Zetzel (1968) - The So Called Good Hysteric.pdf

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Zetzel, E.R. (1968). The So Called Good Hysteric. Int. J. Psycho-Anal., 49:256-260. 49:256-260.

(1968). International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 49: 49:256-260 256-260

The So Called Good Hysteric 1 Elizabeth R. Zetzel There was a little girl And she had a little curl Right in the middle of her forehead. And when she was good She was very, very good, But when she was bad She was horrid.

This nursery rhyme must be familiar to most of you. It is particularly applicable to the analysis of those female patients whose presenting symptomatology symptomatology and/or character character structure structure overtly suggests suggests an unresolved genital genital oedipal situation. This leads to a presumptive diagnosis of hysteria, a condition for which traditional psychoanalysis psychoanalysis remains the treatment of choice. Follow-up studies of the analysis of such patients have not, however, been reassuring. In Boston, for example, we reported ten years ago: Our reports so far tend to indicate that hysterical patients are, to put it simply, very good or very bad patients. (Knapp et al. 1960). This conclusion was based on a review of one hundred patients evaluated as possible patients for supervised analysis. In preparing this paper I have also reviewed the initial clinical evaluation of nearly one hundred non-psychotic women. Of these, more than thirty had been in analysis, either conducted or supervised, over the past ten years. On this basis I hope to revise and explain our presumptive dichotomy and the distinction made by Easser and Lesser in a more recent paper between the the hysteric and the the hysteroid character. character. As my opening jingle suggests, I have limited myself to the discussion of hysteria in the evaluation of female patients. Although Although I have evaluated, evaluated, analysed, and and supervised the analysis of a number number of men comparable comparable with my my sample of women, the number whose presenting symptoms were hysterical is far smaller. My findings are thus in keeping with Easser and Lesser's conclusion that presenting hysterical symptomatology is less common in men than in women. In addition, I have seldom encountered the syndrome I will describe as so-called good hysteria in the initial evaluation of male patients. The pathology of this syndrome is, I believe, largely determined by developmental hazards specific to the growth and development of the feminine character. Comparable developmental failures in men frequently result, in my experiences, in so-called normality rather than overt neurotic symptoms. These are the men whose deceptive external adaptation has been achieved on the basis of minimal awareness of inner reality, with marked deficiencies in the area of affect-tolerance. affect-tolerance. Although so-called normality is also met in women, it is far less common than so-called good hysteria. This, I believe, accounts in large part for the preponderance of women initially diagnosed as hysterical characters and/or hysterical neurotics. In place place of the earlier dichotomy I would now like to suggest that women whose presenting sym ptomatology suggests a diagnosis of either hysterical character or hysterical neurosis tend to fall into one of four sub-groups. These may be ranged ranged from the most to the least analysable on the basis of their response to therapeutic analysis. ana lysis. Although patients in each each of these groups may clearly be distinguished in their most characteristic characteristic form, form, I do not wish wish to imply a rigid compart-mentalization. compart-mentalization. The most analysable hysteric is vulnerable to regression in a bad analytic situation. Conversely, Conversely, certain patients who have regressed before referral may initially present a clinical picture suggestive of more serious pathology than later proves to be the case. My four groups may be briefly defined as follows: first, true good hysterics are young women who are both prepared and ready for all aspects of traditional psychoanalysis; psychoanalysis; second, potential good hysterics are young women whose development, symptomatology, symptomatology, and character structure clearly suggest an analysable hysterical disorder. disorder. They are, however, less fully prepared —————————————

Copyright © Elizabeth R. Zetzel. 1 Presented at the 25th International Psycho-Analytical Congress, Copenhagen, July 1967.

