This article analyses the invariant core of hysterical forms of expression. On the occasion of a non-consensual sexual arousal or, conversely, when the object of desire moves away, the subject is “deeply moved” and experiences abdominal pain that spreads throughout the body as anxiety sets in; breathing difficulties appear that subside when he or she “comes to his or her senses”, expressing him or herself in speech coloured by affect. Sometimes permanent symptoms remain, for which a “belle indifference” is felt, forming a contrasting pair with the overflowing anxiety of the attack. These disorders are accompanied by “gaps” in mental life, reflecting amnesia. Much more than a mysterious leap from the psyche to the body, hysteria is a fall from the psychic sphere into language. Apart from psychoanalysis, whose metapsychology -the most general theory- is deduced from this crisis, other psychopathological conceptions offer no models to account for it. This misappraisal is at the root of therapeutic impasses whose consequences are sometimes dramatic.