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(Accepted for publication 14 May 2014)
The term hysteria has been used in the history of the psychoanalytical movement to describe a large variety of psychic modalities. What is the common denominator of the hysterias? The author suggests that ambivalence in relation to penetration in its passive form (vaginal desire), in its pregenital and genital valences, constitutes the essence of hysteria. It seems that the issue of hysteria thus configured finds its best resolution in the fantasy of an incorporeal penetration, which leads to orgasm, and spares one from the anxiety of destruction to the internal space as well as from the anxiety of guilt following the hoped for climax. The author is attempting to discern, by means of two case studies, how disembodied penetration, depending on whether it is fantasized or delusional, constitutes a solution, neurotic or psychotic respectively, to the issue of hysteria: the private theatre in neurosis, as well as the inhabited and influenced mind in psychosis (delusion of control), act as psychic figurations of vagina.