? which was hosted by New Studies on Hysteria, [Milltown Lacanian Association] Dublin in collaboration with the École Pratique des Hautes Études en Psychopathologies, Paris and held on December 9th 2017 in Marino Institute, Dublin.
[2] Melman. Studies on Hysteria Revisited. Helen Sheehan’s translation of Dr Charles Melman’s Nouvelles études
sur l’hystérie (2010) Toulouse, Editions érès.
[3] Melman, C. Studies on Hysteria Revisited.
[4] Melman, C. Studies on Hysteria Revisited. Chapter Three: The Language of The Body. February 2016. p. 47.
[5] Freud, S. The Interpretation of Dreams. (1900a). S.E. IV. P. 193.
[6] Freud, S. Resistances to Psychoanalysis. S.E.Vol 19. p. 222.
[7] Freud, S. An Autobiographical Study. (1925 [1924]). S.E. Vol. XX p 72.
[8] Freud, S., Two Case Histories: ‘Little Hans and the ‘Rat Man’. S. E. X (1909). p. 36.
[9] Freud, S., TheInfantile Genital Organization: An Interpolation into the Theory of Sexuality. (1923e) S.E. XIX. p. 144, Footnote 2.
[10] Freud, S., Anxiety and Instinctual Life. S. E. XXII. p. 87.
[11] Freud, S., The Infantile Genital Organization: An Interpolation into the Theory of Sexuality. (1923e) S.E. XIX p. 144.
[12] Freud, S., Dostoevsky and Parricide. S.E. XXI (1928b [1927]). p. 184.
[13] Freud. S., Preparatory Note II ([London], June 1938) in Moses and Monotheism: Three Essays. S.E. XXIII. p.
57.
[14] British Broadcasting Corporation. Sigmund Freud. London 1938.
[15] Melman, C. Ibid. Chapter 5, 9th April. p. 6.
[16] Melman, C. Ibid. Chapter 9th January 2016. p. 127.
[17] Zilboorg & Henry, A History of Medical Psychology. p. 484.
[18] Freud. Draft G – Melancholia. Extracts From The Fliess Papers. (1950a [1887-1902]). S.E I. p. 202.
[19] Melman, C. ibid., Chapter 5, 9th April. p. 3.
[20] Melman, C. ibid., Chapter 5, 9th April. p. 7.
[21] . Ibid., Chapter Five, 9th April. p. 9.
[22] Melman, C. Ibid., Chapter 3, 6th February 2016. p. 47.
[23] Freud. Repression. (1915d) S.E. XIV.
[24] Melman, C. Ibid., Chapter 3, 6th February 2016. p. 47.
[25] Melman, C. Ibid.
[26] Melman, C. Ibid.
[27] Sheehan, H. New Studies on Hysteria translation seminar notes. 6th February 2016. p. 48.
[28] Melman, C. Ibid., Chapter 3, 6th February 2016. p. 49.
[29] Melman, C. Ibid., p. 54.
[30] Breuer, Josef and Freud, Sigmund. Studies on Hysteria. (1895d [1893-95]). S.E. II.
[31] Melman, C. Ibid., 5th March 2016. p. 1.
[32] . Melman. Studies on Hysteria Revisited. 5th March 2016. p. 2.
[33] Ibid.
[34] Ibid.
[35] Ibid., p. 5.
[36] Ibid., p. 7. 37 Ibid., p. 7.
[37] O’Sullivan, S. It’s All in Your Head: Stories from the Frontline of Psychosomatic Illness. Vintage 2016.
[38] Ibid., p. 8.
[39] Freud, S. A Seventeenth-Century Demonological Neurosis. (1923 [1922]). Vol. XIX. p. 72.
[40] Freud, S., Project for a Scientific Psychology. Vol 1. Pp 295- 397.
[41] Lacan, J., The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis. The Seminar of Jacques Lacan. Book XI. p. 12. Edited by Jacques-Alain Miller ; Transl. Sheridan, A.
[42] Freud, S., A Seventeenth-Century Demonological Neurosis op. cit. Vol XIX. p. 72.
[43] Melman, C. Ibid., 5th March 2016. p. 16.
[44] . Ibid.