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and/or internally ready to make the serious commitment prerequisite to the establishment of the analytic situation. Third, women with an underlying depressive character structure frequently present manifest hysterical symptomatology to a degree which disguises their deeper pathology. Fourth, there are women whose manifest hysterical symptomatology proves to be pseudo-oedipal and pseudo-genital. Such patients seldom meet the most important criteria for analysability. My classification is based on a reconsideration of the relation between hysteria and infantile oedipal conflict. It is essential in this context to distinguish between instinctual progression and regression and the ego achievements prerequisite to the emergence, recognition, and mastery of a genuine internal danger situation. As I have suggested elsewhere (Zetzel, 1965), the story of Oedipus himself is not a good prototype for what we now mean by a potentially healthy infantile neurosis. His father was not a real person in relation to either himself or his mother. He was a stranger by whom he was waylaid. His mother, Jocasta, was not involved with his real father but was in fact a realistically available sexual object. The myth nevertheless highlights the nature of the dilemma with which the child is most sharply confronted if and when he reaches a genuine oedipal conflict. It was not just fear that his father was stronger and might therefore castrate him which Freud emphasized in his discussion of Little Hans; it was also the fact that Hans loved his father and did not wish to lose him. Though a rival in terms of internal reality, his father was a support and an object for identification as a real person. This conflict, in brief, is the first really significant confrontation to the child of the difference between external and internal reality. It is this difference which leads to the mobilization of the signal anxiety which motivates the major defence of the future hysteric, namely, repression. It is my thesis, in summary, that the true hysteric, whether male or female, has experienced a genuine triangular conflict. The hysteric, in addition, has been able to retain significant object relationships with both parents. Frequently, however, the postoedipal relationship has been less satisfactory and more amibivalent than the relationship established in the preoedipal period. Hysterics, in brief, have paid too heavy a price in the attempted resolution of the oedipal triangle. They have nevertheless retained the potential capacity to recognize and tolerate internal reality and its wishes and conflicts. These are distinguished from external reality. The ability to distinguish these two aspects of reality is a major criterion for analysability. It may indeed constitute the essence of the capacity to distinguish between therapeutic alliance and the transference neurosis. It has of course long been recognized that the ability to modify primitive instinctual responses is initiated during the preoedipal years of development. The child first learns to tolerate delay and frustration in the early mother/child relationship. During the second, third, and fourth years of life he optimally acquires certain controls and achieves some degree of independence and autonomy. During this period, moreover, he expands his capacity for one-to-one relationships, thus adding to his own ego identifications. The major developmental tasks during the preoedipal years include, first, acceptance of the limitations within one-to-one relationships without feeling seriously rejected and/or devalued; second, tolerance of increasing periods of separation from important objects, with added pleasure in available substitutes; and, third, achievement of pleasure in active mastery and learning. In all these tasks the major frame of reference is the one-to-one relationship. The emergence of defences against primitive instinct is thus mainly initiated by the wish for approval and its negative counterpart, fear of disapproval. It is to be anticipated that the one-to-one relationship with the mother will differ significantly from that with the father. Not only are their roles significantly different, but their spontaneous responses to the child's progression and regression will obviously cover an enormous range. It is almost inevitable that the child's relation with one of his parents will be more ambivalent than that with the other. Mastery of the hostility in the less good relationship will typically result in certain reaction formations. These, I would like to suggest, form the basis of the obsessional defences which all of us recognize as important concomitants of the character structure of the most stable hysterics. In this very brief outline I will focus on the specific developmental hazards which appear to be determinants of the relatively high incidence of hysterical symptoms, whether true or socalled, in adult women. First, there are many reasons over and above serious pathology in the mother which increase the probability that the - 257 -

little girl's preoedipal relationship with her mother will be more ambivalent than that of the little boy. Moreover, the oedipal conflict specifically entails a shift of libidinal object choice for the little girl. Her first object, the mother, becomes her rival. It is thus easy to see how earlier failures will tend to impair the maintenance of a good object relationship between mother and daughter during the infantile neurosis. This may impair the girl's feminine identification and the internalization of a positive ego-ideal. It is also to be anticipated that many fathers are less demanding and more openly affectionate to their attractive little daughters than they are to their little sons. When this has been a striking feature of the preoedipal period there may be an impairment of full genital development. The shift to the father is, moreover, immediately preceded by full recognition of sexual differences in the phase well described as both phallic and narcissistic. On the one hand, earlier failures may thus compound penis envy. On the other, the girl may respond to her increased ambivalence by a regressive magnification of earlier passive needs. During the closing phases of the preoedipal period the boy tends to reinforce his reactionformations against such passivity. The analysable man who has failed adequately to resolve his oedipal situation is thus likely to present, at least initially, an obsessional rather than hysterical character structure and/or symptomatology. This same finding is, however, at least relatively true of the group I have described as the most analysable hysterical women.


