There is something annoying about the celebrated (or denigrated) muteness, disappearing acts, or unspoken bodily protest attributed to hysterical women at this point in psychoanalytic history. Any analyst who has worked with a hysteric knows the intense intricacy of what comes to be said, the incredible work of analysis that she performs, no less the process of encountering again and again some kernel of trauma, the very limits of understanding, that tends to bring the analysis towards its final moments. Why emphasize what is merely the symptomatic starting point? Why not describe the ferocious intelligence of some hysterical patients when it comes to analytic work, no less their intelligence in relation to their analysts, something that has often been called clairvoyant, even if defensive—let’s talk about you?

What other treatments are as maddening, mystifying, and magical? And what about the hysteric’s politics, so variably celebrated as radical, feminist, or disparaged as submissive, conservative? This also seems to miss the mark of what takes place in analytic work; though the question, no less how it is conceptualized, is not impertinent for the future of the institution of psychoanalysis. What could a more hysterical psychoanalysis look like, and is that even something we want in the 21st century?

The seminar will take place on Zoom at 8pm-9:30pm Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) Thursday 31 March 2022 and will be followed by a virtual pub gathering on the platform ‘Wonder’. Please be aware that Eventbrite (and Facebook) usually automatically converts the event time for the time zone from which you view the page.

The event is open to everyone and free with Eventbrite registration. The Zoom link to join the seminar will be available for registrants on the ‘Online Event Page’ (found when accessing your ticket on Eventbrite) on the day of the seminar, which is where you can also find information about the virtual pub taking place afterwards.

Dr Jamieson Webster is a psychoanalyst in private practice in New York City. She is the author of The Life and Death of Psychoanalysis (2011) and Conversion Disorder: Listening to the Body in Psychoanalysis (2018); she also co-wrote, with Simon Critchley, Stay, Illusion! The Hamlet Doctrine (2013). She teaches at the New School and supervises doctoral students in clinical psychology at the City University of New York.

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