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“Where is she?” “Where has she gone?” they ask, as if a question of presence or the evocation of absence surrounds her, such that, watched by their vigilant gaze, it can finally be resolved. But that is just the psychoanalysts muttering to themselves—an equally questionable clan with troubles similar to the ones mumbled about—“Where are we?” “Are we on our way out?” “Who wants us anymore?” These questions are so difficult because they seem so obvious; because they seem like they deserve a simple answer. And all the anxiety about disappearance, elusiveness, and ambiguity is concealed in this demand. Perhaps we might ask after her instead: Does she even want to be found or found out?
In Civilization and its Discontents, Freud (1929/1961) notes that writing, to begin with, was the voice of the absent. We write only because we, or another, have been lost. He writes this in a text that proclaims that he cares not if “all of this” (meaning civilization itself), disappears, as if then, finally, we can catch up with writing—with an unconscious that was the essence of absence writ. It is not up to me, Freud says, to judge the value of civilization. Perhaps Eros will win. Perhaps the death drive, silent and still, will conquer all. We should be prepared to lose everything. Contrast this sentiment with his famous statement (1905/1953) about the finding of an object always being a re-finding. If the hysteric is disappearing; if, as a clinical entity, she has ceased to exist—and not only in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM)—perhaps we could apply this Freudian logic and ask what it would mean not to care if she disappeared; what letting her write this voice of absence on a profession that finds its birthright with her, might bring to it. Perhaps, there is something to be learned from the disappearance of the hysteric today.
So we must put aside, for the time being, some of the questions we perennially ask as analysts about the hysteric. To answer them