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These, in my experience, have defensively reinforced penis envy and associated ambitions towards active achievement partly in identification, but also in order to please a father who is not only an oedipal object but also the parent with whom the preoedipal relationship was less ambivalent and more stable. Despite characteristic differences, men and women who have been successfully analysed share certain major developmental successes. The ability to achieve and maintain a positive therapeutic alliance and to work through the terminal phase has been optimal in patients whose analytic material has revealed substantial mastery of ambivalence in the early mother/child relationship. This usually entails the initiation and maintenance of certain reaction-formations which prove to be prophylactic against significant ego regression during the establishment of the analytic situation. These patients had, in addition, consolidated genuine one-to-one relations with both of their parents before the onset of the genital oedipal situation. Their response to both the analytic situation and the transfernce neurosis has demonstrated the capacity to distinguish between external and internal reality. This capacity has been most crucially tested in respect to the regressive revival in the transference neurosis of a triangular oedipal conflict. They have demonstrated during the analytic process a sustained capacity to tolerate anxiety and depression. They have, finally, demonstrated the capacity to renounce without bitterness or self-devaluation the realistically unavailable and actively to approach and attempt to attain available objects and realistic ideals. I will here give a vignette, not of any one individual patient but of the findings which would lead me to believe that a woman belongs in my first group, namely the true hysteric who is ready for analysis. She is usually well past adolescence and has thus typically completed her formal education. She is often a virgin; if not, she has been disappointed in her sexual experiences. While she may not be frigid, she has not been able to make a major sexual investment in a man she cares for as a real person. Often she has somewhere in her life, and sometimes already married, a man who is in love with her to whom she cannot respond sexually. She is often first seen after an experience which might be described as "an hour of truth". Some event or personal confrontation has at last made it clear to her that the problem lies within herself. Most of the patients in this group have been notably successful in areas other than their heterosexual relationships. Their academic and professional achievements have often been notable. They have in addition been able to make and keep stable friendships. Many of them were the oldest, often the most gifted, and typically the father's favourite child. None in my own group was an only child. In many of these patients historical events suggest that the failure to resolve the infantile oedipal situation may have been partially attributable to realistic events. Loss or extended separation from either parent during the height of the oedipal situation has substantially interfered with mastery through neutralization, sublimation, and positive identification with the mother. Instead, massive repression has occurred, with the oedipal father still unrelinquished and a major barrier to adult - 258 -

heterosexual object choice. This reconstruction has been fully confirmed in the analyses of several patients included in my first group. How does this group of almost ideally analysable hysterics differ from my second group, the potential good hysterics? First, this group includes a somewhat wider range of symptomatology and character structure than the first group. It is not therefore possible to give a specific clinical vignette. They are usually younger, they are always less mature than my first group. They are sometimes the youngest, or they may be only children. They have failed to achieve as stable ego-syntonic obsessional defences as the first group. They are somewhat more passive and less consistent in respect of their academic and professional achievements. Their friendships are less stable and more openly ambivalent. They are often afraid of their dependent wishes which are nearer the surface than is typically the case with the true good hysteric. The major problem in respect of the analysis of this group of patients concerns the first phase, namely the establishment of a stable analytic situation in which an analysable transference neurosis may gradually emerge. Some of them are quite simply too young to make a genuine commitment. Others, first seen in a state of neurotic decompensation, may respond to analysis in one of two ways, namely, flight into health through displacement of the transference, or the emergence of a transference associated with ego regression which impairs the establishment of therapeutic alliance. If, however, these pitfalls are avoided this group of patients prove able to achieve a genuine analytic result. They do not necessarily present serious difficulties in respect of either the emergence and analysis of the transference neurosis, or the working through of the terminal phase. My last two groups comprise the vast majority of so-called good hysterics. The first may be analysable in a long and difficult analysis. Depressive characters are typically women who have signally failed to mobilize their active resources during every important developmental crisis. Their basic self-esteem is low, and in addition they tend to devalue their own femininity. Despite these serious drawbacks many of these patients have experienced some genuine triangular conflict, often idealizing their fathers to an excessive degree. They have usually failed to develop adequate reactionformations during the preoedipal period. While, in briefest terms, they are able to recognize and tolerate considerable depression, they have failed significantly in the area of mastery. They are not only passive; they also feel helpless. Despite these handicaps they are often attractive, gifted women whose depression is hidden by laughter and flirtation. Their manifest symptoms may be obviously hysterical. It may therefore prove difficult to recognize depressive characters at the time of initial evaluation. Often, however, they first come to the attention of the psychiatrist or analyst at a somewhat later age than do those included in my other


