Question of the hysteric
The Question of the Hysteric (French: question de l’hystérique) is a Lacanian term for the characteristic interrogative stance by which the divided subject ($) addresses the Other—often in the form of an appeal to an authority or master signifier (S₁)—in order to extract a truth about identity, desire, and sexual position. In Jacques Lacan’s theory, the hysteric’s question is not primarily a request for information but a structural mode of relating to desire and jouissance: it simultaneously demands an answer from the Other and exposes the Other’s lack or inconsistency.
Within Lacan’s theory of the Four Discourses, the Question of the Hysteric is most closely associated with the Discourse of the Hysteric, where the divided subject addresses the master signifier to force the production of knowledge (S₂), while the object-cause of desire (a) remains as the repressed truth driving the demand.
Overview
In Lacanian usage, “hysteric” does not simply denote a psychiatric diagnosis. It designates a discursive position—an enduring structure of speech and demand—organized around questions such as:
- “What am I for the Other?”
- “What does the Other want from me?” (often linked to Lacan’s Che vuoi?—“What do you want?”)
- “What is a woman?” / “Am I a man or a woman?” (in relation to sexual difference and the limits of symbolic identification)
The hysteric’s question typically aims at a signifier that would finally name the subject’s being, yet it repeatedly demonstrates that no signifier can fully do so. The result is a productive but unstable circuit: the subject elicits knowledge from authorities (doctors, lovers, institutions, analysts), while preserving dissatisfaction and keeping desire in motion.
Freudian origins
Hysteria and the enigma of symptoms
The theoretical background of the Question of the Hysteric is rooted in Sigmund Freud’s early work on hysteria, especially Studies on Hysteria (1895, with Josef Breuer), where hysterical symptoms are treated as meaningful formations rather than mere organic dysfunctions. Freud’s account foregrounds:
- the role of unconscious ideas and repression;
- the conversion of conflict into bodily symptoms (conversion hysteria);
- the interpretability of symptoms as “messages” addressed to an Other (explicitly or implicitly).
Freud’s later case study of “Dora” (1905) further clarifies hysteria as organized around questions of desire and sexual knowledge. Dora’s symptom formations and transference reactions repeatedly stage an enigma: what she is for others’ desire, and what desire is.
From etiology to structure
While Freud’s early writings sought causal pathways (trauma, repression, sexuality), his clinical descriptions also show a distinctive subjective position: hysterical speech questions authority, provokes interpretations, and tests the Other’s knowledge. This interrogative stance becomes one of Lacan’s key points of departure for reformulating hysteria not only as a syndrome but as a discursive structure.
Lacan’s reformulation
The hysteric as a subject-position
Lacan re-reads Freud through the primacy of language, treating symptoms as structured like a language and subjectivity as constituted by signifiers. In this framework, the Question of the Hysteric articulates the subject’s division ($) produced by entry into the Symbolic—and the consequent impossibility of a complete signifier of being.
The hysteric’s questioning has a double effect:
- it demands from the Other a signifier that would guarantee identity or sexual position;
- it reveals that the Other does not possess such a guarantee (the “lack in the Other”).
Location within the Four Discourses
In Lacan’s Four Discourses, the Question of the Hysteric is formalized in the Discourse of the Hysteric, expressed by the matheme:
- Agent (upper left): $ (the divided subject)
- Other (upper right): S₁ (master signifier / authority)
- Truth (lower left): a (objet petit a as cause of desire)
- Product (lower right): S₂ (knowledge produced by the Other)
In this discourse, the subject speaks from division and addresses the master signifier—“Tell me what I am,” “Name what I am,” “Explain my symptom.” The Other responds by producing knowledge (diagnostic, theoretical, moral, erotic), yet the truth of the discourse remains a: the object-cause of desire that cannot be stated as a final answer.
Desire, the Other, and the master signifier
“Che vuoi?” and the desire of the Other
A frequent Lacanian condensation of the hysteric’s question is Che vuoi? (“What do you want?”). It is a question addressed to the Other as the locus of language and demand. The hysteric’s question concerns not only what the subject wants, but what the Other wants from the subject—what would satisfy, complete, or secure the Other’s desire.
This interrogation often takes the form of:
- demanding recognition (“Tell me who I am”);
- demanding a rule (“Tell me what a woman/man is”);
- demanding an interpretation (“Tell me what my symptom means”).
Yet the hysteric’s questioning typically ensures that every answer remains insufficient, because the question aims at an impossible object: a signifier that would abolish lack.
S₁ and the failure of nomination
The master signifier (S₁) is the signifier of identity and authority (e.g., “woman,” “man,” “normal,” “sick,” “genius,” “failure”). The hysteric addresses these signifiers to secure being, but also to expose their emptiness. The discourse thus produces a distinctive effect: it compels authorities to generate knowledge (S₂) to shore up S₁, while simultaneously demonstrating that S₁ cannot resolve the subject’s division.
