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Review

Method in the Madness: Hysteria and the Will to Power

School of Social and Behavioural Sciences, The University of Queensland, St Lucia QLD 4072, Australia
Soc. Sci. 2016, 5(3), 29; https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci5030029
Submission received: 12 May 2016 / Revised: 28 June 2016 / Accepted: 4 July 2016 / Published: 12 July 2016

Abstract

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At the very start of a chapter on hysteria in her book From Mastery to Analysis: Theories of Gender in Psychoanalytic Feminism, Patricia Elliot cites Nietzsche’s “truths are illusions of which one has forgotten that they are illusions”. This paper follows this connection between hysteria and the work of Nietzsche. This paper will highlight how a Lacanian interpretation of hysteria can elucidate Heidegger’s reading of Nietzsche’s Will to Power and how this interpretation of the Will to Power can better explain the value and importance of hysteria for psychoanalysis and philosophy. I will show that the hysteric’s discourse has a “higher value” than the master’s discourse because it meets Nietzsche’s definition of art, which aims at life’s enhancement rather than the master’s knowledge or truth which aims at the preservation of life. My work will explain how the hysteric’s discourse can transform the master’s discourse into the analyst’s discourse through the Will to Power. This is important, as this is the ultimate aim of psychoanalysis where “At the end of analysis the subject passes to the position of analyst”. This is the ultimate aim of psychoanalysis because “For Lacan, the Discourse of the Analyst is revolutionary because it articulates the truth of the (unconscious) subject”. Fundamentally, the objective of this article is to demonstrate that “hysteria is to be understood not as an ‘abnormal’ condition but as one possible manifestation of the subject’s uncanny relationship to itself”.

1. Will to Power as a Valuation of Life’s Preservation and Enhancement

In his book Nietzsche: The Will to Power as Knowledge and Metaphysics, Heidegger explains the “Will to Power is the ‘principle of a new valuation’ ” ([1], p. 15), and he notes the word value is essential for Nietzsche that is evident in the subtitle to his book The Will to Power: Attempt at a Revaluation of All Values [2]. Heidegger says value for Nietzsche means, “a condition of life’s being ‘alive’” ([1], p. 15). Therefore, for something to be valuable, means for life to be alive. For life to be alive is not “self-preservation” “but rather in a self-transcending enhancement” ([1], p. 15). This article will demonstrate that a Lacanian interpretation of hysteria meets this definition of value because hysteria enhances life by exposing the lack in the Other/Master. This is the ultimate aim of psychoanalysis where “A+t the end of analysis the subject passes to the position of analyst” ([3], p. 122). This occurs when “the transference is dissolved when the analyst’s position of ‘supposed subject of knowledge’ is rejected” and “Ideally, at the end of analysis, the hysteric reclaims the knowledge she attributes to the analyst in the place of Other” ([3], p. 123). As a result, this article will show that if hysteria is valuable because it enhances life, it has the same characteristics as Nietzsche’s Will to Power1.
Nietzsche says only values that are an enhancement to life are valuable because life’s enhancement is the essence of life and the Will to Power expresses the essence of life which “supports, furthers, and awakens the enhancement of life” ([1], p. 16). This is found in hysteria through “the stance of the permanent questioning of one’s symbolic identity” ([4], p. 115). Heidegger says enhancement occurs “in and through” life and “is an over-beyond-itself” ([1], p. 16) and this enhancement can be understood as required in psychoanalysis because “It is not possible to get very far in psychoanalysis unless the analysand—the patient who comes for analysis—is ‘hystericised’” ([5], p. 27). Hysteria values the enhancement of life and “projects higher possibilities of itself before itself and directs itself forward into something not yet attained, something first to be achieved” ([1], p. 16). Hysteria “is the unconscious in practice” ([6], p. 155) which “is an over-beyond-itself” as the analysand “directs itself forward into something not yet attained”. This enhancement occurs as the hysterical analysand questions the master/analyst (subject supposed to know) ([7], p. 38) to provide knowledge about the analysand’s life. This questioning enhances life when the analysand exposes the lack in the Other to provide an adequate answer. This behaviour of the hysteric is explained by Bracher who says “As Lacan’s schema indicates, the S1 in the discourse of the Hysteric lies on the side of the receiver, who is summoned to respond to the hysterical subject’s message by providing a master signifier (S1), a secure meaning that will overcome anxiety and give a sense of stable, meaningful, and respectable identity” ([8], p. 123). Bracher continues “although such responses provide comfort, hysterics remain alienated in demanding master signifiers from others rather than producing such signifiers themselves”. Although the hysteric will fail to find a signifier from the master/analyst to put their identity into words, this process of hysterical questioning of the master/analyst is a necessary route for the analysand to create their own master signifiers rather than demand them from the master/analyst. This is why a number of authors have said “You need to ‘hysterize’ the subject’s speech, get it to aim at unconscious knowledge” ([9], p. 185) and “These interventions are designed to bring about a ‘hystericisation’ of the subject so that the direction of the treatment is then all the more the direction of the analysand towards their truth” ([10], p. 75) and finally Lacan says “what the analyst establishes as analytic experience can be put simply—it’s the hysterizarion of discourse” ([7], p. 33).
Returning to Nietzsche now, Heidegger says that to enhance life with the Will to Power implies “a looking ahead and through to the scope of something higher, a ‘perspective’” ([1], p. 16). Hysteria displays this “looking ahead and through to the scope of something higher” when the analysand questions the master/analyst “until he fails” ([11], p. 47). When this happens the hysteric reveals the lack in the Other, who is unable to provide a satisfactory answer. This is important because as a result of discovering the lack in the Other, the analysand can create their own “Real” master signifiers from this “looking ahead”. This is the ultimate aim of psychoanalysis where “At the end of analysis the subject passes to the position of analyst” ([3], p. 122). This occurs when “the transference is dissolved when the analyst’s position of ‘supposed subject of knowledge’ is rejected” and “Ideally, at the end of analysis, the hysteric reclaims the knowledge she attributes to the analyst in the place of Other” ([3], p. 123).
Nietzsche also says the Will to Power is a principle of a new valuation and Heidegger explains that this means the Will to Power determines new values for the enhancement of life. What this means for hysteria is that the analysand needs to reveal the lack in the Other to determine new values for the enhancement of life. This is achieved in the analysand’s “demand to know who she is and what her desire is” ([12], p. 306) from the master/analyst, “However, due to the impossibility of satisfying this desire, the answer that the master provides is always wrong or inadequate” ([12], p. 306). As a result, new values for the enhancement of life are established when the analysand discovers the impossibility of the master/analyst to provide the signifiers for a “stable, meaningful, and respectable identity” ([8], p. 123). This is the moment when the analysand “gets rid of this question—that is, when he accepts his being as non-justified by the big Other” ([13], p. 113).
Now since Nietzsche says the essence of life is enhancement; values that aim at preservation would hinder and deny the complete essence of life. Consequently, without resolutely taking the “stance adopted, and the will directed, toward essential knowing” of the Gay Science ([14], p. 20), the analysand cannot discover the failure of the master (subject supposed to know). As a result, the analysand needs to engage in “the permanent hystericization—hysterical questioning—of the hegemonic figure of the Master” ([15], p. 51). The analysand does not overcome the last man or dwarf ego (see [16]), and denies and hinders the essence of life when the analysand looks to the master/analyst to provide master signifiers. Instead the analysand needs to reveal “not only that a master’s ‘repressed’ subjectivity is made present (from S1 to $)” but also that “the essence of the subject—son être du sujet—is situated at the place of the lack of the Other, the place where the Other does not provide us with an answer. The analysand has experienced the fact that the subject is ‘an answer of the Real’ and not ‘an answer of the Other’” ([17], p. 10).
As a result, if the analysand understands life as only preservation which does not aim to discover the lack in the Other, then the past values of life would require a “revaluation of all values” through a “new valuation” ([1], p. 17) to posit values in accordance with life’s essence as enhancement. This revaluation of values occurs in “the Moment” of the gateway from Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra (see [16]). The avenue that leads back symbolises the past where the analysand looks to the master/analyst for the subject as “answer of the Other” compared to the avenue leading forward which symbolises the future where the analysand discovers the lack in the Other or the subject as “an answer of the Real” where “the Other does not provide us with an answer” ([17], p. 10).

2. Knowledge and Truth as Will to Power

To further understand the meaning of the Will to Power it is important to note that Nietzsche says, “This world is Will to Power—and nothing besides! And you yourselves are this Will to Power—and nothing besides!” ([1], p. 18). With this, Heidegger concludes Nietzsche’s “determination of beings as a whole, reads: Life is Will to Power” ([1], p. 18). As a result, Heidegger states that if Will to Power determines beings or life as a whole it must be present in every area of beings—e.g., science, art, “and in knowledge in general” ([1], p. 18) and therefore through an interrogation of these areas of beings, the Will to Power can become discernible.
Accordingly, if knowledge and truth are an example of Will to Power, it is important to ask what knowledge and truth are to Nietzsche. Heidegger says Nietzsche states that truth is an “illusion” however if truth is an illusion and the highest value is life enhancement, truth cannot be the highest value of life. As a result, there must be a higher value in life that provides life its enhancement and Nietzsche’s thinking reflects this when he says, “art is worth more than truth” ([1], p. 25). Nietzsche says art is a higher value than truth because it values vitality and the possibilities of its enhancement for life and therefore “We have art in order not to perish from the truth” ([1], p. 25). I briefly established earlier in this article that Lacan’s interpretation of hysteria appears to have the same characteristics as the Will to Power because it enhances life. Now I have highlighted that Heidegger has explained that Nietzsche says art is a higher value than truth because it enhances life. As a result, because it enhances life, hysteria can also be examined and understood as art. For example, hysteria shows that it values art higher than truth in the “famous Dora case that in many respects plays a paradigmatic role in Freud’s theory of hysteria [18]. Dora categorically dismisses Freud’s interventions, exposing in this way the inadequacy of his knowledge. In this regard, Lacan says that the hysterical patient incarnates the truth of the master that she herself sets up, namely, that he falls short structurally and is inadequate” ([19], p. 122).
This example highlights that Dora values art more than truth with her perpetual dismissal of Freud’s knowledge or “truth”. Dora as a hysteric “senses something remains to be said that resists all speech” ([20], p. 193) and therefore values art “in order not to perish from the truth” of Freud. I will return to an explanation of hysteria as art later in this article after the meaning of “truth” for Nietzsche in relation to hysteria is made clear.
To understand the Will to Power as art, Heidegger says the meaning of knowledge and truth for Nietzsche must be made clear first. Heidegger says knowledge is commonly thought to possess what is true and therefore truth is fundamental to knowledge. He reflects on what Nietzsche says about truth and finds “truth is an ‘illusion’” ([1], p. 26). This belief of Nietzsche’s can also be found in the characteristics of hysteria. Hysteria recognises that “truth is an illusion” and the hysteric shows this by seeking out a master who is supposed to be “an unbarred Other (A)” ([21], p. 96). Following this, the hysteric “endeavors to inscribe lack in the form of the Other’s desire for her” ([21], p. 96) to demonstrate that “truth is an illusion”. The hysteric achieves this by showing the failure of the master that “she can reign over. She reigns, and he does not govern” ([7], p. 129). Tomsic summarises this well by saying “the hysteric wants to be the master of the master and thus a real master!” ([11], p. 127). The hysteric shows that “truth is an illusion” by reigning over the master’s knowledge or truth by being the master’s object of desire. The hysteric shows that “truth is an illusion” by exposing “the lack of knowledge in the Other, because she is never satisfied with the answers the Other gives her” ([22], p. 7). Hysteria also shows the lack in the master by “having provoked the Other’s desire, the hysteric withdraws from the position of object, forcing the Other to acknowledge her as inaccessible object of desire. The hysteric’s intrigue lies in captivating the Other through seeming to offer herself while at the same time refusing to be the object that would satisfy the desire she provokes” ([3], p. 123). This again shows that “truth is an illusion” because when the master “responds to the question, ‘What am I?’ with ‘You are this’, it reduces the subject’s search to a finite object. But no answer can settle the hysteric’s question” ([23], p. 58). The hysteric shows the master’s knowledge/truth is an illusion through her perpetual dissatisfaction with the master’s responses.

3. Reason and Categories

Next, it is important to recognise the role reason plays in hysteria. Heidegger says reason apprehends “beings as beings, takes hold of them in various respects: now as constituted thus and thus, that is, with respect to their constitution (quality, poion), now as thus and thus extended or in size (quantity, poson), now as thus and thus related to others (relation, pros ti)” ([1], p. 49). The categories of reason determine what a being is and therefore determine the analysand’s ability to discover the lack in the Other. The analysand is able to discern this lack in the Other through the hysteric’s discourse. The hysteric “addresses the other as the master, as the one supposed to know, demanding an answer to the truth of her being. It is a demand for that ‘master signifier’ that might fix meaning and identity” ([24], p. 106). Oyer says “it is only with a hysterical question that a psychoanalysis can begin” ([25], p. 126) and this occurs when the hysteric “begins to doubt and question whether the signifying units of the symbolic order provide a sufficient guarantee of identity” ([26], p. 260). The hysteric senses the gap between the Real and symbolic and because of this the “subject starts to question or to feel discomfort in his or her symbolic identity” ([27], p. 35). This is described by Cixous and Clement who say “Hysteria is necessarily an element that disturbs arrangements” ([28], p. 156) and this is the hysteric’s “challenging of the master (S1), and her effort yields to knowledge, S2” ([29], p. 101).
The hysteric seeks out “the man animated by a desire for knowledge” ([23], p. 58) because the hysteric believes the master can provide the “correct answers and in this way absolve him from the pain of division” ([30], p. 122) between the symbolic and Real. Zizek explains this by saying “the hysterical subject who incessantly probes the Master’s knowledge is the very model of the emergence of new knowledge” ([31], p. 125). Fink also argues that the “hysteric gets off on knowledge. Knowledge is perhaps eroticized to a greater extent in the hysteric’s discourse than elsewhere” ([32], p. 133) and this can explain the incessant questioning and insatiable nature of hysteria. Through this process of questioning the master and the inadequacy of “absolving the pain of division” between the symbolic and Real, “hysterics have been a true motor force behind the medical, psychiatric, and psychoanalytic elaboration of theories concerning hysteria” ([32], p. 134). This has led Soler to state “The hysteric’s provocation can be found at the heart of the quest for knowledge from which science emerged” ([33], p. 12). This production of knowledge through the hysteric’s discourse can be summarised in three points that are a circular process. These three aspects are: “(i) requesting an answer, hysteria generates knowledge; (ii) responding to the symptom, knowledge states what the hysteric is (a witch, a saint, a patient, a subject); (iii) no answer settles the hysteric’s question; all answers fail to master their object, none can silence the hysteric” ([34], p. 85).
Through this process of hysterical questioning of the master and the resulting production of knowledge, the analysand can discover the lack in the Other which provides “a clearing through the tangles of lies that surround them in order that they may speak the truth about their predicament and what they themselves are doing to keep themselves tangled up in it” ([5], p. 27). The hysterical questioning and the production of knowledge as well as the failure of this knowledge to master their object use the categories of reason. The categories of reason determine what a being is and therefore determine the analysand’s ability to discover the lack in the Other who cannot provide a “signifier that will do justice to the Real” ([8], p. 7).
When Nietzsche refers to reason, he also says, “Trust in reason and its categories, in dialectic, thus the value-estimation of logic, proves only their usefulness for life, proved by experience-not their ‘truth’” ([1], p. 50). In this statement, Nietzsche is saying reason’s knowledge of beings does not prove its truth but only its usefulness for life as value estimations for life’s preservation and growth. This is reflected in the hysteric who can use the categories of reason to discover the lack in the Other. The hysteric implicitly recognises that using reason and its categories does not prove their “truth” only “their usefulness for life”. The hysteric questions the master to produce knowledge and the hysteric unconsciously recognises the answers provided by the master do not prove their truth, only their preservation, enhancement and “usefulness for life”. The knowledge produced by the master from the hysteric’s questions is not true but it is “useful” for the hysteric to discover the lack in the Other. Although Nietzsche has said that truth is not the highest value for life, Nietzsche says truth is a “precondition for every living thing and its life” ([1], p. 54) therefore truth must be present so what is alive can live and can stay alive. Accordingly, Nietzsche’s idea of truth results in the understanding that truth is a necessary value for life and this can now be explained with the help of hysteria. Hysteria shows that although truth may not be the highest value for life, it is a necessary value as it allows the analysand to discover the lack in the Other. This is achieved by discovering the master’s inability to ever bridge the gap between the symbolic and Real and is therefore unable to provide an answer to the hysteric’s question. When this happens the “analyst reveals the fundamental fantasy ($ ◊ a) that is the cause of the subject’s desire” ([35], p. 142). When the analysand discovers the master’s inability to provide an answer to the hysteric’s question, the “analysand becomes analyst upon assuming that his desire has no support in the Other, that the authorization of his desire can come only from himself. And insofar as this same reversal of the direction of the arrow defines drive, we could say (as Lacan does) that what takes place at the end of psychoanalysis is the shift from desire to drive” ([36], p. 66). In other words, the analysand must “recognize herself as a split subject who has been forbidden a certain jouissance by the Other” ([35], p. 143).

4. True and Apparent Worlds

Heidegger explains why Nietzsche values art higher than truth by referring to the true and apparent worlds from the history of philosophy and this will also assist in elucidating hysteria. Heidegger explains that philosophy has traditionally conceived the true world as what is true and the apparent world as what is untrue. Heidegger explains the difference between the true and apparent worlds as what exists and what does not exist; something exists when it is “present and has constant stability in this presence” ([1], p. 59). This is important to note because the true world is what the hysteric questions. The hysteric is “Constantly torn and full of inner doubt” ([30], p. 121) about the true world of the master. Zizek highlights this doubt of the true world by the hysteric when he says “What characterizes the fundamental subjective position of a hysteric (and one should bear in mind that for Lacan, the status of the subject as such is hysterical) is precisely the ceaseless questioning” ([31], p. 49).
Heidegger says that something is true in the true world because it “can never be removed, what stands fast and resists any attack, survives any accident. The beingness of beings signifies permanent presence” ([1], p. 60). Therefore Heidegger says, what is true in the true world allows one to gain a foothold as “one can always and truly hold on to as what is stable and does not withdraw” ([1], p. 60). Alternatively, the apparent world is what does not exist, changes and is not permanent or stable. The true and apparent worlds are determined by their value and Heidegger says the true world has been traditionally preferred as the higher value to the apparent world.
Heidegger explains the values of the true and apparent worlds are determined by what is valuable and it has been stated earlier that Nietzsche says something is valuable based on its preservation and enhancement of life. Heidegger says the true world, which is fixed, permanent and stable, is thought to be a value for life because it is “necessary for securing the constancy of life itself” ([1], p. 63). However, if the world were perpetually inconstant, altering and changing, the true world which is thought as what is permanent and unchanging would be a freezing of the changing world and “measured against what is becoming, such fixating would be inappropriate and merely a distortion” ([1], p. 63). Thus, the true world of unchanging permanency would not be true, as it would not incorporate the becoming of the world. This provides an explanation for why the hysteric doubts the true world or knowledge of the master.
The hysteric senses that the true world distorts the becoming of the world. The hysteric doubts about the true world are shown where “apropos of every object, his experience is how ‘this is not that’” ([37], p. 255). The true world can also be seen to be rejected in hysteria when “the subject refuses the symbolic mandate conferred on it in the ‘Symbolic universe.’ it begins to question the symbolic authority of the Master Signifier” ([38], p. 118). Finally this also explains why Cixous and Clement say “Hysteria is necessarily an element that disturbs arrangements; wherever it is, it shakes up all those who want to install themselves, who want to install something that is going to work, to repeat. It is very difficult to block out this type of person who doesn’t leave you in peace, who wages permanent war against you” ([28], p. 156). The hysteric apprehends “that the ‘real thing’ behind the mask of the social etiquette is itself void, a mere mirage” ([39], p. 260) and is therefore unsatisfied with the distortion of the knowledge of the master of the “true world”. As a result, the hysteric shakes up the master’s knowledge to try to discover a “signifier that will do justice to the Real” ([8], p. 7). This search to signify the Real is impossible to achieve and that is why the end of analysis concludes when “the analysand comes to recognize ‘that the Other is lacking, that the object is separated from the Other, that the Other does not have a final answer” ([40], p. 79) or “the acknowledgment of the ‘nonexistence of the Other’ or of the Other’s constitutive incompleteness” ([41], p. 35).
This highlights that the definition of “truth” based on the true world of what is permanent would then be error or “illusion” as it is restricted to fixing the truth of beings. The hysteric senses this “illusion” because “Hysteria is the practice of the unconscious” and “this work, this exercise that the unconscious puts into practice corners the Master to produce a knowledge” ([42], p. 126). Hysteria involves the detection of the distortion of the “true world” and “The subject asks his or her Other to explain, to give reasons for, to justify” ([43], p. 130) this true world. Hysteria involves the recognition of the illusion of the “true world” by insisting “on the fact that, beneath the master’s effort to create a stable, symmetrical difference, there nonetheless remains an unresolved, irresolvable antagonism” ([43], p. 130).
This is extraordinarily similar to a conclusion about hysteria made by Olivier. Olivier is also consistent with Elliot [44] (who I mentioned in the abstract) since they both highlight that hysteria involves the detection of the illusion of truth. This is evident when Olivier argues that hysteria is a “‘destruction of... illusions’ comparable to those thematized by Fowles in The magus. And, in my judgment, to disabuse human beings of their illusions, in the place of which a practice of coping with the difficulty and complexity of life is encouraged, can in the final analysis only be a way of promoting psychic health” ([45], p. 206). This work by Olivier also highlights that it is important to understand that this “hysterical symptom is not the sign of an illness, but a sign of the subject, or even a sign of the division of the subject” ([46], p. 82).
With this explained Nietzsche’s statement, that truth is an illusion becomes understandable and highlights its importance for understanding hysteria. Hysteria as art and Will to Power allows the analysand to enhance life and look “ahead and through to the scope of something higher” by removing the error and illusion of the fixed, unchanging “truth”. This takes place by questioning the master to discover the lack in the Other which is “what is becoming” and changing. The hysteric achieves this by charming or seducing the master or “anyone who has a significant position as a phallic metaphor” ([47], p. 99). By setting “herself up as the object of another’s desire, and withholds herself from the other” the hysteric “grants this phallic Other a particular and intense significance and, in so doing, a power over him or her” ([47], p. 100). This also explains why “hysterical desire aims at remaining unfulfilled” ([11], p. 54). The hysteric “places all her energy in making herself into the object of the Other’s desire so as to master it” ([48], p. 13) but “by always eluding the Other, slipping away as object, maintains the lack in the Other. She wants to be the ultimate object of the desire of the Other” ([49], p. 183). The hysteric does this to master the Other’s desire for two key reasons. First the hysteric does this because “it is the partner’s desire that is so important to her in defining her being” ([50], p. 155) and it brings “the self appreciation of the hysterical structure and, ultimately, a feeling of completeness” ([47], p. 100). This is also explained by Ragland who says “She only exists insofar as she is seen or heard by the phallic other whose gaze gives her life” because this makes “herself desirable in her own eyes” ([51], p. 72).
The second and more important reason the hysteric wants to master the Other’s desire is because “Hysterics are looking for a master whom they in turn can master” ([52], p. 116) and by seducing “the desiring man to learn about the object that causes his desire. This object, which has dropped out of the speech cycle set in motion by the Demand, is the hysteric herself” ([34], p. 87). Hysteria involves this “function of teasing knowledge [pousse-àsavoir]” ([34], p. 87) because the hysteric wants the master to provide the signifier to bridge the gap between the Real and symbolic. The hysteric wants the master to put the Real into “the speech cycle” because this “is the hysteric herself”. The hysteric seeks a master that she believes is not lacking in the ability to bridge the gap between the Real and symbolic as “her own escape from castration” ([53], p. 109). This is why Oyer says “the cure of psychoanalysis is a facing up to the real of castration, and both the psychoanalyst and the hysteric must let themselves fall in order to begin (again)” ([25], p. v).
These reasons also highlight why “Hysteria provides the exemplary case of desire as a defence against jouissance” ([31], p. 33). The hysteric “is well aware that the only way to remain desired is to postpone the satisfaction, the gratification of desire which would bring enjoyment” ([31], p. 33). As a result, hysteria involves the strategy of “keeping the Other’s desire unsatisfied so as to assure that she will maintain her role as desired object” ([21], p. 95) which gives an identity to the hysteric. Ragland explains this by saying the master’s “gaze gives her life” ([51], p. 72) and Fink says the hysteric is “extremely attentive to the Other’s desire, since she derives her being from it” ([32], p. 132). If the Other’s desire is enjoyed or satisfied the hysteric risks losing this identity and therefore the hysteric postpones “the gratification of desire which would bring enjoyment” ([31], p. 33). The other reason why hysteria involves “strategies to avoid or deny being the object of the Other’s jouissance” ([21], p. 95) is because the hysteric wants the master to provide the signifier to remove the gap between the Real and the symbolic. These two reasons highlight why Fink says “in addition to expecting being from the Other, she also expects knowledge: she looks to the Other to fill her lack of being (or want-to-be) and lack of knowledge (or want-to-know)” ([32], p. 132).
Hence, the hysteric “solicits knowledge by offering herself as its precious object, compelling man [the male] to always generate more” ([34], p. 85) by always making sure to elude the Other’s satisfaction. The hysteric understands that knowledge can be produced through this strategy of being the object of the Other’s desire but at the same time never satisfying the Other’s desire. The hysteric wants knowledge about the Real from the master and “pushes the one to whom she addresses her question to know [pousseà-savoir]: ‘Look at my body, there you will find the answer to my question’ She offers herself to man as a ravishing enigma” ([34], p. 86). By repeating this “seductive strategy again and again” ([54], p. 67) and by being perpetually unsatisfied with the answers provided by the master as well as being the object of desire for the master, the hysteric pushes the master (who wants to enjoy the object of desire) to produce more and more knowledge to try to satisfy the hysteric by providing the answer s/he is looking for. The end of psychoanalytic treatment transpires when this impasse of trying to put the Real into words is traversed by “what Lacan calls traversing the fantasy” ([55], p. 72). This occurs when the hysteric changes their position from gaining an identity from the desire of the Other as well as trying to receive a signifier for the Real from the master/analyst. This is what occurs when “the hysterical analysand opens the Master’s Discourse to the Analyst’s Discourse” ([40], p. 77). The hysteric moves into the position of the analyst from “the recognition of the Other’s deficiency, the realization that the unconscious fantasies that have been directing one’s desire and contributing to one’s suffering are both relative and doomed to remain unfulfilled” ([55], p. 72). In other words, the hysteric moves to the position of analyst when the ‘true world’ of the master is discovered as lacking and “It is only when the analysand realizes that the analyst doesn’t have the object that he can live a life in which he is no longer completely locked into the desire of the Other but has a little bit of leeway” ([56], p. 79).
Nietzsche also states that the world is “‘in truth’!—a ‘becoming’ world”. There is nothing in ‘being’” ([1], p. 65) and consequently by affirming that the world exists as becoming, Nietzsche is stating becoming as a value. As opposed to a world that is fixed and constant, Heidegger says Nietzsche states the changing world of becoming is a higher value. The hysteric senses Nietzsche’s statement that “there is nothing in being” and “knows that there is always something that is lacking in knowledge” ([51], p. 5). Hysteria explains that the changing world of becoming is a higher value because it is open to an encounter with “the subject that psychoanalysis with the hysteric questions and whose relation to knowledge [le savoir] is of a lack, or gap” ([46], p. 81). The hysteric questions the ‘true world’ of being of the master because this world has excluded the subject which exists as a gap in being which the changing world of becoming is.
As a result, truth as what is permanent and fixed is not the highest value for life’s preservation and enhancement and therefore Nietzsche says “To transform the belief ‘it is thus and thus’ into the will ‘it shall become thus and thus’” ([1], p. 65). This is also the belief of the hysteric who is not satisfied with “it is thus and thus” as noted by many authors. For example, Klepec pronounces “the hysteric is allergic to mastery” ([11], p. 126) and Salecl says “the main problem for the hysteric is that those who incarnate authority are never fully up to the mark, hence the typical dissatisfaction of the hysteric and his or her ever-shifting desire” ([57], p. 137). Finally the hysteric’s “radical doubt and questioning, his entire being is sustained by the uncertainty” ([58], p. 91) of the master’s belief “it is thus and thus” is highlighted by Johnston who says “the discourse of the master is grounded on a gesture of identification (‘That’s me!’), whereas the discourse of the hysteric is grounded on a gesture of dis-identification (‘That’s not me!’)” ([26], p. 260).
The “truth” of the master is not the highest value for life because it fixes beings to be decided, “it is thus,” and therefore “it denies life’s vitality, its will to self-transcendence and becoming” ([1], p. 66). Hysteria adheres to value the world as becoming and art as higher than the true world of being as what is fixed and unchanging. The hysteric’s “relationship to the Other (the symbolic order, the law) is one of perpetual questioning” ([41], p. 34) of the belief “it is thus”. By valuing the world of vitality and becoming “the hysterical position opens up the possibility for change” ([41], p. 34) of the belief “it is thus”. As a result, hysteria does not deny “life’s vitality, its will to self-transcendence” because it aims to discover the lack/gap in the belief “it is thus” of the master. This occurs through the hysterical questioning of the master and this opens the door for the analysand to “come to a point at the end of analysis when he does not hystericize himself in the same way and does not expect from the Other a word about his being” ([59], p. 89). Importantly this could not occur if hysteria valued “it is thus” of the master, the “true world” and what is fixed and unchanging. This explains the necessity of the hystericisation of the subject in psychoanalysis.