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groups. The fact that they did not seek help earlier is seldom as attributable to lack of opportunity as it is to their basic lack of self-esteem. They may first be seen when they are practically defeated, with considerable impairment of major ego functions. Such patients typically verbalize feelings of helplessness and/or depression quite early in treatment. They tend to develop passive, dependent transference reactions which impair their capacity adequately to distinguish between therapeutic alliance and the transference neurosis. They should not be referred for traditional analysis without careful assessment, which should include their total life situation and its potential for progressive alteration. All these patients in my own clinical experience present serious problems during the terminal phases of analysis. Unless, therefore, there are positive available realistic goals they may drift into a relatively interminable analytic situation. Fourth and last is the group of so-called good hysterics typically characterized by a symptomatic picture which can only be described as floridly hysterical. While, however, their symptoms may present a façade which looks genital, they prove in treatment to be incapable of recognizing or tolerating a genuine triangular situation. Such patients all too readily express intense sexualized transference fantasies. They tend, however, to regard such fantasies as potential areas of realistic gratification. They are genuinely incapable of the meaningful distinction between external and internal reality which is prerequisite to the establishment of a therapeutic alliance and the emergence of an analysable transference neurosis. So-called good hysterics do not, in my opinion, meet the criteria for traditional psychoanalysis. Their major pathology is attributable to significant developmental failure in respect of basic ego functions. Initially they may, however, - 259 -

sometimes prove difficult to distinguish from more analysable women who have regressed during the period which preceded their referral. Extended evaluation will often prove invaluable in making the distinction. The more analysable patients often reconstitute fairly rapidly. The so-called good hysteric will tend, conversely, rapidly to develop an intense sexualized transference even in a structured face-to-face interview situation. These women may first be seen at almost any age. Frequently they have been seen by more than one previous therapist and/or analyst, with unfavourable results. Unlike patients in the other group, they have few available areas of past or present conflict-free interest or autonomous ego functions. They seldom present a history which includes a genuine period of latency in respect of either achievement or peer relationships. Their obsessional defences, if present, are not directed against their own egoalien impulses. Like the obsessional defences of the borderline or psychotic, they are directed towards ensuring their perception and control of certain aspects of external reality. In many cases the developmental history will reveal one or more of the following findings: i. absence or significant separation from one or both parents during the first four years of life; ii. serious pathology in one or both parents, often associated with an unhappy or broken marriage; iii. serious and/or prolonged physical illness in childhood; iv. absence of meaningful, sustained object relations with either sex. No one of these observations is sufficient by itself to reach the diagnosis of so-called good hysteria. Two or more of them combined with a regressive transference readiness would, however, constitute a red light, or warning signal. The basic question I have posed in this paper may be stated quite simply. How far can we regard manifest oedipal or genital symptomatology, i.e., instinctual content, as acceptable evidence that the patient in question has achieved and/or maintained a level of ego development at which the capacity for identification, object relations, and affect-tolerance permits emergence and recognition of a triangular situation which involves three whole individuals? This I regard as indispensable for the potential ability to distinguish between external and internal reality which is one major criterion of analysability. I have attempted in this paper to indicate certain sub-groups which may be distinguished among female patients whose presenting symptoms are hysterical. All these patients initially presented a clinical picture clearly suggestive of an unresolved oedipal genital situation. Not all of them proved to be analysable hysterics. I may thus in conclusion paraphrase my opening jingle as follows: There are many little girls Whose complaints are little pearls Of the classical hysterical neurotic. And when this is true Analysis can and should ensue But when this is false 'twill be chaotic.

REFERENCES


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KNAPP, P. et al. 1960 "Suitability for psychoanalysis: a review of one hundred supervised analytic cases." Psychoanal. Q. 29 [→] EASSER, B. R. and LESSER, S. R. 1965 "Hysterical personality: a re-evaluation". Psychoanal. Q. 34 [→] ZETZEL, E. 1965 "The use and misuse of psychoanalysis in psychiatric training and psychotherapeutic practice." Acta Psychother. 13 - 260 -

Article Citation

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Zetzel, E.R. (1968). The So Called Good Hysteric1. Int. J. Psycho-Anal., 49:256-260

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