Flavit et Dissipati Sunt

Flavit et dissipati sunt: for those who do not have Latin, blew and they were scattered. title is not mine, but Freud's, or possibly Freud's; that is, he entertained it as a possible title for chapter he'would write on therapy in his work on hysteria.' But doubtless he thought better of it, for he never did use it, but substituted instead The Psychotherapy of Hysteria, which has none of imaginative attraction of rejected, impossible title. This essay, a discussion of photographs of hysterics which appear in three-volume Iconographie Photographique de la Salpitrizre (Service de J.-M. Charcot)2 reinstates this title, a colophon of speculation on its rejection and on its relation to hysteria. Outside question of inappropriateness of particular image in title-of Janet-like position in which it places analyst with respect to the poor little thing, hysteric;3 hubris it reveals in face of doubts hysteria cast on scientific knowledge; and Janus-like way it turns its back on discovery of resistances--there is question of inappropriateness of image in general, of image to scientific thought. For some time Freud wanted to maintain a distance (as particular image demonstrates) between himself, analyst, and hysteric, analysand. hysteric, in very essay named by substituted title, The Psychotherapy of Hysteria, is characterized by him as being, as a rule, of a visual rather than a thoughtful, verbal type. psychotherapy consists in making a vanish like a ghost that has been laid to rest, in getting rid of it by turning it into words. lines are clearly drawn: analysand is on one side with images, analyst on other with thoughts. This notion of inferiority of image lingers even in Freud's obituary of Charcot, to whom he owed so much of his work on hysteria and whose picture hung always in Freud's office: Charcot, he summar

Art · French Literature and Critical Theory · Historical and Scientific Studies · Semiotics and Representation Studies

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