5. Schematizing

Heidegger continues to analyse Nietzsche’s idea of knowledge and truth and states that knowing implies self-knowing and as man represents beings, man is set “out in the open region of this relation. Thus it also sustains his being human” ([1], p. 68). This relationship is evident and confirmed in hysteria. The relation of knowledge (or non-knowledge) [58] of the lack in the Other to a human’s self-knowledge makes the human what s/he is and “vibrates throughout our basic posture” ([1], p. 68). This highlights that the knowledge of the lack in the Other determines a human’s relationship to life. This is shown where at the end of the analysand’s analysis the “hysteric’s revolutionary power becomes actualized and reconfigured into a liberatory power” ([35], p. 135). The analysand’s liberation comes from discovering the lack in the Other which allows the analysand to create “her own signifiers and continues to dialectize them. This new, self-designated signifier is not imposed from outside in some absolute, rigid way which mandates the subject’s identity. Instead, the subject now creates her own ‘identity’ through the process of subjectivization” ([35], p. 142). This highlights that knowing the lack in the Other implies a self-knowing and this “vibrates throughout our basic posture” because it liberates the analysand to separate from the Other and create their own signifiers and identity.
Nietzsche adds that it is important “Not ‘to know’ but to schematize—to impose upon chaos as much regularity and as many forms as our practical needs require” ([1], p. 70). This occurs when hysteria holds a higher value for the world of becoming and art “To transform the belief ‘it is thus and thus’ into the will ‘it shall become thus and thus’”. By doing this, the hysteric adheres to the aim of psychoanalysis, which “is not to strengthen the ego but to problematize its status” ([60], p. 4). The dissatisfaction of the hysteric with the master’s knowledge of “it is thus” allows the analysand “to impose upon chaos as much regularity and as many forms as our practical needs require” which can ultimately lead to discovering the lack in the Other.
Heidegger says chaos “means the jumbled, the tangled, the pell-mell. Chaos means not only what is unordered but also entanglement in confusion, the jumble of something in shambles” ([1], p. 77). This chaos needs to be understood as the origin of the hysteric’s behaviour. This can be explained by noting that Zizek says “the hysterical subject is the subject par excellence” ([61], p. 144) and this is because the hysteric senses the chaos of the subject in the world of becoming. The hysteric experiences the gap between the symbolic and Real as chaos and this results in the hysteric being “incapable of finding her coordinates within the symbolic network” which can lead to “what may seem to be irrational outbursts” ([62], p. 35). Glowinski supports this by saying “The real driving force behind the hysteric’s discourse is the impossible, the real” ([63], p. 70) and this Real urges, streams, is dynamic, and the order of the chaos of the Real is covered, “whose law we do not descry straightaway” ([1], p. 80). Hysteria allows the analysand to uncover the lack in the Other to schematize the law of the chaos of the Real to preserve and enhance life. The end of psychoanalytic treatment concludes when the analysand discovers the lack in the Other, by uncovering the order and law of the chaos of the Real.
Nietzsche says art is the highest value for life’s preservation and enhancement because it incorporates the flowing of chaos into life and this is what the hysteric does by questioning the “truth” of the master. Art is the highest value for life’s preservation and enhancement because “it does not copy what is at hand” ([1], p. 81). Instead, “art transfigures life, moves it into higher, as yet unlived, possibilities” ([1], p. 81). This is evident in all directions with hysteria. For example, it is clear that the hysteric “does not copy what is at hand” when Verhaeghe says “the hysterical subject will refuse the common cultural answers”, “The hysterical subject refuses the ready made answers” and “the hysterical subject sees through the fallacy of the guarantee of that shared answer, she detects what Lacan calls ‘le monde du semblant’, the world of make-believe” ([64], p. 62). Verhaeghe adds “She does not want an answer, she wants The Answer, she wants the Real Thing” ([64], p. 62) and this is why the hysteric is always unsatisfied with the “true” answers from the world of being from the master.
The hysteric also adheres to Nietzsche’s definition of art by always looking to “higher, as yet unlived, possibilities”. This is clear in many ways. For example, Srinivasan says the “hysterical function cannot be silenced, it seeks to focus incessantly on the lack in the Other” ([65], p. 36). This highlights that the hysteric’s questions and focus on the lack in the Other artistically transfigure life to move “it into higher, as yet unlived, possibilities”. In addition, the hysteric is looking for higher, as yet unlived possibilities by incessantly questioning “the incapacity of the subject to fulfil the symbolic identification, to assume fully and without restraint the symbolic mandate” ([13], p. 113). The hysteric’s characteristic of questioning the master “about the symptom that, unexplainably, riddles her body. She presses him for an answer, impelling him to generate the knowledge needed to cure her” ([34], p. 78) also shows that the hysteric is always looking for “higher, as yet unlived, possibilities”. The hysteric is always looking for “higher, as yet unlived, possibilities” because “the hysteric’s position signifies a larger truth; that something is always lacking in knowledge” ([51], p. 5). As a result, since art is of more value than truth because “art transfigures life, moves it into higher, as yet unlived, possibilities” and since hysteria values art higher than truth, it is logical to conclude that the hysteric’s discourse is a higher value than the master’s discourse. This also explains why the gap between the Real and the symbolic that is sensed by the hysteric “has to be produced, and has been reproduced at the outset of each cure ever since Freud’s first encounters with hysterics: Lacan has called this the ‘hystericisation’ of ‘the subject’” ([46], p. 82). Hysteria “is the only structure that opens a clear path to the unconscious” ([51], p. 61) and this is why it has a higher value than the master’s discourse because “the Discourse of the Hysteric leads to a revolutionary knowledge—that of the psychoanalyst. For Lacan, the Discourse of the Analyst is revolutionary because it articulates the truth of the (unconscious) subject” ([40], p. 79).
Art and hysteria are the highest value for life’s preservation and enhancement because they awaken life, make it alert and “only through magic does life remain awake” ([1], p. 81). Hysteria as art transfigures life and therefore incorporates the becoming world of chaos into life which the “truth” of the master could not do. Art and hysteria incorporate the becoming world of the chaos of the Real. The hysteric’s discourse transforms into the analyst’s discourse when the analysand values art to incorporate the chaos of becoming into life by discovering the lack in the Other and this allows the analysand to create a new master signifier for life’s preservation and enhancement. When the analysand discovers the lack in the Other and moves into the discourse of the analyst “the subject is no longer given the master signifier by the other who imposes it, but she creates her own signifiers” ([35], p. 142). By discovering the lack in the Other “the analyst sets the patient to work, to associate, and the product of that laborious association is a new master signifier” ([32], p. 135). This process of discovering the lack in the Other and responding to this by creating a new master signifier is the death drive which is a “radically negative gesture of ‘unplugging’ from the symbolic order” ([41], p. 35). The death drive “’wipes the slate clean,’ opening up the space for the kind of Truth-Event” ([41], p. 35) by discovering the lack in the Other and creating a new master signifier. The hysteric makes this possible by valuing art higher than truth and this explains why Zizek says “the hysterical subject is the subject par excellence” ([61], p. 144) because “this negativity of the death-drive is constitutive of the faithful subject and that only the Lacanian death drive can allow one to discern a genuine Truth-Event” ([41], p. 35).
Finally this process of the death drive in hysteria can be related to Zizek’s commentary on the Cartesian cogito. The hysteric “does not copy what is at hand” and questions the master’s “truth”. This is reflected in Descartes “methodic doubt” and this explains “Lacan’s insight that the subject of psychoanalysis is none other than Descartes’ cogito” ([66], p. 241). The hysteric values art higher than truth and this allows the analysand to discover the Cartesian cogito which is “the ‘empty place’ of Lacanian subjectivity” ([66], p. 241) through the lack in the Other. When the analysand “comes to recognize ‘that the Other is lacking, that the object is separated from the Other, that the Other does not have a final answer’” ([56], p. 79) there is “a withdrawal from one’s substantial identity” ([66], p. 241). The analysand’s “true subjectivity arises only through encountering the Real” and this occurs “through the subsequent disintegration of the self that had been constituted” ([66], p. 241) by the belief that the master can provide a signifier to close the gap between the symbolic and Real. By discovering the lack in the Other, the analysand incorporates chaos of the Real into life by creatively mastering that which appears at first as confusion and entanglement.

6. Life, Chaos and Horizons

Heidegger states every living being “is surrounded, oppressed, and penetrated by chaos, the unmastered, overpowering element that tears everything away in its stream”. He adds “it might seem that precisely the vitality of life as this pure streaming of drives and pulsions, proclivities and inclinations, needs and demands, impressions and views, wishes and commands pulls and sucks the living itself into its own stream, there to exhaust its surge and flow. Life would then be sheer dissolution and annihilation” ([1], p. 85). However, life annihilated by chaos would no longer be chaos because chaos is dependent on the life to be chaos. As a result, in the flow of chaos, life does not “submit to the urgent onslaught” ([1], p. 85) because life stands fast in it, in order for life to be urged from the chaos and for life to urge beyond itself. This further elucidates the meaning of hysteria in psychoanalysis. Hysteria does not “submit to the urgent onslaught” of the chaos of the Real and because of this the hysteric urges life beyond itself. The hysteric incorporates chaos into life and this opens “a clear path to the unconscious where hysterics led Freud” ([67], p. 73). In addition, by incorporating the chaos of the Real into life the hysteric shows “the end result of the analytical discourse is radical difference: beyond the world of make believe, ‘le monde du semblant’ in which we are all narcissistically alike, we are fundamentally different” ([64], p. 62) because of the lack in the Other (see Saussure, [68]). This explains some of the insights hysteria provided Lacan when he says “and nevertheless I consider that in a very precise manner I have been guided by hysterics” [69].
Heidegger says chaos is “A burden exerts a downward pull, compelling us constantly to hold ourselves erect; but it also embodies the danger that we will fall down, and stay down. In this way the burden is an obstacle that demands constant ‘hurdling’, constant surmounting” ([14], p. 22). However, the burden of the chaos allows humans to descry what they are in their ascendancy over burdens and Nietzsche says the experience of the necessity of the “greatest burden” has “allowed us to live” ([14], p. 22). This highlights that hysteria allows life to exist and urge beyond itself by incorporating the burden of the chaos of the Real into life through discovering the lack in the Other. In other words, for a living being to exist and urge beyond itself in the chaos of the Real, it must discover the lack in the Other and this explains the rationale of psychoanalytic treatment. This would not be possible without hysteria and this is why “In analytic discourse, the hysteric or hystericized analysand is put in the position of the worker” ([50], p. 133) as this allows the analysand to hurdle the chaos of the Real by discovering the lack in the Other. This hurdling of the chaos of the Real “sheds some light on the mysteries of what Lacan, no doubt thinking of the real as impasse, called ‘the pass’” ([70], p. 123).
Heidegger also says a horizon belongs to schematizing to secure a stable form on chaos. Heidegger states a horizon stabilizes a view of chaos in a form of what is constant and this horizon is translucent. The horizon “points as such to what has not been fixed, what becomes and can become, the possible. The horizon pertaining to the essence of living beings is not only translucent, it is somehow also always measured and ‘seen through’, in a broad sense of ‘seeing and looking’”([1], p. 87). The horizon of schematising shows what is not fixed in the chaos and this provides the analysand a view of the Real to be stabilized by discovering the lack in the Other. This explains how the Real is experienced by the hysteric who has “provoked psychoanalysis and she continues to do so from a position of pathology and from a position of truth” ([71], p. 33). The hysteric is “not alone in giving voice to this being, but more than any others they bear its leitmotif” ([6], p. 155) and this is why hysteria has been and will continue to be so important for psychoanalysis. The analysand’s experience of this chaos of the Real in the horizon is very important and results in hysterization which “is the condition necessary for the speaking being to enter into an analysis” ([53], p. 107) as this leads to “the emergence of new knowledge” ([31], p. 125).
To explain the schematizing of chaos further, Heidegger also cites a note from Nietzsche’s work that says, “The development of reason is adjustment, invention, in order to make similar, identical-the same process that every sense impression goes through!” ([1], p. 94). This note explains the development of the schematizing of chaos occurs through the creation of the identity of something encountered in the chaos of the Real. Heidegger explains the identity of something in the chaos is not discovered by first ascertaining the characteristics of it. The identity of something is not “something to be found at hand” ([1], p. 94). Instead, the identity of a thing is created before it is encountered and Heidegger says “this creative character” ([1], p. 94), is the essence of schematizing. Therefore, the horizon of schematizing creates the categories of a thing “poetically” and this creativity of schematizing “first clears for what is encountered that free place from which and upon which it can appear as something constant” ([1], p. 98). This is what happens when “The analysand, in dialogue with the analyst, answers the call for liberation by producing her own signifiers and satisfaction rather than merely submitting to the Other’s” ([35], p. 142). The analysand needs to be creative and “poetic” to discover the lack in the Other and to also respond to this by creating a new master signifier. The analysand can achieve this by being “the most sublime of hysterics” ([7], p. 35) where “the hysteric, by his very questioning, ‘burrows a hole in the Other’” ([72], p. 20) to discover the master’s lack. When this happens the analysand “exposes the castration of the Father, and so the secret of the Master’s discourse (S17: 110)” ([40], p. 77) and perceives “that it is s/he who needs to produce the answer” ([53], p. 112).
By creatively and poetically discovering the lack in the Other, the analysand can “reconfigure its structure of signifiers, and, with that reorganization of signification, to produce new meaning and knowledge” ([40], p. 80). This is achieved by creating a new master signifier in response to discovering the lack in the Other. This new master signifier is creative and poetic because it is “produced by the subject rather than imposed upon the subject from the outside. In this way, one ‘shifts gears’, as Lacan puts it” ([8], p. 124). This new master signifier has “allowed us to live” because it “will perhaps be a little less stupid” ([73], p. 46) since it will include the lack in the Other and its creativity comes from being “less absolute, exclusive, and rigid in its establishment of the subject’s identity, and more open, fluid, processual” ([73], p. 46). When the analysand discovers this lack in the Other there is an identification with the symptom but this is “not a Symbolic nor an Imaginary one, but a Real identification, functioning as a suppletion (suppléance) for the lack of the Other” ([17], p. 10). Through this process, the analysand “acquires a Real identity, connecting it to the Real of its being. This is the identity which defines the subject, that is, his particular, privileged way of enjoying” ([17], p. 10). This elucidates the ‘pass’ at the end of analysis which concerns “each person bringing in a contribution to the analyst’s discourse by bearing witness to [giving some evidence of] how one can enter into it” ([9], p. 186). The analysand “passes” into the position of analyst by “giving some evidence of” how the analysand can artistically and creatively discover the lack in the Other by clearing “what is encountered that free place from which and upon which it can appear as something constant”. To “pass” into the analyst’s discourse, the analysand must also give some evidence how to “progress beyond the mastery of the Other’s signifier to the point or position where she creates or produces her own signifiers and consequently becomes the cause of her own desire” ([35], p. 140).

7. Law of Contradiction

Now that I have explained the poetic and creative nature of schematizing, it is important to highlight that Nietzsche says “The categories are ‘truths’ only in the sense that they are conditions of life for us: as Euclidean space is a conditioned ‘truth’” ([1], p. 101). In addition, Heidegger explains that Nietzsche says the human way of existing involves “The subjective compulsion by which we are unable to contradict here is a biological compulsion...” ([1], p. 101). In this statement, Heidegger recognises that Nietzsche thinks the law of the avoidance of contradiction is a conditioned truth due to a biological compulsion. This is important as it allows the poetic and creative discovery of the lack in the Other to be explained further.
Heidegger explains this conditioned compulsion to not contradict occurs so humans avoid being confused by chaos and to stabilize its torrent by imposing a form on it. The hysteric’s confusion by this chaos is evident in many of the hysteric’s behavioural characteristics. Hysteria “is the unconscious at play” ([23], p. 64) and the hysteric reacts to being confused by this chaos by seeking out a “masterful Other who has knowledge or power and thus seems to her to possess jouissance that she lacks” ([21], p. 95). The hysteric transforms “herself into an enticing object for the Other” ([21], p. 95) as a strategy to gain knowledge from the master to resolve this confusion. The effectiveness of this strategy is clear when Nominé says “Nothing seduces the Master more, nothing can make him more stupid, than a poor little girl who simulates knowing nothing in order better to recognise him in his position of mastery. She pretends to be his slave, and that renders him totally besotted. He declares his love, and she keeps him at distance because she does not fancy a body-to-body relation. It is his knowledge that she loves and, as a result, he becomes her slave” ([74], p. 43). This is the hysteric telling “the truth in the form of a lie” ([75], p. 182) and the truth of the hysteric is the “inconsistency of her desire” ([76], p. 161). This was Freud’s famous misunderstanding of hysteria in the case of Dora where “Freud relentlessly searches for a specific object that answers Dora’s (unconscious) desire. He is thus doomed to miss the mark. Hysterical desire does not aim at being fulfilled by any specific object” ([11], p. 54).
The hysteric lies about “the factual, prepositional, content of his” ([75], p. 261) desire and by doing this hysteria involves “the notion of ‘slipping away’ [77], which indicates the strategy by which the subject extricates herself from the a-sexual jouissance (Seminar XX, 13/6, 115/127) [78] of the relationship between the sexes” ([33], p. 52). Miller explains that when the hysteric does this she “has succeeded in digging her hole, she is delighted to imagine herself as leaving you with a lack on your hands. She is calm at this moment. Because the subject in question imagines herself as leaving you unsatisfied, having operated her task of sustaining your desire” ([79], p. 26). The hysteric is delighted and calm because s/he knows they are the object of desire and by being the enigmatic object of desire the hysteric is a “riddle that poses a question that demands an answer” ([23], p. 64) from the master and Gherovici says “this movement has inspired extensive knowledge” ([23], p. 64). By lying about “the factual, prepositional, content of his” desire the hysteric is an enigma to the master and “the failure of knowledge incessantly fuels the riddle, and hence the production of knowledge” ([34], p. 85). The hysteric is delighted and calm by “leaving you with a lack on your hands” because s/he knows this can produce knowledge from the master so the hysteric can resolve the confusion from the chaos of the Real. This also explains why “The hysteric is never alone, and when she encounters in her own life a symptomatic problem, her first tendency is to address another person” ([80], p. 274).
This not only explains the reason for the hysteric’s behaviour but it also highlights the important role the law of contradiction plays for the analysand in the stabilization of the chaos of the lack in the Other. Hysteria is the Will to Power that preserves and enhances the stability of life in the chaos of the Real through valuations. The analysand can enhance the stability of life in chaos by “looking ahead and through to the scope of something higher, a ‘perspective’” to discover the lack in the Other. This highlights that hysteria involves determining the perspective that avoids contradiction and confusion in its enhancement of life and this is what the hysteric is doing in “the movement of the hysteric’s discourse. She must always seek another signifier—refuse to anchor herself to any one master signifier” ([51], p. 72). The hysteric is determining the perspective that avoids contradiction and confusion to stabilise the chaos of the lack in the Other when “(the hysteric) interrogates the structure at the point of its own failure, and takes on herself, incarnating sometimes even to the sacrifice of herself, to unveil this secret truth at any price” ([25], p. 86). This search for a perspective that avoids contradiction is important because “In analytic work with those showing neurotic suffering around their symptom it is important not to close down what has started to open up. To guide the direction of the treatment is not to impose agendas or to suggest how the work should be done, but to encourage a questioning and selfquestioning. The interventions of the analyst point to something beyond what is said, to the fact that there is something ‘unconscious’, that analysands do not have complete control over their words” ([81], p. 7).
Heidegger quotes Aristotle to express the meaning of the law of contradiction for Nietzsche “That the same thing come to be present and not come to be present at the same time is impossible in the same and with respect to the same” ([1], p. 103). This is an essential factor that helps the analysand discover the lack in the Other. Heidegger states it is important to recognise that the law of contradiction provides a measure of what is possible to belong to life in advance of encountering it. Heidegger says the law of contradiction states a being exists only in the “absence of contradiction” ([1], p. 112). Consequently, the creative and poetic schematizing of chaos to discover the lack in the Other needs to be understood as determined by the law of contradiction. The lack in the Other is discovered by the analysand when it cannot be contradicted. This is what the analysand needs to be searching for from the master to discover the lack in the Other. To discover the lack in the Other through the law of contradiction, the analysand needs to be “more in line with terrorism, with the disruption and destruction of the existing order, than with a politics of increasing synthesis” ([25], p. 90). The analysand can discover the lack in the Other with an “absence of contradiction” by pushing “knowledge to its limits, demonstrating that knowledge does not coincide with the truth that it supposedly expresses” ([34], p. 85). The analysand discovers the “real of castration around which the cure of psychoanalysis orbits” ([25], p. 135) when the lack in the Other cannot be contradicted.
The law of contradiction allows the analysand to discover the lack in the Other by stabilising the chaos of the Real. Although it is possible for the analysand to stabilise the chaos of the Real through the law of contradiction and schematizing, it is possible that the schematizing of the lack in the Other can be contradicted. This explains the hysteric’s “ce n’est pas ça, that’s not it” ([82], p. 165). This is the hysteric’s response when schematizing contradicts itself, when something schematized, as being present will not be present. By responding in this way to contradiction “the hysteric exposes the insufficiency of the answer offered by the Other (whatever the answer may be), the hysteric is making visible the place where the Other is lacking, a lack that the hysteric is in fact occupying as the insurmountable enigma” ([23], p. 59). As a result, the hysteric’s response of “ce n’est pas ça, that’s not it” should be comprehended positively because it leads the analysand to discover the lack in the Other and it also allows the analysand to avoid “contradictory assertions, which man can freely make about the same thing, he displaces himself from his essence into nonessence; he dissolves his relation to beings as such” ([1], p. 112).
Finally, Heidegger also says the law of contradiction is a “command” and therefore can guide the analysand in hysterical questioning of the master/analyst to discover the lack in the Other that cannot be contradicted. As a result, the schematizing of hysteria involves a command of the law of contradiction to stabilize the chaos of the Real. This command comes from “what she is really seeking: her own desire, her own jouissance, the truth that her unconscious is painfully trying to express” ([35], p. 139). The analysand discovers their desire and jouissance to stabilize life within chaos by discovering the lack in the Other. This is how hysteria as Will to Power commands the preservation and enhancement of life through the command of the law of contradiction and how “Hysterical questioning of symbolic reality opens up the void of possible Otherness” ([66], p. 22). When the analysand discovers the lack in the Other, knowledge and truth are acquired and because this stabilizes life in chaos it is a necessary value for life. However, knowledge and truth are not the highest value for life because art allows the analysand to discover the lack in the Other in the first place. This again highlights the importance of hysteria and that “hysteria is to be understood not as an ‘abnormal’ condition but as one possible manifestation of the subject’s uncanny relationship to itself” ([60], p. 3). The hysteric experiences the “open ground beneath her” ([25], p. 135) and therefore recognises the world is “‘in truth’!—a ‘becoming’ world” ([1], p. 65). Hysteria is important and not abnormal because it “stands for subjectivity as such, for the subject per se as $-as-for-itself (i.e., the X that lacks a place in the symbolic order and experiences all signifiers representing it as inadequate and problematic)” ([26], p. 260). The hysteric experiences the subject that lacks a place in the symbolic order and this is why Lacan “following Freud, takes the side of the Hysteric who, precisely, questions and challenges the Master’s” ([82], p. 164) “truth”. Campbell says “the hysterical analysand opens the Master’s Discourse to the Analyst’s Discourse” ([40], p. 77). This occurs by artistically questioning the knowledge and truth of the master which leads to discovering “the possibility of lack, the castration that all subjects suffer” ([40], p. 77) and therefore “We have art in order not to perish from the truth” ([1], p. 25) of the master.

8. Revaluing Values

To recap, although knowledge and truth are a necessary value for life’s preservation, art is a higher value because it accomplishes the transfiguration of life to higher possibilities by discovering the lack in the Other and this can explain why Lacan says the “master finds its reason in the discourse of the hysteric” ([33], p. 47). The hysterical valuing of art higher than truth is evident in both the work of Zizek and Lacan when Nicol notes “It is perhaps not surprising that there should be something hysterical about Zizek’s breathless style and his reluctance to volunteer a particular label for his work” and Lacan’s “aim was to hystericize psychoanalysis. Likewise Zizek hystericizes contemporary theory by forcing it to concentrate on the lack in the subject” ([83], p. 19).
Hysteria allows the last man (in Thus Spoke Zarathustra [16]) to be overcome because the last man (master) does not hold art as the highest value. The last man is “the master who knows best” ([23], p. 66) and thinks he does not need art because he has all the answers. Irigaray highlights this attitude of the master by saying “It is because they want neither to see nor hear that movement that they so despise the hysteric” and because of the last man/master’s narcissism he misses the “revolutionary potential in hysteria” ([84], p. 131). In contrast, the over-man (hysteric) holds art as a higher value than the master’s “truth” through the “questioning of the Symbolic” ([85], p. 33) and affirms the tragedy to schematize chaos to discover the lack in the Other. When truth is held as a higher value than art, the last man/analysand does not affirm the tragedy to discover the lack in the Other and consequently “In the sphere of the last man each thing gets a little bit smaller every day” ([14], p. 33). This occurs because the analysand does not question the master like the hysteric who “hones in on the gaps in the Master’s knowledge” ([86], p. 221). This is important because “Its motivation in doing so, is ‘hidden motor force, is the real’ The real, for Lacan, is the impossible, that which cannot be represented within the Symbolic” ([86], p. 221). By honing in on the gaps in the master’s knowledge the over-man’s “hysterical discourse then opens up to become a new analyst’s discourse by traversing the fantasy” ([86], p. 14) of the master’s knowledge. Each thing in the last man’s sphere gets smaller every day because “The questioning of the hysteric leads to the freedom of the traversed fantasy” ([86], p. 225) and this is what the last man/master has not done.
By valuing art higher than truth, Heidegger also highlights that Nietzsche inverts Platonism by holding the apparent world of becoming (art) as a higher value than the true world of being (truth). The knowledge and truth of the master stabilizes the chaos of the lack in the Other but misses the world of becoming, whereas the art of the hysteric opens up change and possibilities by incorporating the world of becoming. Consequently, because the truth and knowledge of the master miss the becoming world it now becomes the apparent world and the art of the hysteric becomes the true world because it incorporates the becoming world into life. As a result, Heidegger says “we can say that the true world is the world of becoming; the apparent world is the stable and constant world” ([1], p. 124). Hysteria also inverts Platonism (implicitly) as it holds the world of art and becoming as a higher value than the world of truth and being. By valuing the becoming world higher than the world of being the hysteric “wants to put truth at the place of knowledge. This is the value of hysteria for culture. She has a vocation to resist the dominant discourse and to make herself the symptom of a social malaise that she incarnates” ([25], p. 86). Hysteria’s inversion of the values of the world of becoming and the world of being is a value for culture and assists in the “evolution of civilizations” ([6], p. 287). As a result, this highlights that “the hysterical symptom is not the sign of an illness, but a sign of the subject, or even a sign of the division of the subject” ([46], p. 82). The positives of the behaviour of the hysteric need to be recognised instead of focusing on the negatives and this is how psychoanalytic treatment should be approached where “the hysteric is cured of many things in analysis except her hysteria” ([46], p. 82). This also highlights that “all the productivity, all the truth is with the hysteric. Hysteria is the place where something new emerges” ([87], p. 425) and this is achieved by artistically opening up the world of becoming to discover the lack in the truth and knowledge of the Other/master.
Nietzsche’s and the hysteric’s (implicit) inversion of Platonism demotes truth to a lower value for life because it does not incorporate the world as becoming and therefore it is “a kind of error”—“Truth is the kind of error without which a certain kind of living being could not live” ([1], p. 125). The hysteric recognises the “truth” of the master is an error that is why “She insists that we: Turn everything upside down, inside out, back to front. Rack it with radical convulsions, carry back, reimport, those crises that her ‘body’ suffers in her impotence to say what disturbs her” ([84], p. 133). As a result, the art of the hysteric is raised to a higher value than the “truth” of the master because it incorporates the world of becoming through the transfiguration of the world of being. Therefore, instead of understanding hysteria “in the frightful images of demonology” or as a “stubborn and nonlocalizable symptom that could not be defined, isolated, or cured” ([88], p. 145) hysteria needs to be valued and appreciated because it artistically incorporates the becoming world and transfigures the “truth” of the master to discover the lack in the Other.

9. Justice

Heidegger says the thought of justice is also crucial for Nietzsche as it reveals the fundamental meaning of the Will to Power and therefore justice will also reveal a fundamental meaning of hysteria. Heidegger says “Nietzsche wants to emphasize that justice as he understands it has the fundamental character of thinking” which values life’s preservation and enhancement and “’justice’ is understood here as the proper way to be free” ([1], p. 143). Justice involves both truth (being) and art (becoming) and this is clear when Farrell Krell says “Both art and truth would aim at ‘justice’” ([1], p. 258). Truth as the securing of chaos is necessary for life’s preservation, however art is a higher value because it enhances life. Art enhances life because it transfigures forms and “creates possibilities for the self-surpassing of life at any given point of limitation” ([1], p. 140). Truth fixates chaos and therefore does not surpass itself. However, truth is a necessary value for life as it allows beings to subsist and allows art to surpass truth to enhance the possibilities for life.
This explains why “Mastery and hysteria would thus appear to be co-dependent in their mirroring relationship—with both being required before a truth can come into existence” ([89], p. 171). This is crystal clear when Heidegger says “Knowledge in each case posits the fixated and fixating boundaries so that there can be something to surpass, whereas art is able to retain its higher necessity. Art and knowledge require each other reciprocally in their essence” ([1], p. 140). This can be applied to Verhaeghe who explains that at the start of analysis “the analyst is placed into the position of the one who knows, the one that will reveal this hidden signification, the Other without any lack” ([17], p. 9). This highlights the importance of the role of the master for truth to come into existence. The success of psychoanalysis due to the master can be recognised by noting that it begins through the “neurotic subject’s readiness to suppose there is someone, an Other one who knows” ([9], p. 185). However, “The analyst, originally constituted as the subject supposed to know, has, rather than an unlimited knowledge, a knowledge about what cannot be known, about a signifier that does not exist” ([90], p. 49).
These quotes highlight the analyst being placed in the position of the master by the analysand but this “works only up to a certain point, the point when the signifying chain S2 is used up; this is the point of the inconsistency of the Other” ([17], p. 9). By artistically and hysterically using up the master knowledge (S2), the analysand reaches a “crossroads between S2 and the lack in the Other” ([17], p. 9). The analysand brings truth into existence at this point when s/he “identifies with the Real of the symptom” ([17], p. 9) which means to discover the lack in the Other. Knowledge (mastery) and art (hysteria) can also be recognised as co-dependent when Bosteels says “While the point of emergence of a new truth is always caught in a hysterical scheme, the operations of the master name the figure of consequent fidelity” ([89], p. 171). In other words, this also explains how “the hysterical analysand opens the Master’s Discourse to the Analyst’s Discourse” ([40], p. 77). By discovering the truth of the lack in the Other with hysteria (art), the analysand “recognize and work through its own idiosyncratic fantasy that someone, some Other, knows the truth about the world and the subject, and for that reason deserves to be in a position of mastery” ([91], p. 149). Although it is important for the hysteric to discover the lack in the master, the discourse of the master is also important as “the figure of consequent fidelity” to this discovery. This is explained well by Olivier who says “the analyst’s discourse does not enable one to break with the master’s discourse once and for all; the crucial difference here is that, instead of being subordinated to master signifiers imposed from the outside, the subject learns to produce them her- or himself” ([45], p. 189). As a result, by integrating Nietzsche’s work on art and truth in this way we can now better understand how “The analyst and the hysteric are the ‘couple’ who invented psychoanalysis” and how “the growth and change of psychoanalysis is propelled by clinical deadlocks” ([23], p. 63). Gherovici explains this by saying that hysteria exposed Freud’s (the master) “own blind spots, by confronting the limits of his own ignorance” and this forced him “to improve his technique, evolve his theories, and constitute a new body of thinking. For hysteria is not knowledge in itself, although it does serve as a guide toward the elaboration of knowledge” ([23], p. 63).
Thus, the hysteric’s art and the master’s knowledge (truth) require each other mutually as together they aim to embrace and the guide human life within chaos, in other words “Neither simply fixation of chaos in knowledge nor transfiguration of chaos in art, but both together. Yet both are in essence one: namely, the assimilation and the direction of human life to chaos” ([1], p. 140). Heidegger unknowingly summarises how the analysand is artistic when hysterically assimilating the chaos of the lack in the Other through the master’s knowledge by saying “The conjunction between art and truth is now defined as ‘transfiguration that commands and poetizes, establishes perspectival horizons, and fixates’” ([1], p. 258). In this statement that concerns justice and hysteria, it is clear that values focus on the law of contradiction that commands. This hysterical command comes from “what she is really seeking: her own desire, her own jouissance, the truth that her unconscious is painfully trying to express” ([35], p. 139) and this command guides the analysand to discover the lack in the Other that cannot be contradicted. Justice is what cannot be contradicted in the schematizing of the chaos of the lack in the Other and therefore “justice is the ground of the possibility and necessity of every kind of harmony of man with chaos, whether such harmony be the higher one of art or the equally necessary one of knowledge” ([1], p. 149).

10. Justice as Constructive, Exclusive, Annihilative Thinking

Heidegger also refers to a note by Nietzsche titled “The ways of freedom” from 1884 to explain justice as Will to Power and this note will also help elucidate the relationship between the hysteric and master which is so important for psychoanalysis. The note reads “Justice as a constructive, exclusive, annihilative mode of thought, arising from estimations of value: supreme representative of life itself” ([1], p. 142). Heidegger recognises when Nietzsche says justice is a “mode of thought”, he wants to emphasize that justice is a particular mode of thinking. Justice (art and truth) is a particular mode of thinking characteristic of the relationship between the hysteric and master and this thinking involves “poetizing and commanding” and “arising from estimations of value” ([1], p. 142). Justice discovers the lack in the Other by schematizing a horizon for life’s preservation and enhancement and justice allows “the subject to ‘give up’ the master and do the work required to know something of their truth, to answer their own question regarding unconscious desire and the object of jouissance” ([53], p. 108).
Heidegger highlights that Will to Power as justice is thinking which has three distinctive characteristics that Nietzsche describes consecutively and in a necessary order (constructive, exclusive, and annihilative) and this corresponds to the relationship between the hysteric and master which leads to the analyst’s discourse. Justice and the analysand are “constructive”, when the “master hystericizes himself by starting to question what actually makes him a master” ([61], p. 133). The hysteric’s “incessant questioning of the Master’s position” ([49], p. 75) allows the analysand to build and discover what has not or does not yet exist within the chaos of the lack in the Other. Constructive thinking involves Georges Bataille’s hysterical method of turning “discourse against itself, perverts its aims, destabilizes and desutures it, replaces system with chaos, knowledge with void” ([25], p. 111).
Heidegger explains constructive thinking does not copy something already existing and this is also found in the “the hysteric’s refusal to embody-literally, to give her body over to-the Master signifiers that constitute the subject positions that society, through language, makes available to individuals” ([55], p. 122). Instead, by making “the other produce knowledge” ([6], p. 288) the hysteric can discover something not already existing when the analysand “interrogates the structure at the point of its own failure, and takes on herself, incarnating sometimes even to the sacrifice of herself, to unveil this secret truth at any price” ([25], p. 86). Soler explains how the analysand is “constructive” in this way by saying “The hysteric and the man of science are an attractive couple, one of whom stimulates while the other, who is not hysterical at all, works on knowledge” ([6], p. 288). The hysteric is important for the “constructive” thinking of justice because “the hysteric is looking for a man who would be impelled by the desire to know” ([6], p. 288) even though the hysteric “disturbs and is nothing but disturbance” ([92], p. 49) to the knowledge of the master.
Justice (art and truth thought together) and hysteria are artistically creative and poetic in the schematizing of a horizon that discovers the lack in the Other. Through the law of contradiction, the constructive thinking of justice and hysteria creatively commands a “setting up and erecting, rising to the heights-more precisely, first gaining a height, securing it, and thus positing a ‘right direction’” ([1], p. 144) to discover the lack in the Other. The hysteric is commanded to constructively think to discover the lack in the Other because s/he experiences division “between the Real and the Symbolic quite openly and painfully” ([8], p. 7). This experience is necessary for the analysand “to liberate herself from the Other’s masterful discourse” ([35], p. 143). This experience of the hysteric is reflected in the “emblematic figure of this operation in Socrates, the Socrates of Plato (there is no other), who in questioning the ancient master, enjoins him to display his knowledge as master” ([6], p. 287). The hysteric experiences the division between the Real and symbolic and “calls on the other to tell him what he is” ([93], p. 259). The hysteric sets up and erects a construction to close this division by Socratically questioning the master’s knowledge. The failure of the master’s knowledge to close this division is shown when the hysteric presents “the humiliating truth that ‘this does not work,’ that ‘this does not fit’” ([23], p. 65). This hysterical constructive thinking/questioning opens a new outlook onto the chaos of the Real and this view is what orders the construction for the analysand to discover the lack in the Other. It is necessary for the hysteric to constructively search in this way “for a signifier that will do justice to the Real, thus opening a gap between knowledge and jouissance that is impossible to close” ([8], p. 7) as this will allow the analysand to find that the master’s knowledge “does not work” to discover the lack in the Other.
Justice and hysteria also involve “exclusive” thinking which highlights that constructive thinking does not work in a void. Constructive thinking is also exclusive because it “moves within something that obtrudes and intrudes as something ostensibly definitive, something that would not only like to hinder construction but make it unnecessary” ([1], p. 144). The hysteric “excludes” that which obtrudes and intrudes the analysand’s search for the lack in the Other by “Pushing man towards knowledge [pousse-à-savoir], she also pushes him towards failure [pousse-au-manque], the man involved with her always finds himself stupid [manque-à-savoir]” ([34], p. 88). Justice and hysteria are exclusive when constructive thinking makes “incisive decisions about measures and heights” ([1], p. 144) after discovering this failure of the master’s knowledge. Thus, constructive thinking is exclusive when the analysand pushes the master to the failure of his knowledge and this allows decisions to be made to select and schematize forms which are absent from contradiction to discover the lack in the Other. Exclusive thinking is achieved when “the hysteric, with her way of questioning others (because if she succeeds in bringing down the men who surround her, it is by questioning them, by ceaselessly reflecting to them the image that truly castrates them, to the extent that the power they have wished to impose is an illegitimate power of rape and violence” ([28], p. 154). This castration of the master through questioning constructs heights to discover the lack in the Other through the stabilization of the chaos of the world of becoming. In other words, the analysand’s thinking is “exclusive” by refusing “to follow the effect of the master signifier. She will not make herself its object, its slave” ([88], p. 82). The analysand’s thinking is “exclusive” by “constructing and deconstructing itself throughout the process of analysis; the other party is nothing but a stepping-stone” ([94], p. 96).
Finally, justice and hysteria are “annihilative” thinking which involves erasing the knowledge of the master from past constructions, which “had secured the permanence of life” ([1], p. 144). The analysand partakes in “annihilative” thinking by changing “discourses and stop expecting or waiting to receive knowledge from the Other” ([50], p. 133). The hysteric’s annihilative thinking that erases the constructions of the master shows that this knowledge “does not come up to her exacting standards: as far as the hysteric is concerned, the Master is never―masterful enough” [95]. The hysteric’s “annihilative” thinking “represents a contestation and disruption of the Master’s Discourse” ([40], p. 78) and the elimination and removal of past constructions clears fixations that obstruct the discovery of the lack in the Other. The analysand “annihilates” the master’s discourse by discovering the lack in the Other which is the “realisation that there is no big Other and the contingency of master signifiers” ([86], p. 225). Discovering the lack in the Other allows the analysand to “reconfigure the subject’s relation to her desire in order to produce new master signifiers” ([86], p. 226) and therefore “Annihilation offers security against the pressure of all conditions of decline” ([1], p. 242). Annihilation of the master’s discourse offers security against conditions of decline by allowing the analysand to traverse the fantasy that the master can provide “a secure meaning that will overcome anxiety and give a sense of stable, meaningful, and respectable identity” ([55], p. 67). This allows the analysand to stop being “alienated in demanding master signifiers from others rather than producing such signifiers themselves” ([55], p. 67). This highlights that the annihilative thinking of the hysteric as “constructing (as a creating) embraces destruction” ([1], p. 242) and why “the hysteric, like any good anti-philosopher who is never far removed from this figure, can remind the master of the need always to begin anew” ([89], p. 171). This destruction is necessary because “Only through such confrontations with the Real as symbolic inconsistency can we hope to transform fantasy and desire, and to reinvent a new economy of enjoyment” ([66], p. 54). Fantasy and desire are transformed through the destruction of the master’s knowledge to discover the lack in the Other which is the “Real as symbolic inconsistency”. Through this destruction there is a “utopian leap through darkness that transforms symbolic subjectivity” where the discovery of the lack in the Other is the discovery of the subject as a “gap of being (cf. the Hegelian ‘night of the world’ passage in the Jena writings)” ([66], p. 54). McCarthy explains this by saying “truth” is a “creative failure of knowledge” ([96], p. 68) where the analysand transforms symbolic subjectivity by creating a new master signifier in response to discovering the lack (failure) in the Other. Davis, ‎Pound and Crockett argue “This new style of master signifier is one devoid of illusions of completion” ([86], p. 225) because the analysand has discovered the lack in the Other.
Consequently, justice and hysteria as Will to Power have the characteristics of thinking which constructs, excludes, and annihilates. As a result of this, Heidegger concludes that “the vitality of life consists in nothing other than that thinking which constructs, excludes, and annihilates” ([1], p. 145). This explains why psychoanalysis aims to also construct, exclude and annihilate. The analysand achieves the vitality of life’s preservation and enhancement by constructing, excluding, and annihilating to discover the lack in the Other. The Will to Power and hysteria bring vitality into life when the analysand can “reconfigure its structure of signifiers, and, with that reorganization of signification, to produce new meaning and knowledge” ([40], p. 80). This is achieved by creating a new master signifier in response to discovering the lack in the Other. This new master signifier is creative and poetic because it is “produced by the subject rather than imposed upon the subject from the outside. In this way, one ‘shifts gears’, as Lacan puts it” ([8], p. 124). This new master signifier brings vitality through “thinking which constructs, excludes, and annihilates” because it “will perhaps be a little less stupid” since it will include the lack in the Other and its creativity comes from being “less absolute, exclusive, and rigid in its establishment of the subject’s identity, and more open, fluid, processual” ([73], p. 46).

11. Justice and Power

The three characteristics of thinking for justice and Nietzsche’s Will to Power elucidate the meaning of hysteria in psychoanalysis. Hysteria can be understood through justice and the Will to Power because this type of thinking “surpasses itself, separates itself from itself, and brings what is fixated under and behind itself” ([1], p. 146) to discover the lack in the Other. This also means that discovering the lack in the Other is a “self-surpassing, a becoming master of oneself from having climbed and opened a higher height. We call such self-surpassing heightening overpowering. It is the essence of power” ([1], p. 146). This is how we should understand why “The hysteric demonstrates her desire for an unsatisfied desire through sustaining her desire in a series of endless displacements” ([3], p. 118). The hysteric “surpasses itself, separates itself from itself, and brings what is fixated under and behind itself” by “offering herself for the Other’s satisfaction even while fleeing in order that the Other’s unsatisfied desire be maintained” ([97], p. 86). Dolar explains the rationale for this by saying that through the hysteric’s “permanent dissatisfaction it is a subject that produces knowledge” ([98], p. 144) and Dolar quotes Lacan to emphasize “The desire to know is not what leads to knowledge. What leads to knowledge...is the hysteric’s discourse” ([98], p. 144). By producing knowledge through dissatisfaction, the hysteric partakes in a “self-surpassing, a becoming master of oneself from having climbed and opened a higher height. We call such self-surpassing heightening overpowering. It is the essence of power”.
The hysteric’s production of knowledge through dissatisfaction is “a becoming master of oneself” by discovering of the lack in the Other. This “self-surpassing heightening overpowering” of hysteria is also the “bite that is to overcome nihilism” ([14], p. 180) and this is only truly achieved when the lack in the Other has been discovered or “the black snake has penetrated the gorge and its head has been bitten off” ([14], p. 180). The “black snake” is “An unpleasant encounter, no doubt, but a necessary one. Analysis leads to it. When it happens, we know that repressions have been lifted” ([9], p. 188) and the analysand overcomes the nihilism of “demanding the master signifier from the other” ([55], p. 67) by discovering the lack in the Other from this encounter. When this happens “The hysteric in analysis changes her fantasies, changes her relation to the phallic signifier. She comes to accept her father’s castration in accepting her own” ([88], p. 84). This is “a becoming master of oneself” because it allows the analysand to “separate from the given master signifiers and produce its own new master signifiers” ([8], p. 123).
Heidegger adds to this by saying Nietzsche’s Will to Power is the “enhancement of power” ([1], p. 153). The enhancement of power by the Will to Power and hysteria occurs when both truth (being) and art (becoming) are thought together and Heidegger highlights this in a note of Nietzsche’s from 1888 which says “To stamp Becoming with the character of Being-that is the supreme Will to Power” ([1], p. 156). This note demonstrates the meaning of Will to Power and hysteria involve stamping Becoming (art) in Being (knowledge “truth”) by discovering of the lack in the Other. Thus, the meaning of hysteria as Will to Power is for the analysand to discover the lack in the Other for the art of Becoming to be stamped on the Truth and Being of the “knowledge of the psychoanalyst” (the title of Lacan’s seminar XIX) [99]. When this happens the analysand gains “knowledge of the psychoanalyst” which is “‘learned ignorance’ as it was called by Nicholas of Cusa in the fifteenth century; he has wisely learned not to know, and this opens up a way for the other to gain access to that which determined his or her subjectivity” ([94], p. 97).
This is relevant to Dolar’s work when he argues for “the placement of The Phenomenology of Spirit under the banner of hysteria” ([98], p. 148). Dolar argues that “the hysterical subject, with its irreducible negativity, is the principle and the driving force of dialectical progress” ([98], p. 147) in The Phenomenology of Spirit. This negativity and force of the dialectical progress is justice (both truth (being) and art (becoming) thought together). The “enhancement of power” is driven by “the lack of correspondence of the subject to itself and to its own criteria produces a constant sense of ‘this is not it’, that any particular configuration of objectivity and knowledge is inadequate” ([98], p. 148). By being “propelled by a desire that can find no rest and satisfaction in any particular figure of knowledge” ([98], p. 144), the analysand “enhances power” to discover the lack in the Other and “To stamp Becoming with the character of Being-that is the supreme Will to Power”. This also explains the hysteric’s “proximity to the death drive anchors her being in a certain agony. The moment her desire is appeased, resolutions found, she must demolish the illusion of satisfaction in order to continue the quest” ([51], p. 72). The Will to Power’s “enhancement of power” is the death drive which anchors the analysand’s being in a certain agony. To stamp Becoming with the character of Being means that the analysand needs to demolish the illusion of satisfaction from the master’s knowledge “in order to continue the quest” to discover the lack in the Other.
Dolar adds “the subject of The Phenomenology of Spirit is not the subject of a knowledge that knows itself” ([98], p. 144) and this also highlights art (becoming) and truth (being) thought together. Through the hysteric’s “desire that propels it undermines all the different figures of knowledge” ([98], p. 144) the analysand can discover the lack in the Other by boring “a hole into knowledge, into all different types of knowledge” ([98], p. 144). When this happens the analysand becomes “master of oneself” to stamp “Becoming with the character of Being” into the “knowledge of the psychoanalyst”. Lacan explains this process by saying the analysand “passes” into an analyst by taking up that position he called “being alone.” An analyst has “passed when he does not seek to be authorized by an Other” ([100], p. 85)

12. The Will to Power and Eternal Recurrence

Finally, Heidegger says Nietzsche “thinks the Will to Power in an essential unity with ‘the eternal recurrence of the same’” ([1], p. 171). Heidegger says this because he understands that for the Will to Power to be overpowering, it must also be eternal recurrence of the same. The eternal recurrence of the same explains how the Will to Power and hysteria can “stamp Becoming with the character of Being” as art (becoming) discovers of the lack in the Other to stamp it in knowledge/truth (Being).
Heidegger says the statement “To stamp Becoming with the character of Being-that is the supreme Will to Power” means to “shape Becoming as being in such a way that as becoming it is preserved, has subsistence, in a word, is” ([1], p. 202). This highlights that the Will to Power and hysteria that discover the lack in the master/analyst are also the eternal recurrence of the same. The eternal recurrence of the same makes the Will to Power and hysteria what it is by preserving the discovery of an “eternal” lack in the Other in knowledge/truth (Being). This discovery of an “eternal” lack in the Other is a way to “erase the entirety of reality and to start with a clean slate” ([66], p. 241) to create a new master signifier that “will perhaps be a little less stupid”. The lack in the Other is “eternal” because of the “irreducibility of $ to S1 and S2” ([89], p. 146). In other words, this is when the analysand acknowledges “the existence of the real, as that which is impossible to say or think” ([9], p. 188). When this happens the analysand has reached “the final phase of analysis” where “the screen of reality, of the subject’s fantasy, is then torn” by “acknowledging the impossible” ([9], p. 188) by discovering the “eternal” lack in the Other.
Lastly, the Will to Power and hysteria are an “enhancement of power” and if this enhancement came to rest, they would not fulfil their essence as overpowering by discovering an “eternal” lack in the Other. Thus, the Will to Power and hysteria as enhancing and overpowering schematize to discover the lack in the Other which “essentially goes back into itself” ([1], p. 210) as the eternal recurrence of the same. Discovering the “eternal” lack in the Other “essentially goes back into itself” because of the “irreducibility of $ to S1 and S2” ([89], p. 146). In other words, the analysand discovers the impossibility of “the symbolic or language to provide the subject with a signifier that would fix or name his identity within the symbolic” ([93], p. 258). Hysteria and Will to Power stamp Becoming (enhancement of power) in Being by surpassing the knowledge of the master to artistically discover the lack in the Other which “essentially goes back into itself” as the eternal recurrence of the same. When this materializes, the analysand discovers the “eternal” “subject recalcitrant to being captured, and hence a subject that undermines the authority of both master and knowledge” ([98], p. 144).
In conclusion, this article shows that “hysteria is to be understood not as an ‘abnormal’ condition but as one possible manifestation of the subject’s uncanny relationship to itself” ([60], p. 3). In addition, this article has demonstrated that the art of hysteria “is a divine spirit that is always at the edge, the turning point, of making” ([92], p. 47). Art is the value that is decisive for hysteria and the Will to Power because art provides overpowering to discover the lack in the Other through the eternal recurrence of the same and that is why “Nietzsche calls art ‘the metaphysical activity’ of ‘life’” ([14], p. 29). Consequently, Nietzsche’s maxim “art is worth more than truth” is demystified because this article has demonstrated that art as Becoming and transfiguration of the chaos of the Real, discovers the lack in the Other by overpowering the “illusion” and Being of “truth” of the master. When this happens, the analysand “passes to the position of analyst from which she speaks the analyst’s discourse” ([3], p. 122) to reach the end of analysis.

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  • 1Note this article will use Heidegger’s interpretation of the Will to Power, which Nietzsche may not have endorsed.

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Gildersleeve, M. Method in the Madness: Hysteria and the Will to Power. Soc. Sci. 2016, 5, 29. https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci5030029

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Gildersleeve M. Method in the Madness: Hysteria and the Will to Power. Social Sciences. 2016; 5(3):29. https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci5030029

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Gildersleeve, Matthew. 2016. "Method in the Madness: Hysteria and the Will to Power" Social Sciences 5, no. 3: 29. https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci5030029

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