Knowledge (S₂) and objet petit a
Knowledge as product
In the hysteric’s discourse, knowledge (S₂) is produced as an effect: the hysteric provokes the Other into speaking, theorizing, diagnosing, and explaining. Historically, Lacan links this to the way hysteria “made” early psychoanalytic knowledge possible: the hysteric’s demand forces the Other to articulate what it claims to know.
In the analytic setting, this dynamic is central to transference: the analysand may suppose the analyst knows the secret of the symptom and demand that knowledge.
Objet a as hidden truth
The truth beneath the hysteric’s questioning is a, Objet petit a—the cause of desire. The hysteric’s explicit demand is addressed to S₁ (“name it,” “define it”), but the unconscious motor is the subject’s relation to objet a: the elusive remainder that fuels desire and symptom repetition. The hysteric thus circles an impossibility: the cause of desire cannot be fully represented in knowledge.
Clinical implications
Transference and the “subject supposed to know”
The Question of the Hysteric frequently appears in analysis as a demand that the analyst occupy the position of S₁ or S₂ (mastery or expertise). This is closely related to the transference logic of the subject supposed to know, in which the analysand attributes knowledge of the symptom’s truth to the analyst.
Lacanian technique stresses that the analyst should resist becoming a master who answers the hysteric’s question with authoritative knowledge. Instead, the analyst aims to shift the discourse toward the Discourse of the Analyst, occupying the position of objet a as cause—so that the analysand can encounter their own desire and the limits of the Other’s knowledge.
Symptom formation and dissatisfaction
Hysterical symptoms can function as addressed messages that stage the subject’s question to the Other. A symptom may:
- embody a question (“What does the Other want?”);
- challenge authority (“Prove you know what I am”);
- sustain desire by preserving dissatisfaction.
In Lacanian terms, the hysteric’s question is often bound to fantasy: the subject’s scenario that organizes desire and shields the subject from confronting the Real of lack. Analytic work aims not to “answer” the question directly but to modify the subject’s relation to it—often described as a movement toward traversing the fantasy.
Theoretical and cultural significance
Because it positions the divided subject as agent, the Discourse (and question) of the hysteric has been used in Lacanian-oriented social theory to describe forms of critique and contestation: the subject challenges master signifiers and demands justification from institutions. This can illuminate the dynamics of:
- ideological critique (exposing the inconsistency of master signifiers);
- protest and social movements (demanding answers from authority);
- cultural production (articulating dissatisfaction that compels new knowledge).
At the same time, Lacanian theory cautions that hystericization can become self-perpetuating: continual demands for answers from the Other can reproduce dependence on authority unless the subject’s own relation to desire (a) is addressed.
Related concepts
- The Question of the Hysteric is structurally linked to the Discourse of the Hysteric and contrasts with the Discourse of the University (knowledge in command) and the Discourse of the Analyst (objet a as agent).
- It intersects with Lacan’s accounts of Castration and the lack in the Other: the hysteric presses the Other to guarantee meaning, and encounters the impossibility of that guarantee.
- It is often discussed alongside the problematic of sexual difference and the limits of symbolic identification (e.g., “What is a woman?”), especially in Lacan’s later work on jouissance.
See also
References
- Breuer, Josef; Freud, Sigmund. Studies on Hysteria (1895). In: Freud, The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Vol. II. Hogarth Press.</ref>
- Freud, Sigmund. “Fragment of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria” (1905) (“Dora”). In: Standard Edition, Vol. VII. Hogarth Press.</ref>
- Freud, Sigmund. The Interpretation of Dreams (1900). Standard Edition, Vols. IV–V. Hogarth Press.</ref>
- Lacan, Jacques. The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book XVII: The Other Side of Psychoanalysis (1969–1970). Trans. Russell Grigg. W.W. Norton, 2007.</ref>
- Lacan, Jacques. The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book XI: The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis (1964). Trans. Alan Sheridan. W.W. Norton, 1978.</ref>
- Lacan, Jacques. Écrits (1966). Trans. Bruce Fink. W.W. Norton, 2006.</ref>
- Evans, Dylan. An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis. Routledge, 1996.</ref>
- Fink, Bruce. A Clinical Introduction to Lacanian Psychoanalysis: Theory and Technique. Harvard University Press, 1997.</ref>
- Verhaeghe, Paul. Does the Woman Exist? From Freud’s Hysteric to Lacan’s Feminine. Other Press, 1999.</ref>
- Miller, Jacques-Alain. “H2O: Suture” and related essays on discourse and the analytic experience. In: various collections and Ornicar? (selected translations).</ref>
- Copjec, Joan. Read My Desire: Lacan Against the Historicists. MIT Press, 1994.</ref>
- Žižek, Slavoj. The Sublime Object of Ideology. Verso, 1989.